The Hosts of the Lord Part 19

The even creak of the rocker ended at last, and she rose, as he had risen, calmly, and faced him.

"I quite understand now what you meant, Dr. Dillon," she said freezingly, "and why you did not care to explain. I shall, of course, never be able to forgive you for daring to dream such a thing possible, but--"

"But," he interrupted, without a quiver, "you will take that half whiskey-and-soda. Here! _qui-hi! Whiskey sharab belatee pani la'o juldi; mem-sahiba jata hai_. (Bring whiskey-and-soda; the _mem_ is going.)"

Perhaps the command of that a.s.sertion helped her to a decision. At any rate she did not countermand it, but spent the rather awkward pause which inevitably ensued in a perfect field-day of her hat-pins among her curls and veil. Whereat George Dillon, despite a certain bruised feeling, smiled, telling himself she was a true woman.

Nevertheless when, as she was stepping into the dogcart, his friendly help came necessarily to the fore again, she reverted to her dignified resentment. "I ought," she said stiffly, "to have thanked you for--for your good opinion of me, and your evident desire to be kind. I do so now. But I fear it will be quite impossible for me to forget or forgive the delusion."

"That is quite a minor matter," he put in, gleefully. "Now, cheer up, Bacilla, you brute, or we shall be late," Bacilla being his term of abuse for a pony which required a little stick.

They were only just in time, no more. Five minutes after they had joined the company gathered on the red-brick masonry of the ca.n.a.l head, under a canopy of waving garlands and gay bunting, with that inevitable British flag as the centre of all, the small man with the big star on his breast took a step forward, raised a handle, and, as the first drops of water trickled through a sluice, declared, in a violent Scotch accent, "that the Victoria-Kaiser-i-Hind" ca.n.a.l was open. So, keeping time as it were, slowly, majestically, to those (also inevitable) strains of "G.o.d save the Queen," the outer floodgates swung back, allowing the river to have permanent possession during good behaviour, of the walled basin between them and the inner ones. Thus, slowly, with a gurgling of water seeking its level, the surface rose till the half-open sluices in the second gates were reached, and a thin curve tipped over to fall with a splash, and send a tiny scout of a stream to find out what this new straight road might mean. Only a tiny scout, since the earthworks beyond had to be accustomed by degrees to their new tenant.

Still the new way was open, and the current of the river hesitated in the old one.

"Bravo, Smith!" cried George Dillon, coming round, when the cheering and general congratulations were over, to slap his colleague on the back, metaphorically and actually. "We've done that; and now perhaps, old man, you'll have time for other things."

"Yes," a.s.sented the tall, gaunt man, dreamily; "now I shall have time to settle that point about the searchlight."

"The what?"

"Search-light. There's been a correspondence in the _Engineer_ about it; and as I've all the electric plant here, lying useless, now the show's over,--until it's wanted for something else, of course,--I am going to see if I can't overcome their difficulty in concentrating all the power on a sufficiently narrow area. I believe I know how to do it."

George Dillon looked at him with fierce, humorous exasperation.

"Believe!" he echoed. "I know you can! You are the most intolerably circ.u.mscribed, self-concentrated, narrow-minded machine of a man I ever came across. Heaven help you!"

As he drove Mrs. Smith home again, it was his turn to sit mumchance until, womanlike, she relented faintly, and, exaggerating her own powers, trusted she had not been, _etc_., though of course, _etc_.--

"Not in the least, thank you," he replied. "I was only meditating if I should tell you that I think Eugene has softening of the brain."

"Softening of the brain!" she echoed, horrified. "Oh, doctor, do you think it's that?"

"Well, it isn't softening of the heart, anyhow," he said grimly. "But I'm not joking. If someone doesn't get a hold on some portion of that man--I don't care what it is--heart, brain, stomach, anything--and prevent him from killing himself with work, India will lose her best engineer. What he wants is someone to--to give him a nervous headache!"

"We will leave that subject alone, please," she said loftily; but when her husband joined them in the verandah, she went over ostentatiously to him and pinned a carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole, hoping he would like it better than the rose she gave him the day before, which--this was in a louder tone for the doctor's benefit--he had forgotten to put in!

"Did I, my dear?" replied her spouse. "Oh, yes! I remember you put it in my minim gla.s.s because I was working in my s.h.i.+rt-sleeves. Then I wanted the gla.s.s. So it got withered and the head snapped off."

Dr. Dillon laughed--his usual dry laugh. "That is one of the many tragedies which come from the delusion all women have that flowers can't be out of place."

CHAPTER XII

THE CHURCH MILITANT

When Roshan Khan had joined those two great stabilities, Faith and Love, into one pa.s.sionate desire for Vincent Dering's d.a.m.nation, he had meant to follow the English etiquette on such occasions, and keep his aspiration to himself.

