A few days after Colonel Stuart's death John Raby was making up his
accounts in a very unenviable frame of mind, though the balance on the
right side was a large one. As a rule this result would have given him
keen pleasure; for though he was as yet too young to enjoy that
delight of dotage, the actual fingering of gold, he inherited the
instinct too strongly not to rejoice at the sight of its equivalent in
figures. There were two reasons for his annoyance. First, the
constantly recurring regret of not being able to invest his savings as
he chose. With endless opportunities for turning over a high
percentage coming under his notice, it was galling to be restricted by
the terms of his covenant with Government from any commercial
enterprise. Not that he would have scrupled to evade the regulation
had the game been worth the candle; but as yet it was not. By and by,
when his capital warranted a plunge, he had every intention of risking
his position, and, if need be, of throwing it up. But for this
justification he must wait years, unless indeed Fate sent him a rich
wife. Heiresses however are scarce in India, and furlough was not yet
due. So John Raby had to content himself with four per cent, which was
all the more annoying when he remembered that Shunker Dâs was making
forty out of the very indigo business on which he had tried to evade
the income-tax. Sooner or later John Raby intended to have his finger
in that pie, unless some more fortunate person plucked the plum out
first.
The other reason for his annoyance arose from the fact, clearly
demonstrated by his neat system of accounts, that over nine thousand
rupees of his balance were the proceeds of _écarté_ played with a man
who had had the confidence to make him his executor. The young
civilian had no qualms of conscience here either; it had been a fair
fight, the Colonel considering himself quite as good at the game as
his antagonist. But somehow the total looked bad beside that other
one, where intricate columns of figures added themselves into a row of
nothings for the widow and orphans. Not a penny, so far as the
executor could see, after paying current debts. About Madame and the
black-and-tans, as he irreverently styled her family, he did not much
concern himself; but for Belle it was different. He liked the girl,
and had often told himself that the addition of money would have made
her an excellent wife; just the sort one could safely have at home;
and that to a busy man meant much. The thought that Philip Marsden
with his large fortune showed a disposition to annex the prize
lessened his regrets for her poverty, and yet increased them. Why, he
asked himself savagely, did nice girls never have money? The only
gleam of satisfaction, in short, to be yielded by the balance was the
remembrance that his possession of the nine thousand rupees prevented
Lâlâ Shunker Dâs from absorbing it. As a matter of fact his
executorship had proved a wholesome check on the usurer's outcries,
and it gave the young man some consolation to think that no one could
have managed the Lâlâ so well as he did. The smile raised by this
remembrance lingered still when Major Marsden walked, unannounced,
through the window in unceremonious Indian fashion.
"Hullo," said John Raby, "glad to see you. Miss Stuart is much better
to-day."
There was no reason why this very pleasant and natural remark should
annoy his hearer, but it did. It reminded him that John Raby had
acquired a sort of authority over the dead man's daughter by virtue of
his executorship. Neither of them had seen her since the day of the
funeral, for she had been hovering on the verge of nervous fever; but
the responsibility of caring for her had fallen on John Raby and not
on Philip Marsden. John Raby, and not he, had had to make all the
necessary arrangements for her comfort and speedy departure to the
hills as soon as possible; for Mrs. Stuart had collapsed under the
shock of her husband's death, and the rapid Indian funeral had made
the presence of the others impossible. So Philip Marsden felt himself
to be out in the cold, and resented it.
"The nurse told me so when I inquired just now," he replied shortly.
"I'm to see her this afternoon when she comes back from her drive.
I've sent for Shunker Dâs's carriage."
Major Marsden frowned. "You might have chosen some one else's, surely.
He ruined her father."
"Not at all; he lent him money. Some one had to do it."
"Well, it's a grim world, and her drive can't be more so than the last
she had." The remembrance evidently absorbed him, for he sat silent.
"You're looking used up, Marsden," said the other kindly. "Anything
the matter?"
"Yes."
"Well, if it has to do with the Commissariat business I don't wonder.
The Colonel's private affairs are simply chaos." He pointed to the
piles of papers on and below the table with a contemptuous smile.
Major Marsden shook his head. "The public ones are in fairly good
order. I'm surprised at the method; but of course he had good clerks;
and then the system of checks--"
"Make it possible to be inaccurate with the utmost accuracy. What's
wrong?"
Philip Marsden moved uneasily in his chair and gave an impatient sigh.
"I suppose I've got to tell you, because you're the man's executor;
but I don't want to."
