Читать книгу Miss Stuart's Legacy - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 5

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The dawn of another day was just breaking, when the rattle and clatter which had formed an accompaniment to Belle's wakeful dreams all night long, ceased at the last stage out from Faizapore. Belle stepped out of the palki-gharri to stretch her cramped limbs, and looked round her with eyes in which sleep still lingered.

A mud village lay close to the road, and from an outlying hut the ponies, destined to convey her the remaining five miles, struggled forth reluctantly. The coachman was furtively pulling at some one else's pipe; a naked anatomy, halt and blind of an eye, dribbled water from an earthen pot over the hot axles; two early travellers were bathing in a pool of dirty water. Belle standing in the middle of the glaring white highway, instinctively turned to where, in the distance, a slender church-spire rose above the bank of trees on the horizon. That was familiar!--that she understood. Born in India, and therefore a daughter of the soil, she could not have been further removed in taste and feeling from the toiling self-centred cosmogony of the Indian village in which she stood, had she dropped into it from another planet. So, alien in heart, she passed through the tide of life which sets every morning towards a great cantonment, looking on it as on some strange, new picture. Beyond all this, among people who ate with forks and spoons and went to church on Sundays, lay the life of which she had dreamed for years. The rest was a picturesque background; that was all.

A final flourish of an excruciating horn, gateposts guiltless of gates, a ragged privet hedge curving intermittently to a bright blue house set haphazard, cornerwise, in a square dusty expanse,--and the journey was over.

It was not only her cramped limbs that made Belle feel weak and unsteady as she stood before the seemingly deserted house. Suddenly, from behind a projecting corner, came a wrinkled beldame clad in dingy white bordered with red. With one hand she grasped a skinny child dressed in flannel night garments of Macgregor tartan, with the other she held up her draggling petticoats and salaamed profusely, thus displaying a pair of bandy, blue-trousered legs.

Belle looked at her with distinct aversion. "I think I have made a mistake," she said; "this can't be Colonel Stuart's house."

The woman grinned from ear to ear. "Ar'l right, missy ba. Mem sahib comin'. This b'y sonny baba." She broke in on the whining wail of her voice (which made Belle think of a professional beggar) to apostrophise her charge with loud-tongued abuse for not saying good morning to his "sissy."

Belle gasped. Could this dirty dark boy be her brother Charlie? Then a sudden rush of pity for the little fellow whose big black eyes met hers with such distrust, made her stoop to kiss him. But the child, reluctant and alarmed, struck at her face with his lean brown fingers and then fled into the house howling, followed full tilt by his aged attendant.

Belle would have felt inclined to cry, if the very unexpectedness of the attack, joined to the sight of the ayah's little bandy legs in hot pursuit, had not roused her ever-ready sense of humour. She laughed instead, and in so doing showed that she could hold her own with life; for no one throws up the sponge until the faculty of coming up smiling, even at one's own discomfiture, has been lost. And while she laughed, a new voice asserted itself above the howls within; a voice with, to Belle's ears, a strangely novel intonation, soft yet distinctly staccato, sharpening the vowels, clipping the consonants, and rising in pitch at the end of each sentence. It heralded the advent of a tall, stout lady in a limp cotton wrapper, who straightway took Belle to a languidly-effusive embrace, while she poured out an even flow of wonderings, delights, and endearments. The girl, with the reserve taught by long years of homelessness, felt embarrassed at the warm kisses and tepid tears showered upon her; then, ashamed of her own unresponsiveness, tried hard to realise that this was really the great event,--the homecoming to which she had looked forward ever since she could remember. She felt vexed with herself, annoyed at her own failure to reach high pressure point. Yet she was not conscious of disappointment, and gave herself up willingly to the voluble welcomes of three slender, dark-eyed girls, who presently came running in, clad like their mother in limp cotton wrappers. They sat beside her on the bare string bed in the bare room which looked so cheerless to Belle's English eyes, and chattered, fluttered, and pecked at her with little kisses, like a group of birds on a branch.

Mrs. Stuart was meanwhile drying her ready tears on a coarse, highly-scented pocket handkerchief, giving orders for boundless refreshments, and expressing her joy in alternate English and Hindustani. Belle, beset on all sides by novelty, found it difficult to recognise which language was being spoken, so little change was there in voice or inflection. At last, amid the babel of words and embraces, she managed to enquire for her father. The question produced a sudden gravity, as if some sacred subject had been introduced. In after years she recognised this extreme deference to the housemaster as typical of the mixed race, but at the time, it made her heart beat with a sudden fear of evil.

"Colonel Stuart is very well, thank you," replied her stepmother, showing a distinct tendency to reproduce the coarse handkerchief. "He will, I am sure, be very pleased to see you;--indeed that is one reason why I am glad myself. Though, of course, I welcome you for your own sake too, my darling girl. I am only a stepmother, I know, but I will allow no difference between you and my own three. So I told the mess-president yesterday--'My daughters cannot go to your ball, Captain Jenkins,' I said, 'unless Belle goes also.' So, of course, he sent you an invitation." Mrs. Stuart had a habit of saying "of course" as if she agreed plaintively with the decrees of Providence.

