CHAPTER VIII.
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION.
HARK! what was that? Mabel sprang up in bed, her heart beating furiously, her hands clammy with fear. There was the sound of horses’ feet, the rattling of bridles, on every side. A wild impulse seized her to creep under the dressing-table—to hide herself anywhere, but a moment later she laughed aloud. The very last thing before going to bed, Dick had told her for her comfort that not only would the usual Sikh sentry keep guard over the Commissioner’s slumbers, but the compound would be patrolled all night by the Khemistan Horse. She crept to the window and peered out between the slats of the venetians. Yes; there they were—splendid men with huge turbans, and accoutrements glittering in the moonlight—pacing slowly to and fro upon their stout little horses. But how was it that there were two of them at that far corner of the compound, where she could scarcely distinguish their figures, and why had they paused as though to listen for something? Mabel listened too, and presently, above the nearer noises of trampling hoofs and jingling bits, she heard the approach of a galloping horse. Was it a scout coming in to give warning of a threatened attack? But no; the two men at the corner sat motionless on their horses, and as the sound came nearer and nearer she saw the flash of their tulwars. They were saluting—whom or what? Mabel strained her eyes to see, but could distinguish nothing. Then she remembered. It was General Keeling to whom they were doing honour, as he rode his periodical rounds, watchful for the safety of his old province. A cold sweat broke out all over her, and in a panic of which she was heartily ashamed even at the moment, she scurried back to bed and gave herself up to more and more violent paroxysms of horror. Of what use were sentinels against such a visitant as this? Suppose it was his will to come closer, to come up to the house, to enter? What could be more likely? She lifted her head for a moment and listened again. Surely that was a horse’s tread upon the drive, approaching the door? In reality, the intruder was only one of the patrols, but in the state of ungovernable terror in which Mabel was plunged this did not occur to her, and she buried her head under the bed-clothes and screamed.
The ayah, roused from her heavy slumbers by her mistress’s shrieks, came shivering to her side and tried to quiet her, but finding her entreaties of no avail, ran for help. Presently Georgia glided in, looking like a reproachful ghost herself, in a white dressing-gown, and proffered Mabel three tabloids and a glass of water, as sternly as if she had been Queen Eleanor handing Rosamund the poison.
“I’ll sit by you till you are asleep,” she whispered; “but you mustn’t make such a noise. You’ll wake the Commissioner, and he has only just dropped off to sleep, poor man!”
“I know I’m a fearful baby,” confessed Mabel, restored to calmness by the eminently practical nature of Georgia’s benevolence, “but I was so horribly frightened. Is poor Mr Burgrave very bad?”
“It was a nasty accident,” replied Georgia, with professional caution.
“What have you done to him?”
“Strapped up the broken ribs, and applied ice to the leg and slung it up.”
“Ugh, cruel creature! ice this cold night? I suppose it’s because you hate him so much?”
“Hate him? What nonsense! How could we hate a man who has got hurt in trying to save you? He’s so brave about it, too.”
“And he didn’t mind having you for a doctor?”
“Of course I was only helping Dr Tighe. But even if Mr Burgrave disliked my being there, he wouldn’t show it. When Dr Tighe told him he had better stay in this house until the splint is taken off, and not run the risk of jarring the limb, he looked at me, and said, ‘If my presence is not too troublesome to my kind surgeon here.’”
“And smiled at you like a father. I know,” said Mabel, with sleepy sarcasm. “Georgie,” she roused herself suddenly, “I want to know—how is——”
“Now, I will not answer another question to-night,” said Georgia resolutely. “I am going to read to you till you fall asleep.”
When Mabel awoke in the morning she felt oppressed by an intolerable burden. Body and mind seemed to be alike tired out, and it was an effort even to open her eyes. Georgia and Dr Tighe were in the room looking at her, and the sight of them reminded her that there was some question she wanted to ask, but she could not remember what it was.
“Well, Miss North,” said Dr Tighe, “nerves a bit jumpy this morning, eh? We’ll allow you a day in bed to settle them a little, but after that you must get up and help Mrs North to look after her patient.”
“Oh, I’ll get up to-day,” said Mabel faintly.
“No, no; don’t be in too great a hurry. Your brother will come in to ask you a question or two in a few minutes, and afterwards you shall try what a little more sleep and a little more slumber will do for you. It’s quite evident that nature never meant you for a frontierswoman.”
