“Shabash! Shabash!” came in eager accents from the men behind. “He is the true son of Sinjāj Kīlin. The sword will never be out of his hand.”
Badullah Khan retired, much gratified, and Ghulam Rasul, taking his place, was careful to hold his sword where the light fell upon it. Again the baby stretched out its arms to the gleam, and this was accepted as confirming the omen. The rest of the deputation were content when Ismail Bakhsh raised the baby’s hand to touch their sword-hilts, and the same was the case with regard to the two or three gold coins which were brought forward as a mark of respect. The bearer of thisnasrwas just retiring when an untoward incident occurred. There was a sudden whirr, and a bullet, piercing the matting curtain, ploughed up the skin of Ismail Bakhsh’s wrist and passed through the fleshy part of his arm, before burying itself in the wall behind him. The group in the verandah stood staring at one another. Flora declared afterwards that Mabel dropped the baby in her fright, and that it was only rescued by a frantic effort on the part of Dr Tighe, but Mabel repudiated the accusation with scorn. Certain it is that her nephew was still in her arms the moment after, when a cry of “A hit! a palpable hit!” came from the nearest tower, following closely upon the report of a rifle.
“Are you trying to pot the baby, Winlock?” shouted the doctor, recognising the voice, and stooping under the curtain to step out into the courtyard.
“No, but I’ve sniped the sniper. There’s no cover on Gun Hill now, and I saw his head when he raised it to fire. No harm done, I hope?”
“Well, the Luck of Alibad very nearly came to an abrupt and premature end. Take the child in, Miss North, and reassure the mother. Master North has had his baptism of fire pretty early in life.”
“What can have made them fire in this direction now that we have the curtain?” asked Flora, as she brought out a pair of scissors to slit up Ismail Bakhsh’s sleeve.
“I see how it is,” cried the doctor. “The curtain doesn’t quite reach the ground, and the sight of such an assemblage of spurs, shining in the sun, showed the sniper that something was going on in this neighbourhood. It’s a happy thing that Ismail Bakhsh was standing in front of the baby.”
“Ah,” said the old man, with a delighted grin, “the Baba Sahib is altogether ours now. We have paid our respects at his first durbar, and we have been under fire with him already. Surely the Ressaldar-Major Sahib and those who are absent with him will be mad with envy of us!”
“And you have shed your blood for him,” said Dr Tighe, as he bandaged the arm.
“Nay, sahib, it all belongs to him. He has but taken toll.”
“Isn’t he perfectly sweet, Georgie?” Mabel was demanding at that moment, by way of diverting Georgia’s mind from the danger to which the baby had been exposed. Kneeling at the side of the bed, she was trying, with conspicuous lack of success, to tempt her nephew to play with her hair. “Don’t you think he’s the most delightful baby that ever was born?” she asked again.
“Of course,” said Georgia, smiling. “I am almost as proud of him as Dr Tighe is, and that’s saying a good deal.”
“And he’s so good,” resumed Mabel, referring to the baby, not to the doctor. “He has scarcely cried a bit, and that is such a comfort under the circumstances. It would have been so discreditable if the Luck of Alibad had cried whenever a shot was fired, but he’s a regular little hero.”
“Well, he has no lack of nurses, if that’s good for the temper,” said Georgia. “Oh, how I wish his father could see him!” she sighed suddenly, as the baby moved in her arms and looked straight before it with solemn grey eyes.
“Perhaps he can,” suggested Mabel softly.
“Why, Mab! what do you mean?” cried Georgia, her face flushing.
“I only meant that many people think they are allowed to know what is happening on earth,” explained Mabel, with some hesitation. Georgia laid her head upon the pillow again with a little moan of disappointment.
“You will talk as if Dick was dead!” she said. “I thought you had heard something—that he was here, perhaps.”
“Oh, Georgie!” cried Mabel, in strong remonstrance. Then, remembering that exciting topics ought to be avoided, she changed the subject. “What do you mean to call the boy? Have you decided?”
“St George Keeling,” was the unhesitating reply. “Dick has always said that if he had a son he would name him after my father.”
“Then you won’t call him after Dick? Oh, Georgie!”
Georgia smiled triumphantly. “Oh yes, I shall insist upon that. If Dick chooses two names, I’m sure I have a right to choose one. Richard St George Keeling North—it’s rather long, isn’t it? but Dick won’t mind.”
“Then I suppose,” said Mabel, feeling her way timorously, “that you are not thinking of having him christened just yet? Mr Hardy was asking me whether you would like it to be soon, as things are so uncertain.”
“Before his father comes back? Certainly not,” said Georgia, with so much decision that Mabel dared make no further protest. She attacked Dr Tighe, however, upon the subject when she saw him next.
“You thought that poor Georgia’s delusion would pass away when the baby was born, but she is as fully convinced as ever that Dick is alive,” she said, with something of triumph.
“I know,” acquiesced the doctor, “and I am disappointed. But the delusion is bound to disappear in course of time—when she sees his grave, if not before. And I’d have you remember, Miss North, that she’s likely only hoping against hope now. Her reason may be assuring her that he’s dead, while her heart fights against the notion. To try to combat this hope of hers would only make her stick to it all the more. Let it alone, and it will fade away naturally.”
Much against her will, Mabel promised to obey. It seemed to her that it was both wrong and cruel to allow such a state of uncertainty to continue; but as the days passed on without any further suggestion that Dick was alive, she began to be satisfied that the delusion was fading from Georgia’s mind.
Aftertheir disappointment with regard to the guns, the enemy made no further effort to take the fort by storm. They seemed quite content to substitute a blockade for a siege, but this circumstance did not tend to raise the spirits of the garrison, since it showed that there was as yet no sign of any movement for their relief. Sniping was practised indefatigably on both sides whenever opportunity offered, and a stranger standing on the cleared ground between the fort and General Keeling’s house might have imagined the one and the other alike deserted, so skilful had the occupants become in taking advantage of cover, save when a puff of smoke and the crack of a rifle on the right met with an immediate response in kind from the left. The enemy were not now occupying the opposite bank of the canal in force, but it was a favourite station for their boldest sharp-shooters, who took up their posts under cover of darkness, and from the shelter of rough sangars or dikes of earth, fired at the water-carriers as they clambered up and down to the water-gate with their skins and earthen pots. The great fall in the level of the water gave much encouragement to this form of attack, and it was found necessary to erect a screen of tent-cloth, supported on poles, to protect the steps cut in the wall below the gate. On the rampart above two or three good marksmen were always posted, watching for the moment at which the sniper was forced to betray his presence for an instant, and the post was much coveted. Any duty that promised a little excitement was eagerly welcomed, for the closeness of their quarters and the lack of exercise were telling upon the health and spirits of the garrison. The wounded did not recover as they ought, and the mortality among the native refugees was very heavy. Moreover, the stock of provisions accumulated under difficulties by Colonel Graham and Dick was diminishing with alarming speed. Rations were served out to all with the strictest economy, and Mabel and Flora, observing a daily diminution in the numbers of the horses stabled in the outer court, refrained heroically from any remark on the shape of the joints set before them. The two girls were quite accustomed to a state of siege by this time, had ceased to start at the whirr and ping of a bullet, and took cover as naturally as the oldest trooper in the regiment when they left the shelter of their rooms. As Mabel said one day to Colonel Graham, the strangest thing was the remembrance that they had ever known a time when the siege was not going on.
