Читать книгу The Warden of the Marches - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 5

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“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.