UNSTABLE.
Captain Ferrers was jogging gloomily across the desert from Fort
Shah Nawaz to Alibad, and his face was only the index to his thoughts.
At the moment he did not know whether he hated more the outpost of
which he was in command or the errand that was taking him to Alibad,
and as he rode he cursed his luck. There was no denying that
everything seemed to go wrong with him. Harassed by debts and awkward
acquaintances at Bab-us-Sahel, he had acquiesced with something like
relief in Sir Henry Lennox’s suggestion, which was practically a
command, that he should sever himself altogether from his old
associates by taking service on the frontier. But, knowing as he did
that he was sent there partly as a punishment and partly in hope of
saving him for better things, he felt it quite unnecessary to
conciliate his gaoler, as he persisted in considering Major Keeling.
The two men were conscious of that strong mutual antipathy which
sometimes exists without any obvious or even imagined reason, and
Major Keeling was not sorry when Ferrers showed an inclination to
claim the command at Shah Nawaz as his right. It was not an ideal post
for a man who needed chiefly to be saved from himself; but Ferrers was
senior to all the other men save Porter the Engineer, who could not be
spared from the head station. Therefore Ferrers had his desire, and
loathed it continuously from the day he obtained it. The place was no
fort in reality, merely a cluster of mud-brick buildings, standing
round a courtyard in which the live stock of the garrison was gathered
for safety at night, and possessing a gateway which could be blocked
up with thorn-bushes. On every side of it spread the desert, with some
signs of cultivation towards the south, and in the north the dark
hills which guarded the Akrab Pass, the door into Central Asia. To
Ferrers and his detachment fell the carrying out in this neighbourhood
of the policy outlined by Major Keeling in his conversation at the
dinner-table--the protection of the peaceable inhabitants of the
district, and the incessant harrying of all disturbers of the peace,
whether from the British or the Nalapuri side of the frontier. At
first the life was fairly exciting, though Ferrers’ one big fight was
spoilt by the necessity of sending to Alibad for reinforcements; but
now that things were settling down, it was irksome in the extreme to
patrol the country unceasingly without ever catching sight of an
enemy. Ferrers panted against the quietness which Major Keeling’s
rigorous rule was already establishing on both sides of the border. He
would have preferred the system prevailing in the neighbouring
province, where a raid on the part of the tribes was answered by a
British counter-raid, when villages were burnt, crops destroyed, and
women and children dismissed homeless to the hills, the troops
retiring again immediately to their base of operations until the
tribes had recovered strength sufficiently for the whole thing to be
gone through again. It was a poor thing to nip raids in the bud, or
arrest them when they were only just begun: a big raid, followed by
big reprisals, was the sort of thing that lent zest to frontier-life
and stimulated promotion. However, Major Keeling’s whole soul was set
against thrilling experiences of this kind, and Ferrers was forced to
submit. But his love of fighting was as strong as ever, and had led to
the very awkward and unfortunate incident which he was now to do his
best to explain at Alibad, whither he had been called by a peremptory
summons.
The root, occasion, or opportunity of all crime on the border at this
time was the practice of carrying arms, which had grown up among the
inhabitants during many years of oppression from above and incursions
from without. Now that protection was assured them, the custom was
unnecessary and dangerous, and any man appearing with weapons was
liable to have them confiscated--the people grumbling, but submitting.
Hence, when word was brought to Ferrers that a company of armed men
had been seen traversing the lands of one of the villages in his
charge, it was natural to conclude that they were raiders from beyond
the border, who had escaped the vigilance of the patrols, and hoped to
harry the countryside. Ferrers at once started in pursuit, and the
armed men, their weapons laid aside, were discovered in the village
cornfields, busily engaged in gathering in the crop. The impudence
displayed fired Ferrers, and he ordered his men to charge. His
_daffadar_, a veteran soldier, ventured to advise delay and a parley,
but he refused to listen. He meant to make an example of this party of
robbers, not to offer them terms, and a moment later his troopers were
riding down the startled reapers. These made no attempt to resist,
though they filled the air with protests, and before the troop could
wheel and ride through them again, a voice reached Ferrers’ ear which
turned him sick with horror.
“Sahib! sahib!” it cried, “we are the Sarkar’s poor ryots! Why do you
kill us?”