“And that you will know a time when it is over, I hope?” he responded. “I only wish I saw any chance of our being relieved, or even of being able to cut our way through, but the next move lies undoubtedly with the enemy.”
This move, when it came, was an unexpected one. In the course of a dark night, a scuffle close under the eastern wall became audible to the sentries, who fired immediately in the direction of the sound, to hear in return a scream which was unmistakably a woman’s. The garrison stood to arms, but no attack was made, and no explanation of the mysterious occurrence offered itself. In the morning, however, a white flag appeared in the street next to General Keeling’s house, and when Colonel Graham replied to it from one of the gateway turrets, two unarmed men made their appearance, dragging with them a woman, her clothes and veil torn and blood-stained. Having escorted her into the middle of the cleared space, they left her there, and ran back to shelter, while she sank on her knees and raised one hand in an entreaty for mercy. Despite her agony of fear, however, she kept her veil wrapped closely round her.
“Evidently apardahwoman,” said Colonel Graham to Mr Burgrave, “but what she is doing here I can’t make out.”
He shouted some words of encouragement, and the woman came a little nearer, and made signs that she desired to be admitted into the fort.
“No, no; can’t have that,” cried the Colonel. “You must say what you have to say from where you are.”
“Nay, sahib,” came in a quavering voice, “I am not used to speak before so many men. Thy servant belongs to the household of the Hasrat Ali Begum, and is sent with a message to the doctor lady.”
“Tell me your message, by all means, and I will give it her.”
“Nay, sahib, suffer thy servant to see her, for I have gone through great perils to bring the message. Last night I crept close up to the walls, hoping to speak with some who might let me in, but the servants of my mistress’s son tracked and seized me, and thy sowars shot at me from the rampart,” and she thrust forth a roughly bandaged foot. “And this morning Syad Bahram Khan said that since I came to bear my mistress’s message, I should now bear his, and tell thee, sahib, what terms he offers thee.”
“And what may they be?”
“He says, sahib—‘The siege has now lasted many days, and my followers are fast becoming discontented and stealing away from me. I have learnt to honour the valour of the sahibs, and but for the rancour of my uncle, the Amir Sahib, I would have made terms with them long before. He has sworn to have the life of every white man in the fort, and it is only because he is now away at Nalapur that I can offer them safety. The fort I must have, to save my face in the sight of my followers; but if it is surrendered to me to-day, before my uncle returns in his cruelty, thirsting for blood, I will send all the sahibs and the women and children away to Rahmat-Ullah, and by nightfall they shall be so far off that there is no pursuing them. The troopers also may go where they will, but I cannot promise them safe-conduct, for I have not beasts to mount them all, and they might chance to be overtaken. These terms I offer out of my honour for the sahibs, and my hatred for the cruelty of my uncle.’”
“And does the Hasrat Ali Begum advise us to accept them?” asked Colonel Graham dryly.
“She has not heard of them, sahib. I have but spoken as I was commanded.”
“Well, I don’t think we need deliberate long over this,” said the Colonel to Mr Burgrave. “It’s clear that Bahram Khan is trying to hedge, and throwing the blame of all that has happened upon his uncle. From that I should judge that the relieving force is in motion at last. When the inevitable attack was made upon us as soon as we were outside the fort, the Amir would get the credit of the massacre, and Bahram Khan would pose as the innocent and peaceable dupe of his uncle’s treachery. He might even contrive to wipe out the Amir in his honest wrath, and appear red-handed at Rahmat-Ullah as our avenger—and also as the natural heir to the throne of Nalapur.”
“You don’t leave him many shreds of character,” said the Commissioner stiffly.
“I forgot he was a friend of yours. No; but seriously, you wouldn’t dream of trusting him? Of course not. The terms are refused, O servant of the Begum Sahib. Now, what about that message of yours for the doctor lady?”
“It is for her ear alone, sahib.”
“She is ill, and cannot come to the wall.”
“Suffer me to see her, sahib, if only for a moment. My mistress bade me inquire of her health, for she has heard rumours that grieve her heart.”
“I’m sorry it’s impossible to admit you. Mrs North is doing well; you must be satisfied with that.”
“Nay, but let me see her, sahib. I dare not go back with my mistress’s commands undone.”
“It is impossible. Have you any further message?”
“I must see her. It is urgent—most necessary. Sahib, suffer me to come in.”
“Impossible. Get back to your own side as fast as you can.”
“What could she have had to say?” asked Mr Burgrave curiously, as they left the turret.
“Can’t tell. Some native remedy or charm to give her, perhaps—which might have been poison. We have no proof that the woman comes from the Begum. She may be in reality a spy of Bahram Khan’s.”
The news of the woman’s mysterious mission, and her importunity, spread quickly through the fort, but the occupants of the inner courtyard had little time to wonder over it, for Georgia’s condition seemed to have taken a sudden turn for the worse. After a troubled night she had waked in an agitated, excited state, unable to bear the slightest noise in the room. She lay listening anxiously, asking the rest at intervals if they did not hear something, and they tried in vain to find out what it was she thought they ought to hear. They left her alone at last, since their presence seemed only to increase the strain upon her mind, and Mabel remained in the outer room with the door ajar. Peeping into the inner room after a time, she saw, to her delight, that her sister-in-law had dropped asleep, but very soon a cry summoned her back. Georgia was sitting up in bed with flushed cheeks.
“Heishere, then,” she said. “I knew I heard his voice. Bring him in, Mab. How can you keep him outside, when you know he is longing to see me?”
“There’s no one outside. What do you mean, Georgie?” asked Mabel, astonished.
“Why, Dick, of course! I have heard him calling me all day, though it sounded so far off, but now it’s quite close—in my ear, almost. There, don’t you hear?”
Mabel strained her ears, but in vain. “There’s nothing, really,” she said.
“Oh, you must be deaf! Go and see, Mab. Don’t keep him waiting. I know he wants me. Why doesn’t some one tell him where I am?”
To satisfy her, Mabel went out into the verandah and looked round, naturally without result. She could scarcely bring herself to return and assure Georgia that the voice was purely a hallucination, but it was a relief to find that she did not seem seriously disappointed. A new idea had come into her mind.
“What was Dr Tighe or some one saying about the Eye-of-the-Begum? that she wanted to see me? She was bringing me a message from him.”
“Oh, Georgie!” sighed Mabel, in hopeless despair.
“He wants me. I must go to him. Tell Rahah to get my things ready.”
“But you can’t get up, you know. Besides, the enemy are all round outside.”
“I tell you I must go to him. I wish you wouldn’t put absurd obstacles in the way, Mab. He wants me. He is calling me. Of course I shall go.”
“Yes, you shall,” said poor harassed Mabel; “only lie quiet just now. You can’t possibly go to-night, you know. Try to sleep a little.”
She succeeded in inducing her to lie down, but whenever she crept in to look at her Georgia was staring into the darkness with wide-open, brilliant eyes. Not even the baby could divert her thoughts from the conviction that had taken possession of her mind, and Mabel decided to sleep in the outer room, in case her help should be needed during the night. All passed quietly, however, although she had a dream that Rahah came and looked at her very earnestly, even entreatingly, but said nothing. In the morning, after glancing at Georgia, and finding her apparently asleep, she went to her own room to dress. She was just putting the finishing touches to her hair when she saw Rahah come out with a large bundle in one hand and a box in the other, and after looking anxiously around, turn away as if disappointed, and disappear down the passage.
