It was not the first time in her life that she had felt nervous over the fulfilment of one of her impulsive wishes, but she had never had the feeling quite so strongly as to-night. Abdul Qaiyam and Ketty had it too, for they both enquired anxiously if she was not going to wait for the young Sahib. She was obliged to be very firm and cheerful with them over the process of packing, realising that they would not be sorry if they could manage to delay things till the opportunity was lost. Despite the heat, she flew about from the sick-room to her own room and then to the verandah, deciding what must be taken, and seeing with her own eyes that it was packed. Abdul Qaiyam would never let his master go short, she knew—if Richard suffered it would be through forgetfulness, not malice,—but she had an idea that she herself might find various things lacking that were indispensable to comfort unless she looked after them herself. Richard remained in the same lethargic state until the servants lifted him to carry him down to the boat. Then there came another of those brief flashes of full consciousness, and he looked disturbed—even protesting. Eveleen had a moment of terror lest her plan should fall through even now. She bent over him and smiled into his face.
“Off to Bab-us-Sahel!” she said brightly. “Do y’all the good in the world!”
He seemed to try to say something, but in the effort the drowsiness came over him again, and she was guiltily conscious that she was glad. Once get him safely on board, and he might regain command of his senses as soon as he liked. He was certain to make a fuss—especially about her not waiting for Brian’s return—but she would point out triumphantly that his return to consciousness was the best possible proof of the wisdom of her action. The surgeon came to see them on board, and gave anxious directions as to what was to be done if various things happened, and she listened and did her best to label them and stow them away in the proper compartments of her mind. A number of friends were waiting to see them off, for the sudden journey had given every one the idea that Richard had had a serious relapse, and the only chance of saving his life was to take him at once to Bab-us-Sahel, regardless alike of the unpropitious season and the dangers of the way. They were very quiet and sympathetic as he was carried down the path, but a certain revulsion of feeling was perceptible when Eveleen followed. Ambrose looked no worse than he had done for days, and Mrs Ambrose certainly had not the look of strain that the situation demanded. Just a little anxious, no doubt, as any woman is when she is trying to remember whether she has got everything before starting on a journey, but with a look of something like triumph as well. The condolences and good wishes fell rather flat, and as they returned up the cliff by torchlight the ladies told their husbands that either Mrs Ambrose was trying to get rid of the Major by carrying him off away from medical aid, or she was going down the river for some purpose of her own, regardless of the effect on him.
The chill of disapproval made itself felt, and Eveleen was conscious of depression of spirits. The boat was as comfortable as had been promised, their possessions were easily arranged so as to leave ample room for moving about, and one or two suggestions which the doctor made for the invalid’s comfort were instantly carried out. Yet she did not feel happy. The surgeon’s last remark had been that they ought to have a guard of soldiers—he was certain the General would have sent one had he been there,—and anyhow, where were these armed servants of Firozji’s? Mr Firozji explained anxiously that a boat had gone to fetch them, and they would catch up the party below the camp, and the doctor said he hoped it was all right, but his tone was doubtful. Eveleen remembered it when the boatful of guards joined the other two. They were armed, certainly—to the teeth, but they were a wild-looking set, more like outlaws from the hills than the servants of a law-abiding elderly merchant. But had Mr Firozji said they were his servants? She could not remember that he had, and it looked very much as though he had selected his guardians from among the masterless men who had been left without occupation by the defeat of the Khans. If she had guessed that he had carried one of the root principles of Indian housekeeping so far as to guard against trouble from the Kajias by going to some trouble to obtain members of the tribe as his escort, she would have been still more uneasy, but she told herself that it was too late to turn back now, and she must hope for the best. She took out Richard’s pistols, and made sure that they were loaded, and determined to sleep with them under her pillow and a supply of ammunition within reach of her hand. After all, Brian ought to catch them up in two days at most—less if he took a fast boat and kept the crew up to their work. It did not occur to her that Brian might be in no hurry to get back from Khanpur. He was a man of many friends, and there was plenty to hear from all of them, and he had no particular objection to leaving Eveleen to cool her heels at Qadirabad, as he believed, for a day or two. The longer his return was delayed, the more likely was she to have some new plan in her head—completely ousting the Bab-us-Sahel one,—or the floods might even have begun, and the journey be out of the question.
