CHAPTER XXXI.THE SUMMONS.
In the moonlight, bright as day, Mr. Jervis rode home beside Miss Gordon’s rickshaw. Her tell-tale fan stuck out of the pocket of his overcoat.
Yes, their little world was not blind; it was evidently a settled thing. Most people were glad. The Brandes were sure to do the wedding in “style;” and a wedding would be an agreeable variety from dances and picnics.
“I shall come up to-morrow morning,” he said, as he reluctantly released her hand, “to-morrow before twelve.”
Mr. Brande, who had effected his escape early, had returned home, and been in bed and asleep for some hours.
He was suddenly aroused by his wife standing at his bedside, her cloak hanging off her shoulders, her coiffeur a little deranged, a lamp in her hand illuminating an unusually excited countenance.
“Well,whatis it?” he demanded with pardonable irritation.
“Oh, P.! what do you think? A man has come from Simla——”
“Yes,” suddenly sitting erect, his official mind at once on the alert for some pressing and important dispatch.
“He came out with them in the same ship,” she panted.
Had Sarabella his wife gone suddenly out of her mind?
“He says that Mark, not Waring, is the rich man.”
“He said it after supper, I suppose,” snarled Mr. Brande. “He wasdrunk!”
“Not a bit of it! I tackled Mark himself, and he confessed. I was very angry at being taken in. He declares they did it without meaning a bit of harm at first,and that when it went too far he did not know what to do. He is very sorry.”
“That he is a millionaire! Oh yes, I should think so!”
“He is coming up first thing to-morrow to tell you all about it; and, unless I’m mistaken, to speak to you about Honor.”
“What about her?” sharply.
“Why, you dear, stupid man, are you asleep still? Can’t you guess?”
“You told me that there was nothing of that sort; in fact,” with an angry laugh, “that ‘the boy,’ as you called him, was desperately devoted toyou.”
“What stuff!” she ejaculated indignantly. “He will have thirty thousand a year! I know that I shall never close an eye to-night!”
“And are good-naturedly resolved that I am to keep you in countenance. You might, I think, have reserved this double-barrelled forty-pounder for the morning.”
“And that’s all the thanks I get,” she grumbled, as she slowly trailed away to her dressing-room.
Just about this very time, Mark Jervis was smoking a cigarette in his bare sitting-room. Before him, on the table, lay a white feather fan and a programme. He was much too happy to go to bed, he wanted to sit up and think. His thoughts were the usual bright ones incident to love’s young dream, and as he watched the smoke slowly curling up the air was full of castles. These beautiful buildings were somewhat rudely shattered by the entrance of his bearer—wrapped in a resai, and looking extremely sleepy—with a letter in his hand.
“A Pahari brought this for the sahib three hours ago,” tendering a remarkably soiled, maltreated envelope.
Of course it was from his father at last. He tore it open, and this was what it said—
“My dear Son,“I am very ill. If you would see me alive, come. The messenger will guideyou. I live forty miles out. Lose no time.“Your affectionate father,“H. Jervis.”
“My dear Son,
“I am very ill. If you would see me alive, come. The messenger will guideyou. I live forty miles out. Lose no time.
“Your affectionate father,“H. Jervis.”
The letter was forty-eight hours old.
“Is the messenger here?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes, sahib.”
“Then call up the grey pony syce; tell him to take gram and a jule, and saddle the pony. I am going off into the interior. I must start in twenty minutes.”
The bearer blinked incredulously.
“I need not take you.” The bearer’s face expanded into a grin of intense relief. “I shall be away several days. Get out my riding kit, shove some clothes in a bag, and ask the cook to put up some bread and meat and things, and tell the coolie I will be ready very shortly.”
Then he sat down, drew his writing-case towards him, and began to write a note to Honor. Her first love letter—and strange,but true,hisalso. It was merely a few lines to say he had been most suddenly called away by his father, and hoped that he would be back within the week.
It was both a keen disappointment and a keen pleasure to the girl when the ayah brought the letter to her at nine o’clock. She read it over and over again, but she will not allow our profane eyes to see it, nor can it be stolen, for she carries it about with her by day, and it rests under her pillow by night: at the end of the week it was getting a little frayed.
When the ayah handed the note to the Miss Sahib, the writer was already twenty miles out of Shirani, following a broad-shouldered Gurwali with his head and shoulders wrapped in the invariable brown blanket.
