THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 

IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
IN TENT AND BUNGALOW 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "INDIAN IDYLLS." 
 
 JSletfjuen & Co, 
 
 1 8, BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C. 
 
Printed In Germany 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 TOO CLEVER BY HALF I 
 
 CHASED AT A PAPER CHASE . .21 
 
 A PIOUS FRAUD . . 34 
 
 A FATAL GIFT . $O 
 
 A SOUTHSEA BUBBLE . . 68 
 
 AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN ... 83 
 
 ANY PORT IN A DUST-STORM . . . IO2 
 
 MRS. NEYLE'S NURSE . . . .112 
 
 THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN . . .122 
 
 THE HUNTING OF THE MAJOR . . .140 
 
 THAT CHRISTMAS AT CURRIPORE . . 147 
 
 SUCH A SUSPICION . . . .164 
 
IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 tloo Clever l>v> 1balf ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 A MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE ON AN ELEPHANT. 
 FOUNDED ON FACT. 
 
 HE somehow looked rather different to the 
 elephant of my childish days, associated with the 
 fearful joy of a jolting along the gravel walk 
 at the Zoo, or the wild excitement of the yearly 
 advent of the wild-beast show into the market- 
 place. Perhaps it was his surroundings. As I 
 stood and gazed up at him, he seemed framed 
 in a setting of delicate green bamboo jungle, 
 with a patch of sun-baked earth for the fore- 
 ground, and a great, towering, dark bunch of the 
 Himalayas for the distance. He did not appear 
 to object to my admiring scrutiny, for he looked 
 at me knowingly out of the corner of his little 
 eye, the while toying with his trunk a piece of 
 sugar-cane, a kind of a dessert his mahout was 
 proffering him. He had previously partaken of 
 
IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 an excellent meal of great, flat chuppatties cakes 
 of flour and clarified butter. 
 
 "He's a fine old chap, isn't he?" said Bob's 
 voice behind me. "You should only have seen him 
 two months ago, when he was bobbery (vicious). 
 We had to chain him to a tree in the compound, 
 and he shook it in his rage ! He burst the ropes 
 we had to chain him ! " 
 
 I regarded Rajah that was the elephant's 
 name with increased respect, and involuntarily 
 increased the distance between myself and him, 
 as I inquired, 
 
 " He's quite good again now, is he ? " 
 
 " Quiet as a lamb ! " was Bob's expressive, if 
 inappropriate, metaphor. " But we can always 
 manage the Rajah, even when he is bobbery. He's 
 mortally afraid of horses don't know why, but 
 he is. We collected all we could, and rode round 
 him, forming a circle, and gradually closing upon 
 him, and he was regularly quailed. The mahouts 
 got the chains on him in a twinkling ! " And Bob 
 called to a native to bring him a piece of burning 
 wood from the camp-fire, and lit a cigar, the man 
 holding the red-hot ember the while between his 
 horny fingers. 
 
 Bob is my elder brother. Bob has been an 
 officer in the Indian Forest Department since I 
 
TOO CLEVER BY HALF. 
 
 was a boy in petticoats. I am a subaltern in the 
 Twenty-Oneth now, but never did I feel more of 
 a griff, or Bob more of an elder brother, than 
 that morning, as I stood in the middle of his 
 camp admiring his elephants. 
 
 Bob has kindly offered me, in my innocence 
 and inexperience of the country, a few days 
 tiger- shooting in his district. Bob appears to 
 be the arbitrary ruler over a country as large as 
 an English county. True, his subjects are not 
 many in number, for that strip of the Terai, 
 lying between the Himalayas and the plains a 
 marshy, jungly land, seamed with rocky ravines, 
 and traversed by refractory rivers that will not 
 adhere to their beds is malarious to a degree. 
 At certain times of the year even the natives flee 
 with their cattle to the lower Himalayas, and 
 Bob betakes himself to Simla. In the cold 
 weather, however, Bob makes royal progresses 
 through his domain, followed by a vast retinue 
 of servants and camp-followers, investigating the 
 condition of these precious forests, on whose 
 existence much of the rainfall so necessary to 
 this parched land of India depends. 
 
 It is a solitary existence, for Bob does not 
 meet another European for weeks together ; but 
 it has its bright side. Bob is a gamekeeper on 
 
IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 a vast scale. All the beasts of the forest are his. 
 Globe-trotting princelets and peers, who are 
 being shown India, are given a few days' shooting 
 in Bob's district, as a bonne-bouche. The Terai 
 is one vast game-preserve, from the Suwaliks to 
 Nepaul. No wonder all my brother officers in 
 the Twenty-Oneth were green with envy when I 
 told them of Bob's invitation. 
 
 I was much impressed with Bob's imposing 
 surroundings his white tents, so luxurious 
 within, and two sets of them, one always sent on 
 ahead to be ready for him at the end, or rather 
 the middle, of his day's march, for the ground 
 was got over in the cool hours ; the troops of 
 obsequious headmen of the villages, to whom 
 Bob's nod was law; his horses and ponies of 
 many kinds; his elaborate repasts of four courses, 
 all cooked in a little iron stove in the open air, 
 by an idiotic-looking eld man in a white petticoat, 
 who sat crooning over his cooking-pots ; and, 
 lastly, but certainly not least, by his elephants. 
 
 There were ten of them ; for a civil engineer 
 in camp not far off, engaged and not for the 
 first time in trying to bridge one of the refrac- 
 tory rivers, had joined forces with him for a 
 big shoot, when the gladsome intelligence was 
 brought to us two days before that a cow had 
 
TOO CLEVER BY HALF. 5 
 
 been killed near a neighbouring village, and a 
 tiger's pads tracked down a pond hard by. 
 
 I was in real luck, Bob said ; yet, at that 
 moment, I hardly realized it. To begin with, 
 strange though it may appear, it was intensely 
 cold so cold that my fingers felt numb under 
 my ulster, so cold that one could almost fancy 
 that the far, far away snow-peaks, which had 
 gleamed all rosy in the sunset of the evening 
 before, beyond the dark mass towering above 
 us, had somehow stalked close upon us during 
 the darkness of the night. For it was still very 
 early. 
 
 It was dark when the bearer had aroused me 
 with the cup of tea, without which no European 
 appears able to open his eyes in India. And even 
 now, the dawn was dim ; and Rajah and his 
 companions, drawn up in battle array, a mahout 
 squatting behind the ears of each, appeared of 
 huge proportions in the doubtful light. 
 
 Then my mind was exercised about two things. 
 The first had to do with the fact, that though I 
 have an excellent seat in the bamboo-cart with the 
 fast-trotting country-bred I have set up, we of the 
 Twenty-Oneth are emphatically a foot regiment 
 " grabbies," they of the Bengal Light Bouncable 
 Cavalry call us and I was not at all sure 
 
6 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 that I could ride an elephant. My childish ex- 
 periences at the Zoo, afore alluded to, did not 
 assist me. As far as my memory served me, 
 my nurse sat by me and held my hand on those 
 occasions, and she was not here to do so now. 
 Then the wherewithal to ride the elephants 
 appeared doubtful. On some of them, as the 
 cherub said to Saint Cecilia when she asked 
 them to sit down, " il riy a pas de quoi" I was 
 secretly perturbed lest Bob should order me to 
 maintain a precarious existence squatting on 
 the pads some of the great beasts carry kinds 
 of mattresses. They swayed and jolted in those 
 old Zoo days on the gravel walk. Heaven only 
 knew what they would do when we go across 
 country, and such country ravines, rivers ! 
 
 However, my mind was set at rest. 
 
 "Will you ride on the Rajah with Blake?" 
 ordered Bob, and went off to the other elephant 
 himself. Blake is Bob's assistant, and has not 
 been much longer in India than myself. The 
 other sportsmen were the civil engineer, and his 
 " boss," who has come to see how the bridge is 
 getting on. 
 
 My mind was set at rest; for, on his back, behind 
 the mahout y the Rajah carried a howdah, a kind 
 of square basket. 
 
TOO CLEVER BY HALF. 
 
 I craned my neck upwards. The Rajah did 
 not appear to carry a ladder, like his representa- 
 tive in the Regent Park, and I failed to see how 
 on earth I was to mount him. 
 
 But upon a little reminder from his mahout 
 a playful prod into his pachyderma with an 
 iron spike he sunk to the ground, a mighty 
 mass, kneeling on his fore and hind legs. 
 
 Hind legs, did I say ? An elephant has none ! 
 It is strange, but true. Notice it the next time 
 you behold the monsters tricycling round the 
 arena at Barnum's, or performing on the big drum. 
 An elephant's legs are d\\fore, all four of them ! 
 
 The Rajah meant well, no doubt, but he still 
 towered above me, so high that I yet failed to 
 see how I was to attain to that howdah, where I 
 fain would be. 
 
 Blake solved the difficulty Blake, coming 
 hurriedly out of his tent, late as usual. Blake 
 never will get up when he's called, though I 
 believe he pays his bearer extra to shake him, in 
 consideration of the kicks and objurgations the 
 wretched menial receives in his attempt. 
 
 An elephant is certainly a very versatile beast 
 a complete compendium of useful and necessary 
 articles. The old riddle about his being the only 
 animal prepared to go into the ark when the 
 
8 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 flood came, because his trunk was ready, falls 
 short of the mark. He carries on himself the 
 means of mounting him. 
 
 In a twinkling Blake had made a neat crook at 
 the end of the beast's tail, by twisting it up, and 
 a native held it as you might hold a stirrup. 
 Blake, putting his foot into it, hauled himself up by 
 the rest of the caudal appendage, and ensconced 
 himself in the howdah. I followed suit, and just 
 in time, ere the Rajah is seized with an uncontroll- 
 able desire to whisk his tail about. 
 
 I found myself some twelve feet above mother 
 earth, and, as the howdah is like a very narrow 
 pew in church, I had a preliminary struggle with 
 my legs, which seem to be too long to be con- 
 veniently stowed. There are two seats, one 
 behind the other. Blake had taken the back 
 seat. I gave him credit for a wish to treat me as 
 the honoured guest. Later on I discovered his 
 real motive. 
 
 Here I may as well mention what a conceited 
 kind of chap Blake is, and the airs he gives him- 
 self about his superior knowledge of India, be- 
 cause he landed in Bombay a few months before 
 I did. After dinner last night, while our seniors 
 were discussing the delinquencies of this runaway 
 river, Blake took to making disparaging inuendoes 
 
TOO CLEVER BY HALF. 
 
 about the army. I replied by implying that 
 Forest officers, in the junior grades, were nothing 
 more nor less than nursery gardeners on a large 
 scale. Blake did not seem to see it. 
 
 When we were settled in the howdah, the 
 Rajah raised himself. A pitch forward, a pitch 
 backwards, and then, as he began to shamble 
 after the rest of the procession, a pitch all ways 
 at once. Happily I am a good sailor. But, 
 even had I been otherwise, the dangers of the 
 deep I mean the country were enough to 
 make one forget everything else. We stalked 
 through the jungle, crashing under branches, 
 fording marshy streams, with fern-clothed banks, 
 about which the Rajah seemed dubious, for he 
 sounded them with trunk and foot ere he mounted 
 them. My respect for him increased immensely, 
 especially as, with the exception of a very occa- 
 sional word or prod from the mahout, he seemed 
 to require no driving. 
 
 It grew suddenly daylight, as it does in India, 
 where the twilight is so short, while we were 
 thus reaching our shooting-ground. The long, 
 purple line of mountains came out clear, and, be- 
 hind them, the snow range in immaculate white- 
 ness, soon to be clouded again till sunset by the 
 haze of heat. All around, the fresh green of the 
 
io IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 forest and the luxuriant undergrowth was re- 
 freshing indeed to eyes weary of the sun-baked, 
 mud-coloured plains. 
 
 In a clearing in the forest we came to a sud- 
 den halt, at a patch of tall, white, elephant grass 
 about half a mile square. To each far corner, at 
 the end of this went the two " stop " elephants, 
 carrying the engineer " boss " and Bob, while 
 we others formed line with the other pad ele- 
 phants and an army of coolies, to beat down the 
 jungle. 
 
 The excitement now became intense. We 
 were on the extreme left of the line ; and parallel 
 to us, as far as we could see, the giant white 
 grass waved like an angry sea, with every now 
 and then a white sun-helmet or a twisting black 
 trunk appearing on its surface. From under the 
 Rajah's very feet game of all sorts broke covert 
 unheeded. The scream of pea-fowl, or the 
 whirring of black partridge, broke the still morn- 
 ing air, and deer of every kind rustled away 
 through the grass. 
 
 I forgot all about my cramped legs : I felt as 
 if I were part and parcel of the Rajah himself, 
 as, with my nerves strained to the uttermost, I 
 leant anxiously over the howdah, my rifle at the 
 cock. Blake and I hardly dared to breathe. 
 
TOO CLEVER BY HALF. u 
 
 Suddenly the former gave the lowest possible 
 " hist " of warning, and pointed with a ringer. 
 On our left, on the edge of the jungle, the grass 
 was waving slowly, as from a mass creeping be- 
 low. There was an opening in the bushes, and 
 for the minutest portion of a moment, we saw a 
 patch of colour flash through it no form 
 actually, but a kind of tawny glow. It disap- 
 peared, the grass closed over the spot, and our 
 eyes involuntarily sought the edge of the jungle. 
 
 Then two shots rang out sharp and clear into 
 the still, morning air, and our hearts gave a great 
 bound. There was a few minutes' silence of sus- 
 pense, and then arose a mighty wah-wah-ing of 
 the coolie host. 
 
 Hastily we turned the Rajah out into the 
 open. Towards the upper end of the jungle we 
 found a shouting crowd and empty howdahs, 
 while Bob and his companion were afoot, kneel- 
 ing on the grass, triumphantly measuring the 
 kill. For a kill it was the great striped beast 
 was stretched stiff and stark. The natives raised 
 it up on to a pad elephant, and it was conveyed 
 back to camp. 
 
 Next we discovered the sun was getting hot, 
 and were nothing loth to drink to Bob's health 
 in the sparkling whisky and soda produced from 
 
12 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 his howdah, our hearts jubilant. I am sure 
 Blake and I felt as proud and exultant as if we 
 had shot the tiger ourselves. As it was, we said 
 to each other that we had seen him, though only 
 a glimpse, and we should know better next time 
 what to look for. 
 
 But we were yearning for something to slay. 
 The country was alive with game, and after the 
 interval for refreshment, we began to beat again 
 a strip of thick undergrowth this time, inter- 
 spersed here and there with tall forest trees. 
 Everything was fish that came to our net 
 spotted deer, hog deer, a solitary sombre deer as 
 large as an English red-deer, pea-fowl, partridge, 
 quail, even wild boars. There was an incessant 
 fusilade all down the line. I do not quite know 
 how much or how little I shot, but I was so 
 excited that I blazed away a great deal of 
 powder, but not so much as Blake, I am sure. 
 
 I now found out why he had taken the back 
 seat, for I was positively deafened by the dis- 
 charge of his rifle in my ear. 
 
 Just as we were getting into our shooting, and 
 felt sure we had both of us knocked down some- 
 thing, we grew aware that the Rajah's move- 
 ments were becoming erratic. I do not know 
 what it was perhaps the sight of the dead tiger 
 
TOO CLEVER BY HALF. 13 
 
 had disturbed his equanimity, but he seemed 
 put out about something. His mahout spoke to 
 him in terms of endearment, appealing to his 
 better feelings, and calling him " Maharajah, 
 "his son," "his father," "his mother." 
 
 We gave up trying to shoot, and adjured the 
 mahout to steer the great beast steadily. The 
 former then tried a little coercion. But the more 
 he prodded, the less manageable did the elephant 
 seem to become. 
 
 We were swayed about more and more, the 
 great black trunk whisking viciously in front. 
 The pace grew decidedly quicker. It was neces- 
 sary to cling on to the howdah to avoid being 
 thrown out. We dashed under trees, had narrow 
 shaves from big branches, and Blake's helmet 
 was whisked off. 
 
 We shouted at the mahout, and the mahout 
 shouted at the Rajah. It was no question of 
 coaxing him now. The man was fast losing his 
 nerve, as natives often do in emergencies, and was 
 calling the elephant every manner of opprobrious 
 epithet. He was " the ghost of his grandmother/' 
 " the son of the breath of a fowl," etc. etc. 
 
 Not that the Rajah cared one little, tiny bit. 
 He went crashing through the forest at a pace 
 we should never have given him credit for. 
 
i4 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 It was with a deep sense of relief, and of 
 thankfulness that our heads were still on our 
 shoulders, that we found the Rajah now left the 
 jungle, and evidently intended crossing an open 
 strip on the river bank. 
 
 " The river must stop him ! " shouted Blake. 
 
 I made no reply. I felt utterly helpless. It 
 was like being run away with by a railway 
 engine gone mad ; and I had to keep all my 
 breath for holding on with. 
 
 The Rajah dashed through a patch of elephant 
 grass, across some sand, down towards the river, 
 now in its laziest mood, and meandering slug- 
 gishly along in the middle of a waste of sand, 
 which it would cover again next rains. 
 
 The question that came uppermost in my 
 mind was now, " Would he roll ? " 
 
 I remembered something of a tendency of 
 horses to do that in streams at home. Should 
 the Rajah be seized with the same impulse, the 
 howdah would be crushed to matchwood, and 
 we to a jelly. But we were powerless in 
 the Rajah's hands, or, rather, on his back. 
 "After all, these beasts are not really tame," 
 I said to myself, remembering the stories 
 one reads of the catching of elephants, which 
 arc never bred in confinement, but enticed 
 
TOO CLEVER BY HALF. 15 
 
 out of their native jungles, and starved into 
 submission. 
 
 However, the stream seemed to have no 
 terrors for the Rajah. Perhaps he was so wise 
 that he knew how low it was now, and fordable 
 for him at any part ; for, with a wave of his 
 trunk, he dashed into the lead-coloured water. 
 
 He made a few steps, and then suddenly 
 listed over, like a ship struck on a rock. He 
 struggled, plunged, splashed frantically, while 
 we held on with our eyelids closed. 
 
 " What on earth's up ? " I gasped. 
 
 " He's sinking ; he can't stand ; but yet it's 
 quite shallow," I heard Blake mutter behind me. 
 
 The elephant's hind-quarters seemed slowly 
 to sink under Blake, and the truth flashed into 
 my mind. 
 
 " It's a quicksand ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 " Of course these rivers are full of them ; 
 what is to be done ? " gasped Blake. 
 
 The Rajah himself, too, seemed to have 
 realised the gravity of the situation. He made 
 another mighty effort to extricate his huge 
 limbs, and to find a surer foothold. But the 
 more he struggled, the deeper he sank. His left 
 front foot had followed the fate of his hind feet. 
 He did not seem to be able to make it out at all ; 
 
16 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 for he waved his trunk wildly in the air, as if 
 to clutch at some support, and turned his head 
 about with a wild look in his wicked little eye. 
 
 Suddenly (he ivas a knowing one) an idea 
 seemed to strike him. The long, writhing, 
 black trunk came curling round over his head, 
 and, hey ! presto ! in a twinkling the mahout's 
 turban was whisked off his head. 
 
 The next moment the elephant had popped it 
 into the water, and had used it as a stepping- 
 stone, while the terrified owner gave a howl of 
 dismay, and " slithered " from the animal's neck 
 along the side of the howdah to a safe position 
 in the rear, calling upon various of his million 
 deities to protect him from this " shaitan" 
 
 Of course the turban was useless, and the 
 Rajah found himself sinking again. Another 
 struggle, another frantic splashing, only to end 
 in yet further submersion ! And then that evil 
 trunk came swooping round again, guided by the 
 beast's marvellous instinct for self-preservation. 
 
 " Get back, get back, for God's sake ! " shouted 
 Blake, "or the beast will have you off in a 
 minute ! " 
 
 But I needed no telling. Once again I en- 
 vied Blake his back seat, as I hastily followed 
 the mahouts example. 
 
TOO CLEVER BY HALF. 17 
 
 The next moment the elephant had seized 
 my cartridge-bag, hanging on the side of the 
 howdah, and had stamped it and its contents 
 into pulp in his vain struggle. Then he swooped 
 back for something else. 
 
 Blake swung out of the howdah, and there we 
 all three hung three helpless, -pitiable objects 
 on the back of the struggling beast. Below, the 
 remorseless quicksand yawning for us ; above, 
 the trunk darting in despair to minister to the 
 huge, ponderous feet. 
 
 " Puckerega ! puckerega I " (" He will seize ! he 
 will seize ! ") howled the terror-stricken native, 
 and, much as we respected the Rajah's per- 
 spicacity, we gave his keeper credit for knowing 
 the full extent of his powers, and I for one gave 
 myself up for lost. 
 
 It was an awful time, and seemed ages, though 
 probably it was not many minutes, ere we heard 
 a British shout ring from the jungle. 
 
