“Still, dear,” said Lady Haigh, “we had better have him in and be friendly to him. In a place like this white people are bound to hang together, and I dare say we shall find him very pleasant.”
“Bring the sahib in,” said Sir Dugald, shortly, to Chanda Lal, adopting his wife’s pacific suggestion, but without any lightening of countenance; and presently the bearer ushered in a lank, sallow man, rather over middle age, with a straggling lightish beard, and hair that seemed to stand somewhat in need of the scissors. As Fitz said afterwards, if he had only worn striped trousers and a starred waistcoat, Mr Hicks would have represented to the life the Brother Jonathan of American, not English, caricaturists. Sir Dugald received his visitor with frigid politeness, and the staff, taking their cue from him, did the same; but Mr Hicks appeared to feel no embarrassment, although the tender hearts of Lady Haigh and Georgia were moved to pity on his account. He was duly supplied with coffee; and when Georgia had passed him a plate of cakes he stretched his long limbs comfortably as he reclined in a cane chair and beamed upon the party.
“It makes one feel real high-toned,” he said, slowly, “to be waited upon out here at the back of creation by two lovely and cultured daughters of Albion.”
Sir Dugald gave him a stony glance in reply; while the younger men, uncertain whether the remark was to be considered as due to deliberate rudeness or to ignorance, wavered between amusement and indignation. Lady Haigh answered pleasantly but coldly—
“We are not accustomed to be treated to quite such elaborate compliments, Mr Hicks; but no doubt American manners differ from ours. So I have always understood, at least.”
“You bet they do, ma’am!” was Mr Hicks’ reply, delivered with almost startling emphasis. “When your nigger let me in just now, and the General there stepped forward and said, ‘Mr Hicks, I presume?’ hanged if I didn’t think I had got into a Belgravian drawing-room, or into Central Africa with Stanley, instead of finding a party of civilised white people in the midst of Ethiopia! I guess I’m not cut out for shows of this kind, any way.”
“You prefer a European post, perhaps?” suggested Stratford, as Sir Dugald remained silent.
“You may consider that proved, sir, some! I can fly around with any man in a civilised country, and back myself to send home more ‘copy’ than the paper can use; but I was a fool to cable back ‘Done!’ when the Editor wired, ‘Can you start for Ethiopia next week, and keep an eye on this Mission business?’ Set me down in a telegraph bureau, with a dozen newspaper men there before me and only one wire, and I’ll bet you my bottom dollar that my despatch will go over that wire before any of the other fellows’; but when it comes to organising a dromedary-service to carry my ‘copy’ week by week, it makes me tired of life.”
“If you find it so hard to send your letters, how did you surmount the difficulties of getting up here yourself?” asked Sir Dugald, with a faint appearance of interest.
“I must confess to getting along by taking your name in vain, General,” returned Mr Hicks, easily. “I travelled around for a week or two in Khemistan, just to throw your frontier people off the scent and to make friends with some of the natives. They smuggled me across into Ethiopia in disguise, and I told the people here that I was sent out to write about the Mission and note how it was received, which was quite true. Consequently I was taken everywhere for an emissary of your Government, which has smoothed the way for me considerably. I guess it will gratify you to know that your name was a passport most everywhere.”
“Having heard you were a newspaper correspondent,” said Sir Dugald, “I might have guessed what your methods would be.”
“We military people,” said Lady Haigh, again interposing as peacemaker, “have an odd prejudice against special correspondents, Mr Hicks. It is awkward, but you must be kind enough to excuse it.”
“It’s nothing to what I should feel if I was in the General’s place, ma’am,” said Mr Hicks, affably. “I wouldn’t have one in my camp for any money. They might pillory me throughout the Press of the Union, but so long as I kept them off I should smile. Now, General, after that handsome acknowledgment, I hope we are friends?”
“It’s nothing to what I should feel if I was in the General’s place, ma’am,” said Mr Hicks, affably.
“It’s nothing to what I should feel if I was in the General’s place, ma’am,” said Mr Hicks, affably.
“I hope so,” returned Sir Dugald, still unsoftened.
“I should like to do a deal with you, General,” continued Mr Hicks. “If you could spare me a minute or two alone, I think I could convince you that we have interests in common.”
“Work is over at this time of night,” said Sir Dugald, icily. “If I can be of service to you in any little difficulty with the authorities here, or with regard to the postal arrangements, I shall be happy to see you in the morning. My office hours begin at six.”
“Do you wish to name any special time, General?”
“By no means, Mr Hicks.” Sir Dugald fixed a blank uncomprehending gaze on the American’s face. “It is my duty to support the interests of the subjects of friendly powers wherever I can, and I hope you will attend to state your case at the time most convenient to yourself.”
“I guess you don’t understand me, General. I can fix my own affairs, thank you. What I want is to arrange a trade. You give me what I want, and I give you what you want, do you see? I should prefer to speak to you in private as to the exact terms.”
“Any proposal you have to make to me must be uttered in the presence of these gentlemen, if you please.”
Mr Hicks laughed uneasily.
“Well, your way of doing business licks Wall Street,” he said. “What I have to say is, you give me the information I may need as to the plans and intentions of your Government, and I will give you some pieces of news without which you will do nothing here.”
“You are an accredited agent of the United States Government?” asked Sir Dugald.
“Not at all, sir. I represent the ‘Empire City Crier.’”
“And I represent her Britannic Majesty. I regret that the ‘deal’ to which you have referred cannot come off.”
“Then your Mission will be a failure, General.”
“Pardon me, but that is no concern of yours.”
“Well, you are the first man I ever knew bring a wife and daughter into a place like this on such an almighty poor chance. I don’t know what you think, gentlemen”—Mr Hicks wheeled round in his chair and glanced at the rest of the party—“but I say—and I know something about this place—that you have a precious small hope of getting out of Kubbet-ul-Haj with your lives if your Mission does fail.”
“You really must excuse my staff from commenting on your interesting piece of information, Mr Hicks,” said Sir Dugald, smoothly; “but they are not accustomed to be set up as a court of appeal over me.”
“May I ask, General, whether you know why Fath-ud-Din, the Grand Vizier, did not ride out to welcome you to-day?”
“I believe he was ill,” said Sir Dugald, stifling a yawn.
“He was so sick that he was riding past my house to the bath at the moment you were entering the city on the other side.”
“I don’t quite see,” said Dick, “why a piece of bad manners on Fath-ud-Din’s part should be such a fearful omen for us.”
“I guess you think yourself dreadful smart, Colonel,” returned Mr Hicks; “but you soldier officers are a bit too cute sometimes. Old Fath-ud-Din is a bad crowd generally, and he means mischief. Leaving him out of account, what do you think has happened to your friend the Crown Prince, Rustam Khan? Has he dropped in on you here yet?”
“Scarcely,” said Dick. “We have not arrived so very long, you know.”
“That is so.” Mr Hicks disregarded the sarcasm implied in the words. “But I know something of that young man, and I can tell you he would have been around here like greased lightning if he had had the chance. He was afraid of losing his scalp if he attempted it. The fact is, you gentlemen are behind the times.”
