Читать книгу The Advanced-Guard - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 7

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Captain Ferrers was jogging gloomily across the desert from Fort Shah Nawaz to Alibad, and his face was only the index to his thoughts. At the moment he did not know whether he hated more the outpost of which he was in command or the errand that was taking him to Alibad, and as he rode he cursed his luck. There was no denying that everything seemed to go wrong with him. Harassed by debts and awkward acquaintances at Bab-us-Sahel, he had acquiesced with something like relief in Sir Henry Lennox’s suggestion, which was practically a command, that he should sever himself altogether from his old associates by taking service on the frontier. But, knowing as he did that he was sent there partly as a punishment and partly in hope of saving him for better things, he felt it quite unnecessary to conciliate his gaoler, as he persisted in considering Major Keeling. The two men were conscious of that strong mutual antipathy which sometimes exists without any obvious or even imagined reason, and Major Keeling was not sorry when Ferrers showed an inclination to claim the command at Shah Nawaz as his right. It was not an ideal post for a man who needed chiefly to be saved from himself; but Ferrers was senior to all the other men save Porter the Engineer, who could not be spared from the head station. Therefore Ferrers had his desire, and loathed it continuously from the day he obtained it. The place was no fort in reality, merely a cluster of mud-brick buildings, standing round a courtyard in which the live stock of the garrison was gathered for safety at night, and possessing a gateway which could be blocked up with thorn-bushes. On every side of it spread the desert, with some signs of cultivation towards the south, and in the north the dark hills which guarded the Akrab Pass, the door into Central Asia. To Ferrers and his detachment fell the carrying out in this neighbourhood of the policy outlined by Major Keeling in his conversation at the dinner-table—the protection of the peaceable inhabitants of the district, and the incessant harrying of all disturbers of the peace, whether from the British or the Nalapuri side of the frontier. At first the life was fairly exciting, though Ferrers’ one big fight was spoilt by the necessity of sending to Alibad for reinforcements; but now that things were settling down, it was irksome in the extreme to patrol the country unceasingly without ever catching sight of an enemy. Ferrers panted against the quietness which Major Keeling’s rigorous rule was already establishing on both sides of the border. He would have preferred the system prevailing in the neighbouring province, where a raid on the part of the tribes was answered by a British counter-raid, when villages were burnt, crops destroyed, and women and children dismissed homeless to the hills, the troops retiring again immediately to their base of operations until the tribes had recovered strength sufficiently for the whole thing to be gone through again. It was a poor thing to nip raids in the bud, or arrest them when they were only just begun: a big raid, followed by big reprisals, was the sort of thing that lent zest to frontier-life and stimulated promotion. However, Major Keeling’s whole soul was set against thrilling experiences of this kind, and Ferrers was forced to submit. But his love of fighting was as strong as ever, and had led to the very awkward and unfortunate incident which he was now to do his best to explain at Alibad, whither he had been called by a peremptory summons.

The root, occasion, or opportunity of all crime on the border at this time was the practice of carrying arms, which had grown up among the inhabitants during many years of oppression from above and incursions from without. Now that protection was assured them, the custom was unnecessary and dangerous, and any man appearing with weapons was liable to have them confiscated—the people grumbling, but submitting. Hence, when word was brought to Ferrers that a company of armed men had been seen traversing the lands of one of the villages in his charge, it was natural to conclude that they were raiders from beyond the border, who had escaped the vigilance of the patrols, and hoped to harry the countryside. Ferrers at once started in pursuit, and the armed men, their weapons laid aside, were discovered in the village cornfields, busily engaged in gathering in the crop. The impudence displayed fired Ferrers, and he ordered his men to charge. His daffadar, a veteran soldier, ventured to advise delay and a parley, but he refused to listen. He meant to make an example of this party of robbers, not to offer them terms, and a moment later his troopers were riding down the startled reapers. These made no attempt to resist, though they filled the air with protests, and before the troop could wheel and ride through them again, a voice reached Ferrers’ ear which turned him sick with horror.

“Sahib! sahib!” it cried, “we are the Sarkar’s poor ryots! Why do you kill us?”

