The Translation of a Savage, Volume 2.

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THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 2.

VI. THE PASSING OF THE YEARS
VII. A COURT-MARTIAL
VIII. TO EVERY MAN HIS HOUR
IX. THE FAITH OF COMRADES

CHAPTER VI

THE PASSING OF THE YEARS

Lali's recovery was not rapid. A change had come upon her. With that
strange ride had gone the last strong flicker of the desire for savage
life in her. She knew now the position she held towards her husband:
that he had never loved her; that she was only an instrument for unworthy
retaliation. So soon as she could speak after her accident, she told
them that they must not write to him and tell him of it. She also made
them promise that they would give him no news of her at all, save that
she was well. They could not refuse to promise; they felt she had the
right to demand much more than that. They had begun to care for her for
herself, and when the months went by, and one day there was a hush about
her room, and anxiety, and then relief, in the faces of all, they came to
care for her still more for the sake of her child.

As the weeks passed, the fair-haired child grew more and more like his
father; but if Lali thought of her husband they never knew it by anything
she said, for she would not speak of him. She also made them promise
that they would not write to him of the child's birth. Richard, with his
sense of justice, and knowing how much the woman had been wronged, said
that in all this she had done quite right; that Frank, if he had done his
duty after marrying her, should have come with her. And because they all
felt that Richard had been her best friend as well as their own, they
called the child after him. This also was Lali's wish. Coincident with
her motherhood there came to Lali a new purpose. She had not lived with
the Armours without absorbing some of their fine social sense and
dignity. This, added to the native instinct of pride in her, gave her a
new ambition. As hour by hour her child grew dear to her, so hour by
hour her husband grew away from her. She schooled herself against him.
--At times she thought she hated him. She felt she could never forgive
him, but she would prove to him that it was she who had made the mistake
of her life in marrying him; that she had been wronged, not he; and that
his sin would face him with reproach and punishment one day. Richard's
prophecy was likely to come true: she would defeat very perfectly indeed
Frank's intentions. After the child was born, so soon as she was able,
she renewed her studies with Richard and Mrs. Armour. She read every
morning for hours; she rode; she practised all those graceful arts of the
toilet which belong to the social convention; she showed an unexpected
faculty for singing, and practised it faithfully; and she begged Mrs.
Armour and Marion to correct her at every point where correction seemed
necessary. When the child was two years old, they all went to London,
something against Lali's personal feelings, but quite in accord with what
she felt her duty.

Richard was left behind at Greyhope. For the first time in eighteen
months he was alone with his old quiet duties and recreations. During
that time he had not neglected his pensioners,--his poor, sick, halt, and
blind, but a deeper, larger interest had come into his life in the person
of Lali. During all that time she had seldom been out of his sight,
never out of his influence and tutelage. His days had been full, his
every hour had been given a keen, responsible interest. As if by tacit
consent, every incident or development of Lali's life was influenced by
his judgment and decision. He had been more to her than General Armour,
Mrs. Armour, or Marion. Schooled as he was in all the ways of the
world, he had at the same time a mind as sensitive as a woman's, an
indescribable gentleness, a persuasive temperament. Since, years before,
he had withdrawn from the social world and become a recluse, many of his
finer qualities had gone into an indulgent seclusion. He had once loved
the world and the gay life of London, but some untoward event, coupled
with a radical love of retirement, had sent him into years of isolation
at Greyhope.

His tutelar relations with Lali had reopened many an old spring
of sensation and experience. Her shy dependency, her innocent
inquisitiveness, had searched out his remotest sympathies. In teaching
her he had himself been re-taught. Before she came he had been satisfied
with the quiet usefulness and studious ease of his life. But in her
presence something of his old youthfulness came back, some reflection of
the ardent hopes of his young manhood. He did not notice the change in
himself. He only knew that his life was very full. He read later at
nights, he rose earlier in the morning. But unconsciously to himself,
he was undergoing a change. The more a man's sympathies and emotions
are active, the less is he the philosopher. It is only when one has
withdrawn from the more personal influence of the emotions that one's
philosophy may be trusted. One may be interested in mankind and still
be philosophical--may be, as it were, the priest and confessor to all
comers. But let one be touched in some vital corner in one's nature,
and the high, faultless impartiality is gone. In proportion as Richard's
interest in Lali had grown, the universal quality of his sympathy had
declined. Man is only man. Not that his benefactions as lord-bountiful
in the parish had grown perfunctory, but the calm detail of his interest
was not so definite. He was the same, yet not the same.

