In the tiny drawing-room of a tiny house, wedged in between a huge retaining wall and the almost perpendicular hill-side, Belle Stuart sat idly looking out of the window. Not that there was anything to see. The monsoon fogs swept past the stunted oaks, tipped over the railings, filled the verandah, crept in through the crevices, and literally sat down on the hearth-stone; for the room was too small, the thermometer too high, and humanity too poor, to allow of a fire. Without, was a soft grey vapour deadening the world; within, was a still more depressing atmosphere of women, widow's weeds, and wrangling.
On her lap lay the newspaper filled, as usual, with items from the frontier. To many a woman that first sheet meant a daily agony of relief or despair; to Belle Stuart it was nothing more than a history of the stirring times in which she lived, for with Dick's sad end, and John Raby's return to reap rewards at Simla, she told herself that her personal interest in the war must needs be over. A passing pity, perhaps, for some one known by name, a kindly joy for some chance acquaintance, might stir her pulses; but nothing more. Yet as she sat there she was conscious of having made a mistake. Something there was in the very paper lying on her lap which had power to give keen pain; even to bring the tears to her eyes as she read the paragraph over again listlessly.
Severe Fighting in the Terwân Pass. Gallant Charge of the 101st Sikhs. List Of Officers Killed, Wounded, and Missing.--The telegram which reached Simla a few days ago reporting a severe skirmish in the Terwân has now been supplemented by details. It appears that a small force consisting of some companies of the 101st Sikhs, the 24th Goorkhas, the 207th British Infantry, and a mule battery, were sent by the old route over the Terwân Pass in order to report on its practical use. No opposition was expected, as the tribes in the vicinity had come in and were believed to be friendly. About the middle of the Pass, which proved to be far more difficult than was anticipated, a halt had to be made for the purpose of repairing a bridge which spanned an almost impassable torrent. The road, which up to this point had followed the right bank of the river, now crossed by this bridge to the left in order to avoid some precipitous cliffs. Here it became evident that the little force had fallen into an ambuscade, for firing immediately commenced from the numerous points of vantage on either side. The Goorkhas, charging up the right bank, succeeded in dislodging most of the enemy and driving them to a safe distance. From the advantage thus gained they then opened fire on the left bank, managing to disperse some of the lower pickets. Owing, however, to the rocky and almost precipitous nature of the ground the upper ones were completely protected, and continued to pour a relentless fire on our troops, who were, for the most part, young soldiers. During the trying inaction necessary until the bridge could be repaired,--which was done with praiseworthy rapidity despite the heavy fire--Major Philip Marsden, of the 101st Sikhs, volunteered to attempt the passage of the torrent with the object of doing for the left bank what the Goorkhas had done for the right.
Accordingly the Sikhs, led by this distinguished officer, rushed the river in grand style, how it is almost impossible to say, save by sheer pluck and determination, and after an incredibly short interval succeeded in charging up the hill-side and carrying picket after picket. A more brilliant affair could scarcely be conceived, and it is with the very deepest regret that we have to report the loss of its gallant leader. Major Marsden, who was among the first to find foothold on the opposite bank, was giving directions to his men when a bullet struck him in the chest. Staggering back almost to the edge of the river, he recovered himself against a boulder, and shouting that he was all right, bade them go on. Lost sight of in the ensuing skirmish, it is feared that he must have slipped from the place of comparative safety where they left him and fallen into the river, for his helmet and sword-belt were found afterwards a few hundred yards down the stream. None of the bodies, however, of those lost in the torrent have been recovered. Nor was it likely that they would be, as the stream here descends in a series of boiling cataracts and swirling pools. In addition to their leader, whose premature death is greatly to be deplored, the Sikhs lost two native officers, and thirty-one rank and file. The Goorkhas--
But here Belle's interest waned and she let the paper fall on her lap again. One trivial thought became almost pitifully insistent, "I wish, oh, how I wish I had not sent back that letter unopened!" As if a foolish girlish discourtesy more or less would have made any difference in the great tragedy and triumph of the man's death. For it was a triumph; she could read that between the lines of the bald conventional report.
"There's Belle crying, actually crying over Major Marsden," broke in Maud's cross voice from a rocking-chair. Now a rocking-chair is an article of furniture which requires a palatial apartment, where its obtrusive assertion of individual comfort can be softened by distance. In the midst of a small room, and especially when surrounded by four women who have not rocking-chairs of their own, it conduces to nervous irritation on all sides. "You talk about disrespect, mamma," went on the same injured voice, "just because I didn't see why we shouldn't go to the Volunteer Ball in colours, when he was only our stepfather; but I call it really nasty of Belle to sit and whimper over a man who did his best to take away the only thing except debts that Colonel Stuart--"
"Oh, do hold your tongue, Maudie!" cried Mabel. "I'm getting sick of that old complaint. I don't see myself why we shouldn't wear our pink tulles. It would be economical to begin with, and, goodness knows, we have to think of the rupees, annas, and paisas nowadays."
Here Maud, who was not really an ill-tempered girl, became overwhelmed by the contemplation of her own wrongs, and began to sob. "I never--wore--a year-behind-fashion dress before, and--when I suggest it--just to save the expense--I'm told I'm heartless. As if it was my fault that mamma's settlement was so much waste paper, and that our money went to pay--"
"Really, Maud, you are too bad," flared up her youngest sister. "If it was any one's fault, it was Uncle Tom's, for not being more careful. The governor was awfully good to us always. Ah, things were very different then!"
This remark turned on the widow's ready tears. "Very different indeed. Three in the kitchen, and I wouldn't like to say how many in the stable. And though I don't wish to repine against Providence, yet caps are so expensive. I can't think why, for they are only muslin; but Miss Crowe says she can't supply me with one that is really respectful under five rupees."
"It is all very well for you to talk, Mabel," insisted Maud from the rocking-chair; "you have a settlement of your own in prospect."
