A LUCKLESS DAY.
/Morning/ brought--if not counsel--a considerable measure of
cheerfulness to Eveleen. To her buoyant temperament protracted gloom
was impossible, and her husband smiled to remember his momentary
alarm. In her full enjoyment of the happiness she had for ever
disclaimed, she was as shallow as any of the native women whose cause
she had championed. Unfortunately he could not know what was the root
of her pleasurable excitement this morning. His command to avoid the
villages had reminded her of a plan for continuing Bajazet’s education
that had occurred to her when riding with Sir Dugald Haigh one
evening--but had been carefully concealed from that prudent young man.
So far she had never ridden what she delighted to call “my Arab” when
in company with others. She meant the accomplishments of her little
steed to burst proudly on the men who had laughed at him and slandered
his ancestry. Colonel Bayard had had some jumps put up for her in the
compound, and encouraged her in many unsuccessful attempts to take
Bajazet over them with the assurance that your true Arab was never a
good jumper. Much practice had at length enabled her to get him over
them after a fashion, and now she wished to try him over water. The
Resident himself was her companion on the early morning ride--a
parting compliment, since he was leaving by the up-river steamer later
in the day; and as he was a sound, rather than an adventurous
horseman, she found it decidedly dull, its decorum redeemed only by
the romantic wildness of the escort of Khemistan Horse. Her time came
when he and Richard were safely at work in the office, and she could
start out again on Bajazet, attended by the meek syce and an orderly
of satisfactorily brigandish appearance called Shab-ud-din. They rode
out beyond the belt of gardens surrounding the city, so far that
Shab-ud-din began to be anxious, and tried to warn her of something.
He knew no English, the syce very little, and Eveleen about as little
Persian, but their efforts towards mutual comprehension were assisted
by the sound and vibration of heavy guns not far off, and she
understood that the Khans’ artillery was practising somewhere in this
direction. Her attendants were satisfied when she turned aside towards
the river again, though they did not seem quite happy when she reached
her goal. The country out here was a kind of chessboard, cut up in all
directions by irrigation canals, and she had marked one which seemed
exactly suited to her purpose. Deep and wide where it left the river,
it parted with so much water to smaller canals on either side that at
the point she had chosen it was a mere trickle between quite
manageable banks. Bajazet did not appear to like it at first--perhaps
to his desert-descended mind water was something to be respected
rather than leapt over--but after she had dismounted and led him
across once or twice, he began to enter into the idea, and his
mistress flattered him with the assurance that he was a great little
horse indeed.
There was only one drawback to her satisfaction, and that was
Shab-ud-din’s inability to comprehend that he need not follow her
backwards and forwards across the canal. He was very loyal and very
dense, and evidently felt that wherever the Beebee went it was his
duty to go too. His youth had not been spent in the hunting-field, and
his horse was much heavier than Bajazet, so that when Eveleen
increased the length of the jumps by moving farther down the canal,
the results became rather alarming. Two or three falls in the soft
sandy mud happily inflicted no serious injury, but the banks suffered
a good deal, and so did the channel.
Engrossed in her sport, Eveleen did not realise how time was passing
until the increasing heat of the sun began to make itself unpleasantly
evident. It really would soon be too hot to go out in the daytime, she
said to herself regretfully, finding the prospect of the long ride
back to the Residency the reverse of attractive. She must be getting
near a village, too--at least, there were people running across the
fields; so droll for them to be coming out to work at this time of
day! Well, just one more jump, to take her to the right side of the
canal for home, and this would be really a good wide one. Turning to
Shab-ud-din, she did her best, by word and gesture, to explain to him
that he had better ride a little higher up, and not attempt to cross
here, but as she rode towards the bank she heard him pounding after
her. It was his own fault, the foolish fellow! she could not pull up
now, but she hoped he would fall soft--the fragmentary thoughts passed
through her mind as Bajazet rose to the leap. But this time he was not
to sail lightly over the obstacle--“like a bird,” as she delighted to
say,--for a man who must have been crouching unseen in the
water-channel started up, waving his arms and shouting. Had Eveleen
not been taken by surprise the good little horse might have cleared
the interrupter, but involuntarily she deflected him ever so slightly
from his course. He faltered, jumped short, and as he staggered among
the stiff clods of the opposite bank Shab-ud-din and his big horse
came thundering down upon the two. Shab-ud-din would probably have
come off in any case, but in his horror at the scene in front of him
he must have tried to pull up, and forthwith executed a complicated
somersault sideways which left him groaning in the mud.