This time the parley was granted, and Ferrers learned too late that
the men he had attacked were the inhabitants of the village to which
the field belonged, that they had brought their weapons with them
owing to a warning that the people of another village intended to
attack them and carry off their harvest, and that the second village
had revenged itself for its disappointment by sending Ferrers the
information which had led him wrong. There was nothing to be done but
to rebuke the village elders severely for not warning him of the
intended attack instead of taking the law into their own hands,
assuage the sufferings of the wounded by distributing among them all
the money he had about him, and return drearily to Shah Nawaz to draw
up a report of the occurrence. It was his luck all over, he told
himself, ignoring the reminder that he had not attempted to avert the
fight--in fact, that he had hurried it on for the mere sake of
fighting. It was all the fault of the life at this wretched outpost,
where there was nothing a man could do but fight, and that was
forbidden him. It was little comfort to remember that Major Keeling,
in his place, would have found the day all too short for the
innumerable things to be done. He would have been in the saddle from
morning till night, visiting the villages, holding impromptu courts of
justice, looking for traces of old irrigation-works or planning new
ones, and filling up any odds and ends of time by instituting
shooting-competitions among his troopers, or making experiments in
gardening. Ferrers was a very different man from his Commandant,
though he could be brave enough when there was fighting to be done,
and owed his captaincy to his gallantry on a hard-won field. Without
the stimulus of excitement he was prone to fits of indolence, when the
monotonous round of daily duty was intolerably irksome; and he was
further handicapped by the fact that whereas the change to the
frontier had been intended to cut him off from his old life, he had,
unknown to the older men who were trying to direct his course anew,
succeeded in bringing a portion of his past with him.
The fashion among the young officers at Bab-us-Sahel at this time
might be said to run in the direction of slumming. The example had
been set a year or two before by a young man of brilliant talents and
unscrupulous audacity, whose delight it was to escape from
civilisation and live among the natives as one of themselves. This man
was the despair of his seniors, but in the course of his escapades he
contrived to pick up much curious and some useful information. To
follow in his footsteps meant to defy the authorities now and possibly
gain credit later, and this was sufficiently good reason for doing so.
In the case of men of less brilliance or less audacity the natural
result was merely to lead them into places they had much better have
shunned, and acquaint them with persons whom it would have been wiser
not to know. Ferrers was one of those who had followed the pioneer’s
example without gaining the slightest advantage, and he knew this; so
that when the chance of freeing himself came to him, he was almost
ready to welcome it. Almost, but not quite. It so happened that a rule
had lately been introduced requiring a literary knowledge of the local
language from officers employed in the province. Major Keeling, while
remarking to Ferrers, with his usual contempt for the actions of his
official superiors, that in his opinion a colloquial acquaintance with
it was all that was really needed, advised him to take a munshi with
him to Shah Nawaz, and employ his leisure there in study. No sooner
had the advice been given than the munshi presented himself in the
person of one of Ferrers’ disreputable associates, the Mirza
Fazl-ul-Hacq. Originally a Mohammedan religious teacher, this man was
in some way under a cloud, and was regarded by his co-religionists
much as an unfrocked clergyman would be in England. This fact was in
itself an attraction to Ferrers and the young men of his stamp, to
whom there was an actual delight in finding that one who ought to be
holy had gone wrong, and the Mirza professed a strong attachment to
him in return. Now he begged to be allowed to accompany him to the
frontier as his munshi, asserting, with perfect truth, that he was
well acquainted with all the dialects in use there. Ferrers, who had
begun to look back regretfully at the pleasures from which he was to
be torn, closed with the offer, and the Mirza was duly enrolled in his
retinue. The two were closeted together in all Ferrers’ hours of
leisure at Shah Nawaz, but remarkably little study was accomplished.
The Mirza was an adept at various games of chance, he brewed delicious
sherbets (not without the assistance of beverages forbidden by his
religion), and he was a fascinating story-teller. Thoroughly worthless
as Ferrers knew him to be, the man had made himself necessary to him,
and he half hated, half condoned, the fact. When a fellow led such a
dog’s life, how could he refuse any chance of congenial companionship
that offered itself?
