Snake and Sword | Page 4

Nurse Beaton.
"Will you give your son a name, Sir?" she said, and it was evident in
voice and manner that the question had been asked before and had
received an unsatisfactory, if not unprintable; reply. Every line of
feature and form seemed to express indignant resentment. She had
nursed and foster-mothered the child's mother, and--unlike the
man--had found the baby the chiefest consolation of her cruel grief, and
already loved it not only for its idolized mother's sake, but with the
devotion of a childless child-lover.
"The christening is fixed for to-day, Sir, as I have kept reminding you,
Sir," she added.
She had never liked the Colonel--nor considered him "good enough"
for her tender, dainty darling, "nearly three times her age and no better
than he ought to be".
"Name?" snarled Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne. "Name the
little beast? Call him what you like, and then drown him." The
tight-lipped face of the elderly nurse flushed angrily, but before she
could make the indignant reply that her hurt and scandalized look
presaged, the Colonel added:--
"No, look here, call him Damocles, and done with it. The Sword hangs
over him too, I suppose, and he'll die by it, as all his ancestors have
done. Yes--"
"It's not a nice name, Sir, to my thinking," interrupted the woman, "not
for an only name--and for an only child. Let it be a second or third
name, Sir, if you want to give him such an outlandish one."
She fingered her new black dress nervously with twitching hands and
the tight lips trembled.

"He's to be named Damocles and nothing else," replied the Master, and,
as she turned away with a look of positive hate, he added
sardonically:--
"And then you can call him 'Dam' for short, you know, Nurse."
Nurse Beaton bridled, clenched her hands, and stiffened visibly. Had
the man been her social equal or any other than her master, her pent-up
wrath and indignation would have broken forth in a torrent of scathing
abuse.
"Never would I call the poor motherless lamb Dam, Sir," she answered
with restraint.
"Then call him Dummy! Good morning, Nurse," snapped the Colonel.
As she turned to go, with a bitter sigh, she asked in the hopeless tone of
one who knows the waste of words:--
"You will not repent--I mean relent--and come to the christening of
your only son this afternoon, Sir?"
"Good morning, Nurse," observed Colonel Matthew Devon de
Warrenne, and resumed his hurried pacing of the verandah.
* * * * *
It is not enough that a man love his wife dearly and hold her the
sweetest, fairest, and best of women--he should tell her so, morning and
night.
There is a proverb (the unwisdom of many and the poor wit of one) that
says Actions speak louder than Words. Whether this is the most
untrustworthy of an untrustworthy class of generalizations is
debateable.
Anyhow, let no husband or lover believe it. Vain are the deeds of dumb
devotion, the unwearying forethought, the tender care, the gifts of price,
and the priceless gifts of attentive, watchful guard and guide, the

labours of Love--all vain. Silent is the speech of Action.
But resonant loud is the speech of Words and profitable their
investment in the Mutual Alliance Bank.
"Love me, love my Dog?" Yes--and look to the dog for a dog's reward.
"Do not show me that you love me--tell me so." Far too true and
pregnant ever to become a proverb.
Colonel de Warrenne had omitted to tell his wife so--after she had
accepted him--and she had died thinking herself loveless, unloved, and
stating the fact.
This was the bitterest drop in the bitter cup of the big, dumb,
well-meaning man.
And now she would never know....
She had thought herself unloved, and, nerve-shattered by her terrible
experience with the snake, had made no fight for life when the
unwanted boy was born. For the sake of a girl she would have striven
to live--but a boy, a boy can fend for himself (and takes after his
father)....
Almost as soon as Lenore Seymour Stukeley had landed in India (on a
visit with her sister Yvette to friends at Bimariabad), delighted,
bewildered, depolarized, Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne had
burst with a blaze of glory into her hitherto secluded, narrow life--a
great pale-blue, white-and-gold wonder, clanking and jingling,
resplendent, bemedalled, ruling men, charging at the head of
thundering squadrons--a half-god (and to Yvette he had seemed a
whole-god).
He had told her that he loved her, told her once, and had been accepted.
Once! Only once told her that he loved her, that she was beautiful, that
he was hers to command to the uttermost. Only once! What could she

know of the changed life, the absolute renunciation of pleasant bachelor