With an instinct born of long experience, Eveleen had freed her foot
from the stirrup when she saw disaster imminent, but it was not
necessary for her to roll from the saddle, nor was she thrown from it.
What happened--to her exceeding wrath--was that the man whose
interference had caused all the trouble seized the skirt of her long
habit and deliberately dragged her to the ground while Bajazet was
struggling for a foothold. The shock pulled the reins from her hands,
and she saw her steed, freed from her weight, reach the top of the
bank safely and dash off in one direction, while Shab-ud-din’s,
struggling up with an energy which sent the clods flying every way at
once, laboured heavily up the side and disappeared in the other. The
syce was nowhere to be seen, and Eveleen found herself sitting in the
damp mud of the channel, helplessly entangled in her habit, with
Shab-ud-din lying motionless close at hand in an attitude that spoke
to her experienced eye of broken bones, and an angry crowd, who seemed
to have arrived on the scene by magic, yelling and dancing with rage
all about her. She was absolutely defenceless, for she had even lost
her whip in the fall, and every word of Persian she had ever known was
gone completely out of her head--even if these Khemi cultivators could
have understood it. The only thing she could do was to adjust her
hat--which was half-way down her back--for the sun was blazing down
upon her, and then to look as much as possible as if she was not in
the least frightened, which was wholly untrue. If she could even have
risen to her feet, she felt that she might have overawed the mob, but
what could she do when it was impossible to free herself and stand up
without assistance? The men were all armed--some with rusty but
murderous-looking swords, all with heavy iron-shod sticks--and to
judge by their attitude, they had every intention of using them on
her. She found herself speculating which of them would strike the
first blow--the signal for all the rest to fall on her--and decided in
favour of a truculent person who was prancing about and swinging a
huge tulwar in most unpleasant proximity to her head. Would Richard be
sorry? the question presented itself irresistibly, and brought its own
answer---- Undoubtedly, but it would be because his wife hadn’t had
the sense to die decently in her bed!
It would not have been Eveleen not to laugh at the picture thus called
up, and the sight of her amusement gave pause to her assailants. They
did not shout quite so loud, and the tulwar came down a little farther
off instead of actually upon her. In this moment of comparative relief
she saw the stranger. He was riding along the bank towards them--as
fast as the insecure footing would allow, dashing the clods this way
and that--and he was leading Bajazet. He was richly dressed, with a
gorgeous _pagri_ striped with gold, but his complexion was not
dark--rather the brick-red of a European burnt by tropical suns. He
shouted angrily as he came near, and the mob gave one glance of terror
and dissolved helter-skelter. He turned and shouted to some one out of
sight, and the rush of horses’ feet and clank of accoutrements seemed
to show that he was attended by a military escort, which he was
directing to pursue the fugitives. He dismounted as he came
near--Eveleen’s syce appeared out of space to take the horses’
bridles--and stumbled down the rough bank towards her.
“I trust you ain’t hurt, ma’am? Bless my soul, if it ain’t Miss
Evie--Miss Delany, I should say!”
The voice, with its Cockney accent, brought back vague memories of
misty mornings, of purpling copses and vivid turf, of battered stone
walls and untrimmed hedges masking sunken lanes--all the
accompaniments of a day’s hunting in the old life. But why not an
Irish voice? With a sudden effort Eveleen found the clue--recalled a
young man, not a gentleman, who had come into the neighbourhood on
some legal business, and having been bitten by the prevailing mania,
had afforded a rich feast of amusement to the members of the hunt.
