“Georgie,” said Lady Haigh, some two or three days later, “I want to ask you a question. Are you still engaged to Major North, or not?”
The shadow of a smile glimmered on Georgia’s lips.
“It seems a ridiculous thing to say, but really I haven’t the smallest idea whether I am or not,” she answered.
“But what does Major North think about it?”
“I believe he is under the impression that we are still engaged. That is what makes the matter doubtful, for I should certainly say that we were not.”
“But how long is this state of things to go on?”—impatiently.
“I don’t know. Happily I have never had an engagement-ring, so that no one can notice any difference.”
“My dear, this must be put a stop to!” said Lady Haigh, with conviction. “Now that Major North is so much better, there is no need for you to pretend that two doctor’s visits a-day are necessary. Once a-day is quite enough for the present, and then you can drop it altogether.”
“Oh, Lady Haigh! But he looks out for me so eagerly, and is so glad to see me. And I like to see him too.”
“You mustn’t make yourself too cheap, my dear Georgie. Surely you would not wish to cling to a man who has told you in so many words that he is anxious to break off his engagement to you?”
“Oh, but I don’t think he meant it.”
“Then he has nothing to do but to say so. You had far better bring about an explanation, and have it over. It is certainly Major North’s turn to eat humble pie, and it will do him a world of good, and smooth your path very much in the future. Take my advice, dear, and let him see (or at any rate think) that you are prepared to abide by what he said.”
It was with great reluctance that Georgia consented to follow her friend’s counsel; but when she thought it over its wisdom commended itself to her, and she decided to carry it out rigorously, with results which seemed very hard to Dick. He only saw his doctor once a-day, and then she persisted in ignoring sternly all his attempts to extend the scope of the conversation beyond the business in hand. Then she discontinued her visits altogether, and the only explanation his bearer could offer was that the Doctor Miss Sahiba was very busy, and he supposed that she took no more interest in the protector of the poor now that he was so much better. It was the same when Stratford and Fitz came to see him. They agreed that Miss Keeling was very busy, and seemed rather surprised that he should ask after her. It even appeared to him that there was a slight constraint in their tones when they answered his questions. Dick pondered over the mystery without any satisfactory result for two days, and then announced that he was going to get up, and demanded his clothes. The bearer had anticipated this step, and replied promptly that the entire wardrobe of the protector of the poor was at the moment in the hands of a tailor in the town, to whom he had intrusted it for needed repairs, and who preferred to execute them on his own premises. Hari Das invited his master’s reproofs for his own remissness in postponing the operation for so long, but to his dismay discovered that Dick declined to be drawn into a tirade on the vices of bearers in general, illustrated from his experience of this particular specimen. He was too much in earnest in his determination to have time to waste in useless altercations, and, moreover, he knew his man.
“Ask the chota sahib to come to me,” he said. “I will borrow a suit of his clothes.”
The bearer looked blank.
“But the chota sahib’s clothes will not fit my lord,” he objected.
“That doesn’t signify,” said Dick. “Fit or no fit, I am going to get up,” and he only smiled in secret when the bearer returned after a short absence with one of his own suits, and announced that the tailor had brought it back unexpectedly soon. He found himself much weaker than he had anticipated as he dressed, but he disregarded the bearer’s doleful assurances that he would kill himself, and declined to return to his couch, although he was glad to accept the support of the servant’s arm as he crossed the hall and entered the passage leading into the harem. Lady Haigh, writing her home letters busily at a camp-table (for letter-writing had been dropped by common, though unexpressed consent, during those past days, when it seemed unlikely that either the letters or their writers would ever reach home), looked up in astonishment when he came in, and made haste to arrange a comfortable place for him with cushions upon the divan, remarking that he had better lie still and rest for a little and not talk. But this was not what Dick had come for.
“Lady Haigh, where is Georgie?” he asked, the moment after the bearer had departed.
“Well, I think she is busy just now,” Lady Haigh replied, with distinct coldness in her manner. As a matter of fact, at that moment Georgia was sitting outside on the terrace with Sir Dugald, who had by this time been promoted to a knowledge of the whereabouts of his party, and was entertaining him with an account of her visit to Bir-ul-Malikat and of the charms of Khadija.
