THE SUMMONS.
In the moonlight, bright as day, Mr. Jervis rode home beside Miss
Gordon’s rickshaw. Her tell-tale fan stuck out of the pocket of his
overcoat.
Yes, their little world was not blind; it was evidently a settled
thing. Most people were glad. The Brandes were sure to do the wedding
in “style;” and a wedding would be an agreeable variety from dances and
picnics.
“I shall come up to-morrow morning,” he said, as he reluctantly
released her hand, “to-morrow before twelve.”
Mr. Brande, who had effected his escape early, had returned home, and
been in bed and asleep for some hours.
He was suddenly aroused by his wife standing at his bedside, her cloak
hanging off her shoulders, her coiffeur a little deranged, a lamp in
her hand illuminating an unusually excited countenance.
“Well, _what_ is it?” he demanded with pardonable irritation.
“Oh, P.! what do you think? A man has come from Simla----”
“Yes,” suddenly sitting erect, his official mind at once on the alert
for some pressing and important dispatch.
“He came out with them in the same ship,” she panted.
Had Sarabella his wife gone suddenly out of her mind?
“He says that Mark, not Waring, is the rich man.”
“He said it after supper, I suppose,” snarled Mr. Brande. “He was
_drunk_!”
“Not a bit of it! I tackled Mark himself, and he confessed. I was very
angry at being taken in. He declares they did it without meaning a bit
of harm at first, and that when it went too far he did not know what
to do. He is very sorry.”
“That he is a millionaire! Oh yes, I should think so!”
“He is coming up first thing to-morrow to tell you all about it; and,
unless I’m mistaken, to speak to you about Honor.”
“What about her?” sharply.
“Why, you dear, stupid man, are you asleep still? Can’t you guess?”
“You told me that there was nothing of that sort; in fact,” with an
angry laugh, “that ‘the boy,’ as you called him, was desperately
devoted to _you_.”
“What stuff!” she ejaculated indignantly. “He will have thirty thousand
a year! I know that I shall never close an eye to-night!”
“And are good-naturedly resolved that I am to keep you in countenance.
You might, I think, have reserved this double-barrelled forty-pounder
for the morning.”
“And that’s all the thanks I get,” she grumbled, as she slowly trailed
away to her dressing-room.
Just about this very time, Mark Jervis was smoking a cigarette in his
bare sitting-room. Before him, on the table, lay a white feather fan
and a programme. He was much too happy to go to bed, he wanted to
sit up and think. His thoughts were the usual bright ones incident
to love’s young dream, and as he watched the smoke slowly curling up
the air was full of castles. These beautiful buildings were somewhat
rudely shattered by the entrance of his bearer--wrapped in a resai, and
looking extremely sleepy--with a letter in his hand.
“A Pahari brought this for the sahib three hours ago,” tendering a
remarkably soiled, maltreated envelope.
Of course it was from his father at last. He tore it open, and this was
what it said--
“MY DEAR SON,
“I am very ill. If you would see me alive, come. The messenger will
guide you. I live forty miles out. Lose no time.
“Your affectionate father,
“H. JERVIS.”
The letter was forty-eight hours old.
“Is the messenger here?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes, sahib.”
“Then call up the grey pony syce; tell him to take gram and a jule,
and saddle the pony. I am going off into the interior. I must start in
twenty minutes.”
The bearer blinked incredulously.
“I need not take you.” The bearer’s face expanded into a grin of
intense relief. “I shall be away several days. Get out my riding kit,
shove some clothes in a bag, and ask the cook to put up some bread and
meat and things, and tell the coolie I will be ready very shortly.”
Then he sat down, drew his writing-case towards him, and began to write
a note to Honor. Her first love letter--and strange, but true, _his_
also. It was merely a few lines to say he had been most suddenly called
away by his father, and hoped that he would be back within the week.
It was both a keen disappointment and a keen pleasure to the girl when
the ayah brought the letter to her at nine o’clock. She read it over
and over again, but she will not allow our profane eyes to see it, nor
can it be stolen, for she carries it about with her by day, and it
rests under her pillow by night: at the end of the week it was getting
a little frayed.
When the ayah handed the note to the Miss Sahib, the writer was already
twenty miles out of Shirani, following a broad-shouldered Gurwali with
his head and shoulders wrapped in the invariable brown blanket.
