CHAPTER XXVII.
AFTER TOIL—TOIL STILL.
NEARLY three years after Penelope’s death, Sir Dugald rode into Alibad as a stranger. The long illness which followed on Lady Haigh’s exertions on behalf of her friend so exhausted her strength that she was ordered a voyage to the Cape as the only hope of saving her life, and despite her frantic protests, her husband applied for two years’ leave and took her there, much as an unrelenting warder might convey a reluctant prisoner to his doom. He was rewarded by an opportunity of seeing service in one of the perennial Kaffir Wars of the period as galloper to the general commanding, which served also to mitigate his disappointment at being absent when a little war, outside the borders of Khemistan, gave to Colonel Keeling the local rank of Brigadier-General, and to the Khemistan Horse the chance of distinguishing themselves beyond the bounds of their own district. Mr Crayne had retired, and his successor proved to be that rare being, a civilian who could make himself liked and trusted by his military subordinates—one, moreover, who knew and appreciated the work which had been done on the Khemistan frontier, and was anxious for its continuance. The development of the resources of the country, at which Major Keeling had so long laboured single-handed, was now pressed forward in every possible way; and Sir Dugald, as he rode, noted the handsome bazars which had replaced some, at least, of the old rows of mud huts, and the growth of the cantonments, which testified to an increase in the European population. The trees which he had seen planted were now full grown, the public gardens were worthy of their name, and there was nothing warlike in the aspect of the weather-beaten old fort, which seemed as if the passage of years would reduce it by slow degrees to a heap of mud grown over with bushes.
Fronting the fort, but almost hidden by the trees with which it was surrounded, stood General Keeling’s house, and Sir Dugald rode into the compound, to be saluted with evident pleasure by several of the servants, who came to ask after the Memsahib. As he entered the well-known office, he had a momentary glimpse of a grey-haired man in shirt-sleeves, writing as if for dear life, and then General Keeling jumped up and welcomed him joyfully.
“How are you, Haigh? Delighted to see you, but never thought of expecting you till to-morrow. You haven’t dragged Lady Haigh up-country at this pace, I hope?”
“No, sir; I left her at the river. The fact is, Mr Pater wants me to go on with the steamer.”
“And not come here at all? Why, man, your house is all ready for you.” The bright look of welcome had gone from General Keeling’s face, leaving it painfully old and worn. “But I know what it is. King John”—alluding to the imperious ruler of a neighbouring province—“wants more men.”
“He does, and he asks specially for gunners. It’s by no wish of mine, General; but the Commissioner is anxious to send every man we can spare. The news doesn’t improve.”
“No, of course not. How could it? Haven’t I been telling them for thirty years that we should have to reconquer India if they didn’t mend their ways, and they only called me croaker and prophet of evil? Well, time brings about its revenges. For the last ten years John would cheerfully have seen me hanged on the nearest tree of my own planting, and now he steals my officers to keep his province quiet. Go, Haigh, certainly; and every man I can spare shall go, as Pater says. We have got lazy and luxurious up here of late. It’ll do some of these youngsters good to go back to the old days, when a man’s life and the fate of the province depended on his eye and his sword. Not but that I have a fine set of young fellows just now. They all want to come up here—flattering, isn’t it?—and I have to thin ’em out.” He laughed, and so did Sir Dugald, who had heard strange tales of the General’s methods of weeding out the recruits who offered themselves to him. “But how long can you stay, Haigh? Only to-night? Oh, nonsense! Where are your things?”
“I left them at Porter’s, sir.”
“How dare you? I’ll have them fetched away at once. Send a chit to Porter, and say I’ll break him if he tries to detain them. But tell him to come to dinner, and we’ll have Tarleton and Harris and Jones, and yarn about the old times—all of us that are left of the old lot.”