 I turned my head as much as I dared, 
 for I kept my eye closely on the Rajah's 
 movements, and saw Bob tearing down to the 
 strip of elephant grass, followed by a lot of the 
 coolies. 
 
 " Hang on ! hang on ! " he yelled ; " and mind 
 he doesn't get hold of you." 
 
1 8 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 Then they all disappeared into the gigantic 
 grass, and were hidden. 
 
 Had they deserted us, after all? Could not 
 they help us ? Alas ! how can one get ropes 
 out in the jungle? I reflected. We should all 
 have been sucked in, or crushed to pulp, ere 
 they could be fetched from camp. 
 
 As if divining my despair, the Rajah lifted up 
 his voice and trumpetted in a blood-curdling 
 manner, while his hind-quarters sank so deep 
 that we could scarcely remain on his back at all. 
 
 The next moment I heard voices behind once 
 more, and a huge bundle of elephant grass was 
 thrown into the water by some half-dozen coolies. 
 
 The noble beast (for, on the spot, I forgave 
 him instantly his murderous intentions) clutched 
 at it as a drowning man clutches at a straw, 
 only to more purpose. He settled it cleverly 
 under the fast-sinking left foot, and then seized 
 another bundle they threw. This gave him a 
 stepping-stone for a hind leg, and he gained it 
 with a struggle. A few more bundles, a few 
 more struggles, and he stood on terra firma, and 
 we were saved. 
 
 I may say I was never so glad in my life to 
 find my feet on terra fir ma as when I descended 
 with alacrity from the Rajah's back, 
 
TOO CLEVER BY HALF. 19 
 
 We had each, Blake and I, a stiff peg from 
 Bob's soda-water basket, and then the latter 
 suggested we had had enough shooting for that 
 morning. We acquiesced willingly, and every- 
 body turned towards camp and breakfast. Blake 
 and I were only too delighted to mount one of 
 the despised pad-elephants, and the Rajah was 
 sent to the rear in disgrace. But I think his 
 nerves had had a shock too, for he was very 
 docile as the procession wound its way back to 
 camp, under the now almost vertical rays of the 
 sun. 
 
 In the cool of the evening we had a beat on 
 foot after quail and partridge and some small 
 deer, and made good bags. Somehow or other 
 I found it easier to shoot on my own legs than 
 off an elephant, and I fancy I gave vent to some 
 griffish remark about preferring to stalk tigers 
 on foot, which the older sportsmen jeered at, 
 during the jovial dinner-hour in the cosy mess- 
 tent. 
 
 Ere we turned in, we went out to have a look 
 at our morning's prize. His striped and tawny 
 hide was lying in the moonlight, stretched out 
 taut, preparatory to being rubbed with wood 
 ashes. Bob had taken care of the claws and 
 whiskers, as the natives are apt to carry them off 
 
20 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 as charms. We measured him once more, it was 
 such pleasant work. 
 
 "Nine feet and a half! Very fair, indeed !" 
 quoth Bob. 
 
 Close by the elephants stood in line, munching 
 dry grass. I went to say good-night to the 
 Rajah, just to show there was no ill-feeling. He 
 looked gigantic in the moonlight, and the sight 
 of his huge foot, as he stamped occasionally, 
 made me shudder when I recollected how 
 narrow an escape I had had that morning from 
 finding myself underneath it. 
 
Cbaseb at a paper Cbaee* 
 
 " I DON'T think he means business ! " 
 
 " And the other does ? " 
 
 The speakers were two pretty women, clad, 
 one in a light tweed, and the other in a white 
 drill habit, such as are the most workmanlike 
 wear when the hot weather is coming on in 
 India. 
 
 The last speaker, Mabel Ashmere, sat de- 
 jectedly on the side of a little camp-bed in a 
 huge, white-washed Indian bedroom, twisting a 
 note in her slim fingers, and sighed as she spoke. 
 
 " I wish I knew what to do," she added. 
 
 " Think of your new stepmother," said her 
 companion, standing in front of the looking-glass, 
 and taking off her large, white pith-hat and its 
 wrapping of gauze veil. 
 
 " I know I always am thinking of her," re- 
 sponded Mabel, more gloomily. " It isn't only 
 that she's such bad form '' 
 
 " And has so disgracefully hooked your poor 
 father" 
 
 21 
 
22 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " Or that everyone seems to have some story 
 against her, in every station in the country 
 
 " Or that she hates you, and is jealous of 
 you " 
 
 " It's just all that put together ! " ejaculated 
 Mabel, flicking the dust off her riding-boot, for 
 it was getting very dusty now the end of Feb- 
 ruary. " I wish I knew what to do ! " 
 
 " And I wish I knew what to advise," responded 
 Mrs. Murray. " I have heard that if you love 
 one man and like another, after five years of 
 marriage you arrive at the same state of affection 
 with either doesn't last, you know. But then 
 I'm not speaking from personal experience," she 
 added, with a little smile. 
 
 " But I don't like Mr. Cramwell ! " objected 
 Mabel. 
 
 " And you do love Captain Carleton ! " laughed 
 Mrs. Murray. " But I must go. I see the ayah 
 bringing in baby and Bunny from their walk. It's 
 getting late ; Bob will be back from parade 
 directly. I must go and interview the khansamah 
 about dinner. Don't forget to answer that 
 note." 
 
 No fear. The little sheet of paper lay like a 
 lump of lead on Mabel's mind. Yet it was 
 worded innocently enough. 
 
CHASED AT A PAPER CHASE. 23 
 
 " DEAR Miss ASHMERE, Of course you are 
 coming to the paper chase this afternoon. The 
 meet is at the Iron Bridge. May I call for you 
 at 3.30, and drive you down in my trap ? Yours 
 very sincerely, 
 
 " LESLIE CRAMWELL." 
 
 India is the land of notes, though singing-birds 
 are never heard there. But of a dirty paper 
 currency, and of endless chit (or letters) flying 
 about from one house to the other, owing to the 
 servants' inability to deliver a message correctly, 
 there is no end. Mabel felt much hung upon the 
 chit in her hand now. For the hundredth time 
 she went over the whole affair in her mind. 
 
 " I don't know how men propose, out of novels ! 
 Yet I'm sure, I can't help being sure, that 
 Captain Carleton was very near it that evening 
 in the verandah at the Artillery dance. His eyes 
 told me so," she said to herself, a faint flush 
 spreading over her cheek, somewhat delicate- 
 looking, thanks to the Indian climate. 
 
 " But why did he stop short, then ? " she argued 
 from the other side. " He didn't mean anything. 
 He never did. He was only flirting ! " And the 
 colour faded away, and left her face paler than 
 before. 
 
24 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 "And this man, this Cramwell, this 'com- 
 petition wallah,' undrilled, yellow, unsmart? 
 You know very well you can't keep him in hand 
 another moment, if you find yourself alone with 
 him ! " she went on to herself. " He will want 
 an answer. What are you going to do ? Go 
 back to your father to find that woman installed 
 in your mother's place? I'd sooner become a 
 zenana missionaress ! " exclaimed Miss Ashmere, 
 out loud, tossing her pith-helmet and her gloves 
 across the room. 
 
 At that moment the hideous face of the ayah 
 peeped in through the portiere. 
 
 " The sahib has returned ; breakfast is making 
 ready ; will not your highness change your 
 dress ? " 
 
 An hour or so later one of Major Murray's 
 servants received a note, bearing Mabel's mono- 
 gram, with injunctions to deliver it to the 
 " stunt sahib " (other-wise assistant-magistrate) 
 down in the Civil Lines. It was a very meek 
 little note, but it meant a good deal. 
 
 "DEAR MR. CRAMWELL, Thank you very 
 much. I will be ready at 3.30. Yours sin- 
 cerely, 
 
 " MABEL ASHMERE." 
 
CHASED AT A PAPER CHASE. 25 
 
 Thrusting the fateful scrap of paper into the 
 folds of his turban for better security, and draw- 
 ing his white cotton jacket over his bare 
 shoulders, and putting his feet into curved-toed 
 slippers, Mohun arose leisurely from the corner 
 of his special horse's stall, where he was dis- 
 cussing a hookah, and possibly further pecula- 
 tions in forage, with a fellow-groom, and sallied 
 out down the white, glary, dusty road. 
 
 It was English mail morning. The paper of 
 the day before had announced to all Northern 
 India that the weekly mail steamer had been 
 signalled off Bombay, and a special train had 
 shot out the Dustipore bag that morning. The 
 various regimental orderlies had been down to 
 the post-office, and were returning to their 
 respective barracks with their spoil. 
 
 Captain Carleton had finished breakfast at 
 the mess, and returned to tub and dress in mufti 
 at his own bungalow across the road. It was 
 an off day no more duty : he could at once 
 attire himself in the check cotton coat and 
 breeches, and the yellow leather boots, which 
 form the correct riding costume at that season, and 
 so avoid another dressing till dinner-time. Much 
 changing of clothes is a weariness to the flesh with 
 the British officer in India, but an inevitable one. 
 
26 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 His khitmutghar^ or table servant, received his 
 master's budget of letters from the mess ser- 
 geant, and carried them over to the bungalow. 
 He found Carleton in his bath-room, enjoying a 
 warm bath in a huge cut-down cask, while the 
 peripatetic barber officiated upon his chin and 
 cheeks. 
 
 <; At last ! " he ejaculated, with a sigh of satis- 
 faction, as he glanced through his letters, and 
 after making several bad shots at some contain- 
 ing bills and dunning letters, tore open that 
 which he was seeking. This was how it ran : 
 
 " MY DEAR BOY, Your letter has taken me 
 very much by surprise, though I don't know 
 why it should. You are old enough to know 
 your own mind and what you are about. The 
 photo you send is a very sweet-looking one ; 
 though, of course, we could have wished you 
 had chosen some girl we know, and should have 
 liked a little money. However, you may be sure 
 that your mother and myself wish only for your 
 own happiness. I think you have acted very 
 straightforwardly in not entangling yourself till 
 you knew what I would do for you. Things are 
 very tight now. I have had to reduce the rents 
 20 per cent, again this Lady-Day. I think you 
 
CHASED AT A PAPER CHASE. 27 
 
 ought to try and manage on 200 a year in 
 addition to what I allow you already, at all 
 events while the regiment is in India, and you 
 are getting good pay. Your mother and sisters, 
 who are much excited, are writing you reams, 
 so I will only say God bless you ! From your 
 
 affectionate father, 
 
 " JOSEPH CARLETON." 
 
 " Good old dad ! " mentally ejaculated the 
 son. " I knew he'd come down like a brick. 
 And now to try my luck this very afternoon ! " 
 
 At four P.M. the rays of the sun still poured 
 down with a good deal of fervour upon the 
 heads of the crowd collected at the Iron Bridge. 
 The lunatics in the pogel khana^ or fools' house, 
 across the road, grinned out from behind the 
 wooden cages in which they were confined, on 
 the unwonted excitement. Poor wretches ! 
 the only break in their monotonous life was the 
 daily advent of their friends with their food, for 
 Government in India do:s not maintain the 
 idiots. Slow, creaking bullock-carts, heavily 
 laden, and proceeding citywards, drew aside 
 into the dust, for a heterogeneous mass of dog- 
 carts, bamboo traps, buggies, and mail phaetons 
 crowded in the road. All Dustipore was 
 
28 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 gathered at the meet, ere it went for its after- 
 noon drive up and down the Mall. Every 
 regiment in the garrison was represented, and of 
 civilians there were not a few. There was a 
 great descending from vehicles, and ascending 
 of quadrupeds. 
 
 Cramwell in his bamboo dogcart, Mabel 
 Ashmere at his side, drove up late. The groom, 
 who had been squatting in the netting behind, 
 sprang out to hold the horse , but ere he got 
 down himself, Cramwell turned to his com- 
 panion. 
 
 " Won't you give me one word ? " he asked, 
 pathetically. 
 
 Mabel's face turned a shade paler, as she 
 turned away her head, and murmured in- 
 coherently, 
 
 " Mr. Cramwell you've taken me by surprise 
 and this is no time " 
 
 " I will ride home with you when it's all over," 
 he persisted. " Give me your answer then ! " 
 
 "Now, Miss Ashmere," cried Major Murray, 
 coming up, " I've just put my wife up, and your 
 pony is ready." 
 
 Mabel picked her way through the dust to 
 where her mount was waiting. Beside it stood 
 Captain Carleton. 
 
CHASED AT A PAPER CHASE. 29 
 
 " May I put you up ? " he asked. 
 
 She hesitated a second, then she turned to the 
 other, who had followed her. 
 
 " Oh ! Mr. Cramwell, how stupid of me ! I've 
 left my whip in the cart. Do you mind ? " 
 
 Of course he did, very much, but he dared not 
 say so. On his way back he passed Major Murray, 
 intently engaged on getting on his horse, a matter 
 of no small difficulty. Two grooms were cling- 
 ing, half frightened, to the head of the animal, a 
 squealing, grey countrybred, blindfolded for the 
 moment by a cloth thrown over his face. Even 
 as it was he was lashing out viciously, and resent- 
 ing any attempt to mount him. The major, one 
 foot half in the stirrup, was hopping ludicrously 
 about after him, his eye on the beast's heels. 
 
 "Hullo!" said Cramwell. "Going to ride 
 Shaitan ? " 
 
 The grey was well-known in Dustipore for his 
 vicious character as a man-eater. 
 
 " Got nothing else to-day ! Ah ! yer would 
 would yer ! " replied the major. 
 
 When Cramwell returned with the whip, Mabel 
 was already up, and Carleton arranging her foot 
 in the stirrup. 
 
 " I see Major Murray's on that brute Shaitan," 
 remarked Cramwell, sulkily, 
 
30 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " And will pound us all if he can stick to him," 
 laughed Mabel. " But if they part company, he 
 had better make for the nearest tree, or Shaitan 
 will make mincemeat of him ! " 
 
 " Do you remember how he nabbed a bit out 
 of Mr. Robinson's mess-jacket that night he put 
 him off going round his guards?" Mrs. Murray re- 
 marked to Carleton. 
 
 " He's a perfect fiend," the latter rejoined, 
 " but a bad 'un to beat ! " 
 
 Jack Mitford, of the 1 2th Cuirassiers, was 
 master of the ceremonies as usual. He had laid 
 the paper that rnorning, and he led them over a 
 pretty stiff course. This was mainly for the 
 edification of Smith and Jones, two newly-joined 
 cuirassiers, who were being taught to ride. No 
 one ever quite knew how often they came off 
 that paper chase, but the sunbaked ground was 
 like iron, and they both went tender for days 
 afterwards. 
 
 The further side of the river beyond the Iron 
 Bridge was all laid out in cantonments before 
 that dreadful May in '57, traces of which, shat- 
 tered and shell-ridden, still rise in the lovely 
 gardens between the city and the stream, so that 
 there were plenty of enclosures left, gardens or 
 orchards, fenced in with high banks. Then 
 
CHASED AT A PAPER CHASE. 31 
 
 among the poppy fields there were watercourses 
 handy, and, further, mango groves to be ridden 
 through, guava orchards, with low, gnarled boughs 
 to be crashed under, and, here and there, Jack 
 Mitford had gone to the expense of a rail or two. 
 
 It was one of these brought Shaitan to grief. 
 He was clever enough as a rule, but he rushed 
 too much for timber. The Indian countrybred 
 does not understand it. Shaitan lit on his head) 
 and Major Murray on his. Both picked them- 
 selves up unhurt, and the brute, with a squeal, 
 made straight for Murray, rearing and fighting 
 with his fore-legs. The major hastened to put 
 the rail between them. 
 
 Then Cramwell came up on his little stud-bred 
 mare. Till it was too late he was unaware that 
 Shaitan was loose. No one would venture near 
 the animal, even in the stable, except his own 
 particular groom, and that individual was at that 
 moment reposing in the bazaar, two miles off, on 
 his way back to the bungalow. 
 
 But the mare popped over the rail, and, in an 
 instant, Shaitan 9 s attention was distracted from 
 his dismounted rider. He went for Cramwell on 
 the mare. Cramwell grasped the situation, and 
 rode for his life. Shaitan followed, squealing 
 fiendishly. He was a bad 'un to beat, as Carle- 
 
32 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 ton had justly observed, and he gained on the 
 mare. 
 
 A panic seized the field when it was rumoured 
 that Shaitan was loose. Those in front pressed 
 forward, and those behind held back, and 
 watched the chase of Cramwell. Among these 
 latter were Mrs. Murray and Mabel Ashmere, 
 Carleton close to them. 
 
 Delight is a poor word with which to describe 
 the young lady's feelings, as she watched the 
 "chiveying"of her lover. She laughed out loud as 
 the horse made plunges at the mare and grabs at 
 her rider's legs, while the latter tried vainly to 
 beat him off with his hunting-crop. The climax 
 was reached when the unfortunate civilian, in 
 terror of Shaitan's teeth and heels, flung himself 
 out of the saddle and sought safety in the dirty 
 mud-hut of a native village on the verge of the 
 plain. Here he was lost to sight, and the animals 
 kept up the chase alone. 
 
 " Come along, Miss Ashmere," cried Carleton. 
 " We're not in our usual places. Jack Mitford 
 will think we've all broken our necks. Let's 
 hurry up." 
 
 They came in at the finish with the ruck, in- 
 cluding Smith and Jones ; but neither seemed to 
 care much. They rode home together. 
 
CHASED AT A PAPER CHASE. 33 
 
 After mess that evening Carleton came across 
 to the Murrays'bungalow. Was Mabel expecting 
 him ? She was waiting for him in the verandah. 
 
 " Reggy," she said, with an arch smile, laying 
 her hand on Carleton 's arm, " they have brought 
 Shaitan home. Come down to the stables and 
 talk to him ; you don't know how much we have 
 to thank him for. 3 ' 
 
 They walked down together through the moon- 
 light, and startled the grooms in the verandah 
 of the stables, sleeping, after the unprincipled 
 manner of their kind, rolled in the spare rugs of 
 their charges. 
 
 " Good old Shaitan ! Thank you so much > 
 you managed it beautifully." 
 
 Perhaps Shaitan understood, for he actually 
 let her stroke the tip of his nose without attempt- 
 ing to bite. 
 
H pious 3fraut>* 
 
 ^ r\ 
 
 EVERYONE in the "Royal Regiment" knew 
 Driver Blayre and Gunner Blayre at least by 
 repute. They were both so exactly alike, this 
 pair of brothers, that those who knew one, meet- 
 ing the other, forthwith annexed his acquain- 
 tance too. Both were good fellows, and good 
 sportsmen. Of the two, Driver Blayre (Ben) 
 was perhaps the better fellow of the two, and 
 Gunner Blayre (Bob) the smarter and the best 
 rider. Both were neat, dapper, well-groomed 
 men, credits to the corps, whether fate caused 
 them to " fall " to the depths of a garrison bat- 
 tery, or even to a mule or " cow " battery, or 
 bestowed upon them the coveted "jacket," which 
 every gunner one meets always seems to be 
 just on the verge of getting, or aspiring to in the 
 future. And yet men laugh at women for being 
 fond of frocks ! 
 
 Driver Blayre, the elder by a year, was less 
 attractive, perhaps, than his brother, though his 
 character was more sterling. At the time when 
 34 
 
A PIOUS FRAUD. 35 
 
 our story opens he was captain of an elephant 
 battery somewhere down in Madras. It was not 
 a brilliant berth, but the Blayres were proverbi- 
 ally hard-up. Then, too, he had had a long 
 spell of service at home, which does not suit 
 financially weak constitutions, and Driver Blayre 
 was glad of the extra pay which the elephant 
 battery brought. 
 
 Idleminster is a very favourite artillery station. 
 But it means money. The battery is all alone 
 in its glory there, the nearest approach to 
 soldiers being the waifs and strays of the terri- 
 torial depot twenty-five miles off*. So the 
 gunners are made much of in county society. 
 The neighbourhood is very good round Idle- 
 minster, plenty of large country houses, and, 
 what is more, they are lived in ; plenty of shoot- 
 ing and dancing, and men are scarce. There is 
 good hunting too, and neither Blayre ever could 
 resist that. So Driver Blayre had hunted a 
 good deal, keeping more horses than he could 
 afford, and raced a little, for he was a light- 
 weight and good rider, and in request. He had 
 a very good time altogether, and, in a way, not 
 entirely connected with horses. Ethel Merrow 
 was the best lady-rider in all the Idleshire coun- 
 try a tall, handsome girl, wretched at home 
 
36 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 with a stepmother whom she hated, and in her 
 element in the hunting-field. There had been 
 chats at the covert-side; long rides home to- 
 gether in the gathering gloom, along the muddy 
 lanes, when the day's gallops were over ; dances 
 at the Hunt Ball ; cosy teas on Sundays at the 
 house of the battery-major's wife, after afternoon 
 service at the cathedral, which is a great social 
 function in Idleminster. There had been all 
 this, and some people said more. Rumour ran 
 that Driver Blayre had proposed and had been 
 declined. 
 
