CHAPTER III.
“IN HIS SIMPLICITY SUBLIME.”
“THE Major not back from the durbar yet, I suppose, Mrs North? Have you heard this extraordinary report about Bahram Khan?”
“No, I didn’t know there was any report going about,” answered Georgia. She was driving Mabel to the club, and had stopped to speak to the station surgeon, a cheerful little stout man, riding a frisky pony which danced merrily about the road, while its master tried in vain to induce it to stand still.
“It’s all over the bazaar, and one of the hospital assistants told me. They say that the Commissioner means to insist on Bahram Khan’s being restored to his lands and honours, and to advise poor old Ashraf Ali strongly to accept him again as his heir.”
“Oh, that gives the whole thing away,” said Georgia, more cheerfully, “for the Amir’s adoption of Bahadar Shah was recognised by the Government of India. Was all this to happen to-day, Dr Tighe?”
“Yes, at this durbar. Quite thrilling, isn’t it? Well, I must be off on my rounds. When am I to have that game of tennis you promised me, Miss North?” and the doctor rode away, while Georgia drove on, with brows drawn into an anxious frown.
“It’s quite impossible,” she said at last, rousing herself. “He couldn’t spring such a mine upon us. Look, Mab! this is my father’s old house.”
“But why don’t you live in it?” asked Mabel, looking with much interest at the flat-roofed building with its massive stone walls and narrow windows. Georgia laughed.
“Because the accommodation is a little too Spartan for a family,” she said. “My father prided himself on his powers of roughing it, and all his young men had to follow his example. Mr Anstruther inhabits the house at present, in company with the official records, for the office is large and airy, and Dick uses it still.”
“I should have thought General Keeling would have lived in the fort,” said Mabel, as a sharp turn in the road brought them in sight of the dust-coloured walls and mouldering battlements, crowned with withered grass, of the old border stronghold.
“Never!” cried Georgia. “The first thing he did on coming here was to dismantle it. He would never allow either the Khemistan Horse or his British officers to hide behind walls. Their safety had to depend on their own watchfulness.”
“He had the courage of his convictions, at any rate.”
“Of course. He never told any one to do what he would not do himself. He wanted to blow up the fort and destroy it altogether; but the Government objected in the interests of archæology, so he gave it to the station for a club-house. There has never been too much money to spare in Alibad, and people have used it gratefully ever since.”
“What a delicious old place!” sighed Mabel, as they drove in through the hospitable gateway, on either side of which the ancient doors, warped and worm-eaten and paintless, leaned useless against the wall. The block of buildings which had comprised the chief apartments of the fort in the wild days before the coming of the British was now utilised as the club-house, and an inner courtyard had been ingeniously converted into a tennis-ground. As she passed, Mabel caught a glimpse through the archway of Flora Graham and her fiancé, young Haycraft, playing vigorously, but she also noticed something else.
“Georgie, there’s Mrs Hardy looking out for you.”
“Oh dear!” cried Georgia in a panic, “I can’t meet her just now, until I know the truth about Bahram Khan. She is waiting to gloat over me about this horrible rumour, and I can’t stand it. I am going to take you up to the ramparts, Mab, to see the view.”
She gave the reins to the groom, and, avoiding the reading-room, in the verandah of which could be discerned Mrs Hardy’s depressed-looking bonnet, hurried Mabel across the wide courtyard and up a flight of steps which led to the summit of the western wall. From this, at some risk to life and limb, they were able to reach one of the half-ruined towers, which commanded a bird’s-eye view of the town. The native quarter, with its narrow, crooked alleys and carefully guarded flat roofs, the lines, painfully neat in the mathematical symmetry of their rows of white huts, the houses in the cantonments, embowered in pleasant gardens, were all spread before them. Beyond the belt of green which marked the limits of the irrigated land round the town, the desert stretched on the east and south as far as the eye could see. To the west was a range of rugged hills, their nearer spurs within rifle-shot of the fort, and to the north, at a much greater distance, the peaks, at this season covered with snow, of a considerable mass of mountains.
“That is Nalapur,” said Georgia, pointing to the mountains, “and beyond it to the eastward is Ethiopia. Our house is the last on British soil. The corner of the compound exactly touches the frontier line.”