But it had been impossible for him instantly to rejoin the society in which he found himself; that is, a society which shared that fundamental crime--which more even than any definite jealousy had roused his anger against Captain Dering--of being alien to his creed, his customs, his code of conduct towards women. So he had wandered off into the garden again, shadowed by old Akbar's incredulity, curiosity, and sympathy; until, partly from sheer impatience, but mostly from sheer inherited habit of employing such as Akbar Khan in anything approaching an intrigue, he had made a clean breast of the situation.

Even the latter, however, had, as it were, s.h.i.+ed at the extreme novelty of the idea when it was first mooted; but, by degrees, its vast possibilities of advantage to faithful old retainers overpowered his abject terror at the bare idea of Father Narayan suspecting such a thing. The old master, he told himself, was old, indeed! G.o.d only knew if he would last a year or a day; therefore it would be well to ensure the favour of the new mistress. And there could be no harm in sounding her as to what course that favour would follow. One could never tell with a woman; and his wicked, experienced old eyes had caught many a hint of Anari Begum in Laila's childhood. Perhaps she had changed since she went to Calcutta. He could but try.

So when, on the morning after the ball, Laila, in obedience to her pious resolve to do nothing really wrong, had bidden him--with threats of vengeance if he betrayed the fact of their having come at all--remove and return certain trays of clothes and jewels which had been smuggled by someone into her room, he had fallen at her feet, confessed falsely that he was the offender, and besought her not to impose so unmerited a disgrace on his employer, who had been actuated by the ordinary rules of native etiquette which prescribed some recognition of his cousin, the head of his family.

Naturally enough, this brought the girl's curiosity, long restless, to his aid; and she sat listening to the many things he had to tell her, with that faintly mysterious smile of hers. And as she listened, she watched a pigeon, all jewelled about its bosom in rainbow hues, and with a dainty little pair of silver jingles about its jasper feet, which was coquetting and pirouetting to attract the attention of its neighbours on the wide marble sill of her latticed window. For Laila had a room in the upper storey all painted, carved, and set with little balconies, which was worthy of any king's favourite. And Father Ninian, mindful lingeringly of the fine ladies' boudoirs of his youth in Rome, had filled it, against her return from school, with all the prettiest spoils of the palace. Sevres vases, rare old cabinets, quaint carved tables which had been brought thither for the dead Nawabs; treasures that were also, inevitably, of the king's-favourite type,--therefore unlike the owner of the room, as she sat in her white muslin frock, heavy-eyed, almost sallow, from the last night's dissipation.

"So she--my grandmother, you say--was a dancing-girl--a real dancing-girl?" Even her surprise and curiosity were listless. Yet the next moment, while Akbar was protesting the superiority of Anari Begum over all the dancing-girls of his vast experience, she had burst into a sudden laugh, uncovered one of the trays with kicks which sent first one, then the other of her bronze slippers flying, seized on a pair of silver anklets, and there she was centring a Persian rug spread on the marble floor as if she had been born to it. Coquetting, pirouetting, with a challenging clash, a half-impudent jerk of the jingles, for all the world like the pigeon on the window-sill.

Like something else also; so that old Akbar felt a s.h.i.+ver run through him, lest, after all, his first impression should prove right, and this be no more than a _simulacrum_,--a ghost, a changeling, come to possess the usually indifferent lazy Miss-_baba_. Yet when, all of a sudden, she raised her white muslin skirt high in both hands and began to sing, at the top of her voice, the wicked little love song which Vincent Dering had sung the first day she met him, old Akbar's dread turned to sheer wonder. This was not a ghost, but a devil; reckless, unrestrained, with a fling of white arms, a kick of white feet, all held to rhythm by the outrageous frivolity of the song, until, with that last staccato note, she threw herself in a chair, breathless, gurgling with laughter and sheer mischief.

"Lo! Akbar," she gasped, "my grandmother never danced like that, did she? I don't believe she was my grandmother! I believe you are telling stories!"

Akbar looked wise, and thrust out his folded hands in cringing protest.

"The most n.o.ble says true, Anari Begum never danced thus. But there is the grandfather, Bun-avatar-_sahib bahadur_, to be accounted for also."

Laila frowned. The reminder brought back the other side of the story, to which she had listened so often from her guardian's lips, while her pretended indifference masked a real pride. Of her grandfather's gallantry, his good looks, his love of adventure. And of someone else, also, who had always had a secret attraction for the girl. That most beautiful woman in Rome, the companion of princes, the divine singer, the best, the dearest--

Laila's laughter failed her; she rose, and going over to the window looked out absently, startling the pigeon into flight. The sun turned its breast purple, and green, and gold, as it fluttered down to renew its pirouetting on a cupola below, just above the river. And below that again was the roof of the balcony where she had sat with Vincent. The girl's eyes grew soft. She understood now. That best, that dearest, that most beautiful, must have loved her guardian. That was the secret of his remembrance. How could one ever forget that one had sat in a balcony hand in hand? So content, yet saying so little--only feeling.

