“AWFULLY sorry, Mab, but I really can’t ride with you this morning. It’s bad enough when one of our wandering tribes comes in for a palaver, but to-day there are two of them, at daggers drawn with one another. They have both sent deputations to inform me that I am their father and their mother, and will I be good enough to pulverise the other lot? That means that I have a nice long day’s work cut out for me.”
“Oh, what a bother!” grumbled Mabel. “And Georgia has got a lot of dreadful women in the surgery, and is doctoring them all round. How can she bear to have them about? Do you like having an M.D. for a wife, Dick?”
“Personally,” said Dick solemnly, “I rather do; since Georgia is that M.D. Politically, it’s the making of me.”
“No; really?”
“Rather! Every woman of all these nomadic tribes has a stake in the country, so to speak—a personal interest in the maintenance of the system of government which has stuck Georgie and me down here. No Sarkar, no doctor; that’s the way they look at it.”
“Well,” said Mabel, somewhat ashamed, “if it wasn’t that I have my habit on, I would stay and help her. But we were going to try Laili, Dick, and you promised faithfully to come.”
“I know; it’s horribly rough on you. But I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll spare Anstruther to you for the morning, and he must ride out to me after lunch. Don’t break his neck first, mind.”
“But will it be safe for you to go alone? Aren’t you afraid?”
“Shade of my mighty father-in-law! afraid of what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It sounds the sort of thing——”
“That one would naturally be afraid of? No, I would rather face any number of excited tribesmen than Burgrave at his blandest. I’ll send a chit down to Anstruther, and he’ll be here in a few minutes.”
Mabel had not long to wait. She was still standing on the verandah, flicking her dainty riding-boot with her whip, and feasting her eyes on the satin skin of the beautiful little black mare which was being led up and down by the groom, when Fitz came trotting up the drive.
“Awfully good of the Major to lend me out this morning, Miss North! Is that the new pony? She ought to be a flier.”
“Yes, isn’t she a little beauty? I want to test her paces to-day. I have had enough of riding her about the roads. She’s all right there, but I should like to try her in a good gallop out in the desert.”
“Out in the desert?” repeated Fitz, as he gathered up the reins and handed them to Mabel after mounting her. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s any reason why we shouldn’t. If you don’t mind stopping a second at my place I’ll put a revolver in my pocket, and then we shall be all right.”
“Why, what could there be to hurt us?”
“We might happen upon a leopard, or something of the sort. It’s not likely, but there’s no harm in being prepared. We have a sort of fashion here of not going much beyond our own bounds unarmed.”
Mabel made no further objection, and after calling at Fitz’s quarters they rode out into the desert. Laili’s paces were perfect, and as often as Mabel raced her against Fitz’s pony she won easily. It was a clear, cold morning, really cold, as is often the case early on a winter’s day in Khemistan, and horses and riders alike seemed to be possessed of tireless energy. The two grooms, to whom the cold was a highly disagreeable experience, were left behind again and again, and remembered only when they had become mere dots on the horizon, so that it involved some waiting before they could come up.
“Now let us race again!” cried Mabel, when she and Fitz had reluctantly walked their horses for some distance to allow the men to approach them.
“All right. I say, there’s a jerboa! Let’s chase him!”
“Oh, do. I should so like to have one for a pet,” cried Mabel.
It seemed, however, that the jerboa preferred freedom to captivity, even with Mabel as jailer, for it was gone in a moment, getting over the ground in tremendous leaps, at a pace which taxed the horses sorely to keep up with it.
“Oh, it’s getting away!” lamented Mabel.
“Perhaps I can manage to wing him from here,” said Fitz, bringing out his revolver. “We could easily patch up a broken leg. Steady, Sheikh, old boy!”
The pace was fast and the ground rough, and it was scarcely surprising that the jerboa escaped unscathed, but Fitz’s shot had an effect that he had not anticipated. At the sound Mabel’s little mare stopped dead with a suddenness which jerked the rider’s foot from the stirrup and nearly threw her out of the saddle, then took the bit in her teeth and dashed away in a frenzy of terror. Pull as she might, Mabel could not stop her, nor could she get her foot again into the stirrup. The horror of that wild rush through the whirling sand-clouds, with the wind shrieking in her ears, was such as she could never have imagined. Certain destruction seemed to be before her, for Laili was heading straight for the rocky ground at the foot of the mountains, where there was no hope that she would be able to keep her footing. Mabel was dimly conscious that she ought to come to some decision, or at least to select a moment at which to throw herself off, but all her powers seemed to be concentrated in the effort to pull up, or at any rate to turn the pony’s head towards the open desert. As it was, Laili made the decision for her. An isolated rock, revealed unexpectedly by a lull in the wind, which caused the drifting sand to settle for a moment, stood on the left hand of the course she was taking, and catching sight of it, she swerved away so violently that Mabel found herself all at once in a sitting position upon the sand. There she remained, too much dazed to make any attempt to rise, until Fitz dashed up, and flung himself recklessly from his horse, which promptly continued the chase of the runaway on its own account.