“Every person that I have asked about her for the last three days has told me exactly that!” said Dick, with a good deal of indignation in his tone. “I should like to see her, if you please,” he went on, in the voice of one determined to obtain his just rights.
“I assure you that I have not got her locked up,” said Lady Haigh, with some tartness. “I will tell her what you say, if you like, but I must say that after all that has happened——”
“What is the object of tormenting me like this, Lady Haigh?” asked Dick impatiently, raising himself on his elbow. “I know that Georgia must be ill—I suppose she fell ill through overtiring herself in nursing me—and you are all doing your best to keep it from me. I insist on knowing what is the matter with her, and how she is getting on. I have a right to know.”
“Indeed?” said Lady Haigh. “I was not aware of that. But you are mistaken in supposing that Miss Keeling is ill. I am glad to say she is quite well.”
“Then what is the matter? Why are you keeping her away from me like this? What has come between us?”
“Really, Major North, you are a little inconsistent. Why you should accuse me of trying to separate Miss Keeling and yourself, I don’t know. I can only suppose that your illness has caused you to forget the trifling fact that your engagement is broken off.”
Dick stared at her in astonishment and dismay.
“I don’t remember,” he murmured. “Some one said something about a quarrel, but it was nothing after all. When did she do it? What had I done?”
“Pray don’t try to put it upon Miss Keeling. You told her yourself that things had better be over between you.”
“I must have been mad,” said Dick despairingly, “or am I dreaming now?” He pinched his arm to assure himself that he was awake, then looked round the room in a vain search for explanation, until his gaze rested again on Lady Haigh, but he found no comfort in her face. “You wouldn’t humbug me on such a subject, Lady Haigh!” he cried, as he met her accusing glance. “You helped me once before; tell me what to do now. She can’t think I really meant it!”
“So far as I know, you explained your views pretty clearly,” said Lady Haigh, rejoicing to find Dick delivered into her hands in this teachable spirit, and hoping devoutly that Georgia would remain outside and out of hearing. “You mustn’t play fast and loose like this, Major North. Why did you say what you didn’t mean?”
“I don’t know—I must have been angry. I have a beastly temper at times, you know. I suppose Georgia had made me very mad about something. Oh yes, I remember now, it was about her going to Bir-ul-Malikat. She would insist that she had a right to go, and stay too, whether I liked it or not, and she wouldn’t give in. But as for breaking off our engagement——”
“But you are convinced that Miss Keeling ought to have given in?”
“Well, I think that when she saw what a point I made of it——”
“There was no question of your giving in because she also made a point of it?”
“Oh no,” said Dick, innocently.
“Then I think it is a very good thing indeed that your engagement is broken off.” Lady Haigh spoke with her usual decision of manner, but Dick looked so absolutely astonished and appalled that she condescended to an explanation. “I should like to talk to you a little on this subject very seriously, Major North, for as a looker-on I can perhaps see more clearly than you do where you have gone wrong. I daresay you will regard me as a meddling old woman, but at any rate you can’t say that I have turned critic because I have failed in matrimony, for my married life has been as happy as even I could have wished. Besides, it was in getting the medicine to cure Sir Dugald that poor Georgie incurred your royal highness’s displeasure, so that I feel bound to do all I can to put things right between you.”
“But if you think that it is better for her not to be engaged to me?” The question was asked a little stiffly, for Dick did not altogether appreciate the tone of his monitress’s remarks.
“That is a matter which depends solely on yourself. You possess many estimable qualities, Major North, but you were born a few centuries too late. Of course I don’t mean that you were to blame for the fact—on the contrary, it is distinctly a misfortune, both to yourself and others. You would have made an ideal husband in the days when it was considered quite the proper thing for a gentleman to correct his wife with a stick not thicker than his middle finger.”
“Really, Lady Haigh, this is beyond a joke!” Dick was angry now—there was no mistaking the fact.
