Captain Ferrerswas jogging gloomily across the desert from Fort Shah Nawaz to Alibad, and his face was only the index to his thoughts. At the moment he did not know whether he hated more the outpost of which he was in command or the errand that was taking him to Alibad, and as he rode he cursed his luck. There was no denying that everything seemed to go wrong with him. Harassed by debts and awkward acquaintances at Bab-us-Sahel, he had acquiesced with something like relief in Sir Henry Lennox’s suggestion, which was practically a command, that he should sever himself altogether from his old associates by taking service on the frontier. But, knowing as he did that he was sent there partly as a punishment and partly in hope of saving him for better things, he felt it quite unnecessary to conciliate his gaoler, as he persisted in considering Major Keeling. The two men were conscious of that strong mutual antipathy which sometimes exists without any obvious or even imagined reason, and Major Keeling was not sorry when Ferrers showed an inclination to claim the command at Shah Nawaz as his right. It was not an ideal post for a man who needed chiefly to be saved from himself; but Ferrers was senior to all the other men save Porter the Engineer, who could not be spared from the head station. Therefore Ferrers had his desire, and loathed it continuously from the day he obtained it. The place was no fort in reality, merely a cluster of mud-brick buildings, standing round a courtyard in which the live stock of the garrison was gathered for safety at night, and possessing a gateway which could be blocked up with thorn-bushes. On every side of it spread the desert, with some signs of cultivation towards the south, and in the north the dark hills which guarded the Akrab Pass, the door into Central Asia. To Ferrers and his detachment fell the carrying out in this neighbourhood of the policy outlined by Major Keeling in his conversation at the dinner-table—the protection of the peaceable inhabitants of the district, and the incessant harrying of all disturbers of the peace, whether from the British or the Nalapuri side of the frontier. At first the life was fairly exciting, though Ferrers’ one big fight was spoilt by the necessity of sending to Alibad for reinforcements; but now that things were settling down, it was irksome in the extreme to patrol the country unceasingly without ever catching sight of an enemy. Ferrers panted against the quietness which Major Keeling’s rigorous rule was already establishing on both sides of the border. He would have preferred the system prevailing in the neighbouring province, where a raid on the part of the tribes was answered by a British counter-raid, when villages were burnt, crops destroyed, and women and children dismissed homeless to the hills, the troops retiring again immediately to their base of operations until the tribes had recovered strength sufficiently for the whole thing to be gone through again. It was a poor thing to nip raids in the bud, or arrest them when they were only just begun: a big raid, followed by big reprisals, was the sort of thing that lent zest to frontier-life and stimulated promotion. However, Major Keeling’s whole soul was set against thrilling experiences of this kind, and Ferrers was forced to submit. But his love of fighting was as strong as ever, and had led to the very awkward and unfortunate incident which he was now to do his best to explain at Alibad, whither he had been called by a peremptory summons.
The root, occasion, or opportunity of all crime on the border at this time was the practice of carrying arms, which had grown up among the inhabitants during many years of oppression from above and incursions from without. Now that protection was assured them, the custom was unnecessary and dangerous, and any man appearing with weapons was liable to have them confiscated—the people grumbling, but submitting. Hence, when word was brought to Ferrers that a company of armed men had been seen traversing the lands of one of the villages in his charge, it was natural to conclude that they were raiders from beyond the border, who had escaped the vigilance of the patrols, and hoped to harry the countryside. Ferrers at once started in pursuit, and the armed men, their weapons laid aside, were discovered in the village cornfields, busily engaged in gathering in the crop. The impudence displayed fired Ferrers, and he ordered his men to charge. Hisdaffadar, a veteran soldier, ventured to advise delay and a parley, but he refused to listen. He meant to make an example of this party of robbers, not to offer them terms, and a moment later his troopers were riding down the startled reapers. These made no attempt to resist, though they filled the air with protests, and before the troop could wheel and ride through them again, a voice reached Ferrers’ ear which turned him sick with horror.
“Sahib! sahib!” it cried, “we are the Sarkar’s poor ryots! Why do you kill us?”
This time the parley was granted, and Ferrers learned too late that the men he had attacked were the inhabitants of the village to which the field belonged, that they had brought their weapons with them owing to a warning that the people of another village intended to attack them and carry off their harvest, and that the second village had revenged itself for its disappointment by sending Ferrers the information which had led him wrong. There was nothing to be done but to rebuke the village elders severely for not warning him of the intended attack instead of taking the law into their own hands, assuage the sufferings of the wounded by distributing among them all the money he had about him, and return drearily to Shah Nawaz to draw up a report of the occurrence. It was his luck all over, he told himself, ignoring the reminder that he had not attempted to avert the fight—in fact, that he had hurried it on for the mere sake of fighting. It was all the fault of the life at this wretched outpost, where there was nothing a man could do but fight, and that was forbidden him. It was little comfort to remember that Major Keeling, in his place, would have found the day all too short for the innumerable things to be done. He would have been in the saddle from morning till night, visiting the villages, holding impromptu courts of justice, looking for traces of old irrigation-works or planning new ones, and filling up any odds and ends of time by instituting shooting-competitions among his troopers, or making experiments in gardening. Ferrers was a very different man from his Commandant, though he could be brave enough when there was fighting to be done, and owed his captaincy to his gallantry on a hard-won field. Without the stimulus of excitement he was prone to fits of indolence, when the monotonous round of daily duty was intolerably irksome; and he was further handicapped by the fact that whereas the change to the frontier had been intended to cut him off from his old life, he had, unknown to the older men who were trying to direct his course anew, succeeded in bringing a portion of his past with him.
The fashion among the young officers at Bab-us-Sahel at this time might be said to run in the direction of slumming. The example had been set a year or two before by a young man of brilliant talents and unscrupulous audacity, whose delight it was to escape from civilisation and live among the natives as one of themselves. This man was the despair of his seniors, but in the course of his escapades he contrived to pick up much curious and some useful information. To follow in his footsteps meant to defy the authorities now and possibly gain credit later, and this was sufficiently good reason for doing so. In the case of men of less brilliance or less audacity the natural result was merely to lead them into places they had much better have shunned, and acquaint them with persons whom it would have been wiser not to know. Ferrers was one of those who had followed the pioneer’s example without gaining the slightest advantage, and he knew this; so that when the chance of freeing himself came to him, he was almost ready to welcome it. Almost, but not quite. It so happened that a rule had lately been introduced requiring a literary knowledge of the local language from officers employed in the province. Major Keeling, while remarking to Ferrers, with his usual contempt for the actions of his official superiors, that in his opinion a colloquial acquaintance with it was all that was really needed, advised him to take a munshi with him to Shah Nawaz, and employ his leisure there in study. No sooner had the advice been given than the munshi presented himself in the person of one of Ferrers’ disreputable associates, the Mirza Fazl-ul-Hacq. Originally a Mohammedan religious teacher, this man was in some way under a cloud, and was regarded by his co-religionists much as an unfrocked clergyman would be in England. This fact was in itself an attraction to Ferrers and the young men of his stamp, to whom there was an actual delight in finding that one who ought to be holy had gone wrong, and the Mirza professed a strong attachment to him in return. Now he begged to be allowed to accompany him to the frontier as his munshi, asserting, with perfect truth, that he was well acquainted with all the dialects in use there. Ferrers, who had begun to look back regretfully at the pleasures from which he was to be torn, closed with the offer, and the Mirza was duly enrolled in his retinue. The two were closeted together in all Ferrers’ hours of leisure at Shah Nawaz, but remarkably little study was accomplished. The Mirza was an adept at various games of chance, he brewed delicious sherbets (not without the assistance of beverages forbidden by his religion), and he was a fascinating story-teller. Thoroughly worthless as Ferrers knew him to be, the man had made himself necessary to him, and he half hated, half condoned, the fact. When a fellow led such a dog’s life, how could he refuse any chance of congenial companionship that offered itself?
