She crossed the room to his side and put her hands on his shoulders.
She crossed the room to his side and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Look at me, Dick,” she said. But Dick would not turn round.
“You goad a man into saying beastly things to you,” he muttered, “and then you try and get round him when he is feeling ashamed of himself.”
Such an unpromising reception of her effort to make peace might well have daunted Georgia, but she could forgive much to Dick, simply because he was Dick. She turned his moody face towards hers and made him look at her.
“Don’t think of it any more, Dick,” she said. “My dear boy, do you imagine I don’t care for you enough to forgive you that? And let us leave the question of our married life to right itself. If it hadn’t been for this, we should have glided into it naturally, and things would have settled themselves. Surely two people who are neither of them by nature quarrelsome, and who are anxious to do right, ought to be able to get on together, if both are willing to give and take? I can trust you, Dick; won’t you trust me?”
It added considerably to the discomfort of Dick’s present state of mind that he was conscious that Georgia was behaving with a magnanimity to which he could lay no claim, but he had started with the determination to put his foot down, and to show Georgia before they were married that he would stand no nonsense, and he stuck to his point doggedly. “I don’t intend to be made to look a fool before all the world,” he growled.
“But who would want to make you look a fool? You must know that your honour is as dear to me as to yourself. Haven’t I shown that I won’t keep you back when duty calls you? Can’t you trust me, Dick? If you can’t, things had better be over between us, indeed. Suppose you were out, and I was summoned to a dangerous case, and couldn’t possibly let you know. It would be my duty to go, just as it would be yours to start if you were ordered somewhere on special service, and couldn’t even say good-bye to me. Can’t we act on this understanding?”
“But how can you be sure that you can trust me, may I ask? Many men make rash promises before marriage, and break them like a shot afterwards. How do you know that I am not one of them?”
“Oh, not you, Dick! You are a gentleman; I can trust you fully. Tell me that you will agree, and let us forget all this worry.”
“You are trying to get round me,” said Dick again, helplessly. “I can’t think what I was going to say; everything seems to have gone out of my head. What is the matter?” looking irritably at her frightened face. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I think—things had better be—over between us, Georgie. We should never—agree. What was I saying last? What’s the matter with the walls? Is it—an earthquake?”
He was reeling as he stood, and clutching wildly at the frame of the lattice for support. Georgia caught him by the arm, for he had missed his hold and was swaying backwards and forwards, and succeeded in guiding him to the divan.
“I feel—awfully queer,” he said, and fainted away before Georgia could seek a restorative. She cried out, and Lady Haigh and Rahah came rushing in, the latter followed by Dick’s bearer, whose countenance declared plainly that he considered his master’s illness to be entirely due to Georgia, and that it was just what he had expected. With the help of some of the other servants, Dick was carried to his own room, where for several days he was to lie moaning and tossing under a bad attack of fever. Georgia had her hands full during this period, even though the bearer declined respectfully to allow her any share in the actual nursing, for besides her care for Dick, she was engaged in testing, with scarcely less anxiety, the effect upon Sir Dugald’s health of the antidote she had obtained with so much difficulty. She would have preferred to choose a time when she could give her whole attention to his case, but he had appeared so much weaker of late that Lady Haigh was feverishly eager for the remedy to be tried at once, and in fear and trembling Georgia put into practice the directions she had received from Khadija. Her courage revived to a certain extent when she found that the resulting symptoms corresponded exactly with those described by the old woman, but the two days of heavy slumber proved to be a period of intense anxiety. Every sound was hushed in the neighbourhood of Sir Dugald’s sick-room, and the watchers scarcely dared to move or breathe. At last, just as Georgia had returned to her other patient after a heart-breaking visit to Dick, who was calling on her constantly, although he refused to recognise her when she stood beside him, there was a sudden movement on the part of Sir Dugald, and Lady Haigh grasped her arm convulsively.
“Go to him, and let him see you first when he wakes,” said Georgia, in a low whisper, and Lady Haigh obeyed.
“Well, Elma!” It was Sir Dugald’s voice, very weak, but without a hint of delirium. “Haven’t you got the place rather dark?”
Georgia threw the lattice partly open, and he looked round.
“Still at Kubbet-ul-Haj, I see.” They had purposely arranged the bed and the camp-furniture in the same positions that they had occupied in his room at the Mission, with the object of avoiding a sudden shock. “I should have said we must have left it long ago, but I have had the most extraordinary dreams. Could it have been a touch of fever, do you think? But is that Miss Keeling? Ah, this explains it. I must have been ill?”
“Yes, you have frightened us all very much, Sir Dugald,” said Georgia, for Lady Haigh was incapable of speech.
“Ah, it was a bad attack, then, was it? Queer that I don’t remember feeling it coming on. The treaty is not signed yet, I suppose?”
“Yes, it is signed. You have been ill for some time—longer than you think.”
“I always knew that Stratford was a clever fellow. This is the best news you could have brought me, Miss Keeling. But we ought to be thinking of returning to Khemistan if we have secured the treaty. How long do you give me to get well enough to mount a horse again?”
“You mustn’t be in too great a hurry. We might carry you in a litter.”
“No, thank you. It would be too much like my dreams. I have suffered agonies through imagining that I was in a trance, and about to be buried alive, because they thought I was dead. It seemed to me that I could see people moving about all round me, but I could not move, or speak, or feel. Then I was put in a coffin, and carried off to be buried. It always ended there, but it came over and over again. It was the horrible helplessness—my absolute powerlessness to make any sign to show that I was alive—which was the worst thing about it.”