“Ah, but we’ll be truly grateful if you’ll enlighten us a little,” put in Fitz, in a most alluring brogue, which he kept for use on special occasions.
Mr Hicks glanced sharply at Sir Dugald. The slightest sign of interest or eagerness would have determined him to impart no information except at a price, but the look of repressed weariness which was just visible in the half-light served to pique the American into doing his best to surprise and startle his bored and scornful host. He leant back in his chair with his thumbs stuck in his waistcoat pockets.
“We think we are pretty slick in fixing things out West,” he said, “but they have by no means a bad notion of history-making out here. When it was arranged that your Mission should start, General, Rustam Khan was in high favour with his father, old Fath-ud-Din was biting his nails in disgrace, and the people were all in love with the English. But we have had a Palace revolution since then. The King’s second wife (she is Fath-ud-Din’s sister, and they all hang together) gave her husband one of her slave-girls, the prettiest she could pick up anywhere, and that brought her into high favour, and all her relations with her. She is young Antar Khan’s mother, and he is prime favourite now, while Rustam Khan and his mother, the King’s first wife, are nowhere. Curious what little things bring about these big changes, isn’t it?”
“The details of these Palace scandals are scarcely edifying,” remarked Sir Dugald, to whom Mr Hicks had all along been addressing himself.
“Probably not, General; but they are often important, and there is an outside circumstance that complicates this one. From your point of view it was slightly unfortunate that an envoy should turn up a week or two ago with presents and offers of alliance from Scythia and Neustria. I guess those two States are hunting in couples. It’s not the first time they’ve done it, and they generally make a good thing out of it. Does this alter your way of looking at things at all, General?”
“Not at all,” returned Sir Dugald, placidly.
“Now come, General,” said Mr Hicks, leaning forward and extending a long forefinger to tap Sir Dugald on the knee, “you and I are both white men. We understand each other. I can put you up to circumventing this Scythian cuss if you will only show an accommodating spirit.”
“Really,” said Sir Dugald, “I am deeply obliged; but until her Majesty is pleased to appoint me a colleague I have an invincible objection to sharing my duties with any one. I cannot sufficiently admire your disinterested and public-spirited offer of co-operation, Mr Hicks, but this prejudice of mine—foolish and incomprehensible as it must no doubt appear to you—prevents my accepting it.”
“Think of your reputation, General,” urged Mr Hicks, sadly. “I give you my word I had sooner write the story of a successful mission than an unsuccessful one any day. We newspaper men have a way of finding out things which you diplomatic gentlemen never hear of, and I can help you through with your work and cover you with glory as well. You’ll take it?”
“No, thank you,” returned Sir Dugald. “It is all prejudice, of course, but somehow I had rather not.”
“There are just a few people left in the world who prefer honour to glory,” cried Georgia her eyes flashing.
“What an unkind remark, Miss Keeling!” said Sir Dugald. “You will really wound my feelings if you impute motives to me in that reckless way. Well, Mr Hicks, I hope we shall see more of you. Lady Haigh is always at home on Friday afternoons, and if you care to drop in to tiffin any day we shall be delighted to see you.”
Mr Hicks had not been intending to depart so early, but at this intimation he rose reluctantly and took his leave. North and Stratford escorted him to the door, and when they had returned to the terrace a sense of constraint seemed to fall upon those present. Sir Dugald’s impassive face told nothing, and his eyes were fixed on a distant point of light in the city. He was the only one of the party who recognised the full importance of the piece of news which had just been announced, but all perceived more or less distinctly that the enterprise on which they were bound had received a check. It was Georgia who broke the silence at last.
“Sir Dugald,” she said, boldly, “won’t you say something? We couldn’t help being here and hearing what that man said, and we should like to know what you really think, just to hear what we have to expect.”
“I have never pretended to be a prophet,” said Sir Dugald, looking round with a half-smile, “and I fear I am not much in the habit of stating publicly what I really think. Still, after what has happened to-night, I will say that our task is certainly very much complicated by what our American friend has told us, though I see no reason for wailing over it as impossible. Palace revolutions are tolerably frequent in these countries, and Rustam Khan may be in favour again to-morrow. Of course the news about the Scythian agent is bad, but we do not hear that any treaty has been concluded, and we are now on the spot. If the people are reasonably well affected towards us, or are even keeping an open mind, the advantages we can offer ought to convince them that it is to their interest to make friends of us. They appeared friendly enough this morning.”
“Hicks told us at the door,” said Dick, “that the King and his Amirs were very much divided in opinion, some of them advocating the alliance with us, some that with Scythia, and others that the old position of isolation should be maintained. The worst of them, he says, is an old fellow called the Amir Jahan Beg, who is Rustam Khan’s father-in-law. ‘He is the deadest-headed old reactionary I ever saw,’ Hicks said. ‘All the other fellows turn round in the street to look after me and show a little interest, but this old cuss rides right on and takes no notice. The other day I sent my servant to negotiate an interview, and all the answer I got was that the door was shut.’”
“Rather good, that, for Jahan Beg,” remarked Stratford.
“But if he is Rustam Khan’s father-in-law he may persuade him to take sides against us,” said Dr Headlam.
“We can do nothing until we see how the land lies,” said Sir Dugald. “To-morrow, when the King receives us for the first time, we shall get some idea of his attitude towards us, and we can take steps accordingly. There is only one thing that I must specially impress upon you, gentlemen: be careful when you are in company with Hicks. Even after his failure to-night I haven’t a doubt that we shall see a good deal of him. I invited him to come here now and then because I thought we should be acquainted with his movements occasionally, at any rate, and he accepted the invitation as likely to give him a means of finding out what we are doing. Of course he will bribe the servants here and at the Palace to bring him news; but he will certainly not neglect us. Therefore be careful what you say. I don’t want to misjudge the man, but he might not be above the temptation of taking steps to secure the fulfilment of his prophecy as to the failure of the Mission. In any case he might do a great deal of harm by sending home exaggerated or distorted reports of what had actually occurred. General conversation is the safest—no private talks. I would not answer even for you, Stratford, in the hands of a ‘Crier’ interviewer, although you are a past-master in the art of mystification. Even if you said nothing, that is not necessarily a barrier to his crediting you with a long oration. There is safety in numbers, for he could not derive much political capital from a conversation held in the presence of the whole Mission. Our policy is to show a united front.”
“If only that wretched man had never come to Kubbet-ul-Haj to spoil everything!” said Lady Haigh, somewhat ungratefully, it must be confessed, in view of the information imparted by Mr Hicks.
“Oh, don’t abuse him,” said Sir Dugald. “It is his business.”
