A BLANK SHEET.
A description in detail of the journey from Bab-us-Sahel to the
frontier would be as wearisome to the reader as the journey itself was
to the travellers. Lady Haigh and Penelope learned to remain
resolutely in the saddle for hours after they had determined that
human nature could do no more than slip off helplessly on the sand,
and they discovered also how remarkably little in the way of luxuries
one camel could carry when it was already loaded with bedding and
camp-furniture. They found that there was not much to choose, so far
as comfort was concerned, between the acknowledged desert, diversified
by sand-storms and mirages, and the so-called forests, where trees
above and bushes below were alike as dry as tinder, and a spark
carelessly dropped might have meant death to the whole party. An
interlude in the shape of a river-voyage might have seemed to promise
better things, but the small flat-bottomed steamers were cramped and
hot, incredibly destitute of conveniences, and perversely given to
running aground in spots where they had to remain until a levy had
been made on the neighbouring population to drag them off. Scenery
there was none, save banks of mud, for the river ran high above the
level of the country through which it flowed; and it was with positive
relief that the travellers disembarked at a little mud settlement
embowered in date-palms, and prepared for a further ride. A fresh
trial was awaiting Lady Haigh here in the shape of a peremptory order
to Sir Dugald to push on at once to Alibad by forced marches, leaving
the ladies to follow quietly under the care of the regimental surgeon.
Major Keeling, with a portion of his regiment and the little band of
picked men he had gathered together to help him administer his
district, had preceded the Haighs’ party, travelling as fast as
possible; and now it seemed as if his restless energy had involved him
already in hostilities with the wild tribes. Lady Haigh turned very
white as she bade her husband farewell; but she made no attempt to
hold him back, and he rode away into the sand-clouds with his two or
three horsemen. She would have liked to follow him as fast as
possible; but Dr Tarleton, a dark taciturn man, remarkable for nothing
but an absolute devotion to Major Keeling, had his orders, and meant
to obey them. He had been told to conduct the ladies quietly to
Alibad, and quietly they should go, taking proper rest, and not
pushing on faster than his medical judgment allowed. The desert was
even drier, hotter, and less inhabited than that between Bab-us-Sahel
and the river, and to the travellers it seemed unending. Of course
they suffered torments from prickly heat, and became unrecognisable
through the attacks of mosquitoes; and Lady Haigh’s ringlets worried
her so much that nothing but the thought of her husband’s
disappointment restrained her from cutting them off altogether. As the
distance from Alibad became less, however, her spirits seemed to
revive, though this was not due to any special charm in the locality.
Even Penelope was astonished at the interest and vivacity with which
her friend contemplated and remarked upon a stretch of desert which
looked like nothing so much as a sea of shifting mud, with a small
group of mud-built huts clustering round a mud-built fort, like shoals
about a sandbank, and a range of mud-coloured hills rising above it on
the left. No trees, no water, no European buildings: decidedly Alibad,
sweltering in the glaring sun, did not look a promising abode. Sir
Dugald must be very delightful indeed if his presence could render
such a place even tolerable. And why had he not come to meet his wife?
“Look there!” cried Lady Haigh suddenly. “What’s that?”
She pointed with her whip to the desert on the right of the town. A
cloud of dust, followed by another somewhat smaller, seemed to be
leaving the neighbourhood of the fort and the huts at a tremendous
pace, crossing the route of the travellers at right angles.
“I think it must be one man chasing another,” suggested Penelope,
whose eyes had by this time become accustomed to the huge dust-clouds
raised by even a single horseman.
“Not quite, Miss Ross,” said Dr Tarleton, with a grim chuckle. “That’s
the Chief taking his constitutional, with his orderly trying to keep
up with him. There!”--as a patch of harder ground made a break in the
cloud of dust--“you can see him now. Look there, though! something is
wrong. He’s riding without any cap or helmet, and that means things
are very contrary indeed. It would kill any other man, but he can
stand it in these moods, though I got him to promise not to run such
risks. Look out!”
He checked his horse sharply, for the two riders came thundering
across the path, evidently without seeing those who were so near
them--Major Keeling with his hair blowing out on the wind and his face
distorted with anger, the orderly urging his pony to its utmost speed
to keep up with the Commandant’s great black horse.
“Don’t be frightened. He’ll work it off in that way,” said the doctor
soothingly to his two charges. “When you see him next, he’ll be as
mild as milk, but it’s as well not to come in his way just now. Look,
Lady Haigh! isn’t that your husband coming?”