He was not aware of any difference in himself. He did not know that he
looked younger by ten years. Such is the effect of mere personal
sympathy upon a man's look and bearing. When, therefore, one bright May
morning, the family at Greyhope, himself excluded, was ready to start for
London, he had no thought but that he would drop back into his old silent
life, as it was before Lali came, and his brother's child was born. He
was not conscious that he was very restless that morning; he scarcely was
aware that he had got up two hours earlier than usual. At the breakfast-
table he was cheerful and alert. After breakfast he amused himself in
playing with the child till the carriage was brought round. It was such
a morning as does not come a dozen times a year in England. The sweet,
moist air blew from the meadows and up through the lime trees with a
warm, insinuating gladness. The lawn sloped delightfully away to the
flowered embrasures of the park, and a fragrant abundance of flowers met
the eye and cheered the senses. While Richard loitered on the steps with
the child and its nurse, more excited than he knew, Lali came out and
stood beside him. At the moment Richard was looking into the distance.
He did not hear her when she came. She stood near him for a moment, and
did not speak. Her eyes followed the direction of his look, and idled
tenderly with the prospect before her. She did not even notice the
child. The same thought was in the mind of both--with a difference.
Richard was wondering how any one could choose to change the sweet
dignity of that rural life for the flaring, hurried delights of London
and the season. He had thought this a thousand times, and yet, though he
would have been little willing to acknowledge it, his conviction was not
so impregnable as it had been.

Mrs. Francis Armour was stepping from the known to the unknown. She was
leaving the precincts of a life in which, socially, she had been born
again. Its sweetness and benign quietness had all worked upon her nature
and origin to change her. In that it was an out-door life, full of
freshness and open-air vigour, it was not antagonistic to her past. Upon
this sympathetic basis had been imposed the conditions of a fine social
decorum. The conditions must still exist. But how would it be when she
was withdrawn from this peaceful activity of nature and set down among
"those garish lights" in Cavendish Square and Piccadilly? She hardly
knew to what she was going as yet. There had been a few social functions
at Greyhope since she had come, but that could give her, after all, but
little idea of the swing and pressure of London life.

At this moment she was lingering over the scene before her. She was
wondering with the naive wonder of an awakened mind. She had intended
many times of late saying to Richard all the native gratitude she felt;
yet somehow she had never been able to say it. The moment of parting had
come.

"What are you thinking of, Richard?" she said now. He started and
turned towards her.

"I hardly know," he answered. "My thoughts were drifting."

"Richard," she said abruptly," I want to thank you."

"Thank me for what, Lali?" he questioned.

"To thank you, Richard, for everything--since I came, over three years
ago."

He broke out into a soft little laugh, then, with his old good-natured
manner, caught her hand as he did the first night she came to Greyhope,
patted it in a fatherly fashion, and said:

"It is the wrong way about, Lali; I ought to be thanking you, not you me.
Why, look what a stupid old fogy I was then, toddling about the place
with too much time on my hands, reading a lot and forgetting everything;
and here you came in, gave me something to do, made the little I know of
any use, and ran a pretty gold wire down the rusty fiddle of life. If
there are any speeches of gratitude to be made, they are mine, they are
mine."

"Richard," she said very quietly and gravely, "I owe you more than I can
ever say--in English. You have taught me to speak in your tongue enough
for all the usual things of life, but one can only speak from the depths
of one's heart in one's native tongue. And see," she added, with a
painful little smile, "how strange it would sound if I were to tell you
all I thought in the language of my people--of my people, whom I shall
never see again. Richard, can you understand what it must be to have a
father whom one is never likely to see again--whom, if one did see again,
something painful would happen? We grow away from people against our
will; we feel the same towards them, but they cannot feel the same
towards us; for their world is in another hemisphere. We want to love
them, and we love, remember, and are glad to meet them again, but they
feel that we are unfamiliar, and, because we have grown different
outwardly, they seem to miss some chord that used to ring. Richard, I--
I--" She paused.

