Had any one, a week before his daughter arrived, told Colonel Stuart that her presence would be a pleasant restraint upon him, he would have been very angry. Yet such was the fact. Her likeness to her mother carried him back to days when his peccadilloes could still be regarded as youthful follies, and people spared a harsh verdict on what age might be expected to remedy. Then her vast admiration gave a reality to his own assumptions of rectitude; for the Colonel clung theoretically to virtue with great tenacity, in a loud-voiced, conservative "d---- you if you don't believe what I say" sort of manner. He also maintained a high ideal in regard to the honour of every one else, based on a weak-kneed conviction that his own was above suspicion.
He was proud of Belle too, fully recognising that with her by his side his grey hairs became reverend. So he pulled himself up to some small degree, and began to sprinkle good advice among the younger men with edifying gravity. As for Belle she was supremely happy. No doubt had she been "earnest" or "soulful" or "intense" she might have found spots on her sun with the greatest ease; but she was none of these things. At this period of her existence nothing was further from her disposition than inward questionings on any subject. She took life as she found it, seeing only her own healthy, happy desires in its dreary old problems, and remaining as utterly unconscious that she was assimilating herself to her surroundings as the caterpillar which takes its colour from the leaf on which it feeds. For a healthy mind acts towards small worries as the skin does towards friction; it protects itself from pain by an excess of vitality. It is only when pressure breaks through the blister that its extent is realised.
In good truth Belle's life was a merry one. The three girls were good-nature itself, especially when they found the new arrival possessed none of their own single-hearted desire for matrimony. Her stepmother, if anything, was over-considerate, being a trifle inclined to make a bugbear of the girl's superior claims to her father's affection. The housekeeping was lavishly good, and men of a certain stamp were not slow to avail themselves of the best mutton and prawn curry in Faizapore. Where the money came from which enabled the Stuarts to keep open house, they did not enquire. Neither did Belle, who knew no more about the value of things than a baby in arms. As for the Colonel, he had long years before acquired the habit of looking on his debts as his principal, and treating his pay as the interest. So matters went smoothly and swiftly for the first month or so, during which time Belle might have been seen everywhere in the company of the three Miss Van Milders, cheerfully following their lead with a serene innocence that kept even the fastest of a very fast set in check. Once or twice she saw Philip Marsden, and was rallied by the girls on her acquaintance with that solitary misogynist. Mrs. Stuart, indeed, went so far as to ask him to dinner, even though he had not called, on the ground that he was the richest man in the station, and Belle's interests must not be neglected though she was only a stepdaughter. But he sent a polite refusal, and so the matter dropped; nor to Mrs. Stuart's open surprise did Belle make any other declared conquest.
Yet, unnoticed by all, there was some one, who long before the first month was out, would willingly have cut himself into little pieces in order to save his idol from the least breath of disappointment. So it was from Cousin Dick's superior knowledge of Indian life that Belle learnt many comforting, if curious excuses for things liable to ruffle even her calm of content.
Poor Dick! Hitherto his efforts in all directions had resulted in conspicuous failure; chiefly, odd though it may seem, because he happened to be born under English instead of Indian skies. In other words, because he was not what bureaucracies term "a Statutory Native." His mother, Mrs. Stuart's younger sister, had run away with a young Englishman who, having ruined himself over a patent, was keeping soul and body together by driving engines. In some ways she might have done worse, for Smith senior was a gentleman; but he possessed, unfortunately, just that unstable spark of genius which, like a will-o'-the-wisp leads a man out of the beaten path without guiding him into another. The small sum of money she brought him was simply so much fuel to feed the flame; and, within a few months of their marriage, the soft, luxurious girl was weeping her eyes out in a miserable London lodging, while he went the rounds with his patent. There Dick was born, and thence after a year or two she brought them both back to the elastic house, the strong family affection, and lavish hospitality which characterise the Eurasian race. Not for long, however, since her husband died of heat-apoplexy while away seeking for employment, and she, after shedding many tears, succumbed to consumption brought on by the fogs and cold of the north. So, dependent on various uncles and aunts in turn, little Dick Smith had grown up with one rooted desire in the rough red head over which his sleek, soft guardians shook theirs ominously. Briefly, he was to be an engineer like his father. He broke open everything to see how it worked, and made so many crucial experiments that the whole family yearned for the time when he should join the Government Engineering College at Roorkee. And then, just when this desirable consummation was within reach, some one up among the deodars at Simla, or in an office at Whitehall, invented the "Statutory Native," and there was an end of poor Dick's career; for a Statutory Native is a person born in India of parents habitually resident and domiciled in the country. True, the college was open to the boy for his training; but with all the Government appointments awarded to successful students closed to him by the accident of his birth, his guardians naturally shook their heads again over an expensive education which would leave him, practically, without hope of employment. For, outside Government service, engineers are not, as yet, wanted in India. He might, of course, had he been the son of a rich man, have been sent home to pass out as an Englishman through the English college. As it was the boy, rebellious to the heart's core, was set to other employment. Poor Dick! If his European birth militated against him on the one side, his Eurasian parentage condemned him on the other. After infinite trouble his relations got him a small post on the railway, whence he was ousted on reduction; another with a private firm which became bankrupt. The lad's heart and brains were elsewhere, and as failure followed on failure, he gave way to fits of defiance, leading him by sheer excess of energy into low companionship and bad habits. At the time of Belle's arrival he was trying to work off steam as an unpaid clerk in his uncle's office when a boy's first love revolutionized his world; love at first sight, so enthralling, so compelling, that he did not even wonder at the change it wrought in him. Belle never knew, perhaps he himself did not recognise, how much of the calm content of those first few months was due to Dick's constant care. A silent, unreasoning devotion may seem a small thing viewed by the head, but it keeps the heart warm. Poor, homeless, rebellious Dick had never felt so happy, or so good, in all his life; and he would kneel down in his hitherto prayerless room and pray that she might be kept from sorrow, like any young saint. Yet he had an all-too-intimate acquaintance with the corruption of Indian towns, and an all-too-precocious knowledge of evil.
