“I have some bad news, Isobel. At least I suppose you will consider it
bad news,” the Major said one morning, when he returned from the orderly
room. “You heard me say that four companies were going to relieve those
at Deennugghur. Well, I am going with them. It seems that the General is
of opinion that in the present unsettled state of affairs there ought to
be a field officer in command there, so I have to go. For myself I don’t
mind, but you will find it dull in a small station like that, after the
gayeties of Cawnpore.”
“I don’t mind a bit, uncle, in that respect. I don’t think I care
much for gayeties, but of course the move will be a trouble. We have
everything so nice here, it will be horrid having to leave it all. How
long will it be for?”
“Six months, in the ordinary state of things, though of course something
may occur to bring us in before that. Still, the change won’t be as much
trouble as you fancy. When we get there you can stay for two or three
days with the Hunters till we have got the things to rights. There is
one thing that you will be pleased about. Wade is going with us, at any
rate for the present; you are a favorite of his, you know, and I think
that is the principal reason for his going. At any rate, when he heard I
was in orders, he told the Colonel that, as there was no illness in the
regiment, he thought, if he did not object, he would change places for
a bit with M’Alaster, the assistant surgeon, who has been with the
detachment at Deennugghur for the last year, so as to give him a turn
of duty at Cawnpore, and do a little shikaring himself. There is more
jungle and better shooting round Deennugghur than there is here, and you
know the Doctor is an enthusiast that way. Of course, the Colonel agreed
at once.”
“I am very glad of that, uncle; it won’t seem like going to a strange
place if we have him with us, and the Hunters there, and I suppose three
or four officers of the regiment. Who are going?”
“Both your boys,” the Major laughed, “and Doolan and Rintoul.”
“When do we go, uncle?”
“Next Monday. I shall get somebody to put us up from Friday, and that
morning we will get everything dismantled here, and send them off by
bullock carts with the servants to Deennugghur, so that they will be
there by Monday morning. I will write to Hunter to pick us out the best
of the empty bungalows, and see that our fellows get to work to clean
the place up as soon as they arrive. We shall be two days on the march,
and things will be pretty forward by the time we get there.”
“And where shall we sleep on the march?”
“In tents, my dear, and very comfortable you will find them. Rumzan will
go with us, and you will find everything go on as smoothly as if you
were here. Tent life in India is very pleasant. Next year, in the cool
season, we will do an excursion somewhere, and I am sure you will find
it delightful: they don’t know anything about the capabilities of tents
at home.”
“Then do I quite understand, uncle, that all I have got to do is to make
a round of calls to say goodby to everyone?”
“That is all. You will find a lot of my cards in one of those pigeon
holes; you may as well drop one wherever you go. Shall I order a
carriage from Framjee’s for today?”
“No, I think not, uncle; I will go round to our own bungalows first, and
hear what Mrs. Doolan and the others think about it.”
At Mrs. Doolan’s Isobel found quite an assembly. Mrs. Rintoul had come
in almost in tears, and the two young lieutenants had dropped in with
Captain Doolan, while one or two other officers had come round to
commiserate with Mrs. Doolan.
“Another victim,” the latter said, as Isobel entered.
“You look too cheerful, Miss Hannay. I find that we are expected to wear
sad countenances at our approaching banishment.”
“Are we, Mrs. Doolan? It seems to me that it won’t make very much
difference to us.”
“Not make any difference, Miss Hannay!” Captain Doolan said. “Why,
Deennugghur is one of the dullest little stations on this side of
India!”
“What do you mean by dull, Captain Doolan?”
“Why, there are only about six white residents there besides the troops.
Of course, as four companies are going instead of one, it will make
a difference; but there will be no gayety, no excitement, and really
nothing to do.”
“As for the gayety, I am sure I shall not regret it, Captain Doolan;
besides, our gayeties are pretty well over, except, of course, dinner
parties, and it is getting very hot for them. We shall get off having to
go out in the heat of the day to make calls, which seem to me terrible
afflictions, and I think with a small party it ought to be very sociable
and pleasant. As for excitement, I hear that there is much better
shooting there than there is here. Mrs. Hunter was telling me that they
have had some tigers that have been very troublesome round there, and
you will all have an opportunity of showing your skill and bravery.
I know that Mr. Richards and Mr. Wilson are burning to distinguish
themselves.”