The surgeon’s warning came back to Eveleen many times in the course of the next day, and when evening came she would readily have confessed that at the Residency she had not known what heat was. In her anticipations, the voyage had offered all the advantages of a steamer except its speed, coupled with the absence of smoke and smell, and the delight of being near the water. But she found that with the greater speed of the steamer went the pleasant sensation of moving air, and that the long hot hours when there was no breeze to fill the sails, and the river-current seemed incredibly slow, provided a new form of torture—such as might be experienced by a speck of dross on the mirror-like surface of a huge cauldron of molten metal. Even Richard was conscious of it, as she could not but see. He did not recognise her—not even her voice when she spoke to him,—but he gasped feebly, with now and then a pitiful little moan. The fear gripped her that he might die before her eyes, and with threats and bribes she induced one of the boatmen and a servant of Mr Firozji’s to keep the roof of the cabin continually wet with buckets of water, while Abdul Qaiyam performed the same service for his master beneath it. It was no light task, for the heat seemed to dry things at once, and leave them even drier than before; but she threw all her energy into the business of keeping the men at their work, and when evening came her husband was a little easier. She had a moment to rest, and to notice what she had not done before—the threatening look of the sky. Mr Firozji, in a quavering voice which sounded absurdly small for his substantial bulk, opined that they were going to have a thunderstorm, and Eveleen did not need him to tell her that if this extended far up the river, it would mean that the dreaded inundation would begin at once. Other people realised this as well, for the lazy boatmen began to work with some appearance of energy, and the headman of the guards came into Mr Firozji’s boat to urge some course of action upon him, which he refused, though with a fluttering politeness which betrayed alarm. Since there was still no breeze, it was necessary to pole the boats along, as this wide unsheltered channel was not a safe place in which to be caught by the storm; and the boatmen poled to such good purpose that before the rapid darkness fell, the flotilla was moored under the lee of an island—or rather sandbank—which promised some protection from wind and current.
CHAPTER XXI.
WELL AND TRULY LAID.
Still the storm tarried. Supper was served, and Eveleen made a pretence of eating, lest the servants should attribute her lack of appetite to fear. Then they went away to have their food—Ketty eating in self-righteous solitude, while Abdul Qaiyam fraternised with the boatmen, who had kindled a fire on the island to cook their rice. Eveleen envied them as they sat in the smoke, for it served to keep away mosquitoes and other flying pests, while she durst not light a candle for fear of filling the cabin with the winged intruders. Alone with her unconscious husband, she kept a dreary vigil, fearful of she knew not what. She remembered that Richard had seemed about to say something when the boat with the guards came up, but the momentary impulse had passed, and he had shown no inclination to speak since. What was it that had troubled him? Could it be that he had recognised any of the men? But even so, what could the guards do, even if ill-disposed? They might intend robbery, but the modest belongings of the pair would be poor booty compared with the danger of provoking the certain vengeance of the Bahadar Jang. Or if they were indeed adherents of the Khans, their object might be simply to avenge the wrongs of their former masters; and Eveleen shuddered as she remembered what had befallen an invalid officer, on his way down the river, at the hands of some of Khair Husain Khan’s servants. Dragged from his boat shivering with fever, the sick man had pleaded with the robbers, as he thought them, to leave him his clothes, because he was so cold, and they had responded by cutting off his head. Sir Harry had acted as might have been expected of him, informing the Khan he would hang him from the round tower of the Fort unless the guilty servants were given up. They were produced in an hour, and suffered the penalty their master escaped, though it went sorely against the grain with Sir Harry to spare Khair Husain and punish his tools. That example ought to serve as a salutary warning, surely?