"So might you," retorted the other, "if you were wise, instead of wasting your time over men who mean nothing, like that handsome Captain Stanley."
"Yes!" yawned Mildred. "It is the stubby Majors with half-a-dozen motherless children growing up at home who marry."
Mabel flushed through her sallow skin and in her turn became tearful; for in truth herfiancéwas but too accurately described in these unflattering terms. "It is not your part to jeer at me for sacrificing myself to the interests of you girls. In our unfortunate position it is our duty to avail ourselves of the chances left us, and not to go hankering after penniless probationers in the Post-Office."
Yet one more recruit for pocket-handkerchief drill rushed to the front, though more in anger than sorrow. "If you are alluding to Willie Allsop," retorted Mildred fiercely, "I dare say he will be as well off as your Major some day. At any rate I'm not going to perjure myself for money, like some people."
"Oh, girls, girls!" whimpered the widow plaintively, "don't quarrel and wake Charlie, for the doctor said he was to be kept quiet and not excited. Really, misfortunes come so fast, and things are so dear,--to say nothing of Parrish's Chemical Food for Charlie--that I don't know where to turn. If poor Dick had but lived! It was too bad of those nasty Afghans to kill the dear boy just as he was getting on, and being so generous to me. I always stood up for Dick; he had a warm heart, and people don't make their own tempers, you know."
Belle, who had been sitting silent at the window, clasping and unclasping her hands nervously, felt as if she must stifle. "I wish," she said in a low voice, "you would let me go on teaching as I did in the winter. Why should we mind, even if there are old friends here now? I am not ashamed of working."
Her remark had one good effect. It healed minor differences by the counter irritation of a general grievance, and the upshot of a combined and vigorous attack was that there had been quite enough disgrace in the family already, without Belle adding to it. Of course, had she been able to give lessons in music or singing, the suggestion might have been considered, since the flavour of art subdued the degradation; but the idea of teaching the children of the middle class to read and write was hopelessly vulgar. It was far more genteel to become azenana-lady, since there the flavour of religion disguised the necessity. Belle, trying to possess her soul in patience by stitching away as if her life depended on it, found the task beyond her powers. "I think I'll go out," she said in a choked voice. "Oh, yes! I know it's raining, but the air will do me good; the house is so stuffy."
"It's the best we can afford now," retorted Maud.
"And the position is good," suggested Mrs. Stuart feebly.
"Belle doesn't care a fig for position, mamma," snapped up her daughter. "She would have liked one of those barracks by the bazaar where nobody lives."
"We might have got up a scratch dance there," remarked Mildred in tones of regret. "Oh, notnow, mamma, of course; but by and by when things got jollier."
"I don't believe they ever will get jollier," came in gloomy prophecy from the rocking-chair, as Belle escaped gladly into the mist and rain. Six weeks, she thought; was it only six weeks since the maddening, paralysing drip, drip, drip of ceaseless raindrops had been in her ears? And yet these experienced in hill-weather spoke cheerfully of another six weeks to come. Would she ever be able to endure being the fifth woman in that ridiculous little room for all those days? What irritated her most was the needlessness of half the petty worries which went to make up the dreary discomfort. The extravagant clinging to the habits of past opulence, the wastefulness, resulting in the want of many things which might have made life more pleasant; the apathy content to grumble and do nothing, while she felt her spirits rise and her cheeks brighten even from her rapid walk through the driving mist. The rain had lessened as she paused to lean over the railings which protected a turn of the road where it was hollowed out from the hill-side; sheer cliff on one side, sheer precipice on the other. Up to her very feet surged the vast grey sea of mist, making her feel as if one more step would set her afloat on its shoreless waste. Yet below that dim mysterious pall lay, she well knew, one of the fairest scenes on God's earth, smiling doubtless in a sunshine in which she had no part. Then suddenly, causelessly, the words recurred to her--"The world is before you yet; it holds life, and happiness, and love." Who had said them? Even now it cost her an effort to remember clearly the events following on the shock of her father's death. The effort was so painful that she avoided it as a rule; but this time the memory of Philip Marsden's kindness came back sharply, and the trivial remorse about the letter rose up once more to take the front place in her regrets until driven thence by one vague, impotent desire to have the past back again. Looking down into the impalpable barrier of cloud through which a pale gleam of light drifted hither and thither, she could almost fancy herself a disembodied spirit striving after a glimpse of the world whence it had been driven by death; so far away did she feel herself from those careless days at Faizapore, from the kindly friends, the--
"Miss Stuart! surely it is Miss Stuart!" cried a man's voice behind her. She turned, to see John Raby, who, throwing the reins of his pony to the groom, advanced to greet her, his handsome face bright with pleasure. His left arm was in a sling, for he had been slightly wounded; to the girl's eyes he had a halo of heroism and happiness round him.
"I am so glad!" she said, "so glad!"
As they stood, hand in hand, a sunbeam struggling through the cloud parted the mist at their feet. Below them, like a jewelled mosaic, lay the Doon bathed in a flood of light; each hamlet and tree, each silver torrent-streak and emerald field, seemingly within touch, so clear and pellucid was the rain-washed air between. Further away, like fire-opals with their purple shadows, flashed the peaks of the Sewaliks, and beyond them shade upon shade, light upon light, the mother-of-pearl plain losing itself in the golden setting of the sky.
"I am in for luck all round," cried John Raby in high delight. "That means a break in the rains, and a fortnight of heaven for me,--if fate is kind--"
But Belle heard nothing; one of those rare moments when individuality seems merged in a vast sympathy with all things visible and invisible was upon her, filling her, body and soul, with supreme content.
"Are you not coming in?" she asked, when, after walking slowly along the Mall, they reached the path which led downward to the little drawing-room and the four women.
"I will come to-morrow," he replied, looking at her with undisguised admiration in his eyes. "Today it is enough to have seen you. After all, you were always my great friend,--you and your father."
