Читать книгу The Flag of the Adventurer - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Morning brought—if not counsel—a considerable measure of cheerfulness to Eveleen. To her buoyant temperament protracted gloom was impossible, and her husband smiled to remember his momentary alarm. In her full enjoyment of the happiness she had for ever disclaimed, she was as shallow as any of the native women whose cause she had championed. Unfortunately he could not know what was the root of her pleasurable excitement this morning. His command to avoid the villages had reminded her of a plan for continuing Bajazet’s education that had occurred to her when riding with Sir Dugald Haigh one evening—but had been carefully concealed from that prudent young man. So far she had never ridden what she delighted to call “my Arab” when in company with others. She meant the accomplishments of her little steed to burst proudly on the men who had laughed at him and slandered his ancestry. Colonel Bayard had had some jumps put up for her in the compound, and encouraged her in many unsuccessful attempts to take Bajazet over them with the assurance that your true Arab was never a good jumper. Much practice had at length enabled her to get him over them after a fashion, and now she wished to try him over water. The Resident himself was her companion on the early morning ride—a parting compliment, since he was leaving by the up-river steamer later in the day; and as he was a sound, rather than an adventurous horseman, she found it decidedly dull, its decorum redeemed only by the romantic wildness of the escort of Khemistan Horse. Her time came when he and Richard were safely at work in the office, and she could start out again on Bajazet, attended by the meek syce and an orderly of satisfactorily brigandish appearance called Shab-ud-din. They rode out beyond the belt of gardens surrounding the city, so far that Shab-ud-din began to be anxious, and tried to warn her of something. He knew no English, the syce very little, and Eveleen about as little Persian, but their efforts towards mutual comprehension were assisted by the sound and vibration of heavy guns not far off, and she understood that the Khans’ artillery was practising somewhere in this direction. Her attendants were satisfied when she turned aside towards the river again, though they did not seem quite happy when she reached her goal. The country out here was a kind of chessboard, cut up in all directions by irrigation canals, and she had marked one which seemed exactly suited to her purpose. Deep and wide where it left the river, it parted with so much water to smaller canals on either side that at the point she had chosen it was a mere trickle between quite manageable banks. Bajazet did not appear to like it at first—perhaps to his desert-descended mind water was something to be respected rather than leapt over—but after she had dismounted and led him across once or twice, he began to enter into the idea, and his mistress flattered him with the assurance that he was a great little horse indeed.

There was only one drawback to her satisfaction, and that was Shab-ud-din’s inability to comprehend that he need not follow her backwards and forwards across the canal. He was very loyal and very dense, and evidently felt that wherever the Beebee went it was his duty to go too. His youth had not been spent in the hunting-field, and his horse was much heavier than Bajazet, so that when Eveleen increased the length of the jumps by moving farther down the canal, the results became rather alarming. Two or three falls in the soft sandy mud happily inflicted no serious injury, but the banks suffered a good deal, and so did the channel.

Engrossed in her sport, Eveleen did not realise how time was passing until the increasing heat of the sun began to make itself unpleasantly evident. It really would soon be too hot to go out in the daytime, she said to herself regretfully, finding the prospect of the long ride back to the Residency the reverse of attractive. She must be getting near a village, too—at least, there were people running across the fields; so droll for them to be coming out to work at this time of day! Well, just one more jump, to take her to the right side of the canal for home, and this would be really a good wide one. Turning to Shab-ud-din, she did her best, by word and gesture, to explain to him that he had better ride a little higher up, and not attempt to cross here, but as she rode towards the bank she heard him pounding after her. It was his own fault, the foolish fellow! she could not pull up now, but she hoped he would fall soft—the fragmentary thoughts passed through her mind as Bajazet rose to the leap. But this time he was not to sail lightly over the obstacle—“like a bird,” as she delighted to say,—for a man who must have been crouching unseen in the water-channel started up, waving his arms and shouting. Had Eveleen not been taken by surprise the good little horse might have cleared the interrupter, but involuntarily she deflected him ever so slightly from his course. He faltered, jumped short, and as he staggered among the stiff clods of the opposite bank Shab-ud-din and his big horse came thundering down upon the two. Shab-ud-din would probably have come off in any case, but in his horror at the scene in front of him he must have tried to pull up, and forthwith executed a complicated somersault sideways which left him groaning in the mud.