But Eveleen could not take comfort. The servants had returned and made things ready for the night, and she had lain down on her bed, though knowing she could not sleep. Every sense seemed to be more than commonly alive, as though the coming storm, which had lulled Richard into lethargy, merely stimulated her. Theoretically no one was awake within miles of her—for what was the use of posting sentries on an uninhabited island in the middle of a wide river?—but the air was full of little unaccountable noises. A feeble soughing wind that went and came, distant irritable growlings of the storm, the rattling, rather than rustling, of the withered grass and rushes—these sounds she could identify, but there were others whose meaning eluded her. Of course it was only the lapping of the water that sounded like whispers, and when one might think some one had dropped a weapon it was merely the snapping off of a dead branch by its own weight; but she wished they would not happen. The blinds at the ends of the cabin were rolled up to allow the free passage of air, and she lay looking out at the leaden sky, with no companionable stars to brighten it, and listening to the sounds, and there fell upon her at last an agony of terror. It had always been her boast that she did not know what nerves were, but she would never make it again. The beating of her own heart sounded to her like the rise and fall of a tremendous piston, such as she had once heard in a Dublin factory, filling the whole earth and sky; and as she cowered before its relentless thud, she trembled with cold, though the slightest movement made her aware that her whole frame was streaming with perspiration. She who had been afraid of nothing was afraid of everything—the place, the time, the weather, the solitude, the company, the silence, the sounds,—what she saw and what she did not see.
She shook herself angrily free from the overmastering terror at last—or at any rate, which perhaps showed equal courage, she acted as if she did. Struggling from the bed and to her feet—for she found she must put forth all her strength, as though she were really being held down by a powerful hostile hand,—she threw on a dressing-gown and groped her way forward. The old bearer, curled up like a dog beside his master, heard her and looked up curiously: she saw his bright eyes like a dog’s in the dark, lighted by some gleam behind her, perhaps the ashes of the dying fire on the shore. She stood looking out, but there was nothing to see. Dark sky, dark water—a perfect pall of darkness brooding over everything,—and on her left a slightly deeper darkness which showed the position of the island and its ragged grass and shrubs. The voices of the night were whispering as before, and again she felt that terrible sensation of helplessness. Once she opened her lips to pray, but her pride was not broken yet. “And how would I pray,” she asked herself sharply, “when I know every bit of it’s my own doing?”
She staggered as she spoke, and caught at the framework of the cabin to steady herself. What had made the boat lurch suddenly—some wave which was the result of the storm higher up, its precursor here? She looked more narrowly at the water. Was it fancy, or did she see round things moving in it? And surely there were strange amorphous shapes where there had been none before? Her heart stood still. The change, if change there was, was so soundless, so ghostly. But the thought of the supernatural passed from her mind with a shock. The boat was moving. Not merely swaying at its moorings as the current tried to suck it away from the protecting island, but moving out into the stream and leaving the island behind. Wild thoughts of crocodiles rushed into her mind. Could they possibly bite through stout ropes and tow a boat along, or even leave it to float at its own sweet will? Impossible; there must be human agency at work. With Eveleen to think was to act, and kneeling precariously at the side of the boat, she leaned over the gunwale and clutched at one of the round objects she had thought she saw. The yell of horror which came from it told her what the sense of touch told also, that it was a human head. The boat was surrounded by swimming men, who were moving it away from the island—presumably it was also being towed by a rope. But what the great shapeless objects were, which she seemed to see beyond the heads, she could not tell, nor did she trouble to conjecture. Whether she or the man she had grasped was the more astonished might be doubtful, but she had the advantage of position. Catching up an earthen water-pot which stood outside the cabin for the sake of coolness, she hurled it in the direction of the yell, and was on her feet in a moment and under the mat roof. When she came out, Richard’s pistols were in her hand, and she fired one in the direction of the island as a signal. She could not believe that Mr Firozji was concerned in any plot that might be toward, and if he was a man at all he would come to the rescue with those guards of his.