This time the parley was granted, and Ferrers learned too late that the men he had attacked were the inhabitants of the village to which the field belonged, that they had brought their weapons with them owing to a warning that the people of another village intended to attack them and carry off their harvest, and that the second village had revenged itself for its disappointment by sending Ferrers the information which had led him wrong. There was nothing to be done but to rebuke the village elders severely for not warning him of the intended attack instead of taking the law into their own hands, assuage the sufferings of the wounded by distributing among them all the money he had about him, and return drearily to Shah Nawaz to draw up a report of the occurrence. It was his luck all over, he told himself, ignoring the reminder that he had not attempted to avert the fight—in fact, that he had hurried it on for the mere sake of fighting. It was all the fault of the life at this wretched outpost, where there was nothing a man could do but fight, and that was forbidden him. It was little comfort to remember that Major Keeling, in his place, would have found the day all too short for the innumerable things to be done. He would have been in the saddle from morning till night, visiting the villages, holding impromptu courts of justice, looking for traces of old irrigation-works or planning new ones, and filling up any odds and ends of time by instituting shooting-competitions among his troopers, or making experiments in gardening. Ferrers was a very different man from his Commandant, though he could be brave enough when there was fighting to be done, and owed his captaincy to his gallantry on a hard-won field. Without the stimulus of excitement he was prone to fits of indolence, when the monotonous round of daily duty was intolerably irksome; and he was further handicapped by the fact that whereas the change to the frontier had been intended to cut him off from his old life, he had, unknown to the older men who were trying to direct his course anew, succeeded in bringing a portion of his past with him.

The fashion among the young officers at Bab-us-Sahel at this time might be said to run in the direction of slumming. The example had been set a year or two before by a young man of brilliant talents and unscrupulous audacity, whose delight it was to escape from civilisation and live among the natives as one of themselves. This man was the despair of his seniors, but in the course of his escapades he contrived to pick up much curious and some useful information. To follow in his footsteps meant to defy the authorities now and possibly gain credit later, and this was sufficiently good reason for doing so. In the case of men of less brilliance or less audacity the natural result was merely to lead them into places they had much better have shunned, and acquaint them with persons whom it would have been wiser not to know. Ferrers was one of those who had followed the pioneer’s example without gaining the slightest advantage, and he knew this; so that when the chance of freeing himself came to him, he was almost ready to welcome it. Almost, but not quite. It so happened that a rule had lately been introduced requiring a literary knowledge of the local language from officers employed in the province. Major Keeling, while remarking to Ferrers, with his usual contempt for the actions of his official superiors, that in his opinion a colloquial acquaintance with it was all that was really needed, advised him to take a munshi with him to Shah Nawaz, and employ his leisure there in study. No sooner had the advice been given than the munshi presented himself in the person of one of Ferrers’ disreputable associates, the Mirza Fazl-ul-Hacq. Originally a Mohammedan religious teacher, this man was in some way under a cloud, and was regarded by his co-religionists much as an unfrocked clergyman would be in England. This fact was in itself an attraction to Ferrers and the young men of his stamp, to whom there was an actual delight in finding that one who ought to be holy had gone wrong, and the Mirza professed a strong attachment to him in return. Now he begged to be allowed to accompany him to the frontier as his munshi, asserting, with perfect truth, that he was well acquainted with all the dialects in use there. Ferrers, who had begun to look back regretfully at the pleasures from which he was to be torn, closed with the offer, and the Mirza was duly enrolled in his retinue. The two were closeted together in all Ferrers’ hours of leisure at Shah Nawaz, but remarkably little study was accomplished. The Mirza was an adept at various games of chance, he brewed delicious sherbets (not without the assistance of beverages forbidden by his religion), and he was a fascinating story-teller. Thoroughly worthless as Ferrers knew him to be, the man had made himself necessary to him, and he half hated, half condoned, the fact. When a fellow led such a dog’s life, how could he refuse any chance of congenial companionship that offered itself?

