My Dear Miss Stuart,--At the risk of once more being meddlesome, I venture to tell you that your cousin, Dick Smith, goes off to Beluchistan to-night as telegraph overseer. It is dangerous work, and perhaps you might like to see him before he leaves. If so, by riding through the church garden about six o'clock you will meet him. He doesn't know I am writing, and would most likely object if he did; but I know most women believe in the duty of forgiveness. Yours truly,P. H. Marsden.
P.S. If you were to send a small selection of warm clothing to meet him at the bullock train office it, at any rate, could not fail to be a comfort to him.
Belle read this rather brusque production with shining eyes and a sudden lightening of her heart. Perhaps, as she told herself, this arose entirely from her relief on Dick's account; perhaps the conviction that Major Marsden could not judge her very harshly if he thought it worth while to appeal to her in this fashion, had something to do with it. The girl however did not question herself closely on any subject. Even the dreadful doubt which Dick's mad words had raised the night before had somehow found its appointed niche in the orderly pageant of her mind where love sat in the place of honour. Was it true? The answer came in a passionate desire to be ignorant, and yet to protect and save. Very illogical, no doubt, but very womanly; to a certain extent very natural also, for her father, forced by the circumstances detailed in the last chapter to retire early to bed, had arisen next morning in a most edifying frame of mind, and a somewhat depressed state of body. He was unusually tender towards Belle, and spoke with kindly dignity of unhappy Dick's manifest ill-luck. These dispositions therefore rendered it easy for Belle to make excuses in her turn. Not that she made them consciously; that would have argued too great a change of thought. The craving to forget and forgive was imperative, and the sense of wrong-doing which her innate truthfulness would not allow to be smothered, found an outlet in self-blame for her unkindness to dear Dick. As for poor father--: the epithets spoke volumes.
"There is your cousin," said Major Marsden to Dick as Belle rode towards them through the overarching trees in the church garden. "Don't run away; I asked her to come. You'll find me by the bridge."
The lad was like Mahomet's coffin, hanging between a hell of remorse and a heaven of forgiveness, as he watched her approach, and when she reined up beside him, he looked at her almost fearfully.
"I'm sorry I was cross to you, Dick," she said simply, holding out her hand to him. The clouds were gone, and Dick Smith felt as if he would have liked to stand up and chant her praises, or fight her battles, before the whole world. They did not allude to the past in any way until the time for parting came, when Dick, urged thereto by the rankle of a certain epithet, asked with a furious blush if she would promise to forget--everything. She looked at him with kindly smiling eyes. "Good-bye, dear Dick," she said; and then, suddenly, she stooped and kissed him.
The young fellow could not speak. He turned aside to caress the horse, and stood so at her bridle-rein for a moment. "God bless you for that, Belle," he said huskily and left her.
Belle, with a lump in her own throat and tearful shining eyes, rode back past the bridge where Philip Marsden, leaning over the parapet, watched the oily flow of the canal water in the cut below. He looked up, thinking how fair and slim and young she was, and raised his hat expecting her to pass, but she paused. He felt a strange thrill as his eyes met hers still wet with tears.
"I have so much to thank you for, Major Marsden," she said with a little tremor in her voice, "and I do it so badly. You see I don't always understand--"
Something in her tone smote Philip Marsden with remorse. "Please not to say any more about it, Miss Stuart.Iunderstand,--and,--and,-- I'm glad you do not." Thinking over his words afterwards he came to the conclusion that both these statements had wandered from the truth; but how, he asked himself a little wrathfully, could any man tell the naked, unvarnished, disagreeable truth with a pair of grey eyes soft with tears looking at him?
Dick, of course, raved about his cousin for the rest of the evening, and besought the Major to send him confidential reports on the progress of events. In his opinion disaster was unavoidable, and he was proceeding to detail his reasons, when Major Marsden cut him short by saying: "I would rather not hear anything about it; and I should like to know, first, if you are engaged to your cousin?"
Dick confessed he was not; whereupon his companion told him that he would promise nothing, except, he added hastily, catching sight of Dick's disappointed face, to help the girl in any way he could. With this the boy professed to be quite content; perhaps he had grasped the fact that Philip Marsden was apt to be better than his word. And indeed a day or two after Dick's departure Marsden took the trouble to go over and inquire of John Raby what sort of a man Lâlâ Shunker Dâs, the great contractor, was supposed to be.
The young civilian laughed. "Like them all, not to be trusted. Why do you ask?" He broke in on the evasive answer by continuing, "The man is a goldsmith by caste. I suppose you know that in old days they were never allowed in Government service. As the proverb says, 'A goldsmith will do his grandmother out of a pice.' But if the Lâlâ-ji gives you trouble, bring him to me. I've been kind to him, and he is grateful, in his way."
Now the history of John Raby's kindness to Lâlâ Shunker Dâs was briefly this: he had discovered him in an attempt to cheat the revenue in the matter of income-tax, and had kept the knowledge in his own hands. "Purists would say I ought to report it, and smash the man," argued this astute young casuist; "but the knowledge that his ruin in the matter of thatRai Bâhâdur-ship hangs by a thread will keep the old thief straighter; besides it is always unwise to give away power."
That to a great extent was the keynote of John Raby's life. He coveted power, not so much for its own sake as for the use he could make of it. For just as some men inherit a passion for drink, he had inherited greed of gain from a long line of Jewish ancestry. The less said of his family the better: indeed, so far as his own account went, he appeared to have been born when he went to read with a celebrated "coach" at the age of sixteen. Memory never carried him further in outward speech; but as this is no uncommon occurrence in Indian society, the world accepted him for what he appeared to be, a well-educated gentleman, and for what he was, a man with a pension for himself and his widow. His first collector, a civilian of the old type, used to shake his head when John Raby's name was mentioned, and augur that he would either be hanged or become a Chief Court Judge. "He was in camp with me, sir," this worthy would say, "when a flight of wild geese came bang over the tent. I got a couple, the last with the full choke; and I give you my word of honour Raby never lifted his eyes from thebuniah'sbook he was deciphering in a petty bond case!"