Belle in her turn liked him; there was something more congenial in his breezy, tempestuous, nature than in the sweetness of her stepbrothers, and unconsciously she soon learnt to come to him for comfort. "Charlie tells such dreadful stories," she complained one day, "and he really is fond of whisky-and-water. I almost wish father wouldn't give him any."
"The governor thinks it good for him, I bet," returned Dick stoutly. "I believe it is sometimes. Then as for lies! I used to tell 'em myself; it's the climate. He'll grow out of it, you'll see; I did."
Now Dick's truthfulness was, as a rule, so uncompromising that Belle cheered up; as for the boy, his one object then was to keep care from those clear eyes; abstract truth was nowhere.
The next time Sonnybabawas offered a sip from his father's glass, he refused hastily. Pressure produced a howl of terror; nor was it without the greatest difficulty that he was subsequently brought to own that Cousin Dick had threatened to kill him if he ever touched a "peg" again. Luckily for the peace of the household this confession was made in the Colonel's absence, when only Mrs. Stuart's high, strident voice could be raised in feeble anger. The culprit remained unrepentant; the more so because Belle assoilzied him, declaring that Charlie ought not to be allowed to touch the horrid mixture. Whereupon her stepmother sat and cried softly with the boy on her lap, making both Belle and Dick feel horribly guilty, until, the incident having occurred at lunch, both the sufferers fell asleep placidly. When Belle returned from her afternoon ride she found Mrs. Stuart in high good humour, decanting a bottle of port wine. "You frightened me so, my dear," she said affectionately, "that I sent for the doctor, and he says port wineisbetter, so I'm glad you mentioned it." And Belle felt more guilty than ever.
These afternoon rides were Dick's only trouble. He hated the men who came about the house, and more especially the favoured many who were allowed to escort the "Van" as Belle's three stepsisters were nick-named. It made him feel hot and cold all over to think of her in the company which he found suitable enough for his cousins. But then it seemed to him as if no one was good enough for Belle,--he himself least of all. He dreamed wild, happy dreams of doing something brave, fine, and manly; not so much from any desire of thereby winning her, but because his own love demanded it imperiously. For the first time the needle of his compass pointed unhesitatingly to the pole of right. He confided these aspirations to the girl, and they would tell each other tales of heroism until their cheeks flushed, and their eyes flashed responsive to the deeds of which they talked. One day Dick came home full of the story of Major Marsden and the Afghan sepoy; and they agreed to admire it immensely. After that Dick made rather a hero of the Major, and Belle began to wonder why the tall quiet man who had been so friendly at their first meeting, kept so persistently aloof from her and hers. He was busy, of course, but so were others, for these were stirring times. The arsenal was working over hours, and all through the night, long files of laden carts crept down the dusty roads, bearing stores for the front.
To all outward appearance, however, society took no heed of these wars or rumours of wars, but went on its way rejoicing in the winter climate which made amusement possible. And no one in the station rejoiced more than Belle. Major Marsden, watching her from afar, told himself that a girl who adopted her surroundings--and such surroundings!--so readily, was not to be pitied. She was evidently well able to take care of herself; yet, many a time, as he sat playing whist while others were dancing, he caught himself looking up to see who the partner might be with whom she was hurrying past to seek the cooler air of the gardens, where seats for two were dimly visible among the coloured lanterns.
For the most part, however, Belle's partners were boys, too young to have lost the faculty of recognising innocent unconsciousness. But one night at a large ball given to a departing regiment, she fell into the hands of a stranger who had come in from an outstation in order to continue a pronounced flirtation which Maud Van Milder had permitted during a dull visit to a friend. That astute young lady having no intention of offending permanent partners for his sake, handed him over to Belle for a dance, and the latter, failing to fall in with his step during the first turn, pleaded fatigue as the easiest way of getting through the penance.
Philip at his whist, saw her pass down the corridor towards the garden; and, happening to know her companion, played a false card, lost the trick, and apologised.
"Time yet, if we look out," replied his partner; but this was exactly what the Major could not do, and the rubber coming swiftly to an end, he made an excuse for cutting out, and followed Belle into the garden, wondering who could have introduced her to such a man. To begin with he was not fit for decent society, and in addition he had evidently favoured the champagne. Philip had no definite purpose in his pursuit, until from a dark corner he heard Belle's clear young voice with a touch of hauteur in it. Then the impulse to get her away from her companion before he had a chance of making himself objectionable, came to the front, joined to an unexpected anger and annoyance.
