The Potter's Thumb Part 16

'I see it,' came in excited tones from George, 'by the big bush, Miss Tweedie.'

'That's another,' cautioned Lewis again. 'Take care and don't----'

_Whirr, buzz! Whirr, buzz!_

'Ride it! Ride it!'

The cry came from two quarters; but Shahzad was already extended, and Rose forgetful of everything save those brown wings low down against the horizon. She was closer on them this time, for she could see their skimming swoop as they neared a heavy clump of cover. Yet she felt she must lose them, as she had done before, when to her relief she saw Lewis shoot ahead.'

'All right,' he shouted, 'I'm on. Look out for yourself.'

There was a cut of his thong against thorns as he rose Bronzewing to a hedge which Rose had not seen. But she had scarcely steadied herself in the saddle from the half-considered leap in his wake before the partridge was down and up again at right-angles to its first flight; Lewis meanwhile bringing the mare round all he knew, and shouting, 'Ride it, Miss Tweedie! ride it.'

Shahzad, still steadied by the jump, was in hand, and, therefore, on the track in a second, snorting in mad hurry and excitement, and the bird was not quite so fast this time, or Rose was riding straighter, for she saw the last skim of the wings change to running feet as it touched the grey brown earth which tinted so perfectly with its plumage.

'Not there! not there!' came that warning voice from behind. 'It's run on. The next bush--put Shahzad over it.'

A leap, a scurry, a flutter, and the quarry was up again, heading in its hurry for an impossible open, backed by bare plough. Bronzewing being now alongside, Rose found leisure to glance round for the others.

'Gone after the second partridge,' said Lewis. 'I was afraid of it.

There's a hedge twenty yards ahead, Miss Tweedie, I'll mark.'

They were over it, almost in the stride, and now the bird was below the horizon, a mere shadow of darker brown against the plough.

'I've lost it! I've lost it again!' The despairing cry came from Rose's very heart as she tugged vainly at Shahzad. When she succeeded in bringing him up, she saw that Lewis was slipping from the mare.

'AH right!' he cried cheerfully, dropping his white handkerchief on the ground, 'it's somewhere about! That's the place I marked; now for sharp eyes.'

Up and down the bare furrows he searched, followed by Bronzewing, her reins dangling. Up and down, with such patience, that Rose, gaining confidence, began to search also. Only, however, to lose hope, as minute after minute brought no result.

'I don't believe it's here,' she remarked at last; and with the words saw Lewis Gordon stoop to pick up something she had pa.s.sed by, thinking it was a clod of earth.

'Your first partridge!' he said with a kindly laugh, as he placed the bird upon her lap. There it lay unhurt, wide-eyed and motionless as it had lain among the furrows.

'Why doesn't it fly away?' asked Rose, with a little catch in her breath, as she gently stroked the mottled back.

'It will, soon. At present it's winded. Give it five minutes, and we could ride it again; but we won't. It flew game, and I needn't ask if you enjoyed it.'

No need, certainly. The very horses panting, nose down in each other's faces, seemed discussing past pleasure.

'It is safe from kites now,' said Lewis. 'Throw it up, Miss Tweedie.'

The next instant a skimming flight had ended in a covert of thorns and Lewis was on his mare ready to start.

'It wouldn't head for the open again, I bet, he said, 'they get as 'cute as an old fox after a time. To your left, please, that rise yonder is Hodinuggur.'

'But we might ride again, surely? It would give the others time to come up, began Rose, fiercely bitten with the game.

'Best not. The ground here is bad going; all littered with bricks.

And you could barely hold Shahzad that last time. A snaffle is hard work--for a lady.'

Rose refrained from open retort. Lewis had given her a morning's amus.e.m.e.nt, and she owed him something; for all that, she made a mental determination to ride partridge as often as she chose with a snaffle.

His objection was only part of that wholesale depreciation--here a partridge buzzed out of a bush, and partly from impulse, partly from sheer opposition, she gave Shahzad the rein. A bit of bravado in which she reckoned without the excited horse. Ere she had gone fifty yards, she realised it had the bit between its teeth. What was worse, she saw that Lewis realised it also.