“Quite so; but I am not joking. I don’t mean that if you married Georgia, you would keep her in order with a horsewhip—I don’t for a moment believe she would let you, for one thing. But I think you would certainly need some resource of the kind to fall back upon if your ideal of domestic discipline was to be maintained. In your house, according to your theory, there would be one law and one will, and that law would be your law, and that will your will. That is a beautiful ideal—for you—and it would no doubt produce, in course of time, a saintly submissiveness of character in your wife. But any woman who is to be subjected to such a course of training ought to be warned beforehand, and agree to accept it with her eyes open. And that Georgia would never do.”
“I don’t know why she shouldn’t. All women do.”
“Do they?” asked Lady Haigh, with as little sarcasm in her tone as the subject admitted—and Dick was silent, recognising that he had, to use his own phrase, given himself away. His counsellor went on, “I am going to ask you a personal question, Major North. Why do you want to marry Miss Keeling?”
“Because I love her, and I can’t do without her,” very gruffly.
“But why didn’t you fall in love with that beautiful Miss Hervey, whom we met at Mrs Egerton’s before we came out here?”
“Because she is not my sort—an empty-headed doll!”
“Exactly; but if you want a woman without any mind or reason of her own, she would just suit you. She would adore you, and defer to all your wishes when they didn’t clash with any particular fancies of her own, for six months at least, and you would adore her for the same length of time—until you each found the other out. After that, you would know that you had married a fool, and she a tyrant. Georgia is not a fool. She loves you, but she sees your faults, and she has a certain amount of self-respect. If you wanted her to do anything that seemed to her unreasonable, she would talk it over with you, and she might end by refusing to do it, but she would never cry or sulk until you gave it up in despair. It is a great thing to recognise fully that you are both human beings, after all. Georgie doesn’t imagine that the possession of the Victoria Cross necessarily implies that of all the domestic virtues, any more than she believes herself to be perfect because she possesses a London medical degree. She would consider that she had exactly as much right to be the sole arbiter of the house as you had, and that is none at all.”
Dick murmured a feeble protest against this way of looking at things, to which Lady Haigh refused to listen.
“The fact is, you would wish to marry a clever woman, only she must be willing to let herself be treated like a fool. You can’t reconcile two extremes in that way. Georgia has lived her own life, and that a very full and useful one, and you cannot expect her to become a puppet all at once, simply out of love for you. She is used to acting on her own initiative. Well, I will tell you what I learned from her maid, for she won’t talk about it herself. Do you know that when she was at Bir-ul-Malikat, that wicked old woman Khadija tried to get her to lead you and your men into a trap, on the pretence that by calling to you and beckoning you she would warn you of an ambuscade. An ordinary woman would have yielded to the impulse of the moment—I should have myself—and destroyed you, with the purest desire for your safety; but Georgie had the strength of mind to reason the matter out, all in an instant. She refused to call to you, and you were saved. And it is a woman like that whom you expect to fall down and worship your slightest whim!” with intense scorn.
“Not guilty, Lady Haigh. I abjure, I recant—anything! But why didn’t you tell me this before? What an ungrateful brute she must think me!”
“I didn’t begin by telling you of it, because I wanted to make you see reason, instead of working upon your feelings. I’m sure I hope I may have done both.”
“I will give you my solemn promise, if that will satisfy you, that Georgia shall ride roughshod over my most cherished convictions as often as she likes. She is a heroine. I feel ashamed to lift my eyes to her. Oh, Lady Haigh, tell me what to do. How can I begin to make things right?”
“Put yourself in her place. Would you like it if she expected you to give up your military career for her sake?”
“She would never ask or expect such a thing. She knows that I could not do it, even to please her.”
“Then return the compliment. She is willing to give up for your sake any hope of distinguishing herself further in her profession by means of original research, but she will not relinquish the practice of it. Allow her the freedom you claim for yourself—in fact you must allow it, if you mean to marry Georgia Keeling. She will be yours heart and soul, but a certain portion of her time and interest she will always give to her work.”
“But come now, Lady Haigh, doesn’t that strike you as slightly rough on a man?”
“It strikes me as merely just,” snapped Lady Haigh. “No portion of your time and interest will ever be given to your work, of course?”
“Oh, but that’s different, you know,” said Dick, uncomfortably. “Do you really think that this sort of thing is meant for women?”