It might have been objected that Ferrers was within riding distance of
Alibad, and that there was no law cutting him off from his friends
there; but since Colin and Penelope Ross had come up-country he had
avoided the place as if it were plague-stricken. Lady Haigh had been
quite right in her interpretation of his feelings, and though he had
succeeded in winning over Colin to plead his cause with Penelope, he
now wondered gloomily why he could not have let well alone. He was
always acting on impulse, he told himself, in a way that his cooler
judgment disapproved, and it did not occur to him that he had to thank
the Mirza’s influence over him for this fresh change. In fact, he was
not conscious of it, for the subject was never mentioned between them;
but in the Mirza’s society he felt no desire for that of his old
friends. He had a real fondness for Colin, the one man of his
acquaintance who believed in him, though he found it terribly
fatiguing to keep up in his company the pretence of being so much
better than he was. Colin had no idea of his real tastes and pursuits,
and, curious though it may seem, Ferrers was prepared to take a good
deal of trouble to prevent his becoming aware of them. The thought
that Colin’s eyes would never rest upon him in kindness again was
intolerable; and if Colin alone had been concerned, his mind would
have been at ease. But if he married Penelope, he must either give up
the Mirza, or she must know, and therefore Colin would know, a good
many things he would prefer to keep secret--and what counterbalancing
advantage would there be? Though he had felt his interest in her
revive when he saw her admired and courted, she was not the type of
woman who could keep him in thrall: she would suffer in silence, and
look at him reproachfully with eyes that were like Colin’s, and there
would be little pleasure in that.
At this point Ferrers’ meditations were suddenly interrupted. Intent
upon his mental problem, it was with a shock that he found himself
confronted by a trooper of the Khemistan Horse. He tried to discover
what emergency could have dictated the posting of vedettes at this
distance from the town, but learned only that it was the Doctor
Sahib’s order. Wondering vaguely whether there was plague in the
district, and the doctor was establishing a sanitary cordon, he rode
on, to see more vedettes in the distance, and to be sharply challenged
by a sentry as he entered the town. The squalid streets seemed wholly
destitute of the military element which usually gave them brightness;
but in the courtyard of the mud building which served as a hospital Dr
Tarleton was hard at work drilling a motley band of convalescents and
hospital assistants, with a stiffening of dismounted troopers, who
appeared to be bored to extinction by the proceedings.
“What’s up, Tarleton?” cried Ferrers, after watching in bewilderment
the strange evolutions of the corps and their instructor’s energetic
endeavours to get them straight.
Hearing the voice, Dr Tarleton turned round and hurried to the wall,
wiping his face as he came. “Oh, the Chief and all the rest are away,
and I’m in charge. Nothing like being prepared for the worst, you
know. This is my volunteer force--the Alibad Fencibles. I say, tell me
the right word, there’s a good fellow! I’ve got ’em all massed in that
corner, and I can’t get ’em out without going back to the beginning.”
Ferrers whispered two or three words into the doctor’s ear, watched
him write them down, and rode on towards the fort, taking some comfort
in the thought that his unpleasant interview with Major Keeling must
necessarily be postponed. It was clear that it was his duty to pay his
respects to the ladies, and by good luck it was just calling-time.
Lady Haigh and Penelope had now been two or three months at Alibad,
and the heat and burning winds of the shadeless desert were leaving
their mark upon them. Both had lost their colour, and even Lady Haigh
moved languidly, while Penelope was propped up with cushions in a long
chair. She had had a sharp attack of fever, and Ferrers, with an
inward shudder, wondered how he could have thought her handsome when
she landed. But both ladies were unfeignedly pleased to see him,
principally because they were glad of anything that would divert their
thoughts; and he experienced a pleasant sense of contentment and
wellbeing on finding himself established in the dark cool room, with
two women to talk to him. He found that the station had been bereft of
almost the whole of its defenders for nearly twenty-four hours. Two
nights ago Sir Dugald had started with a small force in pursuit of a
band of Nalapuri raiders who were reported to be ravaging the most
fertile part of the border, and yesterday an urgent message had come
from him asking for reinforcements and Major Keeling’s presence.
“But if Haigh and his guns are gone out, it must be a big affair,”
said Ferrers.
“Oh no, the guns are left at home,” said Lady Haigh. “All of us are
people of all work here. Sir Dugald digs canals, and Captain Porter
conducts cavalry reconnaissances, and Major Keeling works the
guns----”
“And the doctor drills the awkward squad,” supplied Ferrers. “What a
lively time you seem to have!”
