Miss Stuart's Legacy Part 24

"It is getting a little hot for Mrs. Raby to be out," remarked Philip, though he was quite aware it would be an offence.

"By George, it is late! Look, Belle! there's the house beyond those trees on the promontory. It is three miles round, but if you cut across, so, by the sand, it's only one and a half. Marsden and I will go the other way. I have to see a village first, and then we can look at the new dam."

"It is over yonder, I suppose?" said Philip pointing to a likely bend in the river bank.

"Just so."

"Then I will see Mrs. Raby across the cut, and join you there."

"But I can manage quite well by myself," protested Belle.

"I have no interest in villages, Mrs. Raby; and,--excuse me--before we start your pony's girths require tightening." He slipped from his horse and was at her side before she could reply.

"Then I'm off," cried John with a faint shrug of his shoulders. "I'll meet you at the corner, Marsden, in twenty minutes."

"Steady, lad, steady!" murmured the Major with his head under the flap of the saddle, as Suleiman figeted to join his stable-companion. Belle standing, tapping her boot with her whip, moved forward. "Give me the reins. I don't see why you should do everything."

Philip came up from the girths smiling, and began on the curb.

"What a fidget you are! I'm glad John isn't like that."

"Curbs and girths mean more than you suppose. There! now you can go neck-and-crop at everything, and I won't say you nay. Steady, lad, steady! One, two, three--are you all right?"

"Thank you, I think I have the proper number of hands and feet, and so far as I know my head is on my shoulders," replied Belle tartly.

They dipped down a bit from the fields to a sluggish stream edging the higher land, and then scampered across the muddy flats towards the promontory which lay right at the other side of the bend.

"Pull up please!" cried Philip. "That strip looks _quick_."

"Nonsense! John comes this way every week; it's all right." Belle gave her pony a cut, making it forge ahead; but it was no match for Suleiman who, unaccustomed to the spur, bounded past her.

"Pull up, please; don't be foolish, pull up!" Philip shouted, hearing the ominous cloop of his horse's feet. Another dig of the spur, a leap, a flounder, and Suleiman was over the creek. Not so Belle's pony; slower, heavier, it was hopelessly bogged in a second, and floundering about, sank deeper and deeper.

"Throw yourself off!" cried Philip; "as far as you can,--arms flat!

So,--quite still, please. There is no danger. I can get at you easily, and it is not deep." A minute after his hand closed on her wrist as she lay sinking slowly despite her stillness; for the pony, relieved of her weight, was plunging like a mad thing and churning up the sand and water to slush. "I must get a purchase first; these sands hold like birdlime;" he said after an ineffectual attempt. "Don't be frightened if I let go for a moment." Then with one hand through Suleiman's stirrup he knelt once more on the extreme edge of the firm ground and got a grip of Belle again. "Now then,--all together!" More all together than he desired, for Suleiman, alarmed at the strain, backed violently, reared, and finally broke away, leaving Philip p.r.o.ne on his back in the dirt. "I hope I didn't hurt you," he said, struggling up, rather blindly, to aid Belle's final flounder to safe ground.

"Not much," she replied with a nervous laugh as she shook the curiously dry sand from her habit. "My wrist will be a bit black and blue, that's all. Why, Philip, what's the matter? Philip!"

He had doubled up limply, horribly, as if he had been shot, and lay in a heap at her feet.

"Philip! What is it?"

As she slipped her arm beneath him to raise his head, something warm and wet trickled over it,--blood!

"The wound," he murmured. "My handkerchief,--anything,--I am sorry."

Then the pain died out of his face and his head felt heavy on her arm.

The wound! She sought for it by the aid of that ghastly trickle only to find, when she tore the coverings away, that it was no trickle, but an intermittent gus.h.i.+ng. That must be stopped somehow,--her handkerchief, his handkerchief, her own little white hands. It had all pa.s.sed so quickly that it seemed but a minute since he had cried "Pull up," and there she was with his head on her knee, face downwards, and the warm blood soaking over her. People make long stories afterwards of such scenes; but as a matter of fact they derive all their horror from their awful swiftness.