“It’s not you, Mr Carthew?” she said incredulously.
“’Sh, miss! They call me Tamas Sahib here, and it’s safer. To think of
comin’ across you!”
“And they call me Mrs Ambrose,” she laughed, as he helped her up. “But
why would you be going about dressed up like this?”
“I ain’t one of your lot,” he avoided her eye. “Master-General of
Ordnance to their Highnesses--that’s what I am. The Resident he don’t
know nothin’ about me, and I’ll thank you, ma’am, not to tell him
nothin’.”
“As you please,” she said, rather perplexed. “But you’ll not mind my
telling Major Ambrose--in confidence----” as she surprised a look of
something like alarm. “Sure you must see he’ll wish to thank you for
coming to my help,” with a touch of _hauteur_. What was the man so
mysterious about?
“As you please, ma’am. But you’ll remember I ain’t an Englishman
here--just one of these people.” He had wrung most of the water out of
her skirt by this time, and brushed off some of the mud--clumsily, but
with evident goodwill. “You did better for me once,” as he looked
disparagingly at his handiwork.
“The time I cot your horse for you when you were in the boghole? Ah
no, nonsense! I didn’t even try to brush the mud off you, because you
were all mud, every bit of you, were you not? But would you look at
us, talking over old times like this, and leaving poor Shab-ud-din to
lie and groan!”
“Let me see to him, ma’am. It’s no job for you.”
“That it is, when he came by his fall trying to help me. What d’ye
think now? his collar-bone. I’d say it was, and maybe an arm as
well--and how in the wide world will we get him home?”
“If you’ll be good enough to leave it to me, ma’am--believe me, you
must. It’s for my own sake----” shamefacedly. “It won’t do for my men
to catch me talking privately with you. If you’ll mount and follow me,
they shall bring the poor chap in.”
“Follow you?” her eyebrows went up slightly.
“If you don’t mind, ma’am. That’s the way here, you know, and as I was
saying, I’m one of ’em now.”
With what she felt was exemplary meekness, Eveleen allowed the syce to
mount her, and waited while her old acquaintance rode to meet the wild
horsemen who formed his escort. They were returning in triumph,
bringing with them several of the fugitive assailants, who bore every
appearance of having been roughly handled. It occurred to her suddenly
that to deliver over Khemi villagers to a band of Arabits was probably
equivalent to sentencing them to death, and she called after Carthew--
“What was it made the villagers so angry? What were they after?”
“You were breakin’ down their canal, and they thought you meant
destroyin’ it, ma’am. I’ll teach ’em to make a fuss about what their
betters do in future.”
“Now, now, ’twas my fault,” said Eveleen. “They have got a good
beating, by the look of them, so let them go, and please give them ten
rupees from me, to pay for the damage.”
“It’s encouragin’ ’em to do it again----” he began.
“They won’t get the chance, or I’m much mistaken--knowing Major
Ambrose as I do,” with a sigh. “No, ’twas just to show them I wasn’t
meaning to do any harm.” She watched Carthew as he met his followers,
had the prisoners ranged in front of him and harangued them
impressively, then received money from an attendant who produced it
from some mysterious hiding-place in his girdle, and distributed it
among them. It made her smile to see that he shepherded his troopers
carefully back, evidently suspecting that otherwise they might follow
the pardoned criminals and force them to disgorge. Leaving two men to
look after Shab-ud-din, he led the way again towards Qadirabad,
Eveleen following him, with the syce at her stirrup, and the escort
bringing up the rear. The sun was very hot by this time, Bajazet was
tired and stumbled more than once, and Eveleen drooped in her saddle,
trying to nerve herself in advance for the ordeal of meeting a justly
incensed Richard. She met him sooner than she expected, in a cloud of
dust, with an escort of Khemistan Horse. Carthew drew aside, with an
admirable air of contempt alike for the service he had rendered and
for its object. Richard was angry.