He broke off with an involuntary sigh, and Sir Dugald wrote his note. Presently General Keeling turned to him with a twinkle in his eye. “Don’t tell Lady Haigh on any account, but I can’t help feeling relieved that she isn’t coming up just yet. I know she’ll want to give me good advice about my little Missy there, and Tarleton and I are so sinfully proud of the way we have brought her up that we won’t stand any advice on the subject.”
Surprised, Sir Dugald followed the direction of his eyes, to see in a corner, almost hidden by a huge despatch-box, a small girl with a curious pink-and-white frock and a shock of dark hair.
“She would play there quietly all day, never coming out unless I call her,” said General Keeling. “If she isn’t with me, she’s with Tarleton, watching him at his work. He gives her an old medicine-bottle or two, and some sand and water, and she’s as happy as possible, pretending to make up pills and mixtures. Or she begs a bit of paper from me, and writes for ever so long, and brings it to me to be sealed up in an official envelope—making up returns, you see. Missy,” raising his voice, “come here and speak to Captain Haigh. He held you in his arms when you were only two or three days old, and you have often heard about him in your Godmamma’s letters.”
The child obeyed at once, disclosing the fact that her embroidered muslin frock (which Sir Dugald had a vague recollection had been sent her by his wife) had been lengthened and adorned by the tailor at his own discretion by the addition of three flounces of common pink English print. She held out a little brown hand to the stranger in silence.
“Does us credit, doesn’t she?” asked her father, smoothing back the elf-locks from her forehead. Sir Dugald’s domestic instincts were in revolt at the idea of the child’s being brought up by two men, without a woman at hand even to give advice; but there was such anxiety in General Keeling’s voice that he crushed down his feelings and ventured on the remark that Missy was a very fine girl for her age.
“We are not very successful with her hair,” the father went on. “The ayah tries to curl it, but either Missy is too restless, or Dulya doesn’t know quite the right way to set about it. It never looks smooth and shiny like children’s hair in pictures.”
Sir Dugald wisely waived the question, feeling that he was not an authority on the subject. “Can she—isn’t she—er—old enough to talk?” he asked, with becoming diffidence.
“Talk! you should hear her chattering to Tarleton and me, or to her favourites in the regiment. But she doesn’t wear her heart upon her sleeve with strangers. If she takes a liking to you, it’ll be different presently.”
“Do you let her run about among the men?”
“She runs nowhere out of my sight or Tarleton’s or Dulya’s. But the whole regiment are her humble slaves, and the man she deigns to favour is set up for life, in his own opinion. What would happen if she took a dislike to a man I don’t know, but I hardly think his skin would be safe. Commendation from me is nothing compared with the honour conferred by the Missy Baba when she allows a stiff-necked old Ressaldar to take her up in his arms, and is good enough to pull his beard.”
“She is absurdly like you, General,” said Sir Dugald, disapproval of what he had just heard making itself felt in his tone, in spite of himself, while Missy rubbed her rough head against her father’s sleeve like a young colt.
“Horribly like me,” returned General Keeling emphatically. “Run away and play, Missy. I can scarcely see a trace of her mother in her,” he went on, with something of apology in his voice. “You know what my wife was—that she couldn’t bear me out of her sight. I changed the arrangement of this room, you remember, because she liked to be able to see me through the open doors from where she sat, so that I could look up and nod to her now and then. But Missy is almost like a doll, that you can put away when you don’t want it, she’s so quiet in that corner of hers. No; there is one thing in which she is like her mother. If you say a hasty word to her, she will go away and break her heart over it in her corner, instead of flaring up as I should do——”
“Or writing furious letters?” suggested Sir Dugald slily.
General Keeling smiled, but refused to be turned from his own train of thought. “Haigh,” he said earnestly, “take care of your wife while you have her. Mine took half my life with her when she went. If you could imagine for one moment the difference—the awful difference—it makes, you would go down on your knees and implore your wife’s pardon for everything you had ever done or said that could possibly have hurt her, and beg her not to leave you.”
