CHAPTER IX.
WOUNDED HERO AND MINISTERING ANGEL.
“‘ARE we not halves of one dissevered world,
Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? never!
Till thou, the lover, know; and I, the knower,
Love—’”
read Mabel, and paused, since it was evident that her auditor had some remark to make.
“It has always seemed to me,” said Mr Burgrave, “that in this meeting between Paracelsus and Aprile, whose characteristics are so essentially feminine, the poet has typified for all time the union of the masculine and feminine elements in human nature. Woman—the creature of feeling, man—the creature of reason, neither complete without the other. Before perfection can be attained, the lover must learn to know, the knower to love.”
“All women are not creatures of feeling,” said Mabel.
“But you would scarcely say that any woman was a creature of reason? Such a—a person would not be a woman. She would be a monstrosity.”
“I mean that I don’t think you can divide people by hard and fast lines in that way. It’s perfectly possible for a man to be a creature of feeling, and I know women who are quite as reasonable as any man.”
“Pardon me; you don’t altogether follow my argument. I yield to no one in my admiration of the conclusions at which women arrive. They are often—one might say very often—astonishingly correct, but they are purely the result of a leap in the dark, and not of any process of reasoning. And since this is so, no wise man can feel safe in acting upon them, while where the lady—as is not infrequently the case with her charming sex—is biassed by her personal feelings, they are liable to be dangerously deceptive.”
Mabel closed the book with a bang. “I wonder,” she said angrily, “at your talking in this way, as if I wasn’t horribly humiliated enough already. It was simply a chance that I didn’t identify the right men, and I know just the same that it was Bahram Khan who employed them.”
Mr Burgrave raised his eyebrows slightly. “Indeed, my dear Miss North, you must pardon my maladroitness. I assure you that I had no intention whatever of alluding to the—let us say the disagreeable incident of yesterday. I was dealing purely with generalities.”
“But you yourself know perfectly well—though you pretend not to think so—that it was Bahram Khan,” persisted Mabel.
The Commissioner raised himself on his elbow and looked straight at her, and Mabel quailed. “And is it possible,” he demanded, “that you believe I am deliberately sheltering from justice, contrary to the dictates of my own conscience, a wretch who has dared to raise his hand against an Englishwoman—against a lady for whom I have the highest regard? No, Miss North, you must be good enough to withdraw those words. Even your brother and his wife are sufficiently just to believe me an honourable man, although we differ on so many points.”
The stern blue eyes under the lowering brows seemed to pierce Mabel through and through. She half rose from her chair, then sat down again, and repressed with difficulty a threatened burst of tears.
“I—I didn’t mean that,” she faltered. “All I meant was that I didn’t see how you could think anything else when we are all so sure of it.”
“Allow me to say that I credit you with the sincerity you refuse to recognise in me. Your brother has a strong prejudice—there is no other word for it—against Bahram Khan, which he has transmitted to you, and you look at the facts in the light of that prejudice. I was perfectly willing to be convinced of the young man’s guilt by the merest shred of anything that could be called evidence, but none was produced. The case against him broke down completely. Would you have me withdraw my countenance from a man whom I conscientiously believe to be innocent, and ruin all his prospects, simply on the score of an unf— unsupported opinion of yours? No, Miss North, I won’t believe it of you. You must perceive that I am right.”
“But you said our intuitions were wonderfully correct, and that your judgment was incomplete by itself,” urged Mabel.
“To be of any real value, the feminine intuition must be confirmed by the masculine judgment. Its use is purely supplementary.”
“Oh, Mr Burgrave, you can’t really mean that! Why, my brother would never dream of doing anything without consulting his wife. He thinks most highly of her judgment.”
“Surely Major North is the best judge of his own affairs?” suggested Mr Burgrave dryly. “If he has confidence in his wife’s judgment, it is only natural he should wish to avail himself of it. Such would not be my case, I confess, but then, the confidence would be wanting.”
“But, according to you, I ought to model my opinions on some one’s,” said Mabel—“Dick’s, I suppose—and that’s just what you have been scolding me for doing.”