It might have been objected that Ferrers was within riding distance of Alibad, and that there was no law cutting him off from his friends there; but since Colin and Penelope Ross had come up-country he had avoided the place as if it were plague-stricken. Lady Haigh had been quite right in her interpretation of his feelings, and though he had succeeded in winning over Colin to plead his cause with Penelope, he now wondered gloomily why he could not have let well alone. He was always acting on impulse, he told himself, in a way that his cooler judgment disapproved, and it did not occur to him that he had to thank the Mirza’s influence over him for this fresh change. In fact, he was not conscious of it, for the subject was never mentioned between them; but in the Mirza’s society he felt no desire for that of his old friends. He had a real fondness for Colin, the one man of his acquaintance who believed in him, though he found it terribly fatiguing to keep up in his company the pretence of being so much better than he was. Colin had no idea of his real tastes and pursuits, and, curious though it may seem, Ferrers was prepared to take a good deal of trouble to prevent his becoming aware of them. The thought that Colin’s eyes would never rest upon him in kindness again was intolerable; and if Colin alone had been concerned, his mind would have been at ease. But if he married Penelope, he must either give up the Mirza, or she must know, and therefore Colin would know, a good many things he would prefer to keep secret—and what counterbalancing advantage would there be? Though he had felt his interest in her revive when he saw her admired and courted, she was not the type of woman who could keep him in thrall: she would suffer in silence, and look at him reproachfully with eyes that were like Colin’s, and there would be little pleasure in that.
At this point Ferrers’ meditations were suddenly interrupted. Intent upon his mental problem, it was with a shock that he found himself confronted by a trooper of the Khemistan Horse. He tried to discover what emergency could have dictated the posting of vedettes at this distance from the town, but learned only that it was the Doctor Sahib’s order. Wondering vaguely whether there was plague in the district, and the doctor was establishing a sanitary cordon, he rode on, to see more vedettes in the distance, and to be sharply challenged by a sentry as he entered the town. The squalid streets seemed wholly destitute of the military element which usually gave them brightness; but in the courtyard of the mud building which served as a hospital Dr Tarleton was hard at work drilling a motley band of convalescents and hospital assistants, with a stiffening of dismounted troopers, who appeared to be bored to extinction by the proceedings.
“What’s up, Tarleton?” cried Ferrers, after watching in bewilderment the strange evolutions of the corps and their instructor’s energetic endeavours to get them straight.
Hearing the voice, Dr Tarleton turned round and hurried to the wall, wiping his face as he came. “Oh, the Chief and all the rest are away, and I’m in charge. Nothing like being prepared for the worst, you know. This is my volunteer force—the Alibad Fencibles. I say, tell me the right word, there’s a good fellow! I’ve got ’em all massed in that corner, and I can’t get ’em out without going back to the beginning.”
Ferrers whispered two or three words into the doctor’s ear, watched him write them down, and rode on towards the fort, taking some comfort in the thought that his unpleasant interview with Major Keeling must necessarily be postponed. It was clear that it was his duty to pay his respects to the ladies, and by good luck it was just calling-time.
Lady Haigh and Penelope had now been two or three months at Alibad, and the heat and burning winds of the shadeless desert were leaving their mark upon them. Both had lost their colour, and even Lady Haigh moved languidly, while Penelope was propped up with cushions in a long chair. She had had a sharp attack of fever, and Ferrers, with an inward shudder, wondered how he could have thought her handsome when she landed. But both ladies were unfeignedly pleased to see him, principally because they were glad of anything that would divert their thoughts; and he experienced a pleasant sense of contentment and wellbeing on finding himself established in the dark cool room, with two women to talk to him. He found that the station had been bereft of almost the whole of its defenders for nearly twenty-four hours. Two nights ago Sir Dugald had started with a small force in pursuit of a band of Nalapuri raiders who were reported to be ravaging the most fertile part of the border, and yesterday an urgent message had come from him asking for reinforcements and Major Keeling’s presence.
“But if Haigh and his guns are gone out, it must be a big affair,” said Ferrers.
“Oh no, the guns are left at home,” said Lady Haigh. “All of us are people of all work here. Sir Dugald digs canals, and Captain Porter conducts cavalry reconnaissances, and Major Keeling works the guns——”
“And the doctor drills the awkward squad,” supplied Ferrers. “What a lively time you seem to have!”
“Oh well, that was more at first. Then there was scarcely a night without an alarm, and we used to hear the troops clattering out of the town at all hours after bands of raiders. There are plenty of alarms still, but generally in the daytime. Two villages have quarrelled over their lands, or some ryots have objected to the survey or resisted the digging of the canal, and Major Keeling is wanted to put things right.”
“But how calmly you speak of it! You and Pen—Miss Ross—must be perfect heroines,” said Ferrers. It was clear that Lady Haigh did not intend to leave him alone with Penelope, and with a resentment which had in it more than a touch of relief, he set himself to tease her. “How pleased Haigh must be to know that, whatever is happening to him, you are just as quiet and happy as if you were at home!”
The malice in his tone was evident, and Lady Haigh knew that he guessed at the terrors of those broken nights, when Sir Dugald was summoned away on dangerous duties, and she brought her bed into Penelope’s room, and they trembled and prayed together till daylight. But she had no intention of confessing her weakness, and answered quickly—
“Of course he is. How clever of you to have gauged him so well!”
“And do tell me what you find to do,” asked Ferrers lazily. “At Bab-us-Sahel you used to be great at gardening.”
“Yes, until you rode across my flower-beds and ruined them,” retorted Lady Haigh. “You won’t find any opportunity of doing that here. Oh, we have only poor silly little things to do compared with the constant activity and splendid exploits of you gentlemen. We look after the servants, of course, and try to invent food enough to keep the household from starvation; and we get out the back numbers of the ‘Ladies’ Repository’ and the ‘Family Friend,’ and follow the fancy-work patterns; and we read all the books and papers that come to the station, and sometimes try very hard to improve our minds with the standard works Miss Ross brought out with her; and in the evening we go out in ourpalkisto inspect the progress of the building and road-making, and offer any foolish suggestions that may occur to us. I think that’s all.”
“But what a life! and in the hot weather, too! Why don’t you go to the Hills, as the Punjab ladies do?”