"I have been looking for you everywhere, Miss Stuart. You are wanted," said Philip going up to them.
"Hallo, Marsden! what a beast you are to come just as we were gettin' confidential--weren't we?" exclaimed Belle's companion with what was meant to be a fascinating leer. She turned from one face to the other; but if the one aroused dislike and contempt, the air of authority in Major Marsden's touched her pride.
"Who wants me?" she asked calmly.
"Who!" echoed her partner. "Come, that's a good one! We both want you; don't we, Marsden?"
Luckily for the speaker Philip recognised his own imprudence in risking an altercation. The only thing to be done now, was to get the girl away as soon as possible.
"Exactly so;" he replied, crushing down his anger, "Miss Stuart can choose between us."
Belle rose superbly.
"You seem to forget I can go alone." And alone she went, while her partner shrieked with noisy laughter, avowing that he loved a spice of the devil in a girl.
Philip moodily chewing the end of his cheroot ere turning in felt that the rebuff served him right, though he could not restrain a smile as he thought of Belle's victorious retreat. By that time, however, subsequent facts had enlightened her as to Philip's possible meaning, and the sight of her former partner being inveigled away from waltzing to the billiard room by the senior subaltern, made her turn so pale that John Raby, on whose arm she was leaning, thought she was afraid.
"He won't be allowed to come back, Miss Stuart," he said consolingly. "And I apologise in the name of the committee for the strength of the champagne."
Belle's mouth hardened. "There is no excuse for that sort of thing. There never can be one."
He looked at her curiously.
"I wouldn't say that, Miss Stuart. It is a mistake to be so stern. For my part I can forgive anything. It is an easy habit to acquire--and most convenient."
Belle, however, could not even forgive herself. She lay tossing about enacting the scene over and over again, wondering what Major Marsden must think of her. How foolish she had been! Why had she not trusted him? Why had he not made her understand?
Being unable to sleep, she rose, and long ere her usual hour was walking about the winding paths which intersected the barren desert of garden where nothing grew but privet and a few bushes of oleander. This barrenness was not Dame Nature's fault, for just over the other side of the wide white road John Raby's garden was ablaze with blossom. Trails of Maréchale Niel roses, heavy with great creamy cups, hung over the low hedge, and a sweet English scent of clove-pinks and mignonette was wafted to her with every soft, fitful gust of wind. She felt desperately inclined to cross the intervening dust into this paradise, and stood quite a long time at the blue gate-posts wondering why a serpent seemed to have crept into her own Eden. The crow's long-drawn note came regularly from akuchnârtree that was sheeted with white geranium-like flowers; the Seven Brothers chattered noisily among the yellow tassels of the cassia, and over head, against the cloudless sky, a wedge-shaped flight of cranes was winging its way northward, all signs that the pleasant cold weather was about to give place to the fiery furnace of May; but Belle knew nothing of such things as yet, so the vague sense of coming evil, which lay heavily on her, seemed all the more depressing from its unreasonableness. A striped squirrel became inquisitive over her still figure and began inspection with bushy tail erect and short starts of advance, till it was scared by the clank of bangles and anklets as a group of Hindu women, bearing bunches of flowers and brazenlotahsof milk for Seetlâs' shrine, came down the road; beside them, in various stages of toddle, the little children for whom their mothers were about to beg immunity from small-pox. Of all this again Belle knew nothing; but suddenly, causelessly, it struck her for the first time that she ought to know something. Who were these people? What were they doing? Where were they going? One small child paused to look at her and she smiled at him. The mother smiled in return, and the other women looked back half surprised, half pleased, nodding, and laughing as they went on their way.
Why? Belle, turning to enquire after the late breakfast, felt oppressed by her own ignorance. In the verandah she met the bearer coming out of the Colonel's window with a medicine bottle in his hand. Did her ignorance go so far that her father should be ill and she not know of it? "Budlu!" she asked hastily, "the Colonelsahibisn't ill, is he?"
The man, who had known her mother, and grown grey with his master, raised a submissive face. "No, missybaba, not ill. Colonelsahib, he drunk."
"Drunk!" she echoed mechanically, too astonished for horror. "Whatdoyou mean?"
"Too much wine drunk,--very bad," explained Budlu cheerfully.
She caught swiftly at the words with a sense of relief from she knew not what. "Ah, I see! the wine last night was bad, and disagreed with him?"
"Damn bad!" Budlu's English was limited but not choice. She remarked on it at the breakfast-table, repeating his words and laughing. None of the girls were down, but Walter and Stanley giggled; and the latter was apparently about to say something facetious, when his words changed into an indignant request that Dick would look out, and keep his feet to himself.
"Was it you I kicked?" asked Dick innocently. "I thought it was the puppy." Then he went on fast as if in haste to change the subject: "I often wonder why you don't learn Hindustani, Belle. You'd be ashamed not to speak the lingo in other countries. Why not here? I'll teach you if you like."
