The Sirdar's Oath Part 25

"Things are going quite right. We have that pestiferous _mullah_, Hadji Haroun, safe by the heels, and Mushim Khan has cut out of all further part in the _jihad_. That's good enough to begin with."

"Yes--and you? You know, you must get removed from here. The blood feud will overtake you sooner or later."

"No, I think not. I believe Mushim Khan was wound up by that sweep of a _mullah_. Now he only remembers what I did for his son. And he has done nothing beyond what he did to me individually, and Murad Afzul is dead, so the Government will not be hard on him, and things will be as they were."

"Yes. And who has he--who have we all got to thank for that? Herbert, had you no thought for me, when you put yourself into their power again?

If I could not get you out of it before, could I again, do you think?"

"Darling, it was because I had every thought for you that I worried along at the official business for all I knew how. I wanted to straighten out the muddle they'd be sure to put down to me. And now I believe I have."

"Yes, indeed, you have."

"And the stir and work knocked me together again, and all that fever has cleared out of my system. I can never forget what an abject invalid I was, just when I ought to have been taking care of you."

"Can't you? But I can, and have."

She was standing beside him now, one hand toying absently with a b.u.t.ton on his coat, a half-absent, half-serious expression in her large eyes that was very sweet. Her mind went back to the period to which he referred, when he was ill and fevered and fainting on the cloud-swept hill side. What a contrast! She saw him now, dominant, restored in every way, having ended the disturbance here in his own jurisdiction by sheer personal intrepidity and weight of influence--the calm, strong, cool-headed official, to whom all looked up.

"Tell me about Cynthia Daintree," she said.

"Just the very thing I've wanted to do. By the way, incidentally, she has hooked that young a.s.s, Beecher. Whether she'll land him is another matter."

"I know. I know, too, what you wanted to tell me that day we went to visit Sarbaland Khan. Well, we met with a very uncommon interruption then."

"Hilda, Hilda. What a witch you are. Is there anything you don't know?"

"Yes, plenty. But I won't bother you to go over all that again, because I know it already. In fact, I knew it on that very day, though not through you. Remember the _dak_ may bring me momentous communications as well as you. Oh, by the way, I have a little present here for you.

Will you take it?"

"Will I? Will I value anything from you! Darling, how can you ask?"

She did not return his kiss. Her manner was constrained--almost awkward. Turning to the table she placed in his hands a doc.u.ment-- large, parchmenty, legal-looking. Then she turned away.

"Why, what on earth is this?" he said as he read through it, and at length mastered how it set forth, amid infinite legal terminology, how shares and property and cash to the amount of thirty-seven thousand pounds was conveyed to "the said Herbert Raynier by his said cousin, the said Hilda Clive."

"Great Scott! What does it all mean?"

"What it says, dear," she answered, still somewhat constrained. "I always thought you had been hardly treated in Cousin Jervis's will. You were much nearer to him than I was, and a Raynier to boot. So I made up my mind to go halves with you--until--until--well, lately. Then I thought you ought to have the whole. I was always reckoned rather eccentric, you know. But I kept a little, just a little for myself.

You won't mind that, will you?"

He was staring blankly at her, then at the doc.u.ment.

"I don't quite understand. What is this thing?"

"Well, it's a restoration of what ought to have gone to you. The lawyers call it a deed of gift. It has to be put that way, you know,"

she added shyly, apologetically.

Still Raynier was staring at her as though he had taken leave of his senses. For there suddenly rushed in upon his mind a sc.r.a.p of a certain conversation with Mr Daintree in the Vicarage garden. This, then, was the distant cousin, Hilda Clive! He had not even known her name--and then he remembered how he would have learned it then and there but for the younger girl's boisterous interruption. He remembered, too, the Vicar's remark. "She's bound to marry, and then where do you come in?"

and his own answer, lightly, banteringly given, "Nowhere, unless I were to marry her myself," and then--

There was a harsh, staccato sound of tearing. The parchment lay upon the floor, crumpled, and torn in several pieces. But she who had handed it to him seemed to share its violent treatment, for she was crushed to him in a close embrace.

"Hilda, darling, I wonder if you have anything approaching a parallel in the world. I never heard of such an act of magnificent generosity.

But, unfortunately, it is all thrown away. I don't want that," pointing to the tattered deed. "I want you. I would rather be back in Mushim Khan's prison, with all it involved, and you as you were then, than take what you wanted me to there--without you. The only deed of gift I will accept is yourself. Yourself, do you hear? Am I to have it?"

She was thinking. Almost the spirit of her clairvoyance was in the vivid picture of the dread prison in the Gularzai stronghold that rose before her mind. Then she had stood with him on the brink of his grave, and soul had met soul undisguised. Then it was death--now life--life and such happiness! Her cheek was against his, her lips at his ear.

She whispered,--

"Yes. You know you are."

The End.