The night which had proved so restless to Philip Marsden had been for Belle, strangely enough, one of profound repose. Never, since as a child she fell asleep with the fresh cool caress of her pillow, had she felt less inclination to be wakeful, less desire for thought. The measureless content which comes so seldom, save in a pleasant dream, held her, body and soul. To feel it was enough. Yet as she woke to the sound of her husband's early return, she woke also to a full consciousness of the change Philip's resurrection from the dead must bring into their lives. A hasty remorse at her own brief happiness made her slip on a morning-gown and go into her husband's office-room. The wonder whether he knew, or whether the post which always went to him direct while he was in camp in order to save time, had failed to find him, made her cheek pale. She scarcely knew which would be worst; to meet him crushed by the news, or to have to kill his easy content with bitter tidings.
She found him already engaged with the tea and toast which the servant had brought in on his arrival, and her heart sank; face to face with it, anything seemed better than the task of telling.
"Hullo! Belle, little woman! is that you up so early? But it must have been deuced startling for you to have Marsden walking in like Lazarus--"
"Then you have heard?" she interrupted with quite a sigh of relief.
"Of course I've heard. One always does hear that sort of thing. But the fool of apeon[5]took the letters to the village I'd just left, so it was too late to send you word. And then I had to finish some work. It's a queer go, isn't it? Poor old Marsden! Somehow it makes me laugh."
Belle sat down helplessly in the low chair by her husband, feeling utterly lost. Was she never to be able even to guess at his moods? She had imagined that this would be the most bitter of blows, and he found it provocative of laughter. "I'm so glad you take it that way, John," she began, "I was afraid--"
"Afraid of what? By the way, he is here, I suppose. You haven't sent him elsewhere, or done anything foolish, I hope?"
"Why should I send him away? I don't understand--"
"Oh, nothing! Only,--you see, when you have got to keep on the right side of a man it is as well not to be too particular. I suppose you have been talking about the money. What did he say?"
A slow colour crept into Belle's face. "Not much,--at least,--I don't think we talked about it at all. There were so many other things."
John Raby whistled a tune; then he smiled. "Upon my soul, you are sometimes quite incomprehensible, Belle; but perhaps it is as well. You might have put your foot in it somehow; and as it is absolutely necessary that the legacy should remain in the business, we must be careful. If we play our cards decently this ridiculous resurrection won't make much difference. You see, Marsden is a gentleman. He wouldn't ruin anybody, least of all a woman he-- Hullo! what's the matter now?"
Her hand gripped his arm almost painfully. "Don't, John, don't! For pity's sake, don't!"
"Phew! you needn't pinch me black and blue, my dear, for hinting at the truth. You know what Marsden did to save you once. Why shouldn't he do something to save you now? There is no use mincing matters when one is in a corner like this. I mean to have the use of that money, and if we play our cards fairly we shall get it. I mean to have it, and you're bound to help; for, though I don't wish to reproach you, Belle, you must see that you are mainly responsible for the position."
"I!"
"Yes, you. If it hadn't been for your squeamishness I should still have been a civilian and able to go back on my tracks. Then again, but for having to quarrel with Shunker for his impudence, I should only have been at half-risks; he would have had to sink or swim with me, and that would have ensured his advancing more capital. The fact is that luck has been against me all through."
"What is it you want me to do?" she asked faintly. "How can I help?"
"Oh, if you ask in that tragedy-tone it's no use answering. I want you to be sensible, that is all. There really is nothing to make a fuss about. I'll ensure him a fair interest. And his coming back doesn't alter our position; we have been living on his money for the last year."
"But we thought he was dead--that it was ours. Oh, John, there is a difference! Don't you see he is tied;--that he has no choice, as it were?"
"If you mean that Marsden is a gentleman and sees that the predicament is none of our making, then I agree."
She knelt down beside him, looking into his face with passionate entreaty in hers. "John!" she said, "I can't make you understand, but if you love me,--ever so little--don't, don't beg of--of this man. Surely we have taken enough! You have some money of your own,--indeed I would rather starve! It would kill me if you took advantage of,--of his kindness." Then, seeing the hopelessness of rousing sympathy in him, she buried her face against the arm of his chair with a sob of pain.
"I'll tell you what I do know, Belle," he answered kindly enough. "It was a confounded shame of Marsden to upset your nerves by popping up like a Jack-in-the-box. You're not a bit strong yet. Go and lie down till breakfast-time, and leave me to settle it. Why, you little goose, you don't think I'm going down on my knees to beg of any man! I am only, very wisely, going to take advantage of the natural strength of the position. It isn't as if you had ever cared a button for him, you know."
Something like a flash of lightning shot down from heaven on poor Belle, shrivelling up all her strength. She crept away to her room, and there, with flaming cheeks, paced up and down wondering why the sky didn't fall on the house and kill every one; every one but Philip. The memory of the night before had come back to fill her with shame and doubt, and yet with a great certainty. When had she felt so happy, so content? When had she talked to John, straight out from her very heart, as she had talked to Philip? What must he have thought? That she had been seeking to please him; as John called it, trying to play her cards well? No! he would not think such things; and yet the alternative was even less honourable to her. What had possessed her? She, John's wife, who had tried,--who had always tried so hard to be content! How had this inconceivable thing come about? Preposterous! Absurd; it had not come about; it could not, should not, must not be. Yet, after all, what was the use in denying it? Philip stood far above John in her Pantheon. She had known that for months. But then it was allowable to canonise the dead. Why had he come back? Above all, why had he brought his saintship with him? So the circle of passionate resentment at fate, and still more passionate contempt for herself, went round and round, bringing no conclusion. She would have liked to throw herself on her bed and cry her eyes out; but, trivial yet insuperable barrier to this relief, it was too near breakfast-time for tears, since no one must guess at her trouble.