“The Punjab ladies may, if their husbands can afford it. Have you any idea what it would cost to go to the Hills, or even down to Bab-us-Sahel, from here?”
“But why come here, then? What good does it do? Of course”—for Lady Haigh was beginning to look dangerous—“it’s delightful for Haigh to have you, and all that; but you won’t tell me he’s such a selfish chap that he wouldn’t rather know you were comparatively cool and comfortable down by the sea? You can’t make me believe it’s his doing.”
“No,” snapped Lady Haigh, “it’s ours. We are here for the good of the station. We are civilisation, society—refinement, if you like. We keep the gentlemen from getting into nasty jungly ways. You are looking rather jungly yourself.” She delivered this home-thrust suddenly, and Ferrers realised that his aspect was somewhat careless and unkempt for the place in which he found himself. “We keep things up to the standard, you see.”
“Ah, but I have no one to keep me up to the standard,” he pleaded. “Out at my place there’s no one to speak to and nothing to do.”
“Then I wonder you chose to go there,” was the sharp retort.
“There was plenty to do just at first, but my rascals are quiet enough now. A good many of them are dead, for one thing. You heard of our big fight before you came up—with a raiding-party six hundred strong? I had to send here for help, worse luck! but even when the reinforcements came up we were so few that the fellows actually stood to receive us. We charged through them again and again—I never remember a finer fight—and there were very few of them left afterwards.”
“You speak as if you liked it!” said Penelope, with a shudder.
“Like it? it’s the finest thing in life—the only thing worth living for. You see a great big brute of a Malik coming at you with a curved tulwar just sweeping down. You try to parry, or fire your Colt point-blank into his face, and for the moment you can’t quite decide whether you are dead or the Malik, until you suddenly realise that your horse is carrying you on towards another fellow, and the Malik is down. Splendid is no word for it!”
“Don’t!” said Lady Haigh sharply. “You’ll make Miss Ross ill again. What’s that?” as a long-drawn, quavering cry seemed to descend from the upper air, “Mem Sahib, the regiment returns!”
Lady Haigh sprang up, and was rushing out of the room, when she suddenly remembered Penelope, and ran back to her. “Yes, I’ll help you, Pen—how selfish of me! It’s ourchaprasi,” she explained hurriedly to Ferrers. “I stationed him on the tower above this to watch for any one who might be coming. He was horribly frightened, and said he knew he should fall down and be killed; but of course I was not going to give in to that. Carry this cushion up for Miss Ross, please. There’s a doorway on the ramparts where she can sit in the shade.”
Ferrers followed obediently, as Lady Haigh half helped, half dragged her friend up the narrow stairs, and, after allowing her one look at the moving cloud of dust, which was all that could be seen in the distance, established her in the doorway on the cushion, taking her own place at a telescope which was fixed on a stand.
“This is my own idea,” she said to Ferrers. “Now, why don’t you say I may justly be proud of it? I am as good as a sentry, I spend so much time up here scanning the desert. I’m glad they’re coming from that direction, for we shall be able to distinguish them so much sooner. They must pass us before getting into the town. Now I begin to see them. They have prisoners with them, Pen, and there are certainly fewer of them than started, but somehow they don’t look as if they had been fighting. No, I see what it is. There’s a whole squadron gone!”
“What!” cried Ferrers, who was standing by, unable to get a single glance through the telescope, which was monopolised by his hostess. “Clean gone, Lady Haigh? Must have been detached on special duty, surely? It couldn’t have been wiped out.”
“No, no, of course,” and Lady Haigh withdrew from the glass, and allowed him to look through it; “that must be it, but it gave me such a fright. But I saw Dugald and Colin, Pen, and the Chief. Muhabat Khan!” she called to thechaprasi, who descended slowly from the top of the tower, and stood before her in a submissive attitude but with an injured expression, “go and meet the regiment as it comes, and say to the Major Sahib that Ferrers Sahib is here, and that I should be glad if he and Ross Sahib will come in to tiffin with us. Now, Pen, I shall take you down again,” as the messenger departed. “Captain Ferrers will bring the cushion.”
Deposited in her chair once more, Penelope looked very white and exhausted, and Lady Haigh reproached herself loudly in the intervals of exchanging mysterious confidences with various servants.
“I ought never to have taken you up to the rampart,” she said; “but I knew you would like to see them ride in; and besides——” She checked herself, but Ferrers guessed that she had been afraid to leave Penelope alone lest he should try to speak to her, and he smiled as he thought how unnecessary her precautions were. But by this time there was a clatter of horses’ feet and accoutrements in the courtyard, and Sir Dugald ran up the steps and kissed his wife, who had sprung to the door to meet him.
“The Chief and Ross are here,” he said. “Glad you sent that message, Elma. You all right, Ferrers? Didn’t know you were coming in.”
Major Keeling and Colin Ross were mounting the steps with much clanking of spurs and scabbards; but it struck Ferrers, as he stood in the doorway, that his Commandant seemed suddenly to have remembered something, for as he reached the verandah he lifted his sword and held it in his hand, and walked with extreme care. After greeting Lady Haigh, he passed on into the room, and Ferrers observed with astonishment that the big man was evidently trying to step softly and speak low. It was not until Major Keeling bent over Penelope’s chair, and, taking her hand very gently, asked her how she was, that the watcher realised for whose sake these precautions were taken.
“I felt obliged to come in when I received the order from our beneficent tyrant over there,” said Major Keeling, in a voice which seemed to fill the room in spite of his best endeavours; “but if our presence disturbs you in the least, we will all go and tiffin at my quarters, and take Haigh off with us too.”
“Oh no, please!” entreated Penelope. “It will do me good, really. It is so nice to see you all back.”
There was a faint flush in her cheeks, which deepened when Major Keeling remarked upon it approvingly; and Ferrers remembered, with unreasonable anger, that her colour had not risen for him. It made her look pretty again at once, and that great lout the Chief (thus unflatteringly did he characterise his commanding officer) evidently thought so too. Once again the younger man was a prey to the curious form of jealousy which had led him into the impulsive action that he now regretted. Penelope, for her own sake, had little or no charm for him, but Penelope, admired by other men, became at once a prize worth claiming. Ferrers regretted his impulsive action no longer. His appeal to Colin had at any rate placed him in a position of superiority over any other man who might approach Penelope.
“Thecurious thing was that we had no fighting,” said Major Keeling. They were seated at the luncheon-table, and Lady Haigh had imperiously demanded an account of the doings of the force since its departure.
“No fighting!” she cried reproachfully. “And you have kept us in agony two whole days while you went out for a picnic!”
“It was more than a picnic,” said her guest seriously. “It is one of the most mysterious things I have ever come across—a complete success, and yet not a matchlock fired, though every one and everything was ready for a big fight.”
“I must get to the bottom of this,” said Lady Haigh, with the little air of importance to which Major Keeling always yielded indulgently. “Let me hear about it from the beginning. Dugald, you don’t mean to say that you started out under false pretences when you told me you were going after a band of raiders?”
