CHAPTER XA CHALLENGE
Thusended the butterfly career of pretty Lena Wilkinson, who looked surprisingly fair and girlish, as she lay with her hands crossed on her heart, surrounded by white flowers. She had passed at dawn; sunset witnessed her interment, and a considerable company—in fact, the whole station—followed the coffin, which was covered with pale blue and silver, by the dead woman's particular desire. The ground in the arid cemetery was almost as hard as rock, and thecortègewas compelled to halt for a time, whilst the grave was made ready and enlarged. What a depressing scene for a newly-arrived exile! The brick-coloured ground, weather-stained headstones, haggard clergyman, and wan-faced assembly—the gay and glittering coffin waiting till inhospitable alien soil was prepared to receive it. Over all was the stare of a triumphant red sun, sinking slowly into the arms of a tropical night.
At last the service was concluded, and whilst the earth was noisily flung upon the blue and silver coffin and the mourners were dispersing, the station cynic, as he walked towards the gate, pronounced the epitaph of the deceased:
"Poor Mrs. Wilkinson, she was like some delicate flower without perfume, and as she never did anything bad, she will soon be forgotten."
A few days after the funeral Colonel Wilkinsonwas faintly surprised to receive a visit from Philip Gascoigne. After one or two commonplace remarks, the latter explained his errand.
"I came to speak to you about Angel," he said. "I do not know if Lena told you that I am to take charge of her."
"By Jove! No, not a word," rejoined the widower, and his eyes glistened. "Man alive, you don't mean that you are inearnest?"
"Yes," assented his visitor; "I propose to educate her, and as soon as I can find a school and a travelling companion, to send her to England."
"Uncommonly handsome of you, I must say," exclaimed her stepfather. "It will cost you a couple of hundred a year."
"Then you are satisfied that I relieve you of the child?" continued Gascoigne, ignoring the money question.
"Satisfied," repeated his host; "satisfied, my dear fellow, is not the word that expresses my feelings—devoutly thankful—happy—enchanted—is more like it. My poor wife and I never agreed about the child. I may say that she was the only subject on which we ever disagreed. From my point of view she is a headstrong, malicious little devil, who cannot be trusted her own length—you never know what mine she will explode on you! My poor Lena held another opinion, and believed her to be 'a little saint.'"
"Perhaps she is something between the two extremes," suggested her cousin drily.
His companion's answer was a doubtful grunt, as he paced the room tugging at his moustache. "I'vebeen making plans," he resumed, now pointing to a table littered with letters and officials; "I've decided to chuck the service. This has been a great blow, and sickened me with India. How can I soldier, and lug a family about with me? I shall go and settle on my own property in New Zealand. Of course, I am bound to marry again—this seems a heartless thing to say, and Lena only dead a week, but what am I to do with all the children? It is a necessity from a common-sense point of view—a housekeeper and a governess would entail no end of bother and er—er——"
"Expense," suggested his companion sarcastically.
"Expense! Just so," seizing the word, "and I've been wondering what I'm to do with Angel, badgering my brains with all sorts of schemes, when in you walk and take her off my hands. It seems almost like a miracle—the interposition of Providence," he added piously; "and now I understand why Lena was so anxious to see you."
"Yes; it was to talk about Angel, and tell me her wishes respecting her."
"And what were they?"
"That I was to be her guardian, and have absolute control over the child," replied the young man. "I intend to educate and provide for her. Oh yes, by the way, her mother wished her to have all her jewellery."
"All her jewellery!" repeated Colonel Wilkinson. "Oh, I don't know about that! I believe it is my property in the eye of the law—there was no will, you see."
"But you have no girls, and at least you willscarcely care to keep what Angel's father gave her mother?"
"I suppose you mean the diamond ring?" stammered Colonel Wilkinson, a little cowed by the young man's manner. "Well, I'll think it over; but look here, Gascoigne, I'm a firm believer in pen and ink; would you mind writing me a letter, a formal letter, to say that you propose to relieve me from all charges or responsibilities connected with Angela Gascoigne?"
"Certainly, with pleasure; and on your side, I shall expect you to hand me over any jewellery that belonged to her mother—at least, before she became your wife."
"Um," grunted Colonel Wilkinson, "that ring is rather a big thing. I've had it valued, and it's worth a hundred pounds." He took another turn to the end of the room and back, then he halted in front of his visitor and said, ungraciously, "Well, it's a bargain—you can have the ring, and all the bangles, too; it's a cheap exchange for your written agreement to rid me of a plague."