“Then that’s why your father rides past just there?” said Mabel unthinkingly.
“So the natives say. I rather like to think of him as still guarding the frontier which he spent his life in defending. It’s a nice idea, I mean—that’s all. But, Mab, the men are coming back from the durbar. Look at that dust-cloud, and you will see the light strike on something shining every now and then. That’s the bravery of their durbar get-up. We will wait here until they get into the town, and capture the first that comes this way. I must find out what has happened.”
They watched the cavalcade enter the town and separate into its component parts, and presently saw Fitz Anstruther riding up to the fort. He caught sight of their parasols and waved his hand, but Georgia dragged Mabel down the steps, and they met him in the courtyard.
“You’ve heard, then?” he cried, as his eyes fell on Georgia’s face.
“Only a bazar rumour. Is it true that Bahram Khan——?”
“He is restored to his estates and rank, and recommended by the Commissioner to the particular favour of his uncle. Burgrave had him all ready outside the tent, it appears, and after enlarging to the Amir and the luckless Bahadar Shah on the blessings of family unity, and the advisability of forgiving and forgetting youthful peccadilloes, brought him in as a practical embodiment of his words. It was dramatic—very—but it was playing it awfully low down on us, especially the Major.”
“Then he knew nothing of it?”
“No more than I did.”
“And Ashraf Ali was willing to take the Commissioner’s advice?”
“He hadn’t much choice. A glance from Major North would have turned the scale, but you know what the Major is, Mrs North—he will play fair by his own side, however badly they may have treated him. He gave him no encouragement to show fight, and Ashraf Ali took a back seat. It is rather tough to have to receive again into the bosom of your family an affectionate nephew who has tried to murder you, isn’t it?”
“But how does the Commissioner get over that little difficulty?”
“Airily ignores it. ‘Not guilty, and won’t do it again,’ is his view. Every prospect of domestic happiness in the Amir’s family circle in future.”
“Where is Dick now?” asked Georgia suddenly.
“I rather think he has gone to have it out with the Kumpsioner Sahib. He was horribly sick, and who can wonder?”
“I really think,” said Mabel, quite inconsequently, “that if I couldn’t pick up my own balls I wouldn’t play tennis.”
They were sitting in the verandah overlooking the tennis-court, and it was the sight of the squad of small boys in uniform who were being kept hard at work by the three men now playing that had called forth the remark.
“We get so slack with the climate,” pleaded Fitz.
“Well, I don’t intend to let those boys pick up my balls when I play.”
“They won’t have the chance, Miss North. We should simply massacre them if they attempted it. Oh, here’s the Major—and the Commissioner!”
Dick was still in uniform, and the man who emerged with him from under the archway was quite thrown into the shade by his magnificence, but the contrast did not appear to afflict Mr Burgrave, even if he noticed it. He crossed the shadowed court with slow, deliberate steps, apparently unaware that he was interrupting the game, talking all the time to Dick, who listened courteously, but without conviction.
“What a curious face it is!” muttered Georgia involuntarily, as the Commissioner stepped into the line of light cast by a lamp in one of the rooms.
“Yes, doesn’t he look the pig-headed brute he is?” was the joyful response of Fitz, who had overheard her.
“No, that’s not it. He looks obstinate enough, but there is something benevolent about the face—nothing cruel or mean. It’s the face of a fanatic.”
“Oh no, Mrs North! There’s bound to be something good about even a fanatic at bottom, I suppose. Won’t you say a doctrinaire?”
“If you prefer it. I mean a man who has formed certain opinions, and allows neither facts nor arguments to prevent his forcing them upon other people.”
“Ah, Mrs North!” The Commissioner was bowing before Georgia with the somewhat exaggerated courtesy which, combined with his paternal manner, caused impatient young people to brand his demeanour as patronising. “And are you very much incensed against me for keeping your husband so busy all day?”