“What have you been doing with yourself now?” he demanded of his muddy
and dishevelled wife.
“I got a fall, and this--this gentleman--something in the Khans’
Artillery he is--helped me up.”
“Sardar Sahib”--Richard rode a little nearer the disdainful figure of
the rescuer--“I am deeply indebted to you. Accept my acknowledgments.”
“It is nothing, sahib. I happened by chance upon the spot.”
“Don’t let him go!” Eveleen whispered anxiously. “There were some
villagers--I spoiled their canal or something--he paid ten rupees for
me--we must give it him back.”
“I don’t carry piles of coin about with me, my dear, but I imagine he
will trust me. Or have you already given him your whip in pledge?”
Horror-stricken, Eveleen realised that she had not recovered her
gold-mounted whip--the gift of the hunt on her marriage. “It’s
gone--lost!” she said despairingly. “I must go back--or another day,
perhaps--and look for it.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. I understand, Sardar Sahib, there’s a
small matter of money between us. It shall be sent to your quarters in
an hour without fail. But I am still infinitely your debtor.”
“The obligation is on my side, sahib. May you be fortunate!” and with
due interchange of compliments the two parties separated.
“This is the last time you’ll ride out without an escort, my dear!”
said Richard pleasantly. “It’s clear you ain’t able to take care of
yourself. That’s the Yankee chap who commands the Khans’ Artillery, I
presume? How did he contrive to be on the spot so pat?”
“How would I know?” listlessly. “But it’s English he is--not American.
I know him.”
“You have the most extraordinary set of acquaintances of any female I
have ever met! He gives himself out as American--that’s all I know.
Where have you seen him before?”
“He used to follow the hounds one season, a few years ago. ’Twas just
when _Pickwick_ was coming out, and everybody called him Mr Winkle,
for he’d turn up on the most hopeless crocks you ever saw, and as
often on the ground as in the saddle. Some sort of attorney’s clerk he
was--hunting up evidence or something, but it wasn’t much he got,
unless he found it in the mud.”
“His riding has improved since then, evidently--or he rides better
horses,” drily. “What became of him?”
“My dear Ambrose, how would I know? I did hear a rumour that he had
got into some trouble and enlisted, but ’twas likely nothing but
scandal.”
“And then got into some more trouble and deserted--eh?”
“Sure y’are very ready to belittle the poor fellow!” Eveleen turned
upon her husband. “I suppose that’s the measure of the value you set
upon your wife--the way you treat the man who’s just saved her life?”
“You had not told me the extent of the obligation, my dear. But the
greater it is, the more careful you had better be to maintain the
distance he has fixed between himself and us. The fellow is
undoubtedly a deserter from our artillery--whether from the Bengal
side or this I don’t know; the native princes are always ready to
entertain ’em to instruct their troops. I have told you he passes
himself off as a Yankee--that’s to prevent our making enquiries, of
course, and perhaps also to evade the suspicions of his present
employers. They would smell a rat at once did he show any desire for
intercourse with the Agency. There’s no manner of doubt he’s a
deserter.”
“Ambrose, you wouldn’t contemplate laying information against him?”
anxiously.
“What do you take me for, my dear? No doubt it’s my duty, but as you
have reminded me, the fellow has placed me under a profound
obligation. If you’ll remember the fact yourself, and be content to
pass him without acknowledgment should you meet, so much the better
for him.”