Their course was by mountain bridle-paths, and in an eastern direction;
the scenery was exquisite, but its beauties were entirely lost upon
Jervis, who was picturing other scenes in his mind’s eye. The road
crept along the sheer faces of bare precipices, or plunged suddenly
into woody gorges, or ran along a flat valley, with cultivated fields
and loosely built stone walls. The further they went, the lovelier
grew the country, the wilder the surroundings. At twelve o’clock they
halted to rest the grey pony--the messenger’s muscular brown legs
seemed capable of keeping up their long swinging trot all day. It was
four o’clock in the afternoon when they arrived at their journey’s end;
they abruptly descended into a flat wooded dale, surrounded by hills on
three sides, sloping away to the plains on the fourth. A path from the
bridle-road led them into a dense jungle of high grass, full of cattle,
pack ponies, and mules. Emerging from this, they came to a wall, along
which they kept for about three hundred yards, and turning a sharp
corner they found themselves outside a great square yellow house, two
stories high.
It seemed as if it had been bodily transplanted from England. There
was nothing irregular or picturesque about it--the windows were in
rows, the roof was square and had a parapet, the sole innovation was a
long verandah, which ran all round the building, and was apparently of
recent date, a mere after-thought.
Mark, as he rode up to the steps, looked about him for the coolie; he
had suddenly disappeared. There was no one to be seen. He ascended
to the verandah, it was deserted, save for some fowl, who seemed
delightfully at home. It was more the verandah of a native dwelling
than the entrance to the home of an Englishman.
The new-comer gazed around expectantly, and saw three string charpoys,
a bundle of dirty bedding, a pair of shoes, a huka, and a turban.
The door, which was innocent of paint or bells, was ajar. He pushed it
open and found himself in a large, dim, very dirty hall. Here he was
confronted by an old nanny goat, and two kids; to the left he saw a
room, which appeared to be a mere repetition of the verandah.
As he hesitated and looked about, a man suddenly appeared, a servant
presumably, wearing a huge red turban, and a comfortable blue cloth
coat. He was stout and well to do, had a fat face, a black square
beard, and remarkably thick lips.
He seemed considerably disconcerted, when he caught sight of the
stranger, but drawing himself up pronounced the words, “Durwaza, Bund,”
with overwhelming dignity. Adding in English--
“The sahib never see no one.”
“He will see me,” said Mark, with decision.
“Sahib sick, sar, seeing no one, those my orders. Sahib seeing no
sahibs for many years.”
“Well, he sent for me, and I have come. Let me see him immediately. I
am his son.”
The Mahomedan’s expression instantly changed from lofty condescension
to the most unqualified astonishment.
“The sahib’s--son!” he repeated incredulously.
“Yes. I have told you that once already. Look sharp, and send some one
to see after my pony; I have come a long distance.”
The bearer went away and remained absent about five minutes, during
which time Mark had leisure to note the dirt, and neglected, almost
ruinous, state of the house--which had originally been a fine
mansion--to listen to loud jabbering and whispering in the room beside
him, and to observe several pairs of native eyes eagerly peeping
through a crack in the door.
“Come with me,” said the bearer, with a sullen air. “The sahib will see
you presently.”
“Is he better?”
“Yes, he is quite well; please to sit here,” and he opened the door
of an immense dining-room, furnished with Bombay carved black wood
furniture, and a dusty Indian carpet. It was a room that was evidently
never used, and but rarely opened. Its three great long windows, which
were caked and dim with grime, looked out upon the snows. This was
evidently the back of the house; the front commanded a view of the
plains. The site had been admirably selected.
A black tray, with cold meat and some very sour bad bread, was borne
in, and a place cleared on the dusty table by the joint efforts of the
sulky bearer and a khitmaghar, with a cast in his eye, and the very
leanest figure Mark had ever beheld. However, he was much too hungry to
be fastidious, and devoured the refreshments with a capital appetite.
Meanwhile, after their custom, the two men stood by in silence with
folded arms, staring with concentrated attention and unremitting gaze
until the conclusion of the meal.
It was quite dark when the bearer reappeared, and, throwing open the
door, announced in a deeply resentful tone--
“The sahib will see the sahib.”
Mark followed the fat, square, aggressive-looking back, till he came
to a curtained archway, and was ushered into a lofty dim room, so dim,
that he could barely discern the figure which rose to greet him--a tall
bent man in a dressing-gown.
“Mark, my boy, it was like you to come so soon,” said a shaky voice.