 The truth of the matter was that he had done 
 no such thing. He was more in love with Ethel 
 Merrow than he himself fancied at the time. 
 But circumstances made it out of the question. 
 There had come Jews, duns, and all sorts of 
 money worries, culminating in the nolens volens 
 exchange out to India and the elephant battery. 
 Driver Blayre was far too straightforward a 
 fellow to ask a penniless girl to share his heart 
 and his debts. There is more of that sort of 
 thing in the world than meets the eye. 
 
 But all this story was three years old now. 
 In the meantime, Gunner Blayre's star was in 
 the ascendant. His "jacket "had fallen to him 
 in pleasant places. The " chestnut " battery at 
 
A PIOUS FRAUD. 37 
 
 Pugreepore was intensely smart ; the polo and 
 pig-sticking in that favourite station without 
 reproach. While his brother moped with his 
 elephants at Guramabad, afar from the world, 
 and little affecting what society there was, 
 Gunner Blayre, a glory of gold lace, became a 
 social and sporting star in the Pugreepore fir- 
 mament. 
 
 But Dame Fortune gave just the wee-est little 
 turn to her wheel, just to show him he was but 
 mortal after all. He had a "crumpler" riding 
 in the Pugreepore Civil Service Cup. The 
 course was like bricks, and Gunner Blayre broke 
 his collar-bone. He had been over-training a 
 bit, and did not get over the accident quickly. 
 The hot weather came on apace, and down he 
 went with a sharp go of fever. The doctor 
 ordered two months' leave to the hills. 
 
 Gunner Blayre betook himself, his bearer, a 
 white terrier, and a couple of polo ponies, to 
 Nynee Tal, to the Mayo Hotel, the bachelors' 
 haunt on the shores of the lovely lovers' lake, 
 which, deep and green, fills up the basin of an 
 extinct volcano some six thousand feet above 
 the sea. For six summer months the moun- 
 tain capua of the Lieutenant-Governor and a 
 galaxy of officials, the play-place of military 
 
38 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 grass-widows and subalterns on leave, Nynee 
 Tal, small and remote as it is, is by no means 
 beneath the notice of a certain individual who is 
 commonly credited with finding nefarious em- 
 ployment for idle hands. On Gunner Blayre, 
 smart and interesting through illness, he had his 
 eye. I am not innuendoing the poker at the 
 club, or the snug baccarat at the Mayo Hotel. 
 I refer to handsome Mrs. Marrinder. 
 
 When you are two-and-twenty, with a neat 
 figure, and good-looking, married to an uninter- 
 esting, though worthy, old colonel, years older 
 than yourself, whom you took, faute de inieux, to 
 get away from an uncongenial home, is it to be 
 wondered at if you find the ceaseless round of 
 gaiety of an Indian hill-station attractive, and 
 the open devotion of a smart little gunner like 
 Bob Blayre not unpleasing. Mrs. Marrinder 
 and Gunner Blayre became inseparable one of 
 those couples you meet riding, very close to- 
 gether, down the cart-road in the moonlight, or 
 in secluded spots behind the Rhododendron 
 Hill, in winding mountain paths under the ilex 
 boughs, or where the deodars look out towards 
 the snows. You come across them in cosy 
 nooks in the verandah overhanging the lake, 
 while the band is playing waltzes in the As- 
 
A PIOUS FRAUD. 39 
 
 sembly Rooms within ; you run against them 
 "canoodling" on the lake in tiny craft at dusk. 
 For such you reserve seats together at your 
 dinner-table such you invite simultaneously to 
 your picnic up Chena, or down to Douglasdale. 
 Only by a judicious assortment of such couples 
 can you make your tableaux or theatricals go 
 off satisfactorily. Of course, it is very wrong, 
 most reprehensible, this " bow-wow " system, a 
 plague-spot in Anglo-Indian society, part of the 
 price we pay for our great dependency. But, at 
 least, it is open and above-board. You see and 
 know the worst. Whereas, in wider, fuller, 
 busier England. . . 
 
 Enter Driver Blayre from the furnace-hell be- 
 low into the modern Garden of Eden. It was 
 at the sacred hour of gossip, when all the world 
 is in the Assembly Rooms at twilight, pretend- 
 ing to read the English papers, after the band 
 has shut up, ere the grooms, tied to the ponies 
 waiting in groups without, have lit the lan- 
 terns to guide the homeward canter. She 
 looked very smart and bewitching in her habit 
 but the laugh faded from her face, and it got 
 very red, as Gunner Blayre looked up from the 
 Punch they were reading together, and, seeing 
 the Driver enter, introduced " My brother." 
 
40 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " No need, Bob ; we're old friends, aren't we, 
 Miss Merrow ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Marrinder," put in the lady, and then it 
 was the Driver's turn to flush. 
 
 For the first week or so he bided his time and 
 said nothing ; but at last he could stand it no 
 longer. He spoke his mind to the Gunner as he 
 had not done since the long-ago days when they 
 were boys at Harrow. He was no saint, was 
 the Driver ; but it was Ethel Merrow whom 
 yes, he knew now how he had loved her that 
 winter at Idleminster. 
 
 The brothers were smoking in the Gunner's 
 rooms at the Mayo, lying far back in leviathan 
 chairs, their legs outstretched on the broad arms 
 intended for that purpose. The Driver, who 
 had made a clean breast of the Idleminster 
 story, and was painfully aware how Mrs. Mar- 
 rinder had cold-shouldered him during the past 
 week, fully expected his brother to turn round 
 upon him with a sarcastic taunt of sour grapes. 
 
 To his astonishment the Gunner tossed away 
 the end of his cigar defiantly, and burst out, 
 
 " Look here, old chap, I'm neither a fool nor a 
 blackguard, whatever you may think ! I've 
 carried on before, same as most men, you know. 
 But this is altogether a different matter. I love 
 
A PIOUS FRAUD. 41 
 
 Ethel Marrinder, and she loves me. Her life 
 with that old fossil is just wretched. She never 
 really cared for him was forced to marry him 
 by her stepmother she dreads going back to 
 him. I love her too well not to try and save 
 her from that fate something must, and shall, 
 be done ! " 
 
 The Driver was dumfounded. He groaned 
 aloud. 
 
 "Good God! Ethel! That it should be 
 Ethel ! " 
 
 Then he added, rising from his chair, 
 
 " Well, at all events you've been frank with 
 me, but I'll respect your confidence. But it 
 seems to me you're in the deuce of a hat. Don't 
 expect me, of all men, to help you out of it ! " 
 
 The next day he took himself out on a ten 
 days' fishing trip to Beemtal. He could not 
 bear to see the two about together. But Ethel's 
 face haunted him from the placid, green waters 
 of the lake, as he lured the wily marseer. 
 
 He returned to find Nynee Tal all agog with 
 the excitement of the Lieutenant-Governor's ball 
 that night, and a card for the same awaiting 
 him. As he sat smoking in the club verandah 
 pondering whether he should go, and feeling, 
 somehow, very old and blase, he saw his brother 
 
42 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 and Mrs. Marrinder canter past the club win- 
 dows. Within, some gilded youths, dawdling 
 over a late breakfast, and oblivious of his vicinity, 
 made some remarks over the fleeting vision. 
 They are not all fit for publication ; but from 
 them Driver Blayre gathered that the lady's 
 husband was expected at Nynee Tal next 
 day, ordered up sick from the plains, and that 
 complications might be expected in the little 
 idyll. 
 
 The Driver rose up, gnashing his teeth, and 
 with yet another violent effort to tear Ethel 
 from his memory Ethel, the worthless, the 
 fallen, the the still loved one, he went out for 
 a solitary ride. 
 
 For the last half-hour the glimmering lanterns, 
 dotting like fireflies the forest-clad hillsides 
 round the lake, have been converging on to the 
 broad terrace on which Government House is 
 perched. A block of ponies andjamfans crowd 
 the portico, and a scarlet-and-gold A.D.C. is 
 presenting the arriving guests to their Honours 
 at the ballroom door. Driver Blayre wanders 
 through the rooms like a restless ghost. " Dance? " 
 " No, thanks, don't know people ! Given it up ! " 
 and so on. He catches a glimpse of Ethel Mar- 
 rinder's white neck and shoulders revolving in 
 
A PIOUS FRAUD. 43 
 
 the mazes of the waltz in proximity to his 
 brother's closely-cropped fair hair and little 
 moustache. Somehow or other his thoughts fly 
 back to a certain Hunt ball when he, too, felt 
 her breath upon his cheek. But that seems 
 years ago, and in another world. 
 
 He is roused from his reverie by a touch on 
 his arm as he leans against the doorway. A 
 fresh dance is beginning, and bright eyes look 
 up into his. 
 
 " I'm not going to be cut for my dance, Cap- 
 tain Blayre ! " says a fair unknown. 
 
 The Driver gazes at her bewildered. Then it 
 dawns upon him. 
 
 "I beg your pardon I've not the pleasure. 
 I think you are mistaking me for my brother. 
 I'm Driver Blayre." 
 
 The fair unknown subsides into apologies, and 
 vanishes. The Driver departs to the peg-table 
 to refresh, and then for a cigarette into the 
 verandah. 
 
 The silence of the midnight world without, 
 with a moon flooding the folds of mountains 
 with silvery shimmer, and the lake below lying 
 in depths of inky shadow, contrasts with the 
 hum of music and voices within. It is balmy, 
 too, and the Driver paces the terrace slowly, 
 
44 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 smoking. Only the stamp of a pony's hoof 
 below, where the grooms and ihtjampan-bearers 
 congregate, breaks the stillness, or the distant 
 bay of a pariah dog in the bazaar. But suddenly 
 he hears voices close by, behind a shrub. Some 
 servants probably, or but no, they speak Eng- 
 lish. The Driver stops short, and listens. 
 
 " Three o'clock, then, darling, at the corner by 
 the church it's quiet there. We shall be safe 
 down at Kaladoongee by daybreak, and he can- 
 not be at Raneebagh till breakfast-time ! Oh ! 
 my darling, to think by to-morrow " 
 
 " Hush, Bob ! I heard someone." 
 
 " I thought the bushes moved. Come, 
 darling, let's go and have some supper, and 
 then go home and dress ; we've a long journey 
 before us." 
 
 A white dress and a brilliant uniform flit to- 
 gether across the terrace in the moonlight to the 
 verandah. But Driver Blayre stays, rooted to 
 the spot, behind the Wellingtonia. How long 
 he stays there he does not know. At last he 
 rouses himself, passing his hand across his face 
 like one waking from a dream. 
 
 He goes back to the peg-table again. As a 
 rule, there is no more abstemious fellow in the 
 mess than Driver Blayre. But he mixes him- 
 
A PIOUS FRAUD. 45 
 
 self a stiff one. As he drinks it rapidly, a voice 
 calls to him from the doorway. 
 
 " I say, Blayre." 
 
 " Yes," replies the Driver. 
 
 " Oh ! beg pardon, thought you were your 
 brother," is the reply. 
 
 "The second time in one night," muses the 
 Driver to himself. " Ah ! an idea ! I'll make it 
 a third. By God, I will!" 
 
 Three o'clock strikes on the gong in the 
 Ghoorkha guard-house. The ball is nearly over 
 up aloft at Government House; a second supper, 
 select and merry, is about to begin. But at the 
 corner where the path leads up to the church, 
 all is very quiet, till a jampan, carried at a 
 round trot by four men, with two spare ones 
 jogging in the rear, comes swinging down from 
 the hill above. 
 
 As it reaches the corner, a figure on a pony 
 comes out of the shadow of the deodars and 
 rides up to \htjampan. 
 
 " You are punctual to the moment. Sit well 
 back, the moon is set, and if we meet anyone, 
 we shall not be recognised." 
 
 " Oh, Bob, I feel so nervous ! " 
 
 " Courage, dearest courage. All will yet be 
 well." 
 
46 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 He reaches a hand into the jampan, and she 
 presses it ; but it is icy cold. Then he draws 
 the head man of the jampan aside, while the 
 others are engaged shouldering their burden. 
 Into the coolie's horny palm he presses a hand- 
 ful of rupees, and whispers, 
 
 " The Raneebagh road, and as quick as you 
 can go ! " 
 
 The occupant of the "dandy" buries herself in 
 a corner under the hood, drawing her shawl over 
 her face, and off they set through the darkness, 
 the pony trotting behind. 
 
 Down, down through the night a narrow path 
 zigzagging down the mountain-side, through 
 ravines, and round sharp, pecipitous corners. On 
 and on, but ever lower and lower. The air grows 
 warmer as they jog along swiftly, the jampan- 
 bearers grunting as they trot, and puffing as they 
 relieve each other, the pony, who has to guide 
 his steps carefully, some little way behind. 
 Occasionally a jackal howls on the hillside, or a 
 chikaw partridge clucks, startled, in the brush- 
 wood. In the branches overhead the crickets 
 begin to whirr, for the air gets warmer as they 
 descend thousands of feet. 
 
 Then the dawn breaks. The shadows of the 
 trees and of the shoulders of the hills begin to 
 
A PIOUS FRAUD. 47 
 
 stand out indistinctly. There comes a crowing 
 of cocks as they pass native huts. The crisp, 
 cool air of the Himalayas has vanished, and is 
 replaced by the sultry, oppressive atmosphere of 
 the plains in hot weather. 
 
 In the verandah of the dak-bungalow at 
 Raneebagh, standing on a little grassy knoll 
 where a wide valley meets the plains, Ethel 
 Marrinder's jampan is set down, and the hood 
 thrown back. 
 
 In the grey twilight of the early morning her 
 escort jumps off his pony and advances to assist 
 her to alight. She looks up at him as he bends 
 over her, and falls back with a faint scream. 
 
 "Not Bob?" 
 
 " No; Ben ! " is the answer. The voice sounds 
 strained and harsh. 
 
 Ethel covers her face with her hands, and 
 moans, " Oh ! I am lost ! I am lost!" 
 
 But a strong arm encircles her and helps her 
 out. The Driver lifts the mat hanging before 
 the door of the nearest room, and leading her in, 
 places her in a chair. She bows herself and weeps 
 silently. But the Driver turns away and stands 
 looking out at the door, up the valley, from which, 
 every moment, the mists of daybreak roll away. 
 He dare not look at her, but he speaks. 
 
48 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " Not lost, Ethel saved ! I, too, love you I 
 may say it now have always loved you, and, I 
 think, love you best, for I have saved you from 
 yourself! No, don't speak. I don't ask you to 
 thank me you probably hate me but perhaps 
 some day you will. Good-bye. My mission is 
 over. I see Colonel Marrinder arriving in a 
 dak-gharry" 
 
 He passed out. A man was descending from 
 the vehicle, which had just driven up and stop- 
 ped at the terminus of the carriage road, a kind 
 of bathing-machine on wheels, drawn by two 
 decrepit ponies at a hand-gallop. 
 
 " Good-morning," said the Driver. " Glad we 
 have just hit it off! I have escorted Mrs. 
 Marrinder down the hill to meet you. No, thank 
 you, I won't stay to breakfast ; must be off before 
 it gets hot," and, mounting the fresh pony he had 
 ordered, the Driver disappeared. 
 
 It was two years ere the brothers met again, 
 and there had been no communication between 
 them meantime. The Gazette, however, told the 
 Driver that the Gunner was posted to a field- 
 battery at home, and the papers likewise in- 
 formed him that Colonel Marrinder had died of 
 liver some months after that morning at Ranee- 
 bagh. 
 
A PIOUS FRAUD. 49 
 
 The Driver's spell of Indian service was over 
 also for the time. The morning after he landed 
 at Portsmouth, as he sat at breakfast at the 
 Junior, he got a letter from the Gunner : 
 
 " We are going to be married. Will you make 
 friends and come to the wedding ? 
 
 " BOB." 
 
 But the answer the Gunner got was equally 
 laconic : 
 
 " I was never the enemy of either of you. My 
 best, heartiest wishes. But don't ask me to 
 come. 
 
 " BEN." 
 
 But the evening of the wedding-day he re- 
 ceived a telegram signed " Ethel Blayre" : 
 " Thanks, a thousand times thanks." 
 
H fatal Gift. 
 
 MELFORT PRAYTE, the most successful barrister 
 of the High Court of Dustipore, East-by-West 
 Provinces, India, had a very good time of it, 
 when, after many years of arduous toil in pocket- 
 ing the fees of litigious natives, he ran home on 
 a few months' holiday. It was pleasant to feel 
 his feet once more upon his native Strand, ex- 
 hilarating to find his contemporaries still brief- 
 less or struggling. It almost made him forget 
 what the atmosphere of the cute/terry at Dusti- 
 pore was like at noontide, in the merry month 
 of May. 
 
 Maidens and their mammas smiled upon Mel- 
 fort Prayte. The Suez Canal has reversed the 
 order of things in the Indian marriage market. 
 Men come home for their wives now. They 
 are no longer satisfied with the article im- 
 ported for Indian consumption, and which no 
 more improves under climatic and social in- 
 fluences than do the tinned provisions in an up- 
 country Parsee's store. 
 
A FATAL GIFT. 51 
 
 Being an exceedingly clever young man for 
 he was still young Melfort Prayte took care not 
 to be at all above laying himself out to loaf and 
 frivol, as occasion demanded. He was partic- 
 ular to remember all the good stories he had 
 heard, and careful to get up the latest society 
 crazes, such as palmistry, graphology, animal 
 magnetism, and so on. Accordingly, when, at 
 the close of a very cheerful season in London, 
 he glanced over his invitations, he found he 
 could easily have mapped out the next six 
 months in staying about in other people's 
 houses. 
 
 His time was running short, though, and India 
 was looming unpleasantly near again, when he 
 found himself at Paddington, one October after- 
 noon, on his way down to the Blake-Baskertons' 
 for a week's pheasant- shooting. 
 
 The Blake-Baskertons had a big house-party, 
 and a big shoot on. Melfort Prayte had dined 
 with them a good deal in town. The eldest 
 daughter, a clever girl, had evinced much interest 
 in India, and was eager for information respect- 
 ing the silver currency, the future of the ryot and 
 the purdah woman, and such-like light subjects. 
 But Melfort Prayte was home for a holiday. A 
 clever woman is sometimes very interesting to 
 
52 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 talk to, but she is not always what a clever man 
 seeks in a wife. He wants a rest and a change 
 from himself. 
 
 The women, in tea-gowns, were having tea in 
 the big hall when Prayte drove up. The men 
 had not yet come in from shooting, so, .for a 
 while, he was monarch of all he surveyed. 
 
 His hostess, after greeting him, handed him 
 over to her daughter at the tea-table, and sank 
 back on to the deep sofa by the fire. 
 
 " Will you excuse me, Mr. Prayte, and let 
 Arabella give you some tea. Lady Dehars and 
 I are settling a most important question before 
 the post goes out in half-an-hour. I am getting 
 a new cook." 
 
 " Indeed," said Prayte, sitting down with his 
 tea-cup on a stool by her side. " What a heap 
 of letters ! Can I help you ? " 
 
 "You clever men think you can do anything," 
 she laughed ; " this is a most important business. 
 Mr. Blake-Baskerton is most particular. Let me 
 see, Lady Dehars ; this is that Mrs. Savory's let- 
 ter, who is so highly recommended, isn't it ? " 
 
 " May I look at it ? I'm something of a judge 
 of handwriting, you know," put in Melfort 
 Prayte. 
 
 *'* It certainly reads very well," he went on, 
 
A FATAL GIFT. 53 
 
 glancing at the highly-glazed paper, with the 
 lines sloping dubiously. " She must be a perfect 
 cordon bleu, and her references sound undeniable ; 
 but" 
 
 " But what ? " asked both ladies at once. 
 
 " Only that it strikes me she is lying through- 
 out, and that her honesty is doubtful. Miss 
 Blake-Baskerton, may my long journey entitle 
 me to another cup of tea ? " 
 
 There was quite a little flutter in the dovecot. 
 Everyone, glad of a little amusement, produced 
 handwritings on which they begged Prayte to 
 sit in judgment. 
 
 " So very clever ! So true ! Just what she 
 really is, you know, said one. 
 
 "Exactly my opinion of him," said another. 
 
 " Perfect magic, I declare," said a third. " If 
 he knew her quite well he couldn't have hit off 
 her character better. I always thought she really 
 had an awful temper." 
 
 And so on, till it was time to go to dress for 
 dinner. 
 
 "Good idea having Melfort Prayte down, 
 wasn't it, dear?" shouted Mrs. Blake-Baskerton 
 from her toilet-table, after her maid had departed, 
 to her better half, tubbing vigorously after shoot- 
 ing, in his dressing-room. 
 
