The Lamp in the Desert by Ethel May Dell (top books to read .txt) 📖

with me."
"I don't know why he should be," said Monck.
"No?" She was frowning slightly over her glove. "You see, my sojourn here has not been--a great success. I think poor Tommy has felt it rather badly. He likes a genial atmosphere."
"He won't get much of that in my company," observed Monck.
She smiled momentarily. "Perhaps not. But I think he will not be sorry to be relieved of family cares. They have weighed rather heavily upon him."
"He will be sorry to lose you," said Monck.
"Oh, of course, in a way. But he will soon get over that." She looked up at him suddenly. "You will all be rather thankful when I am safely married, Captain Monck," she said.
There was a second or two of silence. Monck's eyes looked straight back into hers while it lasted, but they held no warmth, scarcely even interest.
"I really don't know why you should say that, Miss Denvers," he said stiffly at length.
Stella's gloved hands clasped each other. She was breathing somewhat hard, yet her bearing was wholly regal, even disdainful.
"Only because I realize that I have been a great anxiety to all the respectable portion of the community," she made careless reply. "I think I am right in classing you under that heading, am I not?"
He heard the challenge in her tone, delicately though she presented it, and something in him that was fierce and unrestrained sprang up to meet it. But he forced it back. His expression remained wholly inscrutable.
"I don't think I can claim to be anything else," he said. "But that fact scarcely makes me in any sense one of a community. I think I prefer to stand alone."
Her blue eyes sparkled a little. "Strangely, I have the same preference," she said. "It has never appealed to me to be one of a crowd. I like independence--whatever the crowd may say. But I am quite aware that in a woman that is considered a dangerous taste. A woman should always conform to rule."
"I have never studied the subject," said Monck.
He spoke briefly. Tommy's confidences had stirred within him that which could not be expressed. The whole soul of him shrank with an almost angry repugnance from discussing the matter with her. No discussion could make any difference at this stage.
Again for a second he saw her slight frown. Then she leaned back in her chair, stretching up her arms as if weary of the matter. "In fact you avoid all things feminine," she said. "How discreet of you!"
A large white moth floated suddenly in and began to beat itself against the lamp-shade. Monck's eyes watched it with a grim concentration. Stella's were half-closed. She seemed to have dismissed him from her mind as an unimportant detail. The silence widened between them.
Suddenly there was a movement. The fluttering creature had found the flame and fallen dazed upon the table. Almost in the same second Monck stooped forward swiftly and silently, and crushed the thing with his closed fist.
Stella drew a quick breath. Her eyes were wide open again. She sat up.
"Why did you do that?"
He looked at her again, a smouldering gleam in his eyes. "It was on its way to destruction," he said.
"And so you helped it!"
He nodded. "Yes. Long-drawn-out agonies don't attract me."
Stella laughed softly, yet with a touch of mockery. "Oh, it was an act of mercy, was it? You didn't look particularly merciful. In fact, that is about the last quality I should have attributed to you."
"I don't think," Monck said very quietly, "that you are in a position to judge me." She leaned forward. He saw that her bosom was heaving. "That is your prerogative, isn't it?" she said. "I--I am just the prisoner at the bar, and--like the moth--I have been condemned--without mercy."
He raised his brows sharply. For a second he had the look of a man who has been stabbed in the back. Then with a swift effort he pulled himself together.
In the same moment Stella rose. She was smiling, and there was a red flush in her cheeks. She took her fan from the table.
"And now," she said, "I am going to dance--all night long. Every officer in the mess--save one--has asked me for a dance."
He was on his feet in an instant. He had checked one impulse, but even to his endurance there were limits. He spoke as one goaded.
"Will you give me one?"
She looked him squarely in the eyes. "No, Captain Monck."
His dark face looked suddenly stubborn. "I don't often dance," he said. "I wasn't going to dance to-night. But--I will have one--I must have one--with you."
"Why?" Her question fell with a crystal clearness. There was something of crystal hardness in her eyes.
But the man was undaunted. "Because you have wronged me, and you owe me reparation."
"I--have wronged--you!" She spoke the words slowly, still looking him in the eyes.
He made an abrupt gesture as of holding back some inner force that strongly urged him. "I am not one of your persecutors," he said. "I have never in my life presumed to judge you--far less condemn you."
His voice vibrated as though some emotion fought fiercely for the mastery. They stood facing each other in what might have been open antagonism but for that deep quiver in the man's voice.
Stella spoke after the lapse of seconds. She had begun to tremble.
"Then why--why did you let me think so? Why did you always stand aloof?"
There was a tremor in her voice also, but her eyes were shining with the light half-eager, half-anxious, of one who seeks for buried treasure.
Monck's answer was pitched very low. It was as if the soul of him gave utterance to the words. "It is my nature to stand aloof. I was waiting."
"Waiting?" Her two hands gripped suddenly hard upon her fan, but still her shining eyes did not flinch from his. Still with a quivering heart she searched.
Almost in a whisper came his reply. "I was waiting--till my turn should come."
"Ah!" The fan snapped between her hands; she cast it from her with a movement that was almost violent.
Monck drew back sharply. With a smile that was grimly cynical he veiled his soul. "I was a fool, of course, and I am quite aware that my foolishness is nothing to you. But at least you know now how little cause you have to hate me."
She had turned from him and gone to the open window. She stood there bending slightly forward, as one who strains for a last glimpse of something that has passed from sight.
Monck remained motionless, watching her. From another room near by there came the sound of Tommy's humming and the cheery pop of a withdrawn cork.
Stella spoke at last, in a whisper, and as she spoke the strain went out of her attitude and she drooped against the wood-work of the window as if spent. "Yes; but I know--too late."
The words reached him though he scarcely felt that they were intended to do so. He suffered them to go into silence; the time for speech was past.
The seconds throbbed away between them. Stella did not move or speak again, and at last Monck turned from her. He picked up the broken fan, and with a curious reverence he laid it out of sight among some books on the table.
Then he stood immovable as granite and waited.
There came the sound of Tommy's footsteps, and in a moment the door was flung open. Tommy advanced with all a host's solicitude.
"Oh, I say, I'm awfully sorry to have kept you waiting so long. That silly ass of a _khit_ had cleared off and left us nothing to drink. Stella, we shall miss all the fun if we don't hurry up. Come on, Monck, old chap, say when!"
He stopped at the table, and Stella turned from the window and moved forward. Her face was pale, but she was smiling.
"Captain Monck is coming with us, Tommy," she said.
"What?" Tommy looked up sharply. "Really? I say, Monck, I'm pleased. It'll do you good."
Monck was smiling also, faintly, grimly. "Don't mix any strong waters for me, Tommy!" he said. "And you had better not be too generous to yourself! Remember, you will have to dance with Lady Harriet!"
Tommy grimaced above the glasses. "All right. Have some lime-juice! You will have to dance with her too. That's some consolation!"
"I?" said Monck. He took the glass and handed it to Stella, then as she shook her head he put it to his own lips and drank as a man drinks to a memory. "No," he said then. "I am dancing only one dance to-night, and that will not be with Lady Harriet Mansfield."
"Who then?" questioned Tommy.
It was Stella who answered him, in her voice a note that sounded half-reckless, half-defiant. "It isn't given to every woman to dance at her own funeral," she said: "Captain Monck has kindly consented to assist at the orgy of mine."
"Stella!" protested Tommy, flushing. "I hate to hear you talking like that!"
Stella laughed a little, softly, as though at the vagaries of a child. "Poor Tommy!" she said. "What it is to be so young!"
"I'd sooner be a babe in arms than a cynic," said Tommy bluntly.