But _he_ had said some things. He had said she was beautiful, that she ought always to wear that dress, and she had told him she could not,--that she _must_ send it back--that he _must_ learn to like her as much in her ordinary clothes--that he would never see her in that dress again. But, after all, why not--if--?

She turned suddenly to the go-between. "There is no need to take them back to-day," she said, sharply; "but thou canst tell the person who sent them--he who claims cousins.h.i.+p--that I will not keep them, that I know nothing of them; that he must send and _take_ them away."

Akbar, with an inward determination to do nothing so palpably foolish, salaamed down to the ground. The Presence, he said, in doing this showed her dignity; it was undoubtedly the right course to pursue. But, in the mean time, would the Begum-_sahiba_--she must excuse a tongue which could not always bear with the paltry present, which remembered the facts of the past, the possibilities of the future--not temper her n.o.ble severity with the usual courtly favour? Her cousin's grandmother, a most virtuous princess, sister to the late Nawab, was still alive.

Her memory of Bun-avatar-_sahib_ was still so green that doubtless she would be able to tell the Begum-_sahiba_ many things of which a mere mean slave could not be cognizant. And this most virtuous, most interesting one, had long been anxious to return a visit which the Begum-_sahiba_ had graciously paid her, in company with a _missen_-miss--

"What! That funny old fat woman!" interrupted Laila, with a laugh.

"That dirty old thing? I remember, she _did_ claim to be a relation of the Nawab's. And when I asked her why she wore such dirty clothes she was angry, and said she had beautiful ones all tied up in bundles! I don't believe she had, though--"

"The dress the Begum-_sahiba_ wore last night is one of them,"

interrupted Akbar, quietly; "it belonged to Anari Begum, _Huzoor_, and there are plenty more like it. And all are really the _Huzoor's_; no one else's." Laila looked down on the trays with a new interest. "Did it really belong to--to _her?_" she asked; "and the jewels also?"

"The jewels also. There are plenty of them. And if Anari Begum was really the Begum-_sahiba's_ grandmother, then the jewels are hers by right."

"She can come if she wishes," interrupted Laila, impatiently. "I see thy craft, Akbar, but I care not for that. Yet it will be fun to receive her as--as a Begum. And no harm either, since the _missen_ ladies receive her, I know, and her like--when they will come! It will be at night, of course, to ensure her privacy, so Pidar Narayan need know nothing. Only"--she paused, a change swept over her face, leaving it dimpled, cunning, full of mischief and cajolery. "I do naught for naught! If I please thee, thou must please me! If thou art their messenger, thou must be mine also; or I tell Pidar Narayan!"

Akbar-_khan's_ wicked old eyes positively leered approval; he waggled his head and chuckled. Wherefore not? Was there a better, more careful messenger in the world than he, or one more capable of deft arrangings?

"I want none," she put in with a quick distaste, a shrinking from his manner. "'Tis but to take a note to Dering-_sahib_; he must know somewhat before he comes with the other _sahib logue_ this afternoon.

There is no arrangement needed, no fuss."

How could there be, she asked herself, as, after the old sinner had gone off, charmed at this renewal of a once familiar occupation, she sat on the window-sill looking down on the roof of the balcony where she had been so content. For what could be simpler than to make it quite clear that you were real, that you did not pretend, that you were not even afraid? That, briefly, you were not like Mrs. Smith, who took so much--one could not help seeing that!--and gave so little--one could not help seeing that, also! For what was a "Thanks! many, Captain Dering," in return for all the trouble he lavished on her?

So it came to pa.s.s that when Vincent Dering went to the palace that afternoon, some words were haunting heart and brain, as Juliet's words must have haunted Romeo's. No more; no less. But they slid into and filled up the blanks between some words of his own which he had spoken carelessly, not five minutes before he had first seen Laila, and which came back to his memory unbidden. "It isn't altogether despicable to let yourself loose in Paradise without an _arriere pensee_ of flaming swords, especially if you can give pleasure to someone else thereby!

One could play Romeo and Juliet in this garden nicely."

Well, he had played it for an hour or two, swept off his feet by chance. Whether he would continue to play it was unsettled till her note came. That ended his vague reluctance, and he went over to the palace, eager as any lover could be for the interview she suggested in "_the old place when it grows dusk, and the people will mostly have gone_."