He sat down beside her as he spoke, taking little notice of Mabel, and devoted himself to her for ten minutes or more, while Dick went into the club-house to speak to some one. To Mabel, as to Georgia, it appeared as if Mr Burgrave’s condescension towards Dick’s wife was intended to disarm any resentment that might have been aroused in her mind by his treatment of Dick that day, although it was not easy to see why he should take so much trouble. It was Fitz on whom the true comedy of the situation dawned at last, rendering him speechless with secret delight. The Commissioner was an adept in the mental exercise known as reading between the lines, and he had formulated his own explanation of the unconventional manner in which Mabel had made her appearance upon the stage of Khemistan. Jealous of her sister-in-law’s good looks, and the attention she attracted, Georgia had refused to invite her to pay a visit to Alibad, and the poor girl’s only chance had been to take matters into her own hands. Too considerate to expose Mabel to the risk of incurring the reproaches of her family circle, Mr Burgrave would talk to Georgia long enough to put her into a good temper before he gratified his own inclinations. His reward came when Georgia rose and remarked that it was time to go home, for guessing that Dick would be driving his wife, he lost no time in offering Mabel a seat in his dog-cart. As for Mabel, she accepted the offer joyfully. Her hasty determination to give Mr Burgrave a lesson had deepened by this time into the deliberate intention of fascinating him into laying aside his distrust of Dick.
“What an interesting day you must have had!” she began guilefully, as soon as they started. “I wish ladies were admitted to durbars.”
“They are, sometimes, but I fancy”—the Commissioner smiled down at her—“that there is not very much business done on those occasions.”
“Oh, then to-day’s was really a serious affair? Do tell me what you did.”
“I am afraid it would hardly interest you.”
“Indeed it would. I am interested in everything that interests my friends.”
Mr Burgrave’s smile became positively grandfatherly. “I thought so!” he said. “No, Miss North, I won’t allow you to sacrifice yourself by talking shop to me. To tell you the truth, it doesn’t interest me—out of office-hours—and therefore I am the last person in the world to inflict it upon you. I am sure you hear so much of it all day that you are as tired of the subject as I am of the revered name of General Keeling.”
“What, have you been hearing more about him?”
Mr Burgrave groaned. “Have I not! Michael Angelo was nothing to him. I always knew that he founded Alibad and dug its wells, planted the trees and constructed the canals—made Khemistan, in short. But now I am the unhappy recipient of endless personal anecdotes about him. One man tells me that he used to go about in the sun without a head-covering of any kind, trusting to the thickness of his hair—if it was not rude, I should say of his skull. Then comes one of his old troopers, and assures me solemnly that after a battle he has seen Sinjāj Kīlin unbutton his tunic and shake out the bullets which had passed through it without hurting him. Another remembers that he has seen him reading a letter from his wife while under fire—rather a pretty touch that—and another recalls for my admiration the fact that the General reserved an hour every morning for his private devotions, and has been known to keep the Commander-in-Chief waiting rather than allow it to be broken in upon.”
“But he was a splendid man,” said Mabel, ashamed of herself for laughing.
“Who doubts it? Only too splendid;—I understand the feelings of the gentleman who banished Aristides. But forgive me for lamenting my private woes to you, Miss North. Let us turn to more interesting themes. We are to see you in an appropriate rôle on Saturday, Miss Graham tells me.”
“I believe I am to give away the prizes at the Gymkhana—unless you would prefer to do it,” said Mabel, with sudden primness.
“I should not think of such a thing unless it would be a relief to you.”
“To me? I shall enjoy the prize-giving above all things. But why?”
“I imagined you might feel shy.” Mr Burgrave looked at her as kindly as ever, but Mabel fancied that he was disappointed in her in some way.
“He seems to think I am about sixteen,” she said to herself, and awoke to the fact that they had reached home, and that her companion had skilfully prevented her from saying a word about the question of the moment.
“Dick,” said Georgia to her husband, when she was alone with him that evening, “did you get any explanation out of Mr Burgrave?”
“I did—without asking for it. He told me quite calmly that the reinstatement of Bahram Khan was part of his programme, and that as I had taken such a strong line with regard to the youth’s banishment, he considered it better to relieve me of all responsibility about it. It would be pleasanter for both of us, he thought.”
“Pleasanter for you and him in your social relations, perhaps; but your prestige with the natives, Dick! What do they think?”