With an instinct born of long experience, Eveleen had freed her foot from the stirrup when she saw disaster imminent, but it was not necessary for her to roll from the saddle, nor was she thrown from it. What happened—to her exceeding wrath—was that the man whose interference had caused all the trouble seized the skirt of her long habit and deliberately dragged her to the ground while Bajazet was struggling for a foothold. The shock pulled the reins from her hands, and she saw her steed, freed from her weight, reach the top of the bank safely and dash off in one direction, while Shab-ud-din’s, struggling up with an energy which sent the clods flying every way at once, laboured heavily up the side and disappeared in the other. The syce was nowhere to be seen, and Eveleen found herself sitting in the damp mud of the channel, helplessly entangled in her habit, with Shab-ud-din lying motionless close at hand in an attitude that spoke to her experienced eye of broken bones, and an angry crowd, who seemed to have arrived on the scene by magic, yelling and dancing with rage all about her. She was absolutely defenceless, for she had even lost her whip in the fall, and every word of Persian she had ever known was gone completely out of her head—even if these Khemi cultivators could have understood it. The only thing she could do was to adjust her hat—which was half-way down her back—for the sun was blazing down upon her, and then to look as much as possible as if she was not in the least frightened, which was wholly untrue. If she could even have risen to her feet, she felt that she might have overawed the mob, but what could she do when it was impossible to free herself and stand up without assistance? The men were all armed—some with rusty but murderous-looking swords, all with heavy iron-shod sticks—and to judge by their attitude, they had every intention of using them on her. She found herself speculating which of them would strike the first blow—the signal for all the rest to fall on her—and decided in favour of a truculent person who was prancing about and swinging a huge tulwar in most unpleasant proximity to her head. Would Richard be sorry? the question presented itself irresistibly, and brought its own answer—— Undoubtedly, but it would be because his wife hadn’t had the sense to die decently in her bed!

It would not have been Eveleen not to laugh at the picture thus called up, and the sight of her amusement gave pause to her assailants. They did not shout quite so loud, and the tulwar came down a little farther off instead of actually upon her. In this moment of comparative relief she saw the stranger. He was riding along the bank towards them—as fast as the insecure footing would allow, dashing the clods this way and that—and he was leading Bajazet. He was richly dressed, with a gorgeous pagri striped with gold, but his complexion was not dark—rather the brick-red of a European burnt by tropical suns. He shouted angrily as he came near, and the mob gave one glance of terror and dissolved helter-skelter. He turned and shouted to some one out of sight, and the rush of horses’ feet and clank of accoutrements seemed to show that he was attended by a military escort, which he was directing to pursue the fugitives. He dismounted as he came near—Eveleen’s syce appeared out of space to take the horses’ bridles—and stumbled down the rough bank towards her.

“I trust you ain’t hurt, ma’am? Bless my soul, if it ain’t Miss Evie—Miss Delany, I should say!”

The voice, with its Cockney accent, brought back vague memories of misty mornings, of purpling copses and vivid turf, of battered stone walls and untrimmed hedges masking sunken lanes—all the accompaniments of a day’s hunting in the old life. But why not an Irish voice? With a sudden effort Eveleen found the clue—recalled a young man, not a gentleman, who had come into the neighbourhood on some legal business, and having been bitten by the prevailing mania, had afforded a rich feast of amusement to the members of the hunt.

“It’s not you, Mr Carthew?” she said incredulously.

“’Sh, miss! They call me Tamas Sahib here, and it’s safer. To think of comin’ across you!”

“And they call me Mrs Ambrose,” she laughed, as he helped her up. “But why would you be going about dressed up like this?”

“I ain’t one of your lot,” he avoided her eye. “Master-General of Ordnance to their Highnesses—that’s what I am. The Resident he don’t know nothin’ about me, and I’ll thank you, ma’am, not to tell him nothin’.”

“As you please,” she said, rather perplexed. “But you’ll not mind my telling Major Ambrose—in confidence——” as she surprised a look of something like alarm. “Sure you must see he’ll wish to thank you for coming to my help,” with a touch of hauteur. What was the man so mysterious about?

“As you please, ma’am. But you’ll remember I ain’t an Englishman here—just one of these people.” He had wrung most of the water out of her skirt by this time, and brushed off some of the mud—clumsily, but with evident goodwill. “You did better for me once,” as he looked disparagingly at his handiwork.

“The time I cot your horse for you when you were in the boghole? Ah no, nonsense! I didn’t even try to brush the mud off you, because you were all mud, every bit of you, were you not? But would you look at us, talking over old times like this, and leaving poor Shab-ud-din to lie and groan!”

“Let me see to him, ma’am. It’s no job for you.”