“Dick’s?” said the Commissioner reflectively. “No, not Dick’s, I think. That was not at all what I had in my mind, Miss North. And have I been scolding you, or is that another mistaken intuition? You know how gladly I would have accepted your view of Bahram Khan’s guilt, if that had been possible?”
“I know you said so, and I hoped so much——” Mabel’s eyes were full of tears.
“And do you know why that was?”
“No, indeed, I can’t imagine.” She spoke hastily, scenting danger. The Commissioner smiled paternally.
“No? Then will you do me the favour to consider the matter? Ask yourself why I was willing, even anxious, to be converted from my own opinion. When you have arrived at the answer, I shall know.”
He smiled at her again from his pillows, but Mabel muttered something incoherent and fled.
“I don’t know what to do!” she cried, in the seclusion of her own room. “Does he think I am a baby, or a little school-girl? If he wants to propose, why can’t he do it straight out, and take his refusal like a man? I know how to manage that sort of thing. But to break the idea to me gradually in this way, as if I was—oh, I don’t know what—a sort of fairy that must be handled gently for fear it should vanish into thin air—it’s insufferable! And the worst of it is, I can’t quite make out how to stop it. I seem somehow to have got myself into his power.”
To see as little of Mr Burgrave as possible, and to confine the conversation to safe subjects when she did meet him, was the remedy which naturally suggested itself, and Mabel did her best to apply it; but, to her dismay, it did not appear to produce any effect. She had even a distinct feeling that it was just what Mr Burgrave had expected. Moreover, it was extremely difficult to put in practice. Now that the operation had been performed on the patient’s knee, and the leg fixed immovably in a splint, he was allowed to be lifted on a couch, and thus to spend his days in the society of his hosts. Dick was out as much as ever, and when Georgia was busy, it was obviously Mabel’s duty to entertain the invalid. It is sad to relate that when escape proved impossible, she was reduced to assuming an intense interest in the study of Browning, toiling through “Sordello” with astonishing patience. But if any valid excuse offered itself for leaving Mr Burgrave to his own reflections, she embraced it gladly, and when the arrival in the neighbourhood of one of the nomadic tribes brought Georgia a sudden rush of patients, she volunteered at once to help her in dealing with them.
The surgery in which Georgia received her visitors was a building standing by itself in the compound, and approached by a special gate in the wall, so that the ladies might come to see their doctor without fear of encountering any rude masculine gaze. As an additional precaution, when the wives of any of the chief men came to the surgery, they brought a youth with them as attendant, who mounted guard over a motley array of slippers at the door, and completed the security against profane intrusion. Inside, Georgia dealt with the cases individually in a small room at one end, while in the large room the visitors sat on the floor in rows, looking at the pictures on the walls, or listening casually to the Biblewoman, trained by Miss Jenkins at the Bab-us-Sahel Mission, who sat among them and read or talked. At the other end was another small room, where a patient and her friends were occasionally accommodated when Georgia had any special reason for wishing to keep the case under her own eye, and the husband was more than usually indulgent. At other times there stood in this room a spring bedstead, which was never used, but which the women made up parties to inspect, personally conducted by Rahah. There was a history attaching to this object of pilgrimage. Two years before a lady globe-trotter of exalted rank, in the course of an adventurous flying visit to the frontier, had spent a night at the Norths’, and been stirred to enthusiasm by Georgia’s quiet but far-reaching work among the women. Her Grace deplored sympathetically the absence of a proper hospital, and offered to put her London drawing-room at Mrs North’s disposal during her next visit home, that she might plead for funds to establish one. Georgia pointed out, however, that the smallness of the station, and the uncertain character of the wanderings of the tribes, would probably result in leaving the hospital empty for eleven months out of the year, while if Dick should be transferred to another post, its raison d’être would be gone. The duchess was disappointed, but not crushed. Would Mrs North allow her to send a gift, just one, to the surgery as it stood at present? She could not bear to think of the terrible discomfort the poor sick women must suffer.
