The Advanced-Guard

by Sydney C. Grier

Colin rode on in silence with a rigid face, and Lady Haigh wondered whether he would refuse to speak to her again. She had caught sight of Sir Dugald and Penelope coming towards them, and felt that her chance was nearly over. Would he speak? She held her breath with anxiety. Suddenly he turned to her with a smile which transfigured his whole face.

“You are right, Lady Haigh, and I am wrong. I have judged poor Pen hardly, and she must have thought me unkind. If it—this marriage should ever come off, tell her that from my heart I prayed for her happiness and Keeling’s. And I thank you heartily for showing me what a Pharisee I have been.”

Lady Haigh scarcely dared to believe in her success, but she noticed a new tone of tenderness in Colin’s voice when he spoke to his sister presently, and the look of incredulous joy in Penelope’s grey eyes showed that she saw it too. “I have done a good morning’s work,” said Lady Haigh to herself.

For the few days that remained before Colin’s departure, Penelope was happy. The barrier which had existed between her brother and herself since their arrival in India seemed to have suddenly disappeared, and she felt she was forgiven. Ferrers’ name was not mentioned between them, but Colin was able to allude to the object of his journey without unconsciously reproving his sister by the sternness of his voice. Lady Haigh could not discover whether he had told her of his presentiment that he would not return, though she guessed that Penelope must have divined it, for the girl was clearly hoping against hope, unable to believe that the renewed confidence between Colin and herself could be brought to an end so quickly.

All too soon, as it seemed to Penelope, Colin started in the train of Saadullah Kermani, and life at Alibad resumed its ordinary course, sadly flat, stale, and unprofitable in the estimation of one at least of the inhabitants. Penelope’s occupation was gone. She had joyfully resigned her interest in Ferrers, she could do nothing for Colin but pray for him, and she missed daily, almost hourly, the interest which Major Keeling had been wont to bring into her life. He never tried to see her alone now—in fact, his visits to the fort had ceased, and all her information as to the affairs of the border was derived from the stray pieces of news extorted from Sir Dugald by Lady Haigh, who was bent on educating him up to the belief that she and Penelope took an intelligent interest in public affairs. Not that these were exciting at this time. The young officer whose services Major Keeling had requisitioned was peremptorily restored to his original regiment, much against his will, and the usual heated correspondence followed. The border was quiet—in the case of Nalapur much too quiet, Major Keeling considered, and his demand for two additional European officers was finally refused by the authorities. The Haighs moved into their new house, which was at last pronounced safe, and Major Keeling took up his quarters in the imposing but gloomy building he had erected for himself. He abjured punkahs and every other kind of device for modifying the heat of the place, but he had laid aside his heroic views in planning the Haighs’ house. The lofty rooms were fitted with every appliance that had yet been discovered for making a Khemistan summer less intolerable, and there was a large tai-khana, or underground room, for refuge in the daytime, and a spacious roof for sleeping on at night. Lady Haigh and Penelope found plenty to do in making the bare rooms habitable with the small means at their disposal. Those were the days when anything of “country” make was regarded by the English in India as beyond the pale of toleration; but Lady Haigh, looking round upon the remnant of her belongings which had survived the journey up-country and the hands of the native servants, came to a heroic decision. It was all very well for people down at the coast, or generals’ wives and other burra mems, to have things out from home, but the subaltern’s wife must do her best with country goods; and she and Penelope worked wonders with native cottons and embroidered draperies, and the curious rugs which were brought by the caravans from Central Asia. Perhaps, as she herself confessed, she might not have been so courageous had it not been practically certain that none of the great ladies from the coast would ever see and criticise her arrangements, but for her part she did not think the native designs were so very hideous after all, or their colouring as barbaric as it appeared to most English people in those far-off days of the Fifties—devotees as they were of grass green and royal blue.

Into the midst of these domestic labours came the thunderbolt which Penelope told herself she had been expecting, but which was no less appalling. Saadullah Kermani’s caravan returned, without Colin. There had been no remissness on Saadullah’s part, no rashness on Colin’s; but there was a factor in the case the presence of which they had not suspected. Colin had entered Gamara in the humble and distinctive attire prescribed for Christians approaching the holy city, and had behaved with the utmost prudence, making no attempt to penetrate where he should not, or attack the usages of the place. His travelling-companions bore unanimous testimony to his gentleness when he was engaged in controversy by different Mullahs, and to the absence of bitterness when these took leave of him. Many came to visit him at the Sarai, and some even invited him to their houses. There was every hope that his presence would come to the Khan’s ears, so that he might be commanded to the palace as a guest, and have a chance of attaining the object of his journey, when one day some of his first acquaintances brought with them to the Sarai no less a person than the Mirza Fazl-ul-Hacq. He had been one of those who had held controversies with Colin during flying visits to Alibad, and he had expressed his determination to vanquish the Kafir at last. His language had been violent in the extreme, his taunts and provocations almost unbearable; but Colin had kept his temper, and discomfited his opponent by appealing to the audience to contrast the tone of their respective arguments. The Mirza had departed in a rage, and the very next day, in passing one of the colleges, Colin had been assailed by a tumultuous throng of students, who poured out upon him, and, seizing him, demanded that he should abjure Christianity. Upon his refusal to repeat the Kalima they had set upon him with sticks and stones, and he was only rescued by a body of the city police, who arrested him and carried him off to the palace, the precincts of which included the prison. Since then nothing had been heard of him. Saadullah had made tentative and cautious inquiries in every possible direction, but the only result was to bring upon himself a warning from the head of the police that he also was suspected, as having brought the Kafir into the city, and would do well to keep his mouth shut and finish his business in Gamara as quickly as he could. By inquiry from the friends of other prisoners, it was ascertained that Colin was not in the common prison; but this only lent fresh horror to his fate, for to the awful regions beyond no one penetrated. And nothing had been heard of Ferrers, either good or bad.

When Penelope heard the news she fainted, and recovered only to beg Lady Haigh piteously to ask Major Keeling to come to her. She must see him, she said, when her friend demurred; and Lady Haigh, with some misgivings, sent off the note. She felt that she would like to warn Major Keeling when he arrived, and yet she did not know exactly what she feared, but there had been a wild look in Penelope’s eyes which frightened her.

“She is not herself. You will make allowances?” she said eagerly, as she took him into the drawing-room.

“Make allowances—I, for her?” he said, with such an accent of reproach that Lady Haigh was too much flurried to explain that she was anxious he should not be drawn into doing anything rash. It was some comfort to her to notice how big and strong he looked, not the kind of man who would allow himself to be hurried into unwisdom, and she could not wonder that Penelope felt him a tower of strength. But the words which reached her as she left the room made her stop her ears and hurry away in despair. She knew exactly how Penelope had run to meet him, white-faced, trembling, with dilated eyes, and seized his hand in both hers as she cried, “Oh, Major Keeling, save him, save him!”

“What is it you want me to do?” he asked her, the laborious speeches of condolence he had prepared all forgotten.