"Yes, he was very fond of you," she assented softly; and with her flushed cheeks and the little fluffy curls by her pretty ears all glistening with mist drops, showed an April face, half smiles, half tears.
Two months later found Belle Raby sitting in the shade of a spreading deodar-tree, placidly knitting silk socks for her husband, who, stretched on the turf beside her, read a French novel.
Pages would not satisfactorily explain how this sequence of events came about, because pages would not suffice to get at the bottom of the amazing, unnatural ignorance of first principles which enables a nice girl to marry a man towards whom she entertains a rudimentary affection, and afterwards, with the same contented calm, to acquiesce in the disconcerting realities of life. Belle was not the first girl who chose a husband as she would have chosen a dress; that is to say, in the belief that it will prove becoming, and the hope that it will fit. Nor was she (and this is the oddest or the most tragic part in the business) the first or the last girl who, after solemnly perjuring herself before God and man to perform duties of which she knows nothing, and to have feelings of which she has not even dreamed, is on the whole perfectly content with herself and her world. In fact Belle, as she looked affectionately at her lounging spouse, felt no shadow of doubt as to the wisdom of her choice; so little has the mind or heart to do with the crude facts of marriage, so absolutely distinct are the latter from the spiritual or sentimental love with which ethical culture has overlaid the simplicity of nature to the general confusion of all concerned.
"Upon my life, Paul de Kock is infinitely amusing!" remarked John Raby, throwing the book aside and turning lazily to his young wife. "Worth twice all your Zolas and Ohnets, whowillbe serious over frivolity. Our friend here has an inexhaustible laugh."
"I'm sure I thought him dreadfully stupid," replied Belle simply. "I tried to read some last night."
"I wouldn't struggle to acquire the art of reading Paul de Kock, my dear," said John Raby with a queer smile. "It's not an accomplishment necessary to female salvation. The most iniquitous proverb in the language is that one about sauce for the goose and the gander. Say what you will, men and women are as different in their fixings as chalk from cheese. Now I,--though I am domestic enough in all conscience--would never be contented knitting socks as you are. By the way, those will be too big for me."
"Who said they were meant for you?" retorted Belle gaily. "Not I!"
"Perhaps not with your lips; but a good wife invariably knits socks for her husband, and you, my dear Belle, were foreordained from the beginning of time to be a good wife,--the very best of little wives a man ever had."
"I hope so," she replied after a pause. "John, it is all very well here in holiday time to be lazy as I am, but by and by I should like to be a little more useful; to help you in your work, if I could; at any rate to understand it, to know what the people we govern think, and say, and do."
Her husband sat up, dangling his hands idly between his knees. "I'm not sure about the wisdom of it. Personally I have no objection; besides, I hold that no one has a right to interfere with another person's harmless fancies; yet that sort of thing is invariably misunderstood in India. First by the natives; they think a woman's interest means a desire for power. Then by the men of one's own class; they drag up 'grey mare the better horse,' &c. How I hate proverbs! You see, women out here divide themselves, as a rule, betwixt balls and babies, so the men getcliqué. I don't defend it, but it's very natural. Most of us come out just at the age when a contempt for woman's intellect seems to make our beards grow faster, and we have no clever mixed society to act as an antidote to our own conceit. Now a woman with a clear head like yours, Belle, you are much cleverer than I thought you were, by the way, is sure with unbiassed eyes to see details that don't strike men who are in the game,--unpleasant, ridiculous details probably,--and that is always an offence. If you were stupid, it wouldn't matter; but being as you are, why, discretion is the better part of valour."
"But if I have brains, as you say I have, what am I to do with them?" cried Belle, knitting very fast.
"There are the balls,--and the babies; as Pendennis said to his wife, 'Tout vient à ceux qui savent attendre.' By the way, I wonder where the dickens the postman has gone to to-day? It's too bad to keep us waiting like this. I'll report him."
"Tout vient--!" retorted Belle, recovering from a fine blush. "Why are you always in such a hurry for the letters, John? I never am."
"No more am I," he cried gaily, rising to his feet and holding out his hand to help her. "I never was in a hurry, except--" and here he drew her towards him in easy proprietorship--"to marry you. I was in a hurry then, I confess."
"You were indeed," said the girl, who but a year before had felt outraged by the first passionately pure kiss of a boy, as she submitted cheerfully to that of a man whose love was of the earth, earthy. "Why, you hardly left me time to get a wedding-garment! But it was much wiser for you to spend the rest of your leave here, than to begin work and the honeymoon together."
"Much nicer and wiser; but then you are wisdom itself, Belle. Upon my soul, I never thought women could be so sensible till I married you. As your poor father said the first time we met, I have the devil's own luck."
He thought so with the utmost sincerity as he strolled along the turfy stretches beyond the deodars, with his arm round his wife's waist. The devil's own luck, and all through no management of his own. What finger had he raised to help along the chain of fatality which had linked him for life to the most charming of women who ere long would step into a fortune of thirty thousand pounds? On the contrary, had he not given the best of advice to Philip Marsden? Had he not held his tongue discreetly, or indiscreetly? Finally, what right would he have had to come to Belle Stuart and say, "By an accident, I have reason to suppose that you are somebody's heiress." For all he knew the sentimental fool might have made another will. And yet when two days later the dilatory postman brought in the English mail, John Raby's face paled, not so much with anxiety, as with speculation.
"Have you been running up bills already?" he asked, lightly, as he threw an unmistakably business envelope over to her side of the table along with some others.
"You wouldn't be responsible, at all events," she replied with a laugh, "for it is addressed to Miss Belle Stuart."
"I am not so sure about that," he retorted, still in the same jesting way. "It is astonishing how far the responsibility of a husband extends."
"And his rights," cried Belle, who in a halfhearted way professed advanced opinions on this subject.
"My dear girl, we must have some compensation."