"But when"--began Belle, her mind far from balls.

"To-night," chorused the three girls; a chorus followed by voluble solos adjuring her to put on her smartest frock, because all the men were frantic to see the original of the photograph which, it appeared, had been duly handed round for inspection and admiration. Belle neither blushed nor felt indignant; her face fell however when she found that her father would not be up for another two hours, but the bated breath with which they spoke of his morning sleep prevented her from rebellion. Those two hours seemed an eternity, and as she sat waiting for him in the dim drawing-room, her heart beat with almost sickening force at each sound.

Unconscious as yet of disappointment, of anything save not unpleasant surprise, she still was conscious of an almost pathetic insistence that father must be the father of her dreams.

A mellow voice from the window calling her by name startled her from her watch by the door. She turned, to see a tall figure in scarlet and gold standing against the light which glittered on a trailing sword.

There was no doubt this time. With a cry of "Father? oh yes, you are father!" she was in his arms. To him also came the re-incarnation of a half-forgotten dream. The fair, slim, white-robed girl standing in the dim shadows, made the years vanish and youth return. "Good God, child, how like you are to your poor mother!" he faltered, and the ring in his voice made his daughter feel as if life held no more content.

Despite years of dissipation Colonel Stuart was still a singularly fine-looking man; well set up, and if a trifle fat in his dressing-gown, no more than portly in a tightly-buttoned tunic. He had always had a magnificent way with women, a sort of masterful politeness, a beautiful overbearing condescension, which the majority of the sex described as the sweetest of manners. And now, inspired by his little girl's undisguised admiration, he excelled himself, discoursing on his delight in having her with him, and on the impossibility of thanking Heaven sufficiently for the care it had taken of her. On this last point he spoke in the same terms that he was accustomed to use towards his hostess at the conclusion of a visit; that is to say, with the underlying conviction that she had only done her duty. He drew a touching picture of his own forlornness, when, as a matter of fact, the very thought of her had passed so completely out of his life, that her death would only have caused an unreal regret. His eloquence however brought conviction to himself. So, to all intents and purposes, he became a fond father, because he felt as if he had been one. After all, Belle, even had she known the truth, would have no real cause for distress. We have no lien on the past of another, or on the future either; the present is all we can claim, and that only to a certain limited extent.

In truth it would have required little self-deception to convince any one that Belle had always been an abiding factor in life. She was a daughter any man might well have been proud to possess. Tall and straight, clear-eyed and bright, with wholesome thoughts and tastes expressed in every feature. As she brought a cup of tea to her father, her face alight with pleasure, her eyes brilliant with happiness, she looked the picture of all an English girl ought to be.

"Thank you, my dear," said the Colonel viewing the offering dubiously. "I think,--I mean,--I should prefer a peg,--a B. and S.,--a brandy and soda. The fact is I had a confounded bad night, and it might do me good, you know."

He was faintly surprised at finding himself making excuses for what was a daily habit; but it was delightful to bask in the tender solicitude of Belle's grey eyes, as he poured out, and drank the dose with an air of accurate virtue. Once more he imposed on himself; on every one in fact but the servant, who, with the forethought of laziness, sat outside with the brandy-bottle lest he should be summoned again. And when, finally, the Colonel rode off to his committee on his big Australian charger, Belle thought the world could never have contained a more magnificently martial figure. That this gorgeous apparition should condescend to wave its hand to her at the gate, was at once so bewildering and so natural, that all lesser details faded into insignificance before this astounding realisation of her dreams.

This was fortunate, for many were the readjustments necessary ere the day was over. Breakfast, where Belle sat blissfully at her father's side, revealed two handsome, overdressed young men redolent of scent and sleek as to hair. These the Miss Van Milders, still in rumpled wrappers, introduced as their brothers Walter and Stanley, adding by no means covert chaff about "store clothes," whereat the young fellows giggled like girls, and Belle became almost aggressively sisterly in her manner. Walter was in tea, or rather had been so; as the plantation appeared to be undergoing transmutation into a limited Company, in order, Belle was told, to produce a dividend. Stanley was reading for some examination, after which somebody was to do something for him. It was all very voluble and vague. Meanwhile they stayed at home quite contentedly; satisfied to lounge about, play tennis, and keep a tame mongoose.

Towards the end of the meal, however, a red-haired youth slouched into the room, thrust an unwilling hand into Belle's when introduced as "your cousin Dick," and then sat down in silence with all the open awkwardness of an English schoolboy. Afterwards, whenever Belle's cool grey eyes wandered to that corner, they met a pair of fiery brown ones also on the reconnoitre.

Besides these present relations there were others constantly cropping up in conversation; and of them Belle had enough ere the day was done. The young men chattered over their cigarettes on the verandah; the girls chattered over Belle's boxes, which they insisted on unpacking at once; Mrs. Stuart chattered of, and to her servants. It was a relief when, after luncheon, the whole house settled into the silence of siesta, though Belle herself was far too excited to rest.

