Miss Stuart"s Legacy.
by Flora Annie Steel.
CHAPTER I.
An Indian railway station in the first freshness of an autumn dawn, with a clear decision of light and shade, unknown to northern lat.i.tudes, lending a fict.i.tious picturesqueness to the low-arched buildings festooned with purple creepers. There was a crispness in the air which seemed to belie the possibility of a noon of bra.s.s; yet the level beams of the sun had already in them a warning of warmth.
The up-country mail had just steamed out of the station after depositing a scanty store of pa.s.sengers on the narrow platform, while the down-country train, duly placarded with the information that it carried the homeward-bound mail, had shunted in from the siding where it had been patiently awaiting the signal of a clear line. The engine meanwhile drank breathlessly at the tank, where, in a masonry tower overhead, a couple of bullocks circled round and round, engaged in raising the water from the well beneath to the reservoir beside them.
Round and round sleepily, while the primeval wooden wheel creaked and clacked, and the clumsy rope-ladder with its ring of earthen pots let half their contents fall back into the bowels of the earth; round and round dreamily, with the fresh gurgle of the water in their ears, and the blindness of leathern blinkers in their eyes; round and round, as their forebears had gone for centuries in the cool shade of sylvan wells. What was it to the patient creatures whether they watered a snorting western demon labelled "homeward mail," or the chequered mud-fields where the tender wheat spikelets took advantage of every crack in the dry soil? It was little to them who sowed the seed, or who gave the increase, so long as the goad lay in some one"s hands. So much the cattle knew, and in this simple knowledge were not far behind the comprehension of their driver, who, wrapped in his cotton sheet, lay dozing while he drove.
The sweetmeat-seller dawdled by, pursued even at dawn by his pest of flies. The water-carriers lounged along uttering their monotonous chant, "Any Hindu drinkers? Any Mussulman drinkers?" while in their van, dusky hands stretched out holding metal cups and bowls, from the very shape of which the religion of the owners might be inferred, owners sitting cheek by jowl in third-cla.s.s compartments with a gulf unfathomable, impa.s.sable, between them in this world and the next. The lank yellow dogs crept among the wheels, licking a precarious meal from the grease-boxes. The grey-headed carrion-crows sat in lines on the wire fencing with beaks wide open in unending yawns. Nothing else appeared to mark the pa.s.sage of time; indeed the absence of hurry on all sides gave the scene a curious unreality to Western eyes, a feeling which was plainly shown in the expression of a young girl who stood alone beside a small pile of luggage.
"A new arrival," remarked a tall man in undress uniform, who was leaning against the door of a first-cla.s.s compartment, and talking to its occupants.
"Yes, to judge by complexion and baggage," was the reply. "You"d hardly believe it, but Kate was as trim once; now!--just look at the carriage!"
A gay laugh came from behind a perfect barrier of baths, bundles, and ba.s.sinettes. "We hadn"t four babies to drag about in those days, George, and I can a.s.sure Major Marsden that I"m not a bit ashamed of them, or my complexion. George, dear! do for goodness" sake get baby"s bottle filled with hot water at the engine; if he doesn"t have something to eat he will cry in ten minutes, and then you will have to take him."
While George, with the proverbial docility of the Anglo-Indian husband and father, strolled off on his errand, the feminine voice came into view in the shape of a cheerful round little woman with a child in her arms and another clinging to her dress. She looked with interest at the girl on the platform. "She seems lonely, doesn"t she?"
Major Marsden frowned. He had been thinking the same thing, though he was fond of posing as a man devoid of sentiment; a not unusual affectation with those who are conscious of an over-soft heart. "I wonder what she is doing here," he said, kicking his heels viciously against the iron step of the carriage.
A twinkle of mischief lurked in his companion"s blue eyes as she replied:
""What are you doing here, my pretty maid?"
"Going a-marrying, sir," she said.
Can"t you see the square wooden box which betrays the wedding cake?"
"Then if you want to do a Christian act,--and you ladies love aggressive charity--just step out of your car as _dea ex machine_, and take her home again. India is no place for Englishwomen to be married in."
"Now don"t go on! I know quite well what you are going to say, and I agree,--theoretically. India is an ogre, eating us up body and soul; ruining our health, our tempers, our morals, our manners, our babies."
The laugh died from her lips at the last word, for the spectre of certain separation haunts Indian motherhood too closely to be treated as a jest. Instinctively she held the child tighter to her breast with a little restless sigh; a short holiday at home, and then an empty nest,--that was the future for her! So she went on recklessly: "Oh, yes! Of course we are all bad lots,--neither good mothers, nor good wives."
"My dear Mrs. Gordon! I never said one or the other. I only remarked that Englishwomen had no business in India."
"What"s that?" asked George, returning with the bottle.
"Only Major Marsden in a hurry to get rid of me," replied his wife.
"Don"t believe her, Gordon! For all-embracing generalities, convertible into rigid personalities at a moment"s notice, commend me to you, Mrs. Gordon. But there, I regret to say, goes the last bell."