"There's your chance, Belle!" sneered Stanley, still smarting from Dick's forcible method of ensuring silence. "He really is worth ten rupees a month asmoonshee, and 'twill save the governor's pocket if it goes in the family."
An unkind speech, no doubt; yet it did good service to Dick by ensuring Belle's indignant defence, and her immediate acceptance of his offer; for she was ever ready of tongue, and swift of sympathy, against injustice or meanness.
So the little incident of the morning passed without her understanding it in the least. Nevertheless Dick found it harder and harder every day to manipulate facts, and to stand between his princess and the naked, indecent truth. Her curiosity in regard to many things had been aroused, and she asked more questions in the next four days than she had asked in the previous four months; almost scandalizing the Van Milder clan by the interest she took in things of which they knew nothing. It was all very well, the girls said, if she intended to be azenana-mission lady, but without that aim it seemed to them barely correct that she should know how many wives thekhansamah(butler) had. As for the boys, they rallied her tremendously about her Hindustani studies, for, like most of their race, they prided themselves on possessing but a limited acquaintance with their mother tongue; Walter, indeed, being almost boastful over the fact that he had twice failed for the Higher Standard. Then the whole family chaffed her openly because she had a few sensible talks with John Raby, the young civilian; and when she began to show a certain weariness of pursuing pleasure in rear of the "Van," insisted that she must be in love with him without knowing it.
"I don't like Raby," said Mildred, the youngest and least artificial of the sisters. "Jack Carruthers told me the governor had been dropping a lot of money to him atécarté."
"I don't see what you and Mr. Carruthers have to do with father's amusements," flashed out Belle in swift anger. "I suppose he can afford it, and at least he never stints you,--I mean the family," she added hastily, fearing to be mean.
"Quite true, my dear! He's a real good sort, is the governor, about money, and he can of course do as he likes; but Raby oughtn't to gamble; it isn't form in a civilian. You needn't laugh, Belle, it's true; it would be quite different if he was in the army."
"Soldiers rush in where civilians fear to tread," parodied Belle contemptuously. "I wish people wouldn't gossip so. Why can't they leave their neighbours alone?"
Nevertheless that afternoon she stole over to the office, which was only separated from the house by an expanse of dusty, stubbly grass, and seeing her father alone in his private room comfortably reading the paper, slipped to his side, and knelt down.
"Well, my pretty Belle," he said caressing her soft fluffy hair, "why aren't you out riding with the others?"
"I didn't care to go; then you were to be at home, and I like that best. I don't see much of you as a rule, father."
Colonel Stuart's virtue swelled visibly, as it always did under the vivifying influence of his daughter's devotion. "I am a busy man, my dear, you must not forget that," he replied a trifle pompously; "my time belongs to the Government I have the honour to serve." The girl was a perfect godsend to him, acting on his half-dead sensibilities like a galvanic battery on paralysed nerve-centres. He was dimly conscious of this, and also of relief that the influence was not always on him.
"I know you are very busy, dear," she returned, nestling her head on his arm, as she seated herself on the floor. "That's what bothers me. Couldn't I help you in your work sometimes? I write a very good hand, so people say."
Colonel Stuart let his paper fall in sheer astonishment. "Help me! why my dear child, I have any number of clerks."
"But I should like to help!" Her voice was almost pathetic; there was quite a break in it.
Her father looked at her in vague alarm. "You are not feeling ill, are you, Belle? Not feverish, I hope, my dear! It's a most infernal climate though, and one can't be too careful. You'd better go and get your mother to give you five grains of quinine. I can't have you falling sick, I can't indeed; just think of the anxiety it would be."
Belle, grateful for her father's interest, took the quinine; but no drug, not even poppy or mandragora, had power to charm away her restless dissatisfaction. Dick's office was no sinecure, and even his partial eyes could not fail to see that she was often captious, almost cross. It came as a revelation to him, for hitherto she had been a divinity in his eyes; and now, oh strange heresy! he found himself able to laugh at her with increased, but altered devotion. Hitherto he had wreathed her pedestal with flowers; now he kept the woman's feet from thorns, and the impulse to make their pathways one grew stronger day by day. She, unconscious of the position, added fuel to the flame by choosing his society, and making him her confidant. Naturally with one so emotional as Dick, the crisis was not long in coming, and music, of which he was passionately fond, brought it about in this wise; for Belle played prettily, and he used to sit and listen to her like the lover in Frank Dicksee'sHarmony, letting himself drift away on a sea of pleasure or pain, he scarcely knew which. So, one afternoon when they were alone in the house together, she sat down to the piano and played Schubert'sFrühlingslied. The sunshine lay like cloth of gold outside, the doves cooed ceaselessly, the scent of the roses in John Raby's garden drifted in through the window with the warm wind which stirred the little soft curls on Belle's neck. The perfume of life got into the lad's brain, and almost before he knew it, his arms were round the girl, his kisses were on her lips, and his tale of love in her ears.
It was very unconventional of course, but very natural,--for him. For her the sudden rising to her full height with amazement and dislike in her face was equally natural, and even more unforeseen. The sight of it filled poor Dick with such shame and regret, that his past action seemed almost incredible to his present bewilderment. "Forgive me, Belle," he cried, "I was mad; but indeed I love you,--I love you."