“Oh, Dugald!” cried Lady Haigh, in a strangled voice—and kissing him hastily, she hurried out of the room.
“Lady Haigh has been very much frightened about you, Sir Dugald,” said Georgia. “She has watched over you night and day, and I have often wondered that she did not break down.”
“Please look after her,” he said, anxiously. “She has wonderful pluck, but sometimes she is obliged to give way altogether, and I’m afraid from what you say that she must be quite overdone.”
Georgia left the room, and found Lady Haigh sobbing on the divan outside, with her face buried in a cushion that Sir Dugald might not hear her. Sitting down beside her, Georgia began to cry too, out of pure sympathy, until Lady Haigh suddenly choked back her sobs, and throwing her arms round her, cried—
“Oh, Georgie, Georgie, you have given me back my husband, and it has cost you Major North!”
“You mustn’t think of that. There ought to be a change in Dick’s state before long.”
“Georgie, I will nurse him night and day—every moment that I can spare from Sir Dugald, that is. And if I can’t put things right between you when he is better, I’ll—I’ll——”
“But what if he doesn’t want things put right?” asked Georgia, sadly.
* * * * * *
When Dick recovered consciousness, after a very long and fatiguing dream, in which many people and events had played more or less inappropriate parts, he found himself in bed with a cold bandage on his forehead, and a feeling all over him that he had lost more strength than he had ever possessed. There was some one in the room, and he gathered that it was Lady Haigh. She was speaking to some one else at the door.
“I will leave him to you, then, Georgie. He is beautifully asleep still, and I have just changed the bandage.”
The door closed softly, and Dick was aware that Lady Haigh had gone out and that the other person had come in, and was sitting just out of his sight as he lay in bed. That was not what he wanted, and he tried painfully to turn his head in her direction. She was at his side in a moment.
“Are you tired of lying in that position?” she asked. “Shall I help you to turn over?”
“Not if you will sit where I can see you,” he answered, and his voice sounded to himself weak and far-away. Georgia changed her place as he wished, but she took up the book she had been reading and went on with it.
“Why won’t you speak to me, Georgie?” he asked, querulously.
“Because you are forbidden to talk until you are a little stronger.”
“I don’t care! Put down that book and sit nearer me.”
“No,” said Georgia, with decision. “You are not to excite yourself with talking. Lie still, and try to go to sleep.”
“Why do you talk to me like that? I haven’t done anything to make you angry with me, have I? Why are you so unkind?”
“I don’t want to be unkind,” returned Georgia, hastily; “but you really ought not to talk. I will answer any number of questions when you are better.”
“But why won’t you call me Dick? We didn’t quarrel, did we? I have a sort of idea—— But my head was awfully queer, and I daresay I talked a lot of rot. I can’t apologise properly until I remember more about it. But if we quarrelled, why are you here looking after me like this?”
“Simply and solely as your medical adviser.” There was the slightest possible suspicion of triumph in Georgia’s tone, the reason for which Dick did not perceive until afterwards. She returned to her book, and he lay and looked at her in a puzzled kind of way.
“I wish you would take my temperature,” he said at last.
“What, are you feverish again?” she asked anxiously, getting out her thermometer as she rose and came towards him.
“I don’t know; but I remember you were doing it once when I was just about half awake, and I liked it. You put your arm under my head.”
“If you will talk so much, I shall call Lady Haigh.”
“But do take my temperature! I thought sick people always had everything they wanted.”
“Everything in reason. Patients are expected not to trouble their doctors unnecessarily. Now try to go to sleep.” And Georgia returned the thermometer resolutely to its case.
“Would it be considered a thing in reason if a patient asked his doctor to give him a kiss? What would the doctor say?”
“That anything of the kind would be highly unprofessional.”
“Well, this patient,” said Dick, weakly, “refuses to try to go to sleep unless his doctor acts in that unprofessional way.”
And his doctor did.
“Georgie,” said Lady Haigh, some two or three days later, “I want to ask you a question. Are you still engaged to Major North, or not?”
The shadow of a smile glimmered on Georgia’s lips.
“It seems a ridiculous thing to say, but really I haven’t the smallest idea whether I am or not,” she answered.
“But what does Major North think about it?”
“I believe he is under the impression that we are still engaged. That is what makes the matter doubtful, for I should certainly say that we were not.”
“But how long is this state of things to go on?”—impatiently.
“I don’t know. Happily I have never had an engagement-ring, so that no one can notice any difference.”
“My dear, this must be put a stop to!” said Lady Haigh, with conviction. “Now that Major North is so much better, there is no need for you to pretend that two doctor’s visits a-day are necessary. Once a-day is quite enough for the present, and then you can drop it altogether.”
“Oh, Lady Haigh! But he looks out for me so eagerly, and is so glad to see me. And I like to see him too.”
“You mustn’t make yourself too cheap, my dear Georgie. Surely you would not wish to cling to a man who has told you in so many words that he is anxious to break off his engagement to you?”
“Oh, but I don’t think he meant it.”
“Then he has nothing to do but to say so. You had far better bring about an explanation, and have it over. It is certainly Major North’s turn to eat humble pie, and it will do him a world of good, and smooth your path very much in the future. Take my advice, dear, and let him see (or at any rate think) that you are prepared to abide by what he said.”