“That looked like Georgie’s travelling medicine-chest. What can she be doing with it?” said Mabel to herself. “And a bundle of clothes— Oh, what——”
A terrible thought had seized her, and she ran along the darkened verandah. The outer room was in a state of wild confusion, as if Rahah had been making a hasty selection from among her mistress’s possessions, and in the inner room Georgia was sitting on the side of the bed, trying to dress.
“Georgie! what are you doing?” gasped Mabel.
“I am going to Dick. He wants me,” answered Georgia, looking at her with unseeing eyes.
“But you can’t move. You’re not fit for it. Georgie, do be sensible.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m perfectly well, only so ridiculously weak. But Dick is calling me, and I am going to him.”
Mabel gazed at her in despair, then seized the baby, which was wrapped up in a shawl, ready for travelling. “You won’t go without him, I suppose, and I’ll take good care that you don’t go with him,” she said, while Georgia looked at her without a trace of comprehension in her gaze. “Just sit there until I come back.”
She ran down the passage with the baby in her arms, and glanced at the archway in the wall which led to the water-gate. The gate was open, and Ismail Bakhsh was hard at work inflating one of the skins which had been used to support the raft. Rahah was standing near him with her parcels, looking helplessly round, apparently for some one to whom to appeal.
“They have waited until Ismail Bakhsh is on guard, and the sentries on the wall are to look the other way while he ferries them over in turn,” said Mabel to herself. “Why, it would kill Georgie! Well, they won’t start while I have the boy. Oh,” she cried, coming suddenly upon a European, “please tell somebody to go and arrest Ismail Bakhsh. He has got the water-gate open, and he is going to desert.”
Long before she had reached the end of her sentence she recognised that it was Mr Burgrave to whom she was speaking. They had scarcely met since the dreadful night of anxiety when she had given him back his ring, and she noticed with a shock how gray and shrunken he looked. It was the hardships of the siege, she tried to assure herself, that had made him old before his time.
“I will certainly give your message to the officer on guard,” he answered politely. “We can’t allow this sort of thing to begin.”
He went on his way with a bow, and she stood looking after him. Hearing a click, she glanced up hastily. The sentry on the rampart above her was kneeling down and taking deliberate aim with his carbine at the unconscious Commissioner. She knew the man; he was Ismail Bakhsh’s son Ibrahim, and she saw that the moment Mr Burgrave quitted the shelter of the wall in crossing the courtyard he would be at his mercy. But in her arms was a talisman, and she ran forward and caught up the Commissioner, who looked round at her in astonishment.
“Oh, do take him in your arms for a moment!” she cried, stammering in her eagerness. “You have never held him, and his mother will be so pleased.”
Taken completely by surprise, Mr Burgrave allowed the baby to be placed in his arms, and actually carried it across the court, while Mabel, at his side, was shaking with apprehension. She knew that he was safe while he held that precious bundle, but she was by no means sure that Ibrahim would not resent her interference with his plans to the extent of shooting her instead. This physical terror kept her from feeling the awkwardness of the situation, and she did not even realise it until Mr Burgrave paused at the archway leading into the outer court, and looked into her face as he gave her back the baby.
“You will laugh at me for saying that I had a little hope left until to-day,” he said. “Now I see how foolish I was. In spite of the siege and all your troubles, you look now as you did when I first knew you, and it is simply because you are free from me. Don’t be afraid; I shall not persecute you. All I care for is to see you happy in your own way.”
There was little inclination to laughter in Mabel’s mind as she returned slowly to Georgia’s room. She had scarcely reached it when Rahah came flying along the passage to tell her mistress that Woodworth Sahib and ten men had come and taken Ismail Bakhsh prisoner, and there was therefore no hope of escaping to-day. Georgia hardly seemed to hear. She was still sitting where Mabel had left her, sobbing feebly and too weak to move, and they were able to get her into bed again before Dr Tighe came bustling in.
“Now, now, what’s this I hear?” he asked severely. “Will you think, Mrs North, that we’ve always regarded you as a sensible woman, and that the Major was proud of your judgment? You wouldn’t be in earnest just now?”
“Oh, let me go!” implored Georgia. “I can’t hear what you say, doctor. Dick’s voice comes in between. He wants me so much. Oh, Dick, I would come, but they won’t let me.”
“This won’t do,” said Dr Tighe. “Must humour her, poor thing!” he muttered behind his hand to Mabel. “Now, Mrs North, assuming that the Major is delirious, and crying out for you——”
“Torture!” interjected Georgia, in a high, hard voice.
“No, no! Nonsense, nonsense! Why, it’s biting out his tongue he’d be before the devils would get a word out of him. But supposing he’s ill, now—would it be any pleasure to him to know that you had killed yourself and the child trying to get to him? You know it wouldn’t. ’Twould be a bitter grief to him all his days. And for that reason you’ll take this, and lie down quietly, and try to get some sleep.”
“It won’t drown his voice,” said Georgia, accepting the medicine, but looking up with such misery in her eyes that it almost destroyed the doctor’s self-control. “I should hear that if I were dead.”
“Oh, doctor,” murmured Mabel, drawing him into the outer room, “if she should be right, after all! What can we do?”
He looked at her in astonishment. “My dear Miss North, you mustn’t let yourself be led away by that poor soul’s ravings. After such a happy married life as hers, it would be strange indeed if she could give her husband up for lost without a struggle. But what possible hope is there of his being alive? If he was a prisoner, don’t you think Bahram Khan would have made use of him long ago to torment us? Don’t make it worse for her by encouraging her to hope.”
“No, no, of course not,” said Mabel impatiently. “But all the same,” she muttered to herself as he left her, “something ought to be done, and I know the man to do it.”
Half-an-hour later she went out into the verandah to meet Fitz Anstruther, who had come as usual to inquire after Georgia and the baby, and beckoned him to a secluded corner, where two packing-cases served as seats.
“Do you know,” she said eagerly, without giving him time to speak, “I am beginning to believe that Dick is really alive. Georgia is so absolutely convinced he isn’t dead, and I can’t think she is altogether mistaken. Is there no way of finding out?”
“You don’t mean by making inquiries, surely? The Amir certainly believes he is dead, and Bahram Khan chooses us to think that he does too, so we should get no good out of them.”
“Yes, I quite see that, but what I have been thinking is that some one to whom he had been kind may have hidden him away—in a house in the mountains, or one of the camps of the wandering tribes—and he may be lying there ill all this time.”
“I only wish he might, but in that case I’m afraid it would simply be his death-warrant if we found out where he was. Bahram Khan would still be between us and him, you see.”
“Yes, but there’s another chance still. Suppose he is in Bahram Khan’s hands, after all, but too badly wounded to be moved? Bahram Khan would know that he could not make use of him without showing him, and that he would be no good to him dead. So what if he is keeping him prisoner just with that in view—to produce him when he gets better, and offer to give him up if we surrender the fort? Yes, the more I think it over, the more I feel certain that it must be that.”
“And what then?” asked Fitz, as she paused eagerly.
“Why then, don’t you see, if we once knew that he was a prisoner, and where he was kept, a force could go out and rescue him, as they did the guns. There isn’t a man that would not volunteer, and then he would be saved.”
“But how are we to find out whether he is a prisoner?”
“Oh, surely you must know! Don’t pretend to be so stupid. Some one must go and see—dress up as a native, and get into the enemy’s camp.”
