The Strange Story of my Life. A novel ... Second edition

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THE STRANGE STORY OF MY LIFE a The Strange Story of OWy Life A NOVEL BY JOHN STRANGE WINTER Author of " Booties' Baby" "Army Society," " Cavalry Life," " Beautiful Jim," "Garrison Gossip" "Red Coats," "A Born Soldier," "A Magnificent Young Man." " The Same Thing with a Difference," " The Truth Tellers," etc., etc. SECOND EDITION LONDON F. V. WHITE & CO. I4 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. i TO MY LITTLE GIRL, NANCY, WHO WAS BORN ON THE DAY ON WHICH THIS STORY WAS FINISHED, I, WITH MUCH LOVE, Dedicate " The Strange Story of My Life/' JOHN STRANGE WINTER. Dieppe, 1896. CONTENTS CHAP. rAGE I. — Going Back to the Beginning . 1 II. — Mt Life Changes .... 7 III. — A Simla Love Story ... 19 IV. — Doremt ..... 27 V. — Sorrow Clouds .... 38 VI. — A Jarred Note in a Harmony 46 VII. — The Influence of One Person . . 56 VIII. — A Fiat and a Choice . . 65 IX. — The Beginning of Our Journey . . 74 X. — AKcjdderless Ship on an Unknown Sea 83 XI. — My First Impressions of Home . . 92 XII. — Florestella ..... 102 XIII. — Stricken Florestella . . .

Ill XIV. — The Princess Elisabeth . . . 121 XV . — News from Bhozar .... 130 XVI. — On Board the " Kaiserin Elisabeth " . 140 XVII.— A Childless Widow . . . 149 XVIII.— In a Gilded Cage . . . .159 XIX. — Louis Barzadiev .... CONTENTS Vlll CHAP. PAGE XX. — A Casual Question . . . .178 XXI.— Time goes on .... 189 XXII.- The Weaving of the Net . . 199 XXIII.— Rest and Unrest . . 209 XXIV— On the Threshold . . . .217 XXV. -My Memories . . . .228 XXVI.— My Second Marriage Day . . 237 XXVII. — Tranquillity and Contentment . . 247 XXVIII.— A Thunderbolt . . . .257 XXIX. — A Face from the Dead . . 268 XXX.— Two Questions . . . .277 XXXI.— Left Alone ..... 288 XXXII. — Waiting— and the End . .

Chapter I Going Back To The Beginning

It may sound rather an odd thing to say, but I had never been home in my life. The truth was I had been born and brought up in India, and the far-away country which we English people always called " home " was as a sealed book to me. I knew nothing whatever about it. Sometimes, when I was little, I used to ask my mother what home was like, and then she would describe a far-away, quiet, sleepy kind of existence in which church-going played a great part — church-going and the poor — and when I would say to her, " Yes, but that is not what I want to know. What about London ? What is London like ? " then she would answer, " My dear, I never saw London but once, which was for a week after I was married, when it was all so new and strange and confusing that I really can hardly tell you what London is like.

I have a recollection of buying a great many things and of looking in a great many shop windows, and of going to theatres, which was a very new experience to me, and of how your father laughed at me when I wanted to see picture-galleries and churches and other sights. But he was very good, he took me to see as much as he could before we sailed ; A but it is so long ago, dear, and it was such an unrest ful time that it is more like a dream to me than any thing else. Some day we will take you home — we shall all go home together— and then we will make a long stay in London, and you and I will do it, and learn it thoroughly." But alas for the mutability of human hopes and desires! We never did go home together, for, long before my father had even begun to think of a couple of years' leave, my pretty mother had gone to another home from which there is no return, on a journey for which we may make no arrangements for companion ship by the way ; when I was nearly fifteen, she fell a victim to cholera and died.

My mother's death made a changed man of my father. Theirs had been a most passionate love match — a love which began on the day that he, staying at the squire's in the little north-country village of which her father was rector, had fallen in love with her when his eyes first fell upon her under the spreading chestnut trees which shaded one side of the Rectory garden. I have never seen that old garden, but my mother described it to me often and often. My father was twelve years older than she was, and at that time of day she was only eighteen. Her whole life had been bounded by her father's parish. The most prominent person who had ever come into her existence had been her father's squire, Lord Rivers. She had never in her life ventured from under her mother's wing, but had grown up sweet and simple and shy as a wood-violet, surely the last girl in the world that one might imagine would be called upon to leave home and kindred and to make her own the utterly and entirely different GOING BACK TO THE BEGINNING 3 life which is lived in the shining East.