It might have been objected that Ferrers was within riding distance of Alibad, and that there was no law cutting him off from his friends there; but since Colin and Penelope Ross had come up-country he had avoided the place as if it were plague-stricken. Lady Haigh had been quite right in her interpretation of his feelings, and though he had succeeded in winning over Colin to plead his cause with Penelope, he now wondered gloomily why he could not have let well alone. He was always acting on impulse, he told himself, in a way that his cooler judgment disapproved, and it did not occur to him that he had to thank the Mirza’s influence over him for this fresh change. In fact, he was not conscious of it, for the subject was never mentioned between them; but in the Mirza’s society he felt no desire for that of his old friends. He had a real fondness for Colin, the one man of his acquaintance who believed in him, though he found it terribly fatiguing to keep up in his company the pretence of being so much better than he was. Colin had no idea of his real tastes and pursuits, and, curious though it may seem, Ferrers was prepared to take a good deal of trouble to prevent his becoming aware of them. The thought that Colin’s eyes would never rest upon him in kindness again was intolerable; and if Colin alone had been concerned, his mind would have been at ease. But if he married Penelope, he must either give up the Mirza, or she must know, and therefore Colin would know, a good many things he would prefer to keep secret—and what counterbalancing advantage would there be? Though he had felt his interest in her revive when he saw her admired and courted, she was not the type of woman who could keep him in thrall: she would suffer in silence, and look at him reproachfully with eyes that were like Colin’s, and there would be little pleasure in that.

At this point Ferrers’ meditations were suddenly interrupted. Intent upon his mental problem, it was with a shock that he found himself confronted by a trooper of the Khemistan Horse. He tried to discover what emergency could have dictated the posting of vedettes at this distance from the town, but learned only that it was the Doctor Sahib’s order. Wondering vaguely whether there was plague in the district, and the doctor was establishing a sanitary cordon, he rode on, to see more vedettes in the distance, and to be sharply challenged by a sentry as he entered the town. The squalid streets seemed wholly destitute of the military element which usually gave them brightness; but in the courtyard of the mud building which served as a hospital Dr Tarleton was hard at work drilling a motley band of convalescents and hospital assistants, with a stiffening of dismounted troopers, who appeared to be bored to extinction by the proceedings.

“What’s up, Tarleton?” cried Ferrers, after watching in bewilderment the strange evolutions of the corps and their instructor’s energetic endeavours to get them straight.

Hearing the voice, Dr Tarleton turned round and hurried to the wall, wiping his face as he came. “Oh, the Chief and all the rest are away, and I’m in charge. Nothing like being prepared for the worst, you know. This is my volunteer force—the Alibad Fencibles. I say, tell me the right word, there’s a good fellow! I’ve got ’em all massed in that corner, and I can’t get ’em out without going back to the beginning.”

Ferrers whispered two or three words into the doctor’s ear, watched him write them down, and rode on towards the fort, taking some comfort in the thought that his unpleasant interview with Major Keeling must necessarily be postponed. It was clear that it was his duty to pay his respects to the ladies, and by good luck it was just calling-time.

Lady Haigh and Penelope had now been two or three months at Alibad, and the heat and burning winds of the shadeless desert were leaving their mark upon them. Both had lost their colour, and even Lady Haigh moved languidly, while Penelope was propped up with cushions in a long chair. She had had a sharp attack of fever, and Ferrers, with an inward shudder, wondered how he could have thought her handsome when she landed. But both ladies were unfeignedly pleased to see him, principally because they were glad of anything that would divert their thoughts; and he experienced a pleasant sense of contentment and wellbeing on finding himself established in the dark cool room, with two women to talk to him. He found that the station had been bereft of almost the whole of its defenders for nearly twenty-four hours. Two nights ago Sir Dugald had started with a small force in pursuit of a band of Nalapuri raiders who were reported to be ravaging the most fertile part of the border, and yesterday an urgent message had come from him asking for reinforcements and Major Keeling’s presence.

“But if Haigh and his guns are gone out, it must be a big affair,” said Ferrers.

“Oh no, the guns are left at home,” said Lady Haigh. “All of us are people of all work here. Sir Dugald digs canals, and Captain Porter conducts cavalry reconnaissances, and Major Keeling works the guns——”

“And the doctor drills the awkward squad,” supplied Ferrers. “What a lively time you seem to have!”

