Kitabı oku: «The Sirdar's Oath: A Tale of the North-West Frontier», sayfa 13
Chapter Twenty Six
A Deed of Gift
At Mazaran Hilda Clive was the heroine of the hour, and the station did not know which to do most – admire her pluck and resolution, or marvel how it could have regarded her all this while as of no account. She had done a wonderful thing, this quiet, retiring girl, on whom the popular verdict had been “Oh, so-so.” She had ventured alone into the stronghold of one of the fierce, fanatical tribes then engaged in the border war, and had brought back their prisoner, the man whom they had doomed to death. She had saved his life.
But Hilda declared emphatically that she had done nothing of the kind – on the contrary, her errand had failed signally. He had been released by a different and unexpected agency altogether, and it was only by accident that they had travelled back together. To this side of the story not much attention was given. The fact remained that she had set out to effect his release, and had returned with him, and not without him. And now the station metaphorically winked, and pronounced Raynier a lucky fellow indeed.
Yes, but what about that other time when it had so pronounced him, and the reason thereof? Well, on that head it had seen cause to change its mind. For Cynthia Daintree had not been careful to keep up her part. She had flirted outrageously with Captain Beecher what time the man to whom she declared herself engaged was in daily peril of his life, and had incidentally offended more than one whose good word was worth having. Yet how would Raynier dispose of her, she having come all the way out from home; moreover, she would be rather a difficult subject to negotiate? Clearly there were complications ahead, and the station looked forward to no end of fun.
It was disappointed, however. Raynier, with a promptitude and decision for which she had not given him credit gave Cynthia to understand that he did not consider himself in the very least bound to her, nor had he since that last interview in the Vicarage garden. As for her action in coming out there to claim him, under the circumstances, he preferred not to express an opinion, for fear he might say too much.
He had anticipated a wild and stormy scene. To his surprise she seemed to acquiesce. The only thing was that if he repudiated her after what she had given out, what sort of a figure would she cut? She had better let it be known that she had discovered they were not suited to each other, and so had better part, she suggested.
There was something in this. He could hardly show her up – for every reason. He was intensely annoyed, but finally agreed; resolving, however, that there was one person at any rate who should know the truth.
But now official business claimed Raynier’s time and attention to the exclusion of all else. Reinforcements arrived at Mazaran, and field operations were to be opened immediately against the Gularzai, and on the eve of these, Raynier had the good fortune to capture, with the aid of Mehrab Khan and a few Levy Sowars, the mullah Hadji Haroun, he having obtained secret information that that pestilent agitator was travelling in disguise and almost unguarded. This was a stroke of luck indeed. There was no question at headquarters of superseding him now, the more so that immediately afterwards he succeeded, through his friendship with Shere Dil Khan, in opening up communications with the Nawab. The Gularzai chief had been drawn into the war unwillingly, as we have seen. The tribes further along the border had suffered severely, and more reinforcements were moving up to reduce him. He had entered upon it mainly as an opportunity of wreaking his vengeance upon Raynier, only to find that the latter had saved the life of his son and successor. Shere Dil Khan, too, had cast doubts on the genuineness of the document used by the mullah to secure the adherence of the Gularzai – in fact, believed it to be a downright forgery.
Raynier was an important personage at that juncture, and, in truth, he deserved any prestige he may have earned. For, again trusting to Mushîm Khan’s safe conduct, he had placed himself alone in the power of the Gularzai chief, with the result that he returned having obtained the Nawab’s submission. The Gularzai had taken no very active part as yet in the rising, and the Government were only too glad to receive the submission of so important and powerful a chief as Mushîm Khan, wherefore there was peace, and Raynier was marked out for recognition; albeit the military element cursed him roundly among themselves as one of those infernal meddling Politicals who had done them out of a nice little campaign.
Hilda Clive seemed to have become quieter and more retiring than ever, and the station – whose attempt to lionise her she had resolutely evaded – decided that anxiety about Raynier was her motive, for it was universally opined that “that would be a bundobust” once the border trouble was over.
One day she said to the Tarletons, – “Do you remember how scared you all were for fear I should go through the Syyed’s tangi with Mr Raynier?”
“Rather,” said Haslam, who was there, helping Tarleton to reduce Mushîm Khan – in theory.
“How long ago was that?”
They fell to discussion; deciding that it was quite two months.
“Well, then, I ought to be dead by now. The tradition says before the end of the second moon. And even when we were talking about the place, I had already been through it once. I have been through it twice since. The third time it saved our lives, as you know.”
The story of this latter event in its completeness they had agreed to keep to themselves, only giving out that the Gularzai had shrunk from following them into the tangi from superstitious motives.
“I told you I’d prove that superstition nonsensical,” she went on, her eyes dancing with fun. “Well, what have you got to say for yourselves?”
“You’d already been through it before that night, Miss Clive?” said Haslam. “Well, I’m jiggered!”
“Yes. But what about the rule?” she persisted. “I’m not dead yet.”
Snapped Tarleton, “Well, you can’t expect there to be no exception to every rule, can you?”
Hilda had been giving herself over to business of late, for each mail brought her enclosures, bulky and blue, and of unequivocally legal aspect. With such documents she would shut herself up in Tarleton’s den, which he had made over to her for the purpose, and she was so engaged one morning, when Raynier was announced. He had returned to Mazaran the day before, and they had met – in public; but this visit was one of arrangement – of her arrangement.
Hilda looked up from the papers she had been busy with as he entered – in fact made a guilty and trepidatious attempt at sweeping them out of sight, which suggested a weakness entirely foreign to her.
“Well, how are things going?” she asked gaily.
“Things are going quite right. We have that pestiferous mullah, Hadji Haroun, safe by the heels, and Mushîm 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 Mushîm 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 button 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 ass, 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 document – 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 document.
“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 scrap 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 Mushîm 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.”