Their course was by mountain bridle-paths, and in an eastern direction; the scenery was exquisite, but its beauties were entirely lost upon Jervis, who was picturing other scenes in his mind’s eye. The roadcrept along the sheer faces of bare precipices, or plunged suddenly into woody gorges, or ran along a flat valley, with cultivated fields and loosely built stone walls. The further they went, the lovelier grew the country, the wilder the surroundings. At twelve o’clock they halted to rest the grey pony—the messenger’s muscular brown legs seemed capable of keeping up their long swinging trot all day. It was four o’clock in the afternoon when they arrived at their journey’s end; they abruptly descended into a flat wooded dale, surrounded by hills on three sides, sloping away to the plains on the fourth. A path from the bridle-road led them into a dense jungle of high grass, full of cattle, pack ponies, and mules. Emerging from this, they came to a wall, along which they kept for about three hundred yards, and turning a sharp corner they found themselves outside a great square yellow house, two stories high.
It seemed as if it had been bodily transplantedfrom England. There was nothing irregular or picturesque about it—the windows were in rows, the roof was square and had a parapet, the sole innovation was a long verandah, which ran all round the building, and was apparently of recent date, a mere after-thought.
Mark, as he rode up to the steps, looked about him for the coolie; he had suddenly disappeared. There was no one to be seen. He ascended to the verandah, it was deserted, save for some fowl, who seemed delightfully at home. It was more the verandah of a native dwelling than the entrance to the home of an Englishman.
The new-comer gazed around expectantly, and saw three string charpoys, a bundle of dirty bedding, a pair of shoes, a huka, and a turban.
The door, which was innocent of paint or bells, was ajar. He pushed it open and found himself in a large, dim, very dirty hall. Here he was confronted by an old nanny goat, and two kids; to the left hesaw a room, which appeared to be a mere repetition of the verandah.
As he hesitated and looked about, a man suddenly appeared, a servant presumably, wearing a huge red turban, and a comfortable blue cloth coat. He was stout and well to do, had a fat face, a black square beard, and remarkably thick lips.
He seemed considerably disconcerted, when he caught sight of the stranger, but drawing himself up pronounced the words, “Durwaza, Bund,” with overwhelming dignity. Adding in English—
“The sahib never see no one.”
“He will see me,” said Mark, with decision.
“Sahib sick, sar, seeing no one, those my orders. Sahib seeing no sahibs for many years.”
“Well, he sent for me, and I have come. Let me see him immediately. I am his son.”
The Mahomedan’s expression instantly changed from lofty condescension to the most unqualified astonishment.
“The sahib’s—son!” he repeated incredulously.
“Yes. I have told you that once already. Look sharp, and send some one to see after my pony; I have come a long distance.”
The bearer went away and remained absent about five minutes, during which time Mark had leisure to note the dirt, and neglected, almost ruinous, state of the house—which had originally been a fine mansion—to listen to loud jabbering and whispering in the room beside him, and to observe several pairs of native eyes eagerly peeping through a crack in the door.
“Come with me,” said the bearer, with a sullen air. “The sahib will see you presently.”
“Is he better?”
“Yes, he is quite well; please to sit here,” and he opened the door of an immense dining-room, furnished with Bombay carved black wood furniture, and a dusty Indian carpet. It was a roomthat was evidently never used, and but rarely opened. Its three great long windows, which were caked and dim with grime, looked out upon the snows. This was evidently the back of the house; the front commanded a view of the plains. The site had been admirably selected.
A black tray, with cold meat and some very sour bad bread, was borne in, and a place cleared on the dusty table by the joint efforts of the sulky bearer and a khitmaghar, with a cast in his eye, and the very leanest figure Mark had ever beheld. However, he was much too hungry to be fastidious, and devoured the refreshments with a capital appetite. Meanwhile, after their custom, the two men stood by in silence with folded arms, staring with concentrated attention and unremitting gaze until the conclusion of the meal.
It was quite dark when the bearer reappeared, and, throwing open the door, announced in a deeply resentful tone—
“The sahib will see the sahib.”
Mark followed the fat, square, aggressive-looking back, till he came to a curtained archway, and was ushered into a lofty dim room, so dim, that he could barely discern the figure which rose to greet him—a tall bent man in a dressing-gown.
