“I do, indeed. He had to weed them out, you see, or he would have been overrun with volunteers. Oh, you may have full confidence in my veracity, Miss North, even though I once had a report returned me by a jealous Secretary with the remark that I should do well to quit the Civil Service for the path of romantic fiction. The pains I took over that report! You see, I had an inkling that it would be seen by a very exalted person, who is great on us juniors’ cultivating a literary style in our official writings. I can truly say that there has never been such a literary gem sent in since Macaulay left India. It was written in the most beautiful English—though I say it—full of tender touches and delicate conceits, and as to quotations, and Oriental imagery, and wealth of imaginative detail——! Ah well, it’s better not to think of it,” and Fitz sighed deeply.
“Why? Did it bring down upon you a rebuke from the Great Great One?”
“No, alas! for it never reached him. The Secretary intercepted it, naturally enough. Who would ever have looked at his minutes again after it? But at least it furnished him with an ideal to strive after. I have reason to believe he is in a lunatic asylum at this moment. The effort was too great, you see.”
“That was rather close,” said Mabel irrelevantly, as the wheel shaved the basketwork tray of an itinerant sweetseller by the roadside.
“He shouldn’t be so intent on his prospective gains. Look how many of the fellows there are about! That shows we are near the ground. They flock to this place from all quarters when they know there’s a tamasha on.”
They had reached the enclosure by this time, and Mabel found herself surrounded by an admiring throng. Pale-faced ladies from other stations glanced at her dress casually, and continued to gaze long and fixedly, her Alibad admirers brought up friends to be introduced, and both the old slaves and the new displayed a keen anxiety to post themselves for the day in the neighbourhood of her chair. With the exception of the race for the Keeling Cup, the sports were wholly military in character, and the programme was a lengthy one, but Mabel did not find the hours pass slowly. Everything was new and interesting, from the splendid native officers, with fierce eyes gleaming under enormous turbans, who dashed up on fiery steeds and bore away triumphantly an unresisting tent-peg, to the latest recruit who exhibited his coolness by holding out his bare hand, with what Mabel considered privately an excess of confidence, for his daffadar to cut a lemon upon it. There was the inner circle of troopers of the Khemistan Horse, reinforced to-day by such veterans as old Ismail Bakhsh and his fellow-chaprasis, keenly critical, but above all things solicitous for the honour of the regiment. There were the notables of the district, grave and bearded men in flowing robes, who looked as though they might have sat for a gallery of Scriptural portraits, but who exhibited an anxious deference when Dick glanced their way, which suggested that their relation with him in the past had occasionally been that of criminals and judge. At the farther side of the course was the motley throng of dwellers in the native town, and hangers-on of the cantonments, with faces of every shade of brown, and clothes and turbans of every variety of colour. And lastly, close at hand, there was the little group of English, not taking their pleasure sadly, for once, but making the most of the rare opportunity for the exchange of news and opinions. The Commissioner was the centre of attraction here, naturally enough, or at least, he shared the general attention with Mabel; but she was quite aware, as she met his benevolent smile, that he was making her a graceful present of a portion of the homage due to himself.
The last event but one upon the programme was the tug-of-war between six men of the Khemistan Horse and six of the Sikhs who formed the Commissioner’s escort—a contest which was fought out with the greatest obstinacy, but in which the visiting team finally secured the victory, to the unconcealed lamentation and resentment of the local representatives and their friends. The triumphant Sikhs found no sympathisers except among the sahib-log, and the English applause was cut short by the necessity of preparing for the last race, in which it was a point of honour for every man to take part who could possibly do so.
“A solemn sacrifice to the memory of the adored General Keeling!” said Mr Burgrave in a low voice to Mabel, as they watched their late companions assembling upon the course.
“Oh, but what is that native doing?” cried Mabel, forgetting what she had heard only that morning, as a tall lithe man, wearing the green turban of a descendant of the Prophet, stepped out from the group of notables and joined the competitors.
“That,” was the bland answer, “is Bahram Khan, hitherto the bugbear of the frontier; henceforth, I hope, our friend and ally.”