“Oh well, that was more at first. Then there was scarcely a night without an alarm, and we used to hear the troops clattering out of the town at all hours after bands of raiders. There are plenty of alarms still, but generally in the daytime. Two villages have quarrelled over their lands, or some ryots have objected to the survey or resisted the digging of the canal, and Major Keeling is wanted to put things right.”

“But how calmly you speak of it! You and Pen—Miss Ross—must be perfect heroines,” said Ferrers. It was clear that Lady Haigh did not intend to leave him alone with Penelope, and with a resentment which had in it more than a touch of relief, he set himself to tease her. “How pleased Haigh must be to know that, whatever is happening to him, you are just as quiet and happy as if you were at home!”

The malice in his tone was evident, and Lady Haigh knew that he guessed at the terrors of those broken nights, when Sir Dugald was summoned away on dangerous duties, and she brought her bed into Penelope’s room, and they trembled and prayed together till daylight. But she had no intention of confessing her weakness, and answered quickly—

“Of course he is. How clever of you to have gauged him so well!”

“And do tell me what you find to do,” asked Ferrers lazily. “At Bab-us-Sahel you used to be great at gardening.”

“Yes, until you rode across my flower-beds and ruined them,” retorted Lady Haigh. “You won’t find any opportunity of doing that here. Oh, we have only poor silly little things to do compared with the constant activity and splendid exploits of you gentlemen. We look after the servants, of course, and try to invent food enough to keep the household from starvation; and we get out the back numbers of the ‘Ladies’ Repository’ and the ‘Family Friend,’ and follow the fancy-work patterns; and we read all the books and papers that come to the station, and sometimes try very hard to improve our minds with the standard works Miss Ross brought out with her; and in the evening we go out in our palkis to inspect the progress of the building and road-making, and offer any foolish suggestions that may occur to us. I think that’s all.”

“But what a life! and in the hot weather, too! Why don’t you go to the Hills, as the Punjab ladies do?”

“The Punjab ladies may, if their husbands can afford it. Have you any idea what it would cost to go to the Hills, or even down to Bab-us-Sahel, from here?”

“But why come here, then? What good does it do? Of course”—for Lady Haigh was beginning to look dangerous—“it’s delightful for Haigh to have you, and all that; but you won’t tell me he’s such a selfish chap that he wouldn’t rather know you were comparatively cool and comfortable down by the sea? You can’t make me believe it’s his doing.”

“No,” snapped Lady Haigh, “it’s ours. We are here for the good of the station. We are civilisation, society—refinement, if you like. We keep the gentlemen from getting into nasty jungly ways. You are looking rather jungly yourself.” She delivered this home-thrust suddenly, and Ferrers realised that his aspect was somewhat careless and unkempt for the place in which he found himself. “We keep things up to the standard, you see.”

“Ah, but I have no one to keep me up to the standard,” he pleaded. “Out at my place there’s no one to speak to and nothing to do.”

“Then I wonder you chose to go there,” was the sharp retort.

“There was plenty to do just at first, but my rascals are quiet enough now. A good many of them are dead, for one thing. You heard of our big fight before you came up—with a raiding-party six hundred strong? I had to send here for help, worse luck! but even when the reinforcements came up we were so few that the fellows actually stood to receive us. We charged through them again and again—I never remember a finer fight—and there were very few of them left afterwards.”

“You speak as if you liked it!” said Penelope, with a shudder.

“Like it? it’s the finest thing in life—the only thing worth living for. You see a great big brute of a Malik coming at you with a curved tulwar just sweeping down. You try to parry, or fire your Colt point-blank into his face, and for the moment you can’t quite decide whether you are dead or the Malik, until you suddenly realise that your horse is carrying you on towards another fellow, and the Malik is down. Splendid is no word for it!”

“Don’t!” said Lady Haigh sharply. “You’ll make Miss Ross ill again. What’s that?” as a long-drawn, quavering cry seemed to descend from the upper air, “Mem Sahib, the regiment returns!”