“My dear Major North, I am not holding a brief for Women’s Rights. I am merely trying to bring you into line with facts. If you want arguments, no doubt Georgia will argue with you by the hour.”
“I wish she was here to do it!” sighed Dick. “Would it be rude to remind you, Lady Haigh, that I haven’t seen her for three whole days?”
“I suppose that means that you want me to fetch her for you. Well, I will just say this. Once you lamented to me that you had no tact. Now I believe that, until she finds him out, a bad man with tact will make a woman happier than a good man without it.” Lady Haigh paused triumphantly, as though to say, “Contradict that atrocious sentiment if you can!” but Dick made no attempt to do so, and she went on. “I’m afraid you would find it difficult to cultivate tact now, but if you will only try to consider things that affect Georgia from her point of view as well as your own, you will have made a good beginning.”
She stepped out through the lattice, and presently Georgia entered, stethoscope in hand.
“Well, and how do we find ourselves to-day?” she asked cheerfully, hoping that Dick would not notice the trembling in her voice.
“How can you expect a patient to get better when his doctor does not come near him for days?”
“You have always expressed such a dislike to lady doctors, that it struck us you might prefer to be without one.”
“Ah, how did you come to be my doctor, by the bye?”
“I knew you would have preferred the surgeon who came with you,” said Georgia, with resignation in her tones. “I will tell you how it was. He is very young and very new, and knows nothing about fever in practice, which makes him all the more sure about it in theory. He has half-a-dozen infallible remedies, and he was rejoicing at the prospect of being able to test them all on you, when I stepped in and claimed you as my patient. And now I suppose you will tell me that you would prefer to be killed by him rather than be cured by me?”
No suitable repartee occurring to Dick at the moment, he took a mean advantage of his position as an invalid, and lay back on his cushions with a slight groan, which melted Georgia’s heart at once.
“You have a headache, and I have been teasing you!” she said, remorsefully, changing her position and coming behind him. “Keep your head like that, my poor boy,” and she began to pass her fingers slowly across his forehead with such a soothing effect that Dick only kept himself by a violent effort from falling asleep. Pulling her hands down, he looked at them critically.
“Have you been taking lessons in witchcraft from Khadija?” he asked. “Do you think it’s fair to practice magic arts on me? What chance has a man when you begin to mesmerise him with those cool, firm fingers of yours? What nice soft hands you have, Georgie!” emphasising the remark by lifting the said hands to his lips.
“One has to keep one’s hands nice for surgical work,” said Georgia, apologetically, and expecting an outburst. But Dick only gave a rather ostentatious sigh, and went on meditatively.
“Your magic is thoroughly successful, at any rate. Lady Haigh will testify to the change in my demeanour since you came in. Well, Georgie, you have won. Let’s make it up. I surrender at discretion.”
“I begin to think that you are delirious again,” said Georgia, in a puzzled voice, bending forward to look at him.
“I think not. I am merely anxious not to do things by halves. Come, impose your conditions on me while I am in this softened state. As an honourable man, I shall feel bound to carry them out when I return to my right mind. I will only ask you, as you are strong, to be merciful. There, could submission go further than that?”
“You are certainly not fit to be sitting up. I shall call your bearer, and request him to see you back to bed. You may not be delirious, but you are undoubtedly queer in the head.”
“Thank you. You will not call the respectable Hari Das at present—at any rate until I have had a longer talk with you.”
“That sounds more like your usual self,” said Georgia.
“The self which is to vanish from henceforth. Oh, Georgie, I know I’m talking like a lunatic, but it’s because I should make a fool of myself if I didn’t. When I think of what Lady Haigh has just been telling me, of the way in which you saved all our lives the other day, I feel as though I could simply die of shame. How could you—how could you—do it?”
“Pure selfishness,” returned Georgia, with elaborate composure. “I couldn’t do without you, you see.”
“I’m not worth it, Georgie. I couldn’t even behave decently to you an hour after it happened. And I daren’t make any promises for the future, remembering all those I have broken already. But I do ask you to believe that I didn’t know what I was saying when—when I talked about breaking off our engagement the morning you came back. I couldn’t have believed that even when I was off my head I could be such an idiot; but, unfortunately, you heard me say it. Take me on again, dearest. You’ll have a lot to put up with, but——”
“My dear boy, I have never given you up—of my own free will, at any rate.”
