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Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Proper pride : A
novel. Volume 2 (of 3)
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Proper pride : A novel. Volume 2 (of 3)

Author: B. M. Croker

Release date: December 27, 2023 [eBook #72519]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Tinsley Brothers, 1882

Credits: MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet
Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROPER

PRIDE : A NOVEL. VOLUME 2 (OF 3) ***
 PROPER PRIDE.
A Novel.

Life may change, but it may fly not;

Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth,
Love repulsed—but it returneth.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1882.
[All rights reserved.]
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
 CONTENTS.

PAGE
CHAPTER I.
“THE NEILGHERRIES” 1
CHAPTER II.
AFGHANISTAN 20
CHAPTER III.
“MY CAPTAIN DOES NOT ANSWER; HIS LIPS ARE 48
PALE AND STILL”
CHAPTER IV.
MONKSWOOD 80
CHAPTER V.
WAITING FOR AN ANSWER 87
CHAPTER VI.
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 105
CHAPTER VII.
“MARY, IT IS MY HUSBAND!” 134
CHAPTER VIII.
ALICE’S OVERTURES ARE DECLINED 163
CHAPTER IX.
“SIR REGINALD’S EYES ARE OPENED” 200
CHAPTER X.
GEOFFREY MANŒUVRES 238
CHAPTER XI.
“MEET ME BY MOONLIGHT ALONE” 245
PROPER PRIDE.
 CHAPTER I.
“THE NEILGHERRIES.”