“It would be great fun to shoot a tiger,” Richards said. “When I came
out to India I thought there was going to be lots of tiger shooting, and
I bought a rifle on purpose, but I have never had a chance yet. Yes, we
will certainly get up a tiger hunt, won’t we, Wilson? You will tell us
how to set about it, won’t you, Doolan?”
“I don’t shoot,” Captain Doolan said; “and if I wanted to, I am not sure
that my wife would give me leave.”
“Certainly I would not,” Mrs. Doolan said promptly. “Married men have no
right to run into unnecessary danger.”
“Dr. Wade will be able to put you in the way, Mr. Richards,” Isobel
said.
“Dr. Wade!” Mrs. Rintoul exclaimed. “You don’t mean to say, Miss Hannay,
that he is going with us?”
“Yes, he is going for a time, Mrs. Rintoul. My uncle told me that he had
applied to go with the detachment, and that the surgeon there would come
back to the regiment while he is away.”
“I do call that hard,” Mrs. Rintoul said. “The only thing I was glad we
were going for was that we should be under Mr. M’Alaster, who is very
pleasant, and quite understands my case, while Dr. Wade does not seem to
understand it at all, and is always so very brusque and unsympathetic.”
There was a general smile.
“Wade is worth a hundred of M’Alaster,” Captain Roberts said. “There is
not a man out here I would rather trust myself to if I were ill. He is
an awfully good fellow, too, all round, though he may be, as you say, a
little brusque in manner.”
“I call him a downright bear,” Mrs. Rintoul said angrily. “Why, only
last week he told me that if I would get up two hours earlier and go for
a brisk walk just after sunrise, and give up eating meat at tiffin, and
confine myself to two or three dishes at dinner, I should be perfectly
well in the course of a month; just as if I was in the habit of
overeating myself, when I have scarcely the appetite of a sparrow. I
told Captain Rintoul afterwards that I must consult someone else, for
that really I could not bear such rudeness.”
“I am afraid we are all against you, Mrs. Rintoul,” Mrs. Doolan said,
with a little shake of her head at Isobel, who was, she saw, going to
speak out strongly. “No one could possibly be kinder than he is when
anyone is really ill. I mean seriously ill,” she added, as Mrs. Rintoul
drew herself up indignantly. “I shall never forget how attentive he was
to the children when they were down with fever just before he went to
England. He missed his ship and lost a month of his leave because he
would not go away till they were out of danger, and there are very few
men who would have done that. I shall never forget his kindness. And now
let us talk of something else. You will have to establish a little mess
on your own account, Mr. Wilson, as both the Captains are married men,
and the Major has also an incumbrance.”
“Yes, it will be horribly dull, Mrs. Doolan. Richards and I have
quarters together here, and, of course, it will be the same there, and
I am sure I don’t know what we shall find to talk about when we come to
have to mess together. Of course, here, there are the messroom and the
club, and so we get on very well, but to be together always will be
awful.”
“You will really have to take to reading or something of that sort, Mr.
Wilson,” Isobel laughed.
“I always do read the Field, Miss Hannay, but that won’t last for a
whole week, you know; and there is no billiard table, and no racquet
court, or anything else at Deennugghur, and one cannot always be riding
about the country.”
“We shall all have to take pity on you as much as we can,” Mrs. Doolan
said. “I must say that, like Miss Hannay, I shall not object to the
change.”
“I think it is all very well for you, Mrs. Doolan; you have children.”
“Well, Mr. Richards, I will let you both, as a great treat, take them
out for a walk sometimes of a morning instead of their going with the
ayah. That will make a change for you.”
There was a general laugh, but Wilson said manfully, “Very well, Mrs.
Doolan; I am very fond of youngsters, and I should like to take, anyhow,
the two eldest out sometimes. I don’t think I should make much hand with
the other two, but perhaps Richards would like to come in and amuse them
while we are out; he is just the fellow for young ones.”
There was another laugh, in which Richards joined. “I could carry them
about on my back, and pretend to be a horse,” he said; “but I don’t know
that I could amuse them in any other way.”
“You would find that very hot work, Mr. Richards,” Mrs. Doolan said;
“but I don’t think we shall require such a sacrifice of you. Well, I
don’t think we shall find it so bad, after all, and I don’t suppose
it will be for very long; I do not believe in all this talk about
chupaties, and disaffection, and that sort of thing; I expect in three
months we shall most of us be back again.”