“That doesn’t make it any better for me. After you had done a thing that not one woman in a million—or one man either—could have done——”
“Oh yes, they could, if the idea had struck them. It was just that—a sudden inspiration. But you are getting excited, Dick, and I will not have it. As your medical attendant, I forbid you to think about Bir-ul-Malikat any more. I shall break off our re-engagement at once if you don’t talk about something else.”
“Yes, there it is. You have such an awful pull over me, Georgie. I can’t do without you, but you could get on very well without me. Confess now—couldn’t you?”
“By going back to England and joining the Forward Club, and impressing on the world that the grapes were sour?” asked Georgia. “No, I should have to keep to my old plan, and settle down to missionary work in Khemistan; then I should get a glimpse of you sometimes.”
“I don’t know whether you call that a pure motive? Yes, I think I see myself riding past a Zenana hospital every day, and about once a-week catching a distant view of you teaching a lot of native girls to roll up bandages.”
“And I can imagine myself rushing to the verandah to look after you when you had passed,” said Georgia. “It would be a modern version of Roland and his lady.”
“It would be far worse than never seeing one another at all.”
“Oh no, Dick—not worse, much better than that.”
“It would be much worse to me. I should have to look out for an appointment somewhere at the other end of the Empire.”
“Dick, how unkind of you to say such a thing!” There were tears very near to falling in Georgia’s eyes, but with an extraordinary access of tact Dick pretended not to notice them, and looked up at her with a friendly smile.
“Yes, I know I’m a brute. I warn you not to have me, Georgie. I have had a good fright just now, and I’m properly subdued for the moment, but I am bound to break out again. It isn’t safe, is it?”
“I don’t care whether it is safe or not,” and she stooped and kissed him.
“Does that mean that there is to be no more doctoring?”
“Not at all. Did you think you were going to catch me off my guard in a moment of weakness? It means that you agree to my doing what medical work I can, and that I won’t let it come between you and me.”
“That first part is what one might call a cool assumption, but I told you to make your own conditions, and as I said before, I am prepared to accept them abjectly. Do you know, Georgie, that when I was at Rahmat-Ullah it was hinted to me that I might be made assistant political agent when they establish the agency at Iskandarbagh? How would you like that?”
“Dick, it’s too good to be true! It is like a dream. To have you, and my work, and to be able to reach not only Khemistan but my dear Ethiopian women!”
“How do you propose to employ yourself, then?”
“In doctoring the women and children, and teaching where I am allowed.”
“And leaving your house to take care of itself?”
“Yes, of course, and my husband too. It would set such a good example to the Ethiopian women, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, well, if I am only to be regarded in the light of an object-lesson——”
“You will accept the position with resignation, and be thankful. Oh, Dick, don’t let us tease one another any more! Can’t you understand that I am glad and proud to have the chance of helping you a little in your work? It was my father’s work too, you know.”
“Yes, I know. You might come a little closer, Georgie. You don’t seem to understand yet that I make my doctor pay for the privilege of attending me.”
“Come, Mr Stratford, you mustn’t tire Sir Dugald. I am sure he has done quite enough work this morning.”
Stratford looked at Lady Haigh rather guiltily, almost as though he felt that he ought to tell her something, but could not make up his mind to do it.
“I didn’t want him to go on so long, Lady Haigh, but he insisted on looking through the journal. Of course he wanted to be posted up in everything before we start to-morrow, in view of reaching Rahmat-Ullah so soon. I’m afraid you will find that—that he has been doing a little too much.”
Lady Haigh went into the room with a scolding on her lips, but it died away when her eyes fell upon Sir Dugald, sitting at the table with his head leaning on his hand. As she entered, he pushed aside wearily the papers before him and turned to her.
“It’s no use, Elma; I am done for—a worn-out, useless wreck. I always hoped to die in harness, but now I am laid on the shelf. It is all right until I get to business, but I cannot grasp things. My brain refuses to work.”