So she appeared at the appointed time, and asked Philip if he had slept well, and if he would take tea or coffee; and no one knew that she was wondering half the time why the sky didn't fall down and crush her for noticing that Philip saw she was pale, that Philip handed her the butter, and Philip looked to her always for an opinion. What right had he to do all this when her husband did not? Poor Belle; she had dreamed dreams only to find herself, as she thought, in the most despicable position in which a woman can possibly find herself. She never paused to ask if the verdict of society in its more virtuous moods was trustworthy, and that a woman who discovers some other man to be nearer the sun than her husband, must necessarily call her marriage a failure, and so forfeit some measure of her self-respect. Her righteous ignorance simply made her feel, as she looked at the well-laid table, that here were all the elements of amariage à trois; an idea hateful to her, and from which, according to what she had been taught, the only escape was flight. Yet how could there be flight if John would not give up the money? And then the thought that the table laid for two last night had been ever so much more pleasant, came to reduce her reasoning powers to pulp. She listened to the story of poor Dick's will,--that will which had led to the present puzzle,--feeling that the half-excuse it gave to John's avarice, was but another rivet in the chain which bound her life to Philip's; for with his kind face before her eyes, and his kind voice in her ears, it was useless denying the tie between them. That was the worst of it; she knew perfectly well that, as he sat there calmly talking to her husband, silence was no protection to her feelings. He knew them, just as she knew of a certainty what his were; not by any occult power, not by any mysterious affinity, but by the clear-eyed reason which affirms that, given certain conditions and certain ideals, the result is also certain. And yet, while she acknowledged her confidence in him, something, she knew not what, rebelled against his sympathy; it was an interference, an offence.
"It is a pity you did not take the will," she said coldly. "It would have saved us all a great deal of annoyance." The patience in his reply made her still more angry. She positively preferred her husband's frown, as he suggested with a very different tone in his voice, that if Major Marsden had finished breakfast he should come and talk over details in the office.
"But I should like your wife--" began Philip.
"John is much better at business than I am," interrupted Belle. "I don't take much interest in that sort of thing, and,--I would rather not, thank you."
So the two men whom fate had always placed in such strange antagonism to each other sat amicably arranging the business, while Belle wandered about from one occupation to another, angry with herself for knowing which of the two had her interest most at heart.
"It's all settled, Belle!" cried her husband gaily, as they came in to lunch. "Marsden's a trump! but we knew that before, didn't we? You'll never regret it though, Philip, for it is twenty per cent, and no mistake. I say, Belle! we must have a bottle of champagne to drink to the new firm, Marsden, Raby, and Co."
He hurried off for the wine, leaving Belle and the Major alone. Marsden, Raby, and Co.! Horrible, detestable! Nor was the position bettered by Philip's remark that there was no other way out of it at present. Dick's will might turn up, if, as was not unlikely, some one had buried the poor lad; there was no doubt that some one had looked after his effects in the shanties. At all events her husband had arranged to pay back the money, by instalments, so soon as possible. All this only made her reply stiffly, that she was sure John would do his utmost to lessen the risk.
"I shall leave it in his hands, at any rate," said Philip, who despite his pity and sympathy was human. "I shan't trouble you much with interference. By the way, when does the train leave tonight? I shall have to be going on my way."
"What's that?" cried John, returning with the champagne. "Going away? Nonsense! You must see the new house, your new house for the time being. And then there is the new dam; you must see that as member of the firm, mustn't he, Belle?"
Her silence roused Philip's old temper. "Yes, I suppose I ought to see it all. Afzul is leaving tonight, as he has business somewhere or other, but I will stop till to-morrow. We might ride over in the morning to the house, if you have a horse at my disposal?"
"They are all at your disposal," said Belle quickly. "Major Marsden can ride Suleimân, John. I shall not want him."
They dined in the garden again that evening, but it was a different affair, and the perception that it was so added to Belle's wild rebellion at the position in which she found, or fancied she found, herself. When they stood out under the stars again saying good-night, Belle's hand lay in Philip's for an instant while John filled himself a tumbler from the tray in the verandah. Somehow the tragedy of her face proved too much for the humour of the man, who knew himself guiltless of all save a great tenderness. "I am not going to bite my poor Belle!" he said with a smile half of amusement, half of annoyance. "You needn't call in the aid of the policeman, I assure you."
She looked at him angrily, but as she turned away there were tears in her eyes.
He sat on the edge of his bed once more, pondering over the events of the day, but this time there was no doubt in his mind at all. He cared more for Belle's peace than for anything else in the world. He would go away for a while; but he would not give her up; he would prove to her that there was no need for that.
To his surprise she was waiting in the verandah when he came out of his room at daybreak next morning. She looked business-like and self-reliant, as all women do in their riding-habits, and she was fastening a rose at her collar.
"John's not quite ready," she remarked easily; "but he said we had better go on and he would catch us up. I want to see about the garden. The roses here are mine, and as some of them are quite pretty,--this one for instance--won't you take it? you can't have seen many roses lately--I intend moving them. By the bye, I've sent out breakfast, so as your train doesn't leave till midnight we can have a jolly day."
Philip, fastening the rose in his buttonhole, wondered if the best parlour with all the covers off was not worse than calls on the policeman. Both seemed to him equally unnecessary, but then he had all the advantage in position. He could show his friendship in an unmistakable way, while poor Belle had only the far harder task of receiving benefits.
"You don't remember Suleimân, my Arab at Faizapore?" she said as they cantered off. "You are riding him now,--oh, don't apologise, the pony does well enough for me; John gave me such a delightful surprise in buying him back after we were married."
"Got him dirt cheap from a woman who was afraid to ride him," remarked John coming up behind cheerfully; and Belle was divided between vexation and pleasure at this depreciation of his own merits.
"I should think you rode pretty straight as a rule," said Philip, looking at her full in the face. "Many women make the mistake of jagging at a beast's mouth perpetually. If you can trust him, it's far better to leave him alone; don't you think so?"
"John, race me to the nextkikartree. It's our last chance, for we shall be among the corn soon. Come!"