He sat reading, or pretending to read, his own letters with phenomenal patience, while his wife glanced through a long crossed communication from her step-sisters; he even gave a perfunctory attention to several items of uninteresting family news which she retailed to him. He had foreseen the situation so long, had imagined it so often, that he felt quite at home and confident of his self-control.
"John!" came Belle's voice, with a curious catch in it.
"What is it, dear? Nothing the matter, I hope? You look startled." He had imagined it so far; but he knew the next minute from her face that he had under-rated something in her reception of the news. She had risen to her feet with a scared, frightened look. "I don't understand," she said, half to herself; "it must be a mistake." Then remembering, apparently, that she no longer stood alone, she crossed swiftly to her husband's side, and kneeling beside him thrust the open letter before his eyes. "What does it mean, John?" she asked hurriedly. "It is a mistake, isn't it?"
His hand, passed round her caressingly, could feel her heart bounding, but his own kept its even rhythm despite the surprise he forced into his face. "It means," he said, at length,--and the ring of triumph would not be kept out of his voice--"that Philip Marsden has left you thirty thousand pounds."
"Leftme!--impossible! I tell you it is a mistake!"
Now that the crisis was over, the cat out of the bag, John Raby knew how great his anxiety had been, by the sense of relief which found vent in a meaningless laugh. "Lawyers don't make mistakes," he replied. "It is as clear as daylight. Philip Marsden has left you thirty thousand pounds! By Jove, Belle, you are quite an heiress!"
She stood up slowly, leaning on the table as if to steady herself. "That does not follow," she said, "for of course I shall refuse to take it."
Her husband stared at her incredulously. "Refuse thirty thousand pounds,--are you mad?" He need not have been afraid of under-doing his part of surprise, for her attitude took him beyond art into untutored nature.
"It is an insult!" she continued in a higher key. "I will write to these people and say I will not have it."
"Without consulting me? You seem to forget that you are a married woman now. Am I to have no voice in the matter?" His tone was instinct with the aggressive quiet of one determined to keep his temper. "Supposing I disapproved of your refusal?" he went on, seeing from her startled look that he had her unprepared.
"Surely you would not wish--"
"That is another question. I said, supposing I disapproved of the refusal. What then?"
Standing there in bewildered surprise, the loss of her own individuality made itself felt for the first time, and it roused the frightened resentment of a newly-caught colt. "I do not know," she replied, bravely enough. "But you would surely let me do what I thought right?"
"Right! My dear girl, do stick to the point. Of course if there were urgent reasonsagainstyour taking this money--"
"But there are!" interrupted Belle quickly. "To begin with, he had no right to leave it to me."
"I beg your pardon. The law gives a man the right to leave his money to any one he chooses."
"But he had no right to choose me."
"I beg your pardon again. It is not uncommon for a man to leave his money to a woman with whom he is in love."
"In love!" It was Belle's turn to stare incredulously. "Major Marsden in love with me! What put that into your head?"
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "My dear child, even if you didn't know it before,--and upon my soul you are unsophisticated enough for anything--surely it is patent now. A man doesn't leave thirty thousand to any woman he happens to know."
For the first time Belle flinched visibly and her face paled. "All the more reason for refusing, surely," she replied in a low tone, after a pause. "You could not like your wife--"
"Why not? It isn't as if you had cared for him, you know."
The blood which had left her cheeks came back with an indignant rush. "Care for him! Can't you see that makes it doubly an insult?"
"I'm afraid not. It makes it much more sentimental, and self-sacrificing, and beautiful, on his part; and I thought women admired that sort of thing. I know that leaving money to the girl who has jilted you is a stock incident in their novels."
"I did not jilt Philip Marsden. I refuse to admit the incident into my life. I don't want to vex you, John, but I must do what I think right."
Her husband, who had walked to the window and now stood looking out of it, paused a moment before replying. "My dear Belle," he said at last, turning to her kindly, "I hate on principle to make myself disagreeable to any one, least of all to my wife, but it is best you should know the truth. The law gives that money to me, as your husband. You see, you married without settlements. Now, don't look like a tragedy-queen, dear, for it never does any good. We have to accept facts, and I had nothing to do with making the law."
"You mean that I have no power to refuse?" cried Belle with her eyes full of indignant tears.
"I'm afraid so. But there is no reason why I should stand on my rights. I should hate to have to do so, I assure you, and would far rather come to a mutual understanding. Honestly, I scarcely think the objections you have urged sufficient. Perhaps you have others; if so, I am quite willing to consider them."
The curious mixture of resentment, regret, and remorse which rose up in the girl's mind with the mere mention of Major Marsden's name, made her say hurriedly, "Think of the way he treated father! If it was only for that--" The tears came into her voice and stifled it.
John Raby looked at her gravely, walked to the window again, and paused. "I fancied that might be one, perhaps the chief reason. Supposing you were mistaken; supposing that Marsden was proved to have done his best for your father, would it make any difference?"
"How can it be proved?"
"My dear Belle, I do wish you would stick to the point. I asked you if your chief objection would be removed by Major Marsden's having acted throughout with a regard for your father's reputation which few men would have shown?"
"I should think more kindly of him and his legacy certainly, if such a thing were possible."
"It is possible; and, as I said before, it is best in all things to have the naked, undisguised truth. I would have told you long ago if Marsden hadn't given it me in confidence. But now I feel that respect for his memory demands the removal of false impressions. Indeed, I never approved of his concealing the real facts. They would have been painful to you, of course; they must be painful now--worse luck to it; but if it hadn't been for that idiotic sentimentality of poor Marsden's you would have forgotten the trouble by this time."
Belle, with a sudden fear, the sort of immature knowledge of the end to come which springs up with the first hint of bad tidings, put out her hand entreatingly. "If there is anything to tell, please tell it me at once."
"Don't look so scared, my poor Belle. Come, sit down quietly, and I will explain it all. For it is best you should not remain under a wrong impression, especially now, when,--when so much depends on your being reasonable."