Ten days later the detachment was settled down in Deennugghur.
The troops were for the most part under canvas, for there was only
accommodation for a single company at the station. The two subalterns
occupied a large square tent, while the other three officers took
possession of the only three bungalows that were vacant at the station,
the Doctor having a tent to himself. The Major and Isobel had stayed
for the first three days with the Hunters, at the end of which time the
bungalow had been put in perfect order. It was far less commodious than
that at Cawnpore, but Isobel was well satisfied with it when all their
belongings had been arranged, and she soon declared that she greatly
preferred Deennugghur to Cawnpore.
Those at the station heartily welcomed the accession to their numbers,
and there was an entire absence of the stiffness and formality of a
large cantonment like Cawnpore, and Isobel was free to run in as she
chose to spend the morning chatting and working with the Hunters, or
Mrs. Doolan, or with the other ladies, of whom there were three at the
station.
A few days after their arrival news came in that the famous man eater,
which had for a time ceased his ravages and moved off to a different
part of the country, principally because the natives of the village
near the jungle had ceased altogether to go out after nightfall, had
returned, and had carried off herdsmen on two consecutive days.
The Doctor at once prepared for action, and agreed to allow Wilson and
Richards to accompany him, and the next day the three rode off together
to Narkeet, to which village the two herdsmen had belonged. Both had
been killed near the same spot, and the natives had traced the return of
the tiger to its lair in the jungle with its victims.
The Doctor soon found that the ordinary methods of destroying the tiger
had been tried again and again without success. Cattle and goats had
been tied up, and the native shikaris had taken their posts in trees
close by, and had watched all night; but in vain. Spring traps
and deadfalls had also been tried, but the tiger seemed absolutely
indifferent to the attractions of their baits, and always on the lookout
for snares. The attempts made at a dozen villages near the jungle had
all been equally unsuccessful.
“It is evident,” the Doctor said, “that the brute cares for nothing but
human victims. No doubt, if he were very hungry he would take a cow or
a goat, but we might wait a very long time for that; so the only thing
that I can see is to act as a bait myself.”
“How will you do that, Doctor?”
“I shall build a sort of cage near the point where the tiger has twice
entered the jungle. I will take with me in the cage a woman or girl from
the village. From time to time she shall cry out as if in pain, and
as the tiger is evidently somewhere in this neighborhood it is likely
enough he will come out to see about it.
“We must have the cage pretty strong, or I shall never get anyone to sit
with me; besides, on a dark night, there is no calculating on killing
to a certainty with the first shot, and it is just as well to be on the
safe side. In daylight it would be a different matter altogether. I can
rely upon my weapon when I can see, but on a dark night it is pretty
well guesswork.”
The villagers were at once engaged to erect a stout cage eight feet
square and four high, of beams driven into the ground six inches apart,
and roofed in with strong bars. There was a considerable difficulty in
getting anyone to consent to sit by the Doctor, but at last the widow
of one of the men who had been killed agreed for the sum of twenty-five
rupees to pass the night there, accompanied by her child four years old.
The Doctor’s skill with his rifle was notorious, and it was rather the
desire of seeing her husband’s death avenged than for the sake of the
money that she consented to keep watch. There was but one tree suitable
for the watchers; it stood some forty yards to the right of the cage,
and it was arranged that both the subalterns should take their station
in it.
“Now look here, lads,” the Doctor said, “before we start on this
business, it must be quite settled that you do not fire till you hear
my rifle. That is the first thing; the second is that you only fire when
the brute is a fair distance from the cage. If you get excited and blaze
away anyhow, you are quite as likely to hit me as you are the tiger.
Now, I object to take any risk whatever on that score. You will have a
native shikari in the tree with you to point out the tiger, for it is
twenty to one against your making him out for yourselves. It will be
quite indistinct, and you have no chance of making out its head or
anything of that sort, and you have to take a shot at it as best you
may.
“Remember there must not be a word spoken. If the brute does come,
it will probably make two or three turns round the cage before it
approaches it, and may likely enough pass close to you, but in no case
fire. You can’t make sure of killing it, and if it were only wounded
it would make off into the jungle, and all our trouble would be thrown
away. Also remember you must not smoke; the tiger would smell it half
a mile away, and, besides, the sound of a match striking would be quite
sufficient to set him on his guard.”