Major Marsden, overtaking them at regulation pace, owned that Belle did ride very straight indeed. Perhaps she was right after all, and the position was untenable. He felt a little disheartened and weary, only his pride remained firm, telling him that he had a perfect right to settle the point as he chose. Surely he might at least rectify his own mistakes. The sun climbed up and up, and even in the cooler, greener river-land beat down fiercely on the stubble where here and there the oxen circled round on the threshing-floors and clouds of chaff, glittering like gold in the light, showed the winnower was at work. John was in his element, pointing out this field promised to indigo, and that village where a vat was to be built.
"It is getting a little hot for Mrs. Raby to be out," remarked Philip, though he was quite aware it would be an offence.
"By George, it is late! Look, Belle! there's the house beyond those trees on the promontory. It is three miles round, but if you cut across, so, by the sand, it's only one and a half. Marsden and I will go the other way. I have to see a village first, and then we can look at the new dam."
"It is over yonder, I suppose?" said Philip pointing to a likely bend in the river bank.
"Just so."
"Then I will see Mrs. Raby across the cut, and join you there."
"But I can manage quite well by myself," protested Belle.
"I have no interest in villages, Mrs. Raby; and,--excuse me--before we start your pony's girths require tightening." He slipped from his horse and was at her side before she could reply.
"Then I'm off," cried John with a faint shrug of his shoulders. "I'll meet you at the corner, Marsden, in twenty minutes."
"Steady, lad, steady!" murmured the Major with his head under the flap of the saddle, as Suleimân figeted to join his stable-companion. Belle standing, tapping her boot with her whip, moved forward. "Give me the reins. I don't see why you should do everything."
Philip came up from the girths smiling, and began on the curb.
"What a fidget you are! I'm glad John isn't like that."
"Curbs and girths mean more than you suppose. There! now you can go neck-and-crop at everything, and I won't say you nay. Steady, lad, steady! One, two, three--are you all right?"
"Thank you, I think I have the proper number of hands and feet, and so far as I know my head is on my shoulders," replied Belle tartly.
They dipped down a bit from the fields to a sluggish stream edging the higher land, and then scampered across the muddy flats towards the promontory which lay right at the other side of the bend.
"Pull up please!" cried Philip. "That strip looksquick."
"Nonsense! John comes this way every week; it's all right." Belle gave her pony a cut, making it forge ahead; but it was no match for Suleimân who, unaccustomed to the spur, bounded past her.
"Pull up, please; don't be foolish, pull up!" Philip shouted, hearing the ominous cloop of his horse's feet. Another dig of the spur, a leap, a flounder, and Suleimân was over the creek. Not so Belle's pony; slower, heavier, it was hopelessly bogged in a second, and floundering about, sank deeper and deeper.
"Throw yourself off!" cried Philip; "as far as you can,--arms flat! So,--quite still, please. There is no danger. I can get at you easily, and it is not deep." A minute after his hand closed on her wrist as she lay sinking slowly despite her stillness; for the pony, relieved of her weight, was plunging like a mad thing and churning up the sand and water to slush. "I must get a purchase first; these sands hold like birdlime;" he said after an ineffectual attempt. "Don't be frightened if I let go for a moment." Then with one hand through Suleimân's stirrup he knelt once more on the extreme edge of the firm ground and got a grip of Belle again. "Now then,--all together!" More all together than he desired, for Suleimân, alarmed at the strain, backed violently, reared, and finally broke away, leaving Philip prone on his back in the dirt. "I hope I didn't hurt you," he said, struggling up, rather blindly, to aid Belle's final flounder to safe ground.
"Not much," she replied with a nervous laugh as she shook the curiously dry sand from her habit. "My wrist will be a bit black and blue, that's all. Why, Philip, what's the matter? Philip!"
He had doubled up limply, horribly, as if he had been shot, and lay in a heap at her feet.
"Philip! What is it?"
As she slipped her arm beneath him to raise his head, something warm and wet trickled over it,--blood!
"The wound," he murmured. "My handkerchief,--anything,--I am sorry." Then the pain died out of his face and his head felt heavy on her arm.
The wound! She sought for it by the aid of that ghastly trickle only to find, when she tore the coverings away, that it was no trickle, but an intermittent gushing. That must be stopped somehow,--her handkerchief, his handkerchief, her own little white hands. It had all passed so quickly that it seemed but a minute since he had cried "Pull up," and there she was with his head on her knee, face downwards, and the warm blood soaking over her. People make long stories afterwards of such scenes; but as a matter of fact they derive all their horror from their awful swiftness.
Belle, bareheaded in the sunlight, was full of one frantic desire to see the face hidden away in her habit. Was he dead? Was that the reason why the blood oozed slower and slower? She craned over his close-cropped hair only to see the outline of his cheek. "Philip, Philip!" she whispered in his ear; but there was no answer. Was it five minutes, was it ten, was it an hour since she had sat there with her hands?--? Ah, ghastly, ghastly! She could not look at them; and yet for no temptation in the world would she have moved a finger, lest he was not dead and she,--oh, blessed thought!--was staving death aside.
A shout behind, and her husband tearing down at a mad gallop, alarmed at the return of the riderless horse. "Good God! Belle! what has happened?"
"Look, and tell me if he is dead," she said. "Quick! I want to know,--I want to know!"
He was not dead, and yet the bleeding had stopped. Then they must get him home; get him somewhere as best they could. A string bed was brought from the nearest village, with relays of willing yet placid bearers; Belle walked beside it, in Philip's helmet, for her own hat had been lost in the quicksand, keeping her hand on the rough bandages while John raced ahead to set the doors open. It was dreary crossing the threshold of the new house, with the jostling, shuffling footsteps of those who carry something that is death's or will be death's. But there was a light in Belle's eyes, and even her husband, accustomed as he was to her even nerves, wondered at her calm decision. Since they must procure a doctor as quickly as possible, the best plan would be for John to ride across country to a station where the afternoon mail stopped. To return to Saudaghur and a mere hospital assistant would be needless delay. She did not mind, she said, being left alone; and meanwhile they must send for a supply of necessaries since it was evident that Philip could not be moved, at any rate for a day or two. So Belle sat in the big empty room, which by and by was to be hers, and watched alone by the unconscious man, feeling that it was her turn now. It was a vigil not to be forgotten. And once as she raised his head on her arm in order to moisten his lips with the stimulant which alone seemed to keep life in him, he stirred slightly, his eyes opened for a second, and a faint murmur reached her ear, "No need for a policeman."