“Not at all,” answered Sir Dugald, with imperturbable good-humour. “We found the raiders, sure enough, at the village which gave the alarm. They had plundered the granaries, got the cattle together ready to drive off, and were just going to fire the place when we came up. It was rather fine when they realised it was the Khemistan Horse they had to deal with, and not a scratch lot of villagers, for they left the cattle and decamped promptly. Our only casualty was a trooper who came upon two laggards at bay in a corner, and tried to take them both prisoners. Of course we went after them, and several of the villagers, who had appeared miraculously from their hiding-places, came too. It was a long chase, and we stuck to them right up to the frontier. Well, we guessed that this was the band which has made its headquarters at Khudâdad Khan’s fortress, Dera Gul. The Amir of Nalapur has always protested his inability to catch and punish them, so, as we had caught them red-handed on our ground, I thought we would run them to earth. The raiding must be stopped somehow, and if the Amir can’t do it, he ought to be grateful to us for doing it for him.”
Major Keeling nodded emphatically. “If he doesn’t show proper gratitude, I’ll teach it him,” he said.
“They rode, and we rode,” Sir Dugald went on; “and as they had the start and travelled lighter, we had the pleasure of seeing them ride into Dera Gul and shut the door in our faces. When we summoned Khudâdad Khan to give them up, he told us to come and take them, and they jeered at us from the walls and bade us be thankful they let us go home safe. The place is abominably strong, and they had several cannon ready mounted, and plenty of men, so I thought the best thing I could do was to take up a position of observation, and send for reinforcements and the guns. But as I was writing my message, one of our friendly ryots advised me to send for Kīlin Sahib, and not trouble about the guns. ‘You will see that they’ll surrender to him,’ he said. I didn’t believe it, but he stuck to his text, and my ressaldar, Bakr Ali, agreed with him, though neither of them would give me any reason; so I added to mychitan entreaty that the Major would accompany the reinforcements if possible. And he came, saw, and conquered.”
“No thanks to myself,” said Major Keeling. “I summoned Khudâdad Khan to surrender, and he did so at once, with the worst possible grace, merely stipulating that he and his men should be considered our prisoners, and not handed over to Nalapur. I knew the Amir would be precious glad to get rid of them, so I consented. And after that—Haigh, you will agree with me that it was a queer sensation—we rode up into the fortress between the rows of scowling outlaws, spiked the five guns, took stock of the provisions, and left Harris and a squadron in charge of the place until we can hand it over to the Amir. The outlaws we brought back with us, and I mean to plant them out on the newly irrigated land to the west after they have served their sentences. ‘It was a famous victory.’”
“Yes, but how?—why?” cried Lady Haigh. “What made them surrender when they saw you?”
“If you could tell me that I should be much obliged. There’s a mystery somewhere, which is always cropping up, and this is part of it. Why, almost wherever I go, the Maliks and elders meet me as an old friend—no, not quite that, as a sort of superior being—and inform me with unction that all my orders are fulfilled already, and that they are ready to join me with all their fighting men as soon as I want them. It’s the same with the wild tribes, even those from over the frontier. Sometimes I have thought there must be a mistake somewhere, and asked them if they know who I am, and they say, ‘Oh yes, you are Sinjāj Kīlin Sahib, the ruler of the border for the Honourable Company,’ with a sort of foolish smirk, as if they expected me to be pleased. I can’t help thinking they are mistaking me for some one else.”
“Or some one supernatural—some one of whom they have heard prophecies,” suggested Lady Haigh breathlessly.
“But you can’t very well ask them that—whether they take you for Rustam come to life again—lest they should say they never thought of comparing you to any one of the kind,” said Ferrers. The tone, rather than the words, was offensive, but Major Keeling ignored it.
“But they do think something of the sort, I believe,” he said. “At least, when I was present at a tribaljirgahthe other day, an old Malik from a distance remarked that as he had not seen me before, it would be very consoling to him if I would give a slight exhibition of my powers. He would not ask for anything elaborate—if I would just breathe fire for a minute or two, or something of that kind, it would be enough. I told him I wasn’t a mountebank, and the rest hustled and scolded him into silence. But after that very meeting another old fellow, who had been most forward in nudging the first one, and had looked tremendously knowing as he told him that fire-breathing was not a custom of the English, got hold of me alone, and whispered, ‘You won’t forget, Highness, that on the night of which I may not speak you promised I should ride at your right hand when the time comes?’ Without thinking, I said, ‘If the night is not to be spoken of, why do you speak of it?’ and the old fellow stammered, ‘Between you and me, I thought it was no harm, Heaven-born,’ and after that I could get no more out of him. Whatever I asked him, he thought I was trying to test him, and took a pride in keeping his mouth shut.”
“It really is most mysterious,” said Lady Haigh, “and might be most embarrassing. Do you think you go about paying visits to Maliks in your sleep, Major Keeling? Because, you see, you might do all sorts of queer things as well.”
“I know nothing whatever about it—it is totally inexplicable,” said Major Keeling shortly, rising as he spoke. “I am sorry to break up your party, Lady Haigh, but Captain Ferrers and I have some business together, and he ought to be on the way back to his station before very long.”
Seeing that he was not to escape, Ferrers followed the Commandant, and passed a highly unpleasant half-hour in his company. From a scathing rebuke of the criminal carelessness which had led to the late regrettable incident, Major Keeling passed to personalities.
“What have you been doing to yourself?” he asked sharply. “You ought to be as hard as nails with the life you lead at Shah Nawaz. But perhaps you don’t lead it. You look like a Bengal writer.”
“With this examination in view——” began Ferrers with dignity.
“Hang these examinations! They spoil the good men and make the bad ones worse. I’ll have no one up here who would sacrifice his real work to them. If you can’t keep your studies to the hot hours, when you young fellows think it’ll kill you to go out, better give them up. Your munshi must be a queer sort if he’s willing to work all day with you. Who is he, by the bye? Fazl-ul-Hacq?—not one of the regular Bab-us-Sahel munshis, surely? Next time you come in, make some excuse to bring him with you, and I’ll have a look at him. He never seems to be forthcoming when I hunt you up at Shah Nawaz, and when a man keeps out of sight in that way it doesn’t look well. You think he’s all right, I suppose?”
Now was Ferrers’ chance. With one effort he might break with his old life and throw off the Mirza’s yoke, exchanging his solitary indolence at Shah Nawaz for the incessant activity which was the portion of all who worked under Major Keeling’s own eye. But to do this he must confess to the man he disliked that he felt himself unfit for responsibility, and that he had practically betrayed the trust reposed in him. Moreover, not a man in the province but would believe he had been deprived of his command as a punishment. This thought was decisive, and he answered quickly—
“Yes, sir; I believe he is an excellent teacher, and he makes himself useful as a clerk when I want one.”
“Well, don’t let him become indispensable. That plays the very mischief with these fellows. They think they’ve got the Sahib under their thumb, and can do as they like, and very often, when it’s too late, the Sahib finds out that it’s true. Give your man hisrukhsat[leave to depart] in double quick time if you see that he’s inclined to presume.”