The day following had been appointed by the King for the state reception of the Mission, and Sir Dugald and his staff left headquarters early for the Palace, each man arrayed in the most gorgeous garments in his possession. The occasion was a purely formal one, consisting chiefly of the presentation of the different members of the Mission to the King by name, followed by a little ceremonial conversation between his Majesty and Sir Dugald. The King’s questions concerned chiefly the personal and family history of Queen Victoria, although he was also interested in the past services of the Envoy himself. It was not considered correct for Sir Dugald to originate any remarks, when once the courteous messages with which he had been charged by his Government were delivered, and conversation did not flow very freely, although, thanks to the necessity for interpreting everything that was said, the time was fairly well filled up. The King was obviously ill at ease, asking every now and then sudden questions as to the object of the Mission, and the intention of the Government in sending it, with the evident aim of disconcerting Sir Dugald. But the shrewd dark eyes scanned the face of the Envoy in vain for any signs of confusion or surprise, and his tranquil and unhurried manner seemed gradually to disarm the King’s suspicions. For Sir Dugald to succeed in maintaining his air of careless calm was no slight triumph under the circumstances, since he noticed many things which assured him of the correctness of the information given by Mr Hicks. Rustam Khan was nowhere to be seen; but the little Antar Khan, a boy of about eleven, robed in bright blue satin and decked with jewels, occupied a seat at his father’s side, and was allowed to interpolate remarks of his own into the conversation in a way that showed him to be high in favour. Moreover, the King made no allusion to the eager request he had sent to England for a lady doctor who might examine his wife’s eyes, and it seemed as though Georgia’s journey to Kubbet-ul-Haj would be useless, since she could not visit the royal harem without an invitation. The Amirs who stood round the throne appeared interested in all that passed, but their faces expressed no conspicuously friendly feeling; while one of their number, whom the staff identified at once with the Jahan Beg described by Mr Hicks, showed himself ostentatiously inattentive to all that went on. Still, when the members of the Mission left the Palace and returned to their headquarters to reassure the anxious hearts of Lady Haigh and Georgia, they were able to suggest some reasons for hopefulness. At any rate, the Mission had been graciously received, and that at once, and the King seemed to be in a state of suspended judgment, rather than of settled hostility, while no parade had been made of the presence of the Scythian envoy in the city.
Once more the party at the Mission met on the terrace after dinner to discuss coffee and things in general, and once again Chanda Lal interrupted the harmony of the group. Stratford was in the midst of a description of some political crisis which had occurred at Czarigrad during his residence there, when the bearer mounted the steps and made his way noiselessly to Sir Dugald’s side.
“Highness, in the court there is an old man wrapped in a mantle, who wishes to see you. He says he is the Amir Jahan Beg.”
Low as were Chanda Lal’s tones, the rest of the party heard the words, and a thrill of excitement ran through them. Why should this notoriously anti-foreign ruler come disguised and under cover of night to see Sir Dugald? Surely the situation promised fresh developments? But Sir Dugald was neither flattered nor interested.
“This is beyond endurance!” he exclaimed, wrathfully. “It was bad enough to be disturbed in the evening by that American fellow; but for a native it is a little too much! The door is shut, bearer.”
“I bring a message to the Queen of England’s Envoy from Rustam Khan,” said a crisp, penetrating voice in Ethiopian; and the startled hearers turned to see an elderly man with a grey beard standing on the steps behind them, his head and shoulders still shrouded in his cloak. “Let the Envoy bid the servant depart and I will do my errand.”
“You can go, bearer,” said Sir Dugald. “By the bye, we shall want Mr Kustendjian,” he added, and rose to call back Chanda Lal, but the stranger stepped before him, and laid a hand upon his arm.
“There is no need of an interpreter,” said Jahan Beg in English. “Haigh—Dugald Haigh—have you forgotten me?”
“Good heavens!” cried Sir Dugald, stepping back. “Can it be possible? You are John Bigg—the man who disappeared?”
“Exactly,” said Jahan Beg. “The man who disappeared, and made a nine days’ wonder for his friends at Tajpur, every one of whom had a separate discreditable theory to account for his disappearance.”
“That was quite unnecessary,” returned Sir Dugald, “for any one who knew you and knew Beatrice Wynn.”
“As you did? Well—by the bye, what has become of Beatrice Wynn?”
“Dead, years ago. Typhoid—in Assam somewhere.”
“And for years I have been dead in Ethiopia. Young men”—he turned suddenly to the staff, who had been endeavouring, with indifferent success, to get up an interest in conversation among themselves—“let me give you a warning. Never throw up everything for a woman’s sake. Never spoil your lives because you have been disappointed in love. There is not a woman on earth that’s worth it.”
“Present company always excepted, of course,” said Fitz, with a bow to Lady Haigh and Georgia. Jahan Beg looked at him with a grim smile.
“No woman will ever spoil your life,” he said, “though I don’t necessarily think the better of you for that. As for the rest of you, you are beyond the impressionable age, I think. You begin to see that there is something else to live for besides love. I was twenty-three when I threw aside as good prospects under the Public Works Department as a man need want, and cut myself off from my friends and my country, and all for the sake of a woman who had never cared a scrap for me. She was only amusing herself with me for a while—it’s a way they have. I can see now that she painted and dyed, and that she was years older than I was—she was a widow—but I didn’t see it then. I thought her as beautiful as an angel, and as good—heavens! how I did believe in that woman—and when she married the Commissioner, I chucked everything and left.”
“Leaving your friends to get your servants brought into court on suspicion of having made away with you, and your enemies to look for discrepancies in your accounts,” said Sir Dugald.
“It was all a long time ago; but I hope no one was hanged,” said Jahan Beg.
“No; there was no possible evidence against any of the servants, and people began to talk of suicide, and to accuse the fair Beatrice under their breath of driving you to desperation. In self-defence she let it become known that your last letter to her had talked much of going to the dogs and of a ruined life, but had contained no threats. Then public opinion veered round again to a certain extent; but the Commissioner accepted another post before very long.”
“And for that woman’s sake,” said Jahan Beg, fiercely, “I have lost everything. It is enough to make a man’s blood boil, Haigh. I am an alien and a renegade all the rest of my days on account of a woman for whom I have not now even a kindly thought.”
“We have all made fools of ourselves at one time or another,” said Sir Dugald, soothingly. “You have paid heavily enough for that madness of yours, Bigg, and now you can come back with us when we leave this place and get into the world again.”
“Not quite. I have given hostages to fortune, you see.”
“What? Oh, you have married a native?”
“Yes. My wife is the King’s cousin. She was a widow when I married her, and very rich—for this part of the world. She showed a slight disposition to exact a very rigid etiquette at first—expected me not to sit down in her presence without being invited, and so on, which might have led to friction if I had not explained my views clearly at once. We have never quarrelled since, and we never interfere with one another.”
“You have no children?” asked Lady Haigh.
“I have one daughter. She is married to Rustam Khan.”
“An English girl married to a native?” cried Georgia.
“She is only half English, at any rate.”
“But isn’t Rustam Khan a Mohammedan?”
“Of course; so is she, so is my wife, so am I—in so far as I am anything. I told you that I was a renegade, and now you know the worst of me.”
“But how did you find your way here, Bigg?” asked Sir Dugald, while Georgia was silent in dismay.