54 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " Yes ! Ah ! What ! Good shot enough, I 
 daresay. But these Indian fellows, with their 
 big game, often turn up their noses " 
 
 " Tut ! tut ! I didn't mean about the shooting. 
 I meant he'll be such a godsend in the house ! 
 The Slumbertons and old Lady Dehars are so 
 heavy. And then I can quite see he appreciates 
 Arabella ; she is so really superior, so intellec- 
 tual, just the kind of wife for a rising man like 
 him ! " 
 
 And, overflowing with complacency, Mrs. 
 Blake-Baskerton swept downstairs, just in time 
 to welcome the old vicar and his niece, the only 
 outside guests, and who had trotted up the 
 avenue in goloshes. 
 
 Melfort Prayte did his duty bravely at dinner. 
 Even old Lady Dehars laughed over some of his 
 stories. Suddenly he became aware that, when- 
 ever he got on the subject of India, a very sweet 
 pair of eyes were riveted upon him from across 
 the flowers. Their owner was a girl, so young 
 that she failed to appreciate Mrs. Blake-Bask- 
 erton's memi, or to attempt to contribute her 
 share to the conversation. Nevertheless, Melfort 
 Prayte said to himself that she was as much of 
 an ornament to the table as the exotics in the 
 Dresden china that adorned the centre. 
 
A FATAL GIFT. 55 
 
 They played games after dinner. Miss Blake- 
 Baskerton monopolised Prayte, and he never got 
 a chance of being introduced to the owner of 
 the eyes. 
 
 He came up with her next evening, however, 
 in a twilight lane, as he was walking home from 
 shooting with the son of the house. The latter 
 began to talk to her, but she turned to Prayte 
 eagerly 
 
 " You were talking about India last night at 
 dinner. Do you know Guramabad ? " 
 
 " It is about as far off from Dustipore, where 
 I live, as we are now from Madrid. I never was 
 there," rejoined Prayte. 
 
 Her face fell, and the pretty flush died out 
 of it. 
 
 " What a dreadfully big country ! I'm sorry ! 
 I wanted to hear about it, for I'm going there 
 next month.'' 
 
 And as the two men walked beside her down 
 the muddy lane, over the fallen leaves, she 
 prattled on naively about herself, and of how 
 she was going out to her mother and step-father. 
 Melfort Prayte drew her out for the pleasure of 
 watching her face sparkle. A little, unsophisti- 
 cated country girl like this was a new sensation 
 to him. 
 
56 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 But he did not meet her again during his stay. 
 On off-days from the shooting, Miss Blake- 
 Baskerton drove him about in her pony-cart, 
 and they talked " subjects." 
 
 On Sunday, however, his hostess marshalled 
 her guests to church. It was part of her idea of 
 a country chatelaines duty. Melfort Prayte 
 writhed inwardly over the infliction. Church- 
 going was not much in his line. Civilians get 
 out of the way of it in India. The military men 
 are driven to church in droves with the troops. 
 
 But, for many years afterwards, that quiet old 
 village church, smelling mouldy with the dust of 
 departed squires, the sleepy old vicar mumbling 
 the familiar prayers, and the dim light from the 
 narrow windows falling on the profile of the 
 vicar's niece as she sang in the choir, lingered in 
 his memory like a soothing dream. 
 
 At breakfast next morning, just before the 
 dog-cart came round to carry him off to the 
 station, he found his host radiant over a letter 
 his wife had just received. 
 
 " My dear fellow, I owe you a debt of grati- 
 tude ! You have certainly lengthened, if not 
 actually saved, my life ! " 
 
 "That cook, you know, Mr. Prayte," explained 
 Mrs. Blake-Baskerton. "That Mrs. Savory. 
 
A FATAL GIFT. 57 
 
 My sister has interviewed her for me in town, 
 and taken her character. Well, it appears that 
 her perquisites and her pilfering were beyond 
 anything, and as for her cooking she knew ab- 
 solutely nothing ! " 
 
 " Such an escape! A merciful escape!" added 
 her husband, reverently. 
 
 Melfort Prayte got safe away from the Blake- 
 Baskertons, and left Arabella gnashing her teeth. 
 She married the following year a heavy neigh- 
 bour addicted to shorthorns, and now is of the 
 same mind as the eminent politician who advo- 
 cates the " perish India " theory. 
 
 Melfort Prayte found his Indian mail awaiting 
 him at his rooms in Duke Street, and realised 
 with a sigh that he must hie him back to work. 
 
 Hailing a prowling hansom, he betook himself 
 to the P. and O. office in Cockspur Street, and 
 looked at the sailings of the steamers and the 
 list of passengers : 
 
 " 6*5. Kidgeree. For Bombay. Miss Eva 
 Grey." 
 
 A vision of the little girl with the sweet eyes 
 flew into his mind. 
 
 " Put me down for a port-side berth in the 
 Kidgeree? he said to the clerk. " I will go by 
 Brindisi and join it at Suez." 
 
58 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 When the overland contingent, crowded with 
 their baggage on to a big raft, slowly approached 
 the Kidgeree as she lay in the Suez roads, Eva 
 Grey was leaning over the ship's side, sharing 
 the interest the other London passengers took in 
 the new-comers. 
 
 When Melfort Prayte came on board, she 
 came up to him at once with frank, outstretched 
 hand. 
 
 " I am so glad you are coming by this ship, 
 Mr. Prayte. I'm so homesick, and you seem 
 like a whiff of home ! " 
 
 Even a hideous white pith-helmet could not 
 disfigure her. Melfort Prayte thought her eyes 
 the colour of the soft, shimmering, purple 
 Soudanese mountains rising across the hazy bay 
 to the west. 
 
 Prayte had, of course, gone through the fire 
 years before. He had had his grandcs passions 
 for giddy grass-widows on the hills, his cooler 
 intellectual friendships with kindred souls dur- 
 ing the cold weather on the plains. He had 
 dallied with English maidens during his holi- 
 days, and allowed them to imagine they were 
 going to capture him. Yet, somehow, the feel- 
 ing which arose within him during the ten days 
 the Kidgeree took between Suez and Bombay, 
 
A FATAL GIFT. 59 
 
 with regard to Eva Grey, was different to any he 
 had ever experienced before. She was so very 
 young, so naive, and so pretty. Melfort Prayte 
 found himself watching her during sultry noon- 
 tides under the awnings, or in the mysterious 
 glamour of tropical moonlight nights, when the 
 wake of the Kidgeree was a mass of phosphor- 
 escence, and wondering to himself if a fresh, 
 innocent child like this would not be a rest, if 
 woven into the life of a busy, toiling man always 
 in touch with the seamy side of things. 
 
 She had plenty to prattle to him about : her 
 old life in the quiet country vicarage with her 
 uncle, now closed forever her father dead so 
 many years before her mother still young and 
 very beautiful, she said, whom she was longing 
 to see, whom she was preparing to adore, 
 though she could hardly remember her at all 
 her rather elderly, stolid stepfather, of whom 
 she knew next to nothing. Then she was eager 
 for information about the future Indian life. 
 But, somehow, the idea of this fresh, half-opened 
 little English daisy, plunged into the narrow, 
 gossiping, shallow, frivolous life of an Indian 
 station, flirted with by half the subalterns and 
 all the junior civilians, jarred on Melfort Prayte. 
 He told her for choice about native life, and de- 
 
60 /^ TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 scribed the beautiful scenery of the Himalayas, 
 as he lay prone on a coil of ropes at the feet of 
 her long chair. How the two richest natives of 
 the Dustipore district, who were anxiously 
 awaiting this powerful advocate's return to offer 
 him, each, a douceur of many hundred rupees 
 that he should not accept a brief from either 
 side, would have marvelled to see him so ab- 
 sorbed in this child. 
 
 He could hardly himself define what it was made 
 him arrange with Eva's chaperon, only the day 
 before they reached Bombay, to accompany 
 them up country as far as their ways lay together. 
 Anyhow, it staved off the saying good-bye. 
 
 Most of the Kidgerees passengers put up at 
 Watson's Hotel, a huge American kind of 
 caravansera. They sat in the broad verandah 
 after breakfast, idling over the tempting wares 
 that Cashmere shawl merchants and Lucknow 
 silversmiths displayed on the floor before them, 
 and reading the last European newspapers. 
 Prayte had found a friend, Cis Sabretasche, 
 A.D.C. to the General at Dustipore, just going 
 home. Eva Grey was chatting with a man in 
 the Derbyshire drabs, and his bride, with whom 
 she had fraternised during the voyage. These 
 latter were discussing an invitation they had 
 
A FATAL GIFT. 61 
 
 received from a friend's friend to stay on their 
 way up country. 
 
 " It is a very nice letter," mused the bride ; 
 " I wonder what sort of a person she is ? " 
 
 " If you don't mind showing me the letter, per- 
 haps I can give you an idea," suggested Melfort 
 Prayte, from the depths of an enormous arm-chair. 
 
 " Nice woman, I should think," said he, after 
 perusing the 'epistle ; " but a great talker, to 
 judge by the long tail of her capital C's, and no 
 organisation she runs her words together so." 
 
 " That's just what the Smiths told us ; you can't 
 get a word in edgeways, they said. And I think 
 she must be rather muddle-headed, for she asked 
 us first to come on Friday, and now says she can't 
 have us till Saturday, as she is engaged on Friday." 
 
 Eva Grey opened her eyes wide. 
 
 " How awfully interesting ! And can you really 
 tell what people are like from their writing ? " 
 
 " Let's try him again," suggested Dalton of 
 the drabs. " Here's a letter from a man I know 
 intimately was at school with him." 
 
 " Very fond of classical poetry, I should say : 
 his capital letters are all printing letters." 
 
 " Right you are ; he was a dab at Greek and 
 Latin." 
 
 "And now, would you mind looking at this? 
 
62 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 I am awfully anxious to know what the writer is 
 like," pleaded Eva. 
 
 Prayte rose, threw away the end of his cigar, 
 and, bending over the little figure in the low 
 chair, took the letter from her. 
 
 He scanned it a moment or two, then his face 
 clouded. He passed it back to her, and turned 
 away, saying, in a constrained voice : 
 
 " I'd rather not tell you anything about that. 
 That's the writing of a bad woman." 
 
 There was an awkward silence while you 
 might count ten. Eva, the letter motionless in 
 her hand,' followed him with her eyes express- 
 ing utter bewilderment. Then she flushed very 
 red, and rose and left the balcony. 
 
 The others looked at each other as her white 
 dress vanished round the corner. 
 
 " What on earth have I done ? " asked Prayte, 
 anxiously. 
 
 " The letter was from her mother," said the 
 little bride, in an awestruck voice. " She was 
 reading it to me not long ago." 
 
 " Her mother ! Good heavens, Prayte, you 
 have put your foot into it ! " exclaimed Sabre- 
 tasche, with a shrug. 
 
 " But who on earth's her mother, then ; for if 
 ever a hand showed*" 
 
A FATAL GIFT. 63 
 
 " Do you mean to say you don't know ?" asked 
 Sabretasche. " Why, man, after all these years 
 of India, do you mean to say you've never heard 
 of Mrs. Churchhill, wife of Churchhill in the 
 Native Infantry ? " 
 
 "The 'all-embracing mother church?' Of 
 course I have ! Curse it all, what an ass I have 
 been ! " muttered Prayte, angrily. 
 
 " The best-preserved woman in India. Don't 
 you remember how Her Ex. had to put down 
 her foot about her two seasons ago, at Simla, 
 His Ex. was so gone over her; only Lord 
 George and the other A.D.C.'s stood her friends. 
 Then, farther back again, long ago, there was that 
 little shooting-party got up in the Terai for royalty, 
 when Mrs. Churchhill went on special invitation ! " 
 
 Melfort Prayte gnashed his teeth. 
 
 " I suppose the daughter knows nothing ? '' he 
 asked. 
 
 " How the deuce should she ? Pretty girl- 
 but nothing like her mother, though. Wonderful 
 woman ! Little Jenkins, in the Gunners, went 
 to utter grief this year at Naini, after she threw 
 him over for Dabbs in the Secretariat took to 
 gambling has had to leave the service. Wonder- 
 ful woman ! " And Sabretasche lit another cigar 
 meditatively. 
 
64 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 Prayte rose and took himself off into his own 
 room. He was too annoyed with himself to 
 bear the chatter of the others. To think that he 
 should have been thus the means of opening this 
 innocent child's eyes to her mother's depravity 
 the mother she admired so much, to the meeting 
 with whom she was looking forward so eagerly ! 
 That he should thus inadvertently have seared 
 this white, young soul ! The thought made him 
 mad. He cursed graphology and her 'sister arts, 
 and devoutly wished he had never dabbled in 
 them. 
 
 But the worst was yet to come. He saw no 
 more of Miss Grey or her chaperon that day. 
 In the evening a chilly note was brought him 
 from the latter, saying that, as they were going 
 to wait a day or two longer in Bombay than they 
 had expected, they would not trouble him for 
 his escort up country. 
 
 So the dream was over. But for its abrupt 
 ending it might, in another day or two, have be- 
 come a reality. 
 
 Prayte hurled himself into the night mail and 
 was whisked off to Dustipore. There he found 
 plenty of fat cases awaiting him ; both sides 
 anxious to retain him. Yet he was not 
 happy. 
 
A FATAL GIFT. 65 
 
 That cold-weather season at Dustipore, women 
 discussed Melfort Prayte with some bitterness. 
 
 " He used to be so nice before he went home 
 last spring. But men do get so spoilt, their heads 
 so turned, in England, because there are so few 
 of them ; he hardly will speak to a lady 
 now ! " 
 
 A good many months later, when he went 
 down to Lycknow for the race week, he came 
 across Eva Grey at a ball at the Chutter Munzil. 
 She was looking very lovely and very happy, 
 chatting away to a good-looking young gunner. 
 Prayte, on enquiry, found she was engaged to him, 
 and going to be married very shortly. 
 
 Prayte suddenly felt that he hated balls and 
 similar stupidities, and went and had a strong 
 vvhisky-and-soda at the peg-table with his in- 
 formant. 
 
 Returning, and meditating taking his departure, 
 he felt so bored, suddenly round a corner he 
 came upon Eva enlarging gaily to an admiring 
 group about her wedding presents. 
 
 " Isn't this a lovely bracelet ? Mr. Dabbs, the 
 Secretary, has sent me this ; he was an old friend 
 of my father's, he says. And do look at this, 
 isn't it too beautiful ? Fancy, the Viceroy sent 
 me that ! Only fancy ! Mother saw so much 
 
66 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 of Lady Wrenthamdale when she was at Simla 
 two years ago, you know." 
 
 Then she turned suddenly and perceived Prayte 
 got very red, and cut him dead. 
 
 He saw the wedding in the paper, and then 
 lost sight of her altogether. He came across her 
 mother, though, at a hill station, two years later, 
 very loud and noisy, at a very late, or rather 
 early, second supper, after the Bachelors' Ball. 
 No one seemed surprised ; Mrs. Churchhill was 
 generally very noisy after supper now, people 
 said. 
 
 It was when he was ordered home by the 
 doctors, after an attack of fever and general over- 
 work, that he met Eva again. She was sitting in 
 the Row on Sunday morning with her husband 
 and her little girl, and she looked to him so 
 altered, so much sadder, the girlish lighthearted- 
 ness all gone out of her. But she came up to 
 him with outstretched hand, and her old frank 
 manner : 
 
 " Mr. Melfort Prayte, I must speak to you ! 
 I have so often wanted to meet you again, and 
 to apologise for my behaviour to you. I thought 
 once that you wished to be rude to me, wished 
 to insult me something you said hurt me very 
 much I was very young and very inexperienced 
 
A FATAL GIFT. 67 
 
 
 
 at the time. You remember what I allude to ? 
 Alas ! you were quite right ; but I didn't know, 
 and I was angry with you. Will you forgive 
 me and let me introduce you to my hus- 
 band?" 
 
H Soutbsea Bubble. 
 
 SHE was Winsome, with a big W, if ever fluffy 
 hair, a tip-tilted nose, and long-lashed, laughing 
 eyes, half closing with fun when she smiled, can 
 make a girl so. When first I knew her she 
 might have been no more than eighteen ; but 
 she was more " in the know " than many a 
 country brought-up maiden of eight-and-thirty. 
 But then the Miss Barringers had had rather a 
 hot-house education. They were Southsea girls. 
 Papa Barringer had once been a major in the 
 something or other ; but he had died off long 
 ago, leaving a small, meek widow, who was 
 utterly unable to cope with her offspring. Of 
 these, the eldest, Belle, a tall, handsome, black- 
 eyed girl, was not so young as she once had 
 been, and had, moreover, a past. There were 
 several versions of that past current in Southsea 
 society. Miss Barringer was on easy terms 
 with all the men, naval and military, who went 
 out much ; but no one ever dreamed of being 
 
 seriously in love with her, much less of pro- 
 68 
 
A SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. 69 
 
 posing to her. It was noticeable, too, that her 
 friends were all of one sex. Her own was not 
 kind to Belle Barringer. Eventually, I believe, 
 she ran away with the head groom in a riding 
 establishment, and may be seen any day taking 
 out riding-parties of young ladies over the 
 Brighton downs. 
 
 The second sister, Sally, had been badly jilted by 
 a naval man to whom she was engaged, a second- 
 lieutenant of the troopship Alligator, \v\\v whiled 
 away his six months of summer idleness in 
 wiling away her affections. Sally then took to 
 good works. She was the right-hand and 
 highly-valued coadjutor of the very ornamental 
 vicar of St. Estephe's, who had an invalid wife 
 who never went out. He said he did not know 
 what he should have done without Miss Bar- 
 ringer's kindness. He left Southsea later, rather 
 suddenly. It was understood he had taken a 
 chaplaincy in Hawaii. About the same time, 
 Sally Barringer joined a sisterhood, and we 
 heard afterwards she had gone out to nurse the 
 lepers in that same happy island. But Southsea 
 gossip was rather vague about it all, and the 
 subsequent vicar of St. Estephe's had a very 
 strong-minded wife, who managed the parish 
 herself. 
 
70 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 Dottie, our heroine, was the youngest. At 
 the time I am speaking of no one had very 
 much to say against her, and there was un- 
 deniably a great deal to be said in her favour. 
 She was a small person, capable of infinite 
 possibilities, and decidedly with a future before 
 her. 
 
 We were quartered in the Anglesea barracks. 
 India was looming before us. It was our last 
 summer in England, and we were bent on 
 having a good time. We gave a big ball, and 
 started a regimental yacht. None of us knew 
 much about sailing, but we had good fun, and 
 nobody was drowned. We had some adven- 
 tures, though. Wilton, who was our skipper 
 chosen on account, I believe, of having failed 
 for the navy before he tried Sandhurst Freddy 
 Duffield, and another, with Belle and Dottie 
 Barringer, got becalmed one afternoon down the 
 Solent off Calshot Point. They had to leave 
 the yacht, wherein the sleeping accommodation 
 was of the slenderest description, and row 
 ashore, and put up for the night at a wayside 
 inn. Nobody minded about Belle ; but I was 
 sorry about Dottie, she was so young ; and 
 Freddy Duffield was sorry too. 
 
 For Freddy was getting really hard hit. 
 
A SOUTH BE A BUBBLE. 71 
 
 Poor Freddy ! he was such a good-natured old 
 fellow, so single-minded and sincere himself, 
 that he saw no distance at all, and expected 
 everyone to be the same. It is a very praise- 
 worthy kind of character, one which, it is to be 
 hoped, gets its reward in another and a better 
 world, for it certainly meets with the reverse in 
 this. Dottie had flirted a bit with us all round, 
 not excepting the old C. O., who positively 
 beamed upon her, and called her " that pretty 
 child." To my own knowledge I found her 
 making appointments for evening strolls on the 
 pier with young Scamperleigh, and it was at her 
 suggestion that he got up that theatre expedi- 
 tion, wherein the chaperon mysteriously failed 
 at the last moment. We came back about 2.30 
 A.M. the theatre train late as usual and had an 
 impromptu supper at the Barringers. I remem- 
 ber Belle disturbed the maternal slumbers up- 
 stairs by the choruses we emitted to her banjo 
 songs. 
 
 About this time came the great Prosington- 
 Duffield row. Prosington was not long married, 
 and was kept in great order by his wife. He 
 made some remark about Mademoiselle Dottie 
 in the ante-room, and not altogether in her 
 praise. I forget what it was, probably a repeti- 
 
72 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 tion of some uncharitable story of Southsea 
 gossips, which had filtered to him through his 
 wife. 
 
 Duffield took it up furiously, and exploded 
 a bomb-shell into the middle of us by announc- 
 ing that he was engaged to the young lady in 
 question. 
 
 He and Prosington did not speak for a month. 
 Upon us all fell a great awe. We, the Royal 
 Scilly Islanders, were a most ancient and hon- 
 ourable corps, who, the outside world averred, 
 gave themselves no end of airs. We were by no 
 means so particular about other ladies in society, 
 but our regimental ladies had always been 
 perfect Caesar's wives. The C. O. took Freddy's 
 little affair up. His father was communicated 
 with. Freddy suddenly got a long spell of 
 leave, and left Southsea till we were on the 
 point of embarking for India. 
 