"Never do anything you don't want, my dear fellow; it's a mistake. You
don't know what will please other people, and you generally have a
rough guess at your own desires."
"I don't suppose this will please you, the fact is there is a deficit
of four thousand five hundred rupees in the private safe of which
Colonel Stuart kept the key."
"Is that all?"
"All! Surely it is enough?"
"Quite enough; but I'm not exactly surprised."
"Then I am," returned the Major emphatically. "In fact I don't believe
there really is any deficit at all. Do you think Shunker Dâs is the
sort of man to make a false claim?"
"Not unless he has fallen upon fair proofs," said the other coolly.
"What claim does he make?"
"He says he paid in three thousand five hundred the very day of
Colonel Stuart's death and produces a receipt. Another thousand was
paid in by some one else the day before. It seems odd that this should
just make up the deficiency."
"But you have no proof that these are actually the notes missing?"
"Curiously enough I have. Contrary to what one would have expected,
Colonel Stuart made a practice of writing the numbers of notes
received in a private ledger, and none of the four entered as having
been given by Shunker are to be found. Now, as you were Stuart's
friend, and are his executor, do you know of any large payment made to
any one within two days of his death? It limits itself, you see, to
that time."
"Nothing to account for three thousand five hundred," returned John
Raby a little hastily. "Let's stick to Shunker's claim first; it may
be false. You say he holds a receipt?"
"Yes, and gives the numbers of the notes also."
"Right?"
"All but one. The book gives a 3 where he gives a 5; but natives often
confuse figures."
John Raby nodded, and leant back in his chair thinking. "I believe the
notes were paid," he said at last, "and if they are not to be found,
the inference, I'm afraid, is clear. The Colonel _borrowed_ them."
"I don't believe it," returned the Major slowly. He had been drawing
diagrams idly on a piece of paper and now threw aside the pen with
decision. "I don't believe it," he repeated, "and I'll tell you why;
I'd rather not tell you, as I said before, but as you're his executor
I must. When I found him dead that morning there was a paper,--it
wasn't a mistake, you understand"--his hearer nodded again--"and
in it he had set down the reasons, or want of reasons, clearly
enough. I haven't got the paper; I burnt it. I suppose I ought to
have kept it, but it seemed a pity at the time. Anyhow the total he
had,--borrowed--was close on ten thousand."
"Ten! you said there was only--"
"Just so; you see, as luck would have it, I had money with me at the
time. So I replaced it."
"Ten thousand?"
"No; to be strictly accurate nine thousand seven hundred and fifty.
Well,--you needn't stare so, Raby! Why the devil shouldn't I if I
chose?"
John Raby gave a low whistle. "You must be awfully fond of Belle," he
said after a pause.
Philip flushed a deep angry red. Ever since the possible necessity for
giving his action to the world had dawned upon him he had known what
comment would be made; but the knowledge did not lessen its sting.
"Don't you think we had better keep Miss Stuart's name out of the
conversation? I merely tell you this to show that I have good reasons
for supposing that there is some chicanery, or confusion--"
"I beg your pardon! exactly so," assented John Raby with a smile. "I
am as anxious as you can be to keep her out of it; and so, as
executor, I'll undertake to refund the deficiency at once. There may
be some mistake, but it is best to have no inquiry."
"I hardly see how that is to be prevented, for of course I had to
report the matter."
John Raby literally bounded from his chair in unrestrained vexation.
"Reported it! my dear Marsden, what the devil!--Oh, I beg your pardon,
but really, to begin with, you cut your own throat."
"What else could I do?" asked the other quietly. "You forget I am in
charge of the office."
"Do?" returned his hearer, pausing in his rapid pacing of the room.
"Ah, I don't suppose _you_ could do anything else; but I'm not so
high-flown myself, and I can't see the good of chucking ten thousand
rupees into the gutter for the sake of a sentiment, and then chucking
the sentiment after it. For the girl adored her father, and I warn
you--"
"If we can't keep off that subject I'll go," interrupted Philip
rising. "I thought you might know something. Colonel Stuart dined with
you that last evening, if you remember."
The civilian needed no reminder; indeed for the last ten minutes he
had been distractingly conscious of a note for a thousand rupees lying
in his despatch-box which might throw-some light on the mysterious
disappearances. "Yes," he replied, "he did, and,--I see what you are
thinking of, Marsden--he played _écarté_ too; but to tell the truth,
he was so fuddled and excited that I refused to go on, and sent him
home. See what comes of benevolence. If I had let him play and rooked
him, he wouldn't have had the opportunity of brooding over
difficulties and putting an end to them. Again, you see there's
nothing so unsafe as unselfishness."