Eveleen did not agree with this at all. The tone in which Richard
spoke of the “profound obligation” was disagreeable, and the thought
of cutting her rescuer dead was more so. But she was too much subdued
and dispirited to embark on further wordy warfare just now, though she
made her own resolutions privately. Richard, observing her unwonted
meekness, drew flattering deductions from it, and improved the
occasion by intimating that she would do well to relieve the
Resident’s mind by promising to confine her rides within orthodox
limits in future. But this was too much to ask, and when Colonel
Bayard came out anxiously to meet the rescue expedition and enquire
how it had sped, his solicitude did not meet with the gratitude it
deserved, since he incautiously expressed the same hope. What was to
happen if she felt she _must_ go out for a gallop when she was bound
by a promise not to? Eveleen demanded indignantly; and thus faced by
the old problem of the immovable object and the irresistible force,
Colonel Bayard wisely confined himself to laying it down, in the
hearing of his staff, that in no case was she to leave the compound in
future without either an escort or European attendance. This was
galling, and she sought her own rooms in much depression of spirit.
But the misfortunes of this unfortunate day were not yet at an end.
Richard, who had accompanied her in a considerate silence which she
would certainly not have maintained had their cases been reversed,
suddenly found his tongue.
“There was a letter for you in the _dâk_--here it is. That brother of
yours is honouring you, I presume. Why don’t the fellow learn to
write? Such a fist I never saw--nor anybody else neither. Here this
letter has been up to Sahar and down to Bab-us-Sahel again--and all
his fault.”
“The Delanys think more of fighting than of writing,” said Eveleen
succinctly. It sounded so neat that she felt quite cheered.
“No doubt. I’ll wager anything the fellow wants more money, or he
wouldn’t have written now. If he does, you had better leave it to me
to answer him.”
“I’ll not do anything of the sort. He don’t want money, I’m certain,
and if he did, he wouldn’t take yours.”
“H’m!” said Richard Ambrose infuriatingly.
“I tell you he wouldn’t look at it--not if you offered him millions,
and brought it to him on your bended knees!”
“That”--with the strict moderation she found so trying--“is hardly
likely. Well, my dear, I’ll leave you to enjoy your letter.”
But Ketty had something to say first, and she said it at length, as
she removed her mistress’s mud-stained garments and disclosed an
extensive system of bruises. In vain did Eveleen assure her that she
had been worse bruised many a time after a day’s hunting, the handmaid
remained of opinion that “Madam-sahibs no done ride that way.” As a
Parthian shot, even as she with drew by command, she expressed the
hope that Master would stop these rides, but by this time Eveleen was
established on her couch in a deliciously cool muslin wrapper, sipping
a cup of tea, and preparing to break the seals of her letter.
Alas, alas! Brian was in trouble still. By the most unfortunate chance
in the world, at this very last moment the brother officer on whom he
had relied to relieve him--at a price--of an elaborate fowling-piece
had been invalided home, and was selling his own guns, and no other
purchaser could be found. The sum at issue was a paltry one--three
hundred rupees would cover it, but without those three hundred rupees
Brian could not appear before Sir Harry Lennox and proudly declare
himself free of debt. Simply and naturally he applied to the helper
who had never yet failed him. Surely Evie’s husband could not refuse
to advance so small a sum if she asked it? He might cut up a bit
rusty, but it would only be for a minute or two. Alas! Richard’s wont
was not merely to let the sun go down upon his wrath, but to cover
that wrath up carefully to keep it warm for the night--so Eveleen had
once declared aghast, in her astonishment at a method so unlike the
quickly passing tempests to which she was accustomed. And moreover,
even if she could have appealed to him two hours ago, it was
absolutely impossible after the last words that had passed between
them. Even for Brian’s sake--rather, perhaps, especially for Brian’s
sake--she could not expose herself and him to the certainty of a
refusal couched as Richard Ambrose would couch it. But something must
be done, for at the end of his letter Brian supplied an additional
reason:--
“So do your best for me, my dear girl, for I am _bruk entirely_, as
old Tim the huntsman used to say. If you don’t, you will lose more
than you bargain for--this is a dead secret. I hear old Sir Harry is
bound for Kaymistaun before long, so stump up the tin somehow if you
have any fancy for seeing
“Your despairing brother,
“/Brian Delany/.”