 Sir Duncan's shooting in Yorkshire was 
 famous. Freddy was the eldest son, and it was 
 meet he should have his share of it before he 
 left England. The arrangement was entirely 
 for his good. But Freddy fumed. He stood 
 with his broad shoulders against the mantelpiece 
 of his barrack-room one evening, as I smoked a 
 cigar with him, and held forth. 
 
A SOUTHSEA BUBBLE. 73 
 
 " It's an infernal conspiracy ! That's what it 
 is. The sweetest, dearest little girl yes, of 
 course, I know I'm not going to marry the 
 sisters ! I will take the poor child away out of 
 that horrible set think what she must have 
 gone through so young and so innocent. The 
 pater will come round. He's only to see her. 
 Nobody can look into Dottie's eyes and with- 
 stand her. And if he thinks he's going to play 
 the stern parent with me, he's much mistaken. 
 We're too fond of each other for anyone to 
 come between us. By Jove ! if you'd only seen 
 the poor child this afternoon when I told her 
 my leave was in orders ! " 
 
 And so on, with variations, as long as I would 
 listen. Next day he departed, and one could 
 only hope for the best. We read in the World 
 that Sir Duncan Duffield was having a very 
 smart party for the Twelfth. 
 
 It was at an afternoon dance on board the 
 Inferior. The Misses Barringer were there under 
 the nominal chaperonage of Mrs. Golightly, a 
 grass-widow, whose husband was at sea. I 
 passed them by on the other side, for the edict 
 had gone forth in the mess that, after poor 
 Freddy's fiasco, the Barringers were to be 
 avoided. But I found myself close to Dottic at 
 
74 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 the tea-table, the centre of a knot of sub-lieu- 
 tenants. A fellow in the Horse Marines from 
 Westney was pestering her for another dance. 
 
 " Defendu, mon cher ! " laughed Dottie, shak- 
 ing at him a little plump left hand, on the third 
 finger of which glittered a diamond ring. " My 
 young man won't let me dance more than three 
 times not with the C-in-C. himself." 
 
 And then again on the tennis ground, when a 
 sudden shower sent all the players huddling 
 under the central shed. We grumbled at the 
 wet August, and Dottie shot a wicked glance 
 across to me, as she remarked, rather loud, to her 
 partner : 
 
 "Yes, I hear from Yorkshire the weather's 
 just beastly for the moors ! " 
 
 So we feared the worst. 
 
 The day of our embarkation came. Freddy 
 had returned. The great white troopship lay 
 drawn up at the jetty, under the old clock tower 
 which has witnessed so many partings, ready to 
 receive the Royal Scillies, as, no longer in smart 
 red uniform, but in hospital-like sea-kit of blue 
 serge and stocking-cap, they marched, like a 
 long swarm of dark ants, into her side. 
 
 The departure or arrival of a trooper is to 
 the fair Southsea islanders a little amusement, 
 
A SOUTHSEA BUBBLE. 75 
 
 kindly provided by Government for her during 
 the drear winter months, when the pier is im- 
 possible and tennis is not. All the world was 
 on the poop-deck of the Jumbo to say good-bye 
 to us. I stumbled upon Freddy and Dottie in a 
 secluded corner behind the piano, on the stern- 
 lockers, having a fond farewell ; and, to do her 
 justice, the girl's sweet eyes were very dewy. 
 
 When we got to India we were sent to Bula- 
 mabad. It is a splendid sporting station, but 
 socially deficient. Except our own ladies, the 
 female part of society, what there was of it, 
 seemed touched with the tar-brush, and unat- 
 tractive. Like the rest of us, Freddy became 
 immersed in the delights of pig-sticking and 
 black-buck shooting. When he took leave in 
 the hot weather he eschewed the allurements of 
 the frivolous hill stations, and went to Cashmere 
 and slew bears. But the bare, whitewashed 
 room of the bungalow I shared with him was 
 adorned with photos of Dottie Barringer in 
 every conceivable costume, .from one taken, at 
 the age of fifteen, in bathing-dress, with her hair 
 down, as the heroine of the story of how " one 
 sweet little maid washed herself ashore with a 
 tablet of Pears' soap." 
 
 A year passed. The changes I have above 
 
76 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 alluded to took place in the Barringer family, 
 and Mamma Barringer went to her much-needed 
 rest. Freddy Duffield took a mysterious ten 
 days' shooting leave, and, for a wonder, did not 
 tell me what he was going after. We found he 
 had taken the mail train to Bombay, and he 
 returned with Dottie Barringer as Mrs. Freddy. 
 
 She was rather older and stouter-looking, her 
 voice a trifle more shrill, but her manners and 
 ways more ingenue than ever. We made the 
 best of it. We Scilly Islanders kept our regi- 
 mental dhobis, and did not put out our soiled 
 linen to wash. And really, at first, Dottie be- 
 haved quite prettily. She was as quiet as a little 
 mouse, sisterly to all of us, and quite grand- 
 motherly to Freddy, who trotted about at her 
 beck and call like a tame great Newfoundland, 
 and was absurdly happy. 
 
 But when the novelty of her life wore out, 
 Dottie began to find Bulamabad less cheerful 
 than Southsea. In the Scilly Islanders the first 
 mess rule is : " Thou shalt not flirt with thy 
 brother-officer's wife." Freddy's devotion, though 
 gratifying, was exigeant, and began to pall. 
 
 It was probably ennui that, at the beginning 
 of the hot weather, brought on an attack of fever. 
 Mrs. Dottie lost her pretty English colour, and 
 
A SOUTHSEA BUBBLE. 77 
 
 the regimental " pill " prescribed the hills. 
 Freddy took her up to Nynee Tal, and settled 
 her at a tiny chalet on the rhododendron heights. 
 But it was a sickly season at Bulamabad. We 
 were short-handed, and he had to return to duty. 
 Mrs. Dottie must speedily have recovered her 
 health at Nynee Tal, for "our special corre- 
 spondent" there soon began in the Pioneer to 
 quote her and her doings in his gossipy letters. 
 Now, it was her charming appearance at the 
 Lieutenant- Governor's birthday fancy-dress ball, 
 attired as King Cophetua's beggar-maid, her 
 pretty pink skin, we were given to understand, 
 peeping through her tatters. Then, it was posing 
 as Rebecca at the Well, in some charity tableaux, 
 simply swathed in pink muslin, most statuesque. 
 Next, it was her coxing the Honourable Reggy 
 Darlish's four-oar in the Civilians versus Soldiers 
 boat-race. Naughty Nynee was very full that 
 season, and the fun was fast and furious round 
 the lovers' lake. The Honourable Reggy was 
 the Lieutenant-Governor's A.D.C., very fascinat- 
 ing, as many a grass-widow at many a hill 
 station would aver, and the hero of a cause celebre^ 
 out of which he had escaped by the skin of his 
 teeth. We read that it was Mrs. Duffield who 
 nominated his pony in the Ladies' Bracelet at 
 
78 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 the races ; that it was Mrs. Duffield scored such 
 a success acting with him in " Sweethearts " and 
 " Uncle's Will " at the great theatricals. 
 
 Old Mrs. De Ferret, the collector's wife at 
 Bulamabad, whose stories were as highly spiced 
 as her curries, bluntly informed us that our Mrs. 
 Duffield had set up a " bow-wow " at Nynee Tal, 
 and that the " bow-wow " was Captain Darlish. 
 But we were a simple-minded, sporting corps, 
 unversed in the wicked ways of the Himalayas, 
 and we did not pay much attention to her. 
 
 Freddy was jubilant over his wife's sensation, 
 and lived on the letters she sent him. 
 
 " Such nonsense," he said to me one day, as he 
 launched out into a new polo-pony, " that people 
 talk about the expense of life in India, and of 
 two establishments, the hills, and so on. Why, 
 the missus, with all the going out she has, finds 
 the little trousseau she brought out quite enough, 
 and her bills are nothing ! I offered to send her 
 up a pony to ride, but she says it would be too 
 expensive, and that she can always borrow a 
 mount." 
 
 It struck me, somehow, that this did not quite 
 tally with the Pioneer correspondent's glowing 
 descriptions of the beautiful Mrs. Duffield's 
 wondrous toilettes at the big balls. But I dare- 
 
A SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. 79 
 
 say she knew best about her own clothes. 
 Women are so clever. 
 
 It was terribly hot weather at Bulamabad. 
 One always feels the second hot weather more 
 than the first. We were sent out into cholera 
 camp, which is not cheerful in June. Then, 
 when at last the rains broke, there was a great 
 deal of fever. Freddy and I both went down 
 with it, and as soon as we were fit to move he 
 suggested that we should take ten days at Nynee 
 Tal, where he would put me up. 
 
 " So thankful that dear child has been safe up 
 there, out of this hell-upon-earth ! " he would 
 mutter to himself, when at his worst. 
 
 So off we started. A hideous day in the 
 train, thermometer at whatever you like ; a 
 jolting night in a dak-gharry, sleep impos- 
 sible. Then, with the dawn, the purple masses 
 of the Himalayas, and a long ride on ancient 
 hill-ponies, up, and up, and up, by winding 
 mountain paths, yclept roads ; over rushing 
 torrents, and through ilex woods,' all fresh and 
 green and cool to our weary eyes. But it was a 
 grey day in the rains. We had a sharp shower 
 on our way up, and we found a dense mist 
 hanging over the little lake. As we rode along 
 the steep zigzag path up the bare mountain- 
 
8o IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 side, leading to Mrs. Duffield's house, the fog 
 lifted, and a cold gust of wind cut down from a 
 cleft in the hills. 
 
 It nearly blew off my now most unnecessary 
 pith-helmet, and it fluttered something down 
 from the heights above something small and 
 white. It fell at my pony ? s feet ; it was a letter. 
 
 " Give it to me," I said to the. native attendant 
 who was accompanying me, hanging on to my 
 quadruped's tail. 
 
 " What on earth have you got there ? '' asked 
 Freddy, riding up close to me and looking over 
 my shoulder. 
 
 " A letter blown down from someone's hand 
 overhead," I replied. "It's rather muddy." But 
 I read : 
 
 " DEAREST REGGY, Hubby turned up unex- 
 pectedly. Keep away to-night. Will send 
 word. Usual hour when coast is clear. Yours 
 as always, 
 
 " DOTTIE." 
 
 I read, and Freddy read too, looking over my 
 shoulder. 
 
 Reading, we turned a sharp corner up the 
 path, and came suddenly, on the other zigzag, 
 
A SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. Si 
 
 upon a man in a much-belaced uniform on a 
 pony, standing still. His groom at that moment 
 climbed painfully up the side of the rocks from 
 below, whence we had come, and, joining his 
 hands, approached his master. 
 
 " Sahib ! I have searched everywhere. I 
 cannot find the letter. Perhaps the wind " 
 
 But I had recognised the man in uniform. 
 
 " Hullo, Darlish ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 I stopped short. For Freddy turned and gave 
 me an inquiring look. I shall never forget his 
 face as long as I live. It was livid with rage. 
 
 He dug his spurs into his pony, and went for 
 Darlish. 
 
 The latter was taken quite by surprise. The 
 path was very narrow, the edge rotten with the 
 recent rains, and the rocks sheer. 
 
 The ponies collided, staggered, floundered, 
 struggled, and fell over the side with their riders. 
 
 Darlish got clear of his, and saved himself by 
 catching hold of the branch of a tree. Freddy 
 and his horse rolled over and over, ever so far. 
 
 The pony was killed, and Freddy, when we 
 found him, was lying motionless, bleeding pro- 
 fusely from a cut on the head, We picked him 
 up, his groom and I, and carried him up to his 
 house, 
 
82 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 His wife met us in the verandah, with shrieks 
 of terror. 
 
 " Don't you think you'd better clear out of 
 this ? " said I, as harshly as ever I spoke to a 
 woman, when she came forward to see to him. 
 She slunk away into another room. 
 
 We got a doctor ; but the skull was fractured. 
 It was a case of hours. Towards dawn he came 
 to, and called for Dottie. 
 
 I sent her in, and stood just outside in the 
 verandah, looking down into the dark lake be- 
 low, and listening to the howlings of a jackal 
 near the native bazaar. 
 
 Freddy spoke a little, but his mind had gone 
 back to the old Southsea days. 
 
 " Dot ! Get your mother to let you come out 
 for a sail this afternoon I'll meet you on the 
 pier" 
 
 And he died at daybreak with her hand in his. 
 
after %ong Jt)ears of pain. 
 
 I WAS loafing. I generally was in those days. 
 That is the worst of having plenty of money and 
 time, with nothing to do, and no one to think of 
 but yourself. Nous avons change, tout cela ; but 
 not in the days I am writing about. 
 
 It was the time of year when I made a busi- 
 ness of yachting for a few weeks ere the duty 
 of shooting carried me to Scotland. The Plat- 
 sance lay at anchor in Flanerville harbour, 
 and I was sauntering along the plage in front 
 of the Casino, studying the human form divine 
 in its bathing-costumes as it emerged, in be- 
 wildering variety and attractiveness, from the 
 cabanes. 
 
 " Je vous en prie, monsieur, aidez-moi trouver 
 ma cabane ? " 
 
 The speaker was a small dark-eyed boy, clad 
 in a dripping scarlet garment, who was vainly 
 endeavouring to find his local habitation and his 
 clothes among the row of precisely similar erec- 
 tions which faced the waves, 
 83 
 
84 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " Savez-vous le numero ? " I inquired, with a 
 fine British accent. 
 
 His little face brightened instantly. 
 
 "That's just it! I've kite fordot it. Oh, it's 
 all right, Tanks ; I see Celestine coming. Fanks, 
 awfully ! " and away he scampered to his bonne. 
 
 This was my first introduction to Jack. 
 
 We met again in the afternoon at the Casino. 
 The ball-room was crowded, and the scene of 
 wild orgies. The bal-d'enfants was just over, 
 and a swarm of eager youngsters of every age, 
 and of not a few nationalities French, English, 
 American, Russian were drawing in the tombola 
 for toys, which was the crown of the after- 
 noon's diversion. As I looked on, amused, my 
 acquaintance of the morning, now clothed in a 
 sailor suit, rushed up to a lady standing beside 
 me, proudly exhibiting a PolicJdnelle doll. 
 He recognised me, and begged me to admire it. 
 I was jostled at that moment by the crowd, and 
 knocked Mr. Punch out of his hands. It fell 
 among everyone's feet We had a great hunt 
 When we recovered it, Polichinelle was in pieces, 
 and Jack in tears. What could I do but pur- 
 chase him another lottery ticket, in order to re- 
 place the toy. All these transactions led to my 
 talking to Jack's mother, 
 
AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN. 85 
 
 She was just the kind of woman whom you 
 would have expected to have such a dear little 
 son. Unmistakably English, though Jack 
 looked very dark, and his French was irreproach- 
 able, tall and straight and strong, with sweet, 
 dark eyes a thorough well-bred 'un. 
 
 That evening I ran against the Sandham- 
 Sollys at the petits chevaux table in the Casino, 
 we all of us being deeply interested in staking 
 small sums on the gyrations of the little gilt 
 quadrupeds. They invited me to dejeuner with 
 them next morning at the Grand Hotel. I went 
 and I met Jack's mother, and was introduced to 
 her as Madame d'Esterre. 
 
 " Such a charming woman, so glad you 
 like her!" whispered Mrs. Sandham-Solly, as 
 we imbibed black coffee and cigarettes on 
 the terrace. " My oldest friends, she and her 
 twin sister, poor Constance, who went out 
 to an aunt in India, and got killed in the 
 mutiny such a sad story. But Florence this 
 is Florence was always the handsomest 
 married a Frenchman ; he died two years 
 ago. Yes, Jack's a darling ! His mother's 
 wrapped up in him ! " 
 
 Jack came and leant on my knee, and looked 
 up at me with his dark eyes. 
 
86 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " Will 'ou do somefing for me ? Will 'ou take 
 me and m-m-m-my for a sail in 'our big boat. I 
 vant to go in a big boat ! " 
 
 " Oh, Jack ! Jack !" put in his mother. 
 
 " But I will, with pleasure, Jack ! " I hastened 
 to interpose ; " if you will ask your mother and 
 Mr. and Mrs. Solly to come, too." 
 
 It was the first of many a sail we five had in 
 the Plaisance that August. It is a lovely coast 
 off Flanerville ; the weather was fair, a blue sea, 
 and a summer breeze. Ere long Jack had be- 
 come the sworn friend of every man of the 
 crew, and insisted on wearing the yacht ribbon 
 on his hat. They were pleasant days. I can 
 see now Madame d'Esterre lolling in a big 
 wicker chair, and Jack trying to steer. All too 
 soon, for me at least, they came to an end. 
 
 A little more than a year later I started for 
 six months' big-game shooting in India. I had 
 had good sport a few years back after bison and 
 moose in the Rockies, and had spent a winter 
 cruising off the Albanian coast, shooting deer 
 and pig and snipe. But I had not been East 
 yet. I took the overland route, you know 
 whirled like a pill in a pill-box from Calais to 
 Marseilles for three days. Wagon-lits were not. 
 Then via Alexandria, through Egypt to Suez. 
 
AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN. 87 
 
 There I found the P. and O. mail-boat awaiting 
 me, with the passengers who had come the long 
 sea-route through the Bay. We overlanders 
 were towed out, with our baggage, on a sort of 
 barge, to where the great vessel lay in the roads 
 opposite the mouth of the Canal. The ancient 
 inhabitants of the ship stood leaning over the 
 gunwale examining us with curiosity. As I 
 stepped on deck I thought I saw a familiar 
 form. 
 
 " Madame d'Esterre ! Is it you ? I am glad. 
 And how's my friend Jack ? " 
 
 Her face had lighted up, on first seeing me, 
 with that sweet smile I had learnt to like so well 
 But at my last words she shrank back as if I had 
 struck her. Hardly responding to my greeting, 
 she turned away and hurried below. 
 
 A tall, soldierly-looking man, who was stand- 
 ing beside her, came forward. 
 
 " Allow me to apologise for my sister. You 
 seem an old friend of hers. You inquired after 
 her boy. Poor little Jackie died three months 
 ago. It was a terrible shock to her. In fact 
 she has not got over it yet. I am ordered out 
 to India to my battery, and my wife has per- 
 suaded Madame d'Esterre to go with us for a 
 change. She and I are alone in the world now, 
 
88 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 My other poor sister died in India some years 
 ago." 
 
 I found Madame d'Esterre much altered. All 
 the buoyancy seemed crushed out of her. To 
 me she was as charming as ever ; but at first, 
 Jack's name was not mentioned between us. 
 However, I had been Jack's friend, and gradually, 
 very gradually, I got her to speak of him of the 
 days at Flanerville, of Jack's pretty ways, of his 
 exploits on the plage, or on the Plaisance. It 
 was a somewhat sad ten days that we spent to- 
 gether, steaming down the Red Sea, the arid 
 Arabian mountains fringing the horizon, a gleam- 
 ing sea below, a cloudless sky above. I took 
 her ashore at Aden, to divert her mind a little. 
 We drove out over a desert land to see the 
 famous water-tanks. We bought ostrich feathers 
 in the bazaar, and over the ship's side we threw 
 coppers for the amphibious youth to dive for 
 from their little canoes into the clear water. 
 Then on again. There were still, calm, balmy 
 nights in the Indian Ocean, the Southern Cross 
 shining overhead, and a long wake of phosphores- 
 cence behind, made by the ship's course. Then 
 came the purple ghauts and the lovely palm- 
 fringed Bay of Bombay, and good-bye. No, 
 au revoir. I promised Major Alkirk that I 
 
AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN. 89 
 
 would come and stay with them when I went 
 north. 
 
 I went south first, though, and shot some 
 tigers on foot in Central India, and slew much 
 deer and such small fry, living the while in tents 
 and dak bungalows, or as the guest of various 
 civilians who preserved big game in their districts 
 much as an English landowner preserves phea- 
 sants. 
 
 Colonel Llanover was one of these, an agree- 
 able man about my own age, a thorough sports- 
 man, and an hospitable, if somewhat reserved, 
 host. He was rather solitary in the remote 
 station of Guramabad, having only a couple of 
 European subordinates, and pressed me to stay 
 on, long after my visit was supposed to be at an 
 end. I liked him, though he was so grave, not 
 to say melancholy ; but the black-buck shooting 
 in his district was superb, and I stayed. 
 
 One day I was turning over some of my boxes 
 in search of something, Llanover standing by, 
 when I came suddenly on a photograph of 
 Madame d'Esterre. She had had it done during 
 the few days I spent with her and the Alkirks 
 at Bombay, at my special wish, as a little parting 
 souvenir. It was a beautiful picture, though she 
 looked grave and sad in it, in her dark dress. I 
 
90 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 could not help taking it up for a few mo- 
 ments. Colonel Llanover looked over my 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Good God ! " he gasped. " Where did you 
 get that ? " 
 
 " What ! do you know her ? " I exclaimed. 
 