This confirmation of fears which had already occurred to herself and Georgia struck a chill to Lady Haigh’s heart, but she dared not hold out any hope of improvement by way of comfort. She came forward silently, and standing at her husband’s side, laid her hand rather timidly on his shoulder.
“It’s all up, Elma,” he said again. “The very ad valorem duties in the treaty—over which I spent so much time before I was ill—stump me now. We lose everything—position, occupation, influence, even reputation.”
“You have nothing left but your poor old wife,” she said, stifling a sob.
“I don’t count you,” he said, with something of his old manner; “you are part of myself. We have gone through everything together, Elma.”
Lady Haigh murmured something about going home to Scotland and ending their days together, but she left the sentence unfinished. How she managed to get out of the room without absolutely breaking down she did not know, but Georgia found her a short time later dissolved in tears.
“He never spoke to me like that before,” she sobbed. “We have never been a sentimental couple—not even when we were first married. He couldn’t bear that sort of thing; and though I might have liked a little—just a little—more expression, don’t you know? I was not going to worry him. We were good comrades always, and I think I can say that I never stood in his way when he was ordered to do anything. He would come to me in the morning and say, ‘Elma, I am ordered to such and such a place,’ a thousand miles off, perhaps—and I would say, ‘Very well, dear; what time must I be ready? or will it do if we start to-morrow?’ He never said anything, but I knew he liked it, and he was as proud as I was that I could shift quarters as quickly as any soldier of them all. And we have always been together, as he says, and now he must give up work at last!”
“But you have your place in Scotland, Lady Haigh, and Sir Dugald will find plenty to do there, and be very happy. It would not surprise me if he recovered entirely when he had no official work to worry him.”
“But that very official work has been the mainspring of his life. He will be lost without it. And how will things go on without him? To escape so many dangers and recover from that poisoning just for this! No, Georgie, don’t try to show me the bright side of it yet. Let me have my cry out now, and, God helping me, I’ll say no more about it, and he shan’t know. I won’t fail him after all just when he needs me most.”
“Dick,” said Georgia that evening when they met before dinner, “who is the bravest woman you know?”
“You,” he replied, promptly.
“Don’t be absurd; I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I should be satisfied if I were half as brave as Lady Haigh. I think that she and Sir Dugald are just worthy of one another.”
“I suppose there’s a concealed snub somewhere in that remark intended for me, but I can’t quite locate it yet. I have a good mind to ask Stratford to find it out for me—I always want to apply to him for an explanation when your reproofs are couched in too learned language—but he isn’t down yet.”
“Here he comes,” said Georgia, as Stratford entered somewhat hurriedly and cast a hasty glance round the room; “but if you ever venture to ask him to interpret me, Dick, why, beware!”
“I should never think of doing it in cold blood. It might be too much for his brain. What’s the matter, Stratford?” he asked, raising his voice. “You’re not late.”
“The Chief not down yet?” asked Stratford, looking round again and making sure that Sir Dugald and Lady Haigh were the only members of the party who were missing. It was the first time that the two invalids had been allowed to join the rest at dinner, and the servants were obviously unhappy at the delay.
“No,” said Fitz; “the poor old chap is so thin after his illness that Lady Haigh is making Chanda Lal pad his dress-clothes a bit to keep him from looking quite so like a scarecrow.”
“I wish you would have the goodness to confine your jokes to other people, Anstruther, and not go sharpening your wit on the Chief,” said Stratford, irritably. “Look here, all of you—there was something I particularly wanted to say when I got you all together, and this is just the chance. I beg and entreat you all not to allude after to-day—even in private letters or in talking to friends—to the way in which I managed to get the treaty signed.”
“Why, Stratford, there was nothing to be ashamed of!” cried Dick. “It was one of the finest things I ever heard of.”
“You don’t see what I am driving at. At present the Chief has got it into his head that the sudden change in the King’s attitude was entirely due to the discovery by independent means of Fath-ud-Din’s treachery, and the consequent promotion of Jahan Beg. He thinks that I happened on the spot exactly at the right moment and got the treaty signed without a bit of trouble, and I want him to go