“Oh, we rub along all right,” said Sir Dugald hastily, in mortal fear that the Chief was going to be sentimental. “Elma takes everything in good part. She understands things almost as well as a man.”
General Keeling smiled again, rather pityingly. Perhaps he had some idea of the lofty tolerance with which Lady Haigh would have heard the utterance of this handsome testimony. “My little Missy and I understand one another better than that,” he said.
“Do you think of taking her home soon?” asked Sir Dugald.
“Not of taking her home. My home is here. I suppose I must send her home some day—not yet, happily. If there was only her present happiness and mine to consider, I would never part from her, but dress her in boy’s clothes and take her about with me wherever I went.”
“Heaven forbid!” said Sir Dugald devoutly.
“Don’t be an old woman, Haigh,” was the crushing rejoinder. “What harm could come to her where I was—and when the whole regiment would die before a hair of her head should be touched? But Tarleton thinks it would tell against the girl when she grew up, and I remember my own youth too well to subject her to the same sort of thing. No, I shall get your wife or some other good woman to take her home and hand her over to her mother’s friend, Miss Marian Arbuthnot. You must have heard Lady Haigh speak of her? They all studied together at that College of theirs, and now Miss Arbuthnot has a school or seminary, or whatever they call it, of her own.”
“Surely her views are very advanced?” Sir Dugald ventured to suggest.
“I am glad they are. I hope they are. If it should turn out, when Missy grows up, that she has a turn for doctoring, I shall beg Miss Arbuthnot to cultivate it, if it can be done. There’s a lady doctor in America, you know, and I hope there’ll be another here.”
Sir Dugald looked the dismay he felt. “So unwomanly—so unbefitting a lady!” he murmured.
“Do you mean to tell me that her mother’s daughter could be anything but a perfect lady?”
“Considering that she will have been brought up by Tarleton and yourself, sir, I should say she would be more likely to turn out a perfect gentleman,” said Sir Dugald gravely, and General Keeling laughed aloud.
“Well,” he said, “there’s no need to settle Missy’s future as yet, and she will choose for herself, of course. After all, my motives are purely selfish. Do you know that our only trustworthy friend in Nalapur is that excellent woman, the Moti-ul-Nissa, young Ashraf Ali’s sister? Well, you remember what a little spitfire she was as a girl, when you and I saw her. Her friendliness dates entirely from the time when your wife and mine took refuge at Sheikhgarh, and my wife won the young lady’s heart by showing her what to do for her sick brother. Think what a prop it would be to our influence here if there was a properly trained lady who could win the hearts of other women in the same way!”
“You want to see Missy a female politician, then?”
“I want to see her able to get at these unfortunate secluded women and find out what their real views and wishes are. The Moti-ul-Nissa has about the wisest head in Nalapur, but her wisdom might as well be in the moon for all I hear of it until after the event. Her brother is altogether under the influence of the Sheikh-ul-Jabal, and the old man can’t forgive me because I pointed out to him that the same person could not be head of his sect and Amir of Nalapur. He has had to adopt the younger brother as his spiritual successor instead of the elder, and he would like to pay me out; but the Moti-ul-Nissa does all she can for us. That rascal Hasrat Ali leads her a life. Her children have died one after the other, and the brute would divorce her if he dared. The poor woman always sends to inquire after Missy when I am at Nalapur, and I should like to send her to see her, but I daren’t. You never know whose agents may be among the crowds of women in those big zenanas, and I can’t run any risks with Missy. But think what it will be when she grows up, if she cares enough for the poor creatures to do what she can to help them!”
“I shall think more of her if she does what she can to help you, sir,” said Sir Dugald obstinately. “But I suppose this grudge of the Sheikh-ul-Jabal’s means that there is no hope of a treaty with Nalapur for the present?”
