Читать книгу The Sirdar's Oath: A Tale of the North-West Frontier - Mitford Bertram - Страница 2

Raynier awoke in his club chambers the next morning, feeling, as he put it to himself, exceedingly cheap.

When we say awoke, rather are we expressing a recurring process which had continued throughout the few remaining night hours since, by force of circumstances and the swaying of the crowd, he had become separated from his companions, and had wisely found his way straight to bed instead of to the Peculiar Club. On this at any rate he congratulated himself; and yet hardly any sleep had come his way. The howling of patriotic roysterers had continued until morning light, and, moreover, his head was buzzing – not by reason of last night’s revelry, for in such he never got out of hand, but an ugly lump on one side of his forehead, and a swelled eye, reminded him that it is hard to rescue a maltreated stranger from the brutality of a London mob, and emerge unscathed oneself.

“Well, I do look a beauty,” he soliloquised as he stood before his glass, surveying the damage. “I shall have a bump the size and colour of a croquet ball for the next fortnight, and an eye to match. How a man of my age and temperament could have cut in with those young asses last night, I can’t think. Might have known what the upshot would be. And now I’ve got to go down to Worthingham to-day. Wonder what nice remark Cynthia will have to make. Perhaps she’ll give me the chuck. The fact of my being mixed up in a street row may prove too much for her exceeding sense of propriety.” And a faintly satirical droop curled down the corners of the thinker’s mouth.

Having fomented his bruises, and tubbed, and otherwise completed his toilet Raynier went down to breakfast, soon feeling immeasurably the better for the process. But in the middle a thought struck him; struck him indeed with some consternation. The malacca cane – the instrument with which he had almost certainly saved the life of the assailed Oriental, and which he had put into the hands of the latter as a weapon. It was gone, and – it was a gift from his fiancée.

Apart from such association he was fond of the stick, which was a handsome one and beautifully mounted. How on earth was he to recover it? His initials were engraved on the head; that, however, would furnish but faint clue. How should he find the man whom he had befriended – and even if he did, it was quite possible that the other had lost possession of the stick during the scrimmage. It might or might not find its way to Scotland Yard, but to ascertain this would take time. He could make inquiries at the police stations adjacent to the scene of last night’s émeute, or advertise, but that too would take time and he was urgently due at the abode of his fiancée that very day, for his furlough was rapidly drawing to a close, and his return to India a matter of days rather than of weeks.

Herbert Raynier served his country in the capacity of an Indian civilian, but most of his time of service had been passed in hot Plains stations, engendering an amount of constitutional wear and tear which caused him to look rather more than his actual age, such being in fact nearly through the thirties, but the sallowness of his naturally dark complexion had given way to a healthier bronze since he had come home on furlough five months back. By temperament he was a quiet man, and somewhat reserved, and this together with the fact that his countenance was not characterised by that square-jawed aggressiveness which is often associated in the popular estimation with parts, led people to suppose, on first acquaintance, that there was not much in him. Wherein they were wrong, although at the present moment there were chances of such latent abilities as he possessed being allowed to stagnate under sheer, easy-going routine: a potentiality which he himself recognised, and that with some concern. Physically he stood about five foot ten in his boots, and was well set up in proportion. He was fond of sport, though not aspiring to anything beyond the average in its achievement, and was not lacking in ideas nor in some originality in the expression of the same.

As he sat finishing his after-breakfast cheroot in the club smoking-room there entered two of his brethren-in-arms of the night before.

“There you are, Raynier, old chap. That’s all right. Why didn’t you roll up at the Peculiar after the fun? We were all there – Steele and Waring were doosid uneasy about you – thought you’d come to grief, that’s why we thought we’d look in early and make sure you hadn’t.”

“Early?”

“Why, yes. It’s only eleven. But I say, you jolly old cuckoo. You have got a damaged figurehead.”

“Yes, it’s a bore,” pronounced Raynier, pushing the bell, to order “pegs.” “And the worst of it is I’ve got to go down to the country this afternoon – to an eminently respectable vicarage, too.”

“Remedy’s easy. Don’t go.”

“That’s no remedy at all. I must.”

“Stick a patch over the eye, then.”

“But he can’t stick a patch over his head as well,” said the other.

“You two chaps have come off with hardly a scratch,” said Raynier – “and yet you were just as much in the thick of it as I was.”

“So we were. But I say, Raynier, I believe it’s a judgment on a staid old buffer like you for ‘mafeking’ around with a lot of lively sparks like us. Ha – ha – that wasn’t bad, I say, don’t-cher-know. ‘Mafeking!’ See it? Ah – ha – ha!”

“Oh, go away. It’s an outrage. At how many people’s hands have you courted destruction by firing that on them this morning?”

“Not many. But it’s awfully good, eh, old sportsman? Why I invented it.”

“Then you deserve death,” returned Raynier. “Oh, Grice, take him away, and drown him, will you; but stay – let him have his ‘peg’ first – since here it comes.”

“Anyone know what became of that interesting stranger?” went on Raynier, after the necessary pause.