“There is no objection, I hope, Doctor, to our taking up our flasks; we
shall want something to keep us from going to sleep.”
“No, there is no objection to that,” the Doctor said; “but mind you
don’t go to sleep, for if you did you might fall off your bough and
break your neck, to say nothing of the chance of the tiger happening to
be close at hand at the time.”
Late in the afternoon the Doctor went down to inspect the cage, and
pronounced it sufficiently strong. Half an hour before nightfall he and
the woman and child took their places in it, and the two beams in the
roof that had been left unfastened to allow of their entry were securely
lashed in their places by the villagers. Wilson and Richards were helped
up into the tree, and took their places upon two boughs which sprang
from the trunk close to each other at a height of some twelve feet from
the ground. The shikari who was to wait with them crawled out, and with
a hatchet chopped off some of the small boughs and foliage so as to give
them a clear view of the ground for some distance round the cage, which
was erected in the center of a patch of brushwood, the lower portion
of which had been cleared out so that the Doctor should have an
uninterrupted view round. The boughs and leaves were gathered up by the
villagers, and carried away by them, and the watch began.
“Confound it,” Richards whispered to his companion after night fell, “it
is getting as dark as pitch; I can scarcely make out the clump where the
cage is. I should hardly see an elephant if it were to come, much less a
brute like a tiger.”
“We shall get accustomed to it presently,” Wilson replied; “at any rate
make quite sure of the direction in which the cage is in; it is better
to let twenty tigers go than to run the risk of hitting the Doctor.”
In another hour their eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and
they could not only see the clump in which the cage was clearly, but
could make out the outline of the bush all round the open space in which
it stood. Both started as a loud and dismal wail rose suddenly in the
air, followed by a violent crying.
“By Jove, how that woman made me jump!” Wilson said; “it sounded quite
awful, and she must have pinched that poor little beggar of hers pretty
sharply to make him yell like that.”
A low “hush!” from the shikari at his elbow warned Wilson that he
was speaking too loudly. Hours passed by, the cries being raised at
intervals.
“It is enough to give one the jumps, Richards; each time she yells I
nearly fall off my branch.”
“Keep on listening, then it won’t startle you.”
“A fellow can’t keep on listening,” Wilson grumbled; “I listen each time
until my ears begin to sing, and I feel stupid and sleepy, and then she
goes off again like a steam whistle; that child will be black and blue
all over in the morning.”
A warning hiss from the shikari again induced Wilson to silence.
“I don’t believe the brute is coming,” he whispered, an hour later. “If
it wasn’t for this bough being so hard I should drop off to sleep; my
eyes ache with staring at those bushes.”
As he spoke the shikari touched him on the shoulder and pointed.
“Tiger,” he whispered; and then did the same to Richards. Grasping their
rifles, they gazed in the direction in which he pointed, but could for
some time make out nothing. Then they saw a dim gray mass in front of
the bushes, directly on the opposite side of the open space; then from
the cage, lying almost in a direct line between it and them, rose the
cry of the child. They were neither of them at all certain that the
object at which they were gazing was the tiger. It seemed shapeless,
the outline fading away in the bush; but they felt sure that they had
noticed nothing like it in that direction before.
For two or three minutes they remained in uncertainty, then the outline
seemed to broaden, and it moved noiselessly. There could be no mistake
now; the tiger had been attracted by the cries, and as it moved along
they could see that it was making a circuit of the spot from whence the
sounds proceeded, to reconnoiter before advancing towards its prey. It
kept close to the line of bushes, and sometimes passed behind some of
them. The shikari pressed their shoulders, and a low hiss enforced the
necessity for absolute silence. The two young fellows almost held
their breath; they had lost sight of the tiger now, but knew it must be
approaching them.
For two or three minutes they heard and saw nothing, then the shikari
pointed beyond them, and they almost started as they saw the tiger
retreating, and knew that it must have passed almost under them without
their noticing it. At last it reached the spot at which they had first
seen it. The child’s cry, but this time low and querulous, again rose.
