Miss Stuart's Legacy Part 4

Luckily for the speaker Philip recognised his own imprudence in risking an altercation. The only thing to be done now, was to get the girl away as soon as possible.

"Exactly so;" he replied, crushing down his anger, "Miss Stuart can choose between us."

Belle rose superbly.

"You seem to forget I can go alone." And alone she went, while her partner shrieked with noisy laughter, avowing that he loved a spice of the devil in a girl.

Philip moodily chewing the end of his cheroot ere turning in felt that the rebuff served him right, though he could not restrain a smile as he thought of Belle's victorious retreat. By that time, however, subsequent facts had enlightened her as to Philip's possible meaning, and the sight of her former partner being inveigled away from waltzing to the billiard room by the senior subaltern, made her turn so pale that John Raby, on whose arm she was leaning, thought she was afraid.

"He won't be allowed to come back, Miss Stuart," he said consolingly.

"And I apologise in the name of the committee for the strength of the champagne."

Belle's mouth hardened. "There is no excuse for that sort of thing.

There never can be one."

He looked at her curiously.

"I wouldn't say that, Miss Stuart. It is a mistake to be so stern. For my part I can forgive anything. It is an easy habit to acquire--and most convenient."

Belle, however, could not even forgive herself. She lay tossing about enacting the scene over and over again, wondering what Major Marsden must think of her. How foolish she had been! Why had she not trusted him? Why had he not made her understand?

Being unable to sleep, she rose, and long ere her usual hour was walking about the winding paths which intersected the barren desert of garden where nothing grew but privet and a few bushes of oleander.

This barrenness was not Dame Nature's fault, for just over the other side of the wide white road John Raby's garden was ablaze with blossom. Trails of Marechale Niel roses, heavy with great creamy cups, hung over the low hedge, and a sweet English scent of clove-pinks and mignonette was wafted to her with every soft, fitful gust of wind. She felt desperately inclined to cross the intervening dust into this paradise, and stood quite a long time at the blue gate-posts wondering why a serpent seemed to have crept into her own Eden. The crow's long-drawn note came regularly from a _kuchnar_ tree that was sheeted with white geranium-like flowers; the Seven Brothers chattered noisily among the yellow ta.s.sels of the ca.s.sia, and over head, against the cloudless sky, a wedge-shaped flight of cranes was winging its way northward, all signs that the pleasant cold weather was about to give place to the fiery furnace of May; but Belle knew nothing of such things as yet, so the vague sense of coming evil, which lay heavily on her, seemed all the more depressing from its unreasonableness. A striped squirrel became inquisitive over her still figure and began inspection with bushy tail erect and short starts of advance, till it was scared by the clank of bangles and anklets as a group of Hindu women, bearing bunches of flowers and brazen _lotahs_ of milk for Seetlas' shrine, came down the road; beside them, in various stages of toddle, the little children for whom their mothers were about to beg immunity from small-pox. Of all this again Belle knew nothing; but suddenly, causelessly, it struck her for the first time that she ought to know something. Who were these people? What were they doing? Where were they going? One small child paused to look at her and she smiled at him. The mother smiled in return, and the other women looked back half surprised, half pleased, nodding, and laughing as they went on their way.

Why? Belle, turning to enquire after the late breakfast, felt oppressed by her own ignorance. In the verandah she met the bearer coming out of the Colonel's window with a medicine bottle in his hand.

Did her ignorance go so far that her father should be ill and she not know of it? "Budlu!" she asked hastily, "the Colonel _sahib_ isn't ill, is he?"

The man, who had known her mother, and grown grey with his master, raised a submissive face. "No, missy _baba_, not ill. Colonel _sahib_, he drunk."

"Drunk!" she echoed mechanically, too astonished for horror. "What _do_ you mean?"

"Too much wine drunk,--very bad," explained Budlu cheerfully.

She caught swiftly at the words with a sense of relief from she knew not what. "Ah, I see! the wine last night was bad, and disagreed with him?"