'Look out for bricks,' he called, spurring Bronzewing alongside for a moment, 'and don't try to follow when the bird breaks back, as it is sure to do, for cover.'

The words were still on his lips, when the partridge towered and turned. Shahzad, no novice at such tricks, pulled up short, nearly throwing Rose over his ears. Then, with a bound, he dashed off sideways, catching Bronzewing on the flank as she swerved, and throwing her rider's foot from the stirrup. The mare staggered, pulled herself together smartly, set her hoof on a loose brick, and came down heavily; while Rose, tugging vainly at her beast, went sailing away to the horizon, with the memory of that crashing fall seeming to paralyse her strength. When she did manage to turn, Bronzewing was on her feet; but her rider lay where he had fallen. The girl's heart stood still an instant in that utmost fear which will come first--was he _dead_? Yet, as she galloped back she told herself, fiercely, that it was impossible; people fell so often, and did not hurt themselves. But not, surely, to lie as he lay, with eyes wide open and one arm under him as if he had pitched head-foremost. Rose had never seen an accident before, and at first all her helpfulness seemed lost in a senseless desire to gather him up in her arms and hold him safe. Then the thought of her own foolishness came to her aid. He had been right! Women were no good!' A man would have known what to do, and as she thought these things, she searched, comically enough, in his pockets for a flask, as if unconsciously reverting to the first resource of the male animal; but she could find none, and there was no water. What was to be done, save to chafe his hands and call to him vainly, while a perfect agony of negation clamoured against her growing fear. He could not be dead!

He was such a good rider. He must have fallen before and not been killed. Why should he be killed this time? He could not be killed on such a bright sunny morning--when they had been so happy--when he had been so kind. Ridiculous, trivial little thoughts, such as make up the sum of such scenes.

Finally she rose, resolved by her very despair. Water and help she must have. If no nearer than the palace, then to the palace she must go.

Shahzad had taken advantage of liberty to seek a wheat field, but Bronzewing would carry her with the stirrup over. The mare, however, distrusting strangers, sidled off, still circling faithfully round her master. Then the girl's hopes and fears centred themselves on the immediate necessity for success. She coaxed, wheedled, cajoled, forgetting all else, till all of a sudden Bronzewing paused to whinny, and Rose, looking round instinctively, recognised the magnitude of her past despair in the light of her great relief as she saw Lewis Gordon, raised on one elbow, looking at her in a dazed sort of way. She was on her knees beside him in a minute, confessing the past fear she had so strenuously denied while it existed.

'I thought you were dead!' she cried. 'I thought you were dead.' She was trembling and shaking all over, quite visibly, and he gave an unsteady laugh.

'Thumped the back of my head; that's all. No!' a spasm of pain pa.s.sed over his face as he sat up. 'My collarbone's gone. Well! it might have been worse. The ground is uncommonly hard.'

Worse indeed! Rose could not speak for a lump in her throat; but the loquacity of escape was upon him.

'Must have pitched on my shoulder, luckily. I don't in the least remember how it happened. We were partridging, I suppose; but my mind is an absolute blank. No wonder! my head is just splitting; but I can walk home all right.'

And when she proposed riding Bronzewing for help, he negatived it firmly on the ground that the mare wasn't broken in for a lady; a man never having such a strong hold on his individual quips and cranks as when he realises that he has been within an ace of losing them altogether; whence comes the proverbial captiousness of convalescents.

So she had to be content with giving him a hand up and walking beside him, feeling a sad trembling in the knees joined to a general sensation of having gone to pieces. He, on the contrary, talking and laughing in magnificent, manly fashion.

'You had better tell me how it happened,' he said, as they neared the palace. 'People make such a fuss, that it is as well to be prepared.

Did you see me come to grief?'

Rose hesitated for a moment to own up; then she did it wholesale.

'You told me not to ride because of the snaffle, but I did. I lost control of Shahzad; he charged Bronzewing. She put her foot on a loose brick, and--and I'm very, very sorry.'

'Stupid little beast,' he said, looking round at the mare, who was following them like a dog. 'I expect she wants re-shoeing.'