With quicker steps than before it moved on, but still not directly
towards the center, to the great relief of the two subalterns, who had
feared that it might attack from such a direction that they would not
dare to fire for fear of hitting the cage. Fortunately it passed that
point, and, crouching, moved towards the bushes.
Wilson and Richards had their rifles now at their shoulders, but, in the
feeble and uncertain light, felt by no means sure of hitting their
mark, though it was but some thirty yards away. Almost breathlessly they
listened for the Doctor’s rifle, but both started when the flash and
sharp crack broke on the stillness. There was a sudden snarl of pain,
the tiger gave a spring in the air, and then fell, rolling over and
over.
“It is not killed!” the shikari exclaimed. “Fire when it gets up.”
Suddenly it rose to its feet, and with a loud roar sprang towards the
thicket. The two subalterns fired, but the movements of the dimly seen
creature were so swift that they felt by no means sure that they had hit
it. Then came, almost simultaneously, a loud shriek from the woman, of
a very different character to the long wails she had before uttered,
followed by a sound of rending and tearing.
“He is breaking down the cage!” Richards exclaimed excitedly, as he and
Wilson hastened to ram another cartridge down their rifles. “Come, we
must go and help the Doctor.”
But a moment later came another report of a rifle, and then all was
silent. Then the Doctor’s voice was heard.
“Don’t get down from the tree yet, lads; I think he is dead, but it is
best to make sure first.”
There was a pause, and then another rifle shot, followed by the shout
“All right; he is as dead as a door nail now. Mind your rifles as you
climb down.”
“Fancy thinking of that,” Wilson said, “when you have just killed a
tiger! I haven’t capped mine yet; have you, Richards?”
“I have just put it on, but will take it off again. Here, old man, you
get down first, and we will hand the guns to you.”--this to the shikari.
With some difficulty they scrambled down from the tree.
“Now we may as well cap our rifles,” Richards said; “the brute may not
be dead after all.”
They approached the bush cautiously.
“You are quite sure he is dead, Doctor?”
“Quite sure; do you think I don’t know when a tiger is dead?”
Still holding their guns in readiness to fire, they approached the
bushes.
“You can do no good until the villagers come with torches,” the
Doctor said; “the tiger is dead enough, but it is always as well to be
prudent.”
The shikari had uttered a loud cry as he sprang down from the tree, and
this had been answered by shouts from the distance. In a few minutes
lights were seen through the trees, and a score of men with torches and
lanterns ran up with shouts of satisfaction.
As soon as they arrived the two young officers advanced to the cage.
On the top a tiger was lying stretched out as if in sleep; with some
caution they approached it and flashed a torch in its eyes. There was
no doubt that it was dead. The body was quickly rolled off the cage, and
then a dozen hands cut the lashing and lifted the top bars, which was
deeply scored by the tiger’s claws, and the Doctor emerged.
“I am glad to be out of that,” he said; “six hours in a cage with a
woman and a crying brat is no joke.”
As soon as the Doctor had got out, the subalterns eagerly examined the
tiger, upon which the natives were heaping curses and execrations.
“How many wounds has it got?” they asked the Doctor, who repeated the
question to the shikari in his own language.
“Three, sahib. One full in the chest--it would have been mortal--two
others in the ribs by the heart.”
“No others?” the subalterns exclaimed in disgust, as the answer was
translated to them. The Doctor himself examined the tiger.
“No; you both missed, lads, but you need not be ashamed of that; it is
no easy matter to hit a tiger even at a short distance on a dark night
like this, when you can scarce make him out, and can’t see the barrel of
your rifle. I ought to have told you to rub a little phosphorus off the
head of a match onto the sight. I am so accustomed to do it myself as
a matter of course that I did not think of telling you. Well, I am
heartily glad we have killed it, for by all accounts it has done an
immense deal of damage.”
“It has been a fine tiger in its time, although its skin doesn’t look
much,” Wilson said; “there are patches of fur off.”
“That is generally the case with man eaters. They are mostly old tigers
who take, when they get past their strength, to killing men. I don’t
know whether the flesh doesn’t agree with them, but they are almost
always mangy.”
“We were afraid for a moment,” Richards said, “that the tiger was going
to break into your cage; we heard him clawing away at the timber, and as
you didn’t fire again we were afraid something was the matter.”