It was indeed Sir Dugald who rode up, spick and span in a cool white
suit, but with a worried look about his eyes which did not fade for
some time. “You look rather subdued,” he remarked, when the first
greetings had been exchanged. “I am afraid Alibad isn’t all you
expected it?”
“Why, it’s perfectly charming!” cried Lady Haigh hurriedly. “So--so
unique!”
Sir Dugald turned to Penelope. “I shall get the truth from you, Miss
Ross. Has Elma been horribly depressed?”
“Not at all. In fact, I wondered what made her so cheerful.”
“Ah, I thought so. Sort of place that there’s some credit in being
jolly in--eh, Mrs Mark Tapley? Whenever I find Elma in uproariously
good spirits, I know she is utterly miserable, and trying to spare my
feelings. Wish I had the gift of cheerfulness. The Chief has been
biting our heads off all round this morning.”
“Yes, we saw him. What is the matter with him?” cried Lady Haigh and
Penelope together.
“Well, it’s a good thing you ladies didn’t run across him just now.
You’ve defeated one of his most cherished schemes. He meant to blow up
the fort and use the materials for housebuilding, but he was kind
enough to remember that either tents or mud huts would be fairly
uncomfortable for you, so he spared the old place until we could get a
roof over our heads. But meanwhile the Government heard of his
intention, and forbade him to destroy such an interesting relic, so
the new canal has to make a big bend, and all his plans are thrown
out. And as if that wasn’t enough, in comes a _cossid_ [messenger]
this morning with letters from Sir Henry, hinting that his differences
with the Government are so acute that he feels he’ll be forced to
resign, and then we are safe to have a wretched civilian over us. Of
course the Chief feels it, and we’ve felt it too.”
“Poor Major Keeling! I feel quite guilty,” said Lady Haigh.
“Oh, you needn’t. You’ll have a crow to pluck with him when I tell you
why he sent me that order to hurry on from the river. It was simply
and solely to test you--to see if you would keep your promise. If you
had protested and raised a storm, Tarleton had orders to pack you both
down-stream again immediately.”
“Really! To lay traps for one in that way!” Indignation choked Lady
Haigh’s utterance, and she rode on in wrathful silence while her
husband pointed out to Penelope the line of the projected roads and
canals, now only indicated by rows of stakes, the young trees just
planted in sheltered spots, and carefully fenced in against goats and
firewood-seekers, and the rising walls or mere foundations of various
large buildings. Crossing an open space, dotted with the dark tents
and squabbling children of a wandering tribe of gipsy origin, they
rode in at the gateway of the fort, where the great doors hung idly
against the wall, unguarded even by a sentry. Sir Dugald helped the
ladies to dismount, and led them into the first of a range of lofty,
thick-walled rooms, freshly white-washed.
“You’ll be in clover here,” he said. “The heat in the tents is like
nothing on earth. The Chief is a perfect salamander; but your brother,
Miss Ross, has been living under his table with a wet quilt over it,
and I have scooped out a burrow for myself in the ground under my
tent. Porter” (the Engineer officer already mentioned) “makes his boy
pour water over him every night when he goes to bed, so as to get an
hour or so of coolness. By the bye, Elma, the Chief and Ross and
Tarleton are coming to dine with us to-night.”
“Dugald!” cried Lady Haigh, in justifiable indignation. “That man will
be the death of me! To dine, when there is no time to get any food,
and the servants haven’t come up, and there isn’t any furniture!”
“Well, perhaps I ought to say that we are to dine with him up here. He
provides the food, and we are to have it in the durbar-room over
there. It’s a sort of festivity to celebrate your coming up. He really
means it well, you know.”
Lady Haigh was perceptibly mollified, but she took time to thaw.
“It is a pretty idea of Major Keeling’s,” she said, in a less chilly
tone. “At least, if---- Dugald, tell me: he hasn’t asked Ferrers?”
“Why should he? And he couldn’t, in any case. Ferrers is in charge of
our outpost at Shah Nawaz, miles away.”
“And Major Keeling knows nothing--about Penelope?”
“How could he? I haven’t told him, and I shouldn’t imagine Ferrers
has. Besides, I thought there was nothing to tell? But there are
complications ahead. If the General goes home we are bound to have
Ferrers’ uncle, old Crayne, sent to Bab-us-Sahel, and then I don’t
think his aspiring nephew will stay long up here.”