“Oh, thank God you are not killed!” he cried brokenly to Mabel, his sunburnt face ghastly pale. “But you are frightfully hurt! What is it—your back? Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Miss North, try to move! Is your leg broken? Don’t say it’s your back!”
Mabel repressed a weak desire to laugh. “I—I think I’m sitting here because you haven’t offered to help me up,” she replied, as well as her chattering teeth would let her.
He helped her up in silence, and began mechanically to brush the dust from her habit with shaking hands. When at last he looked up at her, Mabel saw that his lips were still trembling, and his eyes full of horror.
“Oh, don’t look like that about me!” she cried impulsively. “I’m not worth it.”
“Not worth it?” he cried violently, then, controlling himself with an effort, he made a fair attempt at a laugh. “If anything had happened to you, I should never have dared to face the Major and Mrs North again,” he said. “Or rather, I could not have faced my own thoughts.”
“But why?” asked Mabel, mystified.
“Because it was all my fault for firing that shot—wretched thoughtless beast that I am! I would have blown my brains out.”
“Now that is wicked,” said Mabel with decision, “and foolish too. But if you are going to talk in this agitating way, I think I should like to sit down in the shade over there. I feel rather shaky still.”
“I’m an unfeeling idiot! Lean on me, please.”
He supported her gently across the intervening space, and found a seat for her on a fragment of rock, in a nook which furnished a partial shelter from the sun and the whirling sand. She made room for him beside her, but he persisted in tramping up and down, his face twitching painfully.
“I can’t stay quiet!” he cried, in answer to her remonstrance. “When I think it’s just a chance—a mercy, Mrs North would say—that you’re not—not—” he skipped the word—“at this moment, it knocks me over. And all my fault!”
Mabel’s renewed protest was cut short by the appearance of the two grooms, who ran up with scared faces, and inquired dolefully which way the horses had gone, and whether the Presences would wait where they were until the missing steeds had been captured and brought back.
“Why, what else should we do?” asked Fitz, calm enough now in the presence of the alien race. His own groom hastened to reply that Dera Gul, the ancestral stronghold of Bahram Khan, was only a bow-shot off, and that there the Presences might find rest and refreshment.
“Not if I know it!” was Fitz’s mental comment. “It’s a blessing that the principal villain himself is away at Nalapur, but we won’t trespass on the hospitality of his vassals in his absence. We will wait here,” he added to the servant, who replied sullenly that his honour’s words were law, and departed with his companion in search of the horses.
“What was he saying?” asked Mabel curiously.
“Oh, only gassing a little about the neighbourhood,” replied Fitz, who had had time to decide that he would not alarm his charge by telling her exactly where they were. It did not occur to him that the uneasiness with which Bahram Khan’s glance had inspired Mabel three days before had resolved itself into a sense of offended pride at what she took to be a premeditated insult, and that no idea of any danger to herself personally had ever entered her mind. He did his best, therefore, to divert her thoughts from the question of the locality, and was congratulating himself upon his success when a little procession appeared round the corner of the cliff in whose shadow they were sitting. The principal figure was a sleek and shining Hindu, swathed in voluminous draperies of white muslin, with occasional glimpses of red brocade, who advanced with profound obeisances, and entreated the exalted personages before him to honour his master’s roof by deigning to rest under it until their horses were found. This time Fitz could not but refer the suggestion to Mabel, and he found to his surprise that she was inclined to accept it.
“I shouldn’t care to meet Bahram Khan,” she said; “but he is away, you say.”
“When did the Prince start for Nalapur?” asked Fitz of the Hindu.
“Three days past, sahib—the same evening that he was present at the tamasha at Alibad.”
“There!” said Mabel, “you see it’s all right. My hair is full of sand, and it is so hot here. One never knows what to wear in this climate. I don’t believe I shall be able to ride all that way back unless I can rest in a cool place for a little first.”
“I am pretty sure Major North wouldn’t like it,” said Fitz doubtfully.
The Hindu caught the purport of the words, and his countenance assumed an expression of the deepest woe. “It is the sad misfortune of the illustrious prince that Nāth Sahib has ever looked upon him with disfavour,” he lamented.