“The mother was,” the Doctor said testily. “The moment the tiger sprang,
the woman threw herself down at full length right on the top of my
second rifle, and when I went to push her off I think she fancied the
tiger had got hold of her, for she gave a yell that fairly made me jump.
I had to push her off by main force, and then lie down on my back, so as
to get the rifle up to fire. I was sure the first shot was fatal, for I
knew just where his heart would be, but I dropped a second cartridge in,
and gave him another bullet so as to make sure. Well, if either of
you want his head or his claws, you had better say so at once, for the
natives will be singeing his whiskers off directly; the practice is a
superstition of theirs.”
“No, I don’t want them,” Wilson said. “If I had put a bullet into the
brute, so that I could have said I helped to kill him, I should have
liked the head to get it preserved and sent home to my people, but as it
is the natives are welcome to it as far as I am concerned.”
Richards was of the same opinion, and so without further delay they
started back for the village, where, upon their arrival, they were
greeted with cries of joy by the women, the news having already been
carried back by a boy.
“Poor beggars!” the Doctor said. “They have been living a life of terror
for weeks. They must feel as if they had woke from a nightmare. Now,
lads, we will have some supper. I dare say you are ready for it, and I
am sure I am.”
“Is there any chance for supper, Doctor?--why, it must be two o’clock in
the morning.”
“Of course there is,” the Doctor replied. “I gave orders to my man to
begin to warm up the food as soon as he heard a gun fired, and I will
guarantee he has got everything ready by this time.”
After a hearty meal and a cigar they lay down for a few hours’ sleep,
and at daybreak rode back to Deennugghur, the two subalterns rather
crestfallen at their failure to have taken any active part in killing
the tiger that had so long been a terror to the district.
“It was an awful sell missing him, Miss Hannay; I wanted to have had the
claws mounted as a necklace; I thought you would have liked it.”
“I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Wilson, but I would much rather not
have had them. If the tiger hadn’t been a man eater I should not have
minded, but I should never have worn as an ornament claws that had
killed lots of people--women and children too.”
“No, I never thought of that, Miss Hannay; it wouldn’t have been
pleasant, now one thinks of it; still, I wish I had put a bullet into
him.”
“No doubt you will do better next time, Mr. Wilson. The Doctor has been
telling me that it is extremely difficult to hit an animal in the dark
when you are not accustomed to that sort of shooting. He says he was in
a great fright all the time he was lying in the cage, and that it was an
immense relief to him when he heard your rifles go off, and found that
he wasn’t hit.”
“That is too bad of him, Miss Hannay,” Wilson laughed; “we were not such
duffers as all that. I don’t believe he really did think so.”
“I am sure he was in earnest, Mr. Wilson. He said he should have felt
quite safe if it had been daylight, but that in the dark people really
can’t see which way the rifles are pointed, and that he remembered he
had not told you to put phosphorus on the sights.”
“It was too bad of him,” Wilson grumbled; “it would have served him
right if one of the bullets had hit a timber of the cage and given him
a start; I should like to have seen the Doctor struggling in the dark
to get his second rifle from under the woman, with the tiger clawing and
growling two feet above him.”
“The Doctor didn’t tell me about that,” Isobel laughed; “though he said
he had a woman and child with him to attract the tiger.”
“It would have frightened any decent minded tiger, Miss Hannay, instead
of attracting it; for such dismal yells as that woman made I never
listened to. I nearly tumbled off the tree at the first of them, it made
me jump so, and it gave me a feeling of cold water running down my back.
As to the child, I don’t know whether she pinched it or the doctor stuck
pins into it, but the poor little brute howled in the most frightful
way. I don’t think I shall ever want to go tiger shooting in the dark
again; I ache all over today as if I had been playing in the first
football match of the season, from sitting balancing myself on that
branch; I was almost over half a dozen times.”
“I expect you nearly went off to sleep, Mr. Wilson.”
“I think I should have gone to sleep if it hadn’t been for that woman,
Miss Hannay. I should not have minded if I could have smoked, but to
sit there hour after hour and not be able to smoke, and not allowed to
speak, and staring all the time into the darkness till your eyes ached,
was trying, I can tell you; and after all that, not to hit the brute was
too bad.”
The days passed quietly at Deennugghur. They were seldom alone at Major
Hannay’s bungalow in the evening, for Wilson and Richards generally came
in to smoke a cigar in the veranda; the Doctor was a regular visitor,
when he was not away in pursuit of game, and Bathurst was also often one
of the party.