“Oh well, that was more at first. Then there was scarcely a night
without an alarm, and we used to hear the troops clattering out of the
town at all hours after bands of raiders. There are plenty of alarms
still, but generally in the daytime. Two villages have quarrelled over
their lands, or some ryots have objected to the survey or resisted the
digging of the canal, and Major Keeling is wanted to put things
right.”
“But how calmly you speak of it! You and Pen--Miss Ross--must be
perfect heroines,” said Ferrers. It was clear that Lady Haigh did not
intend to leave him alone with Penelope, and with a resentment which
had in it more than a touch of relief, he set himself to tease her.
“How pleased Haigh must be to know that, whatever is happening to him,
you are just as quiet and happy as if you were at home!”
The malice in his tone was evident, and Lady Haigh knew that he
guessed at the terrors of those broken nights, when Sir Dugald was
summoned away on dangerous duties, and she brought her bed into
Penelope’s room, and they trembled and prayed together till daylight.
But she had no intention of confessing her weakness, and answered
quickly--
“Of course he is. How clever of you to have gauged him so well!”
“And do tell me what you find to do,” asked Ferrers lazily. “At
Bab-us-Sahel you used to be great at gardening.”
“Yes, until you rode across my flower-beds and ruined them,” retorted
Lady Haigh. “You won’t find any opportunity of doing that here. Oh, we
have only poor silly little things to do compared with the constant
activity and splendid exploits of you gentlemen. We look after the
servants, of course, and try to invent food enough to keep the
household from starvation; and we get out the back numbers of the
‘Ladies’ Repository’ and the ‘Family Friend,’ and follow the
fancy-work patterns; and we read all the books and papers that come to
the station, and sometimes try very hard to improve our minds with the
standard works Miss Ross brought out with her; and in the evening we
go out in our _palkis_ to inspect the progress of the building and
road-making, and offer any foolish suggestions that may occur to us. I
think that’s all.”
“But what a life! and in the hot weather, too! Why don’t you go to the
Hills, as the Punjab ladies do?”
“The Punjab ladies may, if their husbands can afford it. Have you any
idea what it would cost to go to the Hills, or even down to
Bab-us-Sahel, from here?”
“But why come here, then? What good does it do? Of course”--for Lady
Haigh was beginning to look dangerous--“it’s delightful for Haigh to
have you, and all that; but you won’t tell me he’s such a selfish chap
that he wouldn’t rather know you were comparatively cool and
comfortable down by the sea? You can’t make me believe it’s his
doing.”
“No,” snapped Lady Haigh, “it’s ours. We are here for the good of the
station. We are civilisation, society--refinement, if you like. We
keep the gentlemen from getting into nasty jungly ways. You are
looking rather jungly yourself.” She delivered this home-thrust
suddenly, and Ferrers realised that his aspect was somewhat careless
and unkempt for the place in which he found himself. “We keep things
up to the standard, you see.”
“Ah, but I have no one to keep me up to the standard,” he pleaded.
“Out at my place there’s no one to speak to and nothing to do.”
“Then I wonder you chose to go there,” was the sharp retort.
“There was plenty to do just at first, but my rascals are quiet enough
now. A good many of them are dead, for one thing. You heard of our big
fight before you came up--with a raiding-party six hundred strong? I
had to send here for help, worse luck! but even when the
reinforcements came up we were so few that the fellows actually stood
to receive us. We charged through them again and again--I never
remember a finer fight--and there were very few of them left
afterwards.”
“You speak as if you liked it!” said Penelope, with a shudder.
“Like it? it’s the finest thing in life--the only thing worth living
for. You see a great big brute of a Malik coming at you with a curved
tulwar just sweeping down. You try to parry, or fire your Colt
point-blank into his face, and for the moment you can’t quite decide
whether you are dead or the Malik, until you suddenly realise that
your horse is carrying you on towards another fellow, and the Malik is
down. Splendid is no word for it!”
“Don’t!” said Lady Haigh sharply. “You’ll make Miss Ross ill again.
What’s that?” as a long-drawn, quavering cry seemed to descend from
the upper air, “Mem Sahib, the regiment returns!”