Philip, remembering the notice of transfer he had found open by the
dead man's side, wondered if matters might not have turned out
differently had it been viewed by the calm light of day.
"Well, it can't be helped now," continued the speaker. "I don't
approve of what has been done, but I'll do my best,--in fact I'm bound
as executor--to clear the matter up. Though I'm sure I don't know
where the inquiry may not lead me. It's an infernal nuisance, nothing
less! Well, hand me over the papers and--I suppose you've no objection
to my searching the office?"
"None; the Colonel's room is as he left it. I was afraid of noise so
near the house." The speaker frowned at his own words, annoyed to find
how thought for Belle crept into all his actions.
"So far, good. And look here, Marsden, if you value that girl's
opinion go and tell her the downright truth. She will be able to see
you this afternoon."
A piece of sound advice meant kindly, which had the not unusual effect
of making the recipient hesitate about a course of action on which he
had almost decided. In after years, when he considered the tangled
clew Fate held at this time for his unwinding, he never hesitated to
say, "Here I went wrong;" but at the time it seemed of small
importance whether he saw the girl that day or the next. And once more
the assumption of authority on John Raby's part irritated him into
contradiction. "It will be a pity to disturb Miss Stuart's first day,"
he replied stiffly, and rode away.
The young civilian shrugged his shoulders. Philip Marsden wasn't a bad
fellow on the whole, but a prig of the first water. Imagine any one
gifted with a grain of common sense acting as he had done! Why, if he
wanted the girl's good graces, had he not paid up the rest of the
money and finished the whole affair? It was a long price to pay, of
course, but it was better than giving ten thousand for nothing. Only a
morbid self-esteem could have prevented him. Really, the sense of duty
to be found in some people was almost enough to engender a belief in
original sin. The mere struggle for existence could never have
produced such a congeries of useless sentiment.
He threw himself into a chair determining to have a quiet cigar before
tasking his brain with further thought about what he had just heard.
But the first glance at the daily paper which had just come in made
him throw it from him in disgust; for it contained a fulsomely
flattering notice extolling Major Marsden at the expense of Colonel
Stuart, and openly hinting at discrepancies in the accounts which the
former officer was determined to bring home to the latter. The style
betrayed the hand of some clerk toadying for promotion; but style or
no style, the matter was clear, and to be read by the million. It all
came from Marsden's infernal sense of duty, and John Raby had half a
mind to spoil his little game by sending the paper over to Belle as
usual. But with all his faults he was not a spiteful man, or one
inclined to play the part of dog-in-the-manger. Consequently when Lâlâ
Shunker Dâs's carriage went over for Belle the _chuprassi_ in charge
only carried a bouquet; the newspaper remained behind, keeping company
with John Raby and magnanimity.
Belle never noticed the omission, for she was still strangely
forgetful and indifferent; even when she drove along the familiar
road, she hardly remembered anything of her last dismal ride. Only one
or two things showed distinctly in the midst of past pain; such
trivial things as a crooked cross of flowers, and screaming parrots in
a stormy sky. The rest had gone, to come back,--the doctor told John
Raby--ere long; just now the forgetfulness was best, though it showed
how narrowly she had escaped brain-fever. So nobody spoke of the past,
and while Philip was cherishing the remembrance of that first day, and
using it to build up his belief in her trust, she was not even
conscious that he had been the kindest among many kind.
Meanwhile Philip Marsden had not found himself in a bed of roses. The
impossibility of seeing Belle left him a prey to uncertainty, and if
he was ready fifty times a day to admit that he was in love, there
were quite as many times when he doubted the fact. Yet love or no
love, he was strenuously eager to save her from trouble; so his relief
at finding the office in good order had been great. In regard to
matters which had been in Colonel Stuart's own hands he naturally felt
safe; the discovery of the deficiency therefore had been a most
unpleasant shock, the more so because he saw at once that inquiry
might make it necessary for him to betray his own action. He wearied
himself fruitlessly with endeavours to discover any error, but the
thought of hushing the matter up never occurred to him as possible. To
some men it might have been a temptation; to him it was none, so he
deserved no credit on that score. He told himself again that if Belle
were what he deemed her, she would see the necessity of a report also;
but then he was reckoning on perfection, and poor Belle, as it so
happened, was in such a state of nervous tension that she was utterly
incapable of judging calmly about anything relating to her father.