She stood before him like an insulted queen full of bitter anger. "I will never forgive you. How dare you kiss me? How dare you say you love me?"
The lad's combativeness rose at her tone. "I suppose any one may dare to love you. I'm sorry I kissed you, Belle, but my conduct doesn't alter my love."
His manner, meant to be dignified, tended to bombast, and the girl laughed scornfully. "Love indeed! You're only a boy! what do you know about love?"
"More than you do apparently."
"I'm glad you realise the fact ifthatis what you call love."
"At any rate I'm older than you."
The retort that he was old enough to know better rose to Belle's lips, but a suspicion that this childish squabbling was neither correct nor dignified, made her pause and say loftily, "How can you ask me to forgive such a mean ungentlemanly thing?"
The last epithet was too much for Dick; he looked at her as if she had struck him. "Don't say that, Belle," he said hoarsely. "It's bad enough that it's true, and that you don't understand; but don't say that." He leant over the piano and buried his face in his hands in utter despair. For the first time a pulse of pity shot through the storm of physical and mental repulsion in the girl's breast, but she put it from her fiercely. "Why shouldn't I say it if it is true?"
"Because you are kind; always so good and kind."
Again the pity had to be repulsed, this time still more harshly. "You will say next that I've been too kind, that I encouraged you, I suppose; that would put the finishing touch to your meanness."
This speech put it to Dick's patience; he caught her by both hands, and stood before her masterful in his wrath. "You shall not say such things to me, Belle! Look me in the face and say it again if you dare. You know quite well how I love and reverence you; you know that I would die rather than offend you. I forgot everything but you,--I lost myself,--you know it."
The thrill in his voice brought a new and distinctly pleasurable sense of power to the young girl, and, alas! that it should be so, made her more merciless. "I prefer actions to words. You have insulted me and I will never speak to you again." She regretted this assertion almost as it was uttered; it went too far and bound her down too much. She was not always going to be angry with poor Dick surely? No! not always, but for the present decidedly angry, very angry indeed.
"Insult!" echoed Dick drearily, letting her hands slip from his. "There you go again; but fellows do kiss their cousins sometimes."
Had there been any grown-up spectators to this scene they must have laughed at the full-blown tragedy of both faces, and the alternate bathos and pathos of the pleas. They were so young, so very young, this girl and boy, and neither of them really meant what they said, Belle especially, with her vicious retort: "I am not your cousin, and I'm glad of it. I'm glad that I have nothing to do with you."
As before her harshness overreached itself, and made a man of him. "You want to put me out of your life altogether, Belle," he said more steadily, "because I have made you angry. You have a right to be angry, and I will go. But not for always. You don't wish that yourself, I think, for you are kind. Oh Belle! be like yourself! say one kind word before I go."
Again the consciousness of power made her merciless, and she stood silent, yet tingling all over with a half-fearful curiosity as to what he would say next.
"One kind word," he pleaded; "only one."
He waited a minute, then, with a curse on his own folly in expecting pity, flung out of the room. So it was all over! A genuine regret came into the girl's heart and she crept away miserably to her own room, and cried.
"I wonder Dick isn't home to dinner," remarked Mrs. Stuart when that meal came round. "I do hope he isn't going back to his old habit of staying out. He heard to-day that his application for a post in the Salt Department was refused, and he has no patience like my own boys. I do hope he will come to no harm."
The empty chair renewed Belle's remorseful regret.
"Well! I can't have him kicking his heels in my office much longer," remarked the Colonel crossly. "The head-clerk complains of him. Confound his impudence! he actually interfered in the accounts the other day, and showed regular distrust. I must have good feeling in the office; that's asine qua non."
"Oh, Dick's got a splendid opinion of himself," broke in Stanley. "He had the cheek to tell Raby yesterday that he played too muchécartéwith--" The speaker remembered his audience too late.
Colonel Stuart grew purple and breathless. "Do you mean to say that the boy,--thatboy--presumed to speak to Raby,--tomy friendRaby--about his private actions? Lucilla! What is the world coming to?"
This was a problem never propounded to his wife save under dire provocation, and the answer invariably warned him not to expect his own high standard from the world. This time she ventured upon a timid addition to the effect that rumour did accuse Mr. Raby of playing high.
"And if he does," retorted the Colonel, "he can afford to pay. Raby, my dear, is a fine young fellow, with good principles,--deuced good principles, let me tell you."
"I am very glad to hear it, Charles, I'm sure; for it would be a pity if a nice, clever, young man, who would make any girl a good husband, were to get into bad habits."
"Raby is a man any girl might be proud to marry. He is a good fellow." He looked at Belle, who smiled at him absently; she was wondering where Dick could be.
"Raby isn't a Christian," remarked Mabel. "He told us yesterday he was something else. What was it, Maud?"
"An erotic Buddhist."
"Esoteric," suggested Belle.
"It's all the same. He said we were the three Thibetan sisters and he worshipped us all. But we know who it is, don't we?"
"How you giggle, girls!" complained Colonel Stuart fretfully. "Belle never giggles. Dear child, I will teach youécartéthis evening. It will amuse you."