So, seated on the sofa beside her husband, Belle Stuart listened to the real story of her father's death and Philip Marsden's generosity. "Is that all?" she asked, when the measured voice ceased. It was almost the first sign of life she had given.
"Yes, dear, that is all. And you must remember that the trouble is past and over,--that no one but we two need ever suspect the truth--"
"The truth!" Belle looked at him with eyes in which dread was still the master.
"And he was not accountable for his actions, not in any way himself at the time," he continued.
With a sudden sharp cry she turned from him to bury her face in the sofa cushions. "Not himself at the time!" Had he ever been himself? Never, never! How could a dishonoured, drunken gambler, dying by his own act, have been, even for a moment, the faultless father of her girlish dreams! And was that the only mistake she had made; or was the world nothing but a lie? Was there no truth in it at all, not even in her own feelings?
"I am so sorry to have been obliged to give you pain," said her husband, laying his hand on her shoulder. "But it is always best to have the truth."
His words seemed a hideous mockery of her thoughts, and she shrank impatiently from his touch.
"You must not be angry with me; it is not my fault," he urged.
"Oh, I am not angry with you," she cried, with a petulant ring in her voice as she raised herself hastily, and looked him full in the face. "Only,--if you don't mind--I would so much rather be left alone. I want to think it all out by myself,--quite by myself."
The hunted look in her eyes escaped his want of sympathy, and he gave a sigh of relief at her reasonableness. "That is a wise little woman," he replied, bending down to kiss her more than once. "I'll go down thekhudafter those pheasants and won't be back till tea. So you will have the whole day to yourself. But remember, there is no hurry. The only good point about a weekly post is that it gives plenty of time to consider an answer."
That, to him, was the great point at issue; for her the foundations of the deep had suddenly been let loose, and she had forgotten the question of the legacy. Almost mechanically she gave him back his farewell kiss, and sat still as a stone till he had left the room. Then, impelled by an uncontrollable impulse, she dashed across to the door and locked it swiftly, pausing, with her hand still on the key, bewildered, frightened at her own act. What had she done? What did it mean? Why had her one thought been to get away from John, to prevent his having part or lot in her sorrow? Slowly she unlocked the door again, with a half impulse to run after him and call him back. But instead of this she crept in a dazed sort of way to her own room and lay down on the bed to think. Of what? Of everything under the sun, it seemed to her confusion; yet always, when she became conscious of any clear thought, it had to do, not with her father or Philip Marsden, but with her own future. Was it possible that she had made other mistakes? Was it possible that she was not in love with John? Why else had she that wild desire to get rid of him? The very suggestion of such a possibility angered her beyond measure. Her life, as she had proudly claimed, was not a novel; nothing wrong or undignified, nothing extravagant or unseemly should come into it; and it was surely all this not to be in love with one's lawful husband! It was bad enough even to have had such a suspicion after a bare fortnight of wedded life; it was absurd, ridiculous, impossible. So as the day passed on, all other considerations were gradually submerged in the overwhelming necessity of proving to herself that she and John were a most devoted couple. As tea-time approached she put on a certain tea-gown which her lord and master was pleased to commend, and generally prepared to receive the Great Mogul as husbands should be received. Not because she had come to any conclusion in regard to that locking of the door, but because, whatever else was uncertain, there could be no doubt how a husbandshouldbe treated. For, as some one has said, while a man tolerates the marriage-bond for the sake of a particular woman, the latter tolerates a particular man for the sake of the bond.
So Belle poured out the tea and admired the pheasants, to John Raby's great contentment; though in his innermost heart he felt a little manly contempt for the feminine want of backbone which rendered such pliability possible. Only once did she show signs of the unstilled tempest of thought which lay beneath her calm manner. It was when, later on in the evening during their nightly game ofécarté, he complimented her on somecoup, remarking that her skill seemed inherited. Then she started as if the cards she was handling had stung her, and her face flushed crimson with mingled pain and resentment; yet in her homeless life she had necessarily learned betimes the give and take required in most human intercourse. The fact was that already (though she knew it not) her husband was on his trial, and she could no longer treat his lightest word or look with the reasonable allowances she would have accorded to a stranger. A man is seldom foolish enough to expect perfection in a wife; a woman from her babyhood is taught to find it in her husband, and brought up to believe that the deadliest sin a good woman can commit is to see a spot in her sun. She may be a faithful wife, a kindly companion, a veritable helpmate; but if the partner of her joys and sorrows is not, for her, the incarnation of all manly virtues, or at least the man she would have chosen out of all the world, her marriage must be deemed a failure. Love, that mysterious young juggler, is not there to change duty into something which we are told is better than duty, and so the simple, single-hearted performance of a simple, perfectly natural contract becomes degradation.
Belle, confused yet resentful, lay awake long after her husband slept the sleep of the selfish. Her slow tears wetted her own pillow quietly, decorously, lest they might disturb the Great Mogul's slumbers. Yet she could scarcely have told why the tears came at all, for a curious numbness was at her heart. Even the thought of her dead father had already lost its power to give keen pain, and she was in a vague way shocked at the ease with which her new knowledge fitted into the old. The fact being, that now she dared to look it full in the face without reservation, the loving compassion, the almost divine pity which had been with her ever since the day when poor Dick had first opened her eyes to the feet of clay, seemed no stranger, but a familiar friend. Then Philip Marsden! Dwell as she might on her own ingratitude, his kindness seemed too good a gift to weep over; and again she stretched out her hands into the darkness, as she had done on the night when her anger had risen hot against the man she misjudged; but this time it was to call to him with a very passion of repentance, "Friend, I will take this gift also. In this at least you shall have your way."
"By George, Belle!" said John Raby next morning, when she told him that she had made up her mind to take the legacy without demur, "you are simply a pearl of women for sense. I prophesy we shall be as happy as the day is long, always."