 " Know her ! know her ! It's my poor Con- 
 stance." 
 
 "You are making some mistake," I rejoined. 
 " This is a friend of mine, Mrs. d'Esterre. She 
 gave it me at Bombay/' 
 
 He looked at the photograph closely. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, but it was so like so 
 like. It gave me a shock for a moment opened 
 an old wound. I thought it was a Miss Alkirk 
 I I used to know." 
 
 "Miss Alkirk," I replied. "Mrs. d'Esterre 
 was a Miss Alkirk ! Can you be thinking of her 
 sister, who died." 
 
 "I am," he rejoined. "Constance Alkirk who 
 who died." 
 
 He turned away, and said no more at the time. 
 But that evening, as we sat smoking after dinner 
 in the verandah, he told me his story. It was 
 getting hot weather, and the night was still and 
 sultry, and intensely dark. All was very silent, 
 save for the distant howl of a jackal or the bark 
 
AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN. 91 
 
 of a pariah dog. It was a short, sad story 
 Colonel Llanover told. 
 
 Constance Alkirk had come out to India, to 
 an uncle, but a few months before the outbreak 
 of the Mutiny. Major Llanover was quartered 
 at the same station. They played croquet to- 
 gether, and danced together, almost every even- 
 ing, for a few weeks, and then they were en- 
 gaged. Then, quite suddenly, like a mighty 
 conflagration, came the great rebellion, scouring 
 all the country. The lovers parted Llanover to 
 his duty in the thickest of the fight before Delhi ; 
 Constance to a place of refuge, which, alas ! 
 turned out to be a means of destruction. Every- 
 one knows the events that followed. A handful 
 of Europeans starved and sickened into sur- 
 render ; the men cut down, the women and 
 children massacred, not a trace of a survivor. 
 That was the story Llanover told. 
 
 He was a rising official now, in a responsible 
 and coveted berth, a man who was making a 
 mark. But, as I looked at his worn, grave face, 
 and thought of the lonely bachelor life he was 
 leading in Guramabad, I realised that all the joy 
 had gone out of his life. 
 
 Next morning I got a letter, brought out by 
 the primitive postal arrangements of the district, 
 
92 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 and carried for miles through forest and plain in 
 a basket on a coolie's back. 
 
 "When are you coming to see us? "wrote 
 Madame d'Esterre, dating from the hill station 
 of Simree. " John has two months' leave, and 
 we are going on a march into the interior of the 
 hills. Come and join us. No civilisation, camp 
 life, lovely scenery, and shooting." 
 
 A few days later found me, after a long, hot, 
 dusty journey over sun-baked plains in rail and 
 post-carriage, mounted on a sturdy hill pony, 
 ascending winding mountain paths, amid shady 
 forests and bawling torrents, to lovely Simree, 
 perched among ilex woods on the mountain side. 
 
 "I am glad you have come," said Mrs. 
 Alkirk privately to me. " You did Florence so 
 much good on board ship.'' 
 
 " You see, I was Jack's friend," I answered, and 
 then told them I had been staying with Colonel 
 Llanover. 
 
 " Ah ! " said John Alkirk, " I should like to see 
 him, for poor Constance's sake ! Letters passed 
 at the time, but we never met. Now we too 
 have come out to India I wish he would come 
 and see us." 
 
 A letter was written to the brother-in-law that 
 was to have been. Llanover answered that no- 
 
AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN. 93 
 
 thing would please him better, and that he would 
 make arrangements to take a month's leave, and 
 follow us, as we marched by easy stages. 
 
 What a motley train we were as we set off 
 from Simree very early that bright April morn- 
 ing upon our nomad expedition. Major Alkirk 
 and myself rode hill ponies, as also did Florence 
 d'Esterre, and wore white pith-helmets, for the 
 sun is hot even in the hills. Mrs. Alkirk was 
 carried, a la Guy Fawkes, in an arm-chair on a 
 pole, yclept a dandy. Servants followed on foot, 
 some ten or twelve among us, the cook shoulder- 
 ing the iron spit with which he roasted. Before 
 and after us toiled troops of coolies, laden with 
 our tents, our camp furniture, and our baggage. 
 Our way lay along narrow mountain paths, 
 dignified by the name of roads, cut out of the 
 hillside, and overhanging the deep gorges. The 
 mountains were richly clothed with ilex and 
 with rhododendrons, bursting here and there in- 
 to scarlet bloom. Ferns of all sorts carpeted the 
 precipices and fringed the branches of the trees. 
 Starting at dawn, we halted for an alfresco break- 
 fast in some shady spot, with a lovely panorama 
 of purple hills stretching, fold after fold, away to 
 China, and, ere the mid-day sun was hot, reached 
 our new camping-ground, where our canvas home 
 
94 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 was rapidly being erected. A lazy afternoon, 
 with perhaps a little shooting of black partridges 
 or pheasants, a bath in a stream, and then dinner 
 in the verandah of the mess-tent, by the light of 
 a great, full moon. 
 
 A pleasant, idle life. For a few days we were 
 very happy. The colour had returned to Florence 
 d'Esterre's cheek and the sparkle to her eye. As 
 for me, true that I was not getting much sport, 
 that game was not so plentiful as it might have 
 been, but I did not care. 
 
 Three cjays after we had started, Colonel 
 Llanover joined us by forced marches. It was 
 an odd meeting, out there in the mountains, of 
 those three, bound by the sacred memory of one 
 long dead. I did not see it, but took myself off, 
 fishing, a few miles away, and did not return till 
 dinner-time. 
 
 When we had been a week away from Simree, 
 Mrs. Alkirk, as caterer, began to hint that our 
 supplies were running short, and that it was ad- 
 visable that we should get to some place where 
 we could replenish them. The tiny villages of 
 mud-huts we had passed through afforded hardly 
 as much as a fowl, much less mutton, white flour, 
 or potatoes. So we descended into rather a 
 wide, low valley, and encamped by the side of a 
 
AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN. 95 
 
 tolerably large and sedate stream. The village 
 looked a good size, and was the summer capital 
 of a small independent Rajah, whose State ran 
 up into the Himalayas from the plains below. 
 The Rajah's palace we were shown, on a solitary 
 rocky mound above the stream, all surrounded 
 by mud-walls. We determined to make a halt 
 there of a few days, and to send back to Simree 
 for letters and newspapers, enjoying in the mean- 
 time the unwonted luxuries of mutton, plantains, 
 and plenty of fresh milk. We caught marseer, 
 too, in the river. 
 
 One evening, after fishing, Llanover and I 
 strolled up the mountain that rose beyond the 
 stream, following a tiny track used by natives or 
 goats. At a turn of the path we came suddenly 
 on two or three coolies attired in the rather 
 shabby and dirty finery which proclaimed them 
 the Rajah's attendants. They were squatting, rest- 
 ing by the path, and near them sat a small boy. 
 He was clothed in a long cloth garment, and his 
 bare feet were thrust into pointed slippers. He 
 had evidently been playing about, for his turban 
 had fallen off, disclosing his dark, closely-cropped 
 hair. He turned and looked at us with curiosity 
 as we approached. I stopped short in the middle 
 of the path, transfixed with astonishment, 
 
96 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 The boy was little Jack come to life again I 
 The same size, the same dark eyes, the same 
 winning expression, despite the difference of 
 dress. 
 
 I rubbed my eyes, bewildered. 
 
 " Whose boy is this ? " I asked the attendants. 
 
 "The late Rajah's son, your Highness," re- 
 plied the slatternly menial, with a salaam. 
 
 " What a strange likeness," I thought to my- 
 self, as the boy walked on in front of me. 
 
 Suddenly I heard a noise and a shriek from 
 one of the servants. On the steep hillside 
 above us a cow or goat had, in grazing, loosened 
 some rocks, and a shower of great stones and 
 boulders came flying down upon us. 
 
 The child either did not hear or heed, but 
 walked on ahead, unconscious of his danger. 
 Then suddenly he stopped, gazing upwards, 
 panic-stricken, as a large boulder bore down 
 towards him with fearful speed. I rushed for- 
 ward, and, seizing the boy, pulled him out of 
 danger into a safe spot. 
 
 When all was quiet again, the servants rushed 
 up, after the manner of their kind, and over- 
 whelmed the child with their attentions. 
 
 When we returned to camp, Llanover related 
 the little incident, But I suppressed all men- 
 
AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN. 97 
 
 tion of the extraordinary likeness I had noticed 
 between the little Rajah and Florence's lost 
 darling. 
 
 As we sat at dinner, however, under the 
 outside awning of our little mess-tent, doing 
 justice to the excellent repast of four courses 
 which Ali Bux, with the magic of a native cook, 
 contrived to send up from the hole in the ground 
 where he was conducting his mysterious culinary 
 operations, we were startled by the arrival of a 
 messenger from the palace on the hill. 
 
 " They had heard white Sahibs had arrived in 
 this place, where white Sahibs came but rarely. 
 The wife of the late Rajah was very ill, was like 
 to die. Had the Sahibs any English medicine? 
 Would they see her ? " 
 
 "lam no Doctor Sahib," explained Colonel 
 Llanover, who took command of the situation, 
 being an excellent Hindoostanee scholar, and 
 having long experience of the country to boot. 
 " What is more, no Rajah's purdah woman would 
 see me, even were she dying." 
 
 " But, Sahib," rejoined the man, " this one is 
 English. She was the late Rajah's favourite 
 wife her he brought from down below when 
 the troubles were on. She is very ill." 
 
 " English !" we exclaimed. 
 
98 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 "Some half-caste girl, no doubt," put in 
 Llanover. " But as doubtless she has a wish 
 to see me, I will go. Bearer, bring my medicine- 
 chest ; I have doctored natives before now." 
 
 I asked permission to accompany him. 
 Armed with a lantern we left the camp, and 
 followed the servant up the hill and through a 
 gateway closed with heavy iron-studded doors. 
 By the dim light we could see we were in a 
 courtyard, out of which opened various small 
 chambers. Opposite to us was a larger building, 
 without doors or windows, but with the openings 
 between the pillars filled in with heavy mats. 
 Through one of these our guide led us. A 
 woman squatting on the ground rose up at our 
 entrance. 
 
 "She sleeps perhaps she will never wake." 
 And she motioned us to a sleeping form on a 
 low bed in a corner. 
 
 But a small figure lying near it, half asleep, on 
 the floor, sat up at our approach. 
 
 "Hullo!" I exclaimed. "This is my little 
 friend of this afternoon," looking down into the 
 sleepy dark eyes he was rubbing. 
 
 The sleeping woman stirred. 
 
 " Who's speaking ? " she asked, faintly, 
 
 Llanover went up to her. 
 
AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN. 99 
 
 " I hear English. Jack, where are you ?" 
 
 The child went and curled up beside her. She 
 threw her arm around him. 
 
 " Jack! Jack! you mustn't go far from mummy. 
 You won't have her long ! " 
 
 " Mummy go sleep again. Jack go sleep, too," 
 murmured the boy, dozing again. 
 
 Llanover put out his hand and felt her pulse. 
 
 " I am the Doctor Sahib," he said, gently. 
 " Tell me where you feel pain." 
 
 To our intense surprise, the sick woman gave 
 a great start. Her eyes opened wide ; she sat 
 up and stared at him. The native behind, holding 
 the lantern, shed a light on her white face and 
 glittering dark eyes. 
 
 Llanover started back, and then looked at her, 
 transfixed. There was a silence of some 
 minutes, broken only by the heavy breathing of 
 the sleeping child. 
 
 Then she stretched out her arms. 
 
 " Edward ! You have come at last ! " 
 
 "Constance! Is it you?" he asked, in a 
 choked voice. 
 
 Then I slipped out of the chamber, through 
 the courtyard, and went and fetched Florence 
 and her brother. 
 
 They had met, however, but to be parted. 
 
ioo IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 Years of grief and anxiety, of shame and of 
 semi-captivity, had told upon Constance. She 
 did not live many days. But she sent for me, 
 ere she died, to thank me. 
 
 " You saved my Jack's life," she gasped, pain- 
 fully. " But for that, I should never have known 
 that you all, Edward, the others were here 
 so near." 
 
 We buried her under an ilex tree, on a 
 lonely spur above the village, within sight 
 of the far-off snows. I read the Burial Service 
 over her, and we placed a cross above her 
 grave. 
 
 Then we turned home again, back from our 
 gipsy expedition which had ended so strangely 
 and so sadly. 
 
 We were to start before dawn, taking Jack 
 with us, as the Rajah's people had handed us 
 over the boy. Florence and I and he sat to- 
 gether, taking a last farewell of his mother's 
 grave. The sun had just set, and the mighty 
 snow range above the forest -clad heights was 
 glowing with an unearthly pink. 
 
 "Jack got no mummy now," murmured the 
 child, sadly. 
 
 " Auntie will be your mummy," cried Florence, 
 with a sob, clasping him in her arms. 
 
AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN. 101 
 
 "Jack," I said, bending over him, "ask auntie 
 if I may be your father, then ? " 
 
 Florence raised to me a face smiling through 
 her tears, and glowing rosy like the rose. 
 
 I kissed it. 
 
port in a Dust-storm : 
 
 A TRUE STORY. 
 
 -- o-: 
 
 " Don't you hear the general say, 
 1 Strike your tents and march away ! ' 
 M a rch m arch march march march 
 
 march-march, 
 Ma-arch ma-arch, march away ! " 
 
 THE bugle-call to which British soldiers have 
 set the above refrain was being sounded on the 
 fifes as the players marched about the camp, and, 
 ringing out sharp and shrill into the darkness, 
 startled me into something like wakefulness. 
 
 But one sleeps sound under canvas, and I 
 must have dropped off again, for the next thing 
 I heard was my bearer's muttered expostulations 
 and entreaties as he tried to rouse me. 
 
 I dozed again. It was not very unnatural, for 
 it was but two o'clock in the morning. 1 seemed 
 only just to have gone to bed. 
 
 The bearer gave it up, and tried in despair 
 another manoeuvre. I heard the rattle of a tea- 
 
 cup and saucer close to my ear, combined with 
 102 
 
ANT PORT IN A DUST-STORM. 103 
 
 a piteous entreaty that "he had brought his 
 highness's tea. Would the Defender of the Poor 
 deign to drink it?" 
 
 But other words, in a somewhat surly, but truly 
 British, tone, mingling with the Hindoostanee 
 whine, roused me completely. 
 
 " Ugh ! Ain't it just jolly cold ! " 
 
 " Blessed if it ain't fun a-waitin' 'ere till 'e 
 chooses to git up ! " And there followed a 
 stamping of feet and a rubbing of hands. 
 
 I was thus made aware that the fatigue-party 
 were without their hands on the guy-ropes, 
 ready to bring down my canvas house about my 
 ears. 
 
 I sprang up, allowed old Kodar Bux to clothe 
 me, and buckling on my sword, emerged into 
 the open. 
 
 It was dark, and starlight, and intensely cold. 
 Great fires, made of the straw which had served 
 for the men's bedding, lit up with a lurid glare 
 the dark canopy of mango-trees forming the 
 grove under which we were encamped, and illu- 
 mined the hurrying figures, clad in every variety 
 of uniform and costume, which flitted about the 
 scene. Here and there were faintly discernible 
 the dim outlines of some huge elephant or camel 
 or kicking mule, unwilling to be loaded. Shouts, 
 
104 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 cries, orders, filled the air, mingling with the 
 groaning of the camels and the neighing and 
 shrieking of horses and mules. 
 
 The instant I had left my tent, Kodar Bux 
 and his coadjutors dragged the few articles of 
 furniture it contained out on to the ground. 
 With the speed, almost, of a conjuring trick, the 
 little camp-bed collapsed, the bedding was rolled 
 up into a bundle, a change came over the shape 
 of the chair, table, and washstand, and the whole 
 was thrown up on to the top of the bullock-cart 
 laden with trunks which stood awaiting it, the 
 pile being surmounted by the kettle which had 
 boiled my cup of tea. The said cup was stuffed 
 into a kilter (or wicker basket, such as hiilmen, 
 both in Switzerland and in the Himalayas, carry 
 on their backs), and the vehicle creaked and 
 rumbled off, Kodar Bux in the rear. 
 
 But I had not waited to see the completion of 
 this desolation. My place was in the lines, 
 among the tents of my company, where all was 
 bustle and apparent confusion. Each man, how- 
 ever, knew his place and his work. We had 
 been many days already on the march, and this 
 sort of thing had gone on every morning. The 
 non-commissioned officers hurried from one 
 group to another, urging, finding fault, hurrying 
 
ANY PORT IN A DUST-STORM. 105 
 
 and abusing the drabbles (natives) in charge of 
 the mules and camels, for the latter alone seemed 
 to know no discipline. 
 
 The camels, ranged with heads turned inwards 
 in a vast half-circle just outside the camping- 
 ground, were moaning and bubbling in anticipa- 
 tion of the heavy tents in store for them to carry, 
 and the mules were kicking and screaming and 
 breaking loose, while the men tried to load their 
 rolls of kits on to them, one on each side the 
 pack-saddle. Mules always seemed possessed. 
 
 The stars had waned, and a greyness was 
 breaking, in the eastern horizon, over the wide 
 plain, ere the tents were cleared and everything 
 packed. 
 
 Then suddenly, and apparently unexpectedly, 
 a G was sounded by the bugler standing in the 
 middle of the camp. 
 
 The conjurer would not have been in it this 
 time. As if by magic, at that sound the white 
 village of canvas fell suddenly to the ground ; 
 where the neat line of tents had stood a moment 
 before, were only billowy folds of white, with 
 which the soldiers were struggling. 
 
 Another half-hour, however, and all was over. 
 In the road that ran white and dusty in the 
 grey morning light along one side of the mango- 
 
106 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 grove, the regiment was falling in for parade, the 
 band at their head. 
 
 The men hurried past me, not sorry to march 
 off at a quick pace through the cold, crisp air. 
 But I was left behind, for I was on baggage- 
 guard, and left lamenting, stamping up and down 
 to warm myself, with the collar of my cloak up. 
 
 I heard the orders given, passing from com- 
 pany to company. The band struck up, and the 
 regiment moved off ; the colonel, on his old grey 
 Arab, riding on one side, in front. 
 
 My duty, as in charge of the baggage-guard, 
 was to see all the baggage animals off the ground, 
 and to leave it clear and clean. But, even when 
 the regiment had departed, this was by no means 
 easy. The crows, indeed, impudent and fearless, 
 after the nature of crows in India, began to 
 return to their customary haunts in the mango- 
 trees above, on the look-out for pickings. From 
 a collection of mud hovels hard by, yclept a vil- 
 lage, appeared the ryot and his progeny, on the 
 same errand as the crows. But some of the 
 baggage animals remained. 
 
 The mule-trains, tethered head to head, ambled 
 off gradually, with here and there a halt and a 
 skirmish between man and beast, accompanied 
 by flying kits and boxes, and much loss of 
 
ANY PORT IN A DUST-STORM. 107 
 
 temper. The camels, loaded with tents, had been 
 bidden to rise. This they had done with the 
 noisy expostulations and grumblings with which 
 a camel always gets through his work. Then 
 they, too, had shambled off, tied head to tail, the 
 rolls of tents swaying on their horny sides, and 
 their great evil-looking heads and legs swinging 
 about, on the watch for a bite or a kick. 
 
 But the elephants had not started. It was 
 growing late, and time to be off. It was nearly 
 broad daylight, and getting warmer. Tempera- 
 ture changes rapidly in India, even in the cold 
 weather, and in not many hours it would be un- 
 pleasantly hot. 
 
 What was the cause of the delay, I inquired ? 
 I found it was one " Lord Canning/' an elephant, 
 who had come into camp the evening before with 
 the commissariat supply of bread, and who was 
 " bobbery " that is to say, vicious. 
 
 " Lord Canning " was a very fine-looking 
 animal, nearly twelve feet high, and stood waving 
 his trunk in a very self-satisfied manner; but I 
 must say that I did not relish the look in his eye. 
 It appeared his mahout had fallen ill, and had to 
 go back, and he did not know or like his new 
 one. 
 
 Everyone was for giving him a wide berth, for 
 
io8 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 allowing that ugly trunk of his full play, and for 
 awaiting his pleasure till he should choose to 
 stalk on after the other great beasts of the com- 
 missariat train, who had gone down the road. 
 
 But I could not wait any longer for my lord, 
 so, collecting my guard, we proceeded to clear 
 the camping-ground. The last I saw of " Lord 
 Canning" he was waddling off under the trees, 
 trumpeting and rattling the chains, which, in case 
 it might be necessary to secure him, had been 
 put round his hind legs. 
 