“Like what you were as a child,” and he held out both his hands eagerly.
“I only got your letter at four o’clock this morning, sir,” said his
son. “I hope you are better?”
“I am for the present. I sent for you by a private messenger
post-haste, because I believed that I had but a few hours to live, and
I longed desperately to see you.”
“I have been hoping you would send for me for the last two months. I
have been waiting, as you know, in Shirani.”
“Yes--yes--yes! Sometimes the temptation was almost irresistible, but
I fought against it; for why should I cloud over your young life?
However, I had no choice; the situation has been forced upon me--and
you. My faithful companion, Osman, died ten days ago, but we will talk
of this another time. These voices in my head interrupt me; especially
that woman’s voice,” with an irritable gesture.
His son could not, for the life of him, think of any immediate or
appropriate remark, and sat in embarrassed silence, and then Major
Jervis continued--
“You are six and twenty now--a grown man, Mark, and speak like a man! I
have not had a good look at your face yet. I wonder if it is the same
face as that of my own honest-eyed boy?”
The answer would be prompt, if he so pleased, for the lean khitmaghar
now staggered in under the weight of a large evil-smelling “argand”
lamp (a pattern extinct everywhere save in remote parts of India).
Mark looked over eagerly at his father. His head was bent in his
hands. Presently he raised it, and gazed at his son with a look of
unmistakable apprehension. His son felt as if he were confronting
an utter stranger; he would never have recognized this grey-haired
cadaverous old man as the handsome stalwart sabreur he had parted with
sixteen years previously. He looked seventy years of age. His features
were sharpened as if by constant pain, his colour was ashen, his hands
emaciated, his eyes sunken; he wore a camel’s-hair dressing-gown, and a
pair of shabby slippers.
“You are just what I expected,” he exclaimed, after a long pause. “You
have your mother’s eyes; but you are a Jervis. Of course you see a
great change in me?”
“Well, yes--rather,” acquiesced his son, with reluctant truthfulness.
“India ages people.”
“You think this a strange life that I lead, I am sure; miles away from
my fellow-countrymen, buried alive, and long forgotten?”
“No, not forgotten, sir. Do you recollect Pelham Brande of the Civil
Service? He was asking for you only the other day.”
“I think I remember him--a clever fellow, with a very pretty wife, who
people said had been a servant. (How long these sort of things stick to
people’s memories.) I’ve been out of the world for years.”
“But you will return to it. Come back to England with me. What is there
to keep you in this country?”
“What, indeed!” with a jarring laugh. “No, my dear boy, I shall never
leave the Pela Bungalow, as they call it, until I am carried out of it
feet foremost.”
“Why do you say this? You are a comparatively young man--not more than
fifty-five.”
“I feel a thousand years old; and I often wish that I was dead.”
“I don’t wonder! I should say the same, if I had lived here alone for
seven years. How do you kill time?”
“I don’t kill time. Time is killing me. I walk in the garden sometimes,
but generally I sit and think. You must be tired, my boy,” as if struck
by a sudden thought.
“Well, I am, I must confess. I was at a ball until four o’clock this
morning.”
“A ball till four o’clock this morning!” he repeated. “How strange it
sounds. It seems the echo of a voice speaking twenty years ago!”
* * * * *
Dinner was served at a small table; a fowl for Mark, some patent
food for Major Jervis. The cooking was atrocious, the attendance
careless, the appointments splendid, but grimy. It was the same in
every department--an extraordinary mixture of squalor and magnificence.
It seemed to the indignant young man that these ruffians of servants
thought anything good enough for his father.
When Major Jervis’s huka was brought in he looked over at his son and
said--
“You smoke, of course?”
“Yes, thanks; but not that sort of thing. I would not know how to work
it.”
Last time he had lit a cigarette between four walls he little guessed
at the style of his next surroundings. The room was not uncomfortable,
the furniture was massively carved and luxurious, the carpet rich
Persian; there were book-cases full of volumes, and there were fine
pictures on the walls; but the paper was peeling off in strips, and
cobwebs hung like ropes from the corners. The books were grimy with
mould, the carpets and curtains inches deep in dust; certainly a sort
of oasis had been cleared around Major Jervis’s chair, but everywhere
the eye turned were tokens of neglect, poverty, and decay. His father’s
slippers were in holes, his linen frayed; apparently he was a poor man.
What had become of the begum’s fortune?