“Oh, Doctor,” expostulated Georgia, “think what she has gone through since she came here, and only out from home such a short time! Besides, nothing so bad as this has ever happened in our neighbourhood before.”
“At any rate, it’s the sort of thing you want to take to young if you’re to shine in it,” said the doctor. “Life in these parts is not exactly pretty, but it has its exciting moments. Nothing like what it had once, though. A predecessor of mine under General Keeling used to head cavalry charges and take forts in the intervals of his medical duties. I have no pleasant little recreations of that sort for my leisure hours. Now, Miss North, don’t let me see you dare to smile at the thought of my heading a cavalry charge. There was some object in training in those days, but naturally a man puts on weight when there’s nothing to do but potter about an hospital.”
“You see you’re not the only person in the world who hankers after thrilling experiences, Mab,” said Georgia, as she left the room with the doctor, and the words recalled to Mabel their conversation of three weeks since. Stretching out her hand, she took a mirror from the toilet-table and glanced at herself in it, only to drop the glass in horror. What a hollow-eyed wreck she looked! Was it possible that one night could work such a change? She had had her wish and tried experiments in reality, and she recoiled from the result.
“On the whole, I think I prefer the pleasing fictions of ordinary English life,” she said to herself.
“Good-morning, Mab,” said Dick’s voice, following a knock at the door. “I’m not going to disturb you long, but I want you to tell Tighe and me what you can remember about last night’s business. It’s necessary for me to know, or I wouldn’t bother you.”
With a shudder Mabel let her thoughts return to that homeward ride for a moment, then looked up suddenly. “Oh, now I remember!” she said. “My head is so stupid, I couldn’t think of it before. How is Mr Brendon?”
Both men had expected her to ask after the Commissioner, and Brendon’s name took them by surprise. “Brendon? Oh, he’s—he’s as well as he can be,” said Dr Tighe hastily, recovering himself first.
“But how can he possibly be well? His arm must have been nearly cut off. He fell down under the horses’ feet. Oh, you don’t mean—he can’t be——?”
The silence was a sufficient answer, and she turned her face to the wall with a moan. Brendon dead—for whom her kindliest feeling the evening before had been a more or less good-natured contempt—and he had practically given his life for her!
“Look here, Mab,” said Dick earnestly; “it won’t do the poor fellow any good to cry about him just now. What we want is evidence to convict the villains who did it.”
“Have you caught them?” came in a muffled voice from the bed.
“I hope so. Winlock, who went out to track them last night, had his own ideas on the subject, and posted part of his detachment in hiding among the rocks round Dera Gul. A little before dawn three men rode up, coming from Nalapur way—not from our direction—but they and their horses were all dead-beat. Winlock arrested them, feeling pretty certain they were the men he wanted, and had made a long round to avert suspicion before going home. They were Bahram Khan’s servants, sure enough, but he said they had been to Nalapur for him, and he offered no objection to their being arrested. When you are better we must see if you can identify any of them, but now all I want is to know roughly what happened, on account of the—inquiry, which must take place to-day.”
Thus stimulated, Mabel told her tale, helped out by questions from Dick, but breaking down more than once. He took down what she said, and the doctor signed it as a witness, and then they left her to Georgia’s ministrations. Georgia found her patient excited and tearful, and sent Rahah at once to the surgery to make up a composing draught.
“Now, Mab, lie down and try to be quiet,” she said.
“No, I won’t lie down. I can’t sleep,” cried Mabel. “Isn’t it dreadful, my having to identify those men? I can’t bear to think of it. And it brings it all back so vividly—the horrible helplessness—I could do nothing—nothing—to save myself. I think I should have gone mad in another moment if Mr Anstruther had not come up. And now to have to go and look at them in cold blood, and say that I recognise them! Isn’t there any way out of it? Oh, Georgie, can’t Dick make my syce turn Queen’s evidence?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Georgia reluctantly. “The fact is, Mab, your syce didn’t wait to be caught. He went off while we were at the picnic.”
“Oh, well,” said Mabel despairingly, “then I must do it, I suppose. It seems a kind of duty, as poor Mr Brendon was killed in trying to save me, to have the men who killed him punished. But it’s awful to think that three men will be hanged just because I saw their faces! They will be hanged, won’t they?”