“You know I was always fond of disguising myself and going about among the natives. Well, when I left Tajpur I made up my mind to wander about for a time as afakir, and at last I got into Khemistan. Things were not so settled there then as they are now; St George Keeling was hard at work pacifying the country. I fell among thieves—that is, among the hillmen—who would not believe me when I said I was an Englishman, but were afraid to kill me lest it should turn out to be true after all. They compromised matters by making me a slave, and gave me a wretched time of it. At last the Ethiopians made a raid upon their villages, and I was so glad to see the tables turned that I joined the invaders, and helped them to get possession of the various strongholds. The hillmen were wiped out, and when the fighting was over the Ethiopians thought of me. They never imagined I was an Englishman, and I didn’t tell them. Well—I may as well make a clean breast of it—they offered me lands, and so on, and a command in their army if I would turn Mohammedan, thinking that I was an idolater, like the hillmen, and I had had time to recover a little from the knockdown blow Beatrice gave me, and life seemed worth living again, and I consented. It’s a sordid affair enough, you see—just a bartering of one’s conscience against life and wealth—and it was not worth it. I have tried it, and I have come to the conclusion that one’s wretched life is a poor exchange for country and religion. Another warning for you, young men.”
“Then you rose to power after all?” said Sir Dugald.
“I did. It doesn’t sound a moral arrangement—to any one who only looks on the surface. My lands lie near the frontier of the Scythian sphere of influence, and before my day they were always liable to incursions from the tribes under Scythian protection. I put a stop to that, and my fame spread. One Ethiopian chief after another made alliance with me, until I was at the head of a confederation extending all along that frontier. Then it was that the King acknowledged my power. Old Fath-ud-Din, who had taken a dislike to me from the very first, pointed out to him that the position I had built up for myself was a menace to the throne. Consequently his advice was that I should be summoned to Court and quietly put out of the way. Fortunately for me, however, the King took some one else’s advice that time. He knew that I was the only man that could hold that frontier, and he preferred to consolidate my power and attach my interests to his own by offering me his cousin’s hand. I knew better than to refuse, and from that time I became generally known as the Amir Jahan Beg, one of the pillars of the state. At least I can say that I have done my best for my district. The people are better governed there than anywhere else in the kingdom, and the chiefs under me have taken to copying some of my ways. That is something, but I can’t pretend that the game is worth the candle. I used to feel it more than I do now, especially when my daughter was a child. There was so much that was English about her that it nearly broke my heart to think of her growing up and leading the life of an Ethiopian woman. I used to plan to take her with me and make a dash for liberty through Scythian territory, but it seemed mean to go away and leave my wife, and I shouldn’t have known what to do with her if I had got her to come too. Then Rustam Khan, who was a delicate boy, and pined in the city, came to live with us, and I grew as fond of him as if he had been my own son. He is the only person here who knows that I am an Englishman, but I have taught him a little English, and we talk it together sometimes. When he grew up, he wished to marry my daughter, and though I knew it would make Fath-ud-Din and all his crew my open enemies, instead of merely my ill-wishers, I could not refuse him, for he promised to take no other wife if I would give her to him.”
“Then is that the origin of the rivalry between Rustam Khan and Fath-ud-Din?” asked Sir Dugald.
“No, it has merely aggravated it. Rustam Khan is the son of the King’s first wife, but Antar Khan’s mother, the Vizier’s sister, has royal blood in her veins through her mother, and no one can decide which of the two sons has the best right to succeed. Consequently the King gives them each a turn of favour, and plays them off one against the other, to prevent either of them from forming a party. Just now, Antar Khan, which of course means Fath-ud-Din, is uppermost.”
“And that bears seriously on our position here?”
“It does; for Rustam Khan is the strongest advocate of the English alliance, while Fath-ud-Din, out of pure contrariness, has fanned the hopes of the Scythians. There is a wretched Jew fellow, supposed to have been intrusted by the Scythian and Neustrian Governments with a secret mission, in the town now, but he is kept in the background until the King has made up his mind about you. Whatever Fath-ud-Din can do against you he will, you may depend upon that, and he is all-powerful just now. Rustam Khan finds it advisable to remain at home and pretend to be ill. He would have come to see you before this if he had only had himself to please, but he knows that his visit would be at once represented as part of a plot to dethrone his father and place himself on the throne. Even I have to be careful. Naturally I have spoken in favour of the English alliance, and joined with Rustam Khan in doing all I could to further it, but Fath-ud-Din has begun to smell a rat. He can’t dream that I am an Englishman, but I believe he thinks I have been in British territory and brought dangerous ideas into Ethiopia with me, and he would ruin me if he could. That is why I am bound, while supporting the object of your Mission here, to appear indifferent or even hostile to yourselves personally, and why I dare not be seen coming to your house. There is a horrible Yankee journalist about the place—have you come across him yet?—who tried to draw me, but I put on the very haughtiest oriental airs, and sent him away with a flea in his ear. I dare say he means me no harm personally, but I know he is very thick with Fath-ud-Din, and that is enough for me. He has not got much change out of Jahan Beg.”
“Mr Hicks has already presented himself here,” said Sir Dugald. “What with him, and Fath-ud-Din, and the Neustro-Scythian agent, and your precarious position in the country, Bigg, it would appear to a Western mind that our prospects of success were rather cloudy.”
“I will do what I can to help you,” returned Jahan Beg; “secretly, of course. In public you must expect to find me slightly troublesome in weighing your proposals, and rigid in exacting the full pound of flesh and an ounce or two extra; but such hints as I can give you privately I will. Don’t tell me what your instructions are; I don’t want to know them. I only say, don’t insist on the reception of a permanent British resident with an escort at Kubbet-ul-Haj, for you won’t get it, and you will be playing into the hands of Scythia. The Jew agent has assured the King already that you are sure to make that demand, and that such an arrangement would be the first step towards annexing the kingdom. If you must be represented here, stand out for a Consul-General at Iskandarbagh, the big town you passed just after crossing the frontier, with a nativeVakilat the capital. Then don’t demand any territory. The Scythians have damaged their case already by hinting at a rectification of frontier. A reciprocal commercial treaty you are empowered to conclude, I suppose; but you must agree that no foreigner shall enter Ethiopia without the King’s passport. There will be difficulties, too, about the legal status of foreigners——”
“Excuse me, Bigg, but would you not prefer to discuss these things with me in the office? They are a little technical to form an evening entertainment for the ladies. Mr Stratford, perhaps you will kindly accompany us?”
“The ladies must excuse me, remembering that it is a long-desired relief to talk English once more to any one who can understand it properly. You have not presented me to your wife, Haigh.”
Sir Dugald performed the ceremony briefly, and then introduced the guest to Georgia, explaining that she was St George Keeling’s daughter.
“And you are the lady doctor?” said Jahan Beg. “I have one thing to ask of you, Miss Keeling. It is possible that at the Palace you may see my daughter, Nur Jahan, Rustam Khan’s wife. Have pity upon her, and don’t make her discontented with her life. She must stay here all her days, and she is happy with her husband and her baby. You need not describe to her English life and the Christian position of women, and all those other luxuries of civilisation of which you are the culminating product, need you? It could do no possible good, and it certainly would do a great deal of harm, for things of that kind are absolutely unattainable here.”
“I will try not to put new ideas into her head, if they would only make her unhappy,” said Georgia, rather doubtfully; “but surely you have told her about England?”