Georgia consented, and after a time the gift arrived, brought up-country at a vast expenditure of toil and money. It was a regulation hospital bed, the very latest patent, which could be made to roll itself the wrong way like a bucking horse, stand up on end, kneel down like a camel, dislocate itself in unexpected places, and perform other acrobatic feats, all by turning a handle. Rahah sat before it in silent admiration for a whole morning, occasionally pressing the wires gently down for the pleasure of seeing them rise again. When she had drunk in this delight sufficiently, she ventured to put the bedstead through its paces, rushing to summon her mistress in joyful awe at each new trick she discovered. But so far, her enjoyment was incomplete. To be perfect, the bed needed a patient to occupy it, and at last one was brought in by her friends, crippled by some rheumatic affection. Rahah herself laid her on the bed, only to behold her leap from it immediately with the strength of perfect health. There was an evil spirit in the bed, she declared. All other beds sank when you lay down upon them, this one rose up. And in spite of the wonderful cure of this first and only case, the bed was never occupied again. It was talked of all along the frontier, the women came for miles to see it, and watched in shuddering delight while Rahah showed them what it could do; but it was only very rarely that a heroine could be found bold enough even to touch it with a finger. Meanwhile, the patients continued to sleep on their mats or their charpoys, insisting that the bed should be turned out of the room before they would take up their quarters there, lest the evil spirit should seize upon them during the hours of darkness.
On this particular morning Rahah was exhibiting the wonders of the bed to a party of new arrivals, and Mabel was deputed to see that the patients were admitted into Georgia’s sanctum in proper order, and only one at a time. Seeing that they were all comfortably seated facing the Biblewoman, she thought it would be best to begin with those nearest the door, thus going through the whole assemblage methodically. The women, on the other hand, considered that the worst cases ought to be seen first, and each woman was firmly convinced that her own case was the worst of all. Hence arose an uproar, in which the sympathising friends accompanying each would-be patient joined with all the force of their lungs, besieging the unfortunate Mabel, who could not understand a word, with a tumult of assertions, contradictions, and maledictions. At last one woman, who carried a baby, was seized with a bright idea. Flinging away a fold of her veil from the child’s face, she held it out to Mabel, exhibiting the awful condition of its eyes, which were almost sightless from neglected ophthalmia, as an incontestable proof of her right to the first place. The hint was not lost upon the other women, and in a moment Mabel was surrounded by sights from which she recoiled in horror. At first she was too much appalled to move, as each woman displayed triumphantly the urgency of her own need, and then she turned sick and faint. The agglomeration of so many miseries was too much for her. Rahah, returning at the moment, left the outer door open, and this gave her courage to escape. Pressing her hands over her eyes, she burst through the astonished crowd, drank in a draught of pure fresh air, and then fairly ran across the compound and back to the house. Mounting the steps with difficulty, she staggered and caught at the rail to steady herself, only avoiding a fall by a wild clutch at one of the pillars when she reached the top. An exclamation of concern reached her ears, and she became dimly conscious that Mr Burgrave was making desperate efforts to rise from his couch.
“You are ill, Miss North! What is it? You don’t mean to say that another attempt has been made——?”
“To carry me off? Oh no, not quite so near home.” Mabel laughed a little, and as she began to see more clearly, noticed how the remorseful anxiety in his face gave place to unfeigned relief. “No, I’m not ill, only silly and faint.”
“Try a whiff of this, then.” He passed her a bottle of salts. “I was allowed to revive myself with it when my doctors had been investigating the inside of my knee a little more closely than was pleasant.”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Mabel faintly. “I never want to hear a doctor mentioned again.”
“Why, what has happened? Has Mrs North turned vivisectionist?”
“No, of course not. It was only that I was helping her with her patients, and they had such awful things the matter with them that I—well, I ran away.”
“And very wisely. Do I understand that Mrs North required you to expose yourself to the sight of these horrors? It is monstrous!”
“She didn’t ask me to come; I offered to help her.”
“In the hope of pleasing her, of course. It is all the same. In the abundant strength of mind and body she possesses, she forgets that other people are more delicately organised than herself. I am amazed at her lack of consideration.”
“I won’t have you say such things about Georgia!” cried Mabel. “She is the best and dearest woman I know.”
“I honour your enthusiasm. Pray don’t mistake me. I have the highest possible esteem myself for Mrs North, but she is a little too strenuous for my taste.”