In truth the young man's faculty for figures, and his aptitude for discovering fraud, partook of the nature of genius, and gained him the reputation of being a perfectshaitan(devil) among the natives. Philip Marsden, associated with him on a committee for the purchase of mules, learnt to trust his acumen implicitly, and became greatly interested in the clear-headed, well-mannered young fellow who knew such a prodigious amount for his years; pleasant in society too, singing sentimental songs in a light tenor voice, and having a store of that easy small-talk which makes society smooth by filling up the chinks. Being a regular visitor of Colonel Stuart's house John Raby saw a good deal of Belle, and liked her in a friendly, approving manner; but, whatever Mrs. Stuart may have thought, he had no more intention of marrying a penniless girl than of performing a pilgrimage, or any other pious act savouring of the Middle Ages.
"By the way, I haven't seen the Miss Van Milders or their mother lately," remarked Major Marsden one day to him, as they came home from their committee together and met Belle going out for her afternoon ride by herself.
"Oh, they've gone to Mussoorie; Belle's keeping house for her father."
"Alone?"
"Yes, alone; queerménage, ain't it? I believe the girl thinks she'll reform the Colonel; and heisawfully fond of her, but--" The younger man shook his head with a laugh. It jarred upon Philip Marsden and he changed the subject quickly. So she had elected to stay with her father! Well, he admired her courage, and could only hope that she would not have to pay too dearly for it.
Lâlâ Shunker Dâs having discarded all clothing save a scarf of white muslin tied petticoat-wise round his loins, lay on a wooden bed perched high on the topmost platform of his tall house. But even there the burning breezes of May brought no relief from the heat; and he lay gasping, while his faithful jackal Râm Lâl pounded away with lean brown knuckles at his master's fat body. Themassageseemed to do little good, for he grunted and groaned dismally. In truth the Lâlâ ached all over, both in body and soul. A thousand things had conspired against him: his last and most expensive wife (after spending a fortune in pilgrimages) had committed the indiscretion of presenting him with a girl baby; his grandmother having died, he had been forced much against his will to shave his head; his greatest rival had been elevated to the Honorary Magistracy and (adding injury to insult) been associated with him on abunch(bench), and justice grown in bunches is not nearly so remunerative to the grower as single specimens. These were serious ills, but there was one, far more trivial, which nevertheless smarted worst of all; perhaps because it was the most recent.
That very morning Shunker Dâs, as behoved one of his aspirations, had testified to his loyalty by attending the usual parade in honour of the Queen's birthday. On previous occasions he had driven thither in his barouche, but ambition had suggested that an appearance on horseback would show greater activity, and please the Powers. So he bought a cast horse from the cavalry regiment just ordered on service, and having attired himself in glittering raiment, including a magnificent turban of pink Benares muslin, he took his place by the flagstaff. People congratulated him warmly on his confidential charger which, even at thefeu de joie, seemed lost in philosophic reflections. Shunker Dâs waxed jubilant over the success of his scheme, and was just giving himself away in magnificent lies, when the bugle sounded for "close order" preparatory to a few words from the General to the departing cavalry regiment. On this the war-horse pricked up its ears, and starting off at a dignified trot rejoined its old companions, while the Lâlâ, swearing hideously, tugged vainly at the reins. Arrived at the line the conscientious creature sidled down it, trying vainly to slip into a vacant place. Failing of success, the intelligent beast concluded it must be on orderly duty, and just as the Lâlâ was congratulating himself on having finished his involuntary rounds, his horse, turning at right angles, bounded off to rejoin the General's staff. Away went the Lâlâ's stirrups. He must have gone too, despite his clutch on the mane, had not the streaming end of hispugreecaught in the high crupper-strap and held fast. So stayed, fore and aft, he might have reached the goal in safety, had not the General, annoyed by the suppressed tittering around him, lost patience, and angrily ordered some one to stop that man. Whereupon a mischievous aide-de-camp gave the word for the "halt" to be sounded. Confused out of everything save obedience, the charger stopped dead in his tracks, and the Lâlâ shot over his head, still in a sitting posture. On being relieved of his burden, the co-ordination "stables" apparently came uppermost in the horse's mind, for it walked away slowly, bearing with it the end of the Lâlâ's turban still fastened in the crupper. He, feeling a sudden insecurity in his headgear, and being, even in his confusion, painfully conscious of his baldness, clung to the lower folds with both hands. At this slight check, the charger, not to be baulked, set off at a canter, and over rolled the fat Lâlâ, heels in air. Then, and not till then, one roar of laughter rent the air. For as he lay there on his back, kicking like a turned turtle, thepugreebegan to unwind like a ball of thread, while the Lâlâ held on like grim death to the lower portion. Not until the last fold had slipped through his fingers and a quarter of a mile or so of pink muslin was fluttering across the parade ground, did he realise the position, and struggling to his seat pass his hand over his bald head with a deprecating smile.
"Go out, Raby, and pick him up," gasped the General aching with laughter. "You're in political charge, aren't you?"
But Philip Marsden, who happened to be on staff duty that day, was already pouring in oil and wine to the Lâlâ's hurt dignity when the young civilian came up with nonchalant courtesy. "Shâhbâsh, sahib!" he said, "you sat him splendidly, and that last prop would have undone a Centaur."