He laughed. “Curiously enough, the Colonel was talking of something of the kind this very morning. He wants to know whether there is really a rumour among the enemy about a relieving force.”
“And who is to go?”
“Who? Oh, I think that olddaffadarof Haycraft’s, Sultan Jān, was the man pitched upon at last. He is the foxiest old beggar alive, and less known about here than most of our fellows.”
“Only Sultan Jān?” in deep disappointment. “But you are dark—you know the language so well—you are such a good scout—you are going?”
“I, Miss North? Why in the world——”
“To find Dick, because you and he are such friends—because I ask you.”
“I am very much honoured, but surely the Commissioner is the natural person——”
“The Commissioner would be too lame to go,” cried Mabel, in confusion, “and even if he wasn’t, I couldn’t ask him.” Fitz’s look of surprise, less for the fact than for her mention of it, reminded her that her words must sound strangely in his ears. “Perhaps I ought to explain,” she stammered. “I—I am not engaged to Mr Burgrave now.”
“Oh, indeed!” said Fitz slowly, readjusting his ideas as he spoke. Only the night before he had heard Haycraft say to Flora that the Commissioner and Miss North must have quarrelled, for they had not spoken for days, and she was not wearing his ring. Certain hopes of Fitz’s own had sprung up anew at that moment, only to be dashed to earth again by Flora’s confident assurance that the estrangement could be only a temporary one. She was certain that the engagement was not broken off, or Mabel would have told her. Now, however, it appeared that Flora had been mistaken.
Fitz drew a deep breath. “You want me to go in disguise and make inquiries about your brother, because you ask me? Not so very long ago we were discussing a certain subject, and I agreed not to mention it again without your permission. If I go, will you give me that permission?”
Mabel recoiled from him, aghast. “You are trying to drive a bargain with me for Dick’s life?” she cried, in horror. “I should never have believed it of you.”
“Oh, I am only looking at the matter in a business light. If I do your work, I should like to be sure of my wages.”
“How can you talk in such a horrid mercenary way? It’s mean, ungentlemanly of you to try to entrap me like this! I could not have imagined——”
“Please let us be business-like. Only, believe me, I had no idea of setting a trap.”
“Do you mean to say that if I refuse to let you speak to me again you won’t go?”
“That is not the question, allow me to remark. I ask you whether, if I go, I may enter upon the forbidden subject when I come back?”
“I believe you are going whether I say Yes or No.” She looked at him sharply, but he did not change countenance in the least. “Why should you take it into your head to spoil a thing that ought to be so splendid, by tacking on an odious condition to it?”
“I am afraid you won’t find it easy to move me either by hard words or soft ones. Is it a bargain?”
“If you mean that I am to promise to marry you if you go——” cried Mabel, her eyes blazing.
“I mean nothing of the kind. That is not in the bond. If I have such a curious fancy for being rejected by you that I am willing to accept another refusal as the price of my services on this occasion, don’t you think you are getting off rather cheaply on the whole?”
Mabel laughed shamefacedly. “I believe you have only been trying to tease me all along,” she said. “Very well; it is a bargain, then.”
“There’s something rather mysterious about this attempt to desert on the part of Mrs North’s servant,” said Colonel Graham to the Commissioner. “The men seem to feel strongly on the subject, but I can’t get any of them to speak out. I am not sure that it’s a case for a court-martial, and if you would join me in an informal inquiry into the affair, it might prevent bad feeling.”
“With pleasure. But I don’t quite see where the civil power comes in, in a matter of this kind. Is it that the man’s status is really that of a civilian?”
“He is a volunteer, of course”—Colonel Graham ignored the veiled reference to what Mr Burgrave still considered his usurpation of authority—“but as an old soldier, they all acknowledge that he is amenable to military discipline. What I can’t make out is the notion which seems to prevail that you have something to do with the matter, and that’s why I should like your assistance in inquiring into it.”
“You don’t imagine that I incite your volunteers to desert, I hope?” said the Commissioner dryly, taking his seat beside Colonel Graham, to await the arrival of the prisoner.
“If I could think so, the mystery would be cleared up. As it is—” the Colonel broke off suddenly, on the entrance of the prisoner with his guards. He signed to the two sowars to retire out of earshot, and addressed their charge. “I have sent for you privately because I hope that things are less black than they look against you, Ismail Bakhsh. That a man with your record should be detected in the act of deserting to the enemy seems preposterous, and I hope you may be able to show that your idea was to obtain information of some kind. In that case your conduct might be passed over for once, as imprudent but not disgraceful.”
“I have nothing to say, sahib. I had my orders.”
“Orders from Bahram Khan? Don’t trifle with me, Ismail Bakhsh. Am I to give Mrs North the pain of knowing that her father’s orderly has been shot as a traitor?”
The old man drew himself up. “Since I shall no longer be present to protect the Memsahib and her son, I will tell thee the truth, sahib, that thou mayest watch over them in my stead. My orders were from the Memsahib herself.”
“Mrs North told you to desert?” cried the Colonel incredulously.
“The Memsahib bade me be ready to convey her and her son and her waiting-woman out of the fort at such an hour, and I obeyed her.”
“Oh, come, this is too much! Why should Mrs North wish to leave the fort?”
Ismail Bakhsh cast a fierce glance at Mr Burgrave, who had taken no part in the examination. “I can guess the reason, sahib, but it is not expedient to accuse the great ones of the earth to their faces.”
“Now what did I tell you?” asked Colonel Graham of the Commissioner. “I said you were mixed up in it somehow. You would like to have the matter cleared up, of course?”
“By all means,” said Mr Burgrave indifferently. The proceedings bored him, and he did not see why both the Colonel and Ismail Bakhsh should persist in bringing his name into them.
“Speak, and fear not,” said the Colonel.
“Thus then it is, sahib. When the Kumpsioner Sahib came to the border, he found the name of Sinjāj Kīlin in all men’s mouths, and he hated it, and sought to throw dirt upon it, even as an upstart king seeks to defile the monuments of those that were before him. But there were yet living in the land Sinjāj Kīlin’s daughter and her husband, Nāth Sahib, to keep his name in remembrance, and therefore the Kumpsioner Sahib hated them also. His eye was evil against Nāth Sahib, insomuch that he blackened his face in the presence of the tribes and of the Amir of Nalapur. Then, because that was not sufficient, he suborned Bahram Khan to murder him”—the Commissioner, looking bored no longer, tried to interpose a protest, but Ismail Bakhsh disregarded it contemptuously—“and he thought all his enemies were removed, since there was only a woman left of the whole house of Sinjāj Kīlin. But when the Memsahib’s son was born, the Kumpsioner Sahib, remembering the evil deed he had done, feared lest the boy should grow up to avenge his father. The Ressaldar Ghulam Rasul can tell of the wrath and fear with which he heard of the child’s birth, and I myself have watched every night in the Memsahib’s verandah with my weapons, so that no harm should come to the Baba Sahib. And seeing that the Kumpsioner Sahib could not even dissemble his enmity so far as to come and take the child in his arms like the other sahibs, and send messages of good luck to the mother by the Miss Sahibs, I thought at least that he would fight with steel and not with drugs. But the Memsahib knew him better than I, and when this morning I received her order to help her to escape with the child, I knew that she thought it safer to take refuge with the Amir Sahib than to remain in this place. And now they will kill me; but the charge of Sinjāj Kīlin’s son is thine, sahib,” addressing the Colonel, “since the truth has been fully made known to thee by my mouth. For what says the proverb? ‘When the base-born mounts the throne, it is ill to be a king’s son.’ Guard well the Baba Sahib, for the sake of Nāth Sahib, thy friend. And as for the Kumpsioner Sahib, let him know that the men of the regiment have sworn by the holy Kaaba and the sacred well, and by the head of the Prophet of God, that he shall not escape. Once he has succeeded in slaying the Baba Sahib, no land shall be distant enough to afford him a refuge. Each man will hand down to his children the duty of slaying him, and his sons and brothers and nephews, and all his house, even as he has set himself to destroy the house of Sinjāj Kīlin.”
