Читать книгу The Warden of the Marches - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 9

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“Poor dear Laili!” sighed Mabel, patting the dust-begrimed neck of the little mare. There was no fear of Laili’s running away now, although she had spirit enough left to struggle gamely through the sand, miles of which still stretched between her and home.

“I don’t think she’ll be any the worse when she’s had a good rest and feed,” said Fitz consolingly.

“Oh no, I hope not! But I know Dick will never let me ride her again.”

“Of course; it really wouldn’t be safe. The regiment are so often at carbine practice, you know, and the tribesmen can’t come near the town without letting off their jezails to show their friends they have arrived. It’s quite an exception when a day passes without our hearing shots of some kind.”

“I know. But she is such a beauty, I can’t bear to give her up.”

“Look here, Miss North; a bright idea! Will you let me try to break her of this frivolous habit of hers? I’m generally considered rather good with horses, and there’s nothing I should like better than to train her properly for you.”

“Oh, could you really? Of course I have still got Majnûn, but he is so uninteresting to ride compared with her. But won’t it give you a great deal of trouble?”

“Trouble? Not a bit! I wish it would. Then you might set it down as some sort of atonement for my carelessness in nearly getting you killed to-day. But anyhow, I’ll do my best with her, honour bright! If the Major will give her stable-room to-night, I’ll have a box cleared out for her at my place. My stables are crammed with ridiculous old rubbish that has come down to me from General Keeling’s time, and my horses camp in the middle of it. By-the-bye, do you know I can’t feel as I did about Sheikh here”—he looked askance at his own handsome pony—“since Bahram Khan won the Cup on him? It seems as if he must be an awful traitor to sell his master in that style, you see. I distinctly saw the fellow whisper in his ear before he mounted him, and he was like a lamb at once, instead of flinging his heels all over the shop, as he had been doing the moment before. Now suppose he’s been hypnotised once and for all, what’s to happen if he chooses to trot off and attach himself to Bahram Khan any day we may chance to meet him? I shall look a nice sort of fool.”

“Have Bahram Khan arrested for horse-stealing, I should think,” said Mabel, with a rather forced laugh. “But how is it that that dreadful man is here at all? I hope you had a word or two with the Hindu who told us he was away?”

“Ah, but he had us there, unfortunately. Narayan Singh told us that his master had started for Nalapur, but we didn’t ask whether he had come back, so he wasn’t obliged to say anything, and he didn’t. Bahram Khan told me himself how it happens that he’s here. It seems that when he got to Nalapur his uncle intimated that he could run the funeral without his assistance, and more than hinted, as I understand, that he had had too much to do with it already. Hence he thinks it well to hide his cousinly grief in his ancestral fortress, until he can get the Commissioner to tackle Ashraf Ali for him again, I suppose.”

“More trouble!” sighed Mabel.

“I’m afraid so. The Kumpsioner Sahib is scarcely likely to take such a slap in the face quietly. His protégé has been snubbed, and I rather think he will want to know the reason why.”

Mabel sighed again, and they spoke little after that, except to encourage the horses as they toiled through the loose sand. Arrived at the gate of the compound, she asked Fitz to come in and have some lunch, but he laughed.

“No lunch for me to-day, Miss North. I must tear home and get a fresh horse and ride out to the Major. You don’t realise that I have taken a good bit of the afternoon off as well as the morning that he granted me, and that the wigging I shall get is thoroughly well earned.”

“I’ll intercede for you the minute Dick comes in.”

“Ah, it will have happened before that. But never mind; it’s in a fair and honest cause—couldn’t be in a fairer,” added Fitz audaciously, as he rode off.

“I’m afraid that boy is going to be silly,” said Mabel solemnly to herself as she mounted the verandah steps; but on catching sight of Georgia, all thought of Fitz and his foolishness faded from her mind.

“Oh, Georgie, such a day of adventures! I’ve been thrown, and I’ve paid a morning call on Bahram Khan and found him at home, and I’ve penetrated into the recesses of an Eastern harem, and I’ve been talked to more disagreeably than I ever was in my life.”

“Mab!” was Georgia’s horrified exclamation, “how could you? How could Mr Anstruther let you? Was the harem Bahram Khan’s?”

“Yes, of course, and Mr Anstruther had no voice in the matter. I preferred to sit with the ladies rather than with their lord and master, naturally. And oh, Georgie! Bahram Khan’s Ethiopian wife is your little Zeynab, Fath-ud-Din’s daughter, and she thinks—she thinks—I don’t know how to say it—she has got it into her head that I aspire to the honour of being the second Mrs Bahram Khan.”

“Mab!” cried Georgia again, helplessly.

“Yes, and there was a fearful yellow woman there who says she’s English——”

“I know, that dreadful person Jehanara. Oh, Mab, Dick will be terribly angry when he knows you have been talking to her! She is Bahram Khan’s evil genius—inspires all his plots first, and then helps him to carry them out. She came here once as his ambassadress, but Dick would have nothing to do with her, and forbade me to let her come into the house. You see, politicals have to be very jealous of any Europeans or Eurasians’ gaining influence with native princes. And now she will make capital out of your having spoken to her.”

“My dear Georgie, will you kindly tell me how I could help speaking to her when she was the only possible interpreter between the ladies and me? Really one might think I had arranged that all these horrid things should happen, when you know they were pure accidents. And you won’t sympathise a bit, though I’m almost out of my mind with worry. These women will believe you; tell them, assure them, swear to them, that I have no designs on Bahram Khan, for if they go on thinking I have, I don’t know what I shall do.”

“I can put that right, at any rate, but Dick will be so vexed——”

“Dick!” Mabel almost screamed. “Dick is to know nothing of this. Georgie, I absolutely forbid you to say a word to him about it. Isn’t it enough for him to be always casting up against me what happened the other day, without having this to bother me about as well?”

“You must have a horribly guilty conscience, Mab. I’m sure Dick has never said a word to you about the other day.”

“No, but he has looked it, again and again. And I will not have him told about this absurd fancy of poor jealous Zeynab’s. You couldn’t be so dishonourable, Georgie, as to tell your husband another person’s secret against her will.”