It was with great reluctance that Georgia consented to follow her friend’s counsel; but when she thought it over its wisdom commended itself to her, and she decided to carry it out rigorously, with results which seemed very hard to Dick. He only saw his doctor once a-day, and then she persisted in ignoring sternly all his attempts to extend the scope of the conversation beyond the business in hand. Then she discontinued her visits altogether, and the only explanation his bearer could offer was that the Doctor Miss Sahiba was very busy, and he supposed that she took no more interest in the protector of the poor now that he was so much better. It was the same when Stratford and Fitz came to see him. They agreed that Miss Keeling was very busy, and seemed rather surprised that he should ask after her. It even appeared to him that there was a slight constraint in their tones when they answered his questions. Dick pondered over the mystery without any satisfactory result for two days, and then announced that he was going to get up, and demanded his clothes. The bearer had anticipated this step, and replied promptly that the entire wardrobe of the protector of the poor was at the moment in the hands of a tailor in the town, to whom he had intrusted it for needed repairs, and who preferred to execute them on his own premises. Hari Das invited his master’s reproofs for his own remissness in postponing the operation for so long, but to his dismay discovered that Dick declined to be drawn into a tirade on the vices of bearers in general, illustrated from his experience of this particular specimen. He was too much in earnest in his determination to have time to waste in useless altercations, and, moreover, he knew his man.
“Ask thechota sahibto come to me,” he said. “I will borrow a suit of his clothes.”
The bearer looked blank.
“But thechota sahib’sclothes will not fit my lord,” he objected.
“That doesn’t signify,” said Dick. “Fit or no fit, I am going to get up,” and he only smiled in secret when the bearer returned after a short absence with one of his own suits, and announced that the tailor had brought it back unexpectedly soon. He found himself much weaker than he had anticipated as he dressed, but he disregarded the bearer’s doleful assurances that he would kill himself, and declined to return to his couch, although he was glad to accept the support of the servant’s arm as he crossed the hall and entered the passage leading into the harem. Lady Haigh, writing her home letters busily at a camp-table (for letter-writing had been dropped by common, though unexpressed consent, during those past days, when it seemed unlikely that either the letters or their writers would ever reach home), looked up in astonishment when he came in, and made haste to arrange a comfortable place for him with cushions upon the divan, remarking that he had better lie still and rest for a little and not talk. But this was not what Dick had come for.
“Lady Haigh, where is Georgie?” he asked, the moment after the bearer had departed.
“Well, I think she is busy just now,” Lady Haigh replied, with distinct coldness in her manner. As a matter of fact, at that moment Georgia was sitting outside on the terrace with Sir Dugald, who had by this time been promoted to a knowledge of the whereabouts of his party, and was entertaining him with an account of her visit to Bir-ul-Malikat and of the charms of Khadija.
“Every person that I have asked about her for the last three days has told me exactly that!” said Dick, with a good deal of indignation in his tone. “I should like to see her, if you please,” he went on, in the voice of one determined to obtain his just rights.
“I assure you that I have not got her locked up,” said Lady Haigh, with some tartness. “I will tell her what you say, if you like, but I must say that after all that has happened——”
“What is the object of tormenting me like this, Lady Haigh?” asked Dick impatiently, raising himself on his elbow. “I know that Georgia must be ill—I suppose she fell ill through overtiring herself in nursing me—and you are all doing your best to keep it from me. I insist on knowing what is the matter with her, and how she is getting on. I have a right to know.”
“Indeed?” said Lady Haigh. “I was not aware of that. But you are mistaken in supposing that Miss Keeling is ill. I am glad to say she is quite well.”
“Then what is the matter? Why are you keeping her away from me like this? What has come between us?”
“Really, Major North, you are a little inconsistent. Why you should accuse me of trying to separate Miss Keeling and yourself, I don’t know. I can only suppose that your illness has caused you to forget the trifling fact that your engagement is broken off.”
Dick stared at her in astonishment and dismay.
“I don’t remember,” he murmured. “Some one said something about a quarrel, but it was nothing after all. When did she do it? What had I done?”
“Pray don’t try to put it upon Miss Keeling. You told her yourself that things had better be over between you.”
“I must have been mad,” said Dick despairingly, “or am I dreaming now?” He pinched his arm to assure himself that he was awake, then looked round the room in a vain search for explanation, until his gaze rested again on Lady Haigh, but he found no comfort in her face. “You wouldn’t humbug me on such a subject, Lady Haigh!” he cried, as he met her accusing glance. “You helped me once before; tell me what to do now. She can’t think I really meant it!”
“So far as I know, you explained your views pretty clearly,” said Lady Haigh, rejoicing to find Dick delivered into her hands in this teachable spirit, and hoping devoutly that Georgia would remain outside and out of hearing. “You mustn’t play fast and loose like this, Major North. Why did you say what you didn’t mean?”
“I don’t know—I must have been angry. I have a beastly temper at times, you know. I suppose Georgia had made me very mad about something. Oh yes, I remember now, it was about her going to Bir-ul-Malikat. She would insist that she had a right to go, and stay too, whether I liked it or not, and she wouldn’t give in. But as for breaking off our engagement——”
“But you are convinced that Miss Keeling ought to have given in?”
“Well, I think that when she saw what a point I made of it——”
“There was no question of your giving in because she also made a point of it?”
“Oh no,” said Dick, innocently.