“Well, Penelope shan’t go down with him. Did you call me, Pen?” and
Lady Haigh rose from the box on which she and her husband had seated
themselves to enjoy a brief _tête-à-tête_, and hurried after
Penelope, who was exploring the new domain.
However troubled Major Keeling’s mind may have been when he started on
his ride, he seemed to have left all care behind him when he appeared
in Lady Haigh’s dining-room--as he insisted on calling it, although he
himself was responsible for both the dinner and the furniture. He laid
himself out to be amiable with such success that Sir Dugald averred
afterwards he had sat trembling through the whole meal, feeling
certain that the Chief could not keep it up, and dreading some fearful
explosion. The ladies and Colin Ross, who were less accustomed to meet
the guest officially, saw nothing remarkable in his courteous
cheerfulness; and though Penelope’s heart warmed towards the man who
could so completely lay aside his own worries for the sake of his
friends, Lady Haigh, whose mind had recurred to her wrongs, could
barely bring herself to be civil to him. He turned upon her at last.
“Lady Haigh, I am in disgrace; I know it. I have felt a chill of
disapproval radiating from you the whole time I have been sitting
beside you. What have I done? Ah, I know! Haigh has let the cat out of
the bag. How dare you betray official secrets, sir? Well, Lady Haigh,
am I never to be forgiven?”
“I could forgive your sending for my husband,” said Lady Haigh, with
dignity, “especially as there was no danger; but to doubt my word,
after I had promised----”
“I had no doubt whatever of your intention of keeping your word. What
I was not quite sure about was your power. I expect heroism from you
two ladies as a matter of course. Every British commander has a right
to expect it from Englishwomen, hasn’t he? But I want something
more,--I want common-sense. I want you, when your husband, Lady Haigh,
and your brother, Miss Ross, and the rest of us, are all away on an
expedition, and perhaps there’s not a man in the station but Tarleton,
to go on just as usual--to sew and read, and go out for your rides as
if you hadn’t the faintest anxiety to trouble you. While we are away
doing the work, you’ll have to represent us here, and impress the
natives.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that you only wanted people without any
natural feelings?” demanded Lady Haigh.
“I did, didn’t I? You seemed to think so when I gave you leave to come
up. At any rate, if you bring natural feelings up here, you must be
able to control them. Whatever the trouble is, you must keep up before
the natives, or our friends will be discouraged, and our enemies
emboldened. Did you think I could allow the greatest chance that has
ever come to this district to be jeopardised for the sake of natural
feelings?” He emphasised the words with an almost savage sneer. “Think
what our position is here. Alibad is an outpost of British India, not
merely of Khemistan; we are the advanced-guard of civilisation--not a
European beyond until you come to the Scythian frontier. We hold one
of the keys of India; any enemy attacking from this side must pass
over our bodies. And how do we expect to maintain the position? Not by
virtue of stone walls. When I came up here first I found a wretched
garrison shut in--locked in--in this very fort, with the tribes
plundering up to the gates. I turned them out, and gave orders that
the gates were never to be fastened again. Out on the open plain we
are and we shall be, if we have to sleep in our boots to the end of
our lives. Peace and security for the ryot, endless harrying for the
raider until he gives up his evil ways. There shall not be a spot on
this border where the ruffians shall be able to pause for a sip of
water without looking to see if the Khemistan Horse are behind them,
and before long their own people will give them up when they go back
to their tribes. Teach the whole country that we have come to stay,
that it pays better to be on our side than against us--there is the
beginning.”
“And then?” asked Penelope breathlessly.
“And then--you know the old saying in Eastern Europe, ‘The grass never
grows where the Turk’s hoof has trod’? Here it shall be, ‘Where the
Englishman’s hoof has trod, the grass grows doubly green.’ Down by the
river they called all this part Yagistan, you know--the country of the
wild men,” he explained for Penelope’s benefit, “but now the name has
retreated over the frontier. That’s not enough, though. We have the
district before us like a blank sheet--a sea of sand, without
cultivation or trade, and precious little of either to hope for from
the inhabitants. What is our business? To cover that blank sheet.