Wondering savagely what Major Keeling would think of the actual terms which prevailed between Fazl-ul-Hacq and his employer, Ferrers acquiesced with outward meekness, and took his leave. Colin Ross had promised to accompany him part of the way back, and with a couple of troopers as escort they rode out into the desert. As they passed the hospital, Dr Tarleton appeared on the verandah, and shook his fist at Ferrers.
“You rascal!” he cried. “Those words of command you gave me were all humbug. Just wait until I get you in hospital!”
“What does he mean?” asked Colin, as Ferrers rode on laughing.
“Oh, he was trying to drill a lot of non-combatants this morning, and asked me how to get them out of a corner. Of course I favoured him with a few directions, with the result that his squad got more gloriously mixed up than ever. Only wish I had seen them!”
“Tarleton is a good fellow,” said Colin, with apparent irrelevance.
“Don’t be a prig, young ’un. Must have a bit of fun sometimes. What is a man to do, stuck down in a desert under a commandant who’s either a scoundrel or silly?”
“You mean what the Major was telling us at tiffin? But it’s perfectly true: they did surrender the moment they saw him.”
“I daresay. He has carefully circulated all these rumours about his miraculous powers, and then pretends to be surprised that the niggers believe them. He’s a blatant theatrical egotist—a regular old Crummles. ‘I can’t think who puts these things in the papers.Idon’t.’ Oh no, of course not!”
“If you mean that Major Keeling is a hypocrite, I don’t agree with you.”
“Now don’t get white-hot. If he isn’t, then he has read Scott till his brain is turned. You’re such an innocent that you don’t see the man does everything for effect. His appearance, his perpetual squabbles with headquarters, his popularity-hunting up here, the idiotic things he does—they’re all calculated to produce an impression, to make the unsophisticated stare, in fact. Why, one of my patrols came across him riding alone at midnight not long ago, miles away from here. The man must be either mad or a fool.”
“I think you are wrong,” said Colin seriously. “I believe him to be sincere, though mistaken on some points.”
“What! he’s in your black books too? How has he managed that?”
“He has forbidden me to preach publicly to the men,” was the answer, given in a low voice, but with strong feeling—“said it would lead either to religious persecution or the suspicion of it, and that I must be satisfied with showing them a Christian life, and teaching any one who might come to me privately of his own accord. But that isn’t enough. They don’t come, and how can I reach them?”
“Poor old Colin!” said Ferrers, much amused. “What a Crusader you are, far too good to live nowadays. Fancy finding you in rebellion against constituted authority! I’ll back you to get more and more stubborn the worse he bullies you.”
Colin’s face flushed. “No, I was wrong to speak as I did,” he said. “It is possible the Major may be right, though I cannot see it. In any case, it is my duty to submit for the present.”
“Which means that you won’t accept my sympathy against the great Keeling. You always were a staunch little chap, Colin. Bet anything you stick up for me behind my back just as you do for him.”
“Of course,” said Colin simply; “you are our oldest friend.”
“That’s all very well, but your sister doesn’t feel as you do. It was pretty clearly intimated to me to-day that I was not to call her Penelope, by the bye. She’s done with me, I see. She scarcely spoke a word to me the whole time I was there.”
“No, no; indeed you are wrong,” said Colin eagerly. “She is ill, and can’t talk much. She knows your wishes perfectly. Why, you can’t think I would ever let her disappoint you?”
“You wouldn’t, perhaps, but Lady Haigh would be precious glad to see her do it. Look here, Colin, give your sister a message from me. Put it properly—that while I accept her ruling, and won’t venture to address her at present—you know the sort of thing?—yet I fully intend to claim her promise some day, and I regard her as belonging to me, and I trust she does the same. Make it as strong as you like.”
“I will. I didn’t know you took it to heart so much, and Penelope will be glad to know it too. I’m sure she has an idea that you don’t—well, care for her as you once did. But now I can put that right. You know that there’s no one I would sooner have as a brother-in-law if—if all was well with you.”
“Yes, yes, all in good time. There is one of my patrols over there, so you had better turn back now. All right!”
Colin turned back with the escort, and Ferrers pursued his way, fuming inwardly. He did not wish to deceive his friend. Was it his fault if Colin was so ridiculously easy to deceive, and persisted in believing the best of him in spite of all evidence to the contrary? Ferrers knew what his last sentence had meant. There were certain books with which Colin had provided him, entreating him to read them, when he went to Shah Nawaz, and which he was always anxious to discuss with him when they met. Since the only form of religious study to which Ferrers had given any attention of late was the convenient philosophy expounded by the Mirza, which proved right and wrong to be much the same thing, and man to be equally irresponsible for either, he congratulated himself on having so skilfully evaded cross-examination.
As for Colin, he rode back to Alibad with a serious face, and, instead of stopping at his quarters, went on to the fort to find Penelope. He was full of generous indignation over the treatment Ferrers had received, and he was glad Lady Haigh was out of the way. Penelope raised her tired head from her cushions in surprise as he entered.
“Why, Colin! Is there anything the matter, dear?”
“I am disappointed in you, Pen,” he returned gently, sitting down beside her. “You have treated poor George very unkindly to-day.”
Reproof from Colin, though he was only her own age, was very grievous to Penelope. “Oh no,” she cried, trying to defend herself; “I scarcely spoke to him, and I’m sure I said nothing unkind.”
“That was just it. You said nothing to him, and he is deeply hurt.”
“But he was so rough and noisy, Colin, and talked so loud. I could scarcely bear him to be in the room.”
“It is not like you to be selfish. He wants a helping hand just now, and you think only of his voice and manners. It is a terrible responsibility to push a man back when he is trying to climb up.”
“If that was all,” said Penelope, rather warmly, “I would give him any help I could. But you know you said he wanted more than that.”
“Of course he does.” Colin drew back and looked at her in astonishment. “Why, Pen, he has your promise.”
“No, no,” she said restlessly, “not quite a promise. I—I don’t like him, Colin. He is quite different from what he used to be. Even his face has changed.”
“Your promise,” he repeated. “I know you took advantage of his generosity to withdraw it for a moment, but you renewed it again immediately when I pointed out to you what you had done. Penelope, is it possible that you—my sister—wish to break a solemn promise? What reason can you possibly have for such a thing?”
Penelope writhed. She had no reason to give, even to herself. All she knew was that she had felt to-day as never before the incubus of George Ferrers’ presence, the utter lack of sympathy between herself and him. If she contrasted him with any one else, it was done unconsciously.
“I don’t believe he wishes it himself,” she said. “He doesn’t care for me. He doesn’t behave as if he did.”
“He told me himself,” returned Colin’s solemn, accusing voice, “that while he would not venture to appeal to you at present, it was his dearest hope to claim your promise some day. It is your privilege to help him to raise himself again to the position he has lost. What can be a more noble task for a woman?”
Penelope could not say. Alone with Lady Haigh, it was easy to agree that woman was an independent being, with a life and rights of her own; but she would never have dreamt of asserting this to Colin, to whom a woman was a more or less necessary complement to a man. Ferrers needed her, therefore she would naturally accept the charge—that was his view.
“Would you wish me to marry him as he is now?” she asked desperately.