“Why, they gloat, most of ’em,” said Dick grimly.
“But the Amir and Bahadar Shah?”
“Oh, poor old Ashraf Ali sent his pet mullah to interview me while the Commissioner was taking an affectionate leave of his protégé. The old man really thought, or pretended to think, that I had a hand in the matter. Why hadn’t I told him that I desired Bahram Khan’s return instead of springing it upon him in that way? he wanted to know. Had he ever refused to take my advice? I had to assure him that I knew no more about it than he did, for if he once loses confidence in me, it means that we may as well retire from the frontier. Neither he nor the Sardars will stand a second spell of snubbing and suspicion.”
“But what did you advise him to do?”
“To choose the lesser of two evils. Bahram Khan will plot wherever he is, and Burgrave has pledged himself to see his father’s fortress of Dera Gul restored to him, but I advised the Amir strongly to keep him under his own eye at the capital. In any case we shall have one friend in the enemy’s camp, for the good old Moti-ul-Nissa sent a message by the mullah, ‘Tell the doctor lady’s husband that where my son goes I go from henceforth, and that no harm shall be devised against the Sarkar if I can prevent it.’”
“Dear old thing!” cried Georgia.
“But it’s not so much a rising that I’m afraid of at present. Bahram Khan will get the smaller obstacles out of his way first. Poor Bahadar Shah, who is no hero, sent to ask me by the mullah whether I would advise him to throw up his pretensions and retire into British territory. Of course I told him to sit tight, but no insurance office that respected itself would look at his life after to-day. And, Georgie, I am very much mistaken if Burgrave has not got worse in store for us.”
“Dick! what could there be worse?” Georgia’s face was blanched.
“I have a presentiment—call it a conviction, if you like—that they mean to withdraw the subsidy, and Ashraf Ali has got hold of the idea too.”
“But, Dick, that would be a direct breach of faith! They couldn’t do it—they couldn’t! The treaty that really cost my father his life, he had such trouble to get it ratified! Why, it has kept the frontier safe all these years——”
“My dear Georgie, that’s not what Burgrave and his school think about. You know as well as I do that this province is an anomaly, and has got to be reduced to the level of next-door. When Ashraf Ali received the subsidy, he accepted our suzerainty over Nalapur, and according to his lights he has acted up to his obligations. But our present rulers don’t care to keep the suzerainty, don’t care for a vassal state outside our boundaries, and do care for economising rupees.”
“But surely they must know——”
“That they will throw Ashraf Ali into the arms of Ethiopia, and extend Scythian influence down to our very borders, thanks to the way in which Fath-ud-Din has been allowed practically to repudiate Sir Dugald Haigh’s treaty? Why, Georgie, that’s just the sort of thing these fellows never see until it comes to pass. Then they lament that the world is so dreadfully out of joint, and say it all springs from our ingrained suspiciousness.”
“But, Dick, you wouldn’t countenance such a breach of faith?”
“No, I told Ashraf Ali so—told him he would hear of my resignation first. Funny thing, isn’t it, to take a man who knows the frontier as I do, and let him give five of the best years of his life to working for it night and day, and then to send a jack-in-office who has never seen it to reverse all he’s done? It’s a queer world, Georgie. But we’ll retire with clean hands, at any rate, you and I, and taste the modest joys of the pensioned in a suburban flat, with a five-pound note at Christmas-time from Mab and her Commissioner to help us along.”
Georgia could not trust herself to speak. She was holding Dick’s hand in hers, and smoothing his coat-cuff industriously.
“Well, never say die!” he went on. “I may get a berth in some Colonial defence force yet, and from that giddy height we’ll smile superior upon a jeering world, serenely conscious that we can do without the five-pound note.”
At one time Georgia would not have lost a moment in reminding him that she could in any case return to the active practice of her profession, but now she would not even suggest to Dick that last humiliation of living upon his wife’s earnings. Instead, she lifted his hand to her lips.
“We shan’t mind poverty, dear. We shall have been true to our people, and besides, your resignation may save the frontier. It will come out why you retired, and when once the reason is known, public opinion will be roused, and the Government will have to return to the old policy, even though we may not be here to carry it out. But oh, Dick, how can you speak civilly to Mr Burgrave after this?”