A smile, pathetic in its absolute self-surrender, came to her face as she stooped and kissed him with the passion of protection and possession which a mother has for her helpless child; and that is a love which casts out fear. As she crouched once more beside the coarse pallet where he lay, for the room was destitute of all furniture save the string woven bed, Belle Raby, for the first time in her life, faced facts undistorted by her own ideals, and judged things as they were, not as they ought to be. She loved this man; but what was that love? Was it a thing to be spoken of with bated breath just because the object happened to be a person whom, all things consenting, one might have married? Her nature was healthy and unselfish; her knowledge of the "devastating passion" which is said to devour humanity was derived entirely from a pious but unreasoning belief in what she was told. It is not the fashion nowadays to say so, but that is really the position in which a vast majority of women find themselves in regard to many social problems. And so, in that dreary, shadowy room, with the man she loved dependent on her care for his sole chance of life, Belle Raby asked herself wherein lay the sin or shame of such a love as hers, and found no answer.
And yet, when her husband returned with the doctor, he brought back with him also the old familiar sense that something, she knew not what, was wrong. The old resentment, born of the old beliefs, at the odious position in which she found herself. But now she tried to set these thoughts aside as unworthy, unworthy of her own self, above all unworthy of Philip.
Afzul Khân was sitting in Shunker Dâs's house at Faizapore with a frown upon his face. He had come all the way in order to consult Mahomed Lateef, the old Syyed, about a certain blue envelope which was hidden away in hisposteen, only to find that the old man had retreated before his enemies to his last foothold of land, while the usurer had enlarged his borders at the expense of the ruined old chief's ruined house.
Now Mahomed Lateef was Afzul Khân's patron. In this way. The latter was foster-brother to that dead son who had died gloriously in the regiment, and who had been born at an outpost on the frontier. Indeed, but for the old man, Afzul would never have put the yoke of service round his neck. So his frown was not only on account of his useless journey; much of it was anger at his old friend's misfortunes, and those who had taken advantage of them. It angered him to see a blue monkey painted on the wall in front of which the staunch Mohammedan used to say his prayers; it angered him still more to see the rows of cooking-pots where there used to be but one. Yet business was business, and Shunker might be able to tell him what had become of the Commissariat-Colonelsahib'sdaughter; for Afzul had had the address of the letter spelt out for him by a self-satisfied little schoolboy at Kohât, and knew enough of poor Dick's family history to suppose that Belle Stuart must be his cousin.
"Estuartsahib'sdaughter," echoed Shunker, a sullen scowl settling on his face; as it always did at the memory of his wrongs. "Why she married thatshaitanRaby who lives at Saudaghur now, because he was turned out of the service.Wah!a fine pair, and a fine tale. She had a lover, Marsden of a Sikh regiment, who paid for her with lakhs on lakhs. Then, when he was killed, she took the money and married Raby. Scum! and they talk about our women, bah!"
This was not all malice and uncharitableness on the usurer's part; for it must be remembered that, if we know very little of Indian social life, the natives know still less of ours; the result being, on both sides, the explanation of strange phenomena by our own familiar experience; and this is not, as a rule, a safe guide in conditions of which we know nothing.
Afzul gave a guttural snort, startling but expressive. "She married Raby! Truly it is said 'The journeyings of fools are best not made.' And Marsdensahib--long life to him!--was her lover!Inshallah!she might have found a worse."
"Before the worms got him," chuckled Shunker; "and then his money was worth another fine man. That is woman's way, white or black."
"Rabysahib's mem," repeated Afzul meditatively. "There thou speakest truth, O Shunker. He is with her now." The memory of those two, standing together hand in hand, came to him and he nodded his head approvingly, for the thought that Belle's allegiance might return to its original object commended itself to his mind; his view of the subject not being occidental.
"Who is with her now?" asked Shunker with a stare.
"Marsdensahib. Hast not heard he hath come back to life?"
The usurer's eyes almost started from his head. "Come back!" he shrieked. "He is not dead! Oh holy Lukshmi! what offerings to thy shrine! Why, theshaitanwill lose the money; he will have to give up the business; and I--oh Gunesh-ji!I am revenged, I am revenged!" He lay back on his bed gasping, gurgling, choking with spiteful laughter and real passionate delight.
The Pathan scowled. His knowledge of English law was limited, and he objected to laughter at Marsdensahib'sexpense. "If he gave it to thememfor what he got, as thou sayest, Shunker, Marsdensahibwill never ask it back. He will take the woman instead; that is but fair."
"Thou dost not understand their crooked ways," gasped Shunker; "and 'tis waste of time to explain. So Marsdensahibis alive again; that is news indeed!Hurri Gunga!I must go down to Saudaghur and felicitate theshaitanon his friend's return. He! he! on his friend's return!"
Afzul felt the longing of the frontiersman to stick a knife in a fat Hindu stomach, but he refrained. The blue envelope was going to be a heavier responsibility than he had thought for, and till that was settled he must not wander into by-ways. No matter how the pig-faced idolater had lied in other things, it was true, about thememand the Major, he had seen that with his own eyes. Had Dicksahibbeen her lover too? And what did both those brave ones see in such a poor, thin creature? Truly the ways of thesahib-loguewere past finding out. Nevertheless he would seek out the old Khân, and see what he said. Shunker might be lying, all except that about themem-sahiband the Major; that was true.