“Good heavens!” said the Commissioner, passing his hand feebly over his damp brow, “do they actually suspect me of plotting to murder a woman and child—and of putting poor North out of the way?”
“Suspect is not the word,” replied Colonel Graham, rather cruelly; “they are absolutely convinced of it.”
“This is one of the things that have to be lived down, I suppose. Well, the offence of our friend here seems to be a matter relating to me personally. Will you kindly release him as a favour to me? I think also it might be as well to let him do perpetual sentry-go in the verandah he seems to affect so much—take up his quarters there, in fact, and protect the baby from my machinations. And tell him that he is welcome to use his weapons on me if he catches me there under suspicious circumstances.”
“Are you inviting him to murder you?” demanded the Colonel.
“He doesn’t seem to need much invitation. But no amount of protestations will disabuse him of his theory, and it would be a pity to deprive Mrs North of such an attached servant. If you point out that last fact to him, it may give me a few years longer to live.”
It was with deepening surprise and bewilderment that Ismail Bakhsh heard his sentence, which was delivered in terms of considerable pungency by Colonel Graham. Imprisonment or hard labour would have seemed natural enough, death he had confidently expected; but what did this release mean? The Colonel’s indignant vindication of Mr Burgrave affected him not a whit; but that the man he had accused betrayed neither guilt nor fear did cost him some searchings of heart.
Mabelwas not far wrong in guessing that before she spoke to Fitz it had been decided he should take part in Daffadar Sultan Jān’s reconnaissance. Colonel Graham’s choice had fallen upon him less on account of any merits he possessed than of his personal appearance. It could not be said that he outshone the other men in coolness or courage, and in knowledge of the surrounding country Winlock, at any rate, was his equal, but the determining point in his favour was the fact which his friends, dancing with rage the while, were forced to acknowledge, that he made up detestably well as a native. From his Irish mother he had inherited the Spanish type of colouring often found in Connaught and Western Munster, large dark eyes, black hair, and a skin so smooth and sallow that very little assistance from art was needed to assimilate it to the comparatively light tint prevailing among the frontier tribes. There were difficulties at first with Sultan Jān, who had once saved Haycraft’s life in a border skirmish, and had constituted himself a kind of nursing father to him ever since. He rejected with scorn the idea of taking any but his own particular sahib with him on his perilous journey, until it was pointed out to him that this would almost certainly involve the death of both. Haycraft’s fair hair, grey eyes, and sun-reddened complexion made it impossible to disguise him satisfactorily, and the old man yielded the point, ungraciously enough, when he had seen Fitz in native dress.
A noted freebooter in his unregenerate days, Sultan Jān had never found it easy to submit his own will to that of his military superiors. Belonging to a powerful tribe across the border, he had been the terror of the outlying British districts, until one of General Keeling’s lieutenants induced him first to come in to a conference, and then to join the regiment. His independent habits operated to prevent him from rising to any higher rank than that of daffadar, but he was a power in his troop, which was now largely composed of his nephews and cousins of many varying degrees. Haycraft would say sometimes that he was entirely devoid of the moral sense, and that his regard for the honour of the regiment was not wholly to be depended upon as a substitute, but as no one knew exactly what this condemnation implied, Haycraft’s brother-officers generally put it down to liver. One thing was certain, that Sultan Jān’s faithfulness to his salt was above suspicion, since he had on occasion assisted in inflicting punishment upon his own tribe for various raids, and there were special reasons for anticipating his success in the adventure he was undertaking. The scheme, indeed, had been entirely modified in accordance with his views, since Colonel Graham’s first intention had been that his messenger should turn southwards, and cross the desert into the settled territory. Sultan Jān recommended a dash for Fort Rahmat-Ullah instead, pointing out that if he and his companion chose a dark night for their start, they might swim down the canal for a considerable distance, supporting themselves on inflated skins. When beyond the enemy’s farthest outposts, they could strike across the desert to the north until they reached the mountains, with every pass and track of which he was familiar. By certain little-known paths they could then make their way to Rahmat-Ullah, where there would be the chance of discovering what was going on in the outside world, as well as of representing the hard plight of the defenders of Alibad. In returning they might, if opportunity offered, acquaint themselves with the enemy’s dispositions nearer home.
The hour, and even the night, appointed for the start, were kept a profound secret from all but those immediately concerned, lest information should in any way be conveyed to the enemy, and it was not until a whole day had passed without a visit from Fitz, that the dwellers in the Memsahibs’ courtyard made up their minds that he was actually gone. Mabel, sitting in the safest of the four verandahs, with the baby in her arms, looked up anxiously when Flora came to tell her that Fred Haycraft admitted they were right in their surmise.
“Oh, poor Mr Anstruther!” she said. “I do hope he won’t get hurt. I should feel so dreadfully guilty if anything happened to him.”
“You needn’t, then,” said Flora bluntly, as Mabel stopped short, remembering that she had not intended to make public her compact with Fitz. “His going has nothing whatever to do with you. He was chosen as the most suitable man all round, that’s all. Fred said so.”
This was hardly to be borne. “I didn’t mean to tell you,” said Mabel, with dignity, “but I asked him to go, that he might make inquiries about Dick.”
“Oh!” cried Flora, suddenly enlightened; “then Fred was right after all, and you have broken off your engagement. I never would have believed——”
“I really don’t see why you should jump to a conclusion in that way.”
“Why, because you couldn’t very well be engaged to two people at once.”
“I am not engaged to anybody,” very haughtily.
“Not to Mr Anstruther?”
“Certainly not.”
“And yet you make him run this awful risk for the sake of your brother? Oh, nonsense! he knows he will get his reward when he comes back.”
“You don’t seem to understand,” coldly, “that some men are willing to do things without hope of reward. Since I have told you so much, I may as well say that if Mr Anstruther chooses to ask me to marry him when he comes back, he will do it knowing that I shall refuse him again.”
“Again?” cried Flora. “Would you like to know what I think of you? Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t, but I am going to tell you. If you happened to be plain—but no, if you were a plain woman, you wouldn’t find men to do this sort of thing for you—if you were any one but Queen Mab, people would say you were absolutelymean! It’s simply and solely the celebrated smile that makes you able to do these horrid things, and you presume upon it.”
“Oh, don’t, please!” entreated Mabel. “That’s Dick’s word.”
The tables were turned, and Flora became the criminal instead of the avenger of justice. She had seized upon one of Mabel’s dearest memories with which to taunt her, and she was silent for very shame. It tended to deepen her remorse that Mabel betrayed no anger, only a gentle forbearance that cut the accuser to the quick.
