This did not sound
quite like a lady's way of speaking. It was too demonstrative.
Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under their
eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set like the Day of
Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while.
Next the Colonel said, very shortly:--"Well, Sir?" and the woman sobbed
afresh. The Senior Subaltern was half choked with the arms round his neck, but
he gasped out:--"It's a d----d lie! I never had a wife in my life!" "Don't
swear," said the Colonel. "Come into the Mess. We must sift this clear
somehow," and he sighed to himself, for he believed in his "Shikarris," did
the Colonel.
We trooped into the ante-room, under the full lights, and there we saw how
beautiful the woman was. She stood up in the middle of us all, sometimes
choking with crying, then hard and proud, and then holding out her arms to the
Senior Subaltern. It was like the fourth act of a tragedy. She told us how the
Senior Subaltern had married her when he was Home on leave eighteen months
before; and she seemed to know all that we knew, and more too, of his people
and his past life. He was white and ashy gray, trying now and again to break
into the torrent of her words; and we, noting how lovely she was and what a
criminal he looked, esteemed him a beast of the worst kind.
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