“None, so far as I can see, which is a bore, just when our authorities have been wrought up to the proper pitch. Pater will back me at the right moment, and we can offer the Amir a handsome subsidy if he will keep the passes open and let caravans pass freely, and allow us to station a resident at his capital. Of course that means practically that we guarantee his frontiers, but have power to move troops through his territory in case of a land invasion; and the increased stability it would give to his throne would make it well worth his while. The Sheikh and I are trying to tire each other out; but I mean to have that treaty if I live long enough, and the Moti-ul-Nissa will throw her influence on my side. When one has served one’s apprenticeship one begins to understand the ins and outs of these Asian mysteries.”
“Talking of mysteries,” said Sir Dugald, “have you ever heard anything more as to Ferrers’ fate after—the night you saw him?”
General Keeling’s face changed. “Strangely enough, I have,” he said; “but whether the story is true we shall probably never know for certain. I had it from a Gamari Jew who came to me in secret, and was divided between fear of his life if it ever became known what he had done, and anxiety to wring the uttermost pie out of me for his information. I took down the account from his own lips, and have it here.” He unlocked a drawer and took out a paper, glanced across at the corner to make sure that Missy was engrossed in her own affairs, and leaning towards Sir Dugald, began to read in a low voice:—
“‘I was in the city of Gamara a year ago, when there was much talk concerning Firoz Khan, the Farangi chief of his Highness’s bodyguard, who had disappeared. Some said he had been secretly slain, others that he had been sent on a private errand by his Highness. One day there was proclamation made throughout the city that two men were to be put to death in the palace square,—one a Christian, the other one who had embraced Islam and relapsed into his idolatry. Many desired to see the sight, and among those that found standing-room in the square was I. Now when the prisoners were led forth there was much astonishment among the people, for one of them was Firoz Khan; and those that looked upon him said that he bore the marks of torture. And the other was an old man and bent, blind also, and walking with difficulty, who they said had dwelt in the dungeons for many years. It was noticed that no offer of life was made to these prisoners, nor were any questions put to them; moreover, his Highness’s face was black towards every one on whom his eye lighted. But the prisoners spoke to one another in English,—which tongue I understand, having studied it in India,—and the one said, “I am a Christian, and a Christian I die,” and the other, kissing him upon the forehead, said, “George, we shall meet in Paradise, in the presence of God,” and turning to the people he cried, in a voice of extraordinary strength: “Tell the English that this man, who for his life’s sake gave up Christ, now for Christ’s sake gives up his life.” And when his voice was heard there fell a terror on the people, for they said it was a young Farangi that had long ago disappeared, whom they counted to be inspired of God, and there arose murmurings, so that his Highness commanded the executioners to do their duty at once; and the heads of the two men were struck off with a great sword, and their bodies foully dealt with, as is the wont in Gamara. I know no more concerning them.’”
General Keeling ceased reading, and his eyes and Sir Dugald’s met. For a moment neither spoke.
“I suppose there can’t be much doubt that it’s true?” said Sir Dugald at last.
“None, I should say; but we can’t expect positive proof.”
“It’s a curious thing,” said Sir Dugald, with some hesitation, “but when I told my wife, on the voyage to the Cape, what you had told me about Ferrers’ turning up again, she said at once that she believed poor Ross was alive still. She meant to tell you herself—it didn’t seem quite the sort of thing to write about—but when she was watching beside Mrs Keeling the day she died, she saw her smile when they thought she was insensible, and heard her say quite strongly, ‘They are all there, my father and mother, and my little sister who died—all waiting for me, but not Colin. Elma, where is Colin?’ My wife said something—you know the sort of thing women would say in answer to a thing of the kind—but when she thought it over, it occurred to her that it must mean Ross was not dead. That again is no proof, of course, but it’s curious.”
“Very strange,” agreed General Keeling. “Haigh, the more I think of it, the more I feel certain the Jew’s story was true. What conceivable motive could the man have for inventing it? He didn’t know that I had any particular interest in the poor fellows. Poor fellows! it’s blasphemy to call them that. Colin was a true martyr, if ever man was, and as for Ferrers——”
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it,” supplied Sir Dugald.