Our hero went to the Neilgherry Hills for the remainder of his two
months’ leave. It is quite beyond my pen to describe that lovely
region, but in common with almost all who have ever been there I
have an admiration amounting to a passion for the Blue Hills. I
declare them to be the most salubrious, delightful, beautiful range in
the whole world. If I were to attempt a detailed description of these
most favoured hills, I should fall so far short of their perfections that I
would only incur the wrath and contempt of their many devoted
admirers, so I shall content myself by merely giving a description of
Sir Reginald’s journey up the Ghaut.
He arrived at the foot of the hills early one morning, having spent a
night of heat, mosquitoes, and consequent madness at Mettapollium.
He rode up by the old road, which is nine miles to Coonor, in
preference to driving up the new ghaut, a detour of sixteen miles. His
thoughts were exceedingly pleasant, and he whistled uninterruptedly
for the first two miles; but after a while the beautiful scenery he was
passing through engaged his attention entirely, and more than once
he stopped his horse and looked about in amazed admiration. “Oh, if
Alice could only see it! If she were here, what ecstasies she would
be in!” was his frequent thought. As he journeyed steadily up, the
close tropical vegetation was gradually left behind, the trees
assumed a more European aspect, the air lost its thick steamy feel,
and became every instant more rarefied and pure. The path
appeared to wind in and out through mountain-sides clothed with
trees and foliage of every description; a foaming river was tearing
headlong down a wide rocky channel and taking frantic leaps over all
impediments. The scenery was splendid. In spite of hunger and
fatigue, Sir Reginald felt as if he could gaze and gaze for hours, and
yet that his eyes would scarcely be satisfied. Wild roses and wild
geraniums abounded on all sides; enormous bunches of heliotrope
were growing between the stones; lovely flowering creepers
connected the trees, and as to the ferns——!
The graves of several engineers who had died when this old ghaut
was being made were passed—poor lonely graves! and yet could
those laid in them, so many thousands of miles away from their
native land, desire to be buried in a more beautiful spot?
At one side towered the “Droog,” crowned by Tippoo’s old fortress.
The “Droog” itself, a bold beetling hill facing south, and most
precipitous, seemed to stand as sentry to this garden of India. From
the top of it you could look sheer down into the plains. It was on the
opposite side of the river to the old ghaut, and a long day’s outing
from Coonor. On its summit were the gray broken walls of the fort,
very old and much dismantled, and from which they say that Tippoo,
when in an angry mood, used to toss his unhappy prisoners down to
the plains below. There it was that the Mahrattas made their last
stand against the British; and as they brought an enormous amount
of treasure up from their strongholds in the plains, which treasure
has never been recovered, the “Droog” is considered a highly
interesting place for more reasons than one. It is said that all the
gold and jewels were thrown down a well somewhere just beyond
the fort walls. One very old man was supposed to know of its
whereabouts, but he would never divulge the secret, as he said the
spot was guarded by the ghosts—devils, he called them—of many
Mahratta warriors, and he was afraid to incur their displeasure.
Sir Reginald arrived in due time at Coonor, and put up at an hotel,
before the windows of which there was a hedge of heliotrope cut like
box at home, and so high and so dense, that you could ride at one
side of it, and someone else at the other, without either being aware
of their mutual proximity. It was one mass of flowers, and smelt like
ten thousand cherry-pies, and was one of the sights of the
Neilgherries. Sir Reginald relaxed somewhat as regarded society,
made friends with the other inmates of the hotel, and joined in
picnics to all the most celebrated views. He was well known on the
Toda Mund as one of the best and most inveterate of tennis-players,
and carried off the first prize in a tournament which took place during
his stay.
Touching the Toda Mund, there were no Todas there then; they
had long removed themselves, with their black ringlets and sheet
clothing, to a more remote region; but years previously the present
lawn-tennis-court ground had been the home of generations of these
extraordinary people.
Sir Reginald returned to his regiment much the better for his trip,
and received the congratulations of his friends on his improved
appearance, and also on the discovery he had made at Cheetapore;
as what had been the talk of all that station naturally came to the
ears of his brother-officers, and they boldly conversed of himself and
his wife as if they had known all along that he had been a married
man. The individual who had been so contemptuously scouted when
he had declared that Fairfax was a Benedict now found himself
looked upon as a man of unusual penetration—in short, a second
Daniel; and for a time his opinions were quoted at at least ten per
cent. above their usual regimental value.
As for Fairfax himself, a change had certainly come over the spirit
of his dream. He was an altered man; no more headlong solitary
rides, no more moping in his own quarters. Attired in faultless garb of
undoubted “Europe” origin, he was led, like a lamb, to make a series
of calls among the chief notabilities of the place. “Better late than
never!” they mentally exclaimed when his card was handed in, and
being assured that “Missus could see,” the hero of the hour followed.
His history was now as well known as if it had been published in The
Pioneer, and the ladies of Camelabad overwhelmed him with
sympathy and condolence, which he accepted with the best grace he
could muster; but he shrank from speaking of his wife, save in the
most distant and general terms; and it was easy to see that the mock
certificate was a very sore, distasteful subject.
As each succeeding mail came in he said to himself, “Surely this
will bring a letter from Alice?” How he looked forward to mail-days no
one knew but himself; how buoyant were his spirits every Saturday
morning, how depressed that same evening, when, tossing over the
newly-arrived letters on the anteroom table, he would find one from
Mark Mayhew, one from his agent, and perhaps one from his tailor,
but not a line from his wife. He heard from the Mayhews that Alice
had received and acknowledged the confessions; and Mark, Helen,
and Geoffrey each sent him a long letter full of indignation and
congratulation. The burden of each of these epistles was the same,
although couched in very different style and language: it said, “Come
home.” “Whenever his wife endorsed their wishes, he would leave
Bombay by the following mail.” This was what he said to himself over
