Warner’s eyes were fixed with interest on Miss Laury as she stood over him, a model of beautiful vigour and glowing health, a kind of military erectness in her form so elegantly built, and in the manner in which her neck sprung from her bust and was placed with graceful uprightness on her falling shoulders. Her waist too falling in behind, and her fine slender foot supporting her in a regulated position, plainly indicated familiarity from her childhood with the sergeants’ drill.
All the afternoon she had been entertaining: her exalted guests,—the two in the porch were no other than Lord Hartford and Enara,[*] and conversing with them frankly and cheerfully, but with a total absence of levity, a dash of seriousness, an habitual intentness of purpose that had more than once attracted to her the admiring glance of the Home Secretary. These and Lord Arundel were the only friends she had in the world. Female acquaintance she never sought, nor if she had sought would she have found them. And so sagacious, clever, and earnest was she in all she said and did that the haughty aristocrats did not hesitate to communicate with her often on matters of first-rate importance. Mr. Warner was now talking to her about himself.
‘My dear madam,’ he was saying in his imperious but still dulcet tone, ‘it is unreasonable that you should remain thus exposed to danger. I am your friend; yes, madam, your true friend. Why do you not hear me and attend to my representations of the case? Angria is an unsafe place for you; you ought to leave it.’
The lady shook her head: ‘Never till my master compels me; his land is my land.’
‘But—but, Miss Laury, you know that our army has no warrant from the Almighty of conquest. This invasion may be successful, at least for a time, and then what becomes of you? When the duke’s nation is wrestling with destruction, his glory sunk in deep waters, and himself diving desperately to recover it, can he waste a thought or a moment on a woman? You will be at the tender mercies of Quashia,[*] and of Sheik Medina,—I mean of the detestable renegade Gordon,—before you are aware.’
Mina smiled. ‘I am resolved,’ said she. ‘My master himself shall not force me to leave him. You know I am hardened, Warner; shame and reproach have no effect on me. I do not care for being called a camp-follower. In peace and pleasure all the ladies in Africa would be at the duke’s beck; in war and suffering he shall not lack one poor peasant girl. Why, sir, I’ve nothing else to exist for; I’ve no other interest in life. Just to stand by His Grace and watch him and anticipate his wishes, or when I cannot do that to execute them like lightning when they are signified; to wait on him when he is sick or wounded, to hear his groans and bear his heartrending animal-patience in enduring pain; to breathe if I can my own inexhaustible health and energy into him; and oh! if it were practicable, to take his fever and agony, to guard his interests, to take on my shoulders power from him that galls me with its weight; to fill gaps in his mighty train of service that nobody else would dare to step into; to do all that, sir, is to fulfil the destiny I was born to. I know I am of no repute among society at large, because I have devoted myself so wholly to one man. And I know that he very seldom troubles himself to think of what I do; and has never and can never appreciate the unusual feelings of subservience, the total self-sacrifice I offer at his shrine. But then he gives me my reward, and that an abundant one. Mr. Warner, when I was at Fort Adrian and had all the yoke of governing the garrison and military household I used to rejoice in my responsibility and to feel firmer the heavier the weight was assigned me to support. And when my master came over, as he often did, to take one of his general surveys, or on a hunting expedition with some of you, his officers, I had such delights in ordering the banquets and entertainments and in seeing the fires kindled up and chandeliers lighted in those dark halls, knowing for whom the feast was made ready; and it gave me a feeling of ecstasy to hear my young master’s voice as he spoke to you or Arundel or to that stately Hartford, and to see him moving about secure and powerful in his own stronghold, to know what true hearts he had about him, assured as I was that his generals and ministers were men of steel, and that his vassals under my rule were trusty as the very ramparts they garrisoned. The last summer evening that he came here the sun and flowers and quietness brightened his noble features with such happiness I could tell his heart was at rest, for as he lay in the shade where you are now I heard him hum the airs he long ago played on his guitar at Mornington. I was rewarded then to feel that the house I kept was pleasant enough to make him forget Angria, and recur to home. The west, the sweet west, is both his home and mine.’
Mina paused and looked solemnly at the sun now softened in its shine and hanging exceedingly low. In a moment her eyes fell again on Warner. They seemed to have absorbed radiance from what they had gazed on. Light like an arrow-point glanced in them as she said:
‘This is my time to follow. Ill not be robbed of those hours of blissful danger when I may be continually with him. My kind, noble master never likes to see my tears, and I will weep before him night and day till he grants what I wish. I am not afraid of danger. I have strong nerves. I don’t wish to fight like an Amazon; and fatigue I never felt. I will die or be with him.’
‘What has fired your eyes so suddenly, Miss Laury?’ asked Lord Hartford, now advancing with Enara from their canopy of roses.
‘The duke, the duke,’ muttered Henri Fernando; ‘she won’t leave him, I’ll be sworn.’