And yet, how wonderful love is ! One glance of a stalwart soldier's brave blue eyes was sufficiently magnetic to draw the simple young girl completely away from all the ties and associations of her whole life. He proposed to her within a few days of their meeting, and six weeks later they were married in the little country church wherein she had been christened, married by the father whom she was leaving, never to see again. And so the two turned their backs on what to her had been her world, and set their faces toward the unknown. I can safely say that my mother never repented the step which she took that day. From first to last, my father was her lover and her king. She worshipped him, and he, for his part, idolised her. Lovers they were always ; an ideal husband and wife, they existed for each other, and I, their only child, was ever and always a something outside their perfect life.

Not that I had ever to complain of lack of love — oh, no, no. I can never look back to the day when my mother seemed to be fettered by my presence, or my father to be impatient of my childish questionings. I had the most devoted ayah who ever existed, and perhaps it is true that Indian mothers do not have very much trouble with their children, but still, I never in my life felt shut out, although I was always conscious of only coming next to my father or mother in the estima tion of either. My father was never the same after my mother's death. When the time came for him to take his two years' leave, he resolutely declined any idea of going home. I was most bitterly disappointed. I was very young, but just sixteen years old, and the ambition of my life had been to pay a long delicious holiday to the old country, to go home.

My father, however, ab solutely set his face against any such idea. " No," he said resolutely, " if your mother had been still with us, it would have given me the greatest possible pleasure to take you and her home again ; but to go without her, leaving her out here all alone, to go to visit such of her people as are still living, to go to all those places which we last saw together, is more than I can endure. It is quite out of the question, Dottikins. You must not ask me to do it. One of these days you will go home without me, and you will understand then exactly what I am feeling now." I felt the hot tears gush into my eyes as his meaning broke upon me. " Dear Father," I said, slipping my arm round his neck and holding him very tightly, "don't think that I want you to do anything that will hurt you or make you think too painfully of what might have been.

I shall be quite content wherever you are. I wish I had said nothing about it." " Oh, my dear," he replied, "you are young — very young — and young things happily do not quite under stand the sorrows which come to older hearts. Yours will come, child, soon enough. Don't think that I want you to be any different to what you are. You remind me more of her every day." So it came about that my father and I never went home together, and the long, dreamy, delicious wander ings which dear mother and I used to discuss with such pleasure of anticipation never came to fruition. We did not waste our leave — oh, by no means ! We took it out as it were in patches instead of enjoying it all in one lump. First we went off to Cash mere for six months ; then, when Father had put in a few months' more work, we went in the opposite GOING BACK TO THE BEGINNING 5 direction and made Japan our Mecca ; and so we got change of scene and of air without reminding Father too painfully of the holiday to which he had so long looked forward.

I had spent most of my Indian life at Simla, and had been at school there for some years. With our journey to Cashmere my school-days came to an end, and by the time we returned from Japan I was, to all outward appearance, quite a woman grown, although I was but just seventeen. By then my father had as sumed the command of his regiment, and on my return home to take up my position as mistress of his house, I found myself a person of considerable importance. I think, on the whole, that my father felt my mother's death less after I came home for good. Of course, he must naturally have been terribly lonely during the time that I was still at school, for all that we spent of the whole year together was the time when he was able to get leave, or I was able to go down to the plains. He did not say much about it — he was never a man to mope, but remained a gallant, upright soldier to the very end of his life — but others told me how bitterly he had felt his loss.

There were ladies in the garrison who were most anxious to mother me on all possible occasions, and they one and all united in telling me that my father was quite a different man now that I had come home altogether. For myself, I was perfectly happy at this time. Of course, I should have been more happy if I could have had my mother, as I had naturally expected to have, but I was young, and young people do forget — at least, they do not go on feeling as older ones do. I have often thought since that it is middle-aged people who suffer intensely from bereavement. Old folk bear the loss of those they love with comparative equanimity. They seem often to feel that it is no use giving way to their grief, that, after all, it is but for a time, or, as some poet puts it, " A passing out of this room into the next."

