Joyce recalled the superst.i.tion that the owl was a bird of ill omen and should not be allowed to perch in the neighbourhood of a sick room.

Immediately she was seized with foreboding and her husband was dispatched to scare away the prophet of evil. On his return she was trembling and hysterical.

"You must let me give you something, darling," he pleaded. "You'll collapse for want of food, and how then can you look after Baby?" It was inspiration which suggested the child's need of her, for she patiently submitted and drank a gla.s.s of milk. She changed her gown for a silken kimono, and sought rest among the pillows of her bed which adjoined the crib. Then, in subdued tones, she reproached her husband for never having studied the simple diseases of childhood,--so necessary in their case, when for months together they were expected to live in camp, far from the Station, and the reach of medical aid.

"It is criminal," she cried. "If it had been a dog you would have known what to do. But your own child!" words failed her.

"The next time we come out we shall bring 'Good-eve.' I believe it gives everything you want to know and a lot besides."

"There'll never be a 'next time,'" she moaned. "Please G.o.d, when my pet is better he shall never again be taken so far from the doctor. This is the end of all camping for him."

"So I am to be deserted?"

"You are a man and able to look after yourself. Baby needs me far more than you do."

Meredith refrained from any argument, feeling the futility of words in her distraught condition. In the darkened tent he brooded over his difficulties while his eyes strayed with jealous yearning to the slim form in the gaudy kimono. Instead of isolation in a canvas chair, he might so easily have shared her pillows while comforting her lovingly in his arms! but for the time being he was out of favour and unloved!

Shortly before sunrise, Captain Dalton motored in.

CHAPTER III

THE CIVIL SURGEON

From the moment of the doctor's arrival the tension of watching was eased; the very sight of his wide shoulders in the doorway of the tent brought instantaneous relief to Joyce whose faith, as far as her child was concerned, was material rather than spiritual. Though she had felt an instinctive shrinking from the man's society on the few occasions on which they had met, her whole heart went out to welcome him with earnest supplication. He possessed the knowledge, under G.o.d, to save her child; therefore, surely, was he Superman--a being apart, to be reverenced above his fellows.

Captain Dalton of the Indian Medical Service, and Civil Surgeon of Muktiarbad, was an unfriendly being of peculiar personality, whom no one could comprehend. Ordinarily, he was repellent to intimacies; a reserved autocrat, and content to be unpopular. Though elected a member of the Club, he had little use for its privileges. Having fulfilled his duty to his neighbours by calling on them shortly after his arrival in the Station that summer, he had retired into professional and private life, and was as difficult to cultivate as the Pope of Rome. He rarely accepted invitations, and issued none. Men who called upon him received a rigid hospitality, nothing more, so that they soon ceased to visit him at all, at which he was relieved.

That he was a gifted musician became generally known when cla.s.sical strains from a grand piano were wafted through the Duranta hedge which encompa.s.sed his grounds, riveting pa.s.sers-by to the roadway at some sacrifice to personal dignity, that they might listen and admire.

Sometimes he was heard to sing to his own accompaniment in a voice of extraordinary richness and sympathy. The evening breeze would carry the tones of his fine baritone voice farther than the Duranta hedge; and though bungalows were widely separated by private grounds of many acres, with paddocks and lanes between, his neighbours would hang out of their windows to catch every note, and afterwards at the common meeting ground of the Club, discourse on the advantage of their proximity to the singer.

All persuasions to repeat his performances in public met with obstinate discouragement, till, reluctantly, the Station left him alone. Injured feelings were nourished, and opinions concerning his conduct and manners grew harsh and unrelenting the instant his back was turned. To his face there was no failure of cordiality, for it is not politic in a small station to quarrel with one's doctor.

It was on the polo-ground, on the occasion of a slight accident which might have been more serious, that Joyce first met Captain Dalton,--a bare fortnight ago. His appointment had taken place while she had been at the hills, and at the introduction she had resented the impudent scrutiny of his eyes, not realising the fact that she had been an arresting picture with the hue of mountain roses in her cheeks, and eyes like English forget-me-nots; in beauty and colouring a rarity in that rural district of Bengal.

