“We don’t always agree, of course. But we talk things over together, and generally one convinces the other. If not, we agree to differ.”
Mabel shook her head. “Then I’m perfectly certain that you and Dick have never differed on a really vital matter,” she said. “In that case I know quite well that neither of you would ever convince the other, and you could not conscientiously agree to differ, so what is to happen?”
Georgia did not seem to hear her. She rose and went into the drawing-room, and unlocking a little carved cabinet that stood on her writing-table, took something out of a secret drawer. “Look at this, Mab,” she said, handing Mabel a piece of paper. It was a photograph, obviously the work of an amateur, of a little grave surrounded by lofty trees.
“Oh, Georgie!” the tears sprang to Mabel’s eyes; “this is baby’s grave?”
Georgia nodded. “Dick doesn’t know that I have it,” she said, speaking quickly. “Mr Anstruther took the photograph for me, and I had one framed, and it always hung in my room. I used to sit and look at it when Dick was out. Sometimes I cried a little, of course, but I never thought he would notice. But he took it into his head that I was fretting, and when we left Iskandarbagh he gave the servants a hint to lose the picture in moving. Wasn’t it just like him, dear fellow? But he never bargained for the servants’ letting out the truth to me. I had this one as well; but when I saw how Dick felt about it I took care to keep it hidden away, and he thinks his plan has succeeded, and that I have forgotten. It makes him so much happier.”
“I see,” said Mabel, in a low voice. “You wouldn’t have done that once, Georgie. I see the difference. But surely there is a name on the stone?” She was examining the photograph closely. “She was baptized, then? I never heard——”
“Yes, Dick baptized her; there was no one else. Georgia Mabel, he would have it so. Oh, Mab, it was awful, that time! We were the only English people at Iskandarbagh just then, and the tribes were out on the frontier. Miss Jenkins, the Bab-us-Sahel missionary, was coming to me. Since I knew her first, she has been home to take the medical course, and is fully qualified. Well, she could not get to me, and I couldn’t get to Khemistan, and I had to stay where I was and be doctor and patient both. Of course I had my dear good Rahah, and Dick was as gentle as any woman; but oh, it was terrible! But I shouldn’t have minded afterwards if only baby had lived. She was such a darling, Mab, with fair hair and dark eyes, like yours. Dick tried to cheer me up—chaffed me about her being so small and weak—but she died in my arms a few minutes after she was baptized. Miss Jenkins got through to us the next day at the risk of her life, but she was only in time for the—the funeral in the Residency garden.”
“And you lived through that? Oh, Georgie, it would have killed me.”
“Oh no; there was Dick, you know. Poor dear Dick! he was disappointed about baby, of course; but a man doesn’t feel that sort of thing as a woman does. Besides, he was so glad I didn’t die too, that he really could not think of anything else.”
“And you, Georgie?”