“Oh dear!” remarked Mabel, when the words were translated to her; “it will be dreadful if these people get the idea that Dick has a causeless prejudice against Bahram Khan. We had much better show confidence in him by going to his house. Who knows? It may be the beginning of better things.”
“I shouldn’t like to take the responsibility,” began Fitz, but she cut him short.
“Very well; I will take it, then. I am sure Dick will be glad if we can bring about a better understanding; and I think it’s very inconsiderate of you to raise so many objections, when I have told you how hot and tired I am, and how I want a rest. It wasn’t my fault that we were stranded here, you know.”
This ungenerous use of the weapon forged by himself conquered Fitz, and he consented, reluctantly, to accept the invitation brought by the Hindu. Mabel’s smile of approval ought to have been a sufficient reward for his complaisance, but it was not, for he felt an uncomfortable certainty that Dick would object very strongly to the visit when he came to hear of it. The Hindu led the way with much bowing, and Fitz and Mabel followed him a short distance to the gateway of the fortress, which was situated on the farther side of the projecting cliff that had sheltered them. Two or three wild-looking men, apparently half asleep, were lounging about, but otherwise the place seemed to be deserted. The Hindu led them across the courtyard and up a flight of steps into a large cool hall, furnished solely with a carpeted divan and many cushions. Saying that sherbet and sweetmeats should be brought to them immediately, he left them alone, ostensibly to hasten the appearance of the refreshments. As he crossed the court, however, Fitz, watching him idly, saw him glance up to the ramparts. Here, to his astonishment, the young man perceived Bahram Khan himself beginning to descend the steps which led down into the yard. Mabel had also caught sight of the apparition, and Fitz’s eyes met hers.
“The great thing is not to show any sign of fear,” he said hastily.
“I’m not frightened,” retorted Mabel; “but I’m not going to sit here to be stared at by that man. You must tell him that I have come to see the ladies of the house, whoever they may be.”
“I daren’t let you go into the zenana. Anything might happen there, and an army couldn’t rescue you.”
“But what could happen? You would keep Bahram Khan under your eye, of course. And you forget that his mother is one of Georgia’s patients. She will be delighted to see me.”
“Oh, that’s better, naturally. I will take up a strategic position in this corner of the divan, so that I can cover my host comfortably, without the risk of being seized from behind. But look here, won’t you take my revolver? I should hear if you fired a shot.”
“No, thanks. I did learn to shoot once, but if I fired now I’m afraid the result would be disastrous to myself alone. Besides, how could you rescue me without a weapon of any sort? I shall feel much safer with the revolver in your possession, for I am pretty sure you won’t leave the place without me.”
The last words were spoken as Bahram Khan entered the hall, and Fitz had no opportunity to reply. There was a suppressed excitement in the Prince’s manner which made him uneasy, and he begged at once that Mabel might bear the salutations of the doctor lady to the dwellers behind the curtain. Bahram Khan’s face fell, and although he protested that the honour shown to his household was overwhelming, it was fairly clear that no honour could well have been more unwelcome. The ladies had only just arrived, and had not yet settled down properly in their new quarters; they had had no opportunity of making fit preparation for so distinguished a visitor, and it was contrary to all the rules of etiquette that the doctor lady should despatch a messenger to visit them before they had sent their respects to her.
“Oh, very well, I won’t make my call to-day,” said Mabel, rising, when Fitz had translated the long string of apologies that fell from the lips of the embarrassed host. “Then we may as well come, Mr Anstruther.”
But this was not what Bahram Khan desired, and after vainly endeavouring to persuade Mabel to sit down on the cushions again, he summoned a slave-boy, and ordered him to fetch Jehanara.
“There must be some one to interpret between the Miss Sahib and the women,” he explained, and Mabel wondered why Fitz looked so stern and so uncomfortable. Presently the curtain at the end of the room was shaken a little, and Bahram Khan rose and spoke in a low voice through it to the person behind. Then he beckoned to Mabel, the curtain was raised slightly, and she passed through, to find herself in a small dark antechamber. A stout woman in native dress stood there, with a great key in her hand, and unlocking a door, motioned her into a dim passage. It was so gloomy and mysterious that she was conscious of a moment’s hesitation, but as soon as the door was shut the woman began to speak in English, as rapidly as if she was reciting a history she had learnt by heart. She spoke mincingly, and with a peculiar clipping accent which struck Mabel as disagreeable.