It was well on to noon when Afzul, after many hours of varied travelling by train, by canal, and finally on foot, found himself in Mahomed Lateef's last few acres of land. Of a surety they were not ones to be voluntarily chosen as a resting-place; bare of everything save the sparse stalks of last year's millet crop, showing all too clearly how scanty that crop had been; bare to the very walls of the half-ruined tower which stood supported on one side by the mud hovel occupied by the owner. A significant fact, that bareness, showing the lack of flocks and herds, the lack of everything that was not wanted for immediate use. And as he stood at the open door of the yard, it also showed clean-swept and garnished, dire sign of the poverty which allows nothing to go to waste. Yet it was not empty of all, for as the Pathan knocked again, a child, bubbling over with laughter, ran from a dark door into the sunlight.
"Nâna, Nâna! [grand-dad] catch, catch!" it cried, and its little legs, unsteady though they were, kept their advantage on the long ones behind, long but old; crippled too with rheumatism and want of food to keep the stern old heart in fighting order; yet bubbling over with laughter, also, was the stern old face. "Catch thee, gazelle of the desert! fleetest son of Byramghor! Who could catch thee? Ah, God and his Prophet! thou hast not hurt thyself, little heart of my heart! What, no tears? Fâtma, Fâtma! the boy hath fallen and on my life he hath not shed a tear.Ai, the bold heart!ai, the brave man!"
An old woman, bent almost double with age, crept from the door. She kissed the child's feet as it sat throned in its grandfather's arms. Her lips could reach no higher, but that was high enough for worship. "He never cries! None of them cried, and he is like them all," she crooned. "Dost have a mind, Khânsahib, of Futteh Mahomed falling?--the first, and I so frightened. There was a scratch a finger long on his knee and--"
"Peace, Fâtma, and go back! There is a stranger at the door. Go back, I say!"
It was a difficult task to draw the veil over those bent shoulders, but the old woman's wrinkled hands did their best as she scurried away obediently.
"Salaam Alaikoom!" said the Pathan. "The mother may return. It is I, Afzul, brother of the breast."
"Afzul!" The old martinet's face grew dark. "The only Afzul I knew was a runaway and a deserter. Art thou he?"
"Ay! Khânsahib," replied the man calmly. "I ran away because I had sold my life to Marsdensahib, and I wanted to buy it back again. I have done it, and I am free."
"Marsdensahib!'Tis long since I heard that name. Allah be with the brave! Pity there was none to stand between him and death as on that day when my son died."
"Thou liest, Khânsahib. I stood in my brother's place. Marsdensahibis not dead. I left him three days ago at Saudaghur."
"Not dead? This is a tale! A prisoner no doubt.Inshallah!my blood scents something worth words. Here, Fâtma, take the child; or, stay, it's best he should hear too. Such things sink through the skin and strengthen the heart. And bring food, woman, what thou hast, and no excuses. A brave man stomachs all save insult."
So, with the child on his knee, the old soldier listened to Afzul Khân's story, while in the dark room beyond the women positively shed tears of shame over the poor appearance which the plainbajra,[6]cakes, unsweetened, unbuttered, presented on the big brass platter.
"There is the boy's curdled milk," suggested his sad-faced mother. "He will not mind for a day."
"Peace, unnatural!" scolded the grandmother. "The boy's milk, forsooth! What next? Women nowadays have no heart. A strange man, and the boy's milk forsooth!"
Haiyâtbibiblushed under her brown skin. Hers was a hard life with her husband far over the black water, and this stern old man and woman for gaolers. But the boy was hers; she hugged that knowledge to her heart and it comforted her.
The evening drew in, the child dozed off to sleep, but not one jot or tittle of adventure was to be passed over in silence. "Inshallah!but thou didst well!" "God send the traitors to hell!" "Ay! Marsdensahibwas ever the bravest of the brave!" These and many another exclamation testified to the old campaigner's keen interest. But when Afzul began tentatively to question him about the blue envelope, the light died from the hollow eyes. Rabysahib?Nay, he knew nought, save that the people said it was themem-sahib'smoney he was spending in this new talk of indigo and what not. He wished them no ill, but Murghub Ahmad, far away in the Andamans, had saved thememfrom insult,--perhaps worse--and she had given evidence against him in the trial. He wished no man ill, but if what the people said was true, and Rabysahib'snew dam would prevent the river from doing its duty, then it would be a different matter. Ay! the new factory was but ten miles up the river, but no one lived there as yet.
Now the matter of the blue envelope became more and more oppressive to Afzul Khân the more he thought of it. Easy enough to send it anonymously to Rabysahib's mem, and so be quit of it once for all; but what if she had taken the Major's money, as Shunker asserted, in order to buy a new husband? And what if this paper of Eshmittsahib'smeant more loot? Afzul was, all unconsciously, jealous of this white-facedmem, and but for a strange sort of loyalty to the boy he had betrayed would have liked to put the letter in the fire, shake himself loose of all ties, and return to his people.
"Nay! thou askest more than I have to give," replied Mahomed Lateef to his questioning. "I know 'tis on paper they leave their moneys, for, as I said, the Colonelsahibonce asked me--'twas in China, during the war--to set my name as witness to something."
"Was it long-shaped, in a blue cover?" asked Afzul, eagerly.
"There was no cover, but it was long, like the summons from the courts. Stay! if thy mind be really set on such knowledge there is a friend of my poor Murghub's--one who pleads in the courts--even now resting in his father's village but a space from here. He must know more than thou canst want to hear."
So in the cool of the next morning Afzul walked through the barren fields to see the pleader. A keen-faced sallow young man, seemingly glad to escape for the time from patent-leather boots and such like products of civilisation. The Pathan found him squatting over against ahookahand basking in the sunshine like the veriest villager. For all that he was fulfilled with strange knowledge of law and order as administered by the alien, and Afzul sat open-eyed while he discoursed of legacies, and settlements, of thefeme covertand the Married Women's Property Act, with a side glance at divorces and permanent alimony--strange topics to be gravely discussed at the gateway of an Indian village through which men were carried to their rest and women to their bridal beds, with scant appeal to anything but custom. It utterly confused Afzul, though it sent him away convinced that the blue envelope must mean the loot of another lover to themem-sahib.