Philip Gascoigne experienced a most disagreeable sensation; he felt precisely as if he had just purchased the child for a hundred pounds. He instantly rose to end the interview, and said, "I will send you the document as soon as I go home."
"And when will you be prepared to take over charge?" inquired the anxious stepfather.
"Whenever I can make arrangements for her passage."
"And mourning," supplemented the other sharply; "you will provide mourning, of course?"
"Yes; Mrs. Rattray will perhaps undertake her outfit for me. There is a good deal to be done—we must wait until after the monsoon has broken; but I think I can promise you that in six weeks you will have seen the last of Angela."
"Thank God!" was the fervent rejoinder; "that will suit me down to the ground. I won't be moving until the cold weather, not for several months. I say, you won't forget the document, like a good fellow? Oh, must you go? I say, have a lime and soda? No, by the way, we are out of soda-water. Well, then, good-bye—I've a heap of business to get through—you know your way out? Ta, ta."
As the visitor was about to cross the verandah a little figure issued from a side door, and sprang on him and seized his arm in her grasp. "I've been waiting for you for ages, Phil. Why did you stay with him so long?"
"I've been telling Colonel Wilkinson that you are to be my charge, Angel," responded her cousin, "and that in a few weeks' time I hope to send you to England."
"And how much are you to pay?" she demanded bluntly.
"Pay," repeated the young man; "why should I pay anything?"
"Because he never gives without something in exchange." Angel had a bad opinion of her fellow-creatures, and a piercing eye for a hidden motive. "What do you think Ayah Anima is doing now by his orders?"
"She gave them some broth without any bread,She whipped them——"
"No," interrupting the quotation with angry emphasis, "but selling all my mummy's pretty frocks and hats in the patchery and bazaar! She is taking them round among the soldiers' wives in barracks,now."
Gascoigne made no comment on this pitiful illustration of Colonel Wilkinson's thrift; in his mind's eye, he already beheld various reproductions of Mrs. Wilkinson at band and race meeting.
He diplomatically opened a fresh subject by asking, "How will you like to go to England, Angel?"
"Oh, I shall be glad to get away from hateful Ramghur," she answered, "but dreadfully sorry to leave you. I've no one but you now—have I, Phil?"
"Oh, you'll make heaps of friends when you get home," was his evasive reply.
"Who is to take me to England?" she asked sharply.
"I'm not certain," he replied, "and I've not had time to make inquiries, but perhaps Mrs. Dawson."
"Mrs. Dawson," she echoed with an odd, elfish laugh; "she does not like me—lots of people don't like me, cousin Phil," and she looked at him wistfully—such a frail, friendless little creature, his heart was filled with pity as he answered:
"I like you, Angel—that is something to begin with? Would you care to come over and have tea with us this afternoon at four o'clock?"
"Oh yes, yes!" dancing up and down as she gleefully accepted; "and may I pour it out?"
"You may, if we can raise a small teapot. Now there's the bell; run away to your dinner."
A proud, not to say puffed-up, child was thatwhich ran across to the big bungalow in a newly starched frock and wide black sash. In the verandah Angel found the two young men, who welcomed her cordially, and made her sit between them and pour out tea. And what a pouring out it was; what a slopping of milk it entailed, a dropping of the lid of the teapot into the sugar-basin, and a spoon into the hot water! Hosts and guest made tea and made merry together. There was a cake, too, in which "the three" evinced a profound interest, and Angel chattered incessantly to them and to her companions. Her satisfaction was complete when she was conducted all over the premises and into the stables, where Sally Lunn condescended to eat a piece of sugar-cane from her hand. This visit was the precursor of many. Angel was accorded the freedom of the bungalow, and spent many happy hours within its walls, looking at pictures, making tea, or mending gloves for her bachelor hosts.
Discipline at home was considerably relaxed. Colonel Wilkinson was feverishly busy making ready for his move, and Great Sale, getting old furniture re-covered, glued up, and varnished. Already the catalogue was in the printer's hands, and the adjectives "splendid," "unique," "handsome," and "magnificent" were in extraordinary prominence.
Thanks to the preparations, which were going forward, Angel was spared to her neighbours for many an afternoon. She was not a tiresome child, as Shafto freely admitted; she was noiseless, the dogs liked her, the bearer tolerated her, and when Gascoigne was absent she was content to curl herself up in a chair with a book or a stocking.
