“No, indeed, I can’t imagine.” She spoke hastily, scenting danger. The Commissioner smiled paternally.
“No? Then will you do me the favour to consider the matter? Ask yourself why I was willing, even anxious, to be converted from my own opinion. When you have arrived at the answer, I shall know.”
He smiled at her again from his pillows, but Mabel muttered something incoherent and fled.
“I don’t know what to do!” she cried, in the seclusion of her own room. “Does he think I am a baby, or a little school-girl? If he wants to propose, why can’t he do it straight out, and take his refusal like a man? I know how to manage that sort of thing. But to break the idea to me gradually in this way, as if I was—oh, I don’t know what—a sort of fairy that must be handled gently for fear it should vanish into thin air—it’s insufferable! And the worst of it is, I can’t quite make out how to stop it. I seem somehow to have got myself into his power.”
To see as little of Mr Burgrave as possible, and to confine the conversation to safe subjects when she did meet him, was the remedy which naturally suggested itself, and Mabel did her best to apply it; but, to her dismay, it did not appear to produce any effect. She had even a distinct feeling that it was just what Mr Burgrave had expected. Moreover, it was extremely difficult to put in practice. Now that the operation had been performed on the patient’s knee, and the leg fixed immovably in a splint, he was allowed to be lifted on a couch, and thus to spend his days in the society of his hosts. Dick was out as much as ever, and when Georgia was busy, it was obviously Mabel’s duty to entertain the invalid. It is sad to relate that when escape proved impossible, she was reduced to assuming an intense interest in the study of Browning, toiling through “Sordello” with astonishing patience. But if any valid excuse offered itself for leaving Mr Burgrave to his own reflections, she embraced it gladly, and when the arrival in the neighbourhood of one of the nomadic tribes brought Georgia a sudden rush of patients, she volunteered at once to help her in dealing with them.
The surgery in which Georgia received her visitors was a building standing by itself in the compound, and approached by a special gate in the wall, so that the ladies might come to see their doctor without fear of encountering any rude masculine gaze. As an additional precaution, when the wives of any of the chief men came to the surgery, they brought a youth with them as attendant, who mounted guard over a motley array of slippers at the door, and completed the security against profane intrusion. Inside, Georgia dealt with the cases individually in a small room at one end, while in the large room the visitors sat on the floor in rows, looking at the pictures on the walls, or listening casually to the Biblewoman, trained by Miss Jenkins at the Bab-us-Sahel Mission, who sat among them and read or talked. At the other end was another small room, where a patient and her friends were occasionally accommodated when Georgia had any special reason for wishing to keep the case under her own eye, and the husband was more than usually indulgent. At other times there stood in this room a spring bedstead, which was never used, but which the women made up parties to inspect, personally conducted by Rahah. There was a history attaching to this object of pilgrimage. Two years before a lady globe-trotter of exalted rank, in the course of an adventurous flying visit to the frontier, had spent a night at the Norths’, and been stirred to enthusiasm by Georgia’s quiet but far-reaching work among the women. Her Grace deplored sympathetically the absence of a proper hospital, and offered to put her London drawing-room at Mrs North’s disposal during her next visit home, that she might plead for funds to establish one. Georgia pointed out, however, that the smallness of the station, and the uncertain character of the wanderings of the tribes, would probably result in leaving the hospital empty for eleven months out of the year, while if Dick should be transferred to another post, its raison d’être would be gone. The duchess was disappointed, but not crushed. Would Mrs North allow her to send a gift, just one, to the surgery as it stood at present? She could not bear to think of the terrible discomfort the poor sick women must suffer.
Georgia consented, and after a time the gift arrived, brought up-country at a vast expenditure of toil and money. It was a regulation hospital bed, the very latest patent, which could be made to roll itself the wrong way like a bucking horse, stand up on end, kneel down like a camel, dislocate itself in unexpected places, and perform other acrobatic feats, all by turning a handle. Rahah sat before it in silent admiration for a whole morning, occasionally pressing the wires gently down for the pleasure of seeing them rise again. When she had drunk in this delight sufficiently, she ventured to put the bedstead through its paces, rushing to summon her mistress in joyful awe at each new trick she discovered. But so far, her enjoyment was incomplete. To be perfect, the bed needed a patient to occupy it, and at last one was brought in by her friends, crippled by some rheumatic affection. Rahah herself laid her on the bed, only to behold her leap from it immediately with the strength of perfect health. There was an evil spirit in the bed, she declared. All other beds sank when you lay down upon them, this one rose up. And in spite of the wonderful cure of this first and only case, the bed was never occupied again. It was talked of all along the frontier, the women came for miles to see it, and watched in shuddering delight while Rahah showed them what it could do; but it was only very rarely that a heroine could be found bold enough even to touch it with a finger. Meanwhile, the patients continued to sleep on their mats or their charpoys, insisting that the bed should be turned out of the room before they would take up their quarters there, lest the evil spirit should seize upon them during the hours of darkness.
On this particular morning Rahah was exhibiting the wonders of the bed to a party of new arrivals, and Mabel was deputed to see that the patients were admitted into Georgia’s sanctum in proper order, and only one at a time. Seeing that they were all comfortably seated facing the Biblewoman, she thought it would be best to begin with those nearest the door, thus going through the whole assemblage methodically. The women, on the other hand, considered that the worst cases ought to be seen first, and each woman was firmly convinced that her own case was the worst of all. Hence arose an uproar, in which the sympathising friends accompanying each would-be patient joined with all the force of their lungs, besieging the unfortunate Mabel, who could not understand a word, with a tumult of assertions, contradictions, and maledictions. At last one woman, who carried a baby, was seized with a bright idea. Flinging away a fold of her veil from the child’s face, she held it out to Mabel, exhibiting the awful condition of its eyes, which were almost sightless from neglected ophthalmia, as an incontestable proof of her right to the first place. The hint was not lost upon the other women, and in a moment Mabel was surrounded by sights from which she recoiled in horror. At first she was too much appalled to move, as each woman displayed triumphantly the urgency of her own need, and then she turned sick and faint. The agglomeration of so many miseries was too much for her. Rahah, returning at the moment, left the outer door open, and this gave her courage to escape. Pressing her hands over her eyes, she burst through the astonished crowd, drank in a draught of pure fresh air, and then fairly ran across the compound and back to the house. Mounting the steps with difficulty, she staggered and caught at the rail to steady herself, only avoiding a fall by a wild clutch at one of the pillars when she reached the top. An exclamation of concern reached her ears, and she became dimly conscious that Mr Burgrave was making desperate efforts to rise from his couch.
“You are ill, Miss North! What is it? You don’t mean to say that another attempt has been made——?”
“To carry me off? Oh no, not quite so near home.” Mabel laughed a little, and as she began to see more clearly, noticed how the remorseful anxiety in his face gave place to unfeigned relief. “No, I’m not ill, only silly and faint.”