“That it is, when he came by his fall trying to help me. What d’ye think now? his collar-bone. I’d say it was, and maybe an arm as well—and how in the wide world will we get him home?”

“If you’ll be good enough to leave it to me, ma’am—believe me, you must. It’s for my own sake——” shamefacedly. “It won’t do for my men to catch me talking privately with you. If you’ll mount and follow me, they shall bring the poor chap in.”

“Follow you?” her eyebrows went up slightly.

“If you don’t mind, ma’am. That’s the way here, you know, and as I was saying, I’m one of ’em now.”

With what she felt was exemplary meekness, Eveleen allowed the syce to mount her, and waited while her old acquaintance rode to meet the wild horsemen who formed his escort. They were returning in triumph, bringing with them several of the fugitive assailants, who bore every appearance of having been roughly handled. It occurred to her suddenly that to deliver over Khemi villagers to a band of Arabits was probably equivalent to sentencing them to death, and she called after Carthew—

“What was it made the villagers so angry? What were they after?”

“You were breakin’ down their canal, and they thought you meant destroyin’ it, ma’am. I’ll teach ’em to make a fuss about what their betters do in future.”

“Now, now, ’twas my fault,” said Eveleen. “They have got a good beating, by the look of them, so let them go, and please give them ten rupees from me, to pay for the damage.”

“It’s encouragin’ ’em to do it again——” he began.

“They won’t get the chance, or I’m much mistaken—knowing Major Ambrose as I do,” with a sigh. “No, ’twas just to show them I wasn’t meaning to do any harm.” She watched Carthew as he met his followers, had the prisoners ranged in front of him and harangued them impressively, then received money from an attendant who produced it from some mysterious hiding-place in his girdle, and distributed it among them. It made her smile to see that he shepherded his troopers carefully back, evidently suspecting that otherwise they might follow the pardoned criminals and force them to disgorge. Leaving two men to look after Shab-ud-din, he led the way again towards Qadirabad, Eveleen following him, with the syce at her stirrup, and the escort bringing up the rear. The sun was very hot by this time, Bajazet was tired and stumbled more than once, and Eveleen drooped in her saddle, trying to nerve herself in advance for the ordeal of meeting a justly incensed Richard. She met him sooner than she expected, in a cloud of dust, with an escort of Khemistan Horse. Carthew drew aside, with an admirable air of contempt alike for the service he had rendered and for its object. Richard was angry.

“What have you been doing with yourself now?” he demanded of his muddy and dishevelled wife.

“I got a fall, and this—this gentleman—something in the Khans’ Artillery he is—helped me up.”

“Sardar Sahib”—Richard rode a little nearer the disdainful figure of the rescuer—“I am deeply indebted to you. Accept my acknowledgments.”

“It is nothing, sahib. I happened by chance upon the spot.”

“Don’t let him go!” Eveleen whispered anxiously. “There were some villagers—I spoiled their canal or something—he paid ten rupees for me—we must give it him back.”

“I don’t carry piles of coin about with me, my dear, but I imagine he will trust me. Or have you already given him your whip in pledge?”

Horror-stricken, Eveleen realised that she had not recovered her gold-mounted whip—the gift of the hunt on her marriage. “It’s gone—lost!” she said despairingly. “I must go back—or another day, perhaps—and look for it.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. I understand, Sardar Sahib, there’s a small matter of money between us. It shall be sent to your quarters in an hour without fail. But I am still infinitely your debtor.”

“The obligation is on my side, sahib. May you be fortunate!” and with due interchange of compliments the two parties separated.

“This is the last time you’ll ride out without an escort, my dear!” said Richard pleasantly. “It’s clear you ain’t able to take care of yourself. That’s the Yankee chap who commands the Khans’ Artillery, I presume? How did he contrive to be on the spot so pat?”

“How would I know?” listlessly. “But it’s English he is—not American. I know him.”

“You have the most extraordinary set of acquaintances of any female I have ever met! He gives himself out as American—that’s all I know. Where have you seen him before?”

“He used to follow the hounds one season, a few years ago. ’Twas just when Pickwick was coming out, and everybody called him Mr Winkle, for he’d turn up on the most hopeless crocks you ever saw, and as often on the ground as in the saddle. Some sort of attorney’s clerk he was—hunting up evidence or something, but it wasn’t much he got, unless he found it in the mud.”

“His riding has improved since then, evidently—or he rides better horses,” drily. “What became of him?”