It amused him, which was more to the purpose; in addition it prevented him from falling asleep after dinner, which he was particularly anxious not to do that evening. So they played until, just as the clock was striking ten, a step was heard outside, and Colonel Stuart rose with a relieved remark that it must be John Raby at last. The opening door, however, only admitted truant Dick with rather a flushed face. "From Raby," he said handing a note to his uncle. "I met the man outside."
The scowl, which the sight of the culprit had raised on Colonel Stuart's face, deepened as he read a palpable excuse for not coming over to playécarté. It seemed inconceivable that Dick's remonstrance could have wrought this disappointment; yet even the suggestion was unpleasant. He turned on his nephew only too anxious to find cause of quarrel. It was not hard to find, for Dick was manifestly excited. "At your old tricks again, sir?" said his uncle sternly. "You've been drinking in the bazaar."
Now Dick, ever since the day on which Belle had come to him in distress over Charlie's abandonment to "pegs," had forsworn liquor, as he had forsworn many another bad habit. Even when driven to despair, he had not flown to the old anodyne. But his very virtue had been his undoing, and a single stiff tumbler of whisky and water, forced on him by a friend who was startled by his looks as he returned fagged from a wander into the wilderness, had gone to his unaccustomed head in a most unlooked-for degree. The injustice of the accusation maddened him, and he retorted fiercely: "I haven't had so much to drink as you have, sir."
"Don't speak to your uncle like that, Dick," cried Mrs. Stuart alarmed. "You had better go to bed, dear; it is the best place for you."
"Leave the room, you dissipated young meddler," thundered the Colonel breaking in on his wife's attempt to avert a collision. It was the first time Belle had witnessed her father's passion, and the sight made her cling to him as if her touch might soothe his anger.
Dick, seeing her thus, felt himself an outcast indeed. "I've not been drinking," he burst out, beside himself with jealousy and rage. "The man who says I have is a liar."
"Go to bed, sir," bawled his uncle, "or I'll kick you out of the room. I'll have no drunkards here."
Luckless Dick's evil genius prompted an easy retort. "Then you'd better go first, sir; for I've seen you drunk oftener than you've seen me!"
The next instant he was at Belle's side pleading for disbelief. "No, no, Belle! it's a lie! I am mad--drunk--anything--only it is not true!" His denial struck home to the girl's heart when the angry assertion might have glanced by. A flash of intelligence lit up the past: she recollected a thousand incidents, she remembered a thousand doubts which had made no impression at the time; and before Colonel Stuart's inarticulate splutterings of wrath found words, her eyes met Dick's so truthfully, so steadily, that he turned away in despair, in blank, hopeless despair.
"Why to-morrow?" he cried bitterly in answer to his uncle's order to leave the room instantly and the house to-morrow. "There's no time like the present, and I deserve it. Good-bye, Aunt Lucilla; you've been very kind, always; but I can't stand it any longer. Good-bye, all of you!"
He never even looked at Belle again; the door closed and he was gone.
"Poor, dear Dick!" remarked Mrs. Stuart in her high complaining voice. "He always had a violent temper, even as a baby. Don't fret about it, my dear,"--for large tears were slowly rolling down Belle's cheeks--"He will be all right to-morrow, you'll see; and he has really been steadiness itself of late."
"He wasn't anything to speak of either," urged Mildred with her usual good-nature. "Only a little bit on, and I expect he had no dinner."
"Dinner or no dinner, I say he was drunk," growled Colonel Stuart sulkily. "No one lies like that unless he is,--that's my experience."
But Belle scarcely realised what they said. Her heart was full of fear, and though sleep came with almost unwelcome readiness to drive thought away, she dreamt all night long that some one was saying, "One kind word, Belle, only one kind word," and she could not speak.
Outside the parallelograms of white roads centred by brown stretches of stubbly grass, and bordered by red and blue houses wherein the European residents of Faizapore dwelt after their kind, and our poor Belle lay dreaming, a very different world had been going on its way placidly indifferent, not to her only, but to the whole colony of strangers within its gates. The great plains, sweeping like a sea to the horizon, had been ploughed, sown, watered, harvested: children had been born, strong men had died, crimes been committed, noble acts done; and of all this not one word had reached the alien ears. Only the District Officer and his subaltern, John Raby, bridged the gulf by driving down every day to the court-house, which lay just beyond the boundaries of the cantonment and close to the native city; there, for eight weary hours, to come in contact with the most ignoble attributes of the Indian, and thence to drive at evening heartily glad of escape. In the lines of the native regiment Philip Marsden went in and out among his men, knowing them by name, and sympathising with their lives. But they too were a race apart from the tillers of soil, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, who pay the bills for the great Empire.
Even old Mahomed Lateef came but seldom to see the Majorsahibsince he had been forced to send his Benjamin to Delhi, there, in a hotbed of vice and corruption, to gain a livelihood by his penmanship. The lad was employed on the staff of a red-hot Mahometan newspaper entitled "The Light of Islâm," and spent his days in copying blatant leaders on to the lithographic stones. Nothing could exceed the lofty tone of "The Light of Islâm." No trace of the old Adam peeped through its exalted sentiments save when it spoke of the Government, or of its Hindu rival "The Patriot." Then the editor took down his dictionary of synonyms, and, looking out all the bad epithets from "abandoned" to "zymotic," used them with more copiousness than accuracy. Sometimes, however, it would join issue with one adversary against another, and blaze out into fiery paragraphs of the following order:
We are glad to see that yet once more "The Patriot," forgetting its nonsensical race-prejudice for the nonce, has, to use a colloquialism, followed our lead in pertinently calling on Government for some worthy explanation of the dastardly outrage perpetrated by its minions on a virtuous Mahometan widow, &c, &c.