But how? Eveleen’s first thought was to apply to Colonel Bayard, but
the thought was relinquished as soon as formed. He would press upon
her three thousand rupees instead of three hundred if he had it, but
he would certainly make Richard a party to the transaction--and then
it would be at an end. She became as despairing as Brian himself as
she ran over the names of the various men with whom she came in
contact. Some of them would be unable to raise the money, having
solved the problem of existing on chits eked out by a judicious
distribution of their pay as it came in; some would be so proper that
they would tell Richard at once; others would hold over her the threat
of telling him, and do so at last. Clearly there was nothing to be
done in that way. She must sell something--or, at any rate, get an
advance on something, and that not from the Soucars who acted as
bankers to the Agency, but from some firm without official
connections. The idea sounded hopeful. Her own simple rural life had
known nothing of pawnbrokers, but she had relatives in Dublin who, in
common with the rest of their circle, were wont to “deposit” their
ancestral jewellery--at the bank, it was politely understood--save
during the brief Castle season, while the family plate was “stored” in
like manner except when required for a rare dinner-party. She must
certainly pawn something, since the few odd coins in her own
possession, if hunted up from all the nooks and corners where they
somehow found hiding-places, might possibly amount to five rupees, but
more probably would not.
But what could she pawn? She had so little jewellery that Richard
would be sure to notice it if any particular ornament was not worn for
some time, and none of it was very costly. She knew little about
values, but she feared it might need all her trinkets to serve as
security for three hundred rupees. All save one, that is. Impulsively
she rose, and going to her jewel-case, took out the turquoise disc. To
the Western eye it was not particularly attractive, but the Oriental
mind attached to it a sentimental worth. She recalled the day when she
had worn it at Bombay to show Brian, who was staying with her, and the
awe and reverence with which his bearer, a Northern man, had viewed
it. His eyes were glued to it from the moment he first distinguished
it amid the laces on her breast, and when she took it off and handed
it to Brian to examine, the servant retreated a little, as though
either afraid or consciously unworthy to approach. When his master
demanded what was the matter, the man explained that the stone was
undoubtedly the Seal of Solomon, bearing the Name at which all the
demons trembled, and endowing its owner with power to compel their
services. Nothing more was needed to make the brother and sister waste
the whole evening, and all the sealing-wax in the house, in trying to
produce a satisfactory impression, entirely without success. The
bearer, appealed to with ribaldry by his master, pointed out that the
markings on the stone might by the eye of faith be interpreted as
forming the required letters. It was the seal itself, not the
impression, that signified, he said, and to cut it, as the sahib
suggested, would be impious in the extreme, since it already bore all
that was necessary. He ended by adjuring Eveleen to keep it safely,
and pointed out the value which must have been attached to it by the
former possessor who had suspended it from its strong steel chain.
“Well, it’s not much use to me!” said Eveleen. “Not being Solomon, I
can’t wear a ring the size of a soup-plate, and Ambrose don’t like to
see it round my neck. It may be very nice and magical, as your man
says, but what good’s that when I don’t know how it works?”
“Ah, sure the thing will come in some time,” said Brian vaguely. “Let
me have a try with it. Rubbing, now--that’s what it wants, ain’t it?
I’ll give it a rubbing it won’t forget in a hurry!”
But no amount of rubbing produced any effective manifestation, and now
the stone was to be made useful in another way. Any pawnbroker would
surely be willing to advance three hundred rupees on such a treasure.
But the difficulty was to find him. Eveleen could not quite imagine
herself scouring the Qadirabad Bazar for a pawnbroker--especially with
a mounted escort at her heels--and she did not like the idea of
trusting any of the servants. Then came a happy thought.
“Tom Carthew, of course! A disreputable acquaintance, Ambrose may call
him if he likes, but who better can there be to help me do a
disreputable thing? Tom Carthew’s the man!”