“I don’t know, really. It is very dreadful, Mab, but there is one good thing about the whole affair. It may put things right on the frontier. Both Dick and I think Bahram Khan was so confident of Mr Burgrave’s support that he ventured on this outrage feeling sure that he would see him through. If these three men are proved to be his agents, it must open the Commissioner’s eyes. He’s an Englishman and an honourable man, though dreadfully mistaken, and he can’t go on backing him up after that. In fact, I’m sure he wouldn’t want to.”
“No, I don’t think he would. And I suppose there is no question about it really? What do other people think?”
“None of the men here have a doubt that it was Bahram Khan’s doing. As for the regiment, they are so indignant over the insult offered to Dick in attempting to carry off his sister, that they would like to raze Dera Gul to the ground forthwith.”
“Oh, that’s the light in which they look at it? They don’t think of my feelings in the matter at all?”
“I’m afraid not. You and I are merely Dick’s chattels in their eyes, you see.”
“I may be, but you are not. My ayah Tara tells me all sorts of wonderful things about you, Georgie, which she picks up from the other servants. Do you know that when you kiss Dick before he starts in the morning, they think you are putting a spell upon him to keep him safe all day, and bring him back to you all right at night?”
Georgia blushed like a girl. “That is really rather sweet,” she said. “Rahah despises the people round here too much to tell me anything they say about us.”
“Oh, Georgie,” cried Mabel, with sudden envy, “I would give anything to care for any one as you do for Dick! You look quite different when you talk about him. If only I wasn’t such a cold-hearted wretch! I wish I had cared for poor Mr Brendon, even; that would be better than caring for no one but myself.”
She broke into a storm of tearless sobs, and Georgia hailed the appearance of Rahah with the sleeping-draught, which she was obliged to administer almost by force. It was some time in taking effect, but at last the sobs died away, and she was able to leave the patient in charge of her own ayah, while she went about her other duties. Not until the morning of the next day did Mabel wake again, very much ashamed of her behaviour, which she was conscious had not been exactly in accordance with the high aspirations she had formerly confided to Georgia. Resolved to redeem her character, she sprang out of bed at once, and when Georgia came into her room on tiptoe, expecting to find her asleep, she was already dressed.
“Let me do something to help you,” she said eagerly. “You must have had a fearful amount of extra work thrown on you yesterday. What can I do?”
“Well, if you are so benevolently inclined, you might sit with the Commissioner a little,” said Georgia. “He was asking for you all day, and rather suspected us of concealing something dreadful from him.”
“Very well,” said Mabel readily. The proposal exactly fell in with her wishes, for she had conceived a magnificent idea while dressing. By her diplomacy she would induce the Commissioner to reverse his frontier policy.
“Miss North!” Mr Burgrave started up from his pillows as Mabel entered the sickroom, but becoming suddenly conscious of his injuries, he sank back again stiffly. “Excuse my left hand,” he added. “The other is off work just now. And how are you? Really not much the worse?”
“I had no business to be any the worse,” returned Mabel. “Nothing happened to me, thanks to you and—the others.”
“Ah, but the shock to the nerves must have been exceedingly severe,” said Mr Burgrave soothingly. “As I remarked to Tighe yesterday, Mrs North would have got over anything of the kind in an hour or two, but you are much more highly strung.”
Mabel was vaguely aware that the comparison was intended to be in her own favour, but she could not agree that the advantage was on her side, and she changed the subject hastily. “I don’t know how to thank you for what you did. Every time I think of that evening I feel more and more how grateful I ought to be. And I am, indeed, but I can’t say what I should like.”
Mr Burgrave raised his hand. “Please don’t, Miss North, or you will make me more miserable than I am already. How can I forget that I did nothing to help you? Mr Anstruther had that happiness, while I was lying on the ground under my horse.”
“But you tried—you did all you could—you are so terribly hurt!” protested Mabel.
“Yes, and that is my only comfort. I was hurt, and therefore I am here. No, on second thoughts, I don’t even envy Anstruther. He did the work, but I have basely annexed the reward. To have rescued you was happiness enough for him. I, who was unsuccessful, am consoled by finding myself under the same roof with you for a fortnight. That is enough for me.”