“I wouldn’t have her the least bit different. I wish I was like her, instead of being so silly and cowardly.”
“No, Miss North, let me beg of you not to wish that. I would not have you different. Your sister-in-law’s training and her past experiences account for many—er—remarkable points in her character, but, believe me, your true friends would rather see in you this womanly shrinking from the sight of suffering than a bold determination to relieve it.”
“I hope I may consider you one of those true friends?” Mabel tried to infuse a note of strong sarcasm into her voice.
“I hope you may. It is difficult, is it not, to feel confidence in one who differs so totally from Mrs North and her husband? But this is a question upon which we will not enter—yet.”
“Could I say that I preferred to enter upon it at once?” Mabel demanded angrily of herself when she had made her escape. “Somehow he gets such an advantage over me by putting me down in that lofty way, and yet I don’t know how to stop it. The idea of his daring to criticise Georgie to me!”
But Mr Burgrave was even bolder than Mabel imagined. Returning the next morning from a ride with Fitz Anstruther, she was greeted by a laugh from Georgia as she mounted the steps.
“Oh, Mab, I have been having quite a scolding, and all about you! It’s clear that I am not worthy to have such a sister-in-law.”
“Georgie! you don’t mean that Mr Burgrave has been so rude as to——”
“Now, Mab, you know better than that. It would be impossible to him to be rude. He simply took me to task, very mildly and calmly, about the way I neglect you, though I stand to you in the place of a mother——”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mabel, her face scarlet.
“So he says. It seems I am lacking in the tenderness which should be lavished upon you. Our rough frontier life ought to be tempered to you by all sorts of sweetness and light which I have made no attempt to supply. I have been inconsiderate in bringing you into contact with the revolting details of my professional work, and a lot more. Do forgive me, Mab. I really haven’t meant to do all these dreadful things, but you did want to make acquaintance with realities, you know.”
“That man is getting unbearable!” broke from Mabel. “I shall speak to him—No, I shan’t,” she added wearily; “it’s no good. He gets the better of me somehow or other. Can’t you put a little cold poison into his medicine, Georgie? Surely it’s a case in which the end would justify the means.”
She went indoors with rather a forced laugh, and Fitz, who had been looking out over the desert without appearing to notice what was being said, turned round suddenly to Georgia.
“Can you honestly expect me to stand all this much longer, Mrs North?”
“All what?” asked Georgia, in astonishment.
“The Commissioner’s intolerable assumption. Any one would think he was Miss North’s guardian, or her father, or even”—with a fierce laugh—“her husband. What right has he to take it upon himself to defend her?—as if she needed any defending against you! It’s nothing but his arrogant impudence.”
“But still”—Georgia spoke with some hesitation—“how does it affect you?”
“Oh, Mrs North, you needn’t pretend not to have noticed. You know as well as I do that the Commissioner and I are both—er—well, we are both awfully gone on Miss North, and he isn’t playing fair. You have seen it, haven’t you?”
“I have, indeed, but I hoped you hadn’t quite found out what your real feelings were.”
“Surely you must have thought me a hopeless idiot? I found out all about it the day she had that fall from her horse.”
“So long ago as that? Why, you had scarcely known her a fortnight!”
“But I met her first years ago, before we went to Kubbet-ul-Haj. Besides, what does it signify if I had only known her an hour? It is the kind of feeling one can only have for one woman in one’s life.”
“But you didn’t say anything?” asked Georgia anxiously.
Fitz laughed shamefacedly. “No, I have said nothing even yet. The fact is, it seemed sacrilege even to think of it. She is so lovely, so sweet, so far above me in every way! Oh, Mrs North, I could rave about her for hours.”
“And so you shall,” was the cordial but unexpected response, “as often as you like, and I will listen patiently, provided that you still say nothing to her.”
“No, no; things can’t go on in this way. You see, the Commissioner has changed all that. He goes in and fights for his own hand in the most barefaced way, and I must get my innings too. After all, though it sounds horribly low to say it, I did kill the fellow that was carrying her off, and bring her back.”
“Of course you did. If that was all, you certainly deserve to win her.”