"Yes, Lali," he assented--"yes, I understand you so far; but speak out."

"I am not happy," she said. "I never shall be happy. I have my child,
and that is all I have. I cannot go back to the life in which I was
born; I must go on as I am, a stranger among a strange people, pitied,
suffered, cared for a little--and that is all."

The nurse had drawn away a little distance with the child. The rest of
the family were making their preparations inside the house. There was no
one near to watch the singular little drama.

"You should not say that," he added; "we all feel you to be one of us."

"But all your world does not feel me to be one of them," she rejoined.

"We shall see about that when you go up to town. You are a bit morbid,
Lali. I don't wonder at your feeling a little shy; but then you will
simply carry things before you--now you take my word for it! For I know
London pretty well."

She held out her ungloved hands.

"Do they compare with the white hands of the ladies you know?" she said.

"They are about the finest hands I have ever seen," he replied. "You
can't see yourself, sister of mine."

"I do not care very much to see myself," she said. "If I had not a maid
I expect I should look very shiftless, for I don't care to look in a
mirror. My only mirror used to be a stream of water in summer," she
added, "and a corner of a looking-glass got from the Hudson's Bay fort in
the winter."

"Well, you are missing a lot of enjoyment," he said, "if you do not use
your mirror much. The rest of us can appreciate what you would see
there."

She reached out and touched his arm.

"Do you like to look at me?" she questioned, with a strange simple
candour.

For the first time in many a year, Richard Armour blushed like a girl
fresh from school. The question had come so suddenly, it had gone so
quickly into a sensitive corner of his nature, that he lost command of
himself for the instant, yet had little idea why the command was lost.
He touched the fingers on his arm affectionately.

"Like to look at you--like to look at you? Why, of course we all like
to look at you. You are very fine and handsome and interesting."

"Richard," she said, drawing her hands away, "is that why you like to
look at me?"

He had recovered himself. He laughed in his old hearty way, and said:

"Yes, yes; why, of course! Come, let us go and see the boy," he added,
taking her arm and hurrying her down the steps. "Come and let us see
Richard Joseph, the pride of all the Armours."

She moved beside him in a kind of dream. She had learned much since she
came to Greyhope, and yet she could not at that moment have told exactly
why she asked Richard the question that had confused him, nor did she
know quite what lay behind the question. But every problem which has
life works itself out to its appointed end, if fumbling human fingers do
not meddle with it. Half the miseries of this world are caused by
forcing issues, in every problem of the affections, the emotions, and the
soul. There is a law working with which there should be no tampering,
lest in foolish interruption come only confusion and disaster. Against
every such question there should be written the one word, "Wait."

Richard Armour stooped over the child. "A beauty," he said, "a perfect
little gentleman. Like Richard Joseph Armour there is none," he added.

"Whom do you think he looks like, Richard?" she asked. This was a
question she had never asked before since the child was born. Whom the
child looked like every one knew; but within the past year and a half
Francis Armour's name had seldom been mentioned, and never in connection
with the child. The child's mother asked the question with a strange
quietness. Richard answered it without hesitation.

"The child looks like Frank," he said. "As like him as can be."

"I am glad," she said, "for all your sakes."

"You are very deep this morning, Lali," Richard said, with a kind of
helplessness. "Frank will be pretty proud of the youngster when he comes
back. But he won't be prouder of him than I am."

"I know that," she said. "Won't you be lonely without the boy--and me,
Richard?"

Again the question went home. "Lonely? I should think I would," he
said. "I should think I would. But then, you see, school is over, and
the master stays behind and makes up the marks. You will find London a
jollier master than I am, Lali. There'll be lots of shows, and plenty to
do, and smart frocks, and no end of feeds and frolics; and that is more
amusing than studying three hours a day with a dry old stick like me. I
tell you what, when Frank comes--"

She interrupted him. "Do not speak of that," she said. Then, with a
sudden burst of feeling, though her words were scarcely audible: "I owe
you everything, Richard--everything that is good. I owe him nothing,
Richard--nothing but what is bitter."