“I have told her nothing. ‘Where ignorance is bliss’—you know the rest. Although I have married her to a Mohammedan—and roused your indignation by doing so—I did what I could to keep her happy as his wife. She does not know that I am an Englishman, and I have never even taught her English; although for years I used to hold long conversations with myself or with imaginary friends when I was alone, that I might not forget my own language.”
And Jahan Beg went on his way, leaving Georgia oppressed with a sense—which was by no means new to her, but had never made itself felt so clearly as to-night—of the complexity of life. She sat looking out over the Moslem city, and pondering the various problems which the Amir’s words had started in her mind, while Lady Haigh and Fitz settled down to a game of halma, and North carried off Dr Headlam to show him a new kind of locust, which one of the servants had caught and brought to him. The doctor welcomed the discovery with rapture, and conveyed the insect in triumph to his own quarters, while Dick returned to the terrace. Georgia turned to him impulsively as he mounted the steps close beside her.
“What is your opinion of compromises? Can they ever be morally justifiable?”
Now it was more than a month since Dick and Georgia had exchanged any conversation but the merest commonplaces, and Dick was so well satisfied with this state of affairs as to vow to himself every day that he would take care their acquaintance remained on this somewhat restricted footing for the future. Yet although he felt that Georgia had not intentionally appealed to him in preference to any one else, and would have attacked Sir Dugald or Stratford on the subject, if either of them had appeared at the moment, as readily as himself, he sat down near her, and hastily collected his views on the question of compromise.
“It rather depends upon the nature of the compromises, doesn’t it?” he asked—“whether they refer to essentials or non-essentials, I mean. For instance, one’s whole existence is a series of compromises.”
“In the sense in which all social life is a compromise between the demands of the individual and those of the race?” said Georgia. “Yes, but those refer to non-essentials, of course.”
“Non-essentials to the race now; but I dare say they seemed essential enough to the individual at one time. For instance, in the district in India in which I served first, the natives thought it essential to offer human sacrifices every year. Their crops depended upon it, they said. But we have taught them otherwise, and now they compromise matters by sacrificing goats.”
“But that was not really an essential matter; it was only that they thought it so. What I want to know is, how can one tell, in questions of right and wrong, where conciliation ends and compromise begins?”
“That is the office of all great leaders and statesmen, I suppose; to point out a path which shall conciliate as many people, and compromise as few principles, as possible. On the whole, the world is on the side of compromise, I think—when it is called conciliation. The people who object to both the name and the reality generally become martyrs.”
“Martyrs!” said Georgia, slowly. “It is easy enough to say the word; but think what it means!”
“Ah! I see that it is our friend Jahan Beg’s story which has awakened your sudden interest in compromises.”
“Not exactly his story, but what he said to me. It made me wonder whether I had done right in coming here. Perhaps you don’t know that when I agreed to come it was expressly stipulated that I was to make no attempt to introduce Christianity into the King’s household?”
“That seems a very obvious and necessary precaution,” said Dick, delighted to find Georgia talking to him so frankly. “You could do no good, as Jahan Beg said; but you might do a great deal of harm, both to the poor women and to the Mission.”
“But it almost seems to me that I was wrong in reasoning in that way. It is like hiding one’s colours—nearly as bad as doing evil that good may come.”
“Not doing evil, surely, Miss Keeling? As a medical missionary, half your work is concerned with the bodies of your patients. You can do that half still, and you are not forbidden to answer questions if the ladies ask them.”
“But I know they won’t ask me questions of that kind. My Khemistan experiences have shown me that they will only talk about the merest trivialities, or else ask me for poisons.”
“Then it can’t be your fault. At any rate, you will make friends with the ladies, and perhaps the memory of your visit may prepare the way for a regular missionary when the country is opened up later on,” suggested Dick, the fluency of his reasoning astonishing himself.
“I am afraid I looked upon Kubbet-ul-Haj too much as a stepping-stone to Khemistan. I thought perhaps the Government might allow me to settle on the frontier and practise there if I accomplished this business successfully.”
“Well, do you know, I think that was rather a good idea, Miss Keeling. You might even itinerate into Ethiopia if the King was well-disposed towards you, and there could be no mistake as to your status then. But you are not thinking of refusing to treat the poor Queen now that you are here, and leaving her to go on suffering until a lady doctor with a more elastic conscience can be sent out?”
“No, of course not; it would be cruel as well as absurd. Besides, it would be breaking my word. But don’t you ever feel puzzled about your duty, Major North, or afraid that in some particular case you may have acted wrongly?”
“I don’t think so,” returned Dick, meditatively. “Not that I am a very good judge, for things have always been pretty clear for me. I have been under orders a good deal, you know, and then my only business was to obey, and when you are thrown on your own responsibility, you only try to do your duty, and act on the square. You know your father’s motto, Miss Keeling? Two or three of his Khemistan men have told me that he gave it to them when they began to work under him. This was the way it usually went: ‘You are here for the honour of your country and the good of the natives,’ he would say when they joined. ‘Never desert a friend, never disown an agent, never deceive an enemy. You will go on duty to-morrow, and may God bless you.’ I wish I had known him. It is a distinction to have served under such a man.”
“Highness,” said a voice at Dick’s elbow, before Georgia could answer, and they both turned to see Chanda Lal, who had mounted the steps noiselessly with his bare feet, standing beside them, “there is another old man in the court, wrapped up in a mantle, and he says he is the Grand Vizier, Fath-ud-Din. He asks to see theburra sahib, and he will not be turned away.”
“Good gracious!” cried Dick. “We shall have all Kubbet-ul-Haj here before long. It only wants the King and Rustam Khan to make things lively. But if Fath-ud-Din meets Jahan Beg, there’ll be murder done. Miss Keeling, while I go and parley with this old wretch, do you mind warning the Chief to get rid of Jahan Beg? I shouldn’t wonder if we have to let him down through a window into the street behind, for it won’t do for him to pass through the courtyard.”
He ran down the steps, and Georgia hurried to Sir Dugald’s private office, where she found him in earnest confabulation with Jahan Beg. The state of affairs was quickly explained, and Stratford hastened the visitor away to the back of the house. Here, when the new-comer was safely closeted with Sir Dugald, Dick joined him, and together they succeeded in letting Jahan Beg down into the lane, where he alighted softly on a convenient rubbish-heap, and whence he made the best of his way home.
It was not until the rest of the party were thinking of going to bed that Sir Dugald was able to get rid of his visitor and return to the terrace. He smiled grimly as he glanced at the expectant faces which awaited him.
“The worthy Fath-ud-Din has prepared a very pretty little plot,” he said, “which is meant to remove both Jahan Beg and Rustam Khan from his path, and we are expected to help.”
“We shall get into trouble,” remarked Lady Haigh, oracularly, “if all the conspirators in Kubbet-ul-Haj make this house a rendezvous when they want to plot against one another.”