“Nothing; but what a miracle it seems that he was able to seize the chance! I sometimes ask myself whether I could have done what either of them did—lived out those years of martyrdom like Colin, or gone back to certain torture and death like Ferrers. We are poor creatures, Haigh, the best of us, and those of whom we expect least sometimes shame us by what they do. Well, they have seen the end of it now, I suppose—‘in Paradise, in the presence of God.’ As for me,” he added with a half-laugh, as he turned to lock up the paper again, “I’m afraid I shouldn’t be happy, even in Paradise, if I couldn’t take a look at the frontier now and then, and make sure it was getting on all right. Why, Missy, what do you want?”
The little girl had crept up to them as they talked, and was standing with something clasped to her breast, looking in wonder at their moved faces. As her father spoke, she held out shyly to Sir Dugald a large octagonal tile, covered with a beautiful iridescent glaze, in a peculiarly delicate shade of turquoise. “For Godmamma,” she said, and retreated promptly.
“Why, Missy, isn’t that the slab on which you mix your medicines?” asked her father, capturing her. A nod was the only answer. “It’s one of her greatest treasures,” he explained to Sir Dugald. “The men find them sometimes in the ruined forts round here, but it’s very seldom they come on one unbroken, and the man who found this one brought it to her. You really want your Godmamma to have it, Missy?” Another nod. “Well, Haigh, I wouldn’t burden you with it if I didn’t think Lady Haigh would really like it. These things are thought a good deal of.”
“Certainly I will take it to her,” answered Sir Dugald. “I am sure she will like it because Missy sent it.”
The response was unexpected, for Missy wriggled away from her father’s arm, and held up her face to Sir Dugald to be kissed.
“That ought to be gratifying,” said General Keeling, laughing. Both men were perhaps not ungrateful to the child for diverting their thoughts from the tragedy with which they had been busied.
“Gratifying, sir? It’s better than millions of the brightest diamonds to be kissed by Miss Georgia Keeling.”
“As fond of Dickens as ever, I see. What should we do without him? But you and Missy certainly ought to be friends, for she knew all about Paul Dombey long ago. The doll your wife sent her is called Little Paul, and drags out a harrowing existence of all kinds of diseases complicated with gunshot-wounds, according to the cases Tarleton has in hospital. Sometimes I am cheered by hearing that he ‘ought to pull through,’ but generally he is following his namesake to an early grave. But I see your things have come, and you will like to see your quarters. This visit is a great pleasure, believe me, and I only wish it was going to be longer.”
There was no further word of regret, but Sir Dugald realised keenly the disappointment that his friend was feeling. When they were breakfasting together the next day, just before his departure, he essayed a word of comfort.
“If things get much worse, General, we shall have you fetched down with the regiment to help in putting them right.”
General Keeling’s eye kindled, but he shook his head. “No, Haigh, my work lies up here. It would be too much to ride with the regiment through a mob of those cowardly, pampered Bengalis—too much luck for me, I mean. I have made out a list for Pater of the men I can afford to send on by the next steamer, and I must stay and do their work. I’m glad you will get your chance at last. John is a just man—like most of us when our prejudices don’t stand in the way—and his recommendations will be attended to. His is the show province, not left out in the cold like poor Khemistan. I only wish you and all the rest could have got your steps for the work you have done here; but at least I can keep the frontier quiet while you have the chance of getting them elsewhere.”
He stood on the verandah a little later, tall and bronzed and grey-headed, as Sir Dugald rode out at the gate. Beside him Missy, raised high on the shoulder of Ismail Bakhsh, with one hand clenched firmly in his beard, waved the other frantically in farewell. Reduced in numbers, the Advanced-Guard held the frontier still.
[The End]