and over again. Two months elapsed and no letter came—not a line,
not even a message. After making allowance for every conceivable
delay, he gradually and reluctantly relinquished all hopes of the
ardently-desired missive, and came to the conclusion that nothing
now remained for him to think but that she wished their separation to
be life-long.
One evening he mounted his horse and galloped out alone to one
of his former favourite haunts, an old half-ruined temple, about six
miles from the cantonment. Here he dismounted and tied his Arab to
a tree, saying to himself as he ascended the steps: “There is no fear
of any interruption here, and I will make up my mind to some definite
plan before I return to Camelabad this evening.” As he paced up and
down the empty echoing ruin, he tried to judge between Alice and
himself as calmly and dispassionately as if he were a third person.
His own motives and actions were easily explained, but Alice’s were
not so readily understood. What could be the meaning of her
extraordinary conduct? His name had been cleared, and she, who
should never have doubted him, and who, at any rate now, ought to
be the first to come forward, had been dumb. There was but one
reasonable solution. “She did not know her own mind when she was
married; she never cared two straws about me, and she seizes the
first pretext to free herself from a distasteful union. So be it; she shall
be free,” he muttered. “I will hold myself utterly aloof from her for the
future. I shall go home and live at Looton, and surround myself with
friends—shoot, hunt, and lead as gay a bachelor life as if I had no
wife in existence. Why should I expatriate myself for her sake?” he
asked himself aloud.
 But on second thoughts this scheme did not prove so alluring. At
Looton, every room, every walk, every face would only remind him of
Alice.
“I could not stand it just yet,” he muttered; “it is all too fresh, too
recent; one does not get over a thing like that so soon. In a year or
two, when I am thoroughly hardened and indifferent, I will go;
meanwhile I shall remain in the service.”
The duties of his profession had their charms for him; and the
society of his brother-officers was, he reflected, more welcome and
more necessary to him now than ever. Weak he had always been
where Alice was concerned, but for once he would be firm and be a
man, and no longer an infatuated fool, following the ignis fatuus of a
woman’s caprice.
As he stood on the steps of the temple, watching the crimson sun
that was slowly sinking beyond the horizon and tinting the arid
plains, the distant hills, the old temple, and Reginald himself, with the
gorgeous hues of its departing splendour, “That sun,” he exclaimed,
as he watched the last little red streak utterly disappear, “has set on
my folly and weakness; to-morrow will find me, in one respect at
least, a different man. For the future I will endeavour to forget that I
ever had a wife. I know it will be no easy matter to banish her from
my thoughts, but I shall do my best. As a wife she is dead to me in
all but name; her indifference shall be only rivalled by mine.” Query:
Was he not still thinking of her as he sat for fully an hour, with his
head resting in his hands? He was endeavouring to dig the grave of
his love, and to bury decently all the unfulfilled hopes he had
cherished for so long. The moon arose, owls and bats made their
appearance and flitted to and fro, apparently unconscious of the
silent figure on the temple steps. At length the pawing and neighing
of his horse aroused him. He started up hastily, pulled himself
morally together, and hurried down to the impatient steed, whom he
unfastened and mounted, and in another moment was galloping
away over the moonlit midan, leaving the old temple to the
undisturbed possession of a veteran hyena and a family of jackals.
 The Seventeenth Hussars had expected, as a sequel to his
discovery at Cheetapore, that Sir Reginald would have returned to
his ancestral halls as fast as steam could take him.
But month after month went by, and he still remained a fixture at
Camelabad. He carried out his mental resolution to the letter, and left
himself no leisure to think of Alice or anyone else. He returned with
the greatest energy to all his bachelor amusements, kept a string of
racers, hunted the regimental pack, and made constant shooting
expeditions. He played whist till the small hours, and entered into
everything with the greatest zeal; took a prominent if somewhat
mechanical part in all the entertainments in the station, and was
voted “charming” by the ladies, both young and old. Notwithstanding
his bachelor pursuits, he developed a curious and Benedict-like
interest in babies—a species of humanity that he had hitherto held in
abhorrence. He cast more than one inquisitive glance on the smaller
fry in arms as he went round the married quarters. And Mrs. Gifford,
the wife of the only married captain in the Seventeenth, was amazed
when her ayah informed her that “Sir Fairfax” had more than once
taken notice of her baby, “asking age, asking boy or girl, how soon
walking?” It was most flattering, if a little mysterious, and he became
a greater favourite than ever with Mrs. Gifford. She was not aware
that her boy shone with a borrowed lustre in Sir Reginald’s eyes for
being almost the same age as his son, and that the toys and
presents which were showered on him as he grew older were not
bestowed altogether for his own sake.
A year after his visit to Cheetapore, Sir Reginald received a letter
in Alice’s well-known writing. “It has come at last,” he said to himself,
as with trembling hands he tore it open in his own bungalow. He
drew out the photo of a sturdy dark-eyed cherub, enclosed in a sheet
of blank letter-paper. At first he could hardly credit his senses; his
indignation and his bitter disappointment were too great for words.
His first impulse was to tear the photo into four pieces, but,
mastering this rather insane idea, he took it up and looked at it
closely instead. He was glad he had not obeyed his first rash notion.
The boy was certainly a splendid little fellow. Written in the corner of
the carte was, “Maurice E. Fairfax, aged thirteen months.” He was
something more tangible now, his father thought, as he minutely
studied every feature. He felt a thrill of novel and very pleasant pride
as he looked at the bright eager little face, and said to himself: “This
is my son. He has the Fairfax eyes and brows, I believe,” he
continued, as he still studied the photo critically, “but no one will deny
that he has his mother’s mouth.”
With a sigh he pieced together the torn envelope, and looked in
vain for a word; the blank sheet of paper he scrupulously turned
over; it was really blank indeed. He gazed at it for some time, as if
there were actually something written on it; then, suddenly gathering
himself together, he carefully folded it up and put it along with the
photograph into the envelope, and locked them away in his desk.