And Belle said she hoped so too. But when he fell to talking joyously of the coming comforts of sweet reasonableness and thirty thousand pounds, in the life that was just beginning for them, her thoughts were busy with schemes for spending some at least of the legacy in building a shrine of good deeds to the memory of her friend,--surely the best friend a woman ever had. She was bound by her nature to idealise some one, and the dead man was an easier subject than the living one.
Murghub Ahmad, with nothing on but a waistcloth, his high narrow forehead bedewed with the sweat which ran down his hollow cheeks like teardrops, was fanning the flame of his own virtue with windy words in the dark outhouse which he designated the editor's room. Four square yards of court beyond constituted the printing office of theJehâd, a bi-weekly paper of extreme views on every topic under the sun. For the proprietors ofThe Light of Islâmhaving a wholesome regard to the expense of libels, had dispensed with the young man's eloquence as being too fervid for safety. So, Heaven knows by what pinching and paring, by what starvation-point of self-denial, the boy had saved and scraped enough to buy a wretched, rotten handpress, and two used up lithographic stones. With these implements, and a heart and brain full of the fierce fire of his conquering race, he set to work with the utmost simplicity to regenerate mankind in general, and the Government of India in particular, by disseminating the smudged results of his labours on the poor old press among his fellow-subjects; for the most part, it is to be feared, free, gratis, and for nothing. Poor old press! No wonder it creaked and groaned under Murghub Ahmad's thin straining arms; for it had grown old in the service of Government, and on the side of law and order. Generation after generation of prisoners in the district jail had found a certain grim satisfaction and amusement in producing by its help endless thousands of the forms necessary for the due capture and punishments of criminals yet to come. Reams and reams of paper had they turned out as writs of arrest, warrants for committal, charge-sheets, orders for jail discipline, or, joyful thought, memos of discharge. And now order and discipline were unknown quantities in its life. Perhaps the change was too much for its constitution; certain it is that it became daily more and more unsatisfactory in regard to the complicated Arabic words with which its present owner loved to besprinkle his text. Then the damp, overworked stones refused to dry, even under the boy's hot feverish hands; and he lost half his precious time in chasing the shifting sunlight round and round the narrow courtyard in order to set the ink. Something there was infinitely pathetic about it all; especially on the days when, with the look of a St. Sebastian in his young face, the lad could stay his hard labour for a while, and rest himself by folding the flimsy sheets within the orthodox green wrapper where a remarkably crooked crescent was depicted as surrounded by the beams of the rising sun. False astronomy, but excellent sentiment! Then there was the addressing for the post. Most of the packets bore the inscriptionbearing; but one, chosen with care, and cunningly corrected with a deft pen, never failed to carry the requisite stamp above the quaint address:To my respectable and respected father, Khân Mahommed Lateef Khân, in the house of the Khân of Khurtpore, Sudr Bazaar, Faizapore. Which is much as though one should address a Prince of the Blood to Tottenham Court Road.
Then, with the precious parcels in his arms, and one copy in his bosom, he would joyfully lock the door above which "Press of the Jehâd Newspaper" was emblazoned in English, and make his way to some cheap cook-house, where, in honour of the occasion, he would purchase a farthing's worth of fried stuff to eat with his dry dough cakes. Thereafter he would repair to the steps of a mosque, or to one of the shady wells which still linger in the heart of cities in India, in order to discuss his own views and writings with a group of young men of his own age. For in that large town, with its strange undercurrents of new thoughts and aims underlying the steady stream of humanity towards the old beliefs, Murghub Ahmad was not without his audience, nor even his following. He had the sometimes fatal gift, greater than mere eloquence, of leading the minds of his hearers blindfold by some strange charm of voice and personality; and when, as often happened, discussion took the form of harangue, the slow-gathering, stolid crowd used to wake up into muttered approbation as the familiar watchwords of their faith were presented to them in new and bewildering forms.
It was the eve of Mohurrim, the great feast and fast of orthodox and unorthodox Mahomedans; an occasion which claimed more zeal than usual from the young reformer. On the morrow the paper shrines of the dead Hussan and Hussain, which were now being prepared in many a quiet courtyard, would be borne through the streets in triumph, followed by excited crowds of the faithful. And, as sometimes happens, it was Dussarah-tide also, and the Hindus held high festival as well as the Mahomedans. A simple thing enough to Western minds, accustomed to the idea of wide thoroughfares and religious toleration; a very different affair in the tortuous byeways of a native town, and among the ancient antagonisms. It was critical at the best of times, and this year doubly, trebly so, for with the newly-granted franchise of municipal government, the richer Hindus out-numbered the Mahomedans in the committee which had power to direct the route open to each procession. So the cry of favouritism went forth, and as the gaudy paper streamers were being gummed to the frail bamboo frames, many a dark face grew darker with determination to carry the sacred symbol where he chose; yea, even into the midst of the cursed idol-worshipping crew, despite all the municipal committees and fat, bribing usurers in the world.
TheJehâdwas full of sublime wrath and valiant appeals for justice to high Heaven, because a certain connecting alley between two of the big bazaars had been closed to the Mahomedans and given to the Hindus. True, another, and equally convenient, connection, had been allowed the former; but for many years past the procession oftâzziashad struggled through that particular alley, and the innovation was resented as an insult. East and west, mankind is made the same way. It was astonishing how many imperious demands on the resources of Providence this trivial change aroused in Murghub Ahmad. He called for justice, mercy, and religious freedom, for the stars as witness, for the days of Akbar. On the other hand, a rival print with an unpronounceable title, clamoured for Bikramâjeet, the hero-king of old, for Hindu independence and the sword. Either faction, it may be observed, asked for those things in others of which they had least themselves, after the way of factions all over the world.