"d.a.m.n bad!" Budlu's English was limited but not choice. She remarked on it at the breakfast-table, repeating his words and laughing. None of the girls were down, but Walter and Stanley giggled; and the latter was apparently about to say something facetious, when his words changed into an indignant request that d.i.c.k would look out, and keep his feet to himself.

"Was it you I kicked?" asked d.i.c.k innocently. "I thought it was the puppy." Then he went on fast as if in haste to change the subject: "I often wonder why you don't learn Hindustani, Belle. You'd be ashamed not to speak the lingo in other countries. Why not here? I'll teach you if you like."

"There's your chance, Belle!" sneered Stanley, still smarting from d.i.c.k's forcible method of ensuring silence. "He really is worth ten rupees a month as _moonshee_, and 'twill save the governor's pocket if it goes in the family."

An unkind speech, no doubt; yet it did good service to d.i.c.k by ensuring Belle's indignant defence, and her immediate acceptance of his offer; for she was ever ready of tongue, and swift of sympathy, against injustice or meanness.

So the little incident of the morning pa.s.sed without her understanding it in the least. Nevertheless d.i.c.k found it harder and harder every day to manipulate facts, and to stand between his princess and the naked, indecent truth. Her curiosity in regard to many things had been aroused, and she asked more questions in the next four days than she had asked in the previous four months; almost scandalizing the Van Milder clan by the interest she took in things of which they knew nothing. It was all very well, the girls said, if she intended to be a _zenana_-mission lady, but without that aim it seemed to them barely correct that she should know how many wives the _khansamah_ (butler) had. As for the boys, they rallied her tremendously about her Hindustani studies, for, like most of their race, they prided themselves on possessing but a limited acquaintance with their mother tongue; Walter, indeed, being almost boastful over the fact that he had twice failed for the Higher Standard. Then the whole family chaffed her openly because she had a few sensible talks with John Raby, the young civilian; and when she began to show a certain weariness of pursuing pleasure in rear of the "Van," insisted that she must be in love with him without knowing it.

"I don't like Raby," said Mildred, the youngest and least artificial of the sisters. "Jack Carruthers told me the governor had been dropping a lot of money to him at _ecarte_."

"I don't see what you and Mr. Carruthers have to do with father's amus.e.m.e.nts," flashed out Belle in swift anger. "I suppose he can afford it, and at least he never stints you,--I mean the family," she added hastily, fearing to be mean.

"Quite true, my dear! He's a real good sort, is the governor, about money, and he can of course do as he likes; but Raby oughtn't to gamble; it isn't form in a civilian. You needn't laugh, Belle, it's true; it would be quite different if he was in the army."

"Soldiers rush in where civilians fear to tread," parodied Belle contemptuously. "I wish people wouldn't gossip so. Why can't they leave their neighbours alone?"

Nevertheless that afternoon she stole over to the office, which was only separated from the house by an expanse of dusty, stubbly gra.s.s, and seeing her father alone in his private room comfortably reading the paper, slipped to his side, and knelt down.

"Well, my pretty Belle," he said caressing her soft fluffy hair, "why aren't you out riding with the others?"

"I didn't care to go; then you were to be at home, and I like that best. I don't see much of you as a rule, father."

Colonel Stuart's virtue swelled visibly, as it always did under the vivifying influence of his daughter's devotion. "I am a busy man, my dear, you must not forget that," he replied a trifle pompously; "my time belongs to the Government I have the honour to serve." The girl was a perfect G.o.dsend to him, acting on his half-dead sensibilities like a galvanic battery on paralysed nerve-centres. He was dimly conscious of this, and also of relief that the influence was not always on him.

"I know you are very busy, dear," she returned, nestling her head on his arm, as she seated herself on the floor. "That's what bothers me.

Couldn't I help you in your work sometimes? I write a very good hand, so people say."

Colonel Stuart let his paper fall in sheer astonishment. "Help me! why my dear child, I have any number of clerks."

"But I should like to help!" Her voice was almost pathetic; there was quite a break in it.