“You don’t understand,” she said sadly, “and I don’t know that I understand it myself. You wouldn’t wish me to marry Fitz Anstruther if I don’t care for him, would you? and he wouldn’t wish it either. But could I lose a chance of saving Dick because of that? It’s not as if I had pretended to give him any hope. I spoke perfectly plainly, and he quite sees how it is.”
“But you must care for him a little,” broke out Flora, “when he is willing to do such a thing for you without any reward. Oh, you do, don’t you?”
“No,” said Mabel slowly, “I’m sure I don’t. If I did, I couldn’t have let him go.”
“Oh yes,” cried Flora hopefully, “for Mrs North’s sake, and your brother’s, you could give him up.”
Mabel shook her head. “I like him very much,” she said, “but I don’t want to marry him.”
“Now that’s what I say is being mean!” cried Flora. “You get all you want out of him, and offer him nothing in return, because he is generous enough to work without payment. He has made himself too cheap.”
“Well, I am very sorry, but I don’t see how I can help it. If I want things done, and he is willing to do them on my conditions, would you have me refuse?”
“Did your Browning studies with the Commissioner ever take you as far as the story of the lady and the glove?” asked Flora suddenly. “The knight fetched her glove out of the lions’ den, you know, and then threw it in her face. Mr Anstruther would never do anything so rude, but I should really love to advise him to try how you would feel towards him after a little wholesome neglect.”
“Mr Anstruther is a gentleman,” said Mabel, growing red.
“And you trade upon that too! Oh, Mab, you don’t deserve to have a nice man in love with you. It would serve you right if a William the Conqueror sort of person came, and urged his suit with a horsewhip.”
“You are so absurd, Flora. I do wish you wouldn’t bother. I don’t want to marry any one, if you would only believe it. I’m quite satisfied as I am,” and Mabel rose with a flushed face, and carried the baby indoors.
That day and the next passed without any news of the adventurers, but on the second night after their departure the sentries on the south rampart were startled by a hail which seemed to come from the canal. The moon had long set, and nothing could be distinguished in the misty darkness, but again the cry came, weak and quavering, as if uttered by a man all but exhausted. The listening sowars grew pale, and whispered fearfully that the murdered irrigation officer, Western, whose body had been thrown by the enemy into the canal at the beginning of the siege, was claiming the funeral rites of which he had been deprived. The whisper soon reached the ears of Woodworth, who was on duty, and rating the men heartily for their superstition, he went down at once to the water-gate. Here, clinging to the poles which sustained the canvas screen placed to protect the water-carriers, they found Fitz, barely able to speak, supporting Sultan Jān’s head on his shoulder. The old man, who was covered with wounds, and almost insensible, was partially upheld by the inflated skin to which he was tied, but his helplessness had obliged Fitz to propel the skin before him as he swam. It was with the greatest difficulty that the many willing helpers succeeded in bringing the two men, one almost as powerless as the other, up the steps and in at the gate, and when they were safely inside, both were carried at once to the hospital, and delivered over to the care of Dr Tighe. The news of their return spread through the fort as soon as it was light, but it was not until the evening, when Haycraft came into the inner courtyard after a visit to the hospital, that the ladies learned anything of the adventures they had met with.
“I haven’t seen much of Anstruther,” he said, in answer to the eager questions which greeted him. “He was only allowed to talk for a few minutes, and of course the Colonel had to hear all he could tell, but I have a message for you, Miss North. He could not discover anything to justify Mrs North in believing that the Major is still alive. The few men to whom he ventured to put a question were positive that neither Bahram Khan nor the Amir have any white prisoners, and he believes they were speaking the truth.”
“Oh dear! I was so hoping—” sighed Mabel. “But of course he could not help it.”
“Help it? Scarcely. He has done wonders as it is. I have just been hearing all about it from Sultan Jān, who was frantic lest he should die before he could tell his story. The doctor said it would do the old fellow less harm to talk than to lie there fuming, so I listened to the whole thing, and took notes, just to satisfy him.”
“Oh, do tell us what they did,” cried Mabel and Flora together.
“Well, things seem to have panned out all right just at first. They got past the enemy’s outposts, and swam a good bit farther before they thought it safe to take to dry land. When they had let the air out of their skins, they hid them on the opposite bank of the canal, so as to throw any one who found them off the scent, and swam over. They managed to get across the desert before it was light, so that they were not seen, but in the mountains, where they expected to find everything easy, their troubles began. They were scouting awfully carefully, and yet they all but dropped into a pleasant little party of Sultan Jān’s own tribesmen.”
“But why was that a trouble?” interrupted Flora. “I should have thought it was the best thing that could happen to them.”
“Flora is just a little bit apt to jump at conclusions,” said Haycraft, in a stage aside to Mabel, dodging dexterously the palm-leaf fan which Flora threw at him. “If she would just consider that Sultan Jān’s tribe are fighting for Bahram Khan, she would see that family relations might possibly be a little strained if they met. Well, nearly the whole day our two fellows dodged about among the hills, trying to find a path left unguarded, but there wasn’t one. You see, the tribe know the locality as well as Sultan Jān does, and they have picketed all the passes for the benefit of any traders who may come by. So at night our men slipped down into the desert again, and struck out for Rahmat-Ullah by that route. But the level ground was dangerous too, owing to a few other bodies of Bahram Khan’s adherents, who don’t dare dispute the mountain paths with the hillmen, but keep their eyes open for anything that may come their way. After avoiding two or three lots of them with difficulty, Sultan Jān suggested taking a short rest in a cave that he knew of, and going on again when the moon set. Unfortunately, the cave had also occurred to other people as a nice place for a night’s lodging, and before they had been asleep very long, they were waked by the arrival of a whole party of belated travellers, some of the very fellows they had escaped just before. Why, Miss North——”
“No, no, it’s nothing. Please go on,” said Mabel, who had shivered violently.
“Old Sultan Jān had all his wits about him, and cried out at once that he and his son had quarrelled with their tribe, and were coming to Alibad to take service with Bahram Khan. The other men cross-questioned them a good deal, but finding nothing suspicious in their answers, agreed to take them on with them to Alibad in the morning. Of course it was a blow not being able to go on to Rahmat-Ullah, but they didn’t mind that so much when they found out from their new friends that the people there are practically as much besieged as we are. The tribes have given up attempting to rush the place, but they hold the passes, and it’s impossible for the fellows in the fort to force them until there’s a relieving column ready to co-operate at the other end.”
“But what about the relieving column?” broke in Flora. “Is it never coming?”
“In the course of a few centuries, I suppose. There seems to be the usual transport difficulty, to judge by the way the tribesmen are chortling over the loss of time. Of course Anstruther and Sultan Jān made good use of their ears, and learned all they could without asking suspicious questions. In the morning they started off with their fellow-lodgers in this direction, and I must say I don’t envy their feelings. If they had happened to meet one of Sultan Jān’s tribe, it would have been all up. However, the rotten discipline of Bahram Khan’s lot stood them in good stead. It seems that the permanent investing force here consists only of his personal hangers-on and a detachment from the Nalapur army, which the Amir has made as small as he dares, and would like to recall altogether. All the rest—the tribesmen and robber bands—start off whenever they like to raid along the frontier, just leaving representatives in the town to see how things go, so as to make sure of not missing their share in the loot when this place falls. There’s one good thing—they’ll have established such a sweet reputation among the country-people that we shan’t have much trouble in hunting them down when the rising is over.”