“Yes; but then the Commissioner scores in having got hurt. He sees her for ever so long every day, and she is so awfully kind, talking to him and reading to him, and letting him prose away to her, that no wonder he thinks he is making splendid running. I only wish I had got hurt too.”
“Do you really?” asked Georgia, with meaning in her tone.
“No, Mrs North, you’re right; I don’t. If we had both been hurt there would have been no one with the slightest chance of catching up the rascals. Whether she takes him or me in the end, I did save her, at any rate.”
“Good,” said Georgia encouragingly. “I like that spirit.”
“Well, now you know how things stand. You see what an advantage the Kumpsioner Sahib is taking of her gratitude and your kindness, and you can guess how I feel about it. Tell me candidly, do you think I have the slightest chance? Why did you say that you hoped I had not understood my own feelings?”
“Simply because a waiting game is your only chance. Since you ask me, I will speak plainly. You are younger than Mabel, you know; it is undeniable, unfortunately”—as Fitz made a gesture of impatience—“and Dick and I have got into the way of treating you like a son or a brother—a very much younger brother. We haven’t taken you seriously, and I am very much afraid Mabel doesn’t either. Mr Burgrave holds a very high position, and he is a man of great distinction. We on this frontier cherish an unfortunate prejudice against him, of course, but elsewhere he is considered most charming and fascinating. How can she but feel flattered by his homage? And he has undoubtedly acquired a great influence over her; I can’t help seeing that. And yet I can’t make out that she cares for him, and I have watched her closely.”
“Well, that is one grain of comfort, at any rate,” said Fitz disconsolately. “But he is not going to carry her off without my having the chance to say a word to her first, I can tell him.”
Georgia looked up anxiously. “Don’t throw away your only hope,” she entreated. “What you have to do is to make yourself necessary to her. You have been managing very well hitherto—always ready to do anything she wanted. Make yourself so useful to her as a friend that she would rather keep you as a lover than lose you altogether.”
“Oh, I say, Mrs North, you don’t flatter a man’s vanity much!”
“Yes, I do. At least, I am showing that I think you capable of a great deal of self-effacement for the sake of winning her.”
“And if the Commissioner carries her off meanwhile?”
“I don’t think he will, provided you let her alone. But if you worry her to have you, she may accept him just to be rid of your attentions. And then there will be nothing to be done but to bear it like a man.”
“You don’t disguise the taste of your medicines much, Mrs Dr North. I’ll chew the bitter pill as I ride, and try to look as if I liked it. I was to meet the Major at the old fort at ten o’clock. It’s awfully good of you to have listened so patiently to my symptoms, and prescribed for me so fully.”
He ran down the steps and rode away, arriving at the fort a little late, to find that Dick was already discussing with Colonel Graham the business on which they had come. A series of small thefts, irritating rather than serious, had occurred on the club premises of late, and the minds of the members were exercised over the question of their prevention in future. As Fitz rode up Dick and Colonel Graham were descending to the courtyard after making the round of the walls, and the former signed to him to wait where he was.
“I never remember such a succession of petty robberies before,” said Colonel Graham. “The natives must be in a very unsettled state.”
“I’m not sorry these things have happened,” returned Dick. “In fact, I’m glad of it.”
Colonel Graham glanced at him. “What have you got in your head?” he asked.
“Simply this. I suppose you believe, as I do, that the thief gets in by climbing over the wall, while the watchman is busy guarding the gateway and never thinks that there is any other means of entering?”
“That’s my idea. In a climate like this mud-brick is bound to go pretty soon if it isn’t looked after, and for years the rain has washed it down into these rubbish-heaps, till they are as good as so many flights of steps. What with the grass and bushes growing all about, it’s as easy as possible to get in. I could do it myself.”
“Then you agree that it would be as well to make it harder? I propose that we call a club meeting and invite subscriptions for the purpose of putting the walls into proper repair. Otherwise we shall soon have the place down on our heads.”
“But that sort of thing will take a long time to organise.”
“It needn’t, since it’s only to keep the natives from thinking there’s anything up. So far as I can see, there’s no particular reason why you and I shouldn’t head the subscription list with a thousand rupees each—so that the most pressing work may be begun at once—or why that two thousand rupees shouldn’t last out better than such a sum ever did before.”