The Lâlâ, grinned a ghastly smile, and Philip Marsden turned impatiently, saying aside: "Get him home, do! He looks so helpless with his bald head; it seems a shame to laugh."
John Raby raised his eyebrows. "The General shall lend him his carriage. That will soothe his wounded vanity."
So the Lâlâ, with his head tied up in a red pocket-handkerchief, went home in the big man's barouche, and the spectators of his discomfiture laughed again at the recollection of it.
"You ought to be the editor of a native newspaper, Marsden," remarked John Raby. "You would be grand on the unsympathetic Anglo-Indian. But if I'd seen the Viceroy himself being unwound like a reel of cotton I must have chuckled."
"No doubt," replied the other laughing himself. "Yet I am sure a keen sense of the ludicrous is unfortunate in a conquering race. We English always laugh when policy should make us grave; that is why we don't succeed."
"Perhaps; for myself I prefer to grin. As some one says, humour is the religion of to-day. Those who believe in eternity have time for tears. We others,--why we cry 'Vogue la galère!'"
Lâlâ Shunker Dâs, however, without any abiding belief in a future state, was in no laughing mood as he lay under Râm Lâl's manipulations, listening captiously to his items of bazaar rumour.
"And they say, Lâl-ji, that the Sirkar thinks of transferring Colonel Estuartsahib."
Shunker Dâs sat up suddenly and scowled. "Transfer Estuartsahib!--why?"
Râm Lâl redoubled his exertions on the new portion of the Lâlâ's frame thus brought within reach, until the latter, uttering dismal groans, sank back to his former position. "They say," he continued calmly, "that the Sirkar is beginning to suspect."
"Fool! idiot! knave!" growled his master, gasping at the furious onslaught on his fat stomach. "'Tis all thy bungling. Have I not bid thee not go so fast? Times have changed since the Commissariatsahibssat in their verandahs, and one could walk a file of twenty camels round and round the house until they counted the proper number. But remember! 'Tis thou who goest to the wall, not I. That's the compact. Shunker finds the money, Râmu runs the risk."
"Have I forgotten it, Lâlâ-ji?" replied the other with some spirit. "Râmu is ready. And 'tis Shunker's part to look after the wife and children when I'm in jail; don't forget that! The master would do better if he were bolder. This one would have made much in that fodder contract, but your heart was as water; it always is."
"And if Estuart is transferred; what then?"
"If the branch be properly limed, the bird sticks. Is it limed? Such things are the master's work, not mine."
"Ay! limed right enough forhim. But the money, Râmu, the money! It will take months to lay the snare for a new man, and the war will be over." The Lâlâ positively wept at the idea.
Râm Lâl looked at him contemptuously. "Get what is to be got from thissahib, at any rate; that's my advice."
The very next day Lâla Shunker Dâs drove down to the Commissariat office, intent on striking a grand blow.
Things had been going on better than could have been expected in the large, empty house, where Belle, thinner and paler as the days of intense heat went by, did the honours cheerfully. It was not without a struggle that she had been allowed to remain with her father. Mrs. Stuart had prophesied endless evil, beginning with a bad reputation for herself as stepmother; but prudential reasons had given their weight in favour of the girl's earnest desire. To make light of the heat, and avoid flight to the hills, was a great recommendation for a civilian's wife, and that, Mrs. Stuart had decreed, was to be Belle's fate. So with many private injunctions to thekhansamahnot to allow the Misssahibto interfere too much in the management, the good lady had, as usual, taken herself and her family to Mussoorie. Shortly after they left Fate played a trump for Belle by sending a slight attack of malarious fever to the Colonel. He was always dreadfully alarmed about himself, and a hint from the doctor about the consequences of over-free living, reduced him to toast and water for a week, and kept him from mess for three. Belle was in a heaven of delight; and she was just enjoying the sight of her father actually drinking afternoon tea, when Budlu came in to say the Lâlâ-ji wanted to see the Colonel.
"Don't go, father," pleaded Belle. "It's only that horrid fat man; tell him to come again."
John Raby, who often strolled across about tea-time, looked at Colonel Stuart and smiled. He knew most things in the station; among others how unpleasant a visitor Shunker Dâs might be to his host, and not being ill-natured, he chimed in with the girl by offering to see the man himself.
The Lâlâ, leaning back magnificently in his barouche, felt a sudden diminution of dignity at the sight of John Raby. "Bruises all right, Lâlâ?" asked the young man cheerfully, and Shunker's dignity sank lower still. "They ought to give you thatRai Bâhâdur-ship for the way you stuck to him; by George, they should! We don't often get men of your stamp, Lâlâ, with estates in every district,--do we? So you want to see the Colonel; what for?" he added suddenly and sternly.
"Huzoor!" bleated the fat man. "I,--I came to inquire after his honour's health."
"Much obliged to you! He is better; and I really think if you were to come, say this day fortnight, he might be able to see you."
Shunker Dâs hesitated, fear for his money making him brave. "There were rumours," he began, "that my good patron was about to be transferred."
"Sits the wind in that quarter," thought Raby, amused. "My dear Lâlâ," he said, "it's absolutely untrue. Your eighty thousand is quite safe, I assure you."
"Huzoor!"
"Good-bye, Lâlâ-ji--this day fortnight," and he returned to his cup of tea in high good-humour. Then he sat and playedécartéwith the Colonel for an hour while Belle worked and watched them carelessly.