Canals, then cultivation; roads, then travel; fairs, then trade. The
thing will be an object-lesson all the way into Central Asia. Only
give me the time, and it shall be done. I have the men and the free
hand, and----” He broke off suddenly, and laughed with some
embarrassment. “No wonder you are all looking at me as if you thought
me mad,” he said; “I seem to have been forcing my personal aspirations
on you in the most unwarranted way. But as I have burdened you with
such a rodomontade, I can’t well do less than ask whether any one has
any suggestions that would help in making it a reality.”
“I have,” said Lady Haigh promptly. “If you want the natives to think
we mean to stay here, Major Keeling, we ought to have a club, and
public gardens.”
“So we ought, and it struck me only to-day that this old fort might
serve as a club-house when your house is built, Lady Haigh, and you
turn out of it. I won’t have it used for anything remotely connected
with defence or administration, but to turn it over to the station as
a place of amusement ought to produce an excellent effect. But as to
the gardens----”
“Why, that space in front!” cried Lady Haigh. “Turn those gipsies off,
and you have the very place, with the club on this side, and the
church and your new house and all the government buildings opposite.”
“Excellent!” said Major Keeling. “The gipsies have already had notice
to quit, and a new camping-ground appointed them, but I meant to use
the space for godowns until my plans were thrown out. Really I begin
to think I made a mistake in not welcoming ladies up here. Their
advice seems likely to be distinctly useful.”
“What an admission!” said Lady Haigh, with exaggerated gratitude. “But
don’t be deceived by Major Keeling’s flattery, Pen. Very soon you’ll
find that he has set a trap to see whether you have any natural
feelings.”
“How could I subject another lady to such a test when you have
objected so strongly, pray? Miss Ross need fear nothing at my hands.”
“Well, I call that most unfair. Come, Pen. Why!”--Lady Haigh broke off
with a little laugh--“we have no drawing-room in which to give you
gentlemen tea.”
“Have you visited the ramparts yet?” asked Major Keeling. “You will
find them a pleasant place in the evenings, and even in the daytime
there will sometimes be shade and a breeze there. I had one of the
tower staircases cleaned and made safe for your benefit, and if you
will honour me by considering the ramparts as your drawing-room this
evening, the servants shall bring the tea there.”
The suggestion was gladly accepted, and a move was made at once. The
rampart, when reached, proved to afford a pleasant promenade, and the
diners separated naturally into couples. Lady Haigh had much to say to
her husband, while the doctor and Colin Ross gravitated together,
rather by the wish of the older man than the younger, it appeared, and
Penelope found herself in Major Keeling’s charge. They stood beside
the parapet after a time, and he pointed out to her the watchfires of
the camp below, the stretch of desert beyond, white in the moonlight,
and beyond that again the distant hills, the portals of unexplored
Central Asia.
“Do you hear anything?” he asked her suddenly.
She strained her ears, but beyond the faint sounds of the camp, the
stamping of an impatient horse, the clink of a bridle, or the clank of
a sentry’s weapon, she could hear nothing.
“I knew it,” he said. “It is only fancy, but I wondered whether this
night-stillness would affect you as it does me. You know what it is to
stand alone at night and look into the darkness, and listen to the
silence? Whenever I do that on this frontier I hear
footsteps--hurrying steps, the steps of a multitude, passing on and on
for ever. I pray God I may never hear them turn aside and come this
way!”
“Why?” asked Penelope, awed by his tone.
“Because they are the footsteps of the wild tribes of Central Asia,
whose fathers poured down through these passes to the conquest of
India. They wander from place to place, owning no master, obeying
their chiefs when it suits them, always ready for plunder and rapine.
And to the south, spread out before them, is the wealth of the
idolater and the Kaffir. Of course, it would take something to move
them--a cattle-plague, perhaps, leading to famine--and a leader to
unite them sufficiently to utilise their vast numbers to advantage;
but who is to know what is going on beyond those hills? There are men
who have gone there and returned--that splendid young fellow Whybrow
is there now--but they see only what they are allowed to see. I tell
you, sometimes at night the thought of those wandering millions comes
upon me with such force that I cannot rest. I get up and ride--ride
along the border, even across it into Nalapur, to make sure that the
tribes are not at our very doors.”
“You ride alone at night? But that must be very dangerous!”
“Dangerous? If I was afraid of danger, I should not be here.”
“But your life is so valuable. Has no one begged you to be prudent?”