Thus many a quarterstaff was being diligently whittled that evening, and down in the butchers' quarter even deadlier weapons were being talked of openly by its inhabitants, the most truculent of all the mixed races and trades with which rulers have to deal. John Raby, doing his judicial work in the big court-house outside the town, felt, with that sharp, half-cunning perception of concealed things which he possessed so pre-eminently, that there was mischief brewing, and drove round by the executive official's house in order to tell him so. The latter assured him that the newly-elected municipal committee were fully alive to the necessity for precautions; whereat the young man shrugged his shoulders and said he was glad to hear it. He mentioned it casually to Belle with a sneer, which he did not allow himself in public, at the crass stupidity of needlessly setting race against race by premature haste to confer the blessings of vestrydom on India. And Belle agreed, since, even with the limited experience of the past year, she had learnt a sort of reverence for the old ways, which seem so irredeemably bad to the unsympathetic philanthropy of the West.
For a whole year had passed since the fateful letter announcing the legacy had come to disturb the foundations of her world. It had had surprisingly little effect on her, chiefly because she was determined that her life must run in one ordered groove. There must be no mistake or fiasco, nothing but what she considered decent, orderly, virtuous. Uninteresting, no doubt; but it is nevertheless true that a very large number of women are born into the world with an unhesitating preference for behaving nicely; women who can no more help being longsuffering, cheerful, and self-forgetful, than they can help being the children of their parents. Her husband's clear sight had early seen the expediency of concealing from her the radical difference between her view of life and his own. He even felt pleased she should think as she did; it was so much safer, and more ladylike. In his way he grew to be very fond of her, and there was scarcely any friction between them, since, moved by a certain gratitude for the change her money had wrought in his prospects, he gave her free play in everything that did not interfere with his settled plans. Half the said money was already invested in Shunker Dâs's indigo concern, and John Raby was only awaiting its assured success to throw up his appointment and go openly into trade; but of this Belle knew nothing. She had money enough and to spare for all her wishes, and that was sufficient for her; indeed, on the whole, she was happy in the larger interests of her new life. The tragic, poverty-stricken, yet contented lives of the poor around her had a strange fascination for the girl, and the desire to see and understand all that went to make up the pitiful sum-total of their pleasures, led her often, on her solitary morning rides (for John was an incurable sluggard) through the alleys and bazaars of the great city. In the latter, the people knowing in a dim way that she was the judgesahib'swife, wouldsalaamartificially, but in the back streets both women and children smile on her, much to her unreasoning content.
So the morning after her husband's sarcasm over the mistakes of his seniors, she determined, in the confidence of ignorance, to see something of the processions; and with this intention found herself, about seven o'clock, in the outskirts of the town. Here the deserted appearance of the streets beguiled her into pushing on and on, until close to the big mosque a blare of conches, and the throbbing of ceaseless drums mingled with cries, warned her of an advancing procession. Wishing to watch it unobserved, she turned her horse into a side alley and waited.
As in all countries, a rabble of boys, sprung Heaven knows whence, formed the advance guard. Behind them came an older, yet more mischievous crowd of men flourishing quarterstaves and shouting "Hussan! Hussain!" Next emerged into the square, a swaying, top-heavytazzia, looking every instant as though it must shake to pieces, and behind it more quarterstaves and moretazzias, more shouts, and more dark faces streaming on and on to overflow into the square, until the procession formed a part only of the great crowd. So absorbed was she in watching the swooping out of each successivetazzia, like some gay-plumaged bird from the intricate windings of the way beyond, that she failed to notice the current settling towards her until the vanguard of urchins was almost at her horse's hoofs. Then she recognised the disconcerting fact that she had taken refuge in the very path of the procession. Turning to escape by retreat, she saw the further end of the alley blocked by a similar crowd; only that here the shouts of "Dhurm! Dhurm! Durga dei! Gunga(the faith, the faith! the goddess Durga! Ganges!)" told of Hindu fanaticism.
She was, in fact, in the very alley which both sides claimed as their own. Bewildered, yet not alarmed, for her ignorance of religious ecstasy made her presuppose deference, she turned her horse once more, and rode towards the advancingtazziasat a foot's-pace. The look of the crowd as she neared it was startling, but the cry of "Jehâd! Jehâd!Death to the infidel!" seemed too incredible for fear; and ere the latter came with the conviction that not even for a judgesahib's memwould the stream slacken, a young man, his gaunt face encircled by a high green turban, rushed to the front and seized her horse by the bridle.
"No words! Dismount yourself from steed and follow your preserver. We war not with women." The effect of these stilted words uttered in tones of intense excitement was somehow ludicrous. "Smile not! Be nimble, I entreat. Unhorse yourself, and follow, follow me."
The vision of a hideous leering face leading the quarterstaves decided her on complying. The next instant she felt herself thrust into a dark entry, and ere the door closed, heard a scream of terrified rage from her horse, as some one cut it over the flank with his staff. The outrage made her temper leap up fiercely, and she felt inclined to confront the offender; but before she could reach the door it was shut and hasped in her face.
Then the desire to escape from darkness and see--see something, no matter what--possessed her, and she groped round for some means of exit. Ah! a flight of steep steps, black as pitch, narrow, broken; she climbed up, and up, till a grating in the wall shed a glimmer of light on the winding stair; up further, till she emerged on a balcony overlooking the street, whence she could see far into the alley on one side and into the square on the other. Beneath her feet lay a small empty space edged by the opposing factions hurrying into collision.
"Give way! Give way, idolaters! Hussan! Hussain!Futeh Mahommed(Victory of Mahomed)," yelled thetazzia-bearers.
"Jai, Jai, Durga Devi, de-jai!Give way, killers of kine," shouted the Hindus.
For an instant or two Belle's horse, hemmed in by the advancing crowds, kept the peace by clearing a space between them with head and heels; then, choosing the least alarming procession, it charged the Hindus, breaking their ranks as, maddened by terror it plunged and bit. Only for a moment, however, for the packed mass of humanity closing in round it, held it harmless as in a vice.