“Then I think it is a very good thing indeed that your engagement is broken off.” Lady Haigh spoke with her usual decision of manner, but Dick looked so absolutely astonished and appalled that she condescended to an explanation. “I should like to talk to you a little on this subject very seriously, Major North, for as a looker-on I can perhaps see more clearly than you do where you have gone wrong. I daresay you will regard me as a meddling old woman, but at any rate you can’t say that I have turned critic because I have failed in matrimony, for my married life has been as happy as even I could have wished. Besides, it was in getting the medicine to cure Sir Dugald that poor Georgie incurred your royal highness’s displeasure, so that I feel bound to do all I can to put things right between you.”
“But if you think that it is better for her not to be engaged to me?” The question was asked a little stiffly, for Dick did not altogether appreciate the tone of his monitress’s remarks.
“That is a matter which depends solely on yourself. You possess many estimable qualities, Major North, but you were born a few centuries too late. Of course I don’t mean that you were to blame for the fact—on the contrary, it is distinctly a misfortune, both to yourself and others. You would have made an ideal husband in the days when it was considered quite the proper thing for a gentleman to correct his wife with a stick not thicker than his middle finger.”
“Really, Lady Haigh, this is beyond a joke!” Dick was angry now—there was no mistaking the fact.
“Quite so; but I am not joking. I don’t mean that if you married Georgia, you would keep her in order with a horsewhip—I don’t for a moment believe she would let you, for one thing. But I think you would certainly need some resource of the kind to fall back upon if your ideal of domestic discipline was to be maintained. In your house, according to your theory, there would be one law and one will, and that law would be your law, and that will your will. That is a beautiful ideal—for you—and it would no doubt produce, in course of time, a saintly submissiveness of character in your wife. But any woman who is to be subjected to such a course of training ought to be warned beforehand, and agree to accept it with her eyes open. And that Georgia would never do.”
“I don’t know why she shouldn’t. All women do.”
“Do they?” asked Lady Haigh, with as little sarcasm in her tone as the subject admitted—and Dick was silent, recognising that he had, to use his own phrase, given himself away. His counsellor went on, “I am going to ask you a personal question, Major North. Why do you want to marry Miss Keeling?”
“Because I love her, and I can’t do without her,” very gruffly.
“But why didn’t you fall in love with that beautiful Miss Hervey, whom we met at Mrs Egerton’s before we came out here?”
“Because she is not my sort—an empty-headed doll!”
“Exactly; but if you want a woman without any mind or reason of her own, she would just suit you. She would adore you, and defer to all your wishes when they didn’t clash with any particular fancies of her own, for six months at least, and you would adore her for the same length of time—until you each found the other out. After that, you would know that you had married a fool, and she a tyrant. Georgia is not a fool. She loves you, but she sees your faults, and she has a certain amount of self-respect. If you wanted her to do anything that seemed to her unreasonable, she would talk it over with you, and she might end by refusing to do it, but she would never cry or sulk until you gave it up in despair. It is a great thing to recognise fully that you are both human beings, after all. Georgie doesn’t imagine that the possession of the Victoria Cross necessarily implies that of all the domestic virtues, any more than she believes herself to be perfect because she possesses a London medical degree. She would consider that she had exactly as much right to be the sole arbiter of the house as you had, and that is none at all.”
Dick murmured a feeble protest against this way of looking at things, to which Lady Haigh refused to listen.
“The fact is, you would wish to marry a clever woman, only she must be willing to let herself be treated like a fool. You can’t reconcile two extremes in that way. Georgia has lived her own life, and that a very full and useful one, and you cannot expect her to become a puppet all at once, simply out of love for you. She is used to acting on her own initiative. Well, I will tell you what I learned from her maid, for she won’t talk about it herself. Do you know that when she was at Bir-ul-Malikat, that wicked old woman Khadija tried to get her to lead you and your men into a trap, on the pretence that by calling to you and beckoning you she would warn you of an ambuscade. An ordinary woman would have yielded to the impulse of the moment—I should have myself—and destroyed you, with the purest desire for your safety; but Georgie had the strength of mind to reason the matter out, all in an instant. She refused to call to you, and you were saved. And it is a woman like that whom you expect to fall down and worship your slightest whim!” with intense scorn.
“Not guilty, Lady Haigh. I abjure, I recant—anything! But why didn’t you tell me this before? What an ungrateful brute she must think me!”
“I didn’t begin by telling you of it, because I wanted to make you see reason, instead of working upon your feelings. I’m sure I hope I may have done both.”
“I will give you my solemn promise, if that will satisfy you, that Georgia shall ride roughshod over my most cherished convictions as often as she likes. She is a heroine. I feel ashamed to lift my eyes to her. Oh, Lady Haigh, tell me what to do. How can I begin to make things right?”
“Put yourself in her place. Would you like it if she expected you to give up your military career for her sake?”
“She would never ask or expect such a thing. She knows that I could not do it, even to please her.”
“Then return the compliment. She is willing to give up for your sake any hope of distinguishing herself further in her profession by means of original research, but she will not relinquish the practice of it. Allow her the freedom you claim for yourself—in fact you must allow it, if you mean to marry Georgia Keeling. She will be yours heart and soul, but a certain portion of her time and interest she will always give to her work.”
“But come now, Lady Haigh, doesn’t that strike you as slightly rough on a man?”
“It strikes me as merely just,” snapped Lady Haigh. “No portion of your time and interest will ever be given to your work, of course?”
“Oh, but that’s different, you know,” said Dick, uncomfortably. “Do you really think that this sort of thing is meant for women?”