“How nice of you to say so!” Mabel rose. “Then I can leave you alone quite happily, and go and help Georgia?”
“Miss North, you are not going already? What have I said to drive you out of the room? Do you want me to pine away in melancholy solitude? After all, I did try to rescue you, as you were kind enough to say just now; but it will need your constant society and conversation to keep me from brooding over my failure.”
“I’m afraid my society won’t be very cheerful,” said Mabel, resuming her seat with a sigh. “You see, I can’t help feeling that what happened was a good deal my fault. If I had only told what I knew——”
“Well?” asked Mr Burgrave anxiously, as she paused.
“Ah, but if I had, you would not have believed it,” was the unexpected response, “any more than you would now.”
“Do you think I should be so rude as to question your word?”
“You will when I tell you that I know the men who tried to carry me off were agents of Bahram Khan’s.”
“You have evidence to support this very serious charge, I presume? Are you able to identify the men?”
“I suppose so; I haven’t tried yet. But, Mr Burgrave, I’m going to tell you something that only my sister-in-law knows—not even my brother, for I wouldn’t let her say anything to him. Bahram Khan did want to—to marry me.”
“What?” cried the Commissioner, starting up again. “You don’t mean to say that he has ever ventured to—to suggest such a thing to you?” Rage and disgust strove for the mastery in his voice.
“Oh no, he has never said anything to me; but the day I was at Dera Gul the women talked of nothing else.”
“Oh, the women!” Mr Burgrave spoke quite calmly again, and with evident relief. “You must remember that Bahram Khan is a good deal more advanced in his notions than the other Sardars of the province, and would like to imitate our ways with regard to ladies—English ladies, I mean. That is just the sort of thing that native women can’t understand. Any polite attention he might offer you would be misconstrued by them into a cause for violent jealousy. Their mistake made things extremely unpleasant for you at the moment, no doubt; but you need not torment yourself with thinking that he had any such preposterous idea in his head.”
Mr Burgrave did not actually say that a lady accustomed to universal admiration was liable to perceive it even where it did not exist, but this was what Mabel understood his slightly repressive tone to imply. Ignorant of the Eye-of-the-Begum’s secret mission to Georgia, she could not defend herself against the suggestion, and she grew crimson.
“Why don’t you say that I imagined the whole thing?” she demanded. “It’s not an experience I am proud of, I assure you. I told it you purely in the hope that it might open your eyes a little, but since you prefer to regard Bahram Khan as an interesting martyr——”
“Pray don’t mistake me, Miss North. If I believed that Bahram Khan had really devised this dastardly plot against you, I would hunt him down like a bloodhound until he was delivered up to justice, though that would mean the death of all my hopes for this frontier. In one way, of course, it would simplify matters a good deal. I am not in the habit of bothering ladies with politics, but there can be no harm in saying that it gives me great pain to differ from a man I respect as I do your brother. He has done so much for the frontier that it seems almost presumption in me, a new-comer, to set my opinion above his. However, I have formed that opinion after long and careful study of the Khemistan problem, and only the very strongest proof that I had been mistaken could induce me to alter it. But if you should be able to identify Bahram Khan’s servants as your assailants, it would be conclusive evidence that he is not the man I take him to be.”
“And then you would see that Dick was right, and leave him to manage things in his own way?”
“My dear Miss North, we are now soaring into the domain of improbabilities. If my opinion were once modified, it is possible that your brother’s view might prevail, or again, it might not.”
“I am certain he would not be sorry if Bahram Khan was proved to be untrustworthy,” was Mabel’s mental comment. “It would show him a way out of his difficulty. And now I shall be able to do it.”
Mabel was particularly cheerful all the rest of the day, as indeed she had a right to be, for was she not about to secure the safety of the frontier? Warned by her experience of the morning, she made no further attempt to entrap Mr Burgrave into a political discussion, but contented herself with showing in numberless little ways her gratitude for the concession he was prepared to make. She even welcomed his offer to introduce her to the beauties of Robert Browning, a poet whose works she had been wont to regard with the mingled alarm and dislike which, in the case of a modern young lady, can only spring from ignorance of them. He sent a servant back to the bungalow he had occupied to fetch the two portly volumes which, as he told her, always formed a part of his travelling library, and she read aloud to him without a murmur a considerable portion of “Paracelsus.” Under the combined influence of his favourite poet and the reader’s voice, the Commissioner forgot alike his injuries and the difficulties which beset his policy, and the household fairly basked in his smiles. This, at least, was what Fitz Anstruther said, but he had happened to intrude upon the reading as the bearer of an important message from Dick, and was adversely affected by the peaceful scene.