"I will wait," he said to himself decisively; "yes, I will wait until she is faithful and goes back to the Major; then, as that pleader fellow says, he will get the money. But ifheleaves her and takes his money instead, then I will send her the envelope. That is but fair. God and his Prophet! but their ways are confusing. 'Tis better to steal and fight as we do; it makes the women faithful."
That evening he spent half an hour with a needle and thread, borrowed from old Fâtma, in sewing the blue envelope safely into his skin-coat. Then he sat once more stirring the old Mohammedan's blood with tales of fight and adventure till far on into the night. Yet the earliest blink of dawn found him creeping away from the still sleeping household, and his right arm bare of a massive gold bracelet he had worn for years. That he had left lying on the baby's pillow; for was not the child the son of his brother? Had not his father saved Marsdensahibalso? Ah! that score was not paid off yet. He still seemed to see the tall figure standing in the sunlight. Fool that he had been not to fire, instead of giving himself away at a mere word! Even now, though he knew that but for him Philip Marsden's bones would have been churning in a dreary dance of death at the bottom of some boiling pool in the Terwân torrent, he felt the bitterness of defeat. His very admiration, growing as it did with the other's display of pluck, added to his resentment. To take an order from a man when you had your finger on the trigger of your rifle! It was all very well to save a wounded comrade, to stand by him through thick and thin, but that did not show him, or convince yourself, that you cared as little for his menace as he had done for yours. Some day, yes, some day! he would stand up before Marsdensahiband defy him. Then he could cry quits, and go home to his own people in peace.
Nevertheless, the news of his master's accident which met him on his return to Saudaghur sent him without an instant's pause to the factory where Philip still lay unconscious. And when he walked, at the dead of night, into the big bare room where Belle sat watching, his face softened at the sight of that dark head on the pillow. It softened still more when something of the past--Heaven knows what--seemed to come with him, rousing a low, quick voice from the bed. "Afzul, it is cold; put on more fuel. Do you not feel the cold? Afzul, Afzul!" For that something had carried Philip Marsden back to the smoky cave among the snows, although the windows stood wide open to let in the tardy coolness of the summer night.
The Pathan drew himself together and stood at attention. "Huzoor!" he answered quietly. "It is done; the fire blazes."
Belle in the half-shadows thrown by the sheltered lamp stood up looking kindly at the new-comer. "I'm glad you have come, Afzul," she whispered; "he has been calling for you so often."
Behind his military salute the man smiled approvingly. She was of the right sort, faithful to the old love. Marsdensahibshould marry her and get the money, if that was the way they managed things over the black water. And this solution of the question grew upon him as he watched her unfailing devotion when, between them, they helped the sick man through the dreary trouble which was all too familiar to the Pathan. "It was so in the cave," he would say, as time dragged on through days when the sick man lay still and silent, through nights when the quick hurried words never seemed to leave his lips and it was all they could do to keep on the bandages.
"It's the bullet in the shoulder blade that's troublin' him," said the clever little Irish doctor, who rode forty miles every day between two trains in order to see his patient and keep an eye on his hospital. "Put three more days' strength into him, Mrs. Raby, and I'll bring over another man and we'll have at it somehow. The wound has niver haled, and niver will till it gets a fair chance."
Shortly after this Belle found herself pacing up and down the verandah, scarcely daring to think of what was going on within. Would he die? Was this really the end? Was it to be peace at last, and no more struggle? And lo and behold! when the doctors let her into the room again he was lying with a smile on his face, because the pain, the ceaseless pain which had annihilated everything else in the world, was gone.
"I've given you a lot of trouble," he said; and even as he spoke fell asleep from sheer, blessed ease.
After that again came a time when even Afzul stood aside and let thememtake the lead while he sat watching her curiously--a time when it positively seemed more to her that Philip should take so many spoonfuls of nourishment every hour than that he should get better; when the content of immediate success blotted out the thought of future failure, and the fear of death was forgotten in the desire of staving it off. Most people who have nursed a case in which even the doctors stay their hands and wait on Nature, know that strange dream-like life wherein the peaks and passes on the temperature chart seem by contraries to raise or depress the whole world. Belle fought the fight bravely; and not until she stood one day looking at a thermometer which registered normal did she feel a sinking at her heart. They had come down into the low levels of life; they were back in the work-day world. Yet it was not the one they had left six weeks before. Even outwardly it had changed. The last green blade of grass had withered to a brown shadow on the sunbaked soil, and the dust-storms of May swept over the half-finished house.
"It looks dreary enough now, but just you wait till next year," said John Raby, in his cheerful confident way. "The new dam will be finished, I hope, the water will come in at high level to the garden, the place will be a paradise of flowers, and we shall be dividing thirty per cent, profit! There's a prospect! Oh, by the way, did I ever tell you that beast Shunker Dâs came down just after you did, Marsden, expecting to find me on my back like a turned turtle? His face, when he saw I was jolly as a sand-boy, was a caution! By George! that man does hate me and no mistake."
Belle moved a step nearer her husband and laid her hand on the back of his easy-chair. Perhaps it was only his good-nature in leaving her free to nurse Philip, but somehow she felt they had drifted far apart during the past six weeks. "I seem to have heard nothing," she began, wistfully.
"Better employed on the head of the firm, my dear," he replied with a laugh. "You do her credit, Marsden. And now I must be off again, for there is some idiotic fuss at a village a few miles off. Shunker's work, I expect; but we are too strong for him. Even the native recognises the almighty dollar, and if they will only have patience, I'll engage to treble the revenue of this district. Well, good-bye, Belle. I'll be back to-morrow or next day. Soon as I can 'get,' as the Americans say. Take care of yourselves."