“No,” he answered, after a moment’s consideration: “I am not quite happy about him, and that is why I am most anxious you should be kind to him. With your sympathy to help him on, and the hope of claiming you at last, he will find the path much easier to climb. Surely this is not too much to ask?”
It sounded eminently fair and reasonable, but Penelope felt that it was not. There was a flaw somewhere which Colin did not see, and she could not point out to him, even if she could be sure that she saw it herself. Ferrers did not care for her, she was convinced, even in the careless, patronising style of his early days, and yet he insisted on keeping her bound. But perhaps he loved her in some strange fashion of his own, of which she could have no experience or conception. And Colin thought that the sacrifice was called for. She turned to him.
“I—I will try to like him, and help him—and do as he wishes,” she said, finding a strange difficulty in speaking.
“Of course. I knew you couldn’t do anything else,” said Colin, with such utter unconsciousness of the mental struggle she had just gone through that Penelope found his calm acquiescence almost maddening. She was glad to be saved the necessity of answering by the sudden entrance of Lady Haigh, who turned back to rebuke a servant for not having drawn up the blinds, and then discovered Colin.
“You here?” she cried. “Why, an orderly came up ten minutes ago to ask if you had come back, and I said you hadn’t. That old wretch Gobind Chand, the Nalapur Vizier, is to come here to-morrow instead of next week, and every one is as busy as possible. And you have been making Penelope cry! Well, I hope Major Keeling will give you the worst scolding you ever had in your life—for being so late, I mean, of course.”
Gobind Chand, to whom Lady Haigh had alluded, was the Hindu Vizier of the Mohammedan state of Nalapur, the boundary of which marched with that of Khemistan on the north. It was no secret to the rulers of Khemistan that the consolidation of their power, of which Major Keeling’s settlement on the frontier was only one of the signs, could not be particularly welcome to the Amir Wilayat Ali. Formerly the country beyond his own border had been a happy hunting-ground, whither he could despatch any inconvenient Sardar or too successful soldier to raid and plunder until he was tired, reserving to himself the right of demanding a percentage of the spoil when the exile wished to return home. There were also pleasant little pickings derivable from the passage of caravans through the Akrab Pass, and the payment by weak tribes or unwarlike villages of what one side called tribute and the other blackmail, as the price of peace. These things gave the Amir a distinct pecuniary interest in the frontier district, and during Major Keeling’s first sojourn on the border, every effort had been made by the Nalapuris, short of actual war, to convince him that his presence was both undesired and useless. The lapse of time, however, and the activity of the Khemistan Horse, proved to the Amir that his unwelcome neighbour had come to stay, and whereas at first any raider had only to cross the border to receive asylum, Wilayat Ali now persisted in regarding the regiment as his private police. It was quite unnecessary for him to take any trouble to secure marauders when the Khemistan Horse had merely to come and seize them, and would do so whether he liked it or not, and he announced that he left the task of keeping order on both sides of the frontier to them, though this was not at all Major Keeling’s intention, which had been to secure the Amir’s active co-operation for the good of both states. To the English the ruler posed as an obliging friend, but when he wished to demand support or subsidies from his Sardars, he became a helpless victim coerced by superior force; and as he could play both parts without disturbing his own tranquillity by taking any steps whatever, he opposed a passive resistance to all projects of reform. Major Keeling had visions of a time when he would have leisure to arrange a conference at which various outstanding questions might be discussed, and the Amir brought to see what was expected of him; but in view of the Amir’s obvious preference for the present state of things, there seemed little prospect of this.
Apparently, then, the Khemistan authorities should have been pleased when Wilayat Ali suddenly despatched his Vizier, Gobind Chand, to bear his somewhat belated congratulations to Sir Henry Lennox on becoming a K.C.B. To the more suspicious-minded it appeared, however, that the Amir had heard rumours of the General’s approaching departure, and wished to inquire as to their truth. This suspicion was confirmed when Gobind Chand, after postponing his departure from Bab-us-Sahel on endless pretexts connected with his own health and that of every member of his suite, suddenly took a house at the port and announced that he was going to learn English, and would remain until his studies were completed. As this would at the lowest computation allow ample time for Sir Henry to depart and his successor to arrive, the pretext was a little too transparent, and it was politely intimated to Gobind Chand that his own state must be in need of his valuable services, and he was set on his homeward way. In advance went a message to Major Keeling, ordering him to receive the distinguished traveller with all due attention, but to see him over the frontier without delay, and this caused a good deal of bustle and excitement at Alibad.
In spite of the activity with which building operations had been carried on, the gaol and the hospital were still the only edifices actually completed, and as Major Keeling refused hotly even to consider the possibility of receiving the envoy in the fort, it was necessary to erect a large tent in the space which had been set apart for public gardens, but which could not be laid out until the hot weather was over. Gobind Chand and his retinue would encamp outside the town for the night, be received by the Commandant in the morning, and resume their homeward journey in the afternoon—this was the programme. There were various ceremonies to be gone through, gifts had to be presented and accepted, and provision was made for a private interview between the two great men, to which only their respective secretaries were to be admitted. But when the time came for the interview, Gobind Chand surprised his host by requesting that even the secretaries might be excluded; and for more than an hour the officers of the Khemistan Horse kicked their heels in the anteroom, and gazed resentfully at the contented immobility of the Vizier’s attendants opposite them, wondering what secrets the old sinner could have to tell the Chief. Their waiting-time came to an end suddenly. Raised voices were heard in the inner room, Major Keeling’s storming in Hindustani, Gobind Chand’s, shrill with fear, trying to urge some consideration upon him. Then the heavy curtain over the doorway was pulled aside with such force that it was torn from its fastenings, and the cringing form of the Vizier appeared on the threshold, with hands upraised in deprecation. He seemed to be in fear of a blow, but Major Keeling, who towered over him, gripping the torn curtain fiercely, made no attempt to proceed to personal chastisement.
“Go!” he said, and the monosyllable came from his lips with the force of an explosive. Gobind Chand’s attendants were on their feet in a moment, and hurried their master out of the tent, Captain Porter, in obedience to a gesture from the Commandant, following them to superintend their departure.
“Haigh!” said Major Keeling, and Sir Dugald detached himself from the rest. “In my office—at once,” and he led the way, Sir Dugald following. For a moment or two Major Keeling’s indignation seemed to deprive him of speech, as he tramped up and down the little room; then he turned suddenly on his subordinate.
“What are you waiting there for? You will take twenty sowars and ride to Nalapur with a letter for the Amir. Go and change your things,” with a withering glance at Sir Dugald’s full-dress uniform, “and the despatches will be ready when you are. Or before,” he added savagely.
It was fortunate that Sir Dugald was a man of even temper, and had some experience of his leader’s peculiarities, for Major Keeling’s manner was unpleasant in the extreme. But as he was leaving the room he was recalled—
“You must get a guide from Shah Nawaz. Ferrers has several Nalapuris in his detachment. I will ride with you part of the way myself, and post you in the state of affairs. Send Ross to me for orders.”