Lady Haigh sprang up, and was rushing out of the room, when she suddenly remembered Penelope, and ran back to her. “Yes, I’ll help you, Pen—how selfish of me! It’s our chaprasi,” she explained hurriedly to Ferrers. “I stationed him on the tower above this to watch for any one who might be coming. He was horribly frightened, and said he knew he should fall down and be killed; but of course I was not going to give in to that. Carry this cushion up for Miss Ross, please. There’s a doorway on the ramparts where she can sit in the shade.”

Ferrers followed obediently, as Lady Haigh half helped, half dragged her friend up the narrow stairs, and, after allowing her one look at the moving cloud of dust, which was all that could be seen in the distance, established her in the doorway on the cushion, taking her own place at a telescope which was fixed on a stand.

“This is my own idea,” she said to Ferrers. “Now, why don’t you say I may justly be proud of it? I am as good as a sentry, I spend so much time up here scanning the desert. I’m glad they’re coming from that direction, for we shall be able to distinguish them so much sooner. They must pass us before getting into the town. Now I begin to see them. They have prisoners with them, Pen, and there are certainly fewer of them than started, but somehow they don’t look as if they had been fighting. No, I see what it is. There’s a whole squadron gone!”

“What!” cried Ferrers, who was standing by, unable to get a single glance through the telescope, which was monopolised by his hostess. “Clean gone, Lady Haigh? Must have been detached on special duty, surely? It couldn’t have been wiped out.”

“No, no, of course,” and Lady Haigh withdrew from the glass, and allowed him to look through it; “that must be it, but it gave me such a fright. But I saw Dugald and Colin, Pen, and the Chief. Muhabat Khan!” she called to the chaprasi, who descended slowly from the top of the tower, and stood before her in a submissive attitude but with an injured expression, “go and meet the regiment as it comes, and say to the Major Sahib that Ferrers Sahib is here, and that I should be glad if he and Ross Sahib will come in to tiffin with us. Now, Pen, I shall take you down again,” as the messenger departed. “Captain Ferrers will bring the cushion.”

Deposited in her chair once more, Penelope looked very white and exhausted, and Lady Haigh reproached herself loudly in the intervals of exchanging mysterious confidences with various servants.

“I ought never to have taken you up to the rampart,” she said; “but I knew you would like to see them ride in; and besides——” She checked herself, but Ferrers guessed that she had been afraid to leave Penelope alone lest he should try to speak to her, and he smiled as he thought how unnecessary her precautions were. But by this time there was a clatter of horses’ feet and accoutrements in the courtyard, and Sir Dugald ran up the steps and kissed his wife, who had sprung to the door to meet him.

“The Chief and Ross are here,” he said. “Glad you sent that message, Elma. You all right, Ferrers? Didn’t know you were coming in.”

Major Keeling and Colin Ross were mounting the steps with much clanking of spurs and scabbards; but it struck Ferrers, as he stood in the doorway, that his Commandant seemed suddenly to have remembered something, for as he reached the verandah he lifted his sword and held it in his hand, and walked with extreme care. After greeting Lady Haigh, he passed on into the room, and Ferrers observed with astonishment that the big man was evidently trying to step softly and speak low. It was not until Major Keeling bent over Penelope’s chair, and, taking her hand very gently, asked her how she was, that the watcher realised for whose sake these precautions were taken.

“I felt obliged to come in when I received the order from our beneficent tyrant over there,” said Major Keeling, in a voice which seemed to fill the room in spite of his best endeavours; “but if our presence disturbs you in the least, we will all go and tiffin at my quarters, and take Haigh off with us too.”

“Oh no, please!” entreated Penelope. “It will do me good, really. It is so nice to see you all back.”

There was a faint flush in her cheeks, which deepened when Major Keeling remarked upon it approvingly; and Ferrers remembered, with unreasonable anger, that her colour had not risen for him. It made her look pretty again at once, and that great lout the Chief (thus unflatteringly did he characterise his commanding officer) evidently thought so too. Once again the younger man was a prey to the curious form of jealousy which had led him into the impulsive action that he now regretted. Penelope, for her own sake, had little or no charm for him, but Penelope, admired by other men, became at once a prize worth claiming. Ferrers regretted his impulsive action no longer. His appeal to Colin had at any rate placed him in a position of superiority over any other man who might approach Penelope.