"The charger of Pertâp!"[4]cried a huge rice-husker with ready wit, as he leapt to the saddle, and coming rather to grief over the crutches, raised a roar of derision from the other side. He scowled dangerously. "Come on, brothers!" he cried, digging his heels viciously into the trembling, snorting beast. "Down with the cursed slayers of kine. This is Durga-ji's road,--Dhurm! Dhurm!"
"Hussan,--Hussain!"
Then the dull thud of heavy blows seemed to dominate the war of words, and business began in earnest as a Mahomedan, caught behind the ear, fell in his tracks. It was not much of a fight as yet, for in that narrow street the vast majority of the crowd could do nothing but press forward and thus jam activity into still smaller space, until the useless sticks were thrown aside, and the combatants went at each other tooth and nail, but unarmed. So they might have fought out the wild-beast instinct of fighting, but for the fact that the Hindus, with commendable foresight, had headed their procession by athletes, the Mahomedans by enthusiast. So, inch by inch, surging and swaying, yelling, cursing, yet doing comparatively little harm, the combatants drifted towards the square until the wider outlet allowed a larger number of the Mahomedans to come into play, and thus reverse the order of affairs. Once more thetazzias, surrounded by their supporters, carried the lane, and swept back the red-splashed figure of Durga amidst yells of religious fury. So the battle raged more in words than blows. Belle, indeed, had begun to feel her bounding pulses steady with the recognition that, beyond a few black eyes and broken heads, no harm had been done, when a trivial incident changed the complexion of affairs in an instant.
The foremosttazzia, which had borne the brunt of conflict and come up smiling after many a repulse, lost balance, toppled over, and went to pieces, most likely from the inherent weakness of its architecture. The result was startling. A sudden wave of passion swept along the Mahomedan line, and as a young man sprang to the pilaster of the mosque steps and harangued the crowd, every face settled into a deadly desire for revenge.
"Kill! Kill! Kill the idolaters--Jehâd! Jehâd!"--the cry of religious warfare rang in an instant from lip to lip. And now from behind came a fresh burst of enthusiasm, as a body of men naked to the waist pushed their way towards the front with ominous glint of sunlight on steel as they fought fiercely for place.
"Room! Room for the butchers! Kill! Kill! Let them bleed! let them bleed!"
The shout overbore the high ringing voice of the preacher, but Belle, watching with held breath, saw him wave his hand towards the lane. Slowly, unwillingly at first, the crowd gave way; then more rapidly until a roar of assent rose up. "The butchers, the butchers! Kill! Kill!"
Belle gasped and held tight to the railing, seeing nothing more but the tide of strife beneath her very feet. Red knives, gleaming no longer, straining hands, and every now and again a gurgle and a human head disappearing to be trodden under foot. Heaven knows how weapons come in such scenes as these,--from the houses,--passed to the front by willing hands--snatched from unwilling foes who fall. In a second it was knife against knife, murder against murder. "Durga! Durga devi!Destroy! Destroy!" "Hussan! Hussain! Kill! Kill!" Then suddenly, a rattle of musketry at the far end of the square, where, cut off from the actual conflict by an impenetrable crowd, a strange scene had been going on unobserved. Two or three mounted Englishmen unarmed, but sitting cool and square on their horse sat the head of a company of Mahomedan and Hindu sepoys who stood cheek by jowl, calm, apparently indifferent, their carbines still smoking from the recent discharge. About them was a curious stillness, broken only by the sound of more disciplined feet coming along at the double. A glint of red coats appears behind, and then a police-officer, the sunlight gleaming on his silver buckles, gallops along the edge of the rapidly clearing space, laying about him with the flat of his sword, while yellow-trousered constables, emerging Heaven knows from what safe shelter, dive in among the people, whacking vigorously with the traditional truncheon of the West. A rapid order to the sepoys, an instant of marking time as the company forms, then quick march through an unresisting crowd. As they near the combatants a few brickbats are thrown: there is one free fight over the preacher: and then the great mass of mankind falls once more into atoms, each animated by the instinct of self-preservation. Five minutes more, and the processions have gone on their appointed ways with the loss of some chosen spirits, while the ghastly results are being hurried away by fatigue-parties recruited from the bystanders.
"Only one round of blank cartridge," remarked John Raby, as the Deputy Commissioner rode forward ruefully to inspect the damage. "Ten minutes more, and it wouldn't have been so easy, for the fighting would have reached the square, and once a man begins--Great God! what's that?"
He was out of the saddle staring at a horse that was trying to stagger from the gutter to its feet. Perhaps in all his life he had never felt such genuine passion as then; certainly Belle herself was never so near to loving her husband as when she saw the awful fear come into his face at the sight of the riderless steed. She had been waiting for him to come nearer before calling for assistance, and now the thought of her past danger and its meaning almost choked her voice. "I'm not hurt! Oh, John! I'm not hurt," she cried, stretching her hands towards him.
He looked up to see her on the balcony, and his relief, as it often does, brought a momentary resentment. "Belle! What the devil--I mean, why are you here?"
Now that it was all over, she felt disagreeably inclined to cry; but something in his voice roused her pride and urged her to make light of what had happened, and so avoid being still more conspicuous. "I'll come down and explain," she replied with an effort.
"Wait! I'll be with you in a moment. Which is the door?" As he paused to kiss her before helping her down the dark stair, Belle passed the happiest moment of her married life. Physically and morally she felt crushed by the scenes she had witnessed, and his calm, half-callous strength seemed a refuge indeed.
"Not across the square," whispered the police-officer as he was about to take her the shortest route. "That poor brute must be shot."
John Raby raised his eyebrows a little, but took the hint. Women were kittle cattle to deal with; even the best of them like Belle. Who, for instance, would have thought of any one with a grain of sense getting into such a position? Underneath all his kindness lay a certain irritation at the whole business, which he could not conceal.