She lay on the sofa after she returned from her drive, feeling all the
dreariness of coming back to everyday life, and, in consequence,
exalting the standard of her loss till the tears rolled quietly down
her cheeks. Whereupon poor Healy's Mary Ann, full of the best
intentions, brewed her a cup of tea, and sent over the road for the
newspaper, which she imagined had been forgotten. The master of the
house was out for his evening ride, and thus it came to pass that when
he called on his way home, he found Belle studying the misleading
paragraph with flushed cheeks and tearful eyes. "What does it mean?"
she asked tempestuously. "What is it that he dares to say of father?"
With her pretty, troubled face looking into his John Raby washed his
hands of further magnanimity. He refused to play the part of
Providence to a man who could not look after his own interests, and
whom, in a vague way, he felt to be a rival. So, considering Belle
only, he told the modified truth, making as light as he could of the
deficiency, and openly expressing his regret that it should ever have
been reported, the more so because Major Marsden himself believed
there was some mistake. This consolation increased her indignation.
"Do you mean to say," she cried, trembling with anger and weakness,
"that he has dragged father's name in the dirt for a mistake? Why
didn't he come to me, or to you? _We_ would have told him it was
impossible. But he always misjudged father; he hated him; he never
would come here. Ah yes! I see it all now! I understand."
The "we" sounded sweetly in the young man's ears, but its injustice
was too appalling to be passed over. He felt compelled to defence. For
a moment he thought of telling the whole truth, but he reflected that
Philip had a tongue as well as he, and that no one had a right to make
free with another man's confidence. Consequently his palliation only
referred to the culprit's well-known inflexibility and almost morbid
sense of duty; all of which made Belle more and more angry, as if the
very insistence on such virtues involved some depreciation of their
quality in the dead man.
"I do not care what happens now," she said vehemently. "I know well
enough that nothing he can say will harm father's good name; but I
will never forgive him, never! It is no use excusing him; all you say
only makes it more unnecessary, and cruel, and,--and stupid. I will
never forgive him; no, never!"
And all that night she lay awake working herself into a fever, mental
and bodily, by piling up the many evidences in favour of her theory as
to Philip's long-cherished enmity. He had never called, never spoken
to them when all the world beside had been friendly. His very kindness
to Dick was tainted; for had he not sided with the boy against her
father? Once the train of thought started, it was easy to turn the
points so that there seemed no possibility of its following any other
line than the one she laid down for it as she went along. Finally, to
clinch the matter, memory served her a sorry trick by suddenly
recalling to her recollection Philip Marsden's gloomy face when
she had told him who she was on their first meeting at the
railway-station. She sat up in bed with little hot hands stretched
into the darkness. "O father! father! I was the only one who loved
you,--the only one!" A climax at once of sorrow and consolation which
somehow soothed her to sleep.
Now, while she was employed in blackening his character, Philip
Marsden was crediting her with all the cardinal virtues. He had not
seen the daily paper, for reasons which put many other things out of
his head for the time being. He had no idea when he wilfully went to
play racquets that evening instead of following Raby's advice of
seeing Belle, that he was throwing away his last chance of an
interview; but as he sat outside the court, cooling himself after the
game, an urgent summons came from the orderly-room. Ten minutes after
he was reading a telegram bidding the 101st Sikhs start to the front
immediately. Farewell to leisure; for though the regiment had been
under warning for service and in a great measure prepared for it, the
next forty-eight hours were ones of exceeding bustle. Philip, harassed
on all sides, had barely time to realise what it meant; and, despite a
catch at his heart when he thought of Belle, the blood ran faster in
his veins from the prospect of action. His own certainty, moreover,
was so great, that it seemed almost incredible that one, of whose
sympathy he felt assured, should see the matter with other eyes.
Nevertheless he was determined to tell her all at the first
opportunity; and often, as he went untiringly through the wearisome
details of inspection, his mind was busy over the interview to come;
but the end was always the same, and left him with a smile on his
face.
John Raby happened to be standing in the verandah when, between pillar
and post, Philip found that vacant five minutes which he had been
chasing all day long.
"Can't see you, I'm afraid," he returned, cheerfully, to the inquiry
for Miss Stuart. "The fact is she has worried herself into a fever
over that paragraph. I don't wonder; it was infernal!"