Dinner brought a bitter disappointment in Colonel Stuart's absence; for she had excused herself from the ball on plea of fatigue, in the hopes of an evening with her father. It was Cousin Dick who, as they sat down to table, answered the expectation in Belle's face. "The Colonel never dines on ball nights, he goes to mess. You see, the girls bobbing up and down annoy him, and it is beastly to see people bolting their food in curl-papers."

"I'd speak grammar if I were you," retorted Mildred Van Milder, flushing up. Her fringe was a perpetual weariness to her, sometimes demanding the sacrifice of a dance in order to allow hair-curlers to do their perfect work.

"And I wouldn't wear a fringe like a poodle," growled Dick; whereat Mrs. Stuart plaintively wondered whence he got his manners, and wished he was more like her own boys.

Poodles or no poodles, when the dancing-party appeared ready for the fray, Belle could hardly believe her eyes. The sallow-faced girls of the morning in their limp cotton wrappers were replaced by admirable copies of the latest French fashion-prints. Their elaborately-dressed hair, large dark eyes, and cream-coloured skins (to which art had lent a soft bloom denied by nature under Indian skies), joined to the perfect fit of their gowns, compelled attention. Indeed, when Maud, to try the stability of a shoe, waltzed round the room with her brother, Belle was startled at her own admiration for their lithe, graceful, sensuous beauty.

"I'll tell you what it is," cried Mabel, the eldest of the three; "you'll have a ripping good time tonight, Maudie. I never saw you look so cheek." She meant chic, but the spelling was against her. As for Mrs. Stuart, she appeared correctly attired in black satin and bugles. The girls saw to that, suppressing with inexorable firmness the good lady's hankering after gayer colours and more flimsy stuffs.

Left alone with Cousin Dick, Belle pretended to read, while in reality she was all ears for the sound of returning wheels. It was nearly ten o'clock, and, to her simple imagination, time for her father to come home. The clock struck, and Dick, who had been immersed in a book at the further corner of the room, laid it aside, and bringing out a chessboard began to set the men. He paused, frowned, passed both hands through his rough red hair, and finally asked abruptly if she played. A brief negative made him shift the pieces rapidly to a problem, and no more was said. Again the clock struck, and this time Dick came and stood before her. He was a middle-sized, broad-shouldered youth about her own age, with a promise of strength in face and figure. "You had better go to bed," he said still more abruptly. "The Colonel won't be home till morning. It isn't a bit of good your waiting for him."

This was the second time that he had stepped in to her thoughts, as it were, and Belle resented the intrusion. "Don't let me keep you up," she replied. "I'd just as soon be alone."

"Then you'll have your wish, I expect," he answered coolly, as he swept the chessmen together and left the room.

Some two hours after Belle woke from sleep to the sound of an impatient voice. "Bearer! Bearer! peg lao, quick! Hang it all, Raby! you must, you shall stop and give me my revenge. You've the most cursed good luck--"

"Father!" She rose from her chair with cheeks flushed like those of a newly-awakened child. The tall, fair young man who stood beside Colonel Stuart turned at the sound of her voice, then touched his companion on the arm. "Some one is speaking to you."

"God bless my soul, child! I thought you were at the ball. Why didn't you go?" His tone was kind, if a little husky, and he stretched a trembling hand towards her.

"I waited to see you, father," she replied, laying hers on his arm with a touch which was a caress.

The tall young man smiled to himself. "Will you not introduce me to your daughter, Colonel?" he said with a half-familiar bow towards Belle.

Colonel Stuart looked from one to the other as if he had never seen either of them before. "Introduce you,--why not? Belle, this is John Raby: a fellow who has the most infernal good luck in creation."

"I have no inclination to deny the fact at this moment," interposed the other, bowing again.

The implied compliment was quite lost on Belle, whose eyes and ears were for her father only. "I waited for you," she said with a little joyous laugh, "and fell asleep in my chair!"

Once more the Colonel looked from one to the other. The mere fact of his daughter's presence was in his present state confusing, but that she should have been waiting for him was bewildering in the extreme. How many years ago was it that another slim girl in white had gazed on him with similar adoration?

"You had better go to bed now," he said with almost supernatural profundity. "Good night. God bless you."

"Let me stay, please, father. I'm not a bit tired," she pleaded.

He stood uncertain, and John Raby drew out his watch with a contemptuous smile. "Half-past one, Colonel; I must be off."

"Hang it all!" expostulated the other feebly. "You can't go without my revenge. It ain't fair!"

"You shall have it sometime, never fear. Good night, Miss Stuart; we can't afford to peril such roses by late hours."

Again his words fell flat, their only result being that he looked at her with a flash of real interest. When he had gone Belle knelt beside her father's chair, timidly asking if he was angry with her for sitting up.

"Angry!" cried the Colonel, already in a half doze. "No, child! certainly not. Dear! dear! how like you are to your poor mother." The thought roused him, for he stood up shaking his head mournfully. "Go to bed, my dear. We all need rest. It has been a trying day, a very trying day."

Belle, as she laid her head on the pillow, felt that it had been so indeed; yet she was not disappointed with it. She was too young to criticise kindness, and they had all been kind, very kind; even Charlie had forgotten his first fright; and so she fell asleep, smiling at the remembrance of the old ayah's bandy legs.