But she settled herself meekly on the cushions, and closed her eyes, that the swaying of the palki might not recall too vividly the motion of the steamer. She was not losing much, she told herself, for the inhabitants of Bab-us-Sahel appeared to live either in mud-heaps or within high mud walls, both windowless, and there was not a tree to be seen. She must have gone to sleep before very long, for she woke with a start when the reed blind was drawn aside, and Colonel Bayard’s face appeared in the doorway—a sepoy guard standing to attention behind him.
“Welcome to Government House, Mrs Ambrose! Let me say as the Spaniards do, ‘This house is yours, ma’am.’ Turn it upside down if you like, and do me the favour of chivying the servants as much as you please. My wife always declares I spoil ’em when she ain’t with me.”
“Ah, but tell me now—will you let me ride your horses?” demanded Eveleen, pausing as he helped her out. The mud-built town was below them now, for they were at the top of a long slope. An immensely wide road with ostentatiously white houses on either side, so rigidly spaced that they looked like tents in a camp, led down to a muddy swamp, and by a causeway across it to the mud-heap which was Bab-us-Sahel. Some attempt had been made by most of the householders to enclose their domains with a hedge, but the only available plant seemed to be a weak and straggly kind of cactus, which left more gaps than it filled. Government House was mud-built and white-washed like the rest, long and narrow and surrounded by verandahs, and boasted an imposing flagstaff in front, together with a circular enclosure, intended as a flower-bed, in which grew a few debilitated shrubs. Glaring sunshine and shadeless sand were the salient features of the scene from which Eveleen withdrew her eyes as she looked up at her host.
“With all my heart, if I had any,” he responded genially. “But I’ll confess I am a precious lazy fellow when there’s no hunting in question. Bring me khubber of a tiger, and I’ll ride all day and all night to get at him, but here——! My dear ma’am, this respectable elderly gentleman”—he indicated the pony from which he had just dismounted—“represents my whole stable, and you can see by his figure that he don’t get much to do.”
“And such a galloping country!” Deep commiseration was in Eveleen’s tone as she looked down the other side of the rise to the bare rolling sandy plain. “I’ll have to wait till my own horses are landed, then, before challenging you to a race.”
“Mrs Ambrose is going to wake us all up, I see, Richard!” Colonel Bayard beamed as he handed her into the house. He had to perfection the gift of doing little things greatly, and Queen Victoria herself could not have been ushered in with more empressement. “Now if anything is not as you like it, ma’am, command me and all I have, I beg of you. You won’t feel bound to show yourself at table if you ain’t equal to it? Ambrose and I will devour our grub in solitude, like a pair of uncivilised bachelors again.”
“As if I’d allow that! Sure I’ll be there!” and Eveleen nodded brightly as she disappeared under the curtain that hung before the doorway of her room. Her mercurial spirits were recovering fast from the gloom of the voyage. Everything was interesting, and therefore cheerful—the new country, the unfamiliar house, this dear chivalrous Colonel Bayard. What a shame it was that his wife had let herself be sent away! “Sure I’d have stuck to him with teeth and claws!” she said to herself, and broke into her ready laughter at the thought of the inconvenience of such a devotion to its object.
Several hours of healthy slumber left Eveleen almost restored to her usual self, though still a little languid and pale. Her luggage had arrived while she slept, and also her ayah, who was much less welcome. Ketty was an elderly Goanese woman of vast experience and monumental propriety, and Eveleen suspected that Richard Ambrose had chosen her out to keep his erratic wife in order. Her last mistress had been the lady of a Member of Council, and what Ketty did not know of the manners and customs proper to ladies in high places was not worth knowing. Mutely, but firmly, she indicated on all occasions what ought to be worn, and also the appropriate style of hair-dressing, quite regardless of the wishes of her Madam Sahib—the very word showed in what high society she had moved, for in all but very lofty households the English lady was still alluded to as the Beebee. But to-day Eveleen’s reviving spirits led her to trample ruthlessly on Ketty. The ayah had laid out a white gown, and it was summarily rejected. Eveleen had all the Irishwoman’s love of easy old clothes, and in the open trunk she caught sight of a beloved garment that had once been a rather bright blue, but was now faded to a soft dull shade, the proximity of which only a milky skin and Irish blue eyes could endure with impunity. That dress she would wear and no other.
“A stiff starchy thing like that white brilliant!” she was talking to herself again, as she often did, since Ketty’s lack of response tried her sorely after the companionable garrulity of Irish servants. “No, I’ll be comfortable to-night—haven’t I earned it? Sure I’d be a regular ghost in white, and why would I want to haunt poor Colonel Bayard’s house before I’m dead?” Then severely, “Ayah, I said the blue. So that’s done!” triumphantly. “And now what to wear with it? I know what I’d like,” turning over the trinkets which Ketty, with an aloof and reserved air—as of one who refused all responsibility for such doings—laid before her, “and that’s you, you beauty. Isn’t it a real match for my eyes y’are, as Uncle Tom said when he gave you to me?” She took up a disc of flawed turquoise, some two inches across, set in silver and hanging from a steel chain, and looked at it affectionately, but put it down again. “No, Ambrose would have too much to say about my childish taste for ‘something large and smooth and round,’ and why would I provoke him when I needn’t? So we’ll be quite proper and suitable, and wear his bracelet with his hair and his portrait in it. Ah, my dear, what has happened you that you’d be so changed since you gave me that?” This was added in a painful whisper, but in a moment Eveleen had brushed the tears hastily from her eyes and turned to the door, accepting impatiently the handkerchief with which Ketty hurried after her.
Colonel Bayard was the prince of hosts. He told Eveleen that were he only a younger man, he would have a dozen duels on his hands the next morning for depriving the rest of the European community, if only for one day, of the honour of meeting her at supper—and all owing to his thinking she might be fatigued, which he saw now was quite unnecessary. Perhaps the voyage had been better than he feared. It could have been worse, she assured him, and described its horrors dramatically for his amusement and sympathy.