Her father looked at her in vague alarm. "You are not feeling ill, are you, Belle? Not feverish, I hope, my dear! It's a most infernal climate though, and one can't be too careful. You'd better go and get your mother to give you five grains of quinine. I can't have you falling sick, I can't indeed; just think of the anxiety it would be."

Belle, grateful for her father's interest, took the quinine; but no drug, not even poppy or mandragora, had power to charm away her restless dissatisfaction. d.i.c.k's office was no sinecure, and even his partial eyes could not fail to see that she was often captious, almost cross. It came as a revelation to him, for hitherto she had been a divinity in his eyes; and now, oh strange heresy! he found himself able to laugh at her with increased, but altered devotion. Hitherto he had wreathed her pedestal with flowers; now he kept the woman's feet from thorns, and the impulse to make their pathways one grew stronger day by day. She, unconscious of the position, added fuel to the flame by choosing his society, and making him her confidant. Naturally with one so emotional as d.i.c.k, the crisis was not long in coming, and music, of which he was pa.s.sionately fond, brought it about in this wise; for Belle played prettily, and he used to sit and listen to her like the lover in Frank d.i.c.ksee's _Harmony_, letting himself drift away on a sea of pleasure or pain, he scarcely knew which. So, one afternoon when they were alone in the house together, she sat down to the piano and played Schubert's _Fruhlingslied_. The sunshine lay like cloth of gold outside, the doves cooed ceaselessly, the scent of the roses in John Raby's garden drifted in through the window with the warm wind which stirred the little soft curls on Belle's neck. The perfume of life got into the lad's brain, and almost before he knew it, his arms were round the girl, his kisses were on her lips, and his tale of love in her ears.

It was very unconventional of course, but very natural,--for him. For her the sudden rising to her full height with amazement and dislike in her face was equally natural, and even more unforeseen. The sight of it filled poor d.i.c.k with such shame and regret, that his past action seemed almost incredible to his present bewilderment. "Forgive me, Belle," he cried, "I was mad; but indeed I love you,--I love you."

She stood before him like an insulted queen full of bitter anger. "I will never forgive you. How dare you kiss me? How dare you say you love me?"

The lad's combativeness rose at her tone. "I suppose any one may dare to love you. I'm sorry I kissed you, Belle, but my conduct doesn't alter my love."

His manner, meant to be dignified, tended to bombast, and the girl laughed scornfully. "Love indeed! You're only a boy! what do you know about love?"

"More than you do apparently."

"I'm glad you realise the fact if _that_ is what you call love."

"At any rate I'm older than you."

The retort that he was old enough to know better rose to Belle's lips, but a suspicion that this childish squabbling was neither correct nor dignified, made her pause and say loftily, "How can you ask me to forgive such a mean ungentlemanly thing?"

The last epithet was too much for d.i.c.k; he looked at her as if she had struck him. "Don't say that, Belle," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "It's bad enough that it's true, and that you don't understand; but don't say that." He leant over the piano and buried his face in his hands in utter despair. For the first time a pulse of pity shot through the storm of physical and mental repulsion in the girl's breast, but she put it from her fiercely. "Why shouldn't I say it if it is true?"

"Because you are kind; always so good and kind."

Again the pity had to be repulsed, this time still more harshly. "You will say next that I've been too kind, that I encouraged you, I suppose; that would put the finishing touch to your meanness."

This speech put it to d.i.c.k's patience; he caught her by both hands, and stood before her masterful in his wrath. "You shall not say such things to me, Belle! Look me in the face and say it again if you dare.

You know quite well how I love and reverence you; you know that I would die rather than offend you. I forgot everything but you,--I lost myself,--you know it."

The thrill in his voice brought a new and distinctly pleasurable sense of power to the young girl, and, alas! that it should be so, made her more merciless. "I prefer actions to words. You have insulted me and I will never speak to you again." She regretted this a.s.sertion almost as it was uttered; it went too far and bound her down too much. She was not always going to be angry with poor d.i.c.k surely? No! not always, but for the present decidedly angry, very angry indeed.