“My dear Major North, I am not holding a brief for Women’s Rights. I am merely trying to bring you into line with facts. If you want arguments, no doubt Georgia will argue with you by the hour.”
“I wish she was here to do it!” sighed Dick. “Would it be rude to remind you, Lady Haigh, that I haven’t seen her for three whole days?”
“I suppose that means that you want me to fetch her for you. Well, I will just say this. Once you lamented to me that you had no tact. Now I believe that, until she finds him out, a bad man with tact will make a woman happier than a good man without it.” Lady Haigh paused triumphantly, as though to say, “Contradict that atrocious sentiment if you can!” but Dick made no attempt to do so, and she went on. “I’m afraid you would find it difficult to cultivate tact now, but if you will only try to consider things that affect Georgia from her point of view as well as your own, you will have made a good beginning.”
She stepped out through the lattice, and presently Georgia entered, stethoscope in hand.
“Well, and how do we find ourselves to-day?” she asked cheerfully, hoping that Dick would not notice the trembling in her voice.
“How can you expect a patient to get better when his doctor does not come near him for days?”
“You have always expressed such a dislike to lady doctors, that it struck us you might prefer to be without one.”
“Ah, how did you come to be my doctor, by the bye?”
“I knew you would have preferred the surgeon who came with you,” said Georgia, with resignation in her tones. “I will tell you how it was. He is very young and very new, and knows nothing about fever in practice, which makes him all the more sure about it in theory. He has half-a-dozen infallible remedies, and he was rejoicing at the prospect of being able to test them all on you, when I stepped in and claimed you as my patient. And now I suppose you will tell me that you would prefer to be killed by him rather than be cured by me?”
No suitable repartee occurring to Dick at the moment, he took a mean advantage of his position as an invalid, and lay back on his cushions with a slight groan, which melted Georgia’s heart at once.
“You have a headache, and I have been teasing you!” she said, remorsefully, changing her position and coming behind him. “Keep your head like that, my poor boy,” and she began to pass her fingers slowly across his forehead with such a soothing effect that Dick only kept himself by a violent effort from falling asleep. Pulling her hands down, he looked at them critically.
“Have you been taking lessons in witchcraft from Khadija?” he asked. “Do you think it’s fair to practice magic arts on me? What chance has a man when you begin to mesmerise him with those cool, firm fingers of yours? What nice soft hands you have, Georgie!” emphasising the remark by lifting the said hands to his lips.
“One has to keep one’s hands nice for surgical work,” said Georgia, apologetically, and expecting an outburst. But Dick only gave a rather ostentatious sigh, and went on meditatively.
“Your magic is thoroughly successful, at any rate. Lady Haigh will testify to the change in my demeanour since you came in. Well, Georgie, you have won. Let’s make it up. I surrender at discretion.”
“I begin to think that you are delirious again,” said Georgia, in a puzzled voice, bending forward to look at him.
“I think not. I am merely anxious not to do things by halves. Come, impose your conditions on me while I am in this softened state. As an honourable man, I shall feel bound to carry them out when I return to my right mind. I will only ask you, as you are strong, to be merciful. There, could submission go further than that?”
“You are certainly not fit to be sitting up. I shall call your bearer, and request him to see you back to bed. You may not be delirious, but you are undoubtedly queer in the head.”
“Thank you. You will not call the respectable Hari Das at present—at any rate until I have had a longer talk with you.”
“That sounds more like your usual self,” said Georgia.
“The self which is to vanish from henceforth. Oh, Georgie, I know I’m talking like a lunatic, but it’s because I should make a fool of myself if I didn’t. When I think of what Lady Haigh has just been telling me, of the way in which you saved all our lives the other day, I feel as though I could simply die of shame. How could you—how could you—do it?”
“Pure selfishness,” returned Georgia, with elaborate composure. “I couldn’t do without you, you see.”
“I’m not worth it, Georgie. I couldn’t even behave decently to you an hour after it happened. And I daren’t make any promises for the future, remembering all those I have broken already. But I do ask you to believe that I didn’t know what I was saying when—when I talked about breaking off our engagement the morning you came back. I couldn’t have believed that even when I was off my head I could be such an idiot; but, unfortunately, you heard me say it. Take me on again, dearest. You’ll have a lot to put up with, but——”
“My dear boy, I have never given you up—of my own free will, at any rate.”
“That doesn’t make it any better for me. After you had done a thing that not one woman in a million—or one man either—could have done——”
“Oh yes, they could, if the idea had struck them. It was just that—a sudden inspiration. But you are getting excited, Dick, and I will not have it. As your medical attendant, I forbid you to think about Bir-ul-Malikat any more. I shall break off our re-engagement at once if you don’t talk about something else.”
“Yes, there it is. You have such an awful pull over me, Georgie. I can’t do without you, but you could get on very well without me. Confess now—couldn’t you?”
“By going back to England and joining the Forward Club, and impressing on the world that the grapes were sour?” asked Georgia. “No, I should have to keep to my old plan, and settle down to missionary work in Khemistan; then I should get a glimpse of you sometimes.”
“I don’t know whether you call that a pure motive? Yes, I think I see myself riding past a Zenana hospital every day, and about once a-week catching a distant view of you teaching a lot of native girls to roll up bandages.”
“And I can imagine myself rushing to the verandah to look after you when you had passed,” said Georgia. “It would be a modern version of Roland and his lady.”
“It would be far worse than never seeing one another at all.”
“Oh no, Dick—not worse, much better than that.”