“Mr. Bathurst is coming out wonderfully, Miss Hannay,” Mrs. Hunter
said one day, as Isobel sat working with her, while the two girls were
practicing duets on a piano in the next room. “We used to call him
the hermit, he was so difficult to get out of his cell. We were quite
surprised when he accepted our invitation to dinner yesterday.”
“I think Dr. Wade has stirred him up,” Isobel said calmly; “he is a
great favorite of the Doctor’s.”
Mrs. Hunter smiled over her work. “Perhaps so, my dear; anyhow, I am
glad he has come out, and I hope he won’t retire into his cell again
after you have all gone.”
“I suppose it depends a good deal upon his work,” Isobel said.
“My experience of men is that they can always make time if they like, my
dear. When a man says he is too busy to do this, that, or the other, you
may always safely put it down that he doesn’t want to do it. Of course,
it is just the same thing with ourselves. You often hear women say they
are too busy to attend to all sorts of things that they ought to attend
to, but the same women can find plenty of time to go to every pleasure
gathering that comes off. There is no doubt that Mr. Bathurst is really
fond of work, and that he is an indefatigable civil servant of the
Company, but that would not prevent him making an hour or two’s time
of an evening, occasionally, if he wanted to. However, he seems to have
turned over a new leaf, and I hope it will last. In a small station like
this, even one man is of importance, especially when he is as pleasant
as Mr. Bathurst can be when he likes. He was in the army at one time,
you know.”
“Was he, Mrs. Hunter?”
“Yes. I never heard him say so himself, but I have heard so from several
people. I think he was only in it for a year or so. I suppose he did not
care for it, and can quite imagine he would not, so he sold out, and
a short time afterwards obtained a civil appointment. He has very good
interest; his father was General Bathurst, who was, you know, a very
distinguished officer. So he had no difficulty in getting into our
service, where he is entirely in his element. His father died two
years ago, and I believe he came into a good property at home. Everyone
expected he would have thrown up his appointment, but it made no
difference to him, and he just went on as before, working as if he had
to depend entirely on the service.”
“I can quite understand that,” Isobel said, “to a really earnest man
a life of usefulness here must be vastly preferable to living at home
without anything to do or any object in life.”
“Well, perhaps so, my dear, and in theory that is, no doubt, the case;
but practically, I fancy you would find nineteen men out of twenty, even
if they are what you call earnest men, retire from the ranks of hard
workers if they come into a nice property. By the way, you must come in
here this evening. There is a juggler in the station, and Mr. Hunter has
told him to come round. The servants say the man is a very celebrated
juggler, one of the best in India, and as the girls have never seen
anything better than the ordinary itinerant conjurers, my husband has
arranged for him to come in here, and we have been sending notes round
asking everyone to come in. We have sent one round to your place, but
you must have come out before the chit arrived.”
“Oh, I should like that very much!” Isobel said. “Two or three men came
to our bungalow at Cawnpore and did some conjuring, but it was nothing
particular; but uncle says some of them do wonderful things--things that
he cannot account for at all. That was one of the things I read about at
school, and thought I should like to see, more than anything in India.
When I was at school we went in a body, two or three times, to see
conjurers when they came to Cheltenham. Of course I did not understand
the things they did, and they seemed wonderful to me, but I know there
are people who can explain them, and that they are only tricks; but
I have read accounts of things done by jugglers in India that seemed
utterly impossible to explain--really a sort of magic.”
“I have heard a good many arguments about it,” Mrs. Hunter said; “and
a good many people, especially those who have seen most of them, are
of opinion that many of the feats of the Indian jugglers cannot be
explained by any natural laws we know of. I have seen some very curious
things myself, but the very fact that I did not understand how they were
done was no proof they could not be explained; certainly two of their
commonest tricks, the basket trick and the mango, have never been
explained. Our conjurers at home can do something like them, but then
that is on a stage, where they can have trapdoors and all sorts of
things, while these are done anywhere--in a garden, on a road--where
there could be no possible preparation, and with a crowd of lookers on
all round; it makes me quite uncomfortable to look at it.”
“Well, I must be off now, Mrs. Hunter; it is nearly time for uncle to be
back, and he likes me to be in when he returns.”