And young things, although their grief may be very poignant at the outset, soon learn to find other interests and to make the best of what is. But middle-aged people — men in the very prime of life, as my father was — it is they who feel grief and sorrow with intensity. Still, he did feel it less after I went home, and it is almost impossible for me to express how great was my satisfaction when I realised beyond all doubt that such was the case. Of course, it would have been but a dreary and monotonous existence for me if my father had been a man to mope and shut himself up with his grief. Fortunately, he was one of the cheeriest and most pleasantly domestic men that one could meet with in a year's march. He was always interested in my little projects, always ready for me to take the smallest bit of pleasure that happened to be on foot ; he would cheerfully go, night after night, to dances or some other festivities, and stay till all hours watch ing me enjoy myself, when I daresay he would often much rather have stayed quietly at home.

" You are staying late to-night, Colonel," I heard someone say to him one night. "Ah," replied my father, "my little girl is enjoying herself. I like to see young things happy while they have the chance of being so." "Miss Massingham is enjoying herself," rejoined the other voice with a laugh, " that is very certain." " All the better, all the better ! " I heard my father say. " She won't enjoy herself too much for me." And then I stole away, and neither knew that I had heard a single word.

Chapter II My Life Changes

I WAS sitting at tiffin one day with my father, when he looked across the table at me with a glance which was one half of apprehension and half of anxiety. " Dottikins," he said, speaking rather abruptly, " I think you ought to get off to the hills as soon as possible." " Off to the hills ! " I exclaimed. " But why ? " " Well, you know, you have had a long spell of this place, and it is getting fearfully hot. You are look ing very pale and peaky, far too much so for your age. I think you won't be able to wait for me. I shall have to make arrangements to send you off to the hills by yourself." " Oh, but I can't go without you, Father," I replied. " I think it would be better." " Oh, no, dear, I really could not leave you down here. You are ever so much happier when I am with you, you know that."

" Yes, I know that," he said, smiling, " but, at the same time, if you get run down a shade too far, that won't make me happier." " Oh, but I am not ill ! " I exclaimed. " No, you are not ill, but you may get ill at any moment. You know, child, you are not seasoned as I am, and every day now the weather will get worse, not better. The heat will get more oppressive and the atmosphere more stuffy." :' But Mother always stayed down with you ? " " Not the first year or two," he replied. :< Oh ! didn't she ? " "No. She wanted to do so, for she was just as unselfish as you are ; but it became so very plain — patent to the meanest observation, indeed — that she could not stand heat as well as I could, that she very sensibly gave in after trying it for part of one hot season. I really think you had better go up as soon as possible, and I will follow you later on."

" But I cannot go by myself, Father ! " I exclaimed. " No, no, of course not. Mrs Sheepshanks is going up." " Oh, I couldn't go with Mrs Sheepshanks and all those crying babies ! No, Father, I really could not. I would rather stay here, even if I died." " That is talking nonsense," said my father. But he laughed under his moustache, and I knew that Mrs Sheepshanks was, under no circumstances, to be my companion if I should be compelled to leave him at Muggrapore. Finally I turned my back upon Muggrapore and set off for Simla in the company of Mrs Hamilton, a gay little woman, whose husbaud was m the artillery. She had only been out three or four years, and had no idea of burying herself for love's sake in a down country station during the hot season. I am not sure that my father was not a little doubtful as to her efficiency as chaperon for me.

She was young, and distinctly of a gay turn, one of those blonde haired, blue-eyed, insouciant little women who take life as it comes, and as easily as human nature and circumstances will allow. She was undoubtedly extremely fond of her husband, and would infinitely have preferred that he should be going to Simla like wise, but as he was not able to go to Simla any more than my father was, she made the best of the fact that she had to go alone. My father and Captain Hamilton both came to see us off on our journey, and as the train steamed out of the Muggrapore station, leaving the two standing to gether on the platform, her gaiety and brave airs all melted into a perfect passion of tears. " It is awfully silly of me," she said, dabbing fiercely at her eyes with a little wisp of a handkerchief which she had rolled up into a tight ball in her nervousness, " because, of course, Jack is coming up as soon as he can possibly get away, but ' (choking) ' I always feel like this when I leave him first.