“The Indian Johnny? Not much. We all got mixed up in the mob, and what with all the ‘bokos’ that were hit, and the claret flying, and then the bobbies rushing the lot, none of us knew what had happened to anyone else until we all found ourselves snug and jolly at the Peculiar.” And then followed an animated account of wounds and casualties received and doughty deeds effected.

“We thought you were taking care of the Indian Johnny, Raynier,” concluded Grice, “and that was why you didn’t turn up.”

“I wish I knew where to lay finger on the said Indian Johnny,” was the rejoinder.

“Why? Was he some big bug?”

“I don’t know. But he’s got my stick – or had it.”

“Rather. And didn’t he just lay about with it too. Looked as if he was quite accustomed to that sort of thing.”

“The worst of it is I rather value it,” went on Raynier. “In fact I’d give a trifle to recover it. Given me, you understand.”

“Oh – ah – yes, I understand,” said the other, with a would-be knowing wink.

“Why not try the police stations?” suggested the self-styled creator of the above vile pun. “The darkey may have been run in with a lot more for creating a disturbance.”

“Or the pawnbrokers,” said Grice – “for if it was captured by the enemy, why that honest fellow-countryman would lose no time in taking a bee-line for the nearest pawnshop with it. All that yelling must have been dry work.”

“But, I say, old chappie. What a juggins you were to give it him,” supplemented the other, sapiently.

“Oh, he didn’t know how to use his fists, and the poor devil was absolutely defenceless. And a good ‘Penang lawyer’ in a row of that kind is a precious deal better than nothing at all.”

“The darkey seemed to find it so,” said he named Grice. “Why it might have been a sword the way he laid about with it. I bet that chap’s good at single-stick. Wonder who he is. Some big Rajah perhaps. I say Raynier, old chap. You’ll have some of his following finding you out directly, with no end of lakhs of rupees, as a slight mark of gratitude, and all that sort of thing. Eh?”

“If so the plunder ought to be divided,” cut in the other gilded youth. “We all helped to pull him through, you know.”

“All right, so it shall,” said Raynier, “when it comes. As to which doesn’t it occur to you fellows that ‘some big Rajah’ is hardly likely to be found frisking around in the thick of an especially tough London crowd all by his little alones? But if he’d find me out only to return my stick it would be a ‘mark of gratitude’ quite sufficient for present purposes.”

“Why don’t you buy another exactly like it, old chap?” said Grice, who knew enough about his friend to guess at the real reason of the latter’s solicitude on account of the lost article. “Nobody would know the difference.”

Here was something of an idea, thought Raynier. But then the mounting and the engraving – that would take time, even if he could get it done exactly like the other, which he doubted. It was not alone on the score of an unpleasant moment with the donor that his mind misgave him. She would be excusably hurt, he reflected, remembering that the thing must have been somewhat costly, and under the circumstances represented a certain amount of self-denial. Decidedly he was in a quandary.

“Well, ta-ta, old chap,” said Grice, as the two got up to go. “We’ll try and find out something about the Rajah – in fact it’s our interest to do so, having an eye to those lakhs of rupees.”

“Yes – and let me know when you’ve made an end of Barker, here, as you’re bound to do if he fires off that ‘Mafeking’ outrage much more.”

“Raynier’s jealous,” said that wag. “I say, don’t go firing it off as your own down in the country, Raynier.”

“No show for me, because about one hundred thousand people scattered over the British Isles have awoke this morning to invent the same insanity.”

Speeding along in the afternoon sunshine, looking out upon the country whirling by, pleasant and green in its rich dress of early summer, Raynier was conscious of a feeling of relief in that he was leaving behind him the heat and dust of London, likewise the racket and uproar of a city gone temporarily mad; albeit a more or less profuse display of bunting in every station the express slid through, notified that the delirium was already spreading throughout the length and breadth of the land. He had the compartment to himself, which was more favourable to the vein of thought upon which he had embarked. When he had arrived home five months previously he had no more notion of returning an engaged man than he had of building a balloon and starting upon a voyage of discovery to Saturn. Yet here he was, and how had it come about? He supposed he ought to feel enraptured – most men of his acquaintance were – or pretended to be – under the circumstances. Yet he was not. How on earth had he and Cynthia Daintree ever imagined that they were suited to go through life together, the fact being that there was no one point upon which they agreed? But now they were under such compact, hard and fast; yet – how had it come about? Her father, the Vicar of Worthingham, had been a sort of trustee of his, long ago, and on his arrival in England had invited him to spend as much of his furlough at that exceedingly pretty country village as he felt inclined. And he had felt inclined, for he knew but few people in England, and the quiet beauty of English rural scenery appealed to his temperament, wherefore, Worthingham Vicarage knew how to account for a good deal of his time, and so did the Vicar’s eldest daughter. Here, then, was the answer to his own retrospective question – not put for the first time by any means. Propinquity, opportunity, circumstances and surroundings favourable to the growth and development of such – idiocy – he was nearly saying. All of which points to a fairly inauspicious frame of mind on the part of a man who in half an hour or so more would meet his fiancée.