“We shall,” agreed Sir Dugald; “and it is a mystery to me what these good people see in our faces that leads them to think we shall be willing to forward their schemes. I suppose it is only natural that Bigg should wish to utilise us as a means of getting his son-in-law acknowledged as heir to the throne; but I did not expect Fath-ud-Din. It seems that he has for a long time suspected Jahan Beg of being an Englishman, and the suspicion became a certainty yesterday, owing to his ostentatious lack of interest in our entry. Jahan Beg thought that his bearing showed how patriotic an Ethiopian he had become; but Fath-ud-Din argued that such disregard of such a show could only be due to his having often seen similar sights before.”
“I hope you taxed Fath-ud-Din with being an Englishman on the same grounds,” said Lady Haigh.
“Certainly not,” replied Sir Dugald. “You forget that he was ill. His illness may have been diplomatic and momentary; but it has to be accepted as a fact. Well, Hicks supplied the next link in the chain. It seems that Fath-ud-Din granted him the interview which Jahan Beg refused, and in the course of conversation asked him casually what he would think if he heard that a solitary Englishman had lived in Ethiopia disguised for years. Hicks replied, as most men would naturally do, that he should conclude he had done something which had made British territory too hot to hold him, and had run away from fear of the law. That struck Fath-ud-Din as a bright idea, and he came to tell me of his suspicions, and to suggest that I should invite the King to give up Jahan Beg as an escaped criminal. He assured me that he and his party would give me all possible support, which I could well believe; and he let out that he anticipated that Rustam Khan would be involved in his father-in-law’s downfall. That would leave the way clear for Antar Khan, to whom Fath-ud-Din hopes to marry his daughter. A suitablebakhshishwas also understood, and in return for these various boons, Fath-ud-Din would be good enough to further the objects of the Mission, and guarantee its success.”
“And I hope you kicked him down the steps?” said Lady Haigh.
“No, Elma; I did not. I should have thought you knew by this time that my disposition was eminently a peaceful one. I merely told Fath-ud-Din that I knew of no criminal answering to the description of Jahan Beg, but that if he could find out what he had done, and it was sufficiently heinous, I would apply for his extradition with pleasure. With that he had to be content, which leaves us a breathing-space.”
“I suppose you will be able to get the treaty concluded while he is hunting about for proofs of Jahan Beg’s guilt?” said Georgia.
“That is what we must hope to do. I was most careful to make everything hinge on his own efforts. It was necessary to avoid like poison anything that might sound like offering him help in his quest, or he would have understood it as a definite pledge to assist him by fair means or foul to ruin Jahan Beg.”
In spite of the very moderate encouragement he had received, hope must have told a flattering tale to the Vizier Fath-ud-Din when he left the Residency after his interview with Sir Dugald, for it became evident very soon that the hindrances which had threatened to obstruct the path of the Mission had suddenly been removed. Rustam Khan was restored to a measure of his father’s favour and allowed to appear at Court, besides being permitted to speak in the council on behalf of the English alliance, while the Neustro-Scythian agent found his promises received with unconcealed incredulity, and was tantalised with evasive answers to his demands. Of these changes the party at the Mission were kept informed both by Jahan Beg and by the Vizier himself, the latter losing no opportunity of insisting on the virulence with which his rival was opposing the English proposals, and the eagerness with which he advised the extortion of every possible concession. If it had not been for the explanation given behind the scenes by Jahan Beg himself, it would have been difficult for Sir Dugald to resist the conclusion, towards which Fath-ud-Din laboured continually to urge him, that the Amir’s hatred of his native country was deep-rooted and had a sinister origin; but the Vizier’s object was so apparent that it was fairly easy to distinguish the embroidery which he added to the speeches he professed to report. Jahan Beg’s opposition was all on points of detail, not of principle; and although he would haggle for hours over the rate of an import duty, or the terms on which an imaginary passport was to be granted, Sir Dugald forgave him the worry he caused in consideration of his services in bringing his colleagues and the King to look at matters from a business point of view. It was the Ethiopian idea that the King was the greatest monarch on earth, and that he could settle any trouble that might arise by the simple expedient of ordering the heads of the disturbers of the peace to be brought him, and it was difficult at first to wean the people, and especially the Amirs who formed the royal council, from this mediæval way of looking at things. In spite of Jahan Beg’s invaluable help in this respect, however, Sir Dugald did his best more than once to induce him to abandon his simulated policy of obstruction and support the Mission heartily, reminding him that he could not now deceive Fath-ud-Din, who knew him to be an Englishman. But Jahan Beg remained obdurate, declaring that if his proceedings did not blind Fath-ud-Din, at least they continued to deceive the rest of the Amirs, who would at once suspect him of having been bribed by the English should he appear to be suddenly converted to a warm interest in the treaty; while the Vizier himself, having already concealed for some time the fact which had come to his knowledge, was bound still to keep it secret, lest he should be punished for not revealing it before.
In consequence of Jahan Beg’s educational work, and Fath-ud-Din’s unexpected complaisance, Sir Dugald and the staff betook themselves day after day to the Palace, and were conducted at once to the King’s hall of audience. Here seats of rather an uncomfortable and nondescript character were arranged for them, for the camp-chairs they had brought with them were the only chairs in Kubbet-ul-Haj, or possibly in all Ethiopia, and a laboured conversation took place. When the King had satisfied a portion of his curiosity respecting men and things in England and Khemistan, Sir Dugald would contrive to lead the talk round to the more important matters in hand, and in this way the various clauses of the proposed treaty were discussed in turn, notes of the proceedings being taken in Ethiopian by the King’s scribe and the interpreter Kustendjian, and in English by Fitz Anstruther. When the Englishmen had taken their departure, the points touched upon would be discussed afresh by the King and the Amirs, and if no satisfactory conclusion had been reached, they reappeared the next morning with great regularity, while if all was well, the discussion moved on to a fresh stage.
In this way time passed not unpleasantly, varied with a certain amount of incident, so far as regarded Sir Dugald and his staff; but for the ladies it was at first very different. True, they had their own terrace, where they could go about unveiled, and their own courtyard in which to take exercise. When Georgia was in a cheerful frame of mind she called this court her quarter-deck; when she was feeling depressed she alluded to it as her prison-yard,—and here she paced along during the cooler hours of each day until Sir Dugald told her that her feet would wear a path in the stones. Sometimes, when public business prevented the King from receiving the Mission, its members would escort the ladies for a ride, but it was necessary to choose secluded tracks for these excursions, since public opinion in Kubbet-ul-Haj did not permit women to ride with men, unless simply for protection on a journey.
But when the Mission had spent about a month in the city, there came a change for Georgia. By way of propitiating Sir Dugald, who was beginning to wax exceedingly wrathful over the King’s ostentatious forgetfulness of the urgent request he had made for a lady doctor, Fath-ud-Din ventured to remind his august master of Miss Keeling’s existence, and her presence at his desire in Kubbet-ul-Haj. The King happened to be in a good temper at the moment, or perhaps his conscience had been pricking him for his neglect of Rustam Khan’s unfortunate mother, and the result of the reminder was the arrival at the Mission one morning of a covered litter carried by four men, and accompanied by an escort of cavalry, at the head of which rode a gorgeous negro, who brought the intimation that the doctor lady was requested to wait on the Queen.