"Hush, hush," he said; "you must not speak that way. Lali, I want to say
to you--"

At that moment General Armour, Mrs. Armour, and Marion appeared on the
door-step, and the carriage came wheeling up the drive. What Richard
intended to say was left unsaid. The chances were it never would be
said.

"Well, well," said General Armour, calling down at them, "escort his
imperial highness to the chariot which awaits him, and then ho! for
London town. Come along, my daughter," he said to Lali; "come up here
and take the last whiff of Greyhope that you will have for six months.
Dear, dear, what lunatics we all are, to be sure! Why, we're as happy as
little birds in their nests out in the decent country, and yet we scamper
off to a smoky old city by the Thames to rush along with the world,
instead of sitting high and far away from it and watching it go by. God
bless my soul, I'm old enough to know better! Well, let me help you in,
my dear," he added to his wife; "and in you go, Marion; and in you go,
your imperial highness"--he passed the child awkwardly in to Marion;
"and in you go, my daughter," he added, as he handed Lali in, pressing
her hand with a brusque fatherliness as he did so. He then got in after
them.

Richard came to the side of the carriage and bade them all good-bye one
by one. Lali gave him her hand, but did not speak a word. He called a
cheerful adieu, the horses were whipped up, and in a moment Richard was
left alone on the steps of the house. He stood for a time looking, then
he turned to go into the house, but changed his mind, sat down, lit a
cigar, and did not move from his seat until he was summoned to his lonely
luncheon.

Nobody thought much of leaving Richard behind at Greyhope. It seemed the
natural thing to do. But still he had not been left alone--entirely
alone--for three years or more.

The days and weeks went on. If Richard had been accounted eccentric
before, there was far greater cause for the term now. Life dragged. Too
much had been taken out of his life all at once; for, in the first place,
the family had been drawn together more during the trouble which Lali's
advent had brought; then the child and its mother, his pupil, were gone
also. He wandered about in a kind of vague unrest. The hardest thing in
this world to get used to is the absence of a familiar footstep and the
cheerful greeting of a familiar eye. And the man with no chick or child
feels even the absence of his dog from the hearth-rug when he returns
from a journey or his day's work. It gives him a sense of strangeness
and loss. But when it is the voice of a woman and the hand of a child
that is missed, you can back no speculation upon that man's mood or mind
or conduct. There is no influence like the influence of habit, and that
is how, when the minds of people are at one, physical distances and
differences, no matter how great, are invisible, or at least not obvious.

Richard Armour was a sensible man; but when one morning he suddenly
packed a portmanteau and went up to town to Cavendish Square, the act
might be considered from two sides of the equation. If he came back to
enter again into the social life which, for so many years, he had
abjured, it was not very sensible, because the world never welcomes its
deserters; it might, if men and women grew younger instead of older. If
he came to see his family, or because he hungered for his godchild, or
because--but we are hurrying the situation. It were wiser not to state
the problem yet. The afternoon that he arrived at Cavendish Square all
his family were out except his brother's wife. Lali was in the drawing-
room, receiving a visitor who had asked for Mrs. Armour and Mrs. Francis
Armour. The visitor was received by Mrs. Francis Armour. The visitor
knew that Mrs. Armour was not at home. She had by chance seen her and
Marion in Bond Street, and was not seen by them. She straightway got
into her carriage and drove up to Cavendish Square, hoping to find Mrs.
Francis Armour at home. There had been house-parties at Greyhope since
Lali had come there to live, but this visitor, though once an intimate
friend of the family, had never been a guest.

The visitor was Lady Haldwell, once Miss Julia Sherwood, who had made
possible what was called Francis Armour's tragedy. Since Lali had come
to town Lady Haldwell had seen her, but had never met her. She was not
at heart wicked, but there are few women who can resist an opportunity of
anatomising and reckoning up the merits and demerits of a woman who has
married an old lover. When that woman is in the position of Lali, the
situation has an unusual piquancy and interest. Hence Lady Haldwell's
journey of inquisition to Cavendish Square.