 A short time after, I and my little band 
 emerged from the shadow of the grove, and 
 marched off after the rest. 
 
 Though it was now daylight, the atmosphere 
 was dim and heavy. The stars had all gone, but 
 there was no sign of sunrise generally such a 
 gorgeous spectacle in tropical lands. 
 
 Instead, there was a dark bank of cloud, dark 
 with a darkness other than of departing night, 
 which was crowding up the northern horizon. 
 As I looked, it seemed as though it was bearing 
 down upon us. 
 
 " Looks as though we shall have a storm ! " I 
 remarked to the corporal. 
 
 " Perhaps we'll get on to coffee-shop before 
 it breaks, sir," was the rejoinder. 
 
ANY PORT IN A DUST-STORM. 109 
 
 Coffee-shop is the longed-for halt on the early 
 morning march, where a native caterer, seated 
 in the ditch at a half-way spot, doles out hot 
 coffee, chuppatties, and cheese, to the hungry 
 soldier, who has yet some miles to trudge ere he 
 gets his breakfast. 
 
 The men stepped out. But the clouds gained 
 on us. They got redder as they approached, with 
 a lurid glow, which spread as thick as a London 
 fog on the distant landscape, and blotted it out. 
 
 Then, on the still, morning air, there burst, with 
 an awful suddenness, a soughing and a sighing 
 of the wind, springing from no one knew where. 
 
 It grew and grew, louder and louder. With it 
 came that bank of cloud, haze, or fog, whatever 
 you like to term it. 
 
 Then it burst upon us. It was sand fine, 
 driving, pelting sand and dust, which swept into 
 our eyes and mouths and lungs, as if it would 
 blind and stifle us. 
 
 And with it came a darkness which literally 
 might be felt. No one could see his hand before 
 him. Soldiers, officers, natives, baggage-animals, 
 and bullock-waggons stopped dead short where 
 they stood. 
 
 The wind roared overhead. Everyone sought 
 for shelter of some kind, or else lay flat on his 
 
i io IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 face. I was in luck. I felt something hard and 
 solid on my left hand. I felt again it seemed 
 high. 
 
 " Evidently the mud wall of some field/ 1 I 
 thought, and crouched under it eagerly. 
 
 To my delight I found myself protected to 
 a certain extent from the storm, though I was 
 still in utter darkness. The wind was strong, 
 too ; it whizzed past my head every now and 
 then, and at last it swept off my helmet, and 
 whirled it into unknown space. 
 
 But I sat under my mud wall, complacently 
 feeling myself better off than most people. 
 
 Something dark blew past my face. In the dim 
 light it seemed like the falling branch of a tree, 
 and I congratulated myself still further on my 
 cosy nook. 
 
 How long the storm lasted I cannot tell. It 
 seemed an age. But it departed as suddenly as 
 it came. 
 
 The air grew clearer and lighter to breathe. 
 Objects in front became indistinctly visible. I 
 could see I was sitting on the dusty roadside. 
 Turning to look on one side, my bare head 
 rested for a moment against the wall at my back. 
 I started. It was warm ! I turned round and 
 looked at it. It was black/ I jumped up 
 
ANY PORT IN A DUST-STORM. 1 1 1 
 
 and looked up. It was an elephant, kneeling 
 down, against which I had been sitting ; I looked 
 again, and caught his eye his wicked eye ! 
 
 There was no mistaking it, " Lord Canning " 
 had been my shelter my mud wall ! 
 
 The alacrity with which I sprang away from 
 the resting-place I had so much appreciated, may 
 be better imagined than described. I only felt 
 safe when I found myself well out of reach of that 
 wicked waving trunk. 
 
 " That was the wind ! " I said to myself, as I 
 picked up my helmet. " That was the falling 
 branch ! Well, I'm very thankful it was not 
 myself he picked up and threw about ! " And 
 I had reason to be. 
 
'e Ifturse, 
 
 H.M. TROOPSHIP Alligator had her steam up 
 off Portsmouth jetty, ready to start for Bom- 
 bay. Already, the day before, frequent special 
 trains had gorged her with troops, who now 
 swarmed, almost unrecognisable as soldiers, in 
 sea suits of blue serge and stocking-caps, over 
 her tiers of decks, and peered out of the hun- 
 dreds of port-holes in her white sides. 
 
 The jetty was crowded with spectators some 
 idly curious, some on business, some tearful ; but 
 the farewells had mostly been said at the garri- 
 son towns, whence the embarking troops came. 
 
 On the deck, the band of the regiment made 
 the chill autumn air ring with " The Girl I Left 
 Behind Me," " Auld Langsyne," and other cheer- 
 ful melodies. 
 
 The quarter-deck was crowded with officers 
 in uniform, and ladies. The fair " Southsea 
 Islander " was there in force. The arrival or 
 departure of a troopship is always a field-day 
 
 112 
 
MRS. NE YLE'S NURSE. 1 1 3 
 
 with her. She was bidding tender farewells to 
 departing "cousins," who would probably be 
 forgotten and replaced in a fortnight. Such is 
 life by the waters of the Solent. Quarter- 
 masters, generals, and similar brass-hatted 
 officials were fussing about, the ship's officers on 
 duty emulating them in activity, while those 
 unemployed were strolling about with shore 
 friends, or taking mental stock of the new con- 
 signment of passengers, whose society they were 
 to endure for the next month. After all, the 
 ship was their's their home ; and they resented, 
 somewhat, the soldier-officers taking possession 
 of it as if it belonged to them, and looking on 
 that awe-inspiring personage, the post-captain in 
 command, as if he were no more than the man- 
 ager of a Government military hotel. But of 
 friction between the two services on board a 
 troopship there is no end, and never will be. 
 
 At last the great hawsers were unfastened and 
 the gangway removed. The Alligator was only 
 connected with England by a narrow plank. 
 Then, imperceptibly, her mighty screw began to 
 churn the waters, and gradually to make its vibra- 
 tions felt throughout its length and breadth. Deaf- 
 ening cheers from the soldiers lining the deck, 
 bulwarks, and even the rigging, drowned the clang 
 
ii4 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 of the band, and re-echoed over the dockyard, 
 even across to the breezy common. The Alli- 
 gator was off, with her cargo of sixteen hun- 
 dred souls. Some of these, fleeing from debts 
 and misery, and, perhaps, even crime, were only 
 too glad to cut themselves adrift from their 
 native land. But over most there passed at 
 least a vague feeling of sadness. Some had 
 parted with all that life held dear to them had 
 severed ties that would never be reknit. Even 
 the most hardened, the most frivolous among 
 the men were silent, and nearly all the hundred 
 or so of women-folk wiped their eyes. 
 
 No one, perhaps, was more sorry for himself 
 than Captain the Honourable Jack Wilderton, 
 of the Queen's Own Sharpshooters, as, clad in 
 the sombre dark-green uniform which has earned 
 for the Queen's the sobriquet of "the sweeps/ 
 he cocked his brimless forage-cap a shade more 
 on one side of his close-cropped, head, and lit a 
 cigarette. It did seem such deuced hard lines 
 that one fellow should be born heir to a title and 
 thousands, and another fellow, his brother, only 
 a year or two younger, should have to scratch 
 along in a perpetual state of hard-uppishness, on 
 three or four paltry hundreds. Why, Jack asked 
 himself bitterly, had they both been brought up 
 
MRS. NEYLE'S NURSE. 115 
 
 in the same way, both allowed to run bills at 
 Eton, both trained to look upon horses, pheasants, 
 yachts, and society, as necessary adjuncts of 
 life? 
 
 Poor Jack! he had been so happy in his 
 regiment, he had found life so good at Aldershot 
 (so convenient for town, you know) ; and now a 
 stern parent had absolutely refused to pay up 
 again on any consideration whatsoever, and had 
 forced Jack into exchanging into the other 
 battalion in India. No wonder he pitied Jiimself 
 exceedingly ! 
 
 Two days later, the Alligator had passed 
 through that horrid Bay, and had sighted the 
 cliffs of Spain. All who were ever going to do 
 so had got over their sea-sickness, and were be- 
 ginning to " take notice," as nurses say of babies. 
 Friendships and enmities had been formed, so 
 had whist-parties. There had, of course, been 
 the inevitable fire-alarm, on the first afternoon at 
 sea, which drilled both soldiers and sailors into 
 their positions and duties in the event of such a 
 catastrophe, while it scared the women-folk 
 almost out of their sea-sickness. Life, both 
 naval and military, was running on oiled wheels. 
 The poor pestered paymaster breathed again, 
 for peace even reigned in the saloon and in the 
 
u6 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 ladies' cabin. Everyone appeared to have done 
 grumbling about the berths assigned them, and 
 as, with departing sea-sickness, came returning 
 appetites, everyone found less fault with the 
 menus provided. Even the captains, who, 
 "neither fish nor fowl nor good red-herring," 
 are forbidden to use either the field-officers' bath 
 or the one shared by the naval officers and sub- 
 alterns, had had their ablutionary wants satis- 
 factorily attended to. But, if the paymaster 
 counted upon repose, he had reckoned without 
 the nursery. There, in eleven berths, were 
 packed seventeen souls, mothers and nurses 
 children and infants, with one bath and two wash- 
 stands in the adjoining dressing-room between 
 them all, and two port-hole windows. Talk of 
 the clftture discussions, they were as nothing com- 
 pared with the wordy war which raged between 
 Mrs. Major Bosbury, who occupied the top 
 berth facing one of the windows in question, in 
 company with her two infants, aged one and 
 two years, and Mrs. Neyle's nurse, who slept in 
 the berth underneath the said window, with that 
 lady's little girl. Now, as everyone knows, in a 
 berth well underneath, though close to, an open 
 port-hole, you get no air whatever, while in one 
 some distance off the opening, but on a level 
 
MRS. NEYLE'S X URSE. 1 1 7 
 
 with it, you are fanned as if with a perpetual 
 punkah. It will be thus at once perceived that 
 the question was a delicate one. Mrs. Major 
 Bosbury got the ship's doctor, who knew nothing 
 whatever about children, to say that the night 
 air of the Mediterranean was harmful to her 
 babes. Mrs. Neyle and her nurse induced the 
 medical officer in charge of the troops to lay 
 down the law that seventeen souls boxed up in 
 a cabin twelve feet by eighteen need some ven- 
 tilation. The paymaster, like the speaker, had 
 to call everyone to order, and to close the dis- 
 cussion. This he did somewhat in favour of 
 Mrs. Neyle's nurse, a very pretty, nice-mannered 
 girl, by decreeing that the window should re- 
 main partially open. 
 
 But Mrs. Bosbury had her revenge. Two 
 days later all the ladies instinctively drew their 
 virtuous garments about them, and turned up 
 their moral noses (including little Mrs. Frayle, 
 the grass-widow) when they met Mrs. Neyle's 
 nurse on the companion. She was boycotted and 
 sent to Coventry in the nursery. No one would 
 turn on the bath for her, as they came out of it, 
 to save time, or give her a hand with Queenie, 
 who was fractious. At the children's meals, in 
 the saloon, no one spoke to her, and she and 
 
iiS IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 Queen ie might have starved, but for the re- 
 doubled attention of the waiters. Upstairs, on 
 deck, where a space had been netted out for the 
 children to play about in to keep them from 
 inundating the ship, if the unfortunate domestic 
 sat down on a bench, the other nurses, even 
 soldiers' wives temporarily acting as such, would 
 get up and leave it. A ship is a perfect hotbed 
 of gossip, people have so little to talk about. 
 Therefore there was chuckling in the smoking- 
 room and in the ladies' cabin, and at that noisy 
 dinner-table where the jovial second lieutenant 
 reigned, when it was bruited about that Mrs. 
 Bosbury had caught Captain Neyle kissing his 
 pretty nurse on the companion after " lights 
 out," in flagrant defiance of the order hung up 
 there, which enjoins " officers and ladies not to 
 loiter on the companion." 
 
 Of course it must be true, all the occupants of 
 the nursery averred ; for the delinquent was in 
 the habit of coming to bed so late that she dis- 
 turbed everybody. None took the trouble to 
 notice that her mistress seemed to share her 
 predilection for late hours. 
 
 Stewards have sharp ears, especially when 
 they are told off to a table so bristling with fun 
 and good stories as the second lieutenant's. Thus 
 
MBS. NEYLE'S NURSE. 1 19 
 
 it happened that Captain Wilderton, lingering 
 late on deck one night, and pausing to throw 
 away his cigar near the pantry entrance to the 
 saloon, heard a scuffle and a woman's suppressed 
 scream. An amatory steward, who had been 
 pestering Mrs. Neyle's nurse with gastronomic 
 attentions at meals, had lain in wait for her as 
 she went past the pantry to bed, and had en- 
 deavoured to imitate Captain Neyle's example. 
 
 Jack chivalrously interposed to assist beauty 
 in distress. The steward slunk away to the 
 lowermost region in the third deck, where his 
 kind are located. But, to Jack's embarrassment, 
 the pretty nurse burst into tears so hysterical, 
 that he could do no more, and, indeed, was loth 
 to do less, than lead her to the stern-locker at 
 the end of the saloon, and endeavour to console 
 her. It was very dim there, as only one lamp 
 is allowed in the saloon at night ; yet, before 
 they had sat many seconds on the locker, and 
 Jack had heard her story amid her sobs, he was 
 gazing into her face with intense surprise. 
 Another few seconds, and he had Arisen, and was 
 standing before her, his habitual self-possession 
 entirely fled, and was apologising profusely. 
 She held out her hand in sign of forgiveness, 
 and, at a sound of footsteps coming up from 
 
120 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 below, hurried off to her cabin. Jack involun- 
 tarily lifted his cap to her as she left him. 
 
 Six months later, Captain Wilderton was re- 
 turning from a shooting trip in a remote valley 
 in Cashmere, laden with trophies of his chase. 
 As he debouched with his coolies, tents, and 
 followers into a little " riant " green valley, from 
 over a mountain pass, he found the white tents 
 of a European encampment already in possession 
 of the ground. A child, whose face seemed 
 familiar, was playing with some servants on the 
 banks of a stream, and, as he approached, two 
 ladies emerged from one of the tents. 
 
 There was an instant of mutual amazement, 
 followed by one of recognition. Then' the 
 younger lady laughed, and held out her hand. 
 
 " You remember me, Captain Wilderton I am 
 Mrs. Neyle's nurse ! " 
 
 Her companion came forward. 
 
 " Captain Wilderton, I can introduce you pro- 
 perly now. This is my husband's sister ! " 
 
 Now, there was no game, not even a black par- 
 tridge, in all that " riant " valley. Yet Wilderton 
 set up his tents alongside the Neyles', and abode 
 with them as long as they remained there. Then, 
 when they marched again, he marched with 
 them, cheerfully sacrificing his sport ; and it was 
 
MRS. NEYLE'S NUESE. 121 
 
 only the expiration of his leave that induced 
 him to quit them and Cashmere. 
 
 Not long afterwards, the English newspapers 
 were full of that sad accident in the Highlands, 
 where Lord Wilderton's eldest son accidently 
 shot himself, and died on a lonely moor ; and 
 the Indian papers announced the appointment, 
 as A.D.C. to the Commander-in-Chief, of Cap- 
 tain Wilderton of the 7th Sharpshooters. 
 
 Mrs. Major Bosbury took a house at Simla 
 the ensuing hot weather. Soon after her arrival, 
 to her intense delight, for she dearly loved 
 associating with the great in the land, she 
 received a big card inviting her to one of the 
 Commander-in-Chiefs dinners. One A.D.C. 
 received her in the hall ; another armed her 
 into the drawing-room and presented her to His 
 Excellency. Then a third came forward. 
 
 " How do you do, Mrs. Bosbury ? Think 
 we've met before on the Alligator. I think 
 you know my wife ? " 
 
 Mrs. Bosbury found herself confronted by a 
 pretty woman in a smart frock and good 
 diamonds. 
 
 " Don't you remember me, Mrs. Bosbury ? " 
 she murmured, sweetly. "I was Mrs. Neyle's 
 nurse." 
 
face in tbe fountain. 
 
 ONE of the earliest of my childhood's recollec- 
 tions is of old Lady Vantreddert's drawing-room 
 at The Honeysuckles, a little cottage " ornee," in 
 the village of which my father was rector. 
 Everything in the room was of a bygone age, 
 and a faint odour of pot-pourri pervaded the 
 air. Over the mantelpiece there hung the sword 
 and the faded sash of the late Sir Henry Van- 
 treddert, while a daguerreotype of the departed 
 general occupied the post of honour on the side 
 table between a Bombay workbox and a model 
 of the Taj at Agra under a glass case. 
 
 Otherwise, all The Honeysuckles was full of 
 mementoes of their only child " Dear Harry," 
 as we called him in the village. There were 
 pictures of Harry in long curls, of Harry in 
 petticoats, of Harry in knickerbockers, Harry in 
 sailor suits, Harry in his first uniform. Harry's 
 old hat hung in the tiny hall, his discarded walk- 
 ing-sticks and whips made a brave show on the 
 
 122 
 
THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN. 123 
 
 wall. One would not have been surprised to 
 come across his ulster on a peg, or his umbrella 
 in the umbrella stand. Harry's bedroom was 
 much the same as the day he left it, with old 
 pipes and railway novels, tennis bats and boxing- 
 gloves strewn about, just as if he were expected 
 home to-morrow. 
 
 Which was very far from being the case. 
 Harry was thousands of miles away, carving out 
 his fortune with his sword, in India, as his father 
 had done before him ; and his mother's heart had 
 to subsist on the long letters which, I am bound 
 to say, he sent home with most filial regularity. 
 They were nice, frank, cheery letters, with an 
 undercurrent of affection for his mother running 
 unmistakably through them : I often wondered 
 if Harry ever guessed for how large a share of 
 the epistles the village came in, in the pride of 
 his mother's heart. Perhaps he would not have 
 cared for it very much, had he known. 
 
 One day Indian mail day we were alarmed 
 at breakfast by a message to my father that 
 Lady Vantreddert begged he would come up as 
 soon as possible, as she very much wished to see 
 him. 
 
 " Was her ladyship ill ? " my father asked the 
 servant, anxiously. 
 
124 IN- TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " Not at all," replied the old man. " It's a 
 letter from Master Harry," he added, with a 
 smile. Harry was " Master Harry " still at The 
 Honeysuckles, though he was top of the lieuten- 
 ants now. 
 
 "Perhaps, Ethel," said my father, with a 
 meaning smile, " you will run on ahead of me, 
 and tell Lady Vantreddert that I will come 
 directly I have written a letter for the early 
 post." 
 
 I ran up, nothing loth in one's early teens 
 one is delighted to be of importance. 
 
 Lady Vantreddert sat up in bed, the familiar, 
 well-.covered, thin letter spread on the bed before 
 her. She looked rather scared. 
 
 ' Oh ! my dear child ! " she exclaimed, " I'm 
 so glad to see someone! Something has hap- 
 pened." 
 
 She held out a little miniature, one of those 
 miniatures done on ivory by the native artists at 
 Delhi. It was the head of a sweet-looking, fair- 
 haired girl. The artist had certainly caught the 
 colouring and complexion, if the expression was 
 a trifle insipid. I felt relieved as I looked at it. 
 I was afraid something had gone wrong with 
 " Dear Harry." 
 
 " Who's this, Lady Vantreddert ? J: I asked. 
 
THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN. 125 
 
 " It's her Gerta pronounced Yerta, he says 
 mother was a Swede that's why she's so fair 
 Oh, dear, dear ! to think of it all, a boy like that ' 
 
 " Harry a boy, Lady Vantreddert ! Why, you 
 told me the other day he was just double my 
 age, and I'm thirteen ! " 
 
 " Tut ! tut ! tut ! he'll always be a boy to me 
 my boy as long as I live, you know. But 
 who would have thought it ? But yet I might 
 have expected it it's but natural, it is ! " And 
 she wiped her eyes, till I got frightened again, 
 and asked : 
 
 " But Harry's all right, isn't he, Lady Vantred- 
 dert ? " 
 
 " As well and as happy overflowing with 
 happiness. You shall hear how he writes what 
 he says about her about Gerta." 
 
 Now, I never was very sentimental, and, at 
 thirteen, not so at all. To this day I remember 
 how bored I became by the reading of " Dear 
 Harry's" effusions, honest and warm-hearted 
 though they were, over his lady-love. For his 
 lady-love, she of the miniature was. 
 
 " 'Dear Harry's' all right enough," I remarked, 
 scornfully, after I had been relieved by my 
 father, and had gone home ; " he's only going to 
 be married, mamma." 
 
126 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 The excitement of this portentous news lasted 
 The Honeysuckles some time. Just as it was 
 cooling down other news came, and of a very 
 different type. 
 