Lady Haigh sprang up, and was rushing out of the room, when she
suddenly remembered Penelope, and ran back to her. “Yes, I’ll help
you, Pen--how selfish of me! It’s our _chaprasi_,” she explained
hurriedly to Ferrers. “I stationed him on the tower above this to
watch for any one who might be coming. He was horribly frightened, and
said he knew he should fall down and be killed; but of course I was
not going to give in to that. Carry this cushion up for Miss Ross,
please. There’s a doorway on the ramparts where she can sit in the
shade.”
Ferrers followed obediently, as Lady Haigh half helped, half dragged
her friend up the narrow stairs, and, after allowing her one look at
the moving cloud of dust, which was all that could be seen in the
distance, established her in the doorway on the cushion, taking her
own place at a telescope which was fixed on a stand.
“This is my own idea,” she said to Ferrers. “Now, why don’t you say I
may justly be proud of it? I am as good as a sentry, I spend so much
time up here scanning the desert. I’m glad they’re coming from that
direction, for we shall be able to distinguish them so much sooner.
They must pass us before getting into the town. Now I begin to see
them. They have prisoners with them, Pen, and there are certainly
fewer of them than started, but somehow they don’t look as if they had
been fighting. No, I see what it is. There’s a whole squadron gone!”
“What!” cried Ferrers, who was standing by, unable to get a single
glance through the telescope, which was monopolised by his hostess.
“Clean gone, Lady Haigh? Must have been detached on special duty,
surely? It couldn’t have been wiped out.”
“No, no, of course,” and Lady Haigh withdrew from the glass, and
allowed him to look through it; “that must be it, but it gave me such
a fright. But I saw Dugald and Colin, Pen, and the Chief. Muhabat
Khan!” she called to the _chaprasi_, who descended slowly from the top
of the tower, and stood before her in a submissive attitude but with
an injured expression, “go and meet the regiment as it comes, and say
to the Major Sahib that Ferrers Sahib is here, and that I should be
glad if he and Ross Sahib will come in to tiffin with us. Now, Pen, I
shall take you down again,” as the messenger departed. “Captain
Ferrers will bring the cushion.”
Deposited in her chair once more, Penelope looked very white and
exhausted, and Lady Haigh reproached herself loudly in the intervals
of exchanging mysterious confidences with various servants.
“I ought never to have taken you up to the rampart,” she said; “but I
knew you would like to see them ride in; and besides----” She checked
herself, but Ferrers guessed that she had been afraid to leave
Penelope alone lest he should try to speak to her, and he smiled as he
thought how unnecessary her precautions were. But by this time there
was a clatter of horses’ feet and accoutrements in the courtyard, and
Sir Dugald ran up the steps and kissed his wife, who had sprung to the
door to meet him.
“The Chief and Ross are here,” he said. “Glad you sent that message,
Elma. You all right, Ferrers? Didn’t know you were coming in.”
Major Keeling and Colin Ross were mounting the steps with much
clanking of spurs and scabbards; but it struck Ferrers, as he stood in
the doorway, that his Commandant seemed suddenly to have remembered
something, for as he reached the verandah he lifted his sword and held
it in his hand, and walked with extreme care. After greeting Lady
Haigh, he passed on into the room, and Ferrers observed with
astonishment that the big man was evidently trying to step softly and
speak low. It was not until Major Keeling bent over Penelope’s chair,
and, taking her hand very gently, asked her how she was, that the
watcher realised for whose sake these precautions were taken.
“I felt obliged to come in when I received the order from our
beneficent tyrant over there,” said Major Keeling, in a voice which
seemed to fill the room in spite of his best endeavours; “but if our
presence disturbs you in the least, we will all go and tiffin at my
quarters, and take Haigh off with us too.”
“Oh no, please!” entreated Penelope. “It will do me good, really. It
is so nice to see you all back.”
There was a faint flush in her cheeks, which deepened when Major
Keeling remarked upon it approvingly; and Ferrers remembered, with
unreasonable anger, that her colour had not risen for him. It made her
look pretty again at once, and that great lout the Chief (thus
unflatteringly did he characterise his commanding officer) evidently
thought so too. Once again the younger man was a prey to the curious
form of jealousy which had led him into the impulsive action that he
now regretted. Penelope, for her own sake, had little or no charm for
him, but Penelope, admired by other men, became at once a prize worth
claiming. Ferrers regretted his impulsive action no longer. His appeal
to Colin had at any rate placed him in a position of superiority over
any other man who might approach Penelope.