CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ALLOTTED FIELD.
FROM this determination Colin could not be moved. He wrote off immediately to Mr Crayne, asking him to obtain leave for him to resign his commission without delay, since Major Keeling remained obdurate, and join Saadullah Kermani’s caravan when it left Alibad for Gamara. Mr Crayne, whose anxiety for his nephew’s safety was embittered by the remembrance that it was he himself who had obtained him his perilous post, made a flying journey to the river station, and summoned Colin to meet him there, that they might talk things over. The old man was aghast when he heard Colin’s plans. He would attempt no disguise, seek no credentials from the Government, invoke no protection if danger threatened. Bible and Koran in hand, he would go to the wicked city simply as a friend in search of a friend, proving to the orthodox of Gamara from the books they held sacred their abuse of the duties of hospitality. Eager as he was that some definite step should be taken, Mr Crayne recoiled from sending Colin to what seemed certain death, and could hardly be dissuaded from dismissing the project as summarily as Major Keeling had done. But at last Colin’s entreaties induced him to send for Saadullah from Alibad, and after long and anxious consultations with the trader he began to see a glimmering of hope in the scheme. During the short time he had been on the border, Colin had acquired a high reputation for sanctity among the natives. His austere life, the ascetic qualities which made him unpopular among his comrades, his willingness for religious discussion, were so many causes for pride to the men of his troop, from whom his fame spread first to the bazar-people of Alibad and then to the tribes. He was not credited with the possession of miraculous powers, like Major Keeling, but it was very commonly believed that he was divinely inspired. The discussions which took place in his verandah might have bred ill-feeling but for the courtesy and tact with which he conducted them, and the bigoted Mussulmans who came to confound him and went away defeated took with them a feeling almost of affection for their antagonist. He might be a Kafir and a smooth-faced boy, but he could argue against the wisest Mullahs and send them away with a lurking doubt that what they had heard and rejected might in reality be a message from God communicated by an angel.
Since this was the case, Saadullah thought there was good reason to hope that Colin might be able to visit Gamara in safety. The undertaking was fraught with peril, of course, but it was significant that the only European who had in the course of many years been allowed to leave the city uninjured was an eccentric missionary who had followed much the same plan. There was little likelihood of rescuing Ferrers, the trader admitted; but if Rāss Sahib obtained the Khan’s ear, he might at any rate be able to ascertain his fate, perhaps even bring back his bones for burial. It was from Saadullah that Mr Crayne learned the unpalatable fact that Ferrers was the last man who should have been sent to Gamara, that his self-assertion and absence of tact would be a standing irritation to the Khan and his people, and that the sporting characters of the Alibad bazar had only disagreed as to the shortness of the time in which he would offer deadly insult to the prince or his religion, and duly disappear. With Rāss Sahib it was different, for he cared nothing for slights to himself, only to his faith, and his courage in opening discussion at the very seat of Moslem culture, coupled with his kindly and courteous bearing, ought to win him friends enough to ensure his safety.
Thus urged, Mr Crayne consented, with many misgivings, to further the project. He obtained leave for Colin to resign his commission, and persuaded the Government not to veto the journey. He saw that he had ample command of money, and intrusted Saadullah with a further supply, to be used in case his charge found himself in any difficulty or danger, and also authorised them to draw upon him should more be needed. Colin’s way was rendered as smooth as possible, and the resulting conviction that he was right in undertaking the journey made it easy for him to bear the contemptuous coldness of Major Keeling and the wondering remonstrances of his friends. He was very kind to Penelope, who could hardly bear him out of her sight, clinging to him, as it were, in a desperate endeavour to hold him back, while he put her gently aside, pressing on towards the goal he had in view. Her unavailing misery angered Lady Haigh to the point of fiery indignation, and at last she determined deliberately that she would at least make an attempt to bring Colin to a sense of the error of his ways. She gave Sir Dugald orders to take Penelope for a ride one morning, and fairly hunted them both out of the place, promising to overtake them before long, then pounced upon Colin as he rode up, and informed him that he was to have the honour of escorting her. It gave her a malign pleasure to note his evident unwillingness, though he could not well refuse to ride with her, and she wasted no more words until they were out in the desert.
“You are determined to take this journey to Gamara?” she asked him, slackening pace suddenly.
He looked at her in surprise. “Yes,” he answered simply.
“And not even the thought of your sister will make you change your mind? You are leaving her absolutely alone in the world.”
“She is not without friends. You and Haigh will always look after her. Poor George Ferrers has no one. Moreover, I feel that to some extent I am taking the journey in Penelope’s place.”
“You don’t mean to say that you expected her to go?”
“No, no, though she did cry out at first that she ought to go, not I. What I mean is that it was for her sake Ferrers went to Gamara, hoping the mission would lead to some appointment on which he might marry, and as soon as he is gone she turns round and declares that nothing will induce her to marry him.”
“If you asked my opinion, I should say that he went to Gamara because he had made Alibad too hot to hold him; but if you prefer the other view, I can’t help it. Mr Ross, tell me, what is there about Captain Ferrers which captivates you? You are not generally a lenient judge, but you condone in him things which you would rebuke unsparingly in your other comrades, and you can’t forgive your sister for refusing to marry him, though it’s clear it would mean lifelong misery to her if she did. Why is it?”
Colin looked at her in unfeigned perplexity. “He is my friend, Lady Haigh. When I was a little chap, and he a big fellow always getting into scrapes, we were like Steerforth and Copperfield,—no, I don’t mean that”—perceiving that the comparison might be interpreted unfavourably to Ferrers—“like David and Jonathan—he was David, of course. In those days Pen was as fond of him as I was. I may be unjust to her, as you seem to imply, but I can’t get over her fickleness. It was settled so long ago that he was to marry her and I was to live with them—what better arrangement could there have been? George has never changed, I have never changed, but Penelope has. What led to the change, you know best.”
“Not I,” returned Lady Haigh warmly; “except that it was a very natural repugnance to a lover who seemed to take everything for granted, and who, as we now know, never thought of her at all.”
“Lady Haigh,” said Colin earnestly, “you are doing him an injustice. He did not know of her arrival in India, was not expecting her; but if he had been allowed to meet her, and she had met him on the old footing, without interference, this sad alienation would never have taken place. You meant well when you warned her against him, but——”
“Mr Ross,” said Lady Haigh, settling herself firmly in the saddle, and punctuating her sentences by little taps of her whip on the pommel, “I meant well, and I did well. You would have sacrificed your sister to a man who was not worthy to black her shoes. I saved her.”
“You have always misjudged him, and I fear you always will. I know he has done many wrong and foolish things—he has told me so himself, with bitter regret. But he had cast them behind him; all he needed to help him to rise was the love of a good woman, and he and I both hoped he had found it. I begin to fear now that even before he started on his mission he must have felt some misgivings about Penelope’s affection for him——”
“Probably,” said Lady Haigh savagely. “Oh, go on.”
“Some fear that her heart was not really his. What is the result? This terrible, miserable rumour which is taking me to Gamara.”
“Then you actually hold your sister accountable for Captain Ferrers’ becoming a Mohammedan? Now will you kindly tell me what you think a man’s Christianity is worth if it depends on a girl’s feelings?”
“A girl’s actions, rather,” said Colin sorrowfully. “Think, he has met with a terrible shock. All his ideas of woman’s truth and steadfastness are destroyed. I know that ought not to destroy his faith; but he has always been one who depended upon the visible for his grasp of the invisible. And that is why I am going to Gamara, in the hope that he may yet be saved.”
“Do you really expect to bring him back with you?” she asked, awed.
“No. I feel that I shall not return,” he answered. “But I have also the feeling that in some way, even if it is only by my death, George will be brought back.”
“After this”—Lady Haigh spoke brusquely, that he might not see how much she was moved—“I quite understand that it is no use asking you to consider Penelope. She doesn’t count in such a case.”
“I have done what I can for her,” he replied. “I have left her all I have. And I suppose”—he spoke with evident distaste—“that some day she will marry the Chief.”
“Ah, I thought even you would scarcely venture to think she was still bound to Captain Ferrers. Well, Mr Ross, since you have got so far, you must do something more. You must leave a message with me that I can give her if that ever comes about. If I have to persecute you unceasingly till the day you start, I will have it.”
“No; that is too much. I may foresee such a marriage, I cannot prevent it, but I will not encourage it.”
“You will give me leave to tell your sister that you thought such a thing might possibly happen, and that you wished her all happiness in it. She has gone through agonies in trying to keep the promise which you imposed upon her, and she did keep it till it nearly killed her. I believe you think you are the only person who has a right to quote texts, but I ask you what good it will do if you are willing to give yourself up to be killed at Gamara, and yet can’t show common charity to your own sister?”
Colin rode on in silence with a rigid face, and Lady Haigh wondered whether he would refuse to speak to her again. She had caught sight of Sir Dugald and Penelope coming towards them, and felt that her chance was nearly over. Would he speak? She held her breath with anxiety. Suddenly he turned to her with a smile which transfigured his whole face.
“You are right, Lady Haigh, and I am wrong. I have judged poor Pen hardly, and she must have thought me unkind. If it—this marriage should ever come off, tell her that from my heart I prayed for her happiness and Keeling’s. And I thank you heartily for showing me what a Pharisee I have been.”
Lady Haigh scarcely dared to believe in her success, but she noticed a new tone of tenderness in Colin’s voice when he spoke to his sister presently, and the look of incredulous joy in Penelope’s grey eyes showed that she saw it too. “I have done a good morning’s work,” said Lady Haigh to herself.
For the few days that remained before Colin’s departure, Penelope was happy. The barrier which had existed between her brother and herself since their arrival in India seemed to have suddenly disappeared, and she felt she was forgiven. Ferrers’ name was not mentioned between them, but Colin was able to allude to the object of his journey without unconsciously reproving his sister by the sternness of his voice. Lady Haigh could not discover whether he had told her of his presentiment that he would not return, though she guessed that Penelope must have divined it, for the girl was clearly hoping against hope, unable to believe that the renewed confidence between Colin and herself could be brought to an end so quickly.
All too soon, as it seemed to Penelope, Colin started in the train of Saadullah Kermani, and life at Alibad resumed its ordinary course, sadly flat, stale, and unprofitable in the estimation of one at least of the inhabitants. Penelope’s occupation was gone. She had joyfully resigned her interest in Ferrers, she could do nothing for Colin but pray for him, and she missed daily, almost hourly, the interest which Major Keeling had been wont to bring into her life. He never tried to see her alone now—in fact, his visits to the fort had ceased, and all her information as to the affairs of the border was derived from the stray pieces of news extorted from Sir Dugald by Lady Haigh, who was bent on educating him up to the belief that she and Penelope took an intelligent interest in public affairs. Not that these were exciting at this time. The young officer whose services Major Keeling had requisitioned was peremptorily restored to his original regiment, much against his will, and the usual heated correspondence followed. The border was quiet—in the case of Nalapur much too quiet, Major Keeling considered, and his demand for two additional European officers was finally refused by the authorities. The Haighs moved into their new house, which was at last pronounced safe, and Major Keeling took up his quarters in the imposing but gloomy building he had erected for himself. He abjured punkahs and every other kind of device for modifying the heat of the place, but he had laid aside his heroic views in planning the Haighs’ house. The lofty rooms were fitted with every appliance that had yet been discovered for making a Khemistan summer less intolerable, and there was a large tai-khana, or underground room, for refuge in the daytime, and a spacious roof for sleeping on at night. Lady Haigh and Penelope found plenty to do in making the bare rooms habitable with the small means at their disposal. Those were the days when anything of “country” make was regarded by the English in India as beyond the pale of toleration; but Lady Haigh, looking round upon the remnant of her belongings which had survived the journey up-country and the hands of the native servants, came to a heroic decision. It was all very well for people down at the coast, or generals’ wives and other burra mems, to have things out from home, but the subaltern’s wife must do her best with country goods; and she and Penelope worked wonders with native cottons and embroidered draperies, and the curious rugs which were brought by the caravans from Central Asia. Perhaps, as she herself confessed, she might not have been so courageous had it not been practically certain that none of the great ladies from the coast would ever see and criticise her arrangements, but for her part she did not think the native designs were so very hideous after all, or their colouring as barbaric as it appeared to most English people in those far-off days of the Fifties—devotees as they were of grass green and royal blue.
Into the midst of these domestic labours came the thunderbolt which Penelope told herself she had been expecting, but which was no less appalling. Saadullah Kermani’s caravan returned, without Colin. There had been no remissness on Saadullah’s part, no rashness on Colin’s; but there was a factor in the case the presence of which they had not suspected. Colin had entered Gamara in the humble and distinctive attire prescribed for Christians approaching the holy city, and had behaved with the utmost prudence, making no attempt to penetrate where he should not, or attack the usages of the place. His travelling-companions bore unanimous testimony to his gentleness when he was engaged in controversy by different Mullahs, and to the absence of bitterness when these took leave of him. Many came to visit him at the Sarai, and some even invited him to their houses. There was every hope that his presence would come to the Khan’s ears, so that he might be commanded to the palace as a guest, and have a chance of attaining the object of his journey, when one day some of his first acquaintances brought with them to the Sarai no less a person than the Mirza Fazl-ul-Hacq. He had been one of those who had held controversies with Colin during flying visits to Alibad, and he had expressed his determination to vanquish the Kafir at last. His language had been violent in the extreme, his taunts and provocations almost unbearable; but Colin had kept his temper, and discomfited his opponent by appealing to the audience to contrast the tone of their respective arguments. The Mirza had departed in a rage, and the very next day, in passing one of the colleges, Colin had been assailed by a tumultuous throng of students, who poured out upon him, and, seizing him, demanded that he should abjure Christianity. Upon his refusal to repeat the Kalima they had set upon him with sticks and stones, and he was only rescued by a body of the city police, who arrested him and carried him off to the palace, the precincts of which included the prison. Since then nothing had been heard of him. Saadullah had made tentative and cautious inquiries in every possible direction, but the only result was to bring upon himself a warning from the head of the police that he also was suspected, as having brought the Kafir into the city, and would do well to keep his mouth shut and finish his business in Gamara as quickly as he could. By inquiry from the friends of other prisoners, it was ascertained that Colin was not in the common prison; but this only lent fresh horror to his fate, for to the awful regions beyond no one penetrated. And nothing had been heard of Ferrers, either good or bad.
When Penelope heard the news she fainted, and recovered only to beg Lady Haigh piteously to ask Major Keeling to come to her. She must see him, she said, when her friend demurred; and Lady Haigh, with some misgivings, sent off the note. She felt that she would like to warn Major Keeling when he arrived, and yet she did not know exactly what she feared, but there had been a wild look in Penelope’s eyes which frightened her.
“She is not herself. You will make allowances?” she said eagerly, as she took him into the drawing-room.
“Make allowances—I, for her?” he said, with such an accent of reproach that Lady Haigh was too much flurried to explain that she was anxious he should not be drawn into doing anything rash. It was some comfort to her to notice how big and strong he looked, not the kind of man who would allow himself to be hurried into unwisdom, and she could not wonder that Penelope felt him a tower of strength. But the words which reached her as she left the room made her stop her ears and hurry away in despair. She knew exactly how Penelope had run to meet him, white-faced, trembling, with dilated eyes, and seized his hand in both hers as she cried, “Oh, Major Keeling, save him, save him!”
“What is it you want me to do?” he asked her, the laborious speeches of condolence he had prepared all forgotten.
“I thought—oh, surely, you will go to Gamara, won’t you? You are so well known, and the natives have such a regard for you—you could make them give him up.”
He shook his head. The childlike simplicity of the appeal was almost irresistible, but he knew better than she did how hopeless such an attempt would be made by the very fame of which she spoke.
“Oh, don’t say you won’t do it!” she entreated. “He is all I have.”
“Listen,” he said. “You know I thought the journey so dangerous that I refused to the last to let your brother go. Yet there was a chance for him. For me there would be none, the moment I set foot beyond our own border. You will do me the justice to believe that I would not grudge my life if losing it could do any good, but it could do none. And even if it would, I could not go. I am in command here, and I cannot desert my post.”
She looked at him as though she had not heard him. “It is Colin,” she said; “all I have. And you said—you cared.”
“And you say I don’t if I won’t go?” he asked sharply. “Then you are talking of what you don’t understand. I could not leave Khemistan if—even if it was your life, and not your brother’s, that was at stake—even if it tore my heart out.”
Penelope passed her hand over her brow. “No,” she said feebly, “it would not signify then. But for Colin!”
“Sit down and listen to me quietly. I have pacified this frontier, and I am the only man who can keep it quiet. Nalapur is only looking for a pretext to break with us; if my back was turned they would invade us without one. My post is here; it is my duty to remain; I will not—dare not leave it. Penelope, do you ask me to leave it? If you do, I am mistaken in you. Look up, and tell me.”
Penelope raised her head as if compelled by his tone, and her eyes met his. “No,” she said helplessly, “it would be wrong. You must not go. But oh, Colin, Colin!”
She bowed her head again and broke into a passion of sobs, for her last hope was gone. She heard Major Keeling get up and walk up and down the room, and knew that her sobs were agonising to him, but she could not restrain them. At last she found him close to her again, his hand on her shoulder.
“Dear,” he said, “let us bear it together. When you are in the doctor’s hands after a fight, it helps if there’s a friend beside you, whose hand you can grip hard. Take mine, Penelope.”
Her sobs ceased, and she looked at him wonderingly through her tears. He went on speaking in the same low, deeply moved voice—
“I can’t bear to leave you to go through it alone. Let me help. You know I know what trouble is. Give me the right to share yours.”
“Now—when Colin may be tortured, starving, dying? Oh, how can you?” cried Penelope. “Oh, go, go away, and never talk like this again. I don’t want my trouble to be less. Why should I? Share it! how can you share it? you won’t even—no, I don’t mean that. I have only Colin, and he has only me.”
He looked down hopelessly at her bowed head. “I cannot desert my post,” he said, and turned to leave her.
“Oh no, no!” cried Penelope, following him. “It was wicked of me to say what I did. Only, please don’t talk like that again. Let me feel you are a real friend. Oh, you will help him if you can, won’t you?”
“I dare not encourage you to hope for your brother’s safety, but it might be possible to obtain news of him. If it can be done, it shall be. Trust me—and forgive me.”