That was only the first of many days on which Georgia ensconced herself in the litter with her maid Rahah, and with the curtains closely drawn was borne off to the Palace. A very short preliminary examination convinced her that the Queen was suffering from cataract in both eyes, and that an operation was absolutely necessary. But the matter did not appear by any means of so simple a character to the dwellers in the harem. Even when, with the aid of the Khemistani girl, Georgia had succeeded in getting things explained, in highly colloquial Ethiopian, to the Queen and her attendants, she found that they all shrank with horror from the idea of the operation. It was not merely that they distrusted herself, as an alien both in race and religion, but they were strongly of the opinion that whereas the use of any amount of medicine, the nastier the better, was lawful in cases of disease, the employment of the knife to give relief was a blasphemous interference with the designs of Providence. In vain Georgia told of the wonderful instances of recovery, following on operations such as she intended to perform, which had come within her own experience; it was Rahah who at last placed the question before the Queen in a way that appealed to her. Whatever happened was incontrovertibly due to the decrees of fate: if it was fated that the Queen should be blind, blind she would continue to be; but if the operation proved successful, it would be clear evidence that she was not fated to be blind. Influenced by Rahah’s logic, the Queen consented, with great reluctance, to allow the matter to be referred to her husband; and the next day Georgia, with Rahah as interpreter, held a colloquy on the subject with the King, through a grating which effectually precluded either party from gaining a glimpse of the other. The King was not so easily moved by Rahah’s eloquence as his wife had been, but eventually a compromise was agreed upon. It was evident to Georgia that, owing both to fright and to the sorrows of the past few months, the Queen was in no state for the operation to be performed at present. Some delay was therefore inevitable, and the King was at last brought to consent to the trial of the plan, if a week or two of careful diet and nursing, together with cheerful society and the blessing of hopefulness, should prove to have a beneficial effect on the patient’s general health.
It seemed to Georgia that, in view of the state of things in the Palace, each portion of the prescription was more unattainable than the rest; but after two or three days of vain endeavours to instruct the shiftless harem servants in the arts of nursing and of invalid cookery, and to restore tone to the mind of the poor Queen, weakened and saddened as it was by years of sorrow, she found a new ally at her side. Coming into the Queen’s room one day, she saw seated on the divan a tall girl with a fresh English face, blue-eyed and fair-haired, holding a closely-swathed baby in her arms. Although the stranger wore the Ethiopian dress, Georgia would have greeted her at once as a fellow-countrywoman, if she had not turned and stared at her with undisguised interest and pleasure, saying something in Ethiopian to the Queen. Then a great pang of pity seized Georgia’s heart, for she knew that the English girl before her must be Nur Jahan, Jahan Beg’s daughter and Rustam Khan’s wife.
Remembering her promise to Nur Jahan’s father, however, Georgia composed her face and took her usual seat beside her patient. The Queen was so much more cheerful this morning, that it was evident she enjoyed the presence of her daughter-in-law and grandson; and after a while, to Georgia’s delight, she brightened visibly at Nur Jahan’s suggestion that, when the operation had been successfully performed, she would be able to see the baby. When the medical examination was over, the young wife felt herself at liberty to talk, and Georgia learnt that, although she had now come for a few days to the Palace solely for the purpose of cheering her mother-in-law, she had not quitted it very long. When Rustam Khan fell into disfavour, he had put his wife and her week-old baby under his mother’s protection at once, fearing that neither his house nor that of Jahan Beg would be safe from the rabble of the city, who were warm partisans of Fath-ud-Din. With high glee, Nur Jahan narrated how her husband had come to visit her in secret, always at hours when the King was not likely to enter the harem, disguised sometimes as a woman and sometimes as a negro, in order to escape the Vizier’s spies; and how once he had actually met his father outside the Queen’s door, but stepping aside respectfully, had passed him without being recognised under the thick veil. To Georgia, the possibility of such adventures within the sacred walls of the harem was a new thing, and she enjoyed the gusto with which Nur Jahan related them. But the Queen thought differently, and began to moan feebly, as she pulled at the edge of the coverlet.
“Thou art always thus, Nur Jahan,” she said, querulously; “laughing and rejoicing when thy lord is in peril of his life. An Ethiopian woman, seeing her husband in such straits, would have shed an ocean of tears, and refused to be comforted until times had changed; but I have seen thee, when Rustam Khan had but just gone from thee, planning eagerly how he should enter the Palace on the next occasion, without letting fall a tear.”
“But it was that which pleased my lord, O my mother,” said Nur Jahan, eager to defend herself. “What delight had there been in our meetings, if I had only sat at his feet and bedewed them with tears? There was so much to tell, and so much to hear; how could I weep when my lord was with me? And when he was gone, was it not happier for me to consider how I might see him again, rather than weep because he could not be with me still?”
“Go thy ways, Nur Jahan,” said the elder woman, bitterly. “Thou too wilt one day learn that although the life of all women is sad, that of a woman who is also a king’s wife is saddest of all. How canst thou love thy lord as I, his mother, love him? Thine eyes are as bright as when he married thee, while mine are blind with weeping for him. But he loves the bright eyes better than the blind ones, and is it to be wondered at?” and the Queen rocked herself to and fro, and wailed hopelessly.
“O my mother, wilt thou break my heart?” sobbed Nur Jahan, throwing herself down beside her. “Can we not both love my lord? I know well that thy love for him has lasted longer, but must it needs be greater than mine? My lord’s love is my life, and yet thou wilt not believe it because I do not always weep when I am sad. O doctor lady, dost thou not believe that I love my lord?”
“What does the doctor lady know of it?” demanded the Queen. “But thou art my son’s beloved, Nur Jahan, and for that I love thee also. But I would thou wert as we are. Thou art of the idolaters through thy father, and thou dost not grow like us. But thy life is like ours, and, as years pass on, it will be more and more like mine, and if thou dost not weep then, what wilt thou do? Those who do not weep go mad.”
It was evident to Georgia that Nur Jahan was comforting herself with the thought that her husband was very unlike his father, while the Queen expected that in course of time he would exactly resemble him; but she saw that the excitement was bad for her patient, and interposed prosaically, with a suggestion as to the preparation of beef-tea, which Nur Jahan took up at once, displaying practical powers which encouraged Georgia to give her a first lesson in home nursing. But in spite of this cheering fact, Georgia’s heart still ached as she was carried back to the Mission in her litter, for she could not forget the contrast between the girlish form of Nur Jahan and the bowed and broken figure of the old Queen, who seemed so sure that her daughter-in-law’s life must one day come to resemble her own. But there was a trait in Nur Jahan’s character which had no part in that of the Queen, and which would go far to render her lot even harder—the adventurous spirit which her mother-in-law so bitterly resented, and which had caused her to find a certain enjoyment in the shifts and devices to which her husband had been obliged to have recourse in order to see her.