Belle, bareheaded in the sunlight, was full of one frantic desire to see the face hidden away in her habit. Was he dead? Was that the reason why the blood oozed slower and slower? She craned over his close-cropped hair only to see the outline of his cheek. "Philip, Philip!" she whispered in his ear; but there was no answer. Was it five minutes, was it ten, was it an hour since she had sat there with her hands?--? Ah, ghastly, ghastly! She could not look at them; and yet for no temptation in the world would she have moved a finger, lest he was not dead and she,--oh, blessed thought!--was staving death aside.

A shout behind, and her husband tearing down at a mad gallop, alarmed at the return of the riderless horse. "Good G.o.d! Belle! what has happened?"

"Look, and tell me if he is dead," she said. "Quick! I want to know,--I want to know!"

He was not dead, and yet the bleeding had stopped. Then they must get him home; get him somewhere as best they could. A string bed was brought from the nearest village, with relays of willing yet placid bearers; Belle walked beside it, in Philip's helmet, for her own hat had been lost in the quicksand, keeping her hand on the rough bandages while John raced ahead to set the doors open. It was dreary crossing the threshold of the new house, with the jostling, shuffling footsteps of those who carry something that is death's or will be death's. But there was a light in Belle's eyes, and even her husband, accustomed as he was to her even nerves, wondered at her calm decision. Since they must procure a doctor as quickly as possible, the best plan would be for John to ride across country to a station where the afternoon mail stopped. To return to Saudaghur and a mere hospital a.s.sistant would be needless delay. She did not mind, she said, being left alone; and meanwhile they must send for a supply of necessaries since it was evident that Philip could not be moved, at any rate for a day or two.

So Belle sat in the big empty room, which by and by was to be hers, and watched alone by the unconscious man, feeling that it was her turn now. It was a vigil not to be forgotten. And once as she raised his head on her arm in order to moisten his lips with the stimulant which alone seemed to keep life in him, he stirred slightly, his eyes opened for a second, and a faint murmur reached her ear, "No need for a policeman."

A smile, pathetic in its absolute self-surrender, came to her face as she stooped and kissed him with the pa.s.sion of protection and possession which a mother has for her helpless child; and that is a love which casts out fear. As she crouched once more beside the coa.r.s.e pallet where he lay, for the room was dest.i.tute of all furniture save the string woven bed, Belle Raby, for the first time in her life, faced facts undistorted by her own ideals, and judged things as they were, not as they ought to be. She loved this man; but what was that love? Was it a thing to be spoken of with bated breath just because the object happened to be a person whom, all things consenting, one might have married? Her nature was healthy and unselfish; her knowledge of the "devastating pa.s.sion" which is said to devour humanity was derived entirely from a pious but unreasoning belief in what she was told. It is not the fas.h.i.+on nowadays to say so, but that is really the position in which a vast majority of women find themselves in regard to many social problems. And so, in that dreary, shadowy room, with the man she loved dependent on her care for his sole chance of life, Belle Raby asked herself wherein lay the sin or shame of such a love as hers, and found no answer.

And yet, when her husband returned with the doctor, he brought back with him also the old familiar sense that something, she knew not what, was wrong. The old resentment, born of the old beliefs, at the odious position in which she found herself. But now she tried to set these thoughts aside as unworthy, unworthy of her own self, above all unworthy of Philip.

CHAPTER XX.

Afzul Khan was sitting in Shunker Das's house at Faizapore with a frown upon his face. He had come all the way in order to consult Mahomed Lateef, the old Syyed, about a certain blue envelope which was hidden away in his _posteen_, only to find that the old man had retreated before his enemies to his last foothold of land, while the usurer had enlarged his borders at the expense of the ruined old chief's ruined house.

Now Mahomed Lateef was Afzul Khan's patron. In this way. The latter was foster-brother to that dead son who had died gloriously in the regiment, and who had been born at an outpost on the frontier. Indeed, but for the old man, Afzul would never have put the yoke of service round his neck. So his frown was not only on account of his useless journey; much of it was anger at his old friend's misfortunes, and those who had taken advantage of them. It angered him to see a blue monkey painted on the wall in front of which the staunch Mohammedan used to say his prayers; it angered him still more to see the rows of cooking-pots where there used to be but one. Yet business was business, and Shunker might be able to tell him what had become of the Commissariat-Colonel _sahib's_ daughter; for Afzul had had the address of the letter spelt out for him by a self-satisfied little schoolboy at Kohat, and knew enough of poor d.i.c.k's family history to suppose that Belle Stuart must be his cousin.