"What paragraph?" asked Philip innocently.
John Raby looked at him and laughed, not a very pleasant kind of
laugh. "Upon my soul," he said, "you _are_ an unlucky beggar. I begin
to think it's a true case, for you've enough real bad luck to make a
three-volume-course of true love run rough! So you haven't seen it?
Then I'll fetch it out. The paper is just inside."
Philip, reining in his restive horse viciously, read the offending
lines, punctuating them with admonitory digs of his heels and tugs at
the bridle as the charger fretted at the fluttering paper. He looked
well on horseback, and the civilian, lazily leaning against a pillar,
admired him, dangling sword, jingling spurs, and all. He folded the
paper methodically against his knee and handed it back. "And Miss
Stuart believed all that?" he asked quietly.
"Women always believe what they see printed. She is in an awful rage,
of course; but I warned you, Marsden, you know I did."
"You were most kind. Will you tell Miss Stuart, when you see her, that
I called to say good-bye and that I was sorry,--yes! you can say I was
sorry, for the cause of her fever." His tone was bitterness itself.
"Look here, Marsden," said the other, "don't huff; take my advice this
time and write to her."
"Do you think the belief of women extends to what they see written? I
didn't know you had such a high opinion of the sex, Raby! Well,
good-bye to you, and thanks."
"Oh, I shall be down to see the 101st march out. Five A.M., isn't it?"
Philip nodded as he rode off. All through that last night in
cantonments he was angry with everything and everybody, himself
included. Why had he meddled? What demon had possessed the Brigadier
to put him in charge of the Commissariat office? Why had not this
order for the front come before? Why had it come now? What induced the
_babu_ who penned that paragraph to be born? And why did a Mission
school teach him the misuse of adjectives? He was still too angry to
ask himself why he had not taken John Raby's advice; that touched too
closely on the real mistake to be acknowledged yet awhile.
The gloom on his face was not out of keeping with the scene, as the
regiment marched down the Mall at early dawn while the band played
_Zakhmi_, that plaintive lament of the Afghan maiden for her wounded
lover. Yet there was no pitiful crowd of weeping women and children,
such as often mars the spectacle of a British regiment going on
service. The farewells had all been said at home, and if the women
wept in the deserted lines, the men marched, eyes front without a
waver, behind the sacred flag borne aloft by the tall drum-major,
whose magnificent stature was enhanced by an enormous high-twined
turban. Close at his heels went two men waving white silver-mounted
whisks over the Holy Grunth, watchful lest aught might settle on the
sacred page which lay open on a yellow satin cushion borne by four
sergeants. There, plainly discernible even by the half-light, was
inscribed in broad red and black lettering the sure guide through
death to life for its faithful followers. Then, separated by a wide
blank from the book in front and the men behind, rode the Colonel.
Finally, shoulder to shoulder, marched as fine a body of men as could
be seen east or west, with dexterously knotted turbans neutralising
the least difference in height, so that the companies came by as if
carved out of one block.
It was a stirring sight, making the blood thrill, especially when, at
the turn of the road leading to barracks, the bands of the British
regiments formed in front to play their fellow soldiers out of the
station, and the Sikhs broke into their old war cry, "_Jai! Jail
guru-ji ke Jai!_ (Victory, victory, our Teachers' victory)." It
mingled oddly with the--strains of "The Girl I left Behind Me."
A little group of horsemen waited for the last farewells at the
cantonment boundary, and one of them riding alongside told Philip
Marsden that a clue had been found, and the truth would be made
manifest. The conventional answer of pleasure came reluctantly, but as
the hands of the two men met, the gloomy, troubled face looked almost
wistfully into the clever, contented one. "You are very good to her,
Raby; I know that; good-bye." The workmanlike groans and shrieks of
the fife and drum replaced the retiring bands, and as cheer after
cheer greeted the final departure Philip Marsden felt that John Raby
was left completely master of the situation.
That evening, twenty miles out among the sandhills, he put his pride
in his pocket, impelled thereto by a persistent gnawing at his heart,
and followed the advice of writing to Belle; an honest, if somewhat
hard letter, telling her, not of his good deeds, but the truth of
those which seemed to her bad. Ten days after at Peshawar, with the
last civilised post he was to see for many weeks, his letter came back
to him unopened and re-addressed in a shaky hand.
The heart-ache was better by that time. "She might have afforded me
the courtesy of an envelope," he said as he threw the letter into the
camp-fire.