“It would be much worse to me. I should have to look out for an appointment somewhere at the other end of the Empire.”
“Dick, how unkind of you to say such a thing!” There were tears very near to falling in Georgia’s eyes, but with an extraordinary access of tact Dick pretended not to notice them, and looked up at her with a friendly smile.
“Yes, I know I’m a brute. I warn you not to have me, Georgie. I have had a good fright just now, and I’m properly subdued for the moment, but I am bound to break out again. It isn’t safe, is it?”
“I don’t care whether it is safe or not,” and she stooped and kissed him.
“Does that mean that there is to be no more doctoring?”
“Not at all. Did you think you were going to catch me off my guard in a moment of weakness? It means that you agree to my doing what medical work I can, and that I won’t let it come between you and me.”
“That first part is what one might call a cool assumption, but I told you to make your own conditions, and as I said before, I am prepared to accept them abjectly. Do you know, Georgie, that when I was at Rahmat-Ullah it was hinted to me that I might be made assistant political agent when they establish the agency at Iskandarbagh? How would you like that?”
“Dick, it’s too good to be true! It is like a dream. To have you, and my work, and to be able to reach not only Khemistan but my dear Ethiopian women!”
“How do you propose to employ yourself, then?”
“In doctoring the women and children, and teaching where I am allowed.”
“And leaving your house to take care of itself?”
“Yes, of course, and my husband too. It would set such a good example to the Ethiopian women, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, well, if I am only to be regarded in the light of an object-lesson——”
“You will accept the position with resignation, and be thankful. Oh, Dick, don’t let us tease one another any more! Can’t you understand that I am glad and proud to have the chance of helping you a little in your work? It was my father’s work too, you know.”
“Yes, I know. You might come a little closer, Georgie. You don’t seem to understand yet that I make my doctor pay for the privilege of attending me.”
“Come, Mr Stratford, you mustn’t tire Sir Dugald. I am sure he has done quite enough work this morning.”
Stratford looked at Lady Haigh rather guiltily, almost as though he felt that he ought to tell her something, but could not make up his mind to do it.
“I didn’t want him to go on so long, Lady Haigh, but he insisted on looking through the journal. Of course he wanted to be posted up in everything before we start to-morrow, in view of reaching Rahmat-Ullah so soon. I’m afraid you will find that—that he has been doing a little too much.”
Lady Haigh went into the room with a scolding on her lips, but it died away when her eyes fell upon Sir Dugald, sitting at the table with his head leaning on his hand. As she entered, he pushed aside wearily the papers before him and turned to her.
“It’s no use, Elma; I am done for—a worn-out, useless wreck. I always hoped to die in harness, but now I am laid on the shelf. It is all right until I get to business, but I cannot grasp things. My brain refuses to work.”
This confirmation of fears which had already occurred to herself and Georgia struck a chill to Lady Haigh’s heart, but she dared not hold out any hope of improvement by way of comfort. She came forward silently, and standing at her husband’s side, laid her hand rather timidly on his shoulder.
“It’s all up, Elma,” he said again. “The veryad valoremduties in the treaty—over which I spent so much time before I was ill—stump me now. We lose everything—position, occupation, influence, even reputation.”
“You have nothing left but your poor old wife,” she said, stifling a sob.
“I don’t count you,” he said, with something of his old manner; “you are part of myself. We have gone through everything together, Elma.”
Lady Haigh murmured something about going home to Scotland and ending their days together, but she left the sentence unfinished. How she managed to get out of the room without absolutely breaking down she did not know, but Georgia found her a short time later dissolved in tears.
“He never spoke to me like that before,” she sobbed. “We have never been a sentimental couple—not even when we were first married. He couldn’t bear that sort of thing; and though I might have liked a little—just a little—moreexpression, don’t you know? I was not going to worry him. We were good comrades always, and I think I can say that I never stood in his way when he was ordered to do anything. He would come to me in the morning and say, ‘Elma, I am ordered to such and such a place,’ a thousand miles off, perhaps—and I would say, ‘Very well, dear; what time must I be ready? or will it do if we start to-morrow?’ He never said anything, but I knew he liked it, and he was as proud as I was that I could shift quarters as quickly as any soldier of them all. And we have always been together, as he says, and now he must give up work at last!”
“But you have your place in Scotland, Lady Haigh, and Sir Dugald will find plenty to do there, and be very happy. It would not surprise me if he recovered entirely when he had no official work to worry him.”
“But that very official work has been the mainspring of his life. He will be lost without it. And how will things go on without him? To escape so many dangers and recover from that poisoning just for this! No, Georgie, don’t try to show me the bright side of it yet. Let me have my cry out now, and, God helping me, I’ll say no more about it, and he shan’t know. I won’t fail him after all just when he needs me most.”
“Dick,” said Georgia that evening when they met before dinner, “who is the bravest woman you know?”
“You,” he replied, promptly.
“Don’t be absurd; I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I should be satisfied if I were half as brave as Lady Haigh. I think that she and Sir Dugald are just worthy of one another.”
“I suppose there’s a concealed snub somewhere in that remark intended for me, but I can’t quite locate it yet. I have a good mind to ask Stratford to find it out for me—I always want to apply to him for an explanation when your reproofs are couched in too learned language—but he isn’t down yet.”
“Here he comes,” said Georgia, as Stratford entered somewhat hurriedly and cast a hasty glance round the room; “but if you ever venture to ask him to interpret me, Dick, why, beware!”