And lovers of the dreadful, after wading through a column of abuse, would discover that the ancestral dirt of an old lady's cowhouse had been removed by order of the Deputy Commissioner! Yet the paper did good: it could hardly do otherwise, considering its exalted sentiments; but for all that the occupation was an unwholesome one for an excitable lad like Murghub Ahmed. While his fingers inked themselves hopelessly over the fine words, his mind also became clouded by them. The abuse of language intoxicated him, until moderation seemed to him indifference, and tolerance sympathy. He took to sitting up of nights composing still more turgid denunciations; and the first time "The Light of Islâm" went forth, bearing not only his hand-writing, but his heart's belief on its pages, he felt that he had found his mission. To think that but four months ago he had wept with disappointment because he was refused the post of statistical writer in a Government office! Between striking averages, and evolving Utopias, what a glorious difference! He thanked Providence for the change, though his heart ached cruelly at times when he could spare nothing from his modest wage for the dear ones at home. He had a wife waiting there for him; ere long there might be a child, and he knew her to be worse fed than many a street-beggar. It seemed to him part of the general injustice which set his brain on fire.
"Words! Nothing but words," muttered old Mahomed Lateef as he lay under the solitarynimtree in his courtyard and spelt out "The Light of Islâm" with the aid of a huge horn-rimmed pair of spectacles. "Pish! 'The pen is mightier than the sword!' What white-livered fool said that? The boy should not have such water in his veins unless his mother played me false. God knows! women are deceitful, and full of guile."
This was only his habit of thought; he had no intention of casting aspersions on his much respected wife Fâtma Bibi, who just then appeared with a hookah full of the rankest tobacco. "I shall send for the boy, oh Fâtma Bi!" said the stern old domestic tyrant. "He is learning to say more than he dare do, and that I will not have. He shall come home and do more than he says--ha! ha!" Fâtma Bi laughed too, and clapped her wrinkled hands, while the shy girl, dutifully doing the daughter-in-law's part of cooking, turned her head away to smile lest any one should accuse her of joy becausehewas coming back.
So Mahomed Lateef covered a sheet of flimsy German note-paper, bought in the bazaar, with crabbed Arabic lettering, and the women rejoiced because the light of their eyes was coming back. And after all the lad refused stoutly to return. He wrote his father a letter, full of the most trite and beautiful sentiments, informing his aged parent that times had changed, the old order given place to the new, and that he intended to raise the banner ofjehâd(religious war) against the infidel. The women criedBismillah, and Mahomed Lateef, despite his annoyance at the disobedience, could not help, as it were, cocking his ears like an old war-horse. Yet he wrote the lad a warning after his lights, which ran thus:
God and His prophet forbid, oh son of my heart, that I should keep thee back, if, as thou sayest, thou wouldst raise the banner ofjehâd. If a sword be needed, I will send thee mine own friend; but remember always what the mullah taught thee, nor confound the three great things,--the Dur-ul-Islâm, the Dur-ul-Husub, and the Dur-ul-Ummun.[2]Have at the Hindu pigs, especially any that bear kindred to Shunker's fat carcase; he hath cheated me rascally, and built a window overlooking my yard for which I shall have the law of him. But listen for the cry of the muezzin, and put thy sword in the scabbard when its sound falls on thine ear, remembering 'tis the House of Protection, and not the House of the Foe. If thou goest to China, as perhaps may befall, seeing thesahibsfight the infidel there, remember to cool thy brother's grave with tears. Meanwhile, play singlestick with Shâhbâz Khân the Mogul, and if thou canst get the old Meeansahib, his father, on his legs, put the foils into his hand, rap him over the knuckles once, and he will teach thee more in one minute than his son in five.
Then the old Syyed lay down on his bed under thenimtree, and Fâtma Bi fanned the mosquitoes from him with a tinsel fan, and talked in whispers to Nasibun, the childless wife, of the deeds their boy was to do, while Haiyât Bi, the young bride, busy as usual, found time to dry her tears unseen. A fire burning dim in one corner of the courtyard was almost eclipsed by the moon riding gloriously in the purple-black sky overhead. From the other side of the high partition wall came the dull throbbing of thedholki(little drum) and an occasional wild skirling of pipes. The marriage festivities in Shunker Dâs's house had begun, and every day some ceremony or other had to be gone through, bringing an excuse for having themarânsunis(female musicians) in to play and sing. High up near the roof of the sugar-cake house with its white filigree mouldings gleamed the objectionable window. Within sat the usurer himself conferring with his jackal, one Râm Lâl, a man of small estate but infinite cunning. It was from no desire of overlooking Mahomed Lateef's women that Shunker Dâs frequented the upper chamber. He had other and far more important business on hand, necessitating quiet and the impossibility of being overheard. Even up there the two talked in whispers, and chuckled under their breath; while in the courtyard below the delicate child who stood between Shunker and damnation ate sweetmeats and turned night into day with weary, yet sleepless, eyes.