As Richard passed the drawing-room door to ascend the stairs, he
recognised the voices.

Once a sort of heathen, as Mrs. Francis Armour had been, she still could
grasp the situation with considerable clearness. There is nothing keener
than one woman's instinct regarding another woman, where a man is
concerned. Mrs. Francis Armour received Lady Haldwell with a quiet
stateliness, which, if it did not astonish her, gave her sufficient
warning that matters were not, in this little comedy, to be all her own
way.

Thrown upon the mere resources of wit and language, Mrs. Francis Armour
must have been at a disadvantage. For Lady Haldwell had a good gift of
speech, a pretty talent for epithet, and no unnecessary tenderness. She
bore Lali no malice. She was too decorous and high for that. In her
mind the wife of the man she had discarded was a mere commonplace
catastrophe, to be viewed without horror, maybe with pity. She had heard
the alien spoken well of by some people; others had seemed indignant that
the Armours should try to push "a red woman" into English society. Truth
is, the Armours did not try at all to push her. For over three years
they had let society talk. They had not entertained largely in Cavendish
Square since Lali came, and those invited to Greyhope had a chance to
refuse the invitations if they chose. Most people did not choose to
decline them. But Lady Haldwell was not of that number. She had never
been invited. But now in town, when entertainment must be more general,
she and the Armours were prepared for social interchange.

Behind Lady Haldwell's visit curiosity chiefly ran. She was in a way
sorry for Frank Armour, for she had been fond of him after a fashion,
always fonder of him than of Lord Haldwell. She had married with her
fingers holding the scales of advantage; and Lord Haldwell dressed well,
was immensely rich, and the title had a charm.

When Mrs. Francis Armour met her with her strange, impressive dignity,
she was the slightest bit confused, but not outwardly. She had not
expected it. At first Lali did not know who her visitor was. She had
not caught the name distinctly from the servant.

Presently Lady Haldwell said, as Lali gave her hand "I am Lady Haldwell.
As Miss Sherwood I was an old friend of your husband."

A scornful glitter came into Mrs. Armour's eyes--a peculiar touch of
burnished gold, an effect of the light at a certain angle of the lens.
It gave for the instant an uncanny look to the face, almost something
malicious. She guessed why this woman had come. She knew the whole
history of the past, and it touched her in a tender spot. She knew she
was had at an advantage. Before her was a woman perfectly trained in the
fine social life to which she was born, whose equanimity was as regular
as her features. Herself was by nature a creature of impulse, of the
woods and streams and open life. The social convention had been
engrafted. As yet she was used to thinking and speaking with all
candour. She was to have her training in the charms of superficiality,
but that was to come; and when it came she would not be an unskilful
apprentice. Perhaps the latent subtlety of her race came to help her
natural candour at the moment. For she said at once, in a slow, quiet
tone:

"I never heard my husband speak of you. Will you sit down?"

"And Mrs. Armour and Marion are not in? No, I suppose your husband did
not speak much of his old friends."

The attack was studied and cruel. But Lady Haldwell had been stung by
Mrs. Armour's remark, and it piqued her that this was possible.

"Well, yes, he spoke of some of his friends, but not of you."

"Indeed! That is strange."

"There was no necessity," said Mrs. Armour quietly.

"Of discussing me? I suppose not. But by some chance--"

"It was just as well, perhaps, not to anticipate the pleasure of our
meeting."

Lady Haldwell was surprised. She had not expected this cleverness.
They talked casually for a little time, the visitor trying in vain to
delicately give the conversation a personal turn. At last, a little
foolishly, she grew bolder, with a needless selfishness.

"So old a friend of your husband as I am, I am hopeful you and I may be
friends also."

Mrs. Armour saw the move.

"You are very kind," she said conventionally, and offered a cup of tea.

Lady Haldwell now ventured unwisely. She was nettled at the other's
self-possession.

"But then, in a way, I have been your friend for a long time, Mrs.
Armour."

The point was veiled in a vague tone, but Mrs. Armour understood. Her
reply was not wanting. "Any one who has been a friend to my husband has,
naturally, claims upon me."

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