CHAPTER III
THE TRIUMPH

Lady Harriet's lorgnettes were brought piercingly to bear upon the bride-elect that night, and her thin, refined features never relaxed during the operation. She was looking upon such youth and loveliness as seldom came her way; but the sight gave her no pleasure. She deemed it extremely unsuitable that Stella should dance at all on the eve of her wedding, and when she realized that nearly every man in the room was having his turn, her disapproval by no means diminished. She wondered audibly to one after another of her followers what Captain Dacre was about to permit such a thing. And when Monck--Everard Monck of all people who usually avoided all gatherings at the Club and had never been known to dance if he could find any legitimate means of excusing himself--waltzed Stella through the throng, her indignation amounted almost to anger. The mess had yielded to the last man.
"I call it almost brazen," she said to Mrs. Burton, the Major's wife. "She flaunts her unconventionality in our faces."
"A grave mistake," agreed Mrs. Burton. "It will not make us think any the more highly of her when she is married."
"I am in two minds about calling on her," declared Lady Harriet. "I am very doubtful as to the advisability of inviting any one so obviously unsuitable into our inner circle. Of course Mrs. Ralston," she raised her long pointed chin upon the name, "will please herself in the matter. She will probably be the first to try and draw her in, but what Mrs. Ralston does and what I do are two very different things. She is not particular as to the society she keeps, and the result is that her opinion is very justly regarded as worthless."
"Oh, quite," agreed Mrs. Burton, sending an obviously false smile in the direction of the lady last named who was approaching them in the company of Mrs. Ermsted, the Adjutant's wife, a little smart woman whom Tommy had long since surnamed "The Lizard."
Mrs. Ralston, the surgeon's wife, had once been a pretty girl, and there were occasions still on which her prettiness lingered like the gleams of a fading sunset. She had a diffident manner in society, but yet she was the only woman in the station who refused to follow Lady Harriet's lead. As Tommy had said, she was a nobody. Her influence was of no account, but yet