“I should never think of doing it in cold blood. It might be too much for his brain. What’s the matter, Stratford?” he asked, raising his voice. “You’re not late.”
“The Chief not down yet?” asked Stratford, looking round again and making sure that Sir Dugald and Lady Haigh were the only members of the party who were missing. It was the first time that the two invalids had been allowed to join the rest at dinner, and the servants were obviously unhappy at the delay.
“No,” said Fitz; “the poor old chap is so thin after his illness that Lady Haigh is making Chanda Lal pad his dress-clothes a bit to keep him from looking quite so like a scarecrow.”
“I wish you would have the goodness to confine your jokes to other people, Anstruther, and not go sharpening your wit on the Chief,” said Stratford, irritably. “Look here, all of you—there was something I particularly wanted to say when I got you all together, and this is just the chance. I beg and entreat you all not to allude after to-day—even in private letters or in talking to friends—to the way in which I managed to get the treaty signed.”
“Why, Stratford, there was nothing to be ashamed of!” cried Dick. “It was one of the finest things I ever heard of.”
“You don’t see what I am driving at. At present the Chief has got it into his head that the sudden change in the King’s attitude was entirely due to the discovery by independent means of Fath-ud-Din’s treachery, and the consequent promotion of Jahan Beg. He thinks that I happened on the spot exactly at the right moment and got the treaty signed without a bit of trouble, and I want him to go on thinking so.”
“But do you mean to say you don’t want him to know that it was all through you that the old fraud was unmasked, and that you went to the Palace for the sake of rescuing Miss Keeling, and at the risk of your life? What on earth is your reason?”
“I should have thought you would have seen it at once. I want the Chief to get the full credit for this piece of work.”
“But this is nonsense!” cried Dick. “Why should the Chief get the credit for what you did? He is the last man in the world to wish to wear borrowed plumes.”
“Of course he is, and that’s the reason that I want no one beyond our immediate selves to know that they are borrowed. Lady Haigh honestly believes that he did all the work, and that I merely reaped the fruit, so that she won’t let out. Sir Dugald has never been properly appreciated at home, and it is hard on him to lose the reputation he deserves for the way he has managed this affair, which he will do if it once gets known that it was not he who got the treaty signed after all. He is an old man, and he will do no more work after this. His illness has left marks on him. You have noticed it, Miss Keeling, I am sure?”
“There is some loss of brain power,” said Georgia, hesitatingly, “which may be only temporary. But I fear his official career is over.”
“You see that, then? Let him get his peerage and the credit of having made the treaty. After all, he did by far the greater part of the work.”
“Only you came romping in at the finish,” said Fitz. “But what about your own prospects, Mr Stratford?”
“They can look after themselves. I may mention that the Chief let out this morning that he intended to mention us all very honourably in his report, so that we shall none of us lose in the long-run.”
“It is splendid of you to leave Sir Dugald the credit in this way, Mr Stratford,” said Georgia; “and we shall all think far more highly of you than if you had claimed the honour for yourself.”
“But what about your archives—your official journal?” asked Dick, who was still unconvinced.
“I wrote that entry myself. Hush, here comes the Chief!”
And the conspiracy of silence was an accomplished fact, although Dick continued to argue the matter vainly with both Stratford and Georgia all the evening, as often as he could get either of them alone. They succeeded at last in reducing him to a condition of grumbling acquiescence, and during the journey of the next few days all the conspirators did their best to accustom themselves to the new view of what had happened, until they were almost ready to accept it as the true one. Strangely enough, however, they had left out of account an important element which ought to have entered into their calculations, and it was through this oversight that their deep-laid schemes failed eventually of success. The blow came suddenly on the last day of the march, when the officers at Fort Rahmat-Ullah, riding out to welcome the returning travellers, had met them on the frontier. The Mission was being escorted back to the Fort in triumph, and Sir Dugald, able now to mount his horse, was talking to the Commandant as they rode side by side.
“Your staff seem to have come uncommonly well out of this business,” remarked the Commandant. “Of course we expected great things from North, and we were not a bit astonished when he turned up with the treaty, after a three days’ solitary ride; but that Foreign Office fellow of yours—Stratford his name is, isn’t it?—appears to have developed in a wholly unexpected direction.”
“My staff have all behaved extremely well, and I shall have great pleasure in representing the fact in the proper quarter.”
“Oh, come, Haigh, it’s more than that—or do you include absolute heroism in the bond of your requirements? It is not every civilian that would take his life in his hand in the way your man did, and have the nerve to carry through a palace revolution and secure the object of the Mission all at once. I can tell you that when we heard the story from Hicks, there wasn’t one of us but was simply yearning to have had Stratford’s chance, and to have made as good use of it as he did.”
“I wish I had scragged Hicks!” muttered Stratford, behind, to Dick; but Sir Dugald’s face betrayed no astonishment.
“Then I suppose our friend Hicks is beforehand with us now in the matter of news, as he was a short time ago in reaching Kubbet-ul-Haj?”
“You bet he is—as he would say himself. The story of your Mission is all over the world by this time, and Hicks and the proprietor of the ‘Crier’ are raking in the shekels like so much dust. Upon my word, it is rather rough on you. But for that illness of yours, you would have carried the whole thing through yourself, and now you have lost the biggest advertisement you were ever within an ace of getting. Stratford is the popular hero from end to end of the Empire, and no one else will have a look-in beside him.”