“My dear Ambrose, how would I know? I did hear a rumour that he had got into some trouble and enlisted, but ’twas likely nothing but scandal.”

“And then got into some more trouble and deserted—eh?”

“Sure y’are very ready to belittle the poor fellow!” Eveleen turned upon her husband. “I suppose that’s the measure of the value you set upon your wife—the way you treat the man who’s just saved her life?”

“You had not told me the extent of the obligation, my dear. But the greater it is, the more careful you had better be to maintain the distance he has fixed between himself and us. The fellow is undoubtedly a deserter from our artillery—whether from the Bengal side or this I don’t know; the native princes are always ready to entertain ’em to instruct their troops. I have told you he passes himself off as a Yankee—that’s to prevent our making enquiries, of course, and perhaps also to evade the suspicions of his present employers. They would smell a rat at once did he show any desire for intercourse with the Agency. There’s no manner of doubt he’s a deserter.”

“Ambrose, you wouldn’t contemplate laying information against him?” anxiously.

“What do you take me for, my dear? No doubt it’s my duty, but as you have reminded me, the fellow has placed me under a profound obligation. If you’ll remember the fact yourself, and be content to pass him without acknowledgment should you meet, so much the better for him.”

Eveleen did not agree with this at all. The tone in which Richard spoke of the “profound obligation” was disagreeable, and the thought of cutting her rescuer dead was more so. But she was too much subdued and dispirited to embark on further wordy warfare just now, though she made her own resolutions privately. Richard, observing her unwonted meekness, drew flattering deductions from it, and improved the occasion by intimating that she would do well to relieve the Resident’s mind by promising to confine her rides within orthodox limits in future. But this was too much to ask, and when Colonel Bayard came out anxiously to meet the rescue expedition and enquire how it had sped, his solicitude did not meet with the gratitude it deserved, since he incautiously expressed the same hope. What was to happen if she felt she must go out for a gallop when she was bound by a promise not to? Eveleen demanded indignantly; and thus faced by the old problem of the immovable object and the irresistible force, Colonel Bayard wisely confined himself to laying it down, in the hearing of his staff, that in no case was she to leave the compound in future without either an escort or European attendance. This was galling, and she sought her own rooms in much depression of spirit. But the misfortunes of this unfortunate day were not yet at an end. Richard, who had accompanied her in a considerate silence which she would certainly not have maintained had their cases been reversed, suddenly found his tongue.

“There was a letter for you in the dâk—here it is. That brother of yours is honouring you, I presume. Why don’t the fellow learn to write? Such a fist I never saw—nor anybody else neither. Here this letter has been up to Sahar and down to Bab-us-Sahel again—and all his fault.”

“The Delanys think more of fighting than of writing,” said Eveleen succinctly. It sounded so neat that she felt quite cheered.

“No doubt. I’ll wager anything the fellow wants more money, or he wouldn’t have written now. If he does, you had better leave it to me to answer him.”

“I’ll not do anything of the sort. He don’t want money, I’m certain, and if he did, he wouldn’t take yours.”

“H’m!” said Richard Ambrose infuriatingly.

“I tell you he wouldn’t look at it—not if you offered him millions, and brought it to him on your bended knees!”

“That”—with the strict moderation she found so trying—“is hardly likely. Well, my dear, I’ll leave you to enjoy your letter.”

But Ketty had something to say first, and she said it at length, as she removed her mistress’s mud-stained garments and disclosed an extensive system of bruises. In vain did Eveleen assure her that she had been worse bruised many a time after a day’s hunting, the handmaid remained of opinion that “Madam-sahibs no done ride that way.” As a Parthian shot, even as she with drew by command, she expressed the hope that Master would stop these rides, but by this time Eveleen was established on her couch in a deliciously cool muslin wrapper, sipping a cup of tea, and preparing to break the seals of her letter.

Alas, alas! Brian was in trouble still. By the most unfortunate chance in the world, at this very last moment the brother officer on whom he had relied to relieve him—at a price—of an elaborate fowling-piece had been invalided home, and was selling his own guns, and no other purchaser could be found. The sum at issue was a paltry one—three hundred rupees would cover it, but without those three hundred rupees Brian could not appear before Sir Harry Lennox and proudly declare himself free of debt. Simply and naturally he applied to the helper who had never yet failed him. Surely Evie’s husband could not refuse to advance so small a sum if she asked it? He might cut up a bit rusty, but it would only be for a minute or two. Alas! Richard’s wont was not merely to let the sun go down upon his wrath, but to cover that wrath up carefully to keep it warm for the night—so Eveleen had once declared aghast, in her astonishment at a method so unlike the quickly passing tempests to which she was accustomed. And moreover, even if she could have appealed to him two hours ago, it was absolutely impossible after the last words that had passed between them. Even for Brian’s sake—rather, perhaps, especially for Brian’s sake—she could not expose herself and him to the certainty of a refusal couched as Richard Ambrose would couch it. But something must be done, for at the end of his letter Brian supplied an additional reason:—