The tone was quite different, and Sir Dugald had no longer reason to fear that he might unwittingly have excited his Commandant’s displeasure. He hastened to his quarters, sent a hurried message to his wife, and reappeared in undress uniform before the letter was finished, or the twenty horsemen, picked and duly equipped by Colin, had ridden into the compound before Major Keeling’s quarters. Each man carried, as was the rule on these expeditions, three days’ rations for himself and fodder for his horse, with a skin of water. When Sir Dugald had been summoned into the inner office to receive the letter, Major Keeling’s black horse Miani was brought up, and presently the little troop clattered out into the desert, the two Englishmen riding ahead, out of earshot of the sowars.
“Now!” said Major Keeling, when they had settled into the pace which experience had shown was the best for a long march, “I suppose you would like to hear what the row is about. I’m glad I kept my hands off that fellow, though I don’t know how I managed it. He wanted me to help him to murder his master and make himself Amir.”
“And what inducement did he offer?” Sir Dugald’s frigid calm in asking the question was intentional, for Major Keeling’s wrath was evidently bubbling up again.
“Half the contents of the treasury, whatever that might prove to be. But is that all you think about? Do you mean to say you don’t see the insult involved in the offer—the fellow’s opinion of us who wear the British uniform? Good heavens! are you made of stone?”
Sir Dugald smiled with some difficulty, for his face had grown tense. “You are the only man who would say such things to me, Major Keeling, and the only man I would allow to do it. With you I have no choice.”
“No, no; I beg your pardon. That abominable coolness of yours—but I shall be insulting you again if I don’t look out. But if you had sat listening to that villain for an hour, while he depicted Nalapur as a perfect hell on earth, and Wilayat Ali as a wholly suitable ruler for it, and then at last brought things round to the point he had been aiming at all along, but which I had never seen, you’d know something of what I feel. Why, the fellow had the inconceivable impudence to say that he thought I understood all the time what he was driving at, and only held back so as to make certain that he put himself completely in my power!”
“But he could never have thought we should set a Hindu over a Mohammedan state.”
“What have we done in Kashmir?”
“But Nalapur is outside our borders. We don’t claim any right to interfere in their choice of a ruler.”
“Whether we claim it or not, we have interfered already. It was before your time, of course, just after that wretched expedition to Ethiopia, where we ought never to have gone, but having gone, we should have stayed. Nasr Ali was Amir then, and his behaviour throughout was most correct, even when our fortunes were at the lowest. Unfortunately for him, it was thought well that the General and he should meet, so that he might be thanked for his loyalty, and a halt was made for the purpose. Things went wrong from that moment. The General and his escort were attacked by tribesmen in one of the passes, and when they got through, with some loss, the news came that Nasr Ali was ill, and not able to meet them. You know what Old Harry is, and how he was likely to receive such a message after the impudence of the tribes; and just as he was working himself up into a fine fury there came to his camp in disguise these two scoundrels, Gobind Chand and Wilayat Ali, the Amir’s brother. They made out that they had stolen away at the risk of their lives to warn the General that Nasr Ali meant to murder him and the whole escort. Sir Henry didn’t wait to inquire why Nasr Ali should choose the time when a victorious army was within call to assassinate its leader, for the fugitives’ news just fitted in with his own suspicions. They gave him a sign by which he was to judge of their good faith. Nasr Ali had promised to receive the mission at the gate of the city the following day: if he did not appear, that would be proof of his treachery. Sir Henry sent an order back to the army for a brigade to be in readiness, and waited. Sure enough, before they reached the city gate Wilayat Ali, in his own person this time, came to meet them and say that his brother was too ill to come out, but would receive them in thekilla[palace] if they would enter the city. To Sir Henry, and all who remembered the Ethiopian business, it was simply an invitation to come and be murdered; so he rode back to camp, sent another messenger to order up the brigade, and passed a horribly uncomfortable night, expecting to be attacked at every moment. Much to his astonishment, he was not attacked, though bands of Nalapuris were said to be circling round, hoping to catch him off his guard, and then the brigade arrived after a forced march. Old Harry allowed the men two or three hours’ rest, occupied the hills overlooking the city in the night, and sent in a demand for its surrender in the morning. Nasr Ali, posing, so the General thought, as an injured innocent, protested against the whole thing as a piece of the blackest treachery, carried out under the mask of friendship, and refused to surrender. I don’t want to go into the whole sickening business; the place was stormed, and Nasr Ali killed in the fighting. Wilayat Ali opened the gates of thekilla, and allowed the treasury (there was remarkably little in it) to be looted. He was the natural heir, for Nasr Ali’s women and children had all been massacred. Of course Wilayat Ali gave us to understand that our troops had done it, but that is absolutely untrue. The first man that broke into the zenana found it looted, and dead bodies everywhere—a shocking sight. I haven’t the slightest doubt that Wilayat Ali had admitted a set ofbadmashesto wipe out his unfortunate brother’s family, and intended to charge it on us, but there’s no proving it. Well, he was placed on thegadiwith Gobind Chand as his Vizier, and we marched home again. Little by little things came out which made me think a horrible miscarriage of justice had occurred, and when I laid them before Sir Henry he had to believe it too. That Wilayat Ali deliberately traduced and betrayed his brother in order to obtain his kingdom I am as certain as that I am here, and now I have to interfere to save him from being murdered by his fellow-scoundrel!”
“There is no chance of putting things right,” said Sir Dugald, in the tone of one stating a fact rather than asking a question.
“None. If any of poor Nasr Ali’s children survived, we might do something, but the fiends took good care of that. There were two boys, certainly, and I believe some daughters as well, but they are beyond reach of any atonement we can make. And since no good could come of it, it would look rather bad for the paramount Power to have to confess how easily it had been hoodwinked; so we let ill alone.”
“Poetic justice would suggest that you should allow Gobind Chand to murder Wilayat Ali, and to be murdered in his turn by the Sardars.”
“And put young Hasrat Ali, Wilayat’s son, who by all accounts is a regular chip of the old block, on thegadi? That wouldn’t better things much, and would mean a nice crop of revolutions and tumults. Nalapur is too close to our borders for that sort of thing. I don’t say that I wouldn’t have welcomed poetic justice if it had had the sense to take its course without consulting me; but as it is, I can’t connive at the removal of an ally, even an unsatisfactory one. Your business is to see the Amir as soon as you arrive, if bribes or threats will do it, so as to forestall Gobind Chand; but don’t leave without delivering the despatch into his hands, if you have to wait for a week. Even if Gobind Chand succeeds in getting round him and persuading him of his innocence, the warning will make him keep his eyes wide open. And—I am not a particularly nervous man, but this is a wicked world—see that your men mount guard properly day and night while you are in Nalapur, and go the rounds yourself at irregular intervals. Since you know something now of Wilayat Ali, I needn’t remind you not to trust a word that he says. Well, I’ll turn back here. Take care of yourself.”
Sir Dugald saluted and rode on with his detachment, and Major Keeling, putting spurs to his horse, galloped back to Alibad, still in the gold-laced uniform and plumed helmet he had donned for his interview with the Vizier. He had never many minutes to waste, and Gobind Chand had robbed him of half a working day already, but he made time to pause at the fort and send Lady Haigh a message that he had seen her husband on his way.