“Good! Are we to take the young fellows into our confidence?”
“Runcorn may as well know all about it. A sapper will be useful in deciding what it’s possible to do in the time. Happily he and the canal people have kept the wall overlooking the water in tolerable repair. As for the other sides, we must clear away the rubbish from the foot of the walls, and build up the parapets where the bricks have weathered away. The bushes must go, naturally, and the ramparts be made a fairly safe promenade—for the ladies, of course. The tower stairs are awfully dangerous, and it will be quite natural to have them seen to, and the floors and loopholes may as well be looked after while we are about it, though we shall never get a satisfactory flanking fire without rebuilding the whole thing. I shall take it upon myself to present the place with a new gate—not obtrusively martial in appearance, but with a certain reserve strength about it. My wife will think me a terrible Vandal for spoiling the beautiful ruin her father left behind him, but it’s obvious that the chaukidar will be able to look after the place better when there’s a gate to shut.”
“I should say there won’t be much ruin left when you have done with it,” said Colonel Graham. “It’s a mere coincidence that our largest godown turns out to be in the way of the canal extension works, and has been condemned. There would be no harm in storing the corn and a few other little trifles in the vaults under the club-house, and it would give us an excuse for posting a sentry here at night.”
“Good,” said Dick, in his turn. “What accomplished deceivers we shall be by the time this is over, if we live to see it!”
“You think things are in a bad way?”
“What do you think yourself?”
“I? I have no opinion. You have been on this frontier much longer than I have, and you are in political charge. I’ve seen enough to know that there’s something queer going on, that’s all.”
“I’ll tell you one thing that’s going on. Five times in the last fortnight I have received secret information of tribal gatherings which were to be held without my knowledge. Of course I made a point of turning up, and behaving just as if I had received an invitation in due form.”
“Well, that was all right, so far.”
“Yes, but think of the jirgahs that I did not hear of. What went on at them?”
“I see; it looks bad. What do you propose doing?”
“What ought to be done is to revive the martial law proclamation, which has been in abeyance for the last four years. But I am not supreme here just now.”
“Surely the Commissioner would not interfere with the exercise of your authority?”
“The Commissioner has imbibed so many horrors about the Khemistan frontier that he is pleased every morning to find himself alive, and the house not burnt over his head. I believe he regards the improvement as due to his own presence here, and at the same time considers it an additional proof that Khemistan may now be governed like all the other provinces. If I had things my own way, my very first move would be to deport Burgrave, preferably to Simla, where he could both be happy himself and a cause of happiness to others, but as it is, he will probably deport me.”
“Then you believe he has some trick on hand too?”
“I’m sure of it. He is in constant communication with Government. Beardmore and his clerks come to him every day”—Beardmore was the Commissioner’s private secretary, and a man after his chief’s own heart, of the type that considers it has successfully surmounted a crisis when it has drawn up a state-paper on the subject, and has no inconvenient yearnings after energetic action—“and he is busy with them for hours, concocting a report on the state of the frontier, I suppose. When that is finished, we may expect the blow.”
“What is it that you expect exactly? A friend of mine at headquarters tells me there’s a persistent rumour——”
“That they intend to withdraw the subsidy, and cut loose from Nalapur? Just so. And that means the deluge for us. The blessed word Non-intervention will bring about the need for intervention, as usual.”
“Our people will rise?”
“Not at first. Bahram Khan will probably remove his uncle quietly, and in order to still any unpleasant rumours, encourage raids on us, which will serve the further purpose of awakening the appetite for blood and loot. The Sardars will be got to believe that we have only drawn back in order to advance better, and that their one chance is to make the first move. They will cross the border, and our people will join them.”
“And we shall be thankful for the fort? North, in view of all this, what do you say to sending the ladies down to Bab-us-Sahel for a while?”
“I don’t know,” answered Dick hesitatingly. “I thought of suggesting to my wife that she should go down there and do some shopping.”
“But you fancied she’d see through it? Probably. She was born and bred here, and knows the weather-signs as well as you do. What’s the good of trying to throw dust in her eyes? Put it to her plainly that, as things are, you would feel much happier if she was away, and she’ll go like a s