“Mark, my boy, it was like you to come so soon,” said a shaky voice. “Like what you were as a child,” and he held out both his hands eagerly.
“I only got your letter at four o’clock this morning, sir,” said his son. “I hope you are better?”
“I am for the present. I sent for you by a private messenger post-haste, because I believed that I had but a few hours to live, and I longed desperately to see you.”
“I have been hoping you would send for me for the last two months. I have been waiting, as you know, in Shirani.”
“Yes—yes—yes! Sometimes the temptation was almost irresistible, but I fought against it; for why should I cloud over your young life? However, I had nochoice; the situation has been forced upon me—and you. My faithful companion, Osman, died ten days ago, but we will talk of this another time. These voices in my head interrupt me; especially that woman’s voice,” with an irritable gesture.
His son could not, for the life of him, think of any immediate or appropriate remark, and sat in embarrassed silence, and then Major Jervis continued—
“You are six and twenty now—a grown man, Mark, and speak like a man! I have not had a good look at your face yet. I wonder if it is the same face as that of my own honest-eyed boy?”
The answer would be prompt, if he so pleased, for the lean khitmaghar now staggered in under the weight of a large evil-smelling “argand” lamp (a pattern extinct everywhere save in remote parts of India).
Mark looked over eagerly at his father. His head was bent in his hands. Presently he raised it, and gazed at his son with a look of unmistakable apprehension. His sonfelt as if he were confronting an utter stranger; he would never have recognized this grey-haired cadaverous old man as the handsome stalwart sabreur he had parted with sixteen years previously. He looked seventy years of age. His features were sharpened as if by constant pain, his colour was ashen, his hands emaciated, his eyes sunken; he wore a camel’s-hair dressing-gown, and a pair of shabby slippers.
“You are just what I expected,” he exclaimed, after a long pause. “You have your mother’s eyes; but you are a Jervis. Of course you see a great change in me?”
“Well, yes—rather,” acquiesced his son, with reluctant truthfulness. “India ages people.”
“You think this a strange life that I lead, I am sure; miles away from my fellow-countrymen, buried alive, and long forgotten?”
“No, not forgotten, sir. Do you recollect Pelham Brande of the Civil Service? He was asking for you only the other day.”
“I think I remember him—a clever fellow, with a very pretty wife, who people said had been a servant. (How long these sort of things stick to people’s memories.) I’ve been out of the world for years.”
“But you will return to it. Come back to England with me. What is there to keep you in this country?”
“What, indeed!” with a jarring laugh. “No, my dear boy, I shall never leave the Pela Bungalow, as they call it, until I am carried out of it feet foremost.”
“Why do you say this? You are a comparatively young man—not more than fifty-five.”
“I feel a thousand years old; and I often wish that I was dead.”
“I don’t wonder! I should say the same, if I had lived here alone for seven years. How do you kill time?”
“I don’t kill time. Time is killing me. I walk in the garden sometimes, but generally I sit and think. You must be tired, my boy,” as if struck by a sudden thought.
“Well, I am, I must confess. I was at a ball until four o’clock this morning.”
“A ball till four o’clock this morning!” he repeated. “How strange it sounds. It seems the echo of a voice speaking twenty years ago!”
Dinner was served at a small table; a fowl for Mark, some patent food for Major Jervis. The cooking was atrocious, the attendance careless, the appointments splendid, but grimy. It was the same in every department—an extraordinary mixture of squalor and magnificence. It seemed to the indignant young man that these ruffians of servants thought anything good enough for his father.
When Major Jervis’s huka was brought in he looked over at his son and said—
“You smoke, of course?”
“Yes, thanks; but not that sort of thing. I would not know how to work it.”
Last time he had lit a cigarette between four walls he little guessed at the style ofhis next surroundings. The room was not uncomfortable, the furniture was massively carved and luxurious, the carpet rich Persian; there were book-cases full of volumes, and there were fine pictures on the walls; but the paper was peeling off in strips, and cobwebs hung like ropes from the corners. The books were grimy with mould, the carpets and curtains inches deep in dust; certainly a sort of oasis had been cleared around Major Jervis’s chair, but everywhere the eye turned were tokens of neglect, poverty, and decay. His father’s slippers were in holes, his linen frayed; apparently he was a poor man. What had become of the begum’s fortune?