She turned like lightning to the sound, her cheeks for the first time aflame, but she could see no one in the circle of dark faces whom she could credit with the exclamation. Yet she felt sure she had heard it.
"Bravo!" Had it been said in jest or earnest, in mockery or---- Young Mainwaring interrupted the problem by suggesting that as the maskers had run away into a booth, where he could not follow and give them the licking they deserved because of her presence, it might be as well for her to escape further insult by returning to the buggy. His tone was as full of reproach as that of a lad in love could be, but Mrs. Gissing was callous. She declared she was glad to have seen it. Englishmen did drink and Englishwomen waltzed. Why, then, shouldn't the natives poke fun at both habits if they chose? They themselves could laugh at other things. And laugh she did, recklessly, at everything and everybody for the remainder of the drive. But underneath her gayety she was harping on that "Bravo!" And suddenly as they drove by the river she broke in on the boy's prattle to say excitedly: "I have it! It must have been the one in the Afghan cap who said 'Bravo!' He was fairer than the rest. Perhaps he was an Englishman disguised. Well! I should know him again if I saw him."
"Him? who--what? Who said bravo?" asked the lad. He had been too angry to notice the exclamation at the time.
She looked at him quizzically. "Not you--you abused me. But someone did--or didn't"--here her little slack hands resting in her lap clasped each other tightly. "I rather wish I knew. I'd rather like to make him say it again. Bravo! Bravo!"
And then, as if at her own mimicry, she returned to her childish unreasoning laugh.
[CHAPTER VI.]
THE GIFT OF MANY FACES.
Mrs. Gissing had guessed right. The man in the Afghan cap was Jim Douglas, who found the disguise of a frontiersman the easiest to assume, when, as now, he wanted to mix in a crowd. And he would have said "Bravo" a dozen times over if he had thought the little lady would like to hear it; for her quick denial of the possibility of insult had roused his keenest admiration. Here had spoken a dignity he had not expected to find in one whom he only knew as a woman Major Erlton delighted to honor. A dignity lacking in the big brave boy beside her; lacking, alas! in many a big brave Englishman of greater importance. So he had risked detection by that sudden "Bravo!" Not that he dreaded it much. To begin with, he was used to it, even when he posed as an out-lander, for there was a trick in his gait, not to be Orientalized, which made policemen salute gravely as he passed disguised to the tent. Then there was ignorance of some one or another of the million shibboleths which divide men from each other in India; shibboleths too numerous for one lifetime's learning, which require to be born in the blood, bred in the bone. In this case, also, he had every intention of asserting his race by licking one at least of the offenders when the show was over. For he happened to know one of them; having indeed licked him a few days before over a certain piece of bone. So, as the crowd, accepting the finale of one amusement placidly, drifted away to see another, he walked over to the tent in which the discomforted caricaturists had found refuge. It was a tattered old military bell-tent, bought most likely at some auction with the tattered old staff uniform. As he lifted the flap the sound of escaping feet made him expect a stern chase; but he was mistaken. Two figures rose with a start of studied surprise and salaamed profoundly as he entered. They were both stark naked save for a waistcloth, and Jim Douglas could not resist a quick glance round for the discarded costumes. They were nowhere to be seen; being hidden, probably, under the litter of properties strewing the squalid green-room. Still of the identity of the man he knew Jim Douglas had no doubt, and as this one was also the nearest, he promptly seized him by the both shoulders and gave him a sound Western kick, which would have been followed by others if the recipient had not slipped from his hold like an eel. For Jhungi, Bunjârah, and general vagrant, habitually oiled himself from head to foot after the manner of his profession as a precaution against such possible attempts at capture.
His assailant, grasping this fact, at any rate, did not risk dignity by pursuit; though the man stood salaaming again within arm's length.
"You scoundrel!" said Jim Douglas with as much severity as he could command before the mixture of deference and defiance, innocence and iniquity, in the sharp, cunning face before him. "Wasn't the licking I gave you before enough?"