Whenever he could afford time her cousin treated her to a drive; but in these, the last days of a truly fearful hot season, driving had ceased to be a joy. All the world was waiting for the rains, and gazing with strained expectation at the great bank of black clouds to the westward, on which the sheet lightning danced every night in dazzling diagrams. This cloud-bank coming nearer, oh, so slowly! embodied the longed-for rains.
For advice and guidance respecting his new charge, her cousin repaired to Mrs. Rattray. Mrs. Rattray had been Mrs. Wilkinson's friend, and she was a kind-hearted, practical woman. There were other ladies who would gladly have advised the inexperienced young guardian, but he did not believe in a multitude of counsellors.
Mrs. Gordon was charming, but she was too young—a mere girl herself! Mrs. Dawson did not care for children, and was alarmingly stiff and formal; so when it was possible he snatched half-an-hour in order to confer with Mrs. Rattray over letters and telegrams, and matters connected with Angel's passage, outfit, and destination.
Late one afternoon he called on this lady by appointment. Angel was with him when he drove up to the Rattrays' neat bungalow, which stood back from the road in a small enclosure, full of pretty shrubs and flowering trees. It had two gates, both opening into the principal thoroughfare in Ramghur.
"I'm going in here, Angel," announced her cousin. "I won't be more than ten minutes, and you can wait in the cart."
"All right," she assented, but tendering two eager hands; "may I hold the reins?"
"Very well; but only for show, mind," he said as he relinquished them. "Promise me you won't attempt to drive."
"Yes, I'll promise," she assented reluctantly, for she had entertained a glorious vision of trotting out at one gate, and whirling in at the other.
With a brief order to the syce to remain at Sally's head, Gascoigne went indoors. He had come to decide finally the choice of school for Angel.
Mrs. Rattray could hardly restrain a smile, as she satvis-à-visto this good-looking young bachelor, who, with his elbows on the table and his hands in his hair, was anxiously comparing two prospectuses. It was really astonishing how soon he had accommodated himself to his novel situation.
"I must say it is very good of you to adopt——"
"Don't!" he protested, raising his hand. "Please, Mrs. Rattray—every second person I meet tells me the same thing—it is not."
"Very well," she interrupted; "then I will tell you something you have not heard yet. I think you are rashly adventurous."
"I don't see that at all," he replied.
"You will find that Angela requires a strong hand—she is not the least like any child I've ever known. I've not known many intimately—it is true. She will soon pick up an education at home, for she is quick and bright; but she has another education to forget, the education she has acquired out here from servants."
"Oh, she's bound to forget that," said her cousin.
"Is she?" rejoined the lady doubtfully; "I hope so. Now I wonder if you even faintly realise what you have undertaken?"
"I am not sure that I have come down to the bedrock of my responsibilities—but I will do my best."
"Of course, I know that," said the lady. "But pray bear in mind that it is not a stray pony or a lost dog to whom you are playing Providence. You have assumed the charge of a human life, a child with a strange nature, and who will be an extraordinary woman some day."
"Yes; but at present the woman, thank Heaven, is in the far-away future, and I have only to do with a child."
"I hope Angel will never give you reason to regret your generosity."
"I'm sure she will be all right. You make far too much of the business. I'm only sending my poor cousin's little orphan to school. She will turn out well, if she falls into good hands," and here he held up several letters and said: "It is for you to choose to whose keeping I entrust her."
In the meantime the subject of this conversation sat in the cart outside, enormously impressed by the importance of her position. To other children who passed the gate she nodded with an air of splendid condescension; they stared and stared and looked back enviously at the little Gascoigne girl all alone in a dogcart, holding the reins. Truly, these were some of Angela's proudest moments.
But one acquaintance, a bare-legged, freckled boy, in a striped cotton suit, boldly walked up the drive between the shrubs, and proceeded to interview littleGascoigne. This intruder was Toady Dodd, a youth of eight, son of an impecunious house, and Angel's mortal enemy.
"Hullo!" he shouted, standing with hands in pockets and legs wide apart; "what a swell we are, cocked up there!"
"Yes—miles up above you," she retorted sharply; "run away and steal some more macaroons," a malicious reminder of some past evil deed.
"Are you going to drive?" he inquired, calmly ignoring the rude suggestion, "or are you just there for show?"
Angel gave a brief nod.