When he had gone the punkah went on swinging, Belle's hands knitted busily, Philip's lay idle in the languor of convalescence; all was as before, and yet there was a difference--a difference of which each was conscious, and which brought a certain restraint.
"Why does Shunker hate him?" asked Major Marsden.
There was no lack of confidence now between these two, and if he asked many questions, she was quite ready to answer them faithfully, according to her lights. In this one, however, she failed to give a just impression, for the simple reason that she herself had no conception of the extent of the usurer's malice. In fact, his impotent rage on discovering that Philip's return had apparently made no difference to the Rabys would have been incredible to an educated Englishwoman, had she been aware of it, which she was not. The man, coming down to Saudaghur expectant of consternation, had found nothing but a stir of fresh enterprise which his keen business eye told him meant money. He wandered about from village to village, noting the golden seed being sown by his adversary, until the thought of the harvest in which he would have no share positively worried him into spleen and ague. And as he lay among the simple village folk a fresh idea for revenge came to console him. It is never hard to change the stolid opposition of the Indian peasant into stolid obstruction. No overt injustice is required; nothing but a disregard of custom. And so Shunker, taking advantage of the short period during which he had been associated in partnership with John Raby, began cautiously to call in debts in the name of the firm. Now in an Indian village a debt to the ancestral usurer is a debt; that is to say no nighty ephemeral liability which may crop up at any time claiming payment, but a good, solid inheritance going back sometimes a generation or two; a patent almost of solvency, a claim certainly for consideration at the hands of your banker; since a bumper crop might any day give you the upper-hand, or a bad one make it still more unwise for the creditor to present his bill. Thus, when Shunker disregarded time-worn prejudices to the extent of asking one Peru, an old-established customer, to make a settlement, the latter looked as if the foundations of the round world had been moved.
"Pay," he said slowly, his broad nostrils inflated like those of a horse shying at novelty, "I am always paying,buniak-ji, year by year, one harvest or another. God knows how much, but 'tis the old way, and old ways are good."
"They are good," sighed the usurer, piously. "I like them myself, Peru; but new masters have new ways."
"New masters do not make new land," retorted the peasant shrewdly enough. "That remains the same. It must be sown; yet when I ask the seed-grain, as my fathers have done, the answer is 'Pay!' Pay! of course I will pay when the crops ripen. Does not harvest mean payment to the peasant?"
"Your crops won't ripen long on those fields, I'm afraid, my poor Peru! Thesahibwants land, here, everywhere, for this new factory of his. The men who will not pay will see what befalls. A little will go this year, a little more next. If I were alone 'twould be a different matter, for I was ever faithful to my friends."
Shunker's air of virtuous distress was admirable, but Peru laughed; the rough peasant laugh full of broad toleration. "As vermin to the Pathan, so are the grain-dealers to the farmer! We warm you, and you feed on us till you grow troublesome, then--off goes the coat! Onebuniahis like another; why then dost change?"
"I change not, dunderhead!" cried Shunker enraged at a certain slow superiority in the other. "'Tis Rabysahibclaims payment."
"Then tell RabysahibI will pay when the river comes. It will come this year perhaps, if not, next year; if luck be bad, it may tarry twain, not longer. It comes ever sooner or later; then, let us talk of payment."
Shunker leaned forward, his evil face kindling with malice. "But what, Peru, if the river never returns? What if Rabysahib'snew dam is built to prevent the water coming, so that he may have a grip on the land? What if the seed-grain thou sowest springs green, to die yellow, year after year?"
Pera Ditta's ox-eyes opened helplessly. What if the river never returned? The idea was too vast for him, and yet it remained with him long after Shunker had gone to sow the same seed of mischief in other minds. He did it deftly, taking care not to turn the screw too tightly at first, lest he should bring down on himself the villagers' final argument of the stick. The reason given by the Laird of Inverawe for hanging the Laird of Inverie, "that he just didna like him," has been given before now as fair cause for doing an unfortunate usurer to death with quarterstaves. So Shunker did not disturb primeval calm too rudely. Nevertheless as he paused for a night ere returning to Faizapore, in the empty house at Saudaghur, where Kirpo had passed the months of Râmu's captivity, he felt content with his labours. He had started a stone of unpopularity on its travels, which by and by would bring down an avalanche on his enemy.
As he lounged on the string bed, set for coolness on the flat roof, he told himself, not without a measure of truth, that sooner or later all his enemies perished. Ah, if it were only as easy to keep those you loved in life, as it was to drive those you hated down to death! But it was not; and the thought of frail, sickly Nuttu came, as it often did, to take the savour even from revenge. The memory of deserted Kirpo's sons,--those strapping youngsters whom he had often seen playing on that very roof--made him groan and roll over on his fat stomach to consider the possibility of marrying yet another wife. He had married so many only to find disappointment! As his face came back, disheartened, to the unsympathetic stars which fought against him, he started as if he had been shot. For there was Kirpo herself tall and menacing standing beside the bed. The veil wrapped tightly round her body, left her disfigured death's-head face visible.
"Don't be more of a coward than need be," she said scornfully, as the Lâlâ, after shooting up like a Jack-in-the-box, began to sidle away from her, his dangling legs swinging wildly in his efforts to move his fat form. "I've not come to beat the breath from thy carcase. 'Twill die soon enough, never fear; and just now there is a son to perform the obsequies. There won't be one by and by."
The indifference of her voice, and the aptness of her words to his own thoughts, roused the Lâlâ's rage. "What dost want, hag of a noseless one?" he shrieked, "she-devil! base-born!--"
"Not bad words, Lâlâ," she interrupted calmly. "I've had enough of them. I want money. I'm starving; thou knowest it. What else could I be?"
"Starving!" The word rolled sweeter than any honey under Shunker's tongue. "Then starve away. So thou thoughtest to trick me--me! How didst like the bangles, Kirpo dear? the brave bangles,--he,--he!"
To his surprise the allusion failed to touch her. Instead of breaking into abuse she looked at him curiously, drew her veil so as to hide all but her great dark eyes, and squatted down, as if for a chat, on the ground opposite to him.