The next morning, as Dick was going to his office, Mabel intercepted him in the verandah. “I am ready to identify those men as soon as you like, Dick,” she said.
He looked at her in surprise. “Wouldn’t you rather wait until you have recovered a little from the shock?” he asked.
“Oh no, I’m all right now. I should like to get it over, Dick.”
“Well, you certainly seem to have picked up wonderfully. I suppose there’s no doubt of your knowing them again?”
Mabel shuddered. “How could I help recognising them? The red light, and those awful faces—it seems as if the whole thing was photographed on my mind. I should know them anywhere.”
“Oh, all right. It would be far worse, you know, to try to identify them and fail than to let the thing go altogether.”
“You needn’t be afraid. Only I should be glad not to have to look forward to it much longer.”
“Very well. No doubt it’s better to do it before the impression has a chance of fading from your mind. It’s a bother about the Commissioner, though. He insists on being present, and Georgie and Tighe say he mustn’t on any account be allowed to move until they have wired his knee. We shall have to carry his bed out on the verandah, I suppose. Just like him to think the show can’t go on without him. Of course he’s afraid we shall contrive to bring his precious protégé in guilty in some underhand way.”
Mabel smiled as Dick went down the steps, for she knew better. Mr Burgrave’s anxiety was not so much for Bahram Khan personally as for his own schemes, and not so much for them as for the continuance of his friendship with the North family. This knowledge, and the pleasing conviction that she alone possessed it, sustained her when she was summoned in the afternoon to identify her three surviving assailants.
“Come along,” said Dick, entering the drawing-room; “they’re all here, and Tighe has superintended the removal of the distinguished patient. They’re in the verandah outside his room. Don’t be frightened, Mab. Georgia shall come too, and support you.”
In spite of her resolution, Mabel trembled a little as she entered the improvised police-court, realising once more what issues hung upon her words. Fitz was there, and a Hindu clerk, and the Commissioner, propped up in bed. Before them stood a dozen natives with turbans and clothes of various degrees of picturesque dirt and raggedness, guarded by as many dismounted troopers armed to the teeth.
“Now, Mab, pick ’em out,” murmured Dick, from behind his sister.
“But there are too many men here. There were only three left,” objected Mabel, in a hasty whisper.
“Well, and you have to tell us which they were. You didn’t think we were going to parade the three prisoners and invite you to swear to them, did you? Now don’t waste the time of the court.”
Absolute despair seized upon Mabel as she stood in front of the line of men, and looked shrinkingly into their faces. How was it possible that so many natives, differing presumably in origin and circumstances, could be so much alike? Not one of them blenched under her timid scrutiny. Some looked stolid and some bored, and one or two even amused, but this gave her no help. At last, however, it struck her that there was something familiar in one or two of the faces. She moved a step or so in order to examine them more carefully, and then looked round at Dick and the rest.
“This man,” she said, pointing to one, “and that one, and this.”
“You are certain?” asked Mr Burgrave.
“Yes; I know their faces quite well.”
This time an undisguised smile ran momentarily along the line of swarthy countenances, only to disappear before Dick’s frown.
“Take them away,” he said to the troopers, and with a clanking of chains here and there, the prisoners and their guard departed.
“What is the matter?” asked Mabel in bewilderment, as she looked from one to the other of the three chagrined faces before her. “What have I done?”
“Oh, only identified as your assailants one of the chaprasis and a sowar in mufti and the gardener’s son, who were all peacefully going about their lawful business at the time of the outrage,” said Dick bitterly. “You have made us the laughing-stock of the frontier.”
“But—but weren’t the real men there at all?”
“Of course they were, but you passed them over.”
“And what will happen to them now?”
“They’ll be discharged for lack of evidence, that’s all. Bahram Khan will testify that they had been to Nalapur on an errand for him, and other witnesses will swear that they saw and spoke to them there, and we can say nothing.”