Sir Reginald had been nearly two years at Camelabad when the
outbreak which had been simmering for some time in Afghanistan
came to boiling-point, and the gauntlet of defiance was thrown down
by the Ameer.
Captains Campbell and Vaughan were reposing in long chairs in
front of their mess, much exhausted with lawn-tennis, refreshing
themselves with copious iced pegs, and enjoying a delightful
experience of the dolce far niente as embodied in Bombay—chairs
and brandies-and-sodas.
Suddenly a solitary horseman was seen madly careering across
the midan, in the direction of their lines.
“I say, just look at this fellow; his horse has bolted!” said Captain
Campbell.
“Not a bit of it,” replied his companion serenely; “don’t you see that
it’s Fairfax on his chestnut, riding ventre à terre, as usual?”
“Hallo, Fairfax, what’s up?” they shouted as he approached. “Are
the barracks ablaze, and are you going for the fire-engine?”
 “Better than that,” he cried, clattering into the compound. “I have
just come up from the general’s with glorious news—we start for the
front this day week.”
 CHAPTER II.
AFGHANISTAN.

True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe in the field,
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

The Seventeenth Hussars were duly forwarded to the frontier, and

found that their final destination was Dabaule, where there was a
good supply of grass and water for their horses.
Owing to the approach of winter, there was an utter stagnation of
military operations, and in spite of occasional small raids on, and
from, the neighbouring Afridis, the time passed monotonously
enough. The weather was cold and cheerless, but the officers of the
Seventeenth, headed by their junior major, did their very best to
provide exercise and entertainment for their men and for the camp in
general.
Football, hockey, penny readings, and theatricals were set going
with remarkable success, and helped to repel the encroachments of
idleness and ennui. The surrounding scenery was quite different to
the tiresome succession of parallel ridges presented by the ranges
near the frontier. Here hill and valley were thrown together in the
most admirable confusion, and clothed with short stunted shrubs and
wild olives; gloomy pine-woods marked out some of the hills in bold
black relief; the distant mountains were capped with snow, and the
cold at times was most intense. During the suspension of hostilities
there was ample leisure for correspondence, and letter-writing was a
frequent resource on a dull gray afternoon. The following is one of
Sir Reginald’s contributions to the mail-bag, written on his knee by
the light of a small bull’s-eye lantern in the retirement of his seven-
foot tent:
“Camp Dabaule.
“My dear Mark,
“It is not my fault that there has been such a tremendous
gap in our correspondence. I have written to you again and
again, and I once more seize the opportunity of the mail-dâk
passing through to send you a few lines, and hope they will
meet with a better fate than my other effusions, not one of
which appears to have reached you, judging by your
incendiary letter. Doubtless they are in the hands of those
beggars the Afridis, who rob the mails and cut the telegraph-
wires continually. We are all flourishing—men in good spirits,
horses in capital condition; the only thing we ask is to be up
and doing. Cold weather has closed the passes to a great
extent, and there is nothing whatever going on. To come into
our camp you would never dream that you were in an
enemy’s country, we have made ourselves so completely at
home, although our accommodation is not magnificent. We
have all small hill-tents, weighing about eighty pounds, in
which there is just room enough to turn round, and no more.
We all wear thick fur coats, called poshteens, and fur caps,
quite the Canadian style. You would have some difficulty in
recognising me, I can tell you, were you told to pick me out
from among a dozen of fellows sitting round our favourite
rendezvous—the camp-fire. There is snow on the ranges all
round, and we have lots of ice without troubling the ice-
machines, but hot grog is more the fashion than iced
champagne.
“We arrived here six weeks ago, viâ the Khan Pass, and
brought in, among other prisoners, Hadji Khan, a notorious
robber and unmitigated rascal. We have him in camp now. He
has the most diabolical expression I ever beheld;
nevertheless, the length and frequency of his prayers are
absolutely astounding. He spends more than half the day on
his marrow-bones, no doubt consigning us, in all generations,
to Gehenna, if you know where that is?
“The Afghans, take them all in all, are a fine-looking set of
men, with bigger frames and fairer skins than the natives of
sunny Hindostan. Their physiognomy is decidedly of the
Jewish caste—piercing black eyes and hooked noses, set off
by a resolute, not to say savage, expression of death and
extermination to all the Feringhees!
“Now, this cold weather, they are wrapped in poshteens,
with or without sleeves, of very dubious cleanliness. A good
serviceable garment descends from generation to generation.
An enormous dark-blue puggaree encircling a little red cap
forms their turban. But the headman of a village, in a richly-
embroidered poshteen, ‘the woolly side in,’ like the immortal
Brian O’Lynn—magnificent gold and blue turban, and long
silver-mounted matchlock, is as handsome and picturesque a
looking fellow as you could wish to see.
“I have not as yet had an opportunity of beholding an
Afghan lady. Some of the common women labour in the fields
unveiled, a weather-beaten, bold-looking set, but the lady of
the period conceals her charms behind a long white
arrangement, that covers her from head to foot, like a sheet;
two holes cut for her eyes, and covered with white net, give
her a most ghostly and ghastly appearance. She looks like a
she-‘familiar’ of the time of the Inquisition.
“We have a capital mess here, and to find such a dinner as
our head kansamah serves up, after whetting our appetites by
a twenty-mile ride, is a joy no words can express. After the
snows break up we are sure to have a short bout of fighting,
and then the campaign will be over. The English charger I got
in Bombay has turned out first-class—as hard as nails and up
to any amount of work. Many thanks to Helen for the
Cardigan jacket and mittens. My love to her and the Limbs.
“Yours as ever,
“R. M. Fairfax.”