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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.k 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, hara.s.sed 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 a.s.sured, 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 s.e.x, 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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.
CHAPTER IX.
The clue spoken of by John Raby lay in the note for a thousand rupees with which Colonel Stuart had paid a portion of his card debts during his last deal in the great game. It proved to be not only one of the missing notes, but, as luck would have it, the very one about the number of which uncertainty existed. The figures stood as the Colonel had written them; so the mistake lay with the usurer, if it was really a mistake. John Raby lit a cigarette and meditated, with the list before him; but beyond an odd persistency in threes and fives, the figures presented no peculiarity. So he set the problem aside till he could tackle it on the spot where it had arisen; for he was a great believer in scenery as an aid to the senses.
The day was almost done, however, ere he found leisure for the task; nevertheless, fatigued as he was, he set to work methodically and was rewarded by the immediate discovery that uncertainty existed as to the number of another note, the one which had been paid in by some one else. The entry had been blotted by the hasty closing of the ledger, and though it read like 159934, it was quite conceivable that it might be something else. Again those threes and fives! Idly enough he wrote the two uncertainties on a sheet of paper, and sat staring at them till suddenly a suggestion came to him, making him re-write the number given by Shunker in close imitation of the dead man"s bold black figures, and then deliberately blot it by placing it in the ledger.
The result bore so close a resemblance to the blurred entry that his quick brain darted off in a wonder how the usurer had got hold of the number of a note which he had not paid in. No reasonable explanation suggesting itself, he began a systematic search in the waste paper basket; the sc.r.a.ps there would at least tell him on what work the Colonel had been engaged during his last day. He knew that Shunker had had an interview with him in the morning, but that did not account for the shreds of a receipt for three thousand five hundred maunds of grain which he found almost on the top. An old receipt dated some months back; three thousand five hundred too--an odd coincidence! So far good; the next thing was to have a sight of Shunker"s face before he had time to hear rumours or make plans.
The summons to come up for an interview early next morning rather pleased the Lala, for he received it while at the receipt of custom, when it added to his importance in the eyes of the wedding guests who sat watching a nautch girl sidle, like a pouter pigeon, over a strip of dirty carpet. She was stout to obesity; her oiled hair was plastered so as to narrow her forehead to a triangle; her voluminous skirts ended just under the arms in a superfluity of bust. She held one fat hand to her cheek persistently as if in the agonies of toothache, while she yelled away as if the dentist had failed to comfort her. Yet the best native society of Faizapore had sat there for an hour and a half with the impa.s.sive faces of the Asiatic bent on amus.e.m.e.nt; a face which surely will make Paradise dull work for the _houris_.
"Yea! I will come to Raby if he needs me," a.s.sented the rich man, turning with a spiteful chuckle to his right hand, where old Mahomed Lateef sat solemn and dignified. "See you, Khan _sahib_, how even the Sirkar favours money?"
"When I was young, Oh Shunker!" retorted the other grimly, "the hands of Nikalsane and Jan Larnce held the sword too tight to leave room for the rupees."
"Ay! when you Khans of Kurtpore brought fifty swords to flash behind theirs, without payment. Swords are bought nowadays, and those who lack money must e"en go to the wall."
The old Mahomedan"s eyes flared. "_Mashallah_, oh _buniah-ji_, if they go to the wall in my poor house they will find swords enow! But yesterday a hut fell--I mean "twas pulled down for repairs--and we came on five Persian blades![3] Ready to use, O Lala-ji; no spot or blemish of rust. Haply they may help back the rupees some day."
Shunker moved uneasily in his chair, and the guests sank again into silence, broken only by the occasional tributary hiccup which native etiquette demands for the memory of dinner. The stars shone overhead, and a great trail of smoke from the brazier of oil and cotton-seed seemed to mix itself up with the Milky Way. Little Nuttu, the hero of the feast, had fallen asleep in his chair, his baby bride being engaged in cutting her teeth elsewhere. A group of younger men, squatted in the far corner round a flaring paraffin lamp, talked vociferously in a mixed jargon of "individual freedom," "political rights," and "representative government." And no one laughed or cried at anything; neither at the nautch girl with her unmentionable songs, nor the spectacle of people discussing freedom while engaged in taking it away from two harmless infants.
So the night wore on in dull dissipation, leaving Shunker at a disadvantage when he came to confront the young civilian"s clear-cut, clean-shaven face in the morning.
"You have made a mistake, Lala-ji," he began, opening fire at once; "a serious mistake about the notes you claim to have left with Colonel Stuart." So much, at least, was certain; John Raby, however, saw more in the unrestrained start of alarm which the surprise evoked. "It isn"t so very serious," he continued blandly; "nothing for you to be so frightened about, Lala-ji; we all make mistakes at times. By the way, did you keep your original memorandum of the numbers in English or Mahajani [accountant"s character]?" "In Mahajani, _Huzoor_,"
bleated Shunker, and John Raby smiled. For this diminished the possibility of clerical error enormously; indeed it was to settle this point that he had sent for the usurer. "So much the better for you,"
he went on carelessly, "and if you will bring the paper to me this evening, say about six, I"ll see if we can get the error in your claim altered. You have interchanged a five and a three in one number, and it is as well to be accurate before the inquiry commences. It will be a very stringent one. By the by, what time did you last see Colonel Stuart?"
But the usurer was prepared this time, and when he finally bowed himself out, John Raby was as much in the dark as ever in regard to the details of a plot which he felt sure had been laid.
All day long in a sort of under-current of thought he was busy ransacking memory and invention for a theory, coming back again and again, disheartened, to the half-tipsy laugh with which Colonel Stuart had given him the note, declaring it was a windfall. A windfall! what could that mean! Had Shunker given it back? Then there must have been a second interview; but none of the servants could speak to one. He went over early to the office and sat in the dead man"s chair trying to piece things together. The shadows were beginning to cling to the corners ere the usurer was announced, and something in the scared glance he gave towards the tall figure in the seat of office convinced John Raby that the man was reminded of another and similar visit to that room. The quaver in hand and voice with which he produced his day-book, and said that the _Huzoor"s_ number was right after all, clinched the matter.
"I suppose," remarked the young man coolly, "you were confused by the other note." A random shot, but it struck home!
"_Huzoor!_" faltered the fat man.
John Raby looked him full in the face, and went one better; poker was a game of which he was pa.s.sionately fond. "The other note with the threes and the fives which you saw,--which you got when,--I mean the second time you came here--when you brought the receipt for the grain which he destroyed--By Jove!" He threw his hand up, and a light came into his face. "Fool not to see it before--the receipt,--the _wrong_ receipt of course."
"But he never gave me the money; I swear he didn"t!" protested Shunker, completely off his guard.
His hearer broke into a fit of cynical laughter. "Thank you, Shunker, thank you! Of course he gave you the money: I see it all; and as one of the numbers were different, you improved on your original memorandum, thinking you had made a mistake. Stay,--number 150034 wasn"t your note. By Jove! he must have given you back the whole roll of four thousand five hundred by mistake. You"re a bigger blackguard than I thought!"
"No, no!" cried the usurer, beside himself with fear of this _shaitan_. "Only three! I swear it! I only picked up three."
"Thank you again, Lala. You picked up three. Let me see; how was it?"