It is awfully silly. You will think me a perfect fool, child. Some day you will be married yourself, and then you will know what it is. Poor old Jack ! I almost wish I hadn't come. But, of course, he insisted on it, and, after all, it would be an awful bore for him if he were to have me ill on his hands, and the doctor said I should get ill if I stayed down in stuffy Muggrapore. Horrid place ! I don't know why they wanted to quarter us in such a hole ! How lucky we got the carriage to ourselves ! " she added presently, in a different tone, " because I do hate crying before people and making a fool of myself. There, you needn't look at me with such pitiful eyes, Dorothy. I am all right now." And then she whisked open her bag, whisked out a little dressing-glass, which she stuck up on the window ledge, and began to dab at her face with some cooling lotion.

" One cannot afford to cry in this country," she explained to me. " That is what Jack said when we first came out — 'Don't cry about things, little woman. Nobody can afford to cry in India. It takes too much of your vitality out of you.' I must say that I have always found the poor dear old fellow perfectly right." She had spoken truly when she declared that she was not going to cry any more. Not another tear dimmed her radiant blue eyes so long as I was with her. It was a hideous journey, and I felt sometimes as if I should hardly live to reach my destina tion alive. True, we had our diversions as we went. We had a carriage reserved for us — that is to say, reserved for our exclusive use — and as there were several officers whom we knew travel ling by the same train, Mrs Hamilton made a great show of her good-nature in inviting them to pay us little visits.

She did not make them free of our carriage — oh, dear, no ! But at the first stop ping-place, when a couple of them came to see how we were getting on, and to inquire if we were comfortable, she graciously informed them that they might come in as far as the next station if they liked. " After that," she said, " we shall be resting, and you will be glad to get back into your own compartment." Still, even relieved in this way, the journey was a most tedious one, and glad we were when the last tiresome part of it was over, when we had left the hot and stuffy train and found ourselves carried along like so much baggage. Looking back from my present standpoint, I often feel that it was just as well that my father had not realised how very young a chaperon Mrs Hamilton was. We stayed at an hotel only for a few days, and then moved into a charming little bungalow which the Hamiltons had rented from some friends who lived at Simla altogether.

She was young — she was really much younger than I, although she was three-and-twenty, and I was not yet eighteen — she was gay, she had plenty of money, and she denied herself nothing. Every indulgence which she granted herself she set down to the score of Jack's wish that she should not mope. Surely Jack must have been the most complacent husband to be found in the length and breadth of India — of the world, for that matter. She had the smartest dresses, the most gorgeous liveries, gave the most cheery little tiffins and dinners, and she went here, there and everywhere, knew everybody, and was a universal favourite. Being her house - companion, I, too, went everywhere and knew everybody I was not, perhaps, such a universal favourite, because I lacked her wonderful flow of spirits, and her tremendous amount of enterprise; but, all the same, I managed to have a very good time, and in every letter that I wrote to my father, I sang my little hostess's praises, and begged him to hurry along as quickly as he could that he might come up and share our fun.

He always wrote back in the same strain — " Enjoy yourself all you can. Delighted you are having such a lovely time. Don't stint yourself. I trust to your good sense and discretion not to overrun the con stable too much." But he always put me off about his leaving Muggrapore. At last I asked him plainly how it was that neither he nor Captain Hamilton were able to come up at anything like the time which they had expected. In answer to this question he replied that things were not going very well at the station, that we were neither of us to worry, but that it would be impossible for any officers to leave just at present. "There are rumours of trouble in various quarters," he wrote ; " the health of the troops is not very good, and we may be wanted at any moment. You need not make your self at all uneasy, only you must get along without me for a little time longer."

How Mrs Hamilton's Jack contrived to satisfy her I never quite knew. She used to seize his letters eagerly enough to have satisfied the fondest husband in the world, glance them down, utter an exclamation of disgust and dismay, saying, " There now ! Jack's leave put off again ! It is iniquitous ! I believe it is nothing but that horrid old Lady Lonsford, who has always been disagreeable and detestable to me, and who hates me like poison. I daresay she's being horrid to Jack now just because of my flirting a bit with the old General. But I'll flirt with him when I go back again ; you just see if I don't pay that old lady out ! " " Perhaps she is flirting with your Jack," I suggested. " Yes, perhaps she is. And perhaps my Jack is flirting with one of his own chargers," Mrs Hamilton flashed out.