The train moved off in a series of dislocations, which, painful to witness, were still more painful to endure, and Philip Marsden was left watching the last nod of George Gordon"s friendly head, with that curious catching at the heart which comes to all Anglo-Indians as they say good-bye to the homeward-bound. He was contented enough, happy in his work and his play; yet the feeling of exile ran through it all,--as it does always, till pension comes to bid one leave the interests and friends of a lifetime. Then, all too late, the glamour of the East claims the heart, in exchange for the body.
The girl was still standing sentinel by her luggage, and as he pa.s.sed their eyes met. In sudden impulse he went up and offered help if she required it. His voice, singularly sweet for a man, seemed to make the girl realise her own loneliness, for her lips quivered distinctly. "It is father! I expected him to meet me, and he has not come."
"Should you know him if you saw him?" She stared, evidently surprised, so he went on quickly, "I beg your pardon! I meant that you might not have seen him for some time, and--"
"I haven"t seen him since I was a baby," she interrupted, with a sort of hurt dignity; "but of course I should know him from his photograph."
"Of course!" He scanned her face curiously, thinking her little more than a baby now; but he only suggested the possibility of a telegram, and went off in search of one, returning a minute afterwards with several. Behind him came the stationmaster explaining, with the plentiful plurals and Addisonian periods dear to babudom, that without due givings of names it was unpermissible, not to say non-regulation, to deliver telegrams.
"I forgot you couldn"t know my name," said the girl frankly, when a rapid scrutiny had shown that none were addressed to her. "I"m Belle Stuart; my father lives at Faizapore."
"Not Colonel Stuart of the Commissariat?"
"Yes! Do you know him?"
A radiant smile lit up her face with such a curve of red lips, and flash of white teeth, that the spectator might well have been infected by its wholesome sweetness into an answering look. Major Marsden"s eyes, however, only narrowed with perplexed enquiry as he said bluntly, "Yes, slightly."
"Then perhaps father sent you to fetch me?"
This time he relaxed; confidence is catching. "I"m afraid not; but possibly if he had known I was to be here he might. At all events I can make myself useful."
"How?"
"I can get you a _gharri_--that is a carriage--and start you for Faizapore. It is sixty miles from here as you know."
She bent down to pick up her rugs. "I did not know. You see I expected father."
Philip Marsden felt impelled to consolation. "He has been delayed.
Most likely there has been"--in his haste to put forward a solid excuse he was just about to say "an accident," but floundered instead into a bald "something to detain him."
"There generally _is_ something to detain one in every delay, isn"t there?" she asked dryly; adding hastily, "but it is very kind of you to help. You see I have only just arrived in India, so I am quite a stranger."
"People generally _are_ strangers when they first arrive in a new country aren"t they?" retorted her companion grimly. Then as his eyes met her smiling ones, he smiled too and asked with a kinder ring in his voice, if there were anything else he could do for her.
"I"m _so_ hungry," she said simply. "Couldn"t you take me to get breakfast somewhere? I don"t see a refreshment-room, and I hate going by myself."
"There is the _dak_ bungalow, but," he hesitated for an instant and stood looking at her, as if making up his mind about something; then calling some coolies he bade them take up the luggage. "This way please, Miss Stuart; you will have to walk about half a mile, but you won"t mind that either, I expect."
In reply she launched out, as they went along the dusty road, into girlish chatter about the distances she could go without fatigue, the country life at home which seemed so very far off now, and the new existence on which she was just entering.
"You are not in the least like your sisters," he said suddenly.
She laughed. "They aren"t my real sisters, you see. Father married again, and they are my stepmother"s children. There are five of them--three girls and two boys, besides Charlie who is only six years old--but then he is my brother--my half-brother I mean. It"s very funny, isn"t it? to have so many brothers and a mother one has never seen. But of course I have their photographs."
He said he was glad of that; yet when he had seen her safely started at breakfast, he retired to the verandah under excuse of a cigar, and found fault with Providence. Briefly, he knew too much of the reality, not to make poor Belle"s antic.i.p.ations somewhat of a ghastly mockery.
"Poor child," he thought, "how much easier life would be to some of us, if like Topsy, we growed. What business has that girl"s father to be a disreputable scamp? For the matter of that what business has a disreputable scamp to be any girl"s father? It"s the old problem."
Belle meanwhile eating her breakfast with youthful appet.i.te felt no qualms. Life to her was at its brightest moment. This coming out to India in order to rejoin her father had been the Hegira of her existence, with reference to which all smaller events had to be cla.s.sified. His approval or disapproval had been her standard of right and wrong, his mind and body her model of human perfection; and so far distance had enabled Colonel Stuart to do justice to this pedestal; for it is easy to touch perfection in a letter, especially when it only extends to one sheet of creamlaid note-paper. Most of us have sufficient princ.i.p.al for such a small dividend.
"I knew father had not forgotten," she said calmly, when an abject badge-wearer was discovered asleep under a castor-oil bush, and proved to be the bearer of a note addressed in the familiar bold flourish to Miss Belle Stuart. "You see he had made all the arrangements, and I am not to start till the heat of the day is over."