“My officers used to preach to me, but I have broken them of it--all
but the doctor. Poor Tarleton! he is a very faithful fellow. But will
you think me quite mad, Miss Ross, if I tell you that there is another
sound as well? It is as if the warder of a fortress should listen
across a valley, and hear the tread of the sentry on the ramparts of a
hostile fortress opposite. And the tread comes nearer.”
“Major Keeling, you frighten me. Who--what do you mean?”
He laughed. “Oh, the tread is a good thousand miles away yet. But it
is coming nearer, all the same. Nominally it is stopped by the Araxes,
but it is already pressing on to the Jaxartes. The Khanates will be
absorbed, and then--will the two warders meet face to face then, I
wonder? It may not be in my day, or even yours, but it will come.”
“You mean Scythia? But is she advancing? Why----?”
“Is it for me to say? She explains it as the trend of her manifest
destiny; we say it is her hunger for territory. But she advances, and
we remain stationary, or worse, advance and retreat again. But retreat
from this point we will not while the breath of life is in me,” he
cried passionately; “and when I die, I mean to be buried here, if
there is any burial for me at all, that at least the bones of an
Englishman may hold the frontier for England.”
“But,” hesitated Penelope, “if we don’t want to advance, why shouldn’t
she?--up to our frontier, I mean, not beyond.”
“Because she wouldn’t stop there. How could she, after sweeping over
all the barren worthless regions, pause when a rich fertile country
lay before her? I couldn’t myself. Otherwise, one would say that at
any rate her rule could not be worse than the present state of things.
There are plague-spots in Central Asia, like Gamara, which ought to be
swept from the face of the earth. But we ought to do it, not they.
It’s our men who have been done to death there--not spies, but
regularly accredited representatives of the Government--and we don’t
stir a finger to avenge them. Whybrow takes his life in his hand when
he enters Central Asia, and so will any man who follows him.”
“But why don’t we do anything?” asked Penelope, wondering at his
impassioned tone, and little dreaming of the sinister influence which
the wicked city of Gamara was to exercise over her own life.
“Because we are too lazy, too meek, too much afraid of
responsibility--anything! Old Harry--I beg your pardon--Sir Henry
Lennox would do it. I heard him say so once to the troops at a
review--that he would like nothing better than to conquer Central Asia
at their head, plundering all the way to Gamara. He got pulled up for
it, of course. He isn’t exempt from official recognition of that kind
any more than meaner people, though I really think I am particularly
unfortunate. Just now I am in trouble with Church as well as State. I
was so ill-advised as to write to a bishop about sending missionaries
here.”
“Oh, I am so glad!” said Penelope. “Colin--my brother--is so
disappointed that you haven’t asked for any.”
“Ah, but wait. I want to pick the men. To let the wrong man loose up
here would be to destroy all my hopes for the frontier. There’s a
fellow at the Cape named Livingstone--the man who made a long
waggon-journey a year or two ago to look for some great lake the
natives talked of, but found nothing, and means to try again--if I
could get him I should be happy. He’s a doctor--physics the people as
well as preaches to them, you see, and that’s the kind of Christianity
that appeals to untutored savages like his flock and mine. Well, I
asked the bishop if he could send us up a man like that, and his
chaplain answered that I was evidently not aware that the Church’s
care was for men’s souls, not their bodies. I wrote back that the
Church must be very different from her Master if that was the case;
and the answer came that in consequence of the unbecoming tone of my
last communication, his lordship must decline any further
correspondence with me. But that’s nothing. When I have fought for
months to bring some exploit of the regiment’s to the notice of the
authorities, and got an official commendation at last, I have had to
insert in regimental orders a scathing rebuke of the insubordinate and
unsuitable letters from me which had extorted it. But why am I telling
you all this? It must have bored you horribly.”
“Oh no!” cried Penelope. “I have been so much interested. And even if
not, I am so glad to listen, if it is any help to you----”
“Help?” he asked sharply. “Why on earth should it be a help?”
“I don’t know,” answered Penelope, with some surprise. “I only
thought--perhaps you don’t care to talk things over with your
officers--it might be a relief to say what you think sometimes----”
“I believe that’s it,” he answered; “and therefore I pour out the
bottled-up nonsense of years on your devoted head, without any thought
of your feelings. You should have checked me, Miss Ross. I ought to
have been asking you if you adored dancing, or what the latest fashion
in albums was, instead of keeping you standing while I discoursed on
things as they are and should not be. Another time you must pull me up
short.”