“So do your best for me, my dear girl, for I am bruk entirely, as old Tim the huntsman used to say. If you don’t, you will lose more than you bargain for—this is a dead secret. I hear old Sir Harry is bound for Kaymistaun before long, so stump up the tin somehow if you have any fancy for seeing

“Your despairing brother,

“Brian Delany.”

But how? Eveleen’s first thought was to apply to Colonel Bayard, but the thought was relinquished as soon as formed. He would press upon her three thousand rupees instead of three hundred if he had it, but he would certainly make Richard a party to the transaction—and then it would be at an end. She became as despairing as Brian himself as she ran over the names of the various men with whom she came in contact. Some of them would be unable to raise the money, having solved the problem of existing on chits eked out by a judicious distribution of their pay as it came in; some would be so proper that they would tell Richard at once; others would hold over her the threat of telling him, and do so at last. Clearly there was nothing to be done in that way. She must sell something—or, at any rate, get an advance on something, and that not from the Soucars who acted as bankers to the Agency, but from some firm without official connections. The idea sounded hopeful. Her own simple rural life had known nothing of pawnbrokers, but she had relatives in Dublin who, in common with the rest of their circle, were wont to “deposit” their ancestral jewellery—at the bank, it was politely understood—save during the brief Castle season, while the family plate was “stored” in like manner except when required for a rare dinner-party. She must certainly pawn something, since the few odd coins in her own possession, if hunted up from all the nooks and corners where they somehow found hiding-places, might possibly amount to five rupees, but more probably would not.

But what could she pawn? She had so little jewellery that Richard would be sure to notice it if any particular ornament was not worn for some time, and none of it was very costly. She knew little about values, but she feared it might need all her trinkets to serve as security for three hundred rupees. All save one, that is. Impulsively she rose, and going to her jewel-case, took out the turquoise disc. To the Western eye it was not particularly attractive, but the Oriental mind attached to it a sentimental worth. She recalled the day when she had worn it at Bombay to show Brian, who was staying with her, and the awe and reverence with which his bearer, a Northern man, had viewed it. His eyes were glued to it from the moment he first distinguished it amid the laces on her breast, and when she took it off and handed it to Brian to examine, the servant retreated a little, as though either afraid or consciously unworthy to approach. When his master demanded what was the matter, the man explained that the stone was undoubtedly the Seal of Solomon, bearing the Name at which all the demons trembled, and endowing its owner with power to compel their services. Nothing more was needed to make the brother and sister waste the whole evening, and all the sealing-wax in the house, in trying to produce a satisfactory impression, entirely without success. The bearer, appealed to with ribaldry by his master, pointed out that the markings on the stone might by the eye of faith be interpreted as forming the required letters. It was the seal itself, not the impression, that signified, he said, and to cut it, as the sahib suggested, would be impious in the extreme, since it already bore all that was necessary. He ended by adjuring Eveleen to keep it safely, and pointed out the value which must have been attached to it by the former possessor who had suspended it from its strong steel chain.

“Well, it’s not much use to me!” said Eveleen. “Not being Solomon, I can’t wear a ring the size of a soup-plate, and Ambrose don’t like to see it round my neck. It may be very nice and magical, as your man says, but what good’s that when I don’t know how it works?”

“Ah, sure the thing will come in some time,” said Brian vaguely. “Let me have a try with it. Rubbing, now—that’s what it wants, ain’t it? I’ll give it a rubbing it won’t forget in a hurry!”

But no amount of rubbing produced any effective manifestation, and now the stone was to be made useful in another way. Any pawnbroker would surely be willing to advance three hundred rupees on such a treasure. But the difficulty was to find him. Eveleen could not quite imagine herself scouring the Qadirabad Bazar for a pawnbroker—especially with a mounted escort at her heels—and she did not like the idea of trusting any of the servants. Then came a happy thought.

“Tom Carthew, of course! A disreputable acquaintance, Ambrose may call him if he likes, but who better can there be to help me do a disreputable thing? Tom Carthew’s the man!”