“Aren’t you counting your chickens a little too soon?” asked Mabel, with a rather strained smile. “And we are forgetting——”
“Our two fellows? So we are. I’m an awful chap for wandering away from the point. Well, they found Bahram Khan established in the court-house, which was in a horrible state of squalor, overlaid with a little cheap magnificence. He received them with every appearance of friendliness, though they were certain he suspected them. They had nothing to go upon, for he treated them royally, and promised them both posts in his bodyguard, but they felt sure there was something wrong. They expected to be denounced every minute, but he was too wily for that. Before letting them go to their quarters at night, he informed them confidentially that he had just finished constructing a mine reaching from General Keeling’s house to our east curtain, and that it was to be exploded the next day. They should form part of the storming-party, and have the honour of leading. Of course they pretended to accept with tremendous delight, but he had got them in an awful fix. There was just the one hope that the mine did not really exist at all, but when they asked the rest about it, they were shown the entrance, though they were not allowed to go down into it, because of the explosives put ready there, the fellows said. I think myself, and so does Runcorn, that the soil is much too light for them to be able to dig such a length of tunnel without its falling in, and that we must have heard them at work if they had got as near as they make out, but of course Anstruther dared not trust to the chance. He didn’t venture to speak to Sultan Jān, but they managed to give each other a look which meant that they must get away and warn us. Of course that was just what Bahram Khan had been counting upon, and they found that their quarters for the night were in the stables belonging to the court-house, where all their new comrades slept. There were sentries in the yard in front, which looked as if something was expected to happen. Anstruther and Sultan Jān had one of the stalls to themselves, and as soon as ever the rest seemed to be asleep, they set to work to dig through the wall with their daggers, one working, and the other lying so as to screen him from the sentry, or any one else who might look in. Just before they broke through, it struck them to ask one another what was on the other side. They knew there was a lane at the back of the stables, but would they come out into the full moonlight or the shadow, and was there another sentry there? After listening carefully, they settled that there, wasn’t a sentry, but they couldn’t decide upon the moonlight, so they had to chance it. While Sultan Jān dug away the mud bricks, Anstruther was heaping up the straw they had been lying upon to hide the hole, and arranging theirposhteens[sheepskin-lined coats] to look as if they were still there. Happily, when they got through, they were on the dark side of the lane. They crept out, and built up the hole again as well as they could from the outside. It was awfully nervous work, for a patrol might come along at any minute, but at last they were able to be off. They wriggled along in the shadow, and Sultan Jān led the way towards the east side of the town. Of course it was a fearful round, but they couldn’t risk passing the enemy’s headquarters again. The moon bothered them horribly, for they knew that until it set there was no hope of passing the outpost at the old godowns on the bank, even if they got to the canal safely. They reached the desert all right through the by-lanes, and made tracks for the point at which they had landed two nights before, but to get to it they had to pass the house of one of the Hindu canal-officials, who seems to have been left in possession in return for doing some sort of dirty work for Bahram Khan. There was a dog which made a row, and the Hindu came out and caught them. Sultan Jān wanted to kill him, but Anstruther wouldn’t hear of it, so they asked for a night’s lodging in one of the outbuildings, intending, of course, to slip away as soon as he was gone to bed again. But he insisted on bringing out food, and sat up talking to them, while they were agonising to get rid of him. And all the time he must have sent some one to the town to give the alarm, for suddenly he changed countenance and got confused as he talked, and they looked at the door, and there were Bahram Khan’s men. In a moment they were in the thick of a tremendous rough-and-tumble fight. There was no room inside the hut to use rifles, but both sides had daggers, and the enemy tulwars. Anstruther says he fought mostly with his fists, and the enemy seemed to think that wasn’t fair, for pretty soon they began to give him a wide berth. Just as he got out of the scrimmage, Sultan Jān went down, and in falling knocked over the lamp and put it out. The enemy devoted their attention to one another for some little time before they saw what had happened, and then they started to find Anstruther. He was standing up, perfectly quiet, against the side of the hut, and he says it nearly turned his brain to hear the fellows feeling for him in the dark, while he knew that his only hope was not to move. They didn’t find him—actually! but they found the Hindu instead. He had been hiding in a corner in an awful fright, and they killed him, and having accounted for two, thought they had done their business. They didn’t stop to mutilate the bodies, apparently because there was a false alarm in the town just then. You know one of our men let off his rifle by mistake last night, and we noticed that the enemy seemed a good deal disturbed. Well, there was Anstruther left in the hut, with what he believed to be Sultan Jān’s dead body. And this is what the old man can’t get over—he wouldn’t leave him to be cut up by those swine, but dragged him down to the canal, and when he had fetched over one of the skins and blown it out, tied him on to it, and started to swim up here. But as soon as the cold water touched Sultan Jān’s wounds, he revived, and was able to put one arm round Anstruther’s neck, and so make it a little easier for him. But it was tremendous—simply tremendous, and if ever any man deserved the V.C., Anstruther does, though of course he won’t get it, being merely a poor wretch of a civilian.”
“Why, Mab!” cried Flora, for Mabel had risen suddenly. Her eyes were dilated and her cheeks flushed, and she looked more beautiful than the others had ever seen her. They almost expected her to break out into an impassioned eulogy of Fitz’s achievement, but the sight of their astonishment seemed to recall her to herself, and she faltered and grew crimson.
“Oh, it’s too splendid!” she stammered. “I—I can’t bear it,” and they heard a sob as she rushed away.
“I say!” remarked Haycraft, with meaning in his tone.
“Fred!” responded Flora, in a voice of such crushing severity that he hastened to apologise, and to assure her that he had not meant anything.
“Of course not. Why should you mean anything?” demanded Flora.
“Oh no, naturally. There was nothing that should make any one mean anything,” he said lamely; whereupon, as a reward for his docility, Flora assured him she had great hopes that everything would come right, and when it did, he should know all about it, but that if he went and fancied things and made trouble, she would never speak to him again.
“All right! Henceforth I am blind and deaf and dumb,” he declared.
“That’s right! When you can’t do anything to help, at least you needn’t spoil things. Oh, but that reminds me, Fred. I am not blind and deaf, you know. Is it true that Mr Beardmore is dead, as the servants say?”
“Yes, poor chap! and it was only last night that we were chaffing him about being seedy. He was so perfectly happy looking after the stores, you know, and we said he couldn’t bear to think that he would soon have to write to the Colonel, ‘Sir, I have the honour to report that the last ounce of food has been distributed according to instructions. Please send further orders.’ His occupation would be gone, you see.”
“Yes,” said Flora absently; “but, Fred—only last night? That’s fearfully sudden. Was it—is it true that it was—cholera?”
“Hush!” said Haycraft, looking round apprehensively, “you mustn’t let it get about. If it’s once suspected that cholera has broken out, we shall have the natives dying like flies of sheer terror. And there’s no occasion for panic. It was the poor fellow’s own fault—a case of the ruling passion, you know. He was mad to make the stores last out as long as possible, and there were a lot of tins that Tighe condemned as unfit for food. Beardmore was certain they were all right, and backed his opinion by trying one—with this result. But you see how it is. There’s no reason for any one else to be frightened.”
“I’m glad you told me,” was Flora’s only answer, “for now I can help to keep it from the rest.”
“You’re a trump, Flo! I’d share a secret with you as soon as with any man I know.” And with this unromantic tribute Flora was wholly satisfied.