“You would not wish me to rob Mr Stratford of the honour which is due to him?” inquired Sir Dugald, raising his eyebrows. “If I know him at all, he will owe Hicks just as much thanks for his advertisement as I should in his place, and that is—nothing. He is so touchy on the subject of his visit to the Palace that I have scarcely yet been able to mention it to him myself. Still, it is a little disappointing to find that we have been forestalled in the announcement of our greatcoup. You agree with me, Mr Stratford?” and Sir Dugald turned partially round in his saddle, and cast a side-glance at the guilty Stratford, who looked extremely unlike a popular hero at the moment. He muttered something unintelligible in reply to his leader’s question, and Sir Dugald smiled and changed the subject as he rode on with the Commandant.
In the bustle and confusion of arriving at the Fort, Stratford heard no more of his attempted deception until late that evening, when he and Fitz, who had been dining with the officers at mess, walked over to the verandah in front of the Haighs’ old quarters to say good-night. Sir Dugald had employed the interval in catechising Lady Haigh and Georgia, as well as in collecting stray pieces of information from Dick and Kustendjian, so that he was now well acquainted with the history of all that had passed on the eventful day when the treaty had been signed.
“Sit down, Stratford, and don’t be in such a hurry,” he said, as they came up the steps, divining Stratford’s evident intention of seeking safety in flight to his own quarters as soon as the requisite farewells had been exchanged. “We may not have the chance of being together again without any strangers present. Do you know that you have been plotting all this time to play me a very shabby trick—to make a fool of me, in fact, in the eyes of everybody?”
“Pray don’t think that I agree with your description of our aims, Sir Dugald, when I say that I can only wish they had succeeded.”
“And left me at the mercy of our friend Hicks? Don’t you see that as soon as he gave his version of your proceedings, I should be suspected either of concealing the facts or of being ignorant of them? I have no particular fancy for either alternative.”
“Unfortunately, we had all left Hicks out of our calculations.”
“Most fortunately, if you will allow me to correct you, Hicks declines to be ignored in such an unceremonious fashion. I suppose you imply that if he had occurred to your memory you would have tried to square him? You ought to know by this time that there is no one on earth so incorruptible as the newspaper man who has a big sensation in charge. The wealth of India would not move him, if the condition of receiving it was the suppression of his ‘copy.’ And what a fine story he could have made out of your eager attempts (instigated, without a doubt, by myself) to bribe him not to publish the true facts of the case! The issue would have been simple ruin for both of us. Not that that is the worst of it. Since when, Mr Stratford, have you imagined me capable of trading upon another man’s reputation?”
“Honestly, Sir Dugald, our only idea was to preserve for you the credit which we know you deserve, but which Hicks and the world are determined to award to the wrong man.”
“My dear Stratford, I have no doubt as to the entire excellence of your intentions, although I can’t congratulate you on the steps you took to carry them out. I cannot be too thankful that your Quixotic scheme has failed. Leaving out of sight all the other considerations, I have still a little pride left, and I can’t stand being indebted, even to my friends, for a reputation which doesn’t belong to me. I have had my day, and I am quite ready to walk off and leave the stage to the younger men.”
“Ah, Sir Dugald,” said Stratford, earnestly, “none of the younger men can hope to do what you have done.”
“Stuff!” said Sir Dugald, but he could not help allowing a gleam of pleasure to be seen. “You have all done your duty under very trying circumstances, and I am proud of you, gentlemen.”
“And we of you, Sir Dugald,” said Dick, finding his tongue suddenly.
“You are bringing home peace with honour, as you said once at Kubbet-ul-Haj,” said Stratford.
“The Chief gets the peace, and Stratford the honour,” observed Fitz,sotto voce, to Georgia. “Do you call that a fair division or not, Miss Keeling?”
(Being part of a letter addressed by Mr Fitzgerald Anstruther, about a year after the return of the English Mission from Kubbet-ul-Haj, to Mrs North, M.D., British Residency, Iskandarbagh.)
“... I have just come back from my visit to Sir Dugald and Lady Haigh at Inverconglish. The Chief is all right again, and looks quite bucolic in knickerbockers and a deerstalker—a regular ‘tyrant of his little fields,’ indeed. I had promised myself the pleasure of seeing him in a kilt, but he says that his tenants are a serious-minded people, unaccustomed to laughter, and he is afraid the sight of him so arrayed might do them severe physical injury. He is a great power in the neighbourhood, and the people bring their disputes to him to settle instead of going to law, so that he is quite busy and happy, though he has not got his peerage. Lady Haigh, who directs the affairs (particularly the love affairs) of the locality generally, told me something about Stratford that will amuse you and North. He is destined, so they say, to get a high appointment before long, and meanwhile he has devoted his leave to falling in love with a girl just out of the schoolroom, who is desperately frightened by his attentions, and won’t have a word to say to him. Lady Haigh says she is rather like a lady whom Stratford knew long ago, and who died. She is a hero-worshipper, and has adored him from a distance since Hicks first made him known to the British public, but she doesn’t want him to come any closer. However, if old Stratford makes up his mind to stick to a thing, I fancy he is pretty sure to get it. By the bye, I met Hicks the other day. He was just off to Thracia again, drawn by the rumour of these new disturbances. He quite considers himself as one of us, and says that when we of the old Kubbet-ul-Haj gang meet next to celebrate the signing of the treaty, he will be there, if he has to come from the other side of the world in order to be present....”
THE END
Sydney C. Grier was the pseudonym of Hilda Caroline Gregg.
This book is part of the author’s “Modern East” series. The full series, in order, being: