CHAPTER XX.
THE ISLE OF AVILION.
“MISS SAHIB, the Doctor Sahib!”
“The door is shut,” said Penelope hastily; but Dr Tarleton had followed the servant up the stairs, and now stood on the house-top confronting her. She glanced wildly round for a way of escape, but there was none, and she was obliged to go forward and hold out a nerveless hand to him. He looked her steadily in the face.
“It’s no good trying to run away from me, Miss Ross. I was determined to see you.”
“Thank you, but there is nothing the matter with me,” wilfully misunderstanding him.
“Not with you, perhaps, but with other people.” He sat down, uninvited.
“Oh, if I can be of any use——” but she spoke listlessly, and her eyes had sought the mountains again.
The doctor regarded her with a kind of restrained fury. “It makes one’s blood boil,” he burst out, “to see a man—old enough to know better, too—breaking his heart over a girl’s silly whims, and then to find the girl absolutely wrapped up in herself and her own selfish sorrow!”
“Are you speaking of me?” asked Penelope, turning to him in astonishment. She could scarcely believe her ears.
“I am, and of the Chief. How dare you treat him in this way? Isn’t it enough for a man to have the whole military and civil charge of the district, and the burden of keeping the peace all along this frontier, upon his shoulders, without his work being made harder by the woman who ought to help him? Do you know that he worries himself about you to such an extent that it interferes with his work?”
“I didn’t know—— What do you mean? Did he tell you?” stammered Penelope, utterly confounded by this attack.
“Tell me? Do you know him no better than that? Of course not. But I have eyes, and Keeling and I have been friends for five-and-twenty years. Do you expect me to be blind when I know he can’t settle to anything, and snaps at every one who comes near him, and contradicts his own orders, and rides all night instead of taking proper rest? Don’t pretend it’s not your fault. You know it is. For some reason or other he does you the honour to care for you, and you won’t see him or speak to him or send him a message, until he takes it into his head that he has mortally offended you—how or why, you know best.”
“I didn’t know,” murmured Penelope again. “Oh, but you must be mistaken. It isn’t like him. Why should he care so much—all because of me?”
“Don’t know, I’m sure. Some men are made that way,” said the doctor grimly. “But there it is. And you, who ought to be on your knees thanking God for the love of such a man, are doing your best to drive him mad. What is a woman’s heart made of? Don’t you see what an honour it is for you that he should even have thought of you? Don’t let me see you laugh. Don’t dare.”
“I—I’m not laughing,” she faltered hysterically. “But—but—oh, why didn’t he come himself instead of sending you? I never thought——”
“I should imagine he didn’t come because you have never allowed him to see you for weeks. But as for his sending me——!” the doctor laughed stormily. “If you want to punish me for what I have said to you, all you have to do is to tell him I have been here, and what I came for. I don’t think the province would hold me. But I don’t care, if it meant that you would treat him properly. Do you know what Keeling did for me? You mayn’t think it to look at me now, but I was as wild as the best of them when I knew him first. He was a queer, long-legged youngster when he joined the old —th, as dark as a native, pretty nearly—‘fifteen annas’ was what they generally called him—and the greenest, most innocent creature you can imagine. He must have had a terrible time, for there was scarcely a single thing he did like other people—I know I took my share in making his life a burden to him. Well, we had been having a big tamasha of some sort one night, when I was called to a bad case in hospital. An operation was needed, and I insisted on doing it at once. It was a thing that demanded a steady hand—and my hand was not steady—you can guess why. Something slipped—and the man died. An inquiry was called for, and I knew that I was ruined. There was only one thing to be done that I could see—to blow out my brains—and I was just going to do it when Keeling came in. None of the other men had come near me, though they must have guessed, as he had done, what I was up to, but I suppose they thought it was the best way out of it for me. He stopped me, though I fought him for the pistol—vowed I should not do it, and talked to me until I gave in. Of his own free will he offered never to touch wine or spirits again if I would do the same, and actually entreated me to accept the offer. He came and chummed with me in my bungalow—the other men had cleared out; I daresay I was as savage as a bear—and stood by me all through the inquiry. I lost my post—had to begin again at the bottom of the list of assistant-surgeons—but he stood by me. We were through the Ethiopian War together, and when Old Harry picked him out to come up here and raise the Khemistan Horse, he got leave for me to come too. Now you see what I owe to him; but he may kick me out of Khemistan, and welcome, if it means that you will only treat him decently.”
“Indeed, indeed I have tried,” cried Penelope, with tears in her eyes, “but I cannot meet him. It is like that with the others—I make up my mind that I will see them, and try to talk, but as soon as I hear them in the verandah I feel that I cannot meet their eyes, and I rush out of the room.”
“Pure nervousness. You must get over it, Miss Ross. No one expects you not to grieve for your brother, but this sort of thing can do the poor fellow no good, and it is very hard on those who are left.”
“I know they must feel it is my fault——”
“What?” shouted the doctor. “Your fault that your brother was murdered? Come, come, this is arrant nonsense. You don’t mean to say that you are making Keeling miserable on account of this delusion?”
“No, it is worse with him.” She spoke very low. “I have never told even Lady Haigh; but whenever I see Major Keeling, or even think of him, Colin’s face seems to rise up before me—not dead, but as the dervish described it, white and thin, and his hair white too. And I can’t help feeling that it may be a—warning.”
“A fiddlestick! Oh, you Scotch people, with your portents and your visions! A warning of what?”
“You don’t know—perhaps I ought not to tell you—but I am sure Colin would have disapproved of my—caring for Major Keeling. And we were twins, you know—what if he comes to show me that he disapproves of it still?” She looked at him with wide eyes of terror.
“Then you don’t know that in talking to Lady Haigh he gave her to understand that he had no objection to your marrying the Chief—excuse me if I speak plainly—and even looked forward to it? She told me as much when she was confiding to me her anxiety about you.”
“Colin said that to Elma, and she told you—and never told me!”
“Why, how could she? Of course she felt the time hadn’t come—that you would think her brutal, or horrid, or whatever young ladies call it. She mentioned it to me in confidence, and I had no business to repeat it; but I’m the sort of person that rushes in where angels fear to tread—am I not? Having once opened my attack, I couldn’t keep my biggest gun idle, could I? What! you won’t condescend to answer me?”
“I am trying to understand,” she said in a low voice. “It ought to make such a difference, and yet—there is Colin’s face.”
“My dear Miss Ross,” he spoke earnestly, as her eyes questioned his, “this illusion of yours is purely physical. You have been brooding over your brother’s fate for months, and living a most unhealthy life—eating only enough to keep body and soul together, and refusing to take exercise or accept any distraction. The wonder would have been if you had not seen visions after it. Now that you know the truth about your brother’s feelings, don’t you agree with me that nothing would have grieved him more than to know you had made such a bugbear of him? At any rate, let us put the illusion to the test. You must have a thorough change—Lady Haigh and I will arrange it—and see nothing for a time of any of the people here. You don’t mind the Haighs, I suppose? Very well; then the illusion will disappear, if I am right. If not, you must see Keeling once, and definitely bring things to an end. He is not the man to break his heart for a woman who hasn’t courage to accept him”—he saw that Penelope winced—“but it is this undecided state of affairs that is the trouble. And if you have any heart at all, you will let him know that it is not his fault, and that you hope things will be different in future.”
“But how can I?” cried Penelope, following him as he took up his topi and went towards the stairs.
“How can I tell you? I only know what you ought to do; surely you can devise a way of doing it. I wouldn’t have wasted my trouble on most women, but it seemed to me that the woman Keeling cared for ought to have more sense than the general run, and you’ve taken it better than I expected. Put all that nonsense about warnings out of your head, and leave the dead alone and think of the living. That’s all I have to say,” and he was gone.
It seemed as if Penelope was to have no reason for refusing to follow Dr Tarleton’s advice, for Lady Haigh found an opportunity of unfolding her plan to Major Keeling that very evening. He had invited her to dismount and walk up and down with him while listening to the band, and she gathered her long habit over her arm and seized her chance joyfully.
“You will think I am always asking for favours, Major Keeling, but I want this one very much. Will you send my husband to inspect the south-western district instead of Captain Porter?”
“But Porter has his orders, and is making preparations,” he said, looking at her in astonishment. “Have you quarrelled with Haigh, that you are so anxious to banish him?”
“Quarrelled? banish him? Oh, I see what you mean. How absurd! Of course Miss Ross and I are going too.”
“Are you, indeed? And may I ask whether the idea is Haigh’s or yours?”
“Oh, mine. He doesn’t know anything about it.”
“So I imagined.” He was looking at her rather doubtfully. “And have you any particular reason for wishing to go?”
“I think it will do Miss Ross good—to take her away from old associations, and people that she knows, I means.”
“And from me especially?” he asked bitterly. Lady Haigh answered him with unexpected frankness.
“Exactly—from you especially,” she said. “I really believe she will appreciate you better at a distance—no, not quite that. I want her to miss you. At present it is a kind of religious duty to Colin’s memory not to have anything to do with you; but when you are not there I think she will see that she has been turning her back on what ought to be her greatest blessing and comfort.”
Major Keeling looked as if he could have blushed. “Very well,” he said meekly. “If you can bring Haigh round to it, you shall go.”
“And shall I put it right with Captain Porter?” asked Lady Haigh, with an easy assurance born of success. “I know he’ll be quite willing to stay here if I tell him it’s for Pen’s sake,” she added to herself.
“Thank you, I think I am the best person to do that,” he replied, and again Lady Haigh caught the doubtful look in his eyes, of which she was reminded later when she found that the change of plan had put her husband into a very bad temper, though he would not give her any reason for it. The fact was that, as the Sheikh-ul-Jabal had predicted, the return from Gamara of the envoys sent to consult Mirza Fazl-ul-Hacq, with whom his dervish follower had travelled, seemed to have been the signal for the Nalapuri authorities to begin a series of hostile acts. Troops—or rather the ragged levies of the various Sardars—were being massed in threatening proximity to the frontier, fugitive criminals were sheltered and their surrender refused, and a preposterous claim was put forward to the exclusive ownership of all the wells within a certain distance of the border-line. The Amir was undoubtedly aiming at provoking hostilities, and war might begin at any moment. To Major Keeling it was a most comforting thought that the European ladies could so easily be placed in safety without alarming them, for the south-western district was protected against any attack from Nalapur by a natural bulwark, the hills in which Sheikhgarh was situated; and the obvious course for an invading army was to pour across the frontier by way of the plains, with the undefended Alibad as its first objective. But to Sir Dugald, who knew the state of affairs as well as the Commandant, the case was different. He was the natural protector of his wife and Penelope, and it was only to be expected that he should remain to guard them, even in the place of safety to which Major Keeling was so glad to consign them—and this while there would be fighting going on round Alibad, and his beloved guns would be delivered over to the tender mercies of little Harris or any other subaltern who might choose to turn artilleryman for the nonce! Sir Dugald registered a solemn vow that when the news of hostilities came, he would leave his wife and Penelope in the nearest fortified village, and make all speed back to Alibad himself. Elma could not protest, after all she had said, and he would miss only the very beginning of the fight. The thought consoled him, and he was even able to take pleasure in withholding the reasons for anxiety from Lady Haigh, who would have refused point-blank to leave Alibad if she had guessed that fighting was imminent in its neighbourhood. Accordingly he interposed no obstacles in the way of an immediate start, and as Lady Haigh was as anxious to be gone as Major Keeling was to hurry her off, the necessary preparations were soon made. Penelope was roused perforce from her lethargy, and set to work, and she responded the more readily to the stimulus that Dr Tarleton’s vigorous expostulation seemed already to have waked her to something like hope again. Nevertheless, she still felt unable to face Major Keeling; and it was with a shock that on the afternoon of the start from Alibad she saw him riding up the street, with the evident design of seeing the travellers on their way. He made no attempt to attach himself to her, however, apologising for his presence by saying that he had some last directions to give Sir Dugald, and the two men rode on together. They had nearly reached the hills before Major Keeling turned back, and Lady Haigh at once claimed her husband’s attention.
“Dugald, do you think my horse has a shoe loose? There seems to be something queer about his foot, but I didn’t like to interrupt you before.”
Calling up one of the grooms, Sir Dugald dismounted and went to his wife’s assistance, and in the hum of excited talk which ensued, Major Keeling had a momentary opportunity of speaking to Penelope.
“Am I to hope that this change will do you good, and enable you to come back here?” he asked, bending towards her from his tall horse.
“Oh, I—I hope so,” she stammered. “Why?”
“Do you hope so? Wouldn’t you rather be ordered home?”
His tone, restrained though it was, told Penelope that the question was a crucial one. With a great effort she raised her eyes to his. “I hope with all my heart to come back to Alibad quite well,” she said. “Because”—voice and eyes alike fell—“Khemistan holds all that I care for—now.”
She felt his hand on hers for a moment as she played with her pony’s mane, and heard him say, “Thank you, thank you!” in a voice as low as hers had been; but she knew that she had removed a load from his mind, and she was glad she had conquered the shrinking repugnance which had held her. The vision of Colin’s face had floated between them when she looked at him; but she had taken her first step towards breaking the spell, and he could not know the effort it had cost her to defy her brother’s fancied wish as she had only once defied him in his life. As for Major Keeling, he rode back to Alibad in a frame of mind which made his progress a kind of steeplechase. He put Miani at every obstacle that presented itself, and drove his orderly to despair by leaping the temporary canal instead of going round by the bridge. As in duty bound, Ismail Bakhsh did his best to follow; and it was only when he had helped him and his pony out of the water, and explained matters to a justly indignant canal official, that Major Keeling realised the unconventional nature of his proceedings. He made the rest of the journey more soberly, planning in his own mind the last steps to be taken to make Alibad impregnable to a Nalapuri army. The Amir thought the place was defenceless, not knowing that in a few moments any street could be swept from end to end by guns mounted in improvised batteries. It was not for nothing that Major Keeling’s own house and the various administrative buildings were so gloomy and massive in appearance, or that the labyrinth of lanes in the native town could be blocked at any number of points by the simple expedient of knocking down a few garden walls. The Commandant had no misgivings as to the fate of the town, but he was much exercised in mind by the necessity of waiting to be attacked. The Nalapuri Sardars knew better than to let a single man put his foot over the border until they were quite ready, while in the absence of an actual declaration of war Major Keeling could not cross it to attack them, and his only fear was that they might succeed in dashing upon Alibad and spreading panic among the inhabitants (though they could do no more), without giving him time to intercept them and cut them up in the open desert. He could only rely upon the efficiency of his system of patrols, and wait for the enemy to make the first move.
Beyond the hills there was no rumour of war. The agricultural colonies, so to speak, planted by Major Keeling on the land reclaimed from the desert by irrigation, were prosperous and contented, and the reformed bandits, of whom a large proportion of the colonists consisted, were even more industrious and energetic than the hereditary cultivators. This part of the district was kept in good order by a European police-officer with a force composed of the boldest spirits among the colonists, so that Sir Dugald had little to do in the way of dispensing justice, and he passed on rapidly to the wooded country nearer the hills. This was a kind of New Forest, constructed by the former rulers of Khemistan as a shikargah or pleasance for hunting purposes, regardless of the objections of the ryots, who saw their villages destroyed and their lands given over to wild beasts. On the expulsion of their tyrants, the people had begun to creep back to their confiscated homes; and it was one of Major Keeling’s anxieties to ensure the proper control of this re-immigration. The forests were valuable government property, and as such must be protected; but where a clear title could be shown to land on the outskirts, and the claimants were willing to face the wild animals, he was inclined to let them return, under due supervision. But no European officer could be spared to undertake the task; and Sir Dugald, as he moved from place to place, found little colonies springing up in most unpromising spots. To organise the people into communities with some form of self-government, appoint elders who would be responsible for the behaviour of the rest and prevent wanton destruction of the forests, and devise the rude beginnings of a legal and fiscal system, was his work. Nothing could be satisfactorily done while there was no permanent official in charge; but at least the people understood that the Sahibs meant well to them, and they were in a measure prepared for a more formal rule when it could be established.
Lady Haigh and Penelope, who had not the cares of government upon their shoulders, were much more free to enjoy themselves. They made advances to the shy women and children of these sequestered hamlets, who fled in terror from the white ladies, never having seen such an alarming sight before. Sweetmeats and gaily coloured cloths were the bribes that attracted them most readily, and after a time they would become quite friendly, listening with uncomprehending patience while Lady Haigh, who was a true child of her generation, tried to teach them to adopt Western instead of Eastern ways. Those were the days in which much stress was laid by reformers on the importance of anglicising the native, and Lady Haigh was a good deal disheartened by the slight result of her efforts. The women listened to her with apparent docility, sometimes even did what she told them, under her eye, and then went home and made their tasteless chapatis, or put charms instead of eye-lotion on their babies, just as they had always done. She gave up trying to teach them at last, and vied with Penelope in making botanical collections, which were also a hobby of the day. Penelope collected grasses, of which there were many varieties; and Lady Haigh, not to be behindhand, began to collect wild-flowers, which were much less abundant. Sir Dugald, whose tastes were not botanical, collected skins and horns, for he managed to get a good deal of sport in his leisure hours, and when there was nothing to shoot, he inspected his wife’s and Penelope’s sketches, and sternly corrected mistakes in drawing. It was a happy, healthy life, and the colour began to return to Penelope’s cheeks and the light to her eyes. She could think of Major Keeling now without the vision of Colin’s anguished face rising between them, and the morbid feelings which had preyed upon her so long had become by degrees less acute. She and Lady Haigh called the district “the island-valley of Avilion,” rather to the mystification of Sir Dugald, who knew his Dickens better than his Tennyson. He was far too prudent, however, to show his bewilderment further than by pointing out mildly that the district was neither an island nor a valley—and besides, how could a valley be an island?
“Dugald,” said Lady Haigh one evening, when Penelope happened to be out of earshot, “don’t you think Major Keeling would like to pay us a visit here?”
“It’s not a bad place,” returned her husband, glancing round at the tents pitched among the trees. “But who ever heard of a sub inviting his chief out into camp to stay with him?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that exactly. He might come without being definitely asked. He would be sure to like to hear how we are getting on, wouldn’t he? Well, if I mentioned that you have had five tigers already, and were going after another soon——”
“You won’t mention anything of the kind,” growled Sir Dugald. “I’m going to bag that man-eater, if any one does.”
Lady Haigh laughed gently. “Well, perhaps I might find other attractions as strong,” she said. “But I mean to get him here.”
But circumstances over which she had no control were destined to intervene.