“As if that was any consolation!” cried Lady Haigh when she received it. “If he had seen him coming back, now——! The way he keeps poor Dugald running about all day and every day is really shameful. I do believe”—with gloomy triumph—“that he picks him out for all the dangerous and awkward bits of work on purpose. If anything happened to any of the other men, their sweethearts or mothers or sisters might reproach the Major, and so he sends Dugald, knowing that I have sworn not to say a word, whatever happens.”
Penelope smiled feebly. She was very long in recovering from her attack of fever, and Lady Haigh was anxious about her, even throwing out hints as to the possibility of emulating the despicable conduct of the Punjab ladies, and taking a trip to the Hills or the sea. But Penelope only shook her head, and said she should be better when the cool weather came. No change of scene could alter the fact that she had finally and deliberately taken upon herself the responsibility of Ferrers and his failings, or relieve her from the haunting feeling that henceforward there would be a blank in her life. What caused the blank she had not courage to ask herself. People were not so fond of analysing their sensations in those days as in these; it was enough to be conscious of an ever-present sense of loss, to know that she had put away from her something that it would have been a joy to possess.
Three days passed without news of any kind, dreary days to the two ladies, who devoted themselves, as in honour bound, to their unsatisfactory pursuits, and only emerged from the fort for their evening ride. The “gardens”—for the name which sounded ironical had by general consent been adopted as prophetic—boasted a nondescript erection of masonry which did duty as a band-stand; and here a band in process of making struggled painfully through various easy exercises and a mutilated edition of “God Save the Queen.” Lady Haigh and Penelope always halted theirpalkisdutifully in the neighbourhood of the band, and stepped out to walk and talk a little with Major Keeling and the other men. It was as necessary to appear here once a-day as on the sea-drive at Bab-us-Sahel, and if Major Keeling was in the town he never failed to show himself. Riding, fighting, building, surveying, planting, exercising his men, administering his district, he had ten men’s work in hand, and his only moment of leisure in the whole day was this brief evening promenade. Lady Haigh told him once that it was very good of him to devote it to social purposes. He replied gravely that it was his duty, the least he could do—then hesitated, and confessed that he did not dislike it, nay, that the thought of it sometimes occurred to him pleasantly in the intervals of his day’s labours, and Lady Haigh received the information with suitable surprise and gratitude.
When the watchman on the fort tower announced at last that Sir Dugald’s detachment was in sight, Major Keeling broke up abruptly the court he was holding, and rode out to meet him. As soon as details could be discerned through the haze of sand, he assured himself that the numbers were complete, and that no fighting had taken place; but Sir Dugald’s face, as he met him, did not bear any look of triumph.
“Well?” asked the older man sharply.
“The Amir absolutely refused to receive me until the morning after we arrived, and by that time Gobind Chand had turned up, of course. They make out that Gobind Chand’s proposal to you was inspired by his master, and intended to test your friendship.”
“I hope they were satisfied that it had stood the test?”
“Well, hardly. They said that if you were really friendly you would hand over to them some fugitive called the Sheikh-ul-Jabal.”
Major Keeling nodded his head slowly two or three times. “So that’s it, is it? Rather a neat plan, if my righteous indignation hadn’t knocked it on the head. But somehow I don’t fancy Wilayat Ali would care to suggest to Gobind Chand the idea of murdering him. And yet, if you got to Nalapur before Gobind Chand, how could he have managed to delay the audience until he had put things right with the Amir? Of course he may have anticipated my action, and left directions, but—— Who was your guide, after all?”
“Ferrers’ munshi, Mirza Fazl-ul-Hacq.”
“What!” Major Keeling smote his hand upon his knee. “That man, of all men? The very last—— How in the world——?”
“Is there any objection to him? Ferrers did not want to weaken his garrison, for the outlaw Shir Hussein is in the neighbourhood again, and he hopes to catch him. This man knows Nalapur well, and has friends in the city. Ferrers trusts him implicitly—with all that he has in the world, if you are to believe the Mirza himself.”
“I can quite believe it. Well, no matter. I ought to have warned you. No, I know nothing against the man; but why does he always keep out of my way, if it isn’t that he’s afraid to meet me? And he has friends in Nalapur, has he? Did he go to see them as soon as you arrived?”
“Fairly soon after. I thought it as well to let him trot off, so that he might bring us warning if there was any talk of attacking us.”
“Quite so. But I hardly think he’d have done it. So they want the Sheikh-ul-Jabal given up? I’ll see them hanged first!”
“Is there anything peculiar about the man, Major,—any mystery——?”
“None that I know of. Why?”
“Both the Amir and Gobind Chand looked at me very hard when they made the demand, almost as if they expected to stare me out of countenance. And there was a sort of uneasiness about the whole interview, as if either they knew more than I did, or suspected me of knowing more than they did—I couldn’t make out which. And perhaps you didn’t notice, sir, that when Gobind Chand met you first he gave a great start? I noticed it, and so did Porter.”
“No, I didn’t see it. That wretched mystery cropping up again, I suppose! I wish I could get to the bottom of it. But there’s nothing mysterious about the Sheikh-ul-Jabal. He was a great friend of our unfortunate victim, Nasr Ali, who married his sister, and he managed to escape into our territory, with a few followers, when the trouble came. He had done us good service in the Ethiopian war, and Sir Henry, whose conscience was pricking him pretty badly, was glad to promise him protection, though Wilayat Ali has never ceased to press for his being given up. He is a heretic of some sort, and the orthodox Nalapuri Mullahs hate him like poison.”
“A Sufi, I suppose?” said Sir Dugald.
“No; he is the head of a sect of his own—the remnant of some organisation which was very powerful at the time of the Crusades, I believe. Even now he seems to have adherents all over Asia, and several times he has given us valuable information. But Wilayat Ali swears that he is perpetually intriguing against him, and so the Government have rewarded him rather scurvily—forbidden him to quit Khemistan. The poor man laid it so much to heart that he took a vow never to leave his house again as long as the sun shone upon the earth.”
“Then he is a state prisoner somewhere? Is he down at the coast?”
“No, he has furbished up a ruined fort which he found in the mountains, and calls it Sheikhgarh. He has an allowance from us, and he could range all over the province if he liked. It is only his vow that prevents him, and, curiously enough, I have reason to know that it’s not as alarming as it sounds.”
“Why, have you ever seen him?”
“I have, and I have not. I met him out in the desert one night—saw a troop of men riding, and challenged them. When he heard who I was, he came forward to explain that for a person of such sanctity it was easy to dispense himself partially from his vow—so as to let him take his rides abroad at night. He was muffled up to the eyes, and it was dark, besides, so I can’t say I saw him, but I liked his voice. I told him he need fear no molestation from me, that I considered both he and Nasr Ali had been treated scandalously, and that I was on his side if the Government troubled him any more.”
Sir Dugald hid a smile. Major Keeling’s opinion of any government he might happen to serve was never a matter of doubt, and no prudential motives would be likely to induce him to keep it secret.