"That makes fifteen," remarked the young man as he rose to go, whereupon Colonel Stuart assented cheerfully, for he had won that evening; and Belle looked up with a smiling farewell, unconscious and content. She lived in a fool's paradise, hugging the belief that her presence was the charm; as though Niagara was to be stemmed by a straw, or the habit of years by a sentiment. As time wore on, the few remaining ladies fled before that last awful pause ere the rains break, when a deadly weariness settles on all living things. Belle, feeling shy among so many men, ceased to go out except on the rare occasions when she could persuade her father to accompany her. But, though he still adhered to his habit of dining at home, he was moody and out of sorts. He, too, had heard rumours of transfer, and that meant the possibility of disaster not to be faced with composure. Restless and irritable, he began to relieve the great craving which took possession of him by all sorts of stimulant and narcotic drugs. And one day came an almost illegible note from him, bidding Belle not wait dinner for him. She felt instinctively that this was the beginning of trouble; nor was she wrong, for though Colonel Stuart was full of excuses the next evening, he never even sent a note the day after that. So Belle ate her solitary dinners as best she might, and though she often lay awake till the small hours of the morning brought an altercation between Budlu and her father, she never sat up for him, or made any effort to meet him on his return. From this time, brutal though it may seem to say so, poor Belle's presence in the house, so far from being an advantage, became a distinct drawback. But for it, Colonel Stuart would have yielded to the mad craze for drink which generally beset him at this time of the year; and after a shorter or longer bout, as the case might be, have been pulled up short by illness. Instead of this, he tried to keep up appearances, and drugged himself with chloral and laudanum till the remedy grew worse than the disease so far as he himself was concerned. It served, however, to hide the real facts from his daughter; for he met her timid protests by complaints of ill-health, assertions that he knew what was best for him, and absolute refusal to call in a doctor.
She grew alarmed. The long, silent days spent in brooding over her father's altered demeanour were too great a strain on her nerves, and she began to exaggerate the position. Her thoughts turned again and again to Dick; if he were there! ah, if he were only there! No one who has not had in extreme youth to bear anxiety alone, can fully understand the horror of silence to the young. Belle felt she must speak, must tell some one of her trouble; it seemed to her as if her silence was a sort of neglect, and that some one must be able to do something to set matters straight. But who? She hesitated and shrank, till one day her father broke down and began to cry piteously in the middle of his ordinary abuse of the servants at lunch. A stiff glass of whisky-and-water restored his anger effectually, and he made light of the incident; but that evening, when Philip Marsden came in late to dress for dinner he found a note awaiting him from Belle.
She, having received no answer, had been expecting him all the afternoon, and as time passed began to wonder at her own temerity in writing. Dick, it is true, had bidden her look on Major Marsden as one willing to help if needs be; but what could Dick know? She went out, after a pretence of dinner, to the little raised platform in the garden where chairs were set every evening for those who preferred it to the house. Belle liked it far better; the purple arch of sky, spangled with stars save where the growing moon outshone them, rested her tired eyes, and the ceaseless quiver of the cicala prevented her from thinking by its insistence. Suddenly her half-doze was interrupted by a voice asking for the Misssahib, and she stood up trembling and uncertain. Why had she sent for him, and what should she say now that he had come?
"I came as soon as I could, Miss Stuart," said Major Marsden, formally, as their hands met. "But I was out all day, and had a guest to entertain at mess." He stopped, dismayed at her appearance, and added in quite a different tone, "I am afraid you are ill."
She did indeed look ghastly pale in the moonlight, her eyes full of appeal and her lips quivering; yet her shyness had gone with the first look at his face, and she felt glad that she had sent for him. "It is father," she began, then could say no more for fear of breaking down.
The trivial words brought back the recollection of that first meeting with her months before, when she had made the same reply to his offer of help; and as he stood waiting for her to master the fast-rising sobs, a remorse seized him with the thought that surely some of this pain might have been prevented somehow, by some one.
"You must think me very silly," she murmured hastily.
"I think you are overdone," he replied, "and I don't expect you've had any dinner. Now have you?"
A smile struggled to her face. "I don't think I had,--much."
"Then I will tell thekhansamahto bring you something now."
The full-blown tragedy of life seemed to have departed. She even wondered at her own tears as she sipped her soup, and told him of her troubles with a lightening heart. "Budlu says he never saw father like this before," was the climax, and even that did not seem a hopeless outlook.
"Could he not take leave?" suggested Major Marsden at once; leave being the panacea for all ills in India.
"That's what I want to know. I begged him to go, but the very idea excites him. Would it harm him officially? Is there any reason why he should not?"
Dick's words of warning recurred to Major Marsden unpleasantly. "None that I know of," he replied. "I will go round to Seymour's to-morrow, and get him to bundle you both off to the hills. You want change as much as your father. In a month's time you will be laughing at all these fears."
"I think you are laughing at them now," said Belle wistfully.
"Am I? Well, I promise not to laugh at you any more, Miss Stuart." He stood up, tall and straight, to say good-bye.
"Isn't that rather a rash promise, Major Marsden?"
"I don't think so. Anyhow I make it, and I'm very glad you sent for me. Considering how little you knew of me,--and how disagreeable that little had been--it was kind."
"I know a great deal of you," she replied, smiling softly. "Dick has told me a lot,--about the brevet,--and the intelligence-work--and the Afghan sepoy--"
"And the men in buckram too, I suppose? I'm afraid Dick is not to be trusted. Did he tell you how the man escaped next day, and I got a wigging?"
"No!" cried Belle indignantly. "Did he?--Did you, I mean?--what a shame!"
"On the contrary, it was quite right. I'll tell you about it some day, if I may. Meanwhile, good-bye, and don't starve; it really doesn't do any good!"
She watched him jingle down the steps, thinking how like an overgrown school-boy he looked in his mess-jacket. So life was not a tragedy after all, but a serio-comedy in which only the monologues were depressing and dull. She went in and played the piano till it was time to go to bed. Yet nothing had really changed, and Fate marched on relentlessly as before. We make our own feelings, and then sit down to weep or smile over them.
The very next afternoon Colonel Stuart was brooding silently over nothing at all in his private office-room, passing the time, as it were, out of mischief, till he went to dine with John Raby. For the latter, with a sort of contemptuous kindness, put the drag of an occasional game ofécartéon to the Colonel's potations. Sitting in the dusk his face looked wan and haggard, and, despite his profound stillness, every nerve was wearied and yet awake with excitement; as might be seen from his unrestrained start when Shunker Dâs came into the room unannounced; for the office-hours being over thechuprassiehad departed.
"Well, what is it now?" he cried sharply. "I saw you this morning. Haven't you got enough for one day? Am I never to have any peace?"
An angry tone generally reduced his native visitors to submission, but the Lâlâ was evidently in no mood for silence. He had taken up a small contract that morning, the earnest-money of which lay for the time in Colonel Stuart's safe. Since then he had heard casually that a long-expected source of profit over which he had often talked with the Colonel, and for which he had even made preparations, had slipped through his fingers. In other words, that all the mule-transport was to be bought by a special officer. "I've come,sahib," he blurted out, sitting down unasked, "to know if it is true that Mardsensahibhas the purchase of mules."
"And if he has, what the devil is it to you, or to me?" The man's arrogance was becoming unbearable, and Colonel Stuart was a great stickler for etiquette.
"Only this; that if you are not going to deal fairly by me, you mustn't count on my silence; that's all!"
"Go and tell the whole bazaar I owe you money, you black scoundrel," cried his hearer, annoyed beyond endurance by the man's assumption of equality. "I'll pay you every penny, if I sell my soul for it, curse you!"
"Eighty thousand rupees is a tall price,sahib," sneered the Lâlâ. "And how about the contracts, and the commission, and the general partnership? Am I to tell that also?"
The Colonel stared at him in blank surprise. God knows in his queer conglomerate of morality it was hard to tell what elementary rock of principle might be found; yet to a certain extent honour remained as it were in pebbles, worn and frayed by contact with the stream of life. "General partnership! you black devil, what do you mean?"
"Mean!" echoed the Lâlâ shrilly. "Why, the money I've lent you,paidyou for each contract; the commission I've given your clerks; the grain your horses have eaten; the--"
The Colonel's right hand was raised above his head; the first coarse rage of his face had settled into a stern wrath that turned it white. "If you stop here another instant, by God I'll kill you!"
The words came like a steel-thrust, and the Lâlâ without a word turned and fled before the Berserk rage of the Northman; it is always terrible to the Oriental, and the Lâlâ was a heaven-sent coward.
"Stop!" cried the Colonel as the wretched creature reached the door. He obeyed and came back trembling. "Take your money for the contract with you; it's cancelled. I won't have it in the house. Take it back and give me the receipt I gave you; give it me, I say." The Colonel, fumbling at the lock of the safe, stuttered and shook with excitement. "Take 'em back," he continued, flourishing a roll of notes. "The receipt!--quick! out with it!--the receipt for the three thousand five hundred I gave you this morning!"
"Huzoor! Huzoor!I am looking for it; be patient one moment!" The Lâlâ's quivering fingers blundered among the papers in his pocket-book.
"Give it me, or, by heaven, I'll break every bone in your body!" His hand came down with an ominous thud on the table.
"I will give it,sahib,--I have it,--here--no--ah! praise to the gods!" He shook so that the paper rustled in his hand. Colonel Stuart seized it, and tearing it to bits, flung the pieces in the waste paper basket at his feet. "There goes your last contract from me, and there's the door, and there's your money!" As he flung the notes in the man's face they went fluttering over the floor, and he laughed foolishly to see them gathered up in trembling haste.
"Gad!" he muttered as he sank exhausted into a chair, "there isn't much fear of Shunker so long as I've a stick in my hand. Hullo! what's that? Something rustled under the table. Here, Budlu! quick, lights! It may be a snake! Confound the servants; they're never to be found!"
He stopped and drew his hand over his forehead two or three times. Just then Budlu, entering with the lamp, stooped to pick something from the floor. It was a note for a thousand rupees, crisp and crackling.
Colonel Stuart looked at it in a dazed sort of way, then burst into a roar of laughter and put it in his pocket-book. "My fair perquisite, by Jove! and it will come in useful to-night atécarté. Budlu, give me the little bottle. I must steady my nerves a bit if I'm to play with Raby."
People who talk of the still Indian night can scarcely do so from experience, for, especially during the hot weather, darkness in the East is vocal with life. The cicala shrills its loudest, the birds are awake, and the very trees and plants seem to blossom audibly. Go round an Indian garden at sunset and it is a sepulchre; the roses shrivelled in their prime, the buds scorched in the birth, the foliage beaten down by the fierce sun. Visit it again at sunrise and you will find it bright with blossom, sweet with perfume, refreshed with dew. That is the work of night; what marvel then if it is instinct with sound and movement! Never for one hour does silence fall upon the world. The monotonous beat of some native musician's drum goes on and on; a village dog barks, and is answered by another until seventy times seven; a crow takes to cawing irrelatively; the birds sing in snatches, and the Indian cock, like that of scriptural story, crows for other reasons besides the dawn.
The long-legged rooster who habitually retired to sleep on the summit of Colonel Stuart's cook-room, had, however, legitimate cause for his vociferations, and dawn was just darkening the rest of the sky when the sudden flapping of his wings startled the horse of an early wayfarer who came at a walk down the Mall.
It was Philip Marsden setting out betimes for a two days' scour of the district in search of the very mules out of which Shunker Dâs had hoped to make so much profit. Most men, carrying ten thousand rupees with them, would have applied for a treasure-chest and a police guard; but Major Marsden considered himself quite sufficient security for the roll of currency notes in his breast-pocket. As he quieted the frightened horse, his close proximity to the Commissariat office reminded him that he had forgotten to apply for a certain form on which he had to register his purchases; the omission would entail delay, so he anathematised his own carelessness and was riding on, when a light in the office-windows attracted his attention. It was early for any one to be at work, but knowing how time pressed in all departments under the strain of war, he thought it not improbable that some energeticbabuwas thus seeking the worm of promotion, and might be able to give him what he required. Dismounting, lest his horse's tread should disturb the sleepers in the house by which he had to pass, he hitched the reins to a tree, and made his way towards the office; not without a kindly thought of the girl, forgetful of care, who lay sleeping so near to him that, unconsciously, he slackened his step and trod softly. He had been as good as his word, and that very day the doctor was to go over and prescribe immediate change. Change! he smiled at the idea, wondering what change could stem the course of the inevitable.
As he drew near he saw that the light came, not from the office, but from its chief's private room. He hesitated an instant; then a suspicion that something might be wrong made him go on till he could see through the open door into the room. Thefts were common enough in cantonments, and it was as well to make sure. Through thechickhe could distinctly see a well-known figure seated at the writing-table, leaning forward on its crossed arms.
"Drunk!" said Philip Marsden to himself with a thrill of bitter contempt and turned away. The bearer would find the Colonel and put him decently to bed long before the girl was up. Poor Belle! The little platform where she had stood but the night before was faintly visible, bringing a recollection of her pale face and sad appeal. "It is father,"--the first words she had ever said to him; the very first! He retraced his steps quickly, set thechickaside, and entered the room. The lamp on the table was fast dying out, but its feeble flicker fell full on the Colonel's grey hair, and lit up the shining gold lace on his mess-jacket. Silver, and gold, and scarlet,--a brilliant show of colour in the shabby, dim room. A curious smell in the air and a great stillness made Philip Marsden stop suddenly and call the sleeper by name. In the silence which followed he heard the ticking of a chronometer which lay close to him. He called again, not louder, but quicker, then with swift decision passed his arm round the leaning figure and raised it from the table. The grey head fell back inertly on his breast, and the set, half-closed eyes looked up lifelessly into his.
"Dead," he heard himself say, "dead!"--dead, not drunk. As he stood there for an instant with the dead man's head finding a resting-place so close to his heart, the wan face looking up at him as if in a mute appeal, a flame of bitter regret for his own harsh judgment seemed to shrivel up all save pity. The great change had come, to end poor Belle's anxieties. And she? Ah! poor child, who was to tell her of it?
He lifted the head from his breast, laying it once more, as he had found it, on the crossed arms; then looked round the room rapidly. An empty bottle of chloral on the table accounted for the faint sickly smell he had noticed. Was it a mistake? If not, why? Perhaps there was a letter. Something at any rate lay under the nerveless hands, powerless now to defend their secret. Philip Marsden took the paper from them gently and turned up the expiring lamp till it flared smokily. The blotted writing was hard to read, yet easy to understand, for it told a tale too often written; a tale of debt, dishonour, remorse, despair. Ten thousand rupees borrowed from the safe, and an unsigned cheque for the amount, drawn on no one, but payable to the Government of India, lying beside the dead man in mute witness to the last desire for restitution in the poor stupefied brain. A pile of official letters were scattered on the floor as if they had fallen from the table. All save one were unopened, but that one contained a notification of Colonel Stuart's transfer. Major Marsden drew a chair to the table and deliberately sat down to think.
Something must be done, and that quickly, for already the merciless light of day was gaining on the darkness. "And there is nothing hid that shall not be made manifest;" the words somehow recurred to his memory bringing another pulse of pity for poor Belle. What was to be done? The answer came to him suddenly in a rush, as if it had all been settled before. Why had Fate sent him there with more than enough money to save the girl from shame? Money that was his to use as he chose, for he could repay it twenty times over ere nightfall. Why had Fate mixed the girl's life with his, despite his efforts to stand aloof? Why had she sent for him? Why,--why was he there? The dead man's keys lay on the table, the sum owed was clearly set down in black and white, the safe close at hand. What was there, save a personal loss he could well afford, to prevent silence? And he had promised help--
When the hastily-summoned doctor came in a few minutes later the bottle of chloral still lay on the table, but the blotted paper and the cheque were gone. The lamp had flared out, and a little heap of grey ashes on the hearth drifted apart as the doors and windows were flung wide open to let in all the light there was.
"He has been dead about two hours," said the doctor. "Over-dose of chloral, of course. I forbade it from the hospital, but he got it elsewhere."
They had laid the dead man on the floor, and the grey dawn falling on his face made it seem greyer still. The native servants huddled trembling at the door; the two Englishmen stood looking down upon the still figure.
"There is always the fear of an over-dose," said Philip Marsden slowly, "or of some rash mistake."
The doctor met his look comprehensively. "Exactly! who can tell? Unless there is circumstantial evidence, and I see none as yet. Anyhow he was not responsible, for he has been on the verge ofdelirium tremensfor days."
"Then you give the benefit of the doubt?"
"Always, if possible."
Again the wind of dawn fanning the dead man's hair drifted the grey ashes further apart.
"He had better stay here," continued the doctor. "Moving him might rouse the poor girl, and there's no need for that as yet. By the way, who is to tell her? There isn't a lady or a parson in the place."
"I suppose I must," returned Philip after a pause. "I think it might be best, since she confided her trouble to me. But couldn't I get some sort of a woman from barracks just to stay with her?"
"Right; you're a thoughtful fellow, Marsden. Take my buggy and go to the sergeant-major; his wife will know of some one. I'll stay till you return in case she wakes; and look here, as you pass send a man about the coffin. The funeral must be this evening, and--"
Philip Marsden fled from the dreary details of death with a remark that the doctor could send a messenger. He was no coward, yet he felt glad to escape into the level beams of the rising sun. As he drove down along the staring white roads he asked himself more than once why he had interfered to save a girl he scarcely knew from the knowledge of her father's dishonour; and if he could find no sufficient reason for it he could find no regret either. It had been an impulse, and it was over. He had kept his word to Dick, and done his best to drive care from those clear eyes,--what beautiful eyes they were!
"Och then!" cried Mrs. O'Grady, the sergeant-major's wife, who, hastily roused from her slumbers, came out into the verandah in scanty attire, "and is the swate young leddy alone? It's meself wud go at wanst but that I'm a Holy Roman, surr, and shud be talkin' of the blessed saints in glory. An' that's not the thing wid a Prothestant in his coffin."
Despite his anxiety her hearer could not repress a smile. "I don't set so much store by religious consolation, Mrs. O'Grady. It's more a kind, motherly person I want."
"Then, Tim!" cried the good lady, appealing to her spouse who had appeared in shirt and trousers, "Mrs. Flanigan wud be the woman, but that she's daily expectin' her tinth--"
"Isn't there some kindly person who's seen trouble?" hastily interrupted the Major.
"Ah, if it's the throuble you're wantin', take little Mrs. Vickary. A Baptist and a widder,--more by token twice; bore with two dhrunken bastes, Major, like a blissed angel, and wud be ready to spake up for anny one."
Major Marsden, with a recollection of Widow Vickary's sad face as nurse by a comrade's sick bed, pleaded for a younger and brighter one. Thereupon the serjeant-major suggested poor Healy's Mary Ann, but his wife tossed her head. "What the men see in that gurrll, surr, I can't say; but she'll go, and cheerful, wid her little boy; a swate little boy, surr, like thim cherubs with a trumpet--for her father she come to live wid died of the fayver a month gone, and her man is waiting to be killed by thim Afghans somewhere."
So Major Marsden, driving back with poor Healy's Mary Ann and the cherub wielding a piece of sugarcane as trumpet, found Belle still sleeping.
Then together, in the fresh early morning, they broke the sad tidings to the girl. How, it does not much matter, for words mean nothing. We say, "He is dead," many and many a time, carelessly, indifferently. Then comes a day when the sentence is fraught with wild despair and helpless pain. The sun seems blotted out, and the world is dark. Yet the words are the same, nor can pen and ink write them differently.
"Let me see that he is dead! Oh, let me see him!" was her cry; so they took her across to the shabby room where everything stood unchanged save for the sheeted figure on the string bed. The gardener had strewn some roses over it and the sun streamed in brightly. The sight brought no real conviction to Belle. It all seemed more dreamlike than ever. To fall asleep, as she had done, in the turmoil of life, and to wake finding the hush of death in possession of all things! She let Philip Marsden lead her away passively like a child, and all through the long day she sat idle and tearless, with her hands on her lap, as if she were waiting for something or some one. Yet it was a busy day in that quiet, empty house; for in India death comes rudely. Many a time has the father to superintend the making of the little coffin, while the mother stitches away to provide a daintier resting-place for the golden head that is used to frills and lace; until, in the dawn, those two go forth alone to the desolate graveyard, and he reads the Church service as best he can, and she says "Amen" between her sobs. There was none of this strain for Belle, nothing to remind her of the inevitable; so she wondered what they wanted of her when, as the glare of sunset reddened the walls of her room, Major Marsden came and looked at her with pitying eyes. "It is time we were starting, Miss Stuart," he said gently.
"Starting! where?"
"We thought you would like to go to the cemetery, and I have arranged to drive you down. It will be a military funeral, of course."
She rose swiftly in passionate entreaty. "Ah no, no! not so soon! he is not dead! Oh I cannot, I cannot!" Then seeing the tender gravity of his face, she clasped her hands on his arm and begged to seehimonce more,--just to say good-bye.
He shook his head. "It is too late--it is best not."
"But I have no dress,--it can't be--" she pleaded vainly.
"Every one will be in white as you are," he returned with tears he could not check in his eyes. "Come! it will be better for you by and by." He laid his hand on her clasped ones. She looked in his eyes doubtfully, and did as she was bidden.
"We will drive out a bit first," said Philip, when she had taken her seat by his side in the tall dog-cart that seemed so out of keeping with its dismal office. "We have plenty of time for I thought the air would do your head good,--and,--it was best for you to be away just now."
Better, and best! As if anything could make any difference now! "You are very kind," she said in dull recognition of his care.
Philip Marsden never forgot that drive; the memory of it remained with him for years as a kind of nightmare. The girl in her white dress and sailor hat as he had seen her at many a tennis-party; the great bank of clouds on the horizon telling of welcome rain; the little squirrels leaping across the white road; the cattle returning homewards amid clouds of dust; the stolid stare of the natives as they passed by. It was almost a relief to stand side by side before an open grave listening to an even, disciplined tramp audible above the muffled drums coming nearer and nearer.
A dingy brick wall bleached to mud-colour shut out all view, but high up in the sky, above the fringe of grey tamarisk trees, a procession of flame-edged clouds told that, out in the west, Nature was celebrating the obsequies of day in glorious apparel. SuddenlyThe Dead Marchstruck up, loud and full, bringing to Philip Marsden's memory many a sword-decked coffin and riderless charger behind which he had walked, wondering if his turn would come next. The music ceased with a clash of arms at the gate; and after a low-toned order or two the procession appeared in narrow file up the central path. The white uniforms looked ghostly in the deepening shadows; but through a break in the trees a last sunbeam slanted over the wall, making the spikes on the officers' helmets glow like stars.
Belle's clasped yet listless fingers tightened nervously as the Brigade-Major's voice rose and fell in monotonous cadence about "our dear brother departed." It seemed to her like a dream; or rather as if she too were dead and had no tears, no grief, nothing but a great numbness at her heart. Then some one put a clumsily-made cross of white flowers into her hands, bidding her lay it on the coffin, bared now of the protecting flag; and she obeyed, wondering the while why other people should have thought of these things when she had not, and thinking how crooked it was, and how much better she could have made it herself. Perhaps; for the hands that twined it were not used to such woman's work. It was Philip Marsden's task, also, to throw the first handful of earth into the grave, and draw Belle's arm within his own before the salutes rang out. They startled the screaming parrots from their roost among the trees, and sent them wheeling and flashing like jewels against the dark purple clouds.
"Was it never going to end?" she thought wearily as they waited again, and yet again, for the rattle of the rifles. Yet she stood heedlessly silent, even when the band struck into quick time and the cheerful echo of the men's answering footsteps died away into the distance.
"Take her home," said the doctor, who with John Raby had remained to see the grave properly filled in. "I'll call round by and by with a sleeping draught; that will do her more good than anything."
As they drove back she complained, quite fretfully, of the cold, and her companion reined in the horse while he wrapped his military coat round her, fastening it beneath her soft dimpled chin with hands that trembled a little. She seemed to him inexpressibly pitiful in her grief, and his heart ached for her.
"It is going to rain, I think," she said suddenly, with her eyes fixed on the dull red glow barred by heavy storm clouds in the west; adding in a lower tone, "Father will get wet!"
Major Marsden looked at her anxiously and drove faster, frightened at the dull despair of her tone. He had meant to say good-bye at the door, but he could not. How could he leave her to that unutterable loneliness? And yet what good could he do beyond beguiling her to take a few mouthfuls of food? Poor Healy's Mary Ann proved helpless before a form of grief to which she was utterly unaccustomed, and as her presence seemed to do more harm than good Philip Marsden sent her into the next room, where she nursed her boy and wept profusely. He sat talking to Belle till long after the mess-hour, and then, when he did turn to go, the sight of her seated alone, tearless and miserable in the big, empty room was too much for his soft heart. He came back hastily, bending over her, then kneeling to look in her downcast face, and take her cold little hands into his warm ones and say kind words that came from his very heart. Perhaps they brought conviction, perhaps the touch of his hand assured her of sympathy, for suddenly her dull despair gave way; she laid her head on his shoulder and cried pitifully, as children cry themselves to sleep.
With the clasp of his fingers on hers and his breath stirring her soft curly hair, Philip Marsden's heart beat fast and his pulses thrilled. His own emotion startled and perplexed him; he shrank from it, and yet he welcomed it. Did he love her? Was this the meaning of it all?
"How good you are," she whispered, trying to regain her composure. "What should I have done without you?" Her unconsciousness smote him with regret and a great tenderness.
"There are plenty who will be kind to you," he answered unsteadily. "Life holds everything for you yet, my dear; peace, and happiness, and love."
Love! Did it hold his for her? he asked himself again as he walked homewards in the dark. Love! He was quite a young man still, only two and thirty, yet he had deliberately set passion and romance from him years before. Poverty had stood between him and the realisation of a dream till, with the sight of his ideal profoundly happy as some one else's wife, had come distrust and contempt for a feeling that experience showed him did not, could not last. Why, therefore, should it enter into and disturb his life at all? Friendship? ah, that was different! Perhaps the future held a time when he would clasp hands with a life-companion; a woman to be the mistress of his home, the mother of his children. But Belle! poor little, soft Belle Stuart, with her beautiful grey eyes! He seemed to feel the touch of her hand in his, the caress of her hair on his lips; and though he laughed grimly at himself, he could not master the joy that took possession of him at the remembrance. Dear little Belle! Amidst the doubt and surprise which swept over him as he realised his own state of mind, but one thing gave him infinite satisfaction,--he had saved her from the far more lasting trouble of her father's disgrace. Friend, or lover, it had been a good deed to do, and he was glad that he had done it. Nothing could alter that. And while he slept, dreaming still of his clasp on the little cold yet willing hand, an official envelope lay on the table beside him mocking his security. He opened it next morning, to lay it aside with a curse at his own ill luck, though it was only a notification that Major P. H. Marsden would carry on the current duties of the Commissariat office till further orders. He had half a mind to go over to the Brigade office and get himself excused: a word or two about his other work would do it; but his pride rose in arms against any shirking for private reasons. Besides, there might be nothing wrong in Colonel Stuart's accounts, and even if there was, he would be the best man to find it out. Yet he walked up and down the verandah a prey to conflicting desires, bitterly angry with himself for hesitating an instant. Common sense told him that it might be as well for one less biassed than he was by previous knowledge to undertake the scrutiny, that it was scarcely fair for him to go to the task with a foregone conclusion in his mind; but pride suggested that he could not trust himself to decide fairly even now. How could he, when he was bitterly conscious of one overmastering desire to save Belle? Then came the thought that if she was indeed what in his heart he believed her to be, if her steadfastness and straightforwardness were more than a match for his own, then the very idea of his refusing the task would be an offence to her. After that, nothing could have prevented him from placing himself with open eyes in a position from which, in common fairness to himself and others, he ought to have escaped.