“Yes, Miss North, and I don’t wonder you’re surprised, I’m sure, to find me here, and as English as yourself. My poor papa was riding-master in a European regiment—none of your Black Horse—and my mamma was pure-blood Portuguese, and yet here I am.”
Even to the inexperienced eye the woman’s own face, though seen only in the half-light, gave the lie to her claim of pure European descent, but Mabel had not yet acquired the Anglo-Indian’s skill in distinguishing shades of colour, and did not care to dispute the assertion. Having taken breath, Jehanara went on—
“Yes, and I was educated at a real pucca boarding-school in the hills, Miss North—quite genteel, I assure you; one of the young ladies was the daughter of the Collector of Krishnaganj. And everything done so handsome—china-painting and making wax flowers, and all the extras—no expense spared. I wish I could lay my hands on some of the rupees that were poured out like water on my education, I do. I should commence to astonish the people about here, I assure you, Miss North.”
“You must have found this life very trying at first,” murmured Mabel.
“Trying’s no word for it, Miss North; it was just simply slavery. And I, that thought to be a princess, reduced to be treated like a common coolie woman, and thankful for that! Oh, I’ve been deceived shamefully, Miss North, and there is that makes allowances for me, and there is that doesn’t; but submit to be downtrodden I won’t be, not by any old black woman that calls herself a begum, nor yet by any fine gentleman officer that don’t think me good enough to talk to his lady wife.”
Some instinct told Mabel that it would not be well to inquire too minutely into the means by which this waif of “gentility” had been stranded on such an inhospitable shore; and to cut short the complaints, which threatened to become incoherent, she asked whether Jehanara knew her sister-in-law.
“Yes, Miss North, I do, and a real lady she is—no thanks to her high and mighty sahib of a husband. Spoke to me polite, she did, the only time I’ve seen her, and gave me some English books and papers to pass the time away. Not like Mrs Hardy—there’s a sanctimonious old cat for you, Miss North, and no mistake, drawing her dress away from me, and talking at me as if I was the very scum of the earth!”
Mabel began to feel uncomfortable. Mrs Hardy’s judgments had not much weight with her, but it was evident that Dick had directed Georgia to hold no more intercourse with this person than civility required, and she thought it well to hint that her time was limited.
“Oh, well, if you’re in such a hurry, Miss North, I’m sure I’m agreeable. A little talk with any one that’s English like myself is a treat I don’t often get, but I don’t desire to detain anybody to talk to me that doesn’t want to. The Begum will be ready to see you, I dare say.”
She led the way down the passage and into a low dull room looking into a small paved courtyard, from which similar rooms opened on the other three sides. Here were assembled some fifteen or twenty women and girls, who had evidently made use of the time since Jehanara had been summoned to the visitor in flinging on their best clothes over their ordinary garb. Robes of fine cloth, silk, or brocade showed treacherous glimpses here and there of coarse cotton or woollen garments underneath, while the hair of the wearers was unplaited, and their eyelids innocent of colouring. They were not at all embarrassed, however, and crowded round Mabel with friendly interest; all but one, who lay huddled up upon a bedstead in the farthest corner, with her face to the wall, and refused even to look round. The chief person present was Bahram Khan’s mother, who was known officially, from the name of her late husband, as the Hasrat Ali Begum, but whose personal title was the Moti-ul-Nissa, or Pearl of Women. She was an elderly woman, with a shrewd face showing considerable power, and she greeted Mabel with the kindness due to one who came from her friend the doctor lady, but also with a constraint which the visitor could not but recognise.
Presently a privileged attendant of the Moti-ul-Nissa’s drew attention to the dusty state of Mabel’s habit, and in explaining, with the aid of Jehanara, what had happened to her, she was able to awaken the sympathies of her audience. Ready hands brushed off the dust, a bowl of perfumed water was brought that she might bathe her sun-scorched face, and she was eagerly entreated to take down her hair and shake the sand out of it. Not quite liking the look of the comb held out to her, however, she contented herself with coiling her hair afresh, while an eager girl held a cracked hand-mirror, with a battered wooden back, at an angle that made it absolutely useless. The women were loud in their exclamations of wonder and delight at the sight of the soft fair hair, and presently Mabel became aware that the girl in the corner had raised herself on her elbow, revealing a face beautiful in its outline, but now haggard and stained with tears, and was scowling at her with a look of unmistakable hatred.
“Is there some one ill in that corner?” she asked of Jehanara.
“No, Miss North, not ill—angry and sullen, that’s all.”
“Poor thing! in trouble, do you mean?” asked Mabel, rising and approaching the bed. The girl had turned away again when she saw that her glance was observed, and Mabel laid a hand upon her shoulder. “Can I do anything to help you?” she asked.