Lady Lonsford was rather like a horse, and I could not help laughing at the implied simile. However, she put the letter away in the drawer where she always kept those from her husband, and after a minute or two said, — " Well, it's no use our wasting our time grizzling here all day, Dorothy. Let us get ready to go to the Macdonalds." To have seen her an hour later, the gayest of the gay, surrounded by at least a dozen of the best men in the place, nobody would have believed that she had ever been troubled even by a passing cloud. For myself, I was, of course, intensely disappointed that my father had not been able to come as I had expected and as he had arranged, but I could not help seeing the wisdom of her suggestion that we should make the best of a bad business, and be as happy as we could without our men folk.

I remember that it was at that party at Mrs Mac donald's that I first met a man who possessed any real interest for me. Men I knew by the dozen, offers I had had in plenty, partners— why, I could have had fifty of them at every dance I went to. It was no unusual thing for me to find the Viceroy's A.D.C. at my shoulder with an intimation that His Excellency wished for the next dance. I was very young, and I took it all as it came, enjoyed myself thoroughly from morning till night, and wished with all my girl's heart, at the end of every entertainment, that it could begin and happen all over again. Until I met Captain Hamlyn I had thought of all men as being one as good as another, and had been absolutely impartial in my behaviour towards them. But from the first moment of meeting him things were different with me.

I do not know why it was. He was not especially good-looking ; in fact, a good many people thought that he was rather ugly. Hewas the regular type of a cavalry officer, long of limb, lean without being skinny, walked with a swinging, soldierly gait, had brown curly hair, cut so close to his head that you could see no more than a wave in it, and a very sun burnt face, about which there was nothing at all in particular excepting a pair of very blue eyes and a carefully-trained, reddish moustache. He was the kind of man that one sees about a military station every day of one's life, a man with nothing especially distinctive or particularly individual about him. He was well dressed, like every other man of his station, his manners were good, as the manners of men of his class always are, perhaps his most noticeable charac teristic was a singularly smooth and pleasant voice, and an easy, friendly sort of manner, about which there was not the very smallest trace of affectation.

He was introduced to me by Mrs Macdonald her self, and as there was dancing going on he asked me to honour him with a waltz just then beginning. He danced to perfection, and before we had taken two turns round the big marquee, which had been erected on the lawn for the occasion, he told me that he had not met with any lady since he came to India whose step suited him so well as mine did. This led, naturally, to my asking him how long he had been out. He told me that he had not been in India quite a year ; then, when the dance was over, he drew me away down a secluded walk of the charming garden, and found me a very comfortable seat, where we were able to talk in complete retirement. He had, I learned, come out to India with the 23rd Dragoons, and chiefly with an idea that he would find his reward in the way of sport.

On the whole, he had been disappointed, both in India itself and in the sport which it afforded. " I shall exchange as soon as I reasonably can," he said. " But you like Simla ? " I exclaimed. " Oh, yes, I like Simla very much. It is a fine place. Very go-ahead, you know, Miss Massingham." " Oh, I don't know that it is," I replied. " Is it more go-ahead than any other places that you have been in ? " " Very much more. Compare it, for instance, with London." " I can't," I said, with a laugh, " because I have never been in London in my life." " You have never been in London ? You have never been home ? But you were not brought up in India ? " " Yes, I was." " Really ? " He turned and looked at me with the utmost surprise. " You astonish me," he said. " But why ? I don't see that there is anything to be astonished at.

I was brought up in Simla, or almost entirely so." " You don't mean it ? And do you live in Simla all the year round ? " " Oh, no. I am only staying here with Mrs Hamilton," I told him. " I am most of the year down at Muggrapore with my father." " Oh ! Your father is at Muggrapore ? " " Yes. He is in command of the 110th Native Lancers at Muggrapore." " Yes. Oh, that is the place where they have got the cholera so badly." He blurted the words out and then looked at me apprehensively. " I don't think they have cholera at Muggrapore," I replied. " Oh, but they have. The men are dying like sheep there. Is it possible you didn't know ? I — I — ought not to have told you. Oh, Miss Massingham, I am so sorry. Perhaps I muddled the name of the place. You know these Indian stations are not very familiar to me as yet.