Perhaps the doctor wondered at the unusual combination of prettiness and simplicity, for, in his experience, good looks without vanity were something unique. Possibly he was sceptical, for a smile of satire lurked at the back of his inscrutable eyes. At any rate, he had found her an interesting study, and the jade-green orbs, reckoned his finest feature, seemed to a.s.sess her from top to toe, critically and coolly.

Though he made no effort to engage her in conversation, he had lingered in her vicinity, listening to her childish prattle; and, contrary to expectations, long after the need of his services was past, he had loitered on the polo-ground till the Merediths had driven away in their car.

On looking back, Joyce had felt a sense of resentment at his quiet contempt of the ladies present. His cynical study of herself without any attempt to cultivate her society annoyed her self-esteem.

"He's positively rude!" was her indignant verdict, later. "I wonder people put up with him. And he has perfectly hateful eyes."

"The ladies think them very handsome eyes," Meredith had insinuated.

"They are very uncomfortable; like a thought-reader's. Anyhow, I shall not allow him to stare at me another time."

"There's a saying that 'a cat may look at the queen,'" he had remarked mischievously.

"It's a blessing, however, that one may choose one's friends!" she had finally stated; and her husband allowed the subject to drop, not displeased at her repugnance to the doctor whom he marked dangerous to feminine susceptibility and an unknown quant.i.ty.

Captain Dalton had called the following Sunday at noon, and was received by both husband and wife for the conventional few minutes. Being the official holiday, it was recognised as the correct day for men to pay formal visits, and by an unwritten law, at the warmest hour in the twenty-four.

Another time they had driven past each other in a lane, when Dalton gravely raised his hat in acknowledgment of her bow. Lastly, he had sat beside her at a Hindu dramatic performance held in the grounds of a local landowner, in celebration of a religious festival, and he had barely noticed her existence, being engaged with his host on the other side.

On the whole, he had not made a favourable impression on Joyce Meredith.

But what did it matter, now? He had come out to their camp, many miles away from the Station, post-haste to save her child, and for that she was thankful. All memory of the doctor's bad manners was forgotten when she saw him enter the tent with her husband, a strong virile being, from his keen eyes and locked lips to his brisk tread;--G.o.d's own agent to cure her babe; a blessed healer of the sick, to whom the mysteries of the human frame were revealed; who could fight even death!

"Oh, Doctor," she cried piteously, the tears like great dewdrops on her lashes: "Baby has been so bad--I thought, once, I had lost him!"

Without formal greetings, Dalton pa.s.sed to the cot, and stooping over it, began his examination of the case.

Appreciating the reproof conveyed by his silence, the little mother sat still while the examination proceeded, answering in tremulous tones the crisp, short questions hurled at her from time to time.

By and by, when a certain drug had been administered and there was nothing to be done but wait for its effects to be apparent, he abruptly turned his attention to herself. Had she eaten anything? What had she fed on for the past twenty-four hours? He covered her wrist with his hand, studied her highly nervous face for a full minute, and then ordered her away to bed.

"Take her out of this, Meredith, if you wish to avoid having two invalids on your hands. Is there another bed anywhere?"

Meredith's own occupied the dressing-tent, since he was obliged to give up sharing his wife's on account of the baby's claim to the services of an ayah.

"But, Doctor, I am not ill!" Joyce protested feebly, realising however now, that it was mentioned, that a collapse was imminent.

"You'll do as we think best," he said shortly, "or I had better get out."

"Who is to look after Baby?" she asked faintly.

"I am here for that," he said more gently.

After some futile objections, Joyce departed feeling unable to hold out a minute longer.

"How are you feeling?" her husband's anxious voice was asking. "You are as white as a lily, darling."

"I'll be all right when Baby is," she answered wearily.

In a little while Joyce was put to bed with a sleeping draught and tucked in comfortably, her husband as skilful in his ministrations as any nurse. "Won't you kiss me before I go? Love me a little bit," he pleaded wistfully.

"Go away Ray," she cried irritably. "Don't worry."

"You've made me so miserable!"

"It's nothing to what you made me!"

"I made you!"

"You--you were absent all day when Baby was so ill. It has nearly killed me."

"Dearest, don't blame me unjustly."