"Estuart _sahib's_ daughter," echoed Shunker, a sullen scowl settling on his face; as it always did at the memory of his wrongs. "Why she married that _shaitan_ Raby who lives at Saudaghur now, because he was turned out of the service. _Wah!_ a fine pair, and a fine tale. She had a lover, Marsden of a Sikh regiment, who paid for her with lakhs on lakhs. Then, when he was killed, she took the money and married Raby. Sc.u.m! and they talk about our women, bah!"

This was not all malice and uncharitableness on the usurer's part; for it must be remembered that, if we know very little of Indian social life, the natives know still less of ours; the result being, on both sides, the explanation of strange phenomena by our own familiar experience; and this is not, as a rule, a safe guide in conditions of which we know nothing.

Afzul gave a guttural snort, startling but expressive. "She married Raby! Truly it is said 'The journeyings of fools are best not made.'

And Marsden _sahib_--long life to him!--was her lover! _Inshallah!_ she might have found a worse."

"Before the worms got him," chuckled Shunker; "and then his money was worth another fine man. That is woman's way, white or black."

"Raby _sahib's mem_," repeated Afzul meditatively. "There thou speakest truth, O Shunker. He is with her now." The memory of those two, standing together hand in hand, came to him and he nodded his head approvingly, for the thought that Belle's allegiance might return to its original object commended itself to his mind; his view of the subject not being occidental.

"Who is with her now?" asked Shunker with a stare.

"Marsden _sahib_. Hast not heard he hath come back to life?"

The usurer's eyes almost started from his head. "Come back!" he shrieked. "He is not dead! Oh holy Lukshmi! what offerings to thy shrine! Why, the _shaitan_ will lose the money; he will have to give up the business; and I--oh Gunesh-_ji!_ I am revenged, I am revenged!"

He lay back on his bed gasping, gurgling, choking with spiteful laughter and real pa.s.sionate delight.

The Pathan scowled. His knowledge of English law was limited, and he objected to laughter at Marsden _sahib's_ expense. "If he gave it to the _mem_ for what he got, as thou sayest, Shunker, Marsden _sahib_ will never ask it back. He will take the woman instead; that is but fair."

"Thou dost not understand their crooked ways," gasped Shunker; "and 'tis waste of time to explain. So Marsden _sahib_ is alive again; that is news indeed! _Hurri Gunga!_ I must go down to Saudaghur and felicitate the _shaitan_ on his friend's return. He! he! on his friend's return!"

Afzul felt the longing of the frontiersman to stick a knife in a fat Hindu stomach, but he refrained. The blue envelope was going to be a heavier responsibility than he had thought for, and till that was settled he must not wander into by-ways. No matter how the pig-faced idolater had lied in other things, it was true, about the _mem_ and the Major, he had seen that with his own eyes. Had d.i.c.k _sahib_ been her lover too? And what did both those brave ones see in such a poor, thin creature? Truly the ways of the _sahib-logue_ were past finding out. Nevertheless he would seek out the old Khan, and see what he said. Shunker might be lying, all except that about the _mem-sahib_ and the Major; that was true.

It was well on to noon when Afzul, after many hours of varied travelling by train, by ca.n.a.l, and finally on foot, found himself in Mahomed Lateef's last few acres of land. Of a surety they were not ones to be voluntarily chosen as a resting-place; bare of everything save the spa.r.s.e stalks of last year's millet crop, showing all too clearly how scanty that crop had been; bare to the very walls of the half-ruined tower which stood supported on one side by the mud hovel occupied by the owner. A significant fact, that bareness, showing the lack of flocks and herds, the lack of everything that was not wanted for immediate use. And as he stood at the open door of the yard, it also showed clean-swept and garnished, dire sign of the poverty which allows nothing to go to waste. Yet it was not empty of all, for as the Pathan knocked again, a child, bubbling over with laughter, ran from a dark door into the sunlight.

"Nana, Nana! [grand-dad] catch, catch!" it cried, and its little legs, unsteady though they were, kept their advantage on the long ones behind, long but old; crippled too with rheumatism and want of food to keep the stern old heart in fighting order; yet bubbling over with laughter, also, was the stern old face. "Catch thee, gazelle of the desert! fleetest son of Byramghor! Who could catch thee? Ah, G.o.d and his Prophet! thou hast not hurt thyself, little heart of my heart!