“Why, Georgie, the difficulty would be to speak uncivilly to him. The man is so wrapt up in his own greatness that he can’t imagine any one’s venturing to differ from him. He sweeps on like a glacier, removing all obstacles by his mere passage. The stones and rocks and things get carried along too, you know, whether they like it or not, and when the glacier has done with them it dumps them down in a neat heap, that’s all. Besides, we have to give Mab her chance.”
“If Mab marries him, I have done with her,” said Georgia, with conviction.
During the next fortnight the house was overrun by a horde of Christmas guests, who came from outlying forts and irrigation and telegraph stations to taste the joys of civilisation for three or four days, hurrying back like conscientious Cinderellas at a given moment, that the other man might have his turn. Mabel was immensely interested in these lads, who looked up to Dick with frank veneration, and sought for quiet talks with Georgia that they might tell her all their home news, and kept the house lively from early morning until their host reluctantly suggested that it was time for them to repair to their improvised bedrooms at night. Her interest did not go unrequited, for she had them all at her feet, regulating her favours so discreetly that none of them could complain that he was worse treated than his neighbour, and at the same time no one had undue cause for self-congratulation.
“I know you think I shall lose my head, Georgie,” she said, on the evening of Christmas Day, when she and Georgia had left the men to their nightly smoke; “and I really believe I should if it lasted. These boys are all so splendid. Each of them is a hero in the ordinary course of his day’s work, but he never thinks of it, and no one out here thinks of it, and at home no one even knows their names. How is it that all the men out here are so nice? The women, as far as I have seen, are distinctly inferior.”
“So sorry,” said Georgia humbly. “Perhaps we were born so.”
“Goose! I didn’t mean you. I meant the ordinary Anglo-Indian woman. With so many delightful men about, she ought to be proportionately better than at home.”
“Perhaps it’s just possible that the delightful men spoil her, Mab. What do you think?”
Mabel laughed consciously, as she reclined in a long chair, with her arms behind her head. “You mean that I have deteriorated perceptibly already, I suppose? But that must be the men’s fault. If their admiration is the right kind, it ought to elevate me, surely? Now don’t say that I trade on their honest admiration to flatter my self-love. I’m sick of that sort of thing. Besides, it’s a pleasure to them to admire me, and I consider that it does them good. I am a liberal education for them.”
“How nice it must be to feel that!”
“Yes, and I really am awfully fond of them, every one. I should like them all to win to-morrow. I can’t bear the thought that only one or two of them can get prizes; I shall feel so unfair. Georgie, what are you going to wear? Oh—” she sat up suddenly, with eyes wide with horror, “what a wretch I am! Georgie, I never remembered your dresses when I was so busy getting my own. I haven’t brought you a single one.”
“I guessed that some days ago,” said Georgia.
“Oh, how wicked of me! Take one of mine, Georgie—any of them—even the muslin. I deserve it.”
“I should look like a death’s head at a feast, indeed! Nonsense, Mab! I shall wear my red and white foulard.”
“The one I sent you out two years ago? Oh, it will be too dreadful! Sleeves and everything have altered since then. Besides, every one will know it.”
“What does that signify? It is quite fresh, and suits me very well. No one will remember it—not even Dick.”
But in this Georgia was mistaken. When she appeared the next morning, her husband looked suspiciously from her to Mabel.
“Didn’t you wear that dress last year, Georgie? I thought you were going to get a new one. Why don’t you have something floppy and frilly, like Mab?”
“Mab is a perfect dream,” said Georgia. “No amount of trains or fichus could make me look like her. You are very ungrateful, Dick. Who ever heard of a man’s quarrelling with his wife before for saving him a dressmaker’s bill?”
“I’ve a good mind to telegraph home at once,” grumbled Dick.
“But what good would that be for to-day? Never mind. I’ll get something terribly elaborate for next Christmas.”
“Oh, Georgie, how good of you not to give me away!” murmured Mabel, as Dick went out, grumbling, to see whether the dog-cart was ready. “But I can’t help being glad you didn’t take this gown. I don’t think I could have given it up.”