To her astonishment the girl shook off her hand as if it had been a snake, and springing up from the couch, burst into a torrent of vituperation. Her lithe young form shook with passion, her delicate hands were clenched, and her voice rose into a shrill scream. The other women strove in vain to quiet her, and Mabel’s efforts to disarm her anger were fruitless, but the storm ceased as suddenly as it had arisen. Breaking off in the midst of a furious sentence, the girl threw up her arms in a gesture of utter despair, then dashed herself down again upon the bed, sobbing as though her heart would break.
“What is the matter with her?” asked Mabel, astounded and somewhat offended by this reception of her friendly overtures. “What does she say?”
Jehanara looked inquiringly at the Moti-ul-Nissa. A nod gave her permission to interpret, and she replied glibly—
“Why, Miss North, she says she hates you, that you’ve stolen away her husband with your airs and graces, and then come to gloat over her. You mustn’t mind what she says. It’s the way with these native women; they’re so sadly uncontrolled, you see.”
“But I haven’t stolen away her husband. Tell her so. What can she mean? Who is she?”
The other women, breathlessly interested, gathered round while Jehanara interpreted the answer to the girl, who sat up with streaming eyes, and poured forth a succession of fierce, abrupt sentences.
“She says, Miss North, ‘I am Zeynab, called Rose of the World, daughter of Fath-ud-Din, the King of Ethiopia’s Grand Vizier, and the fair-haired woman’—that’s you, Miss North—‘has stolen from me the heart of Bahram Khan, my lord. She has beguiled him to cast me off—me, Fath-ud-Din’s daughter—that she may have his house to herself, and now she comes to mock me. But let her beware. The witch Khadija was not my nurse for nothing, and if poison can disfigure, or steel kill, or fire burn, she shall pay every anna that she owes me.’ Don’t you go and take it to heart, Miss North; she’s a poor, wild, uneducated creature, not brought up like us.”
“But she must be mad!” cried Mabel. “Tell her she is making some extraordinary mistake; that I wouldn’t touch her husband with a pair of tongs—that I hate the very sight of him. Tell her that nothing would make me marry him if he was free, that my religion would forbid it; and as he is married already, our law forbids it. Tell her that even if I wanted to marry him, my brother would see me dead first—that I would beg him to kill me before I stooped to such degradation.”
Even Jehanara cringed before Mabel in her crimson indignation, and translated her words without comment. The women looked at one another doubtfully, and the Moti-ul-Nissa frowned. The forsaken wife spoke again in bitter disdain—
“It is a fine thing to talk thus, when the fair-haired woman has robbed me of my lord’s heart for ever. Since she cares so little for it, why did she not leave it with Zeynab?”
“For anything that I have done, it is hers still,” said Mabel desperately. “Ask my sister, the doctor lady, if it is not so. You know her, all of you.”
“Ah, woe is me!” cried Zeynab. “Why did not the doctor lady leave me to die as a little child, rather than save me by her art that misery might come upon me through one of her own house?”
“Peace, girl!” said the Moti-ul-Nissa. “The doctor lady knows not yet that thou art my son’s wife. It is not through her that this trouble has come. I will send a message to her, that she may tell us what to do. If the words of her sister here are true words—” she broke off and looked keenly at Mabel—“it may be that she is one of those that ensnare men even without their own will; but such women ought not to place themselves where men are forced to behold them.”
Mabel digested the rebuke, translated with startling plainness by Jehanara, as well as she might. “I am very sorry,” she said in a low voice. “My brother said just the same to me, but I have only been here a short time, and I didn’t understand things. Please forgive me,” she added, looking first at Zeynab and then at her mother-in-law. “I never dreamed that such a thing could happen, and I will take care that it never does again.”
“Never again is too late for me,” said Zeynab bitterly.
“Peace!” said the old lady again. “Is it nothing to thee that the doctor lady’s sister has humbled herself before thee? Now it is for thee to win back thy lord as best thou mayest. And as for thee, Miss Sahib,” added the Moti-ul-Nissa severely, “choose thee a husband quickly, since that is the custom of thy people, and see that he is such a man as will slay any other that casts his eyes upon thee.”
“The Sahib desires the Miss Sahib to be told that the horses have been found, and all is ready,” said the little slave-boy, pushing himself unbidden into the group, and Mabel wasted no time over her farewells.
“I really think I have never been so uncomfortable before!” she said to herself, as she got out of the room.
“Now you see, Miss North, what a trial it is to me to live among such coarse, ungenteel creatures as these,” said Jehanara.