"Look here, Lâlâ!" she said. "This is no matter for ill words: 'tis business. What is past, is past. I'm going to give thee a chance for the future--a last chance! Dost hear? So I've come to say I am starving. For six months I paid for my food in this very place; paid for it in thy pleasure. Fair and square so far. But now, because of that pleasure, Râmu is in jail again and I am noseless. Then Râmu's people have taken his sons,--hai! hai!his beautiful sons--from me because of that pleasure. Is not that payment enough, Lâlâ? Shall I starve also?"
"Why not?" chuckled Shunker, "I have no need of thee any more."
Kirpo leaned forward with hand raised in warning, her fierce eyes on his face. "Have a care, Lâlâ! Have a care! It is the last chance. Thou dost not want me; good. I asked for naught to be taken; I asked for something to be given."
"Not apaisa, not apai!" broke in the usurer brutally. "I'm glad of thy starvation; I'm glad they've taken away thy sons."
"Stop, Lâlâ!" shrieked Kirpo, her calm gone, her voice ringing with passion. "I did not saymysons! I said Râmu's! Look, Shunker, look! I have another,--" as she spoke, she tore her veil aside--"in my arms, Lâlâ! Is he not fair and strong for a two months' babe? Would you not like to have him? No, no, hands off, no touching! He is mine, I say, mine, mine!" She sprang to her feet holding the baby high above his head exultantly. He sat staring at it, and trembled like a leaf.
"Kirpo!" he gasped, "give it to me; by all the Gods in Heaven, I will pay--"
A peal of mocking laughter greeted the words. "Bah! Now I have roused thee. 'Tis all a lie, Shunker, all a lie! Only a trick of starving Kirpo's! And yet, somehow he favours thee as thou mightest have been before the grease came to spoil beauty. For all that not like Nuttu, the sickly one. Nuttu will die, this one will live. Wilt thou not, heart's darling and delight?" She covered the babe with a storm of passionate kisses.
"Kirpo! by all the torments of hell--" urged Shunker.
"What! art there already? Not so fast, Lâlâ! not so fast. Wait till I bring this babe to curse thy pyre, to spit on thy ashes,--thy son--thy son!"
"It is a lie!" burst in the wretched man, beside himself with doubt, certainty, and desire. "He is not mine."
"Well said, Shunker, well said!" laughed Kirpo triumphantly, growing calmer with her evident success. "He is not thine, he is mine." She folded her veil round the sleeping child with a flourish, as if to emphasise her words, and stepped backwards. As she stood there sombre, malignant, the winged thoughts flew through Shunker's brain. There is, strictly speaking, no possible divorce, no remarriage for the Hindu; but if Râmu could be got out of the way, he, Shunker Dâs, might pose as a social reformer. It was a fine idea. Or he might,--a thousand suggestions found expression in the covetous hands he stretched towards his victim. "Kirpo, listen!"
"I will not listen. I gave the chance for the child's sake. Now--"
"Kirpo! take what thou likest--"
"Iwilltake what I like, Lâlâ. That is revenge!" Before he could say another word she had turned her back on him, and ere he could rise to stop her was down the narrow stair and out into the street with her precious burden.
So Lâlâ Shunker Dâs lay down and cried, because not one of the women his wealth had bought could bear him a son save this Kirpo whom he had betrayed. Fool that he was not to have seen she must have some deep move on hand ere she came to beg of him! Revenge! He had dreamt of that himself; but what was his poor spite to this devilish malice? He tried to remember that want was a hard master; that Kirpo's own people came from beyond the fourth[7]river and were therefore useless to her as a refuge; that it was woman's way to bark more than bite. In his heart of hearts he knew that she had said truly when she offered him his last chance. And, as a matter of fact, while he sat trying to recover confidence on the edge of his bed, Kirpo and the baby, with many a swing of the full skirts as she strode along, were making their way direct to the enemy's camp; in other words to John Raby's new factory. Thesahibhad interfered on her behalf once, and he hated Shunker. He could give her coolie's work on the new dam, and in return she could give him valuable information as to the usurer's little game. The Lâlâ, had had his chance, partly for the sake of comfort, partly for the sake of the child. Now she would devote herself to revenge and gain a living at the same time.
Of all this, however, Belle was profoundly ignorant; nor did Kirpo say more to her new master than was necessary to show a sound, conceivable reason for her professions of attachment to his cause. John Raby laughed when he heard of his enemy's vows of vengeance; but he was wise enough to see the prospect of unpopularity with his poorer neighbours, and the advisability of being prepared for opposition.
"I hope you don't mind, Marsden," he said a day or two before the Major left, "but I've been treating with that truculent rascal of yours, Afzul. He's coming back to India, he says, next cold weather, on business or something. I've asked him to bring me a gang of navvies and do overseer himself till next rainy season. Those hill-men work like Englishmen, and the new dam will require constant care until it solidifies; besides, I believe in mercenaries; a bandit is always handy."
"And Afzul consented?" asked Philip in surprise.
"Jumped at it. There is no one like the noble savage for turning an honest penny when he can, and I own to tempting him pretty stiffly. We may want that sort of fellow by and by to keep things going."
"I am surprised at Afzul for all that," continued Philip, thoughtfully. "I wonder what he means?"
"Devotion to you," laughed the other; "you should have heard him. And you too, Belle! He laid the butter on thick about your capabilities as a nurse."
She looked up quickly. "I suppose it's ungrateful, but I don't like that man. He always seems to have something in his mind that I can't get hold of."
"He is very intelligent," replied her husband with a shrug of his shoulders; "and took quite an interest in the business, I assure you; he asked a lot of questions. And, to tell the truth, I think a thoroughly devoted rascal is the most useful thing in creation; so I hope he is one."
Philip laughed. "Shall I leave my interests in his hands, Belle, or in yours?"
"Leave them to me, my dear fellow," interrupted John. "Belle doesn't understand business."