“Jahan Beg ought to have escaped from the country and brought her to England, as he thought of doing,” was Georgia’s mental comment. “It is his spirit she inherits, and it is cruel of him to rest satisfied with the life to which he has condemned her. She is ready to welcome any excitement, even of a disagreeable kind, as a relief to the monotony of her existence. I can see that she is pining for outside interests, though she doesn’t know it. In a man of English blood this would seem quite natural and proper to every one, and why should it be different for a woman? And what a life it is to which she has to look forward! Even if Rustam Khan keeps his promise and marries no other wife, she can only spend her days in doing nothing. Nothing to do for husband or children, in the house or outside, and to be surrounded by a number of other women as idle as herself! ‘Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.’ I had rather have my thirty-two years of life than the poor Queen’s fifty, queen and wife and mother though she is. Her only advantage in being Queen is that she must not do the little pieces of work which would have fallen to her in another position. As a wife she has to share her husband with an indefinite number of other women, and as a mother she sees her sons treated like Rustam Khan, and her daughters condemned to the same kind of life as herself. Perhaps Nur Jahan’s children may inherit enough of her character to enable them to break the spell; but I am afraid the change won’t come in her time. The East moves so slowly.”
Since Georgia’s thoughts had been so deeply stirred on this subject, it was not wonderful that she communicated her views to Dick when they happened to be talking on the terrace that evening. She felt it a necessity to share her reflections with some one, and to her surprise he received them with unwonted meekness.
“Kipling doesn’t agree with you,” was all he said in answer to her estimate of the probable happiness of the Eastern as compared with that of the Western woman.
“Kipling!” said Georgia, in high scorn.
“I thought you admired him?”
“So I do. I think he is an excellent authority on men—at least, the men seem to find it so—but what can he, or any man, know about women? At best they can only see results and guess at causes. They observe very carefully all that they can see, and give us the result of their observations in knowing little remarks, half cynical and half patronising, and think they have gauged a woman’s nature to its very depths. Then she does something that throws all their calculations wrong, and they say that she is shallow and fickle, and, above all, unwomanly; whereas it is only that either their observations or their deductions were incorrect.”
“Still,” said Dick, “I am inclined to agree with a very comforting doctrine I heard you enunciating to Stratford the other night. You were speaking of the principle of balance, and you said that when one side of the truth had been exclusively insisted upon for a time the pendulum swung back and the other side became prominent until it was the first one’s turn again. I thought it was a very good idea—for the people who can keep just in the middle. Those who rush to either extreme must find themselves rather left when the pendulum swings.”
“But what has that to do with our present subject?” asked Georgia.
“It seems to me to apply. You see, the New—I beg your pardon; I know you dislike the term—the modern female has had rather a long innings lately. You have often said that you don’t agree with all her developments, which seems pretty clear proof that she has at any rate approached the extreme point. Well, Kipling comes to show us the other side of the matter, exaggerated, perhaps; but that is unavoidable, owing to the exaggerations on the lady’s part. At least, that is how it strikes me.”
“North, where are you?” said Stratford, appearing suddenly on the terrace. “The Chief wants you for something.”
Dick rose and disappeared, with an apology to Georgia, who leaned back in her chair and smiled.
“He is improving wonderfully,” she said to herself. “Two months ago he would never have talked as he has to-night. Crushing assertions without any proof used to be his idea of arguments. He must have taken a lesson from Mr Stratford. Was he really listening all the time I was talking to him the other night? He has certainly changed very much, and I am very glad of it. It would have been most unpleasant if the only man who could not bring himself to be civil to me was such an old friend, and Mab’s brother.”
If Mabel could have heard this soliloquy, it is probable that she would have smiled darkly to herself, and remarked that her dear Georgie must have been considerably piqued by Dick’s cavalier behaviour for her to make such a point of having overcome his opposition to herself. However, there was no one at hand to point out to Georgia that she felt more satisfaction in one amicable conversation with her former lover than in all the attentions of Stratford and the doctor, who entertained no prejudice against medical women, and always appreciated the honour of a talk with her. It may be that it was merely the feeling that she had been victorious in disarming Dick’s hostility which gave such a zest to her intercourse with him; but if this was so, an incident which occurred a few days later ought to have cast some additional light upon the subject.
Matters had been going very smoothly at the Palace of late, and Sir Dugald had the satisfaction of knowing that all the clauses of the projected treaty had been in substance agreed to. It now only remained to draw it up in formal shape, and to ratify it by the signatures, or rather seals, of the contracting parties. While the draughtsmen on both sides were busy reducing the notes taken during Sir Dugald’s audiences of the King into suitably involved phraseology, the members of the Mission enjoyed a short holiday. They made several expeditions into the districts lying around the city, and one day the King invited the gentlemen of the party to visit a summer-palace which he had erected on a spur of the hills some fifteen miles away. Mr Hicks, who had remained doggedly at his post in spite of the rebuff he had received, and contrived to glean sufficient news from his talks with Fath-ud-Din and the gossip of the Mission servants to fill the requisite number of columns per week for his paper when supplemented by his own lively imagination, was to be of the party, and the younger men anticipated some amusement in baffling his insatiable curiosity. They rode off in high spirits, the outward expression of which was modified in deference to Sir Dugald, to whom the excursion appeared in a light which was anything but pleasurable; and Lady Haigh and Georgia resigned themselves to a long, slow, quiet day. It was not one of the days on which Georgia visited her patient at the Palace, and therefore Lady Haigh and she wrote up their diaries with great industry, compiled several lengthy descriptive letters for the benefit of friends at home, and filled in odd corners of time with reading and talking. As the afternoon wore on, Lady Haigh went to remind the cook to make a particular kind of cake, likely to be appreciated after a long, dusty ride, for tea, and Georgia was left alone on the terrace.
As she sat there reading, the noise of horses’ feet in the outer court came to her ears, and she dropped her book, wondering whether the party had already returned. Presently Fitz Anstruther made his appearance under the archway which furnished a means of communication between the two courtyards, and catching sight of Georgia on the terrace, hurried towards her, followed by Dr Headlam. Fitz had something in his hand, carefully wrapped up in leaves and tied with wisps of grass, and as he reached the top of the steps he deposited it at Georgia’s feet.
“There, Miss Keeling,” he cried, in high delight, “I’ve got a spotted viper for you, for the collection! He’s a really fine beast; that measly old specimen the doctor got hold of hasn’t a look-in compared with him. See him, now,” and he unrolled the wrappings and displayed, as he said, a remarkably good specimen of the deadliest snake known to Kubbet-ul-Haj. It was only about twenty-seven inches long, but the spots, from which the Mission had given it its hopelessly unscientific name, were unusually brilliant.
“You very nearly had the chance of labelling him as a murderer,” Fitz went on, holding up the snake’s head and examining its fangs with the air of a connoisseur. “He reared up suddenly, just behind North, and had his head stretched out to strike. North was leaning on his elbow on the cushions, and when he saw all the Ethiopians staring at him as pale as death, he turned round. There was no time to move away, and he cut at the thing with his knife and missed. We were eating fruit just then, all smothered in snow from the hills. Stratford had his revolver out in a moment, and was going to fire, but I yelled out to him to stop. I didn’t want the skin spoilt, and I knew that a shot at that distance would smash the head all to smithereens. I had my riding-crop handy, and I jumped up and managed to catch the beast such a whack that it broke his spine or something. Anyhow, he was killed, and I brought him home all the way on purpose for you, Miss Keeling.”