Mabel had rushed away to her own room, and was now lying sobbing upon her bed, with her face pressed tightly into the pillow, lest any sound should reach Georgia’s ears through the thin partition. At this moment even the news of the outbreak of cholera would not have disquieted her, for she had other things to think of. It seemed to her that a veil had been suddenly removed from her eyes, with the result that for the first time she saw Fitz Anstruther as he really was. “That boy,” as she had been wont to call him, with friendly, half-contemptuous patronage, was a hero. He had gloried in making himself generally useful to Dick and Georgia, doing anything that needed doing, and requiring no thanks for it. Mabel herself had made a slave of him—a willing slave, undoubtedly, for he had entered into all her whims with a ready zest, not merely submitting to them, but furthering them. Why was this? Not because he was fit for nothing better than humouring her fancies, as she had been inclined to think, but because that was the way in which he had deliberately chosen to do her homage. It was because he loved her. Had he chosen, he could have beaten down her defences long ago, but his love knew itself so strong that it could afford to wait. It refused to accept defeat, but it responded to her appeal for mercy. Mabel sprang up from her bed, and began to walk about the room. She could not be still.
“Oh, how can he? how can he?” she demanded of herself. “To care for me so tremendously after the way I have treated him—a man who can do such splendid things! How can I ever meet him? I daren’t face him. He’ll guess. I should be too dreadfully ashamed to let him know I have changed so suddenly. It seemed to come all at once. Oh, why didn’t I care for him a little before? why did I say those awful things to him only the other day? why did I let even Flora see what a mean wretch I was? She said herself that I was mean. And now they’ll all think it’s just because he deserves the V.C. that I care for him, and it’s not. It isn’t what he did, but what he is—but no one will believe it. He has been quite as splendid all the time, and I never saw it; and when he speaks to me again, he’ll think that I—I am different to him just because he didn’t leave Sultan Jān to die. As if that signified! It’s—it’s simply because he cares for me that I care for him.”
These considerations, though they might seem somewhat inconsistent with one another, made Mabel sit down in despair to think the matter out. First of all, how was she to nerve herself to meet Fitz again? and next, how was he to be brought to perceive the delicate distinction, that she loved him not because he had done a great thing, but because the doing of it had revealed his real self to her?
“I know,” she said to herself at last; “I will meet him just as usual. I think I have pride and self-respect enough left for that, and when he speaks to me again I won’t accept him at once. I won’t refuse him again, of course, or at any rate, not definitely. I will be kinder, and give him a little hope. Then he will feel at liberty to try again,” she laughed nervously; “and I can give in by degrees, so that he will understand how it really is. Oh dear! how glad I am that he made that condition the other day.”
For two or three days she waited impatiently, unable to carry out her plan, for Dr Tighe announced loudly that he was keeping Fitz a prisoner in hospital, and that he found him a perfect angel of a patient, not fussing a bit to be out before it was safe to let him go. Mabel received the statement with secret incredulity, judging of Fitz’s feelings by her own, but when she did see him next, the meeting proved grievously disappointing. On the first day of his convalescence Mrs Hardy invited him to tea in the inner courtyard, with the special intimation that his mission there was to cheer up the inmates, and he did his duty nobly. The tea was very weak, and without milk, and Anand Masih, with shamefaced reluctance, handed round a few broken biscuits—the last that could be mustered—in his mistress’s shining silver basket. It wounded his hospitable soul to see guests invited to a Barmecide feast, and when Mrs Hardy alluded pleasantly to the care he showed in keeping everything nice, he was covered with confusion. Fitz, decorated in several places with bandages and sticking-plaster, was the life of the party. He was particularly amusing on the subject of the stores, which came naturally to the front, since the rations had been reduced that day, in consequence of the deficiency caused by the unsoundness of some of the tinned provisions, of which Haycraft had spoken to Flora. Mabel sat listening, with an impatience that was almost disgust, to his funny stories of sieges and the shifts to which other besieged garrisons had been put—stories so palpably absurd that they could not shed any additional gloom on the present situation. Then he turned upon Rahah, who came out of Georgia’s room, followed by her inseparable companion, the great Persian cat. She had brought the baby for Fitz to see, with her mistress’s compliments, and was not the Baba Sahib grown?
“I’m looking with wolfish eyes at that cat of yours, ayah,” he said, after duly admiring the baby. “Some morning you will find it gone.”
“Then the Dipty Sahib will be found shot by Ismail Bakhsh,” said Rahah, unmoved.
“Why, you don’t mean to say you would have me killed for trying to get one good meal? You shouldn’t keep the creature so fat if you don’t want it stolen, you know. What do you feed it on—rats?”
“The cat shares with me, sahib.”
“Well, that’s very noble of you, I’m sure; but it would really be safer for the poor thing if you let it shift for itself.”
“No one will eat the cat but my Memsahib,” said Rahah severely. “When there is no food left, it will preserve her life for two or three days, and that is why I feed it with my own ration, sahib.”
She departed with dignity, and the rest did not dare to laugh until she was out of hearing. Then Fitz took the lead in the conversation again, and talked away until Dr Tighe appeared suddenly and haled him back to the hospital. Mabel was disappointed—bitterly disappointed. She had felt certain that he would perceive a change in her, even while she scouted the idea of allowing him to divine the cause of it, but he had not seemed to think of her at all. However, he imagined, no doubt, that he was consulting her wishes by ignoring their compact altogether, and she consoled herself with thinking that things would be different to-morrow. But they were not. Day after day Fitz paid his afternoon visit to the courtyard, rattled away to Flora or Mrs Hardy or herself, and seemed to desire nothing more. She was puzzled. Could it be that he had actually forgotten their agreement, perhaps as a result of some injury to his brain? But no; it was evident that his mind was as clear as ever. What was it, then? Had he determined, during those long hours in the hospital, to crush down and root out the love which had met with so poor a return? Had her change of feeling come too late? Or, worst of all, had he seen her character too clearly in that last interview—had she shown herself in such colours of hardness and ingratitude that he had now no desire to ask his question again? Mabel writhed under the thought. Her one consolation was in the assurance that he had not perceived the change in her. She would die rather than let him know that her heart had warmed towards him as his had cooled towards her; and yet—such is the inconsistency of human nature—she felt it would kill her to go on in this way, and she did not wish to die just yet. Even when he was alone with her, there was nothing loverlike in his manner, and she felt bitterly that the tables were turned. It was she who now listened in vain for any softening in his voice, who longed to be allowed to do things for him, and could not, for very shame, offer her services. At first she was piqued by his behaviour, then hurt, at last made thoroughly miserable; but she flattered herself that she hid her trouble from the world, at least as well as Fitz had hitherto contrived to hide his. For this reason it was a blow to discover one day that Mrs Hardy, who had been exclusively occupied with Georgia for some time, was now at leisure to think of other people’s affairs. She opened her attack without the slightest warning beforehand.
“I don’t like to see you looking so doleful, Miss North,” she said briskly, finding Mabel sitting idle, in a somewhat disconsolate attitude.
“Why, do you think all our circumstances are so bright that I ought to be cheerful too?” asked Mabel, roused to defend herself. Mrs Hardy looked at her critically.
“It’s not circumstances that are wrong in your case; it’s yourself. You needn’t try to blind me. Think of poor Mrs North. Do you ever see her looking doleful, or hear a murmur from her? No; because she persists in being cheerful for the child’s sake and ours. You have spirit enough, too, to be bright before other people, but when you are alone you drop the mask. Can you deny it?”