"Whata show!" cried Toady, cutting a caper, and making a series of hideous grimaces. Angel now leant over and lifted the whip out of its socket, and began to handle it significantly.
"You're afraid to drive, ain't you?" he screamed. No reply; his adversary was far too proud to record her promise.
"Drive out of the gate and back," urged the tempter, "and I'll never say you're a coward again."
"I'm not a coward, you ugly, freckled toad," she screamed. "If you don't mind, I shall hit you with the whip."
"First catch me," he shouted derisively, executing a war dance just out of reach. Come now—I dare you—dare you—to hit the horse."
To touch Sally with the whip was not driving, argued the child with herself; and consumed by a feminine desire to show off, and exasperated by her tormentor, with a force really intended forhim, shebrought the lash suddenly down on Sally's shining flank.
Instantly there was a vicious bang against the splash-board; Angel felt herself shot into the air, and remembered no more. The shrieks of Toady, the yells of the syce, and the sound of thundering hoofs summoned Gascoigne to the steps. There he saw the syce picking himself up with great care, he saw a white bunch and two black legs in the middle of a croton bush, he saw a great cloud of dust flying down the road—and that was all! He ran to the shrub and disentangled Angel, who had gone in head foremost and was merely stunned and speechless. The servant, however, found his tongue, when he discovered that his injuries were not mortal.
"Missy Baba—beating with whip—horse done gone!"
Such was his brief explanation.
Meanwhile the real cause of all the mischief lurked under a great creeper, and remained a palpitating spectator of the scene. As soon as Angel had recovered her senses she began to exculpate herself in sobbing gasps, "Oh, Philip, I didn't drive—I didnotdrive. I only touched Sally with the whip." And she burst into a storm of tears, whilst the syce ran limping out, in order to raise the station and catch the runaway.
It was in a second-class "fitton" that Angel returned home. A fitton is a ramshackle phaeton, drawn by a pair of bony ponies, and a second-class fitton is precisely what it claims to be. From this lowly equipage the delinquent was delivered over toher ayah, who awaited her on the verandah with stolid dignity.
"And the dogcart and big horse," she cried, "what hath befallen them?" But Miss Gascoigne merely shrugged her shoulders and stalked off into her own apartment. Her cousin did not escape so easily; he had dismissed the conveyance, and was proceeding on foot, when he encountered his chum.
"I say, where are Sally and the trap?" asked Shafto.
"I've no notion," he answered; "in Jericho, for all I know."
"But," pulling up, "I say—bar jokes."
"Oh, yes, I bar jokes," agreed Gascoigne; "I left Angel holding the reins when I was in at the Rattrays'. I heard a scrimmage, and when I ran out Angel was in the bush, the syce on his back, and Sally was nowhere. I believe the child touched her with the whip—at any rate, she went through the station like greased lightning."
"Great Scotland!" ejaculated his friend, "and with the cart at her heels—a mare that is worth a thousand rupees, and the trap new from Dykes' last season. So much for Angel! Has she broken her neck?"
"No, but she is breaking her heart, poor little soul."
"Odious little beast, she has no heart to break—that's where you make a mistake. Where are you off to?"
"To send out all the syces in the place to chase Sally—she went towards the railway."
"Oh, I'll run her down; but, mind you, Phil, nexttime you see her she'll have broken knees," and with this agreeable prophecy he galloped away. There was no sign of Sally all that night, but various rumours respecting her were afloat in the Club. One lady had seen a ghostly horse and trap dash up at her door at dark, and when a servant ran to the steps the horse had wheeled sharp round, plunged through a low hedge, cart and all, and vanished.
Later, an empty vehicle and a galloping steed had been viewed beyond the jail. At eight o'clock the next morning the syce reappeared with a quadruped said to be the runaway animal, coated from head to tail with sweat and red dust; her very eyes were half closed. Who could believe that this dirty, demoralised, limping creature was smart Sally Lunn? Yet it was Sally, and, marvellous to relate, her knees were unblemished. She had been captured five miles out in the open country on her back in a dry nullah, with the trap under her. The shattered remains of the vehicle followed soberly on the Ryot's bullock cart—it was minus a wheel, a shaft, also mats, lamps, cushions, but these were subsequently collected in various parts of the cantonment—and their owner came to the conclusion that he had got out of the business far better than he expected. Sally was terribly nervous and wild for weeks; the cart was despatched to Lucknow to be repaired—and there were no more drives for Angel.