The moon, shining in on the two courtyards, shone also on the church garden, as Major Marsden after going his rounds turned his horse into its winding paths. A curious garden it was, guiltless of flowers and planted for the most part with tombstones. Modern sanitation, stepping in like Aaron's rod to divide the dead from the living, had ceased to use it as a cemetery; but the records of long forgotten sorrows remained, looking ghostly in the moonlight. The branch of a rose-tree encroaching on the walk caught in the tassel of Major Marsden's bridle, and he stooped to disentangle it. Straightening himself again, he paused to look on the peaceful scene around him and perceived that some one, a belated soldier most likely, was lying not far off on a tombstone. The horse picked its way among many a nameless grave to draw up beside a figure lying still as if carved in stone.
"Now, my man, what's up?" said Major Marsden dismounting to lay a heavy hand on its shoulder. The sleeper rose almost automatically, and stood before him alert and yet confused. "Dick Smith! What on earth brings you here?"
The boy could scarcely remember at first, so far had sleep taken him from his troubles. Then he hung his head before memory. "I'm leaving Faizapore, and came here--to wait for daylight; that's all."
But the moonlight on the tombstone showed its inscription, "Sacred to the memory of John Smith"; and Philip Marsden judged instantly that there was trouble afoot; boys do not go to sleep on their father's graves without due cause. Some scrape no doubt, and yet--. His dislike to Colonel Stuart made him a partisan, and he was more ready to believe ill of the elder, than of the younger man.
"Don't be in a hurry," he said kindly. "There's something wrong of course, but very few scrapes necessitate running away."
"There's nothing to make me run away," replied Dick, with a lump in his throat as he unconsciously contrasted this stranger's kindness with other people's harshness; "but go I must."
"Where?"
The question roused the sense of injury latent for years. "Where? How do I know? I tell you there's nothing for me to do anywhere--nothing! And then, when a fellow is sick of waiting, and runs wild a bit, they throw it in his teeth, when he has given it all up."
It was not very lucid, but the lad's tone was enough for Philip Marsden. "Come home with me," he said with a smile full of pity; "and have a real sleep in a real bed. You don't know how different things will seem to-morrow."
Dick looked at his hero, thought how splendid he was, and went with him like a lamb.
Next morning when the boy with much circumlocution began to tell the tale of his troubles, Major Marsden felt inclined to swear. Would he never learn to mistrust his benevolent impulses, but go down to his grave making a fool of himself? A boy and girl lovers' quarrel,--was that all? Yet as the story proceeded he became interested in spite of himself. "Do you mean to tell me," he said incredulously, "that Miss Stuart is absolutely ignorant of what goes on in that house?"
Dick laid his head on the table in sheer despair. "Ah Major, Major!" he cried, "I told her--I--you should have seen her face!" He burst into incoherent regrets, and praises of Belle's angelic innocence.
"It appears to me," remarked Major Marsden drily, "to be about the best thing that could have happened. Fiction is always unsafe. Belle,--as you call her--must have found it out sooner or later. The sooner the better, in my opinion."
"You wouldn't say that if you knew her as I do," explained the other eagerly; "or if you knew all that I do. There will be a smash some day soon, and it will kill Belle outright. Ah! if I hadn't been a fool and a brute, I might have stayed and perhaps kept things from going utterly wrong."
"Then why don't you go back?" asked his hearer impatiently.
"I can't! He won't have me in the office again. You don't know what mischief is brewing there."
"Thank you, I'd rather not know; but if you're certain this move of yours is final,--that is to say if you don't want to kiss and make friends with your cousin--[Poor Dick writhed inwardly, for he had kept back the full enormity of his offence]--then I might be able to help you in getting employment. They are laying a new telegraph-line to the front, and, as it so happens, a friend wrote to me a few days ago asking if I knew of any volunteers for the work."
The lad's face brightened. "Telegraphs! oh, I should like that! I've been working at them these two years, and I think--but I'm not sure--that I've invented a new--"
"All right," interrupted Major Marsden brusquely; "they can try you, at any rate. You can start tonight; that settles it. Now you had better go round and get your things ready."
Dick writhed again in mingled pride and regret. "I can't; I've said good-bye to them all; besides, I left a bundle of sorts in the bazaar before I went--there."
Philip Marsden shrugged his shoulders, remarking that the boy might do as he liked, and went off to his work; returning about two o'clock, however, to find Dick asleep, wearied out even by a half-night's vigil of sorrow. "How soft these young things are," he thought, as he looked down on the sleeping boy, and noticed a distinctly damp pocket-handkerchief still in the half-relaxed hand. A certain scorn was in his heart, yet the very fact that he did notice such details showed that he was not so hard as he pretended. He went into the rough, disorderly room where he spent so many solitary evenings, lit a cigar, and walked about restlessly. Finally, telling himself the while that he was a fool for his pains, he sat down and wrote to Belle Stuart in this wise:--