The evasion was kindly meant; but she regretted it. It seemed somehow to set her aside. But this was her portion in all things, for with Lewis in his room, scientifically bandaged by Dan and nursed by his cousin, Rose's part resolved itself into doing audience for her father's fussing. He had a capacity for it at all times, but Fate had provided him with special reasons for it now. Another delay! and when it was absolutely necessary that he should hold a Ca.n.a.l Committee at Delhi early in the week, how was he to manage without his personal a.s.sistant? Then there were private reasons for annoyance which he did not confide to Rose, but which that clear-sighted young lady fully understood. If Lewis had to remain a few days longer at Hodinuggur, his cousin would remain also; in which case Dan Fitzgerald would stay to look after them. Now Dan, ever since the fire, had been in the Colonel's black books. He had, as it were, thrust himself forward and made himself conspicuous. Finally, any woman must feel grat.i.tude to a man who had saved her life. It was all of a piece--all the result of disobedience to his superior wisdom. Why had Rose set fire to the camp?

Had he not warned her a hundred times against sitting up to read? Why had she charged Lewis? Had he not begged her fifty times to ride in a more reserved and ladylike fashion?

Rose could only fall back on George for comfort, and he, for reasons of his own, was utterly unsympathetic. A broken collar-bone, he said, was nothing--except an awful nuisance to every one else. To tell truth, the only person in that up-stairs world who was satisfied at the new turn affairs had taken was Gwen Boynton. It suited her admirably in more ways than one. So she sat after lunch and talked with Colonel Tweedie in the balcony until his ill-humour vanished in a bland flood of conviction that this eminently charming woman really was full of sympathy for his difficulties, and thoroughly impressed with his responsible position. In fact, when she had apologised for returning to duty and her patient, he came and let loose his satisfaction upon his daughter. Nothing was more useful to a man having authority than the companionship of a really sensible woman of the world. It enabled you to do justice to yourself, to adopt the course you considered best without undue hesitation. Therefore he would start for Rajpore, as he had always intended to do, on the following day, taking Mr. Fitzgerald with him to supply Gordon's place. He knew something of the current work, and it would be a kindness, serving to show--er--that--er--there was really nothing against him at headquarters.

'That was very considerate of Mrs. Boynton,' interrupted Rose quickly.

She saw the meaning of this man[oe]uvre so far that it roused her resentment, even though, after all, it would be better for Dan than dangling about with a sore heart while Gwen nursed the sick man. Better for George also, since the _partie carree_ could not well consist of three and a dummy. George should talk to her, and so be kept from dangling also.

Thus Dan himself was the only one to look blank at the proposal, and even he admitted its reasonableness when Mrs. Boynton pointed out the many advantages it would have. This was during the _tete-a-tete_, in a bell-shaped cupola, which she allowed him over their tea. To tell truth, Gwen always behaved with the strictest and most impartial justice to all who had claims upon her, and she would have felt herself unkind had she allowed poor dear Dan to go away feeling aggrieved. She was very sorry he had to go, or rather, to be strictly accurate, she was sorry that common-sense dictated that he should go. Had all things been consenting, there was no one in the wide world she would so gladly have had for a husband. Now, when a woman of Mrs. Boynton's type, which is at all times kindly disposed to lovers, has an idea of this sort firmly fixed in her mind, she can be very kind indeed, even in her dismissals. So Dan was perfectly happy after he had sat beside her, and given her a second cup of tea, and handed her the bread and b.u.t.ter, though he made wry faces over her lecture on the necessity for subordinating his opinions to Colonel Tweedie's.

'And, Dan,' she said, when the _tete-a-tete_ had lasted long enough, 'as you are going to Delhi, you might take a parcel for me to Manohar Lal, the jeweller's. It is quite small, but you might just send it round--the shop is in the Chowk--by the bearer. I wouldn't trouble you, but it is a chance, as you are going that way. It won't bother you, will it?'

'Bother,' echoed Dan in the tones which men in his condition use on such occasions.

'Then, I'll give it you now. I was going to send it by post, so it is addressed, and all the instructions are inside; but it would be safer if you took it--as you happen to be going.'