Belle, bareheaded in the sunlight, was full of one frantic desire to see the face hidden away in her habit. Was he dead? Was that the reason why the blood oozed slower and slower? She craned over his close-cropped hair only to see the outline of his cheek. "Philip, Philip!" she whispered in his ear; but there was no answer. Was it five minutes, was it ten, was it an hour since she had sat there with her hands?--? Ah, ghastly, ghastly! She could not look at them; and yet for no temptation in the world would she have moved a finger, lest he was not dead and she,--oh, blessed thought!--was staving death aside.
A shout behind, and her husband tearing down at a mad gallop, alarmed at the return of the riderless horse. "Good God! Belle! what has happened?"
"Look, and tell me if he is dead," she said. "Quick! I want to know,--I want to know!"
He was not dead, and yet the bleeding had stopped. Then they must get him home; get him somewhere as best they could. A string bed was brought from the nearest village, with relays of willing yet placid bearers; Belle walked beside it, in Philip's helmet, for her own hat had been lost in the quicksand, keeping her hand on the rough bandages while John raced ahead to set the doors open. It was dreary crossing the threshold of the new house, with the jostling, shuffling footsteps of those who carry something that is death's or will be death's. But there was a light in Belle's eyes, and even her husband, accustomed as he was to her even nerves, wondered at her calm decision. Since they must procure a doctor as quickly as possible, the best plan would be for John to ride across country to a station where the afternoon mail stopped. To return to Saudaghur and a mere hospital assistant would be needless delay. She did not mind, she said, being left alone; and meanwhile they must send for a supply of necessaries since it was evident that Philip could not be moved, at any rate for a day or two. So Belle sat in the big empty room, which by and by was to be hers, and watched alone by the unconscious man, feeling that it was her turn now. It was a vigil not to be forgotten. And once as she raised his head on her arm in order to moisten his lips with the stimulant which alone seemed to keep life in him, he stirred slightly, his eyes opened for a second, and a faint murmur reached her ear, "No need for a policeman."
A smile, pathetic in its absolute self-surrender, came to her face as she stooped and kissed him with the passion of protection and possession which a mother has for her helpless child; and that is a love which casts out fear. As she crouched once more beside the coarse pallet where he lay, for the room was destitute of all furniture save the string woven bed, Belle Raby, for the first time in her life, faced facts undistorted by her own ideals, and judged things as they were, not as they ought to be. She loved this man; but what was that love? Was it a thing to be spoken of with bated breath just because the object happened to be a person whom, all things consenting, one might have married? Her nature was healthy and unselfish; her knowledge of the "devastating passion" which is said to devour humanity was derived entirely from a pious but unreasoning belief in what she was told. It is not the fashion nowadays to say so, but that is really the position in which a vast majority of women find themselves in regard to many social problems. And so, in that dreary, shadowy room, with the man she loved dependent on her care for his sole chance of life, Belle Raby asked herself wherein lay the sin or shame of such a love as hers, and found no answer.
And yet, when her husband returned with the doctor, he brought back with him also the old familiar sense that something, she knew not what, was wrong. The old resentment, born of the old beliefs, at the odious position in which she found herself. But now she tried to set these thoughts aside as unworthy, unworthy of her own self, above all unworthy of Philip.
[CHAPTER XX.]
Afzul Khân was sitting in Shunker Dâs's house at Faizapore with a frown upon his face. He had come all the way in order to consult Mahomed Lateef, the old Syyed, about a certain blue envelope which was hidden away in his posteen, only to find that the old man had retreated before his enemies to his last foothold of land, while the usurer had enlarged his borders at the expense of the ruined old chief's ruined house.
Now Mahomed Lateef was Afzul Khân's patron. In this way. The latter was foster-brother to that dead son who had died gloriously in the regiment, and who had been born at an outpost on the frontier. Indeed, but for the old man, Afzul would never have put the yoke of service round his neck. So his frown was not only on account of his useless journey; much of it was anger at his old friend's misfortunes, and those who had taken advantage of them. It angered him to see a blue monkey painted on the wall in front of which the staunch Mohammedan used to say his prayers; it angered him still more to see the rows of cooking-pots where there used to be but one. Yet business was business, and Shunker might be able to tell him what had become of the Commissariat-Colonel sahib's daughter; for Afzul had had the address of the letter spelt out for him by a self-satisfied little schoolboy at Kohât, and knew enough of poor Dick's family history to suppose that Belle Stuart must be his cousin.
"Estuart sahib's daughter," echoed Shunker, a sullen scowl settling on his face; as it always did at the memory of his wrongs. "Why she married that shaitan Raby who lives at Saudaghur now, because he was turned out of the service. Wah! a fine pair, and a fine tale. She had a lover, Marsden of a Sikh regiment, who paid for her with lakhs on lakhs. Then, when he was killed, she took the money and married Raby. Scum! and they talk about our women, bah!"