 It was nothing less than the news of the out- 
 break of the Indian Mutiny, flashed by the 
 remorseless cable. Father saw the telegram 
 first, and sent mother up to The Honeysuckles 
 to break it to Lady Vantreddert. Mother re- 
 mained there all day, and it was a little while 
 before I saw Lady Vantreddert again. All the 
 agonising telegrams filtered through my parents 
 to the poor, anxious mother, round whose one 
 pet lamb, shut up in the fort at Guramghur, a 
 herd of merciless black demons in human form 
 were raging. It was a miserable summer at 
 The Honeysuckles, that of '57. Child as I was, 
 I can remember the gloom which seemed to 
 darken the gay little rose-covered cottage, and 
 which was felt through the whole village. 
 
 The news got worse. There was no sign or 
 letter from Harry. We knew Guramghur had 
 been relieved ; we had seen his name among 
 those of the garrison who were rescued. He 
 was alive, so why did he not write or telegraph, 
 when he must have known what a state his poor 
 mother must have been in on his account ? 
 
THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN. 127 
 
 At last came a wire, not from him, but about 
 him. It was signed by a surgeon-major at the 
 hospital of some place which we had none of us 
 ever heard of. 
 
 " Vantreddert has been ill is better sails 
 for home in Shanghai, September 9th." 
 
 Words cannot describe Lady Vantreddert's 
 relief and delight. It almost seemed too much 
 for her to hear, after all these months of torture, 
 that her darling was safe ; nay, more, that he 
 was returning to her ! Unexpected bliss ! 
 
 " I didn't, of course, say anything to the poor 
 soul to damp her joy, but I think it's odd they 
 send him home if he's better. There's plenty of 
 work to be done yet, hunting down these fiends." 
 
 My mother agreed with my father. But no 
 forebodings of any kind crossed Lady Van- 
 treddert's mind. Her boy was better, and was 
 coming home. She could think and talk of 
 nothing else. We watched in the paper the 
 homeward voyage of the Shanghai, bearing its 
 precious burden. We allowed so many hours 
 for the passage across the desert (it was before 
 the days of the Suez Canal), and we watched 
 the embarkation of mails and passengers at 
 Alexandria for Southampton. As the vessel 
 became due, our excitement was beyond every- 
 
128 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 thing. Lady Vantreddert was too much over- 
 come to be able to think of driving into Barmin- 
 ster to meet her son when we got a wire telling us 
 to expect him. My mother sat with her at The 
 Honeysuckles, and my father drove off in his 
 parsonical waggonette to Barminster station. I 
 accompanied him, all agog to see "Dear Harry," 
 whom I had been too young to remember. 
 
 On our way through the village we saw the 
 brass band collecting at .the cross-roads to play 
 the conquering hero home ; and the old gar- 
 dener had erected a triumphal arch over the 
 little gate leading into the garden. 
 
 " Tall slim very active cheery," I repeated 
 to myself, my father's description of the ex- 
 pected one, as I sat on the box of the wag- 
 gonette, holding the horse, and watched the 
 passengers emerge from the station. 
 
 There was no one that fitted the description. 
 Women with children, women with many small 
 parcels, an old man or two, an invalid helped 
 along by an attendant, a few country bumpkins, 
 a few towny-looking clerks but no one who 
 looked at all like a smart, slim soldier, a re- 
 turned hero. 
 
 I became despairing. My father came out 
 dejected. 
 
THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN. 129 
 
 " There's some mistake. Harry's not come 
 by this train." 
 
 It was most disappointing. We drove home 
 silently. In front of us, some way ahead, a fly 
 dragged its slow course along. We were im- 
 mensely surprised, as we turned the corner, to 
 see it pulling up at the gate of The Honey- 
 suckles. 
 
 "It must be he, and we have overlooked 
 him ! " cried my father ; and he jumped down 
 and ran up to the fly, leaving me to drive after 
 him. 
 
 When I reached the gate I saw a man in the 
 fly. He was neither young nor old, neither fair 
 nor grizzled a little of all. He had a vacant, 
 vague look, and a broad grin on his face. 
 
 At the fly-door stood a rather stern-faced, 
 smooth-shaven man, evidently persuading the 
 other to alight. 
 
 " I don't want to get out Let me alone. 
 He! he! he! Oh ! don't ! You hurt me!" And 
 he looked as if he were going to cry. 
 
 My father, pale as death, interposed. 
 
 " For God's sake ! let him wait a minute, 
 while I go in and prepare them. Ethel," he 
 called back to me, "drive back and stop the 
 
 band!" 
 
 i 
 
130 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 I was glad enough to get away. The grin- 
 ning, jabbering thing in the fly frightened me. 
 
 It did not kill her quite, the poor mother, this 
 dreadful home-coming. 
 
 " My boy has come back to me, indeed," she 
 told my mother, with pitiful resignation, after a 
 few days " come back to me again, like a little 
 child ; so it has pleased God ! " 
 
 Whether it was the fever or the sunstroke or 
 the horrors of that siege, something had turned 
 the poor brain, and, apparently, forever. He 
 recognised no one, he did not remember the 
 place or the house. He seemed to forget every- 
 thing as fast as it was said, and to be unable to 
 carry on any continuous thought. Yet he was 
 gentle and manageable, and always loving to 
 his poor mother, the only person he seemed to 
 recognise. 
 
 u If he had not known me," she sobbed one 
 day to my mother, " it would have killed me out- 
 right. But now I must bear up and live for him, 
 and tend him as long as I am able." 
 
 I soon got over my alarm of poor Harry, who 
 seemed to like to be with me. It was like talk- 
 ing to a big, overgrown child. 
 
 One day, however, I had a great fright. 
 
 Lady Vantreddert had asked me to look for 
 
THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN. 131 
 
 something in her desk in her bedroom. Whilst 
 I was doing so, Harry wandered in, and began 
 watching me in his vague way. 
 
 Suddenly I came across the miniature of Gerta 
 I had seen that morning, which seemed so long 
 ago, on Lady Vantreddert's bed. 
 
 Harry noticed it too, and for a second or two 
 in silence. Then he clasped his head with his 
 hand, as if making some mighty mental effort, 
 and a marvellous change came over his face. 
 His eyes flashed, his breast heaved, and he looked 
 more sane than I had ever seen him. 
 
 " Oh ! my God ! my God ! it is she. It is 
 Gerta my lost Gerta," he cried, passionately 
 pressing the picture to his lips. "Ah ! if I knew 
 that she was lost was dead ! She is lost to me ! 
 If I only knew she were at rest ! To think those 
 sweet lips that pretty face should be the sport 
 the toy of that incarnate fiend ! My God ! 
 it is too much " 
 
 He sank exhausted on the bed in a paroxysm 
 of grief. 
 
 Years passed by. I had married and left the 
 village, in the churchyard of which Lady Vant- 
 reddert and her poor boy had been long at rest. 
 I had married a soldier, and in the natural course 
 
132 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 of things found myself with my husband in 
 India. Jim is an enthusiastic sportsman, and 
 likes me to accompany him on his shooting ex- 
 peditions. 
 
 One day, towards the beginning of the hot 
 weather, we drove out many miles from the 
 station where we were then quartered, into a 
 neighbouring Rajah's territory, intent on shoot- 
 ing antelope. 
 
 The potentate in whose domain we found our- 
 selves was hardly a shining light in the way of 
 a ruler or a statesman ; but his wide stretches of 
 uncultivated country afforded excellent sport. 
 Moreover, he was exceedingly anxious to be on 
 good terms with the British, to whose influence 
 he entirely owed his position. His predecessor, 
 that bloodthirsty miscreant who was the prime 
 mover in the siege of Guramghur and the hid- 
 eous massacre of the ladies and children at Dusti- 
 pore, had met with his deserts at the avenging 
 hands of Havelock and Outram, and the present 
 Rajah had been enthroned in his stead. 
 
 To any British officer shooting in his terri- 
 tory, the Rajah hospitably offered lodging in 
 his summer palace of Bebipore, where he hardly 
 ever lived. So thither, after the manner of 
 Indian travellers, we sent on ahead our food, our 
 
THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN. 133 
 
 cooking-pots, our servants, and our bedding, 
 and adjourned there ourselves when the day's 
 sport was over. 
 
 Bebipore was a glorious specimen of the 
 highest type of Hindoo architecture. It was 
 built of salmon-coloured stone, with richly- 
 carved loggia, balconies, and pillared halls. But 
 it was falling fast into ruins. The formally laid- 
 out garden was overgrown and matted, the 
 interior of the palace filthy, and well-nigh given 
 up to owls and flying foxes. 
 
 " What a pity to let this lovely place fall into 
 such decay," said I to Jim as we sat on the 
 terrace after dinner, in the rich, calm light of a 
 great, full moon. " It might be a perfect para- 
 dise, you know." 
 
 " Ugh ! I don't know," muttered Jim, from 
 the depths of a huge folding camp-chair. " There 
 are anything but memories of paradise con- 
 nected with it, you know. It was the favourite 
 abode of that brute the late Rajah, who dyed 
 his hands in so much European blood, you re- 
 member." 
 
 I shuddered, and rose. 
 
 " Indeed I do, and it quite takes the glamour 
 off the spot. A serpent in the garden of Eden 
 indeed ! Well, I'll take a little turn before I go 
 
134 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 to bed. The moon's so bright, I'm not afraid of 
 meeting a real snake.'' 
 
 The only answer was a slight snore from the 
 depths of the camp-chair Jim had had a heavy 
 day after the black-buck. 
 
 If the moonlight was unearthly bright, as 
 only tropical moonlight can be, the shadows it 
 cast were of inky blackness. I strolled along 
 the straight paths, between a tangle of orange 
 and pomegranate trees, matted together with 
 masses of creepers. In the centre of the grounds 
 I came on one of those oblong artificial ponds 
 or tanks so dear to the native taste. It was 
 surrounded by a low masonry parapet, and, 
 from each corner, jets of water were intended to 
 spout from the brickwork. But the whole thing 
 was in ruins, and as silent as the grave, lying, 
 like a huge mirror, a dazzling spot among the 
 surrounding dark shrubberies. 
 
 I paused a few seconds, and gazed into the 
 shining depths. 
 
 The night was still, save for the whirring of 
 the crickets in the trees and the occasional un- 
 earthly yell of a jackal in the distance. Not the 
 faintest breeze ruffled the surface of the tank, 
 which was so placid that I could distinctly see 
 myself as I leant over the edge. 
 
THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN. 135 
 
 Suddenly I gave a start. 
 
 Someone else was looking too. Over my 
 shoulder there was another face reflected and 
 oh, what a face ! I see it now sometimes in a 
 nightmare. 
 
 It was the face of a native, swarthy, beetle- 
 browed, keen-eyed, gazing from beneath a white 
 turban, with a cunning malignity that froze the 
 marrow in my bones. 
 
 With a cry of horror, I turned round to see 
 who was there. 
 
 There was no one. 
 
 The path was deserted and silent. Not even 
 a rustle in the bushes broke on the night air, or 
 betrayed a disappearing form. 
 
 I looked wildly round for a moment, and then 
 I fled, as fast as I could run, back to the palace 
 and into my room, and, not stopping till I had 
 made fast the door, sank breathless on to the 
 bed where Jim lay snoring peacefully. 
 
 I had a hideous night, haunted by blood- 
 curdling dreams of that awful face, which I some- 
 how associated with the wicked Rajah of evil 
 memory, the late inhabitant of the place. I can 
 assure you I was not sorry to find myself driv- 
 ing back into the cantonments next morning. 
 
 I had not told Jim of my fright. He had 
 
1 36 IN TENT AND B UNGALO W. 
 
 been asleep during the first flush of my excite- 
 ment, and when I thought the matter over in 
 broad daylight, and in a calmer mood, I was 
 dreadfully afraid he would chaff me about it ; for 
 Jim has no imagination, and absolutely no be- 
 lief in the supernatural. 
 
 However, I felt very sorry I had not risked 
 the chaff when, some weeks later, Jim proposed 
 another expedition to Bebipore. It was too 
 late now, however, and I could only put as 
 cheerful a face on the matter as possible, promis- 
 ing myself that no power on earth should induce 
 me to wander near that fearful tank again. 
 
 But I had counted without my host, however. 
 I kept within doors all the evening, quaking 
 secretly in my shoes, and fearing to see that face 
 looking out upon me from every dark nook of 
 the pillared hall or the lofty chambers. I took 
 care that Jim should not leave me for a second ; 
 and I think, on the whole, I played my part 
 bravely, for he never suspected how nervous I was 
 
 But, on the morrow, as we sat having our early 
 tea on the terrace before setting out shooting, there 
 was a hue and cry among the servants for Nip 
 my little terrier, who was missing. 
 
 " Go and call down in the garden, Ethel/' sug- 
 gested Jim. 
 
THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN. 137 
 
 I was torn asunder between fear of losing Nip 
 and dread of revisiting that horrible tank. 
 
 " You come with me, Jim," I replied. " You 
 you you can whistle so much louder than I can." 
 
 Jim strolled off, cigar in mouth, and I followed. 
 
 Of course he went straight down to the tank, 
 and then oh, horror ! seated himself on the 
 edge of the parapet, and began, quite uncon- 
 cernedly, to call Nip. 
 
 I couldn't call : my voice would have failed 
 me, different though the scene was in daylight. 
 The water, for instance, looked quite deep and 
 dark, and yet it was evidently shallower than it 
 had been at our last visit, for there had been no 
 rain, and the country was drying up fast. 
 
 I noticed this as I leant over the edge, saying 
 to myself that the vision of that night must have 
 been all fancy. Yet my hand was trembling so 
 much as I tried to fasten my brooch, which had 
 become undone, that the latter slipped from my 
 grasp and splashed into the water, making me 
 start 
 
 " Oh, Jim ! " I cried, " my mother's brooch, 
 with baby's hair in it ! I must find it ! " 
 
 I had forgotten all my terror now in real 
 grief; for that little yellow lock inside the brooch 
 was all that was left to me of the little form 
 
138 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 which for a few short months had gladdened our 
 Indian home. 
 
 " We'll get it directly," said Jim, all alacrity, 
 and thrusting in his stick. " There's not a foot 
 of water in the tank. Never knew such a dry 
 season. Go and call some of the gardeners ; 
 we'll make them search, and I'll stand here to 
 mark the spot." 
 
 Anxious as I was to get my brooch back, I 
 was not sorry to keep away from the dreaded 
 spot, so sat expectant on the terrace. 
 
 Presently our bearer came running. He put 
 my little treasure safe, but muddy, into my hand, 
 and then hurried away again in the direction of 
 the tank. Some time elapsed, and Jim did not 
 appear. What could he be doing ? 
 
 At last I descried him coming up the walk, 
 followed by a crowd of natives, servants, gar- 
 deners, hangers-on. Evidently something had 
 happened, for Jim looked grave. 
 
 " Very rum thing," he said, sitting down by 
 me on the terrace. "What do you think we 
 found when looking for your brooch ? A 
 skeleton a woman's skeleton, I think lying in 
 the mud. This ring was on the third finger of 
 the left hand" 
 
 He was interrupted by the headman in charge 
 
THE FACE IN THE FOUNTAIN. 139 
 
 of the place, who made his way through the 
 crowd, followed by a toothless old crone, and 
 flung himself at our feet. 
 
 " May it please your highness, the defender 
 of the poor, this, the grandmother of the gardener, 
 knows all. She says the bones are those of the 
 beautiful white lady, with hair like gold, whom 
 the late Rajah (whom may the devils destroy !) 
 brought here alive after he had killed all the 
 other white ladies at Dustipore. He loved her 
 much, the Rajah. She was to have been his 
 favourite wife ; but this old woman, who had 
 charge of her, slept heavily one night, and the 
 Miss Sahib had gone when she awoke. No one 
 ever saw her again. But the old grandmother 
 says that was the ring she wore." 
 
 Jim and I looked at each other. It was a 
 dark tale, but it sounded true. 
 
 I twiddled the ring in my fingers. 
 
 " It looks of English make," said Jim. 
 
 " There is something written on it," said I, 
 peering intently, and rubbing the dirt off. 
 
 Then, suddenly, a memory came back of 
 the long-ago days of my childhood in the old 
 village at home, of old Lady Vantreddert, and 
 of her " Dear Harry." 
 
 For on the ring I read: "From Harry to Gerta!" 
 
"bunting of tbc flDajor. 
 
 "THE SAHIB" was the best polo pony I ever 
 had, and he was cursed with the most fiendish 
 temper it has ever been my ill-luck to come 
 across in four-footed beast. His very appearance 
 was satanic : I have his portrait before me now, 
 drawn in water-colours, by one " Mummoo, 
 painter," as he signs his production a white 
 turbaned Hindoo, who made the round of the 
 European stables of the station, painting like- 
 nesses of favourite steeds for a few rupees apiece. 
 Mummoo certainly had a clever knack in draw- 
 ing horse flesh, though hardly so successful with 
 the human form "divine, as was to be seen when 
 he attempted to mount the noble owner upon 
 some pet quadruped. " The Sahib," however, 
 stands alone in his glory; for, in good earnest, no 
 one, except his own particular groom, cared to 
 approach him in his stable. Mummoo has drawn 
 him standing on what is intended to be the 
 
 yellow-brown grass of the country, with which 
 140 
 
THE HUNTING OF THE MAJOR. 141 
 
 we bed -down horses in India. But vegeta- 
 tion was not Mummoo's forte. A polo-ball and 
 stick lie on the bedding, and the back-ground is 
 the grey-washed wall of the stable, with a square- 
 paned window in the centre. This, Mummoo 
 probably copied from some picture in an English 
 sporting paper, such as he was very fond of 
 getting hold of; for no impecunious sub., such as 
 I was when I owned " The Sahib," ever boasted 
 a stable in India as grand as that. A rude row 
 of mud-huts, thatched with grass, divided by low 
 mud walls into stalls, with a rough log as a 
 barrier before each, and a grass screen to keep 
 the sun out, such is the average Indian stable, 
 thought quite good enough for even valuable 
 race-horses. Pigs are better lodged in England ; 
 but in India, the grooms fare worse than the 
 horses. 
 
 Mummoo could only draw horses in profile, 
 and on the near side. But he had caught " The 
 Sahib's " characteristics to a " T." His clean, 
 white legs, with plenty of bone below the knee ; 
 his powerful neck and shoulders, piebald red and 
 white; his wicked, white face and dilated nostrils; 
 his knowing, red ears, and his well-ribbed-up red 
 back and strong quarters. 
 
 In those days we subs, of the " onety-oneth " 
 
142 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW, 
 
 bestowed more pains on the hogging of our 
 ponies' manes than on the cultivation of our own 
 moustaches. In his idle hours, any fellow who 
 was known to be a good hogger was always 
 in request to come round and do so-and-so's new 
 "tat" (short for tattoo; Anglice,pony). We scorned 
 even to leave an " after-dinner curl " or " mount- 
 ing lock" at the saddle-bow (though I cannot 
 say we did not ever need it), and bent lovingly 
 over the little beast's necks, finishing them off 
 with a sharp, fine scissors, after the manner of the 
 most experienced coiffeurs. 
 
 I bought " The Sahib" at Batasar fair. This 
 is a spring gathering in the North- West provinces, 
 well-known to all in search of horses and ponies. 
 It takes the form of a vast camp on a plain out- 
 side the town, and in the motley throng which, 
 all the three days of the fair, crowd up and down 
 the ranks of the tethered horses, high civilian 
 officials jostle wild, unkempt Cabool dealers with 
 treacherous Tartar eyes ; remount officers on the 
 buy for troop-horses elbow subs, after polo 
 ponies ; and village zemindars, or head-men, 
 crowd with country-bred tattoos for sale. The 
 quadrupeds are quite as diverse as the buyers 
 and sellers. In the long ranks you find horses 
 that have known better days, poor beasts Arabs 
 
THE HUNTING OF THE MAJOR. 143 
 
 or " Walers " cast from the troops, side by side 
 with wild-looking ponies from the frontier, 
 or country-breds from the plains. There are 
 lines of camels, too, for sale, either as beasts 
 of burden or for riding purposes, and some 
 elephants. The trumpeting, neighing, squealing, 
 and kicking, and occasional stampeding, pass 
 description. 
 
 Though I had marked " The Sahib " for mine 
 own from the first moment my eyes fell on his 
 legs and shoulders, it took me two days to bar- 
 gain with the dealer for him. My groom, 
 Mohun, led the pony towards my tent, and I 
 ordered him to be saddled, and thought I would 
 try my new purchase in the cool of the evening. 
 
 But I found I was altogether mistaken, for the 
 pony was of quite a different opinion, and, at 
 first, shewed himself so much the better fellow 
 of the two, that I christened him " The Sahib " 
 (or. " The Master ") on the spot. 
 
 "Your highness has got a bobbery wallah" 
 (a naughty fellow), remarked Mohun, consolingly, 
 as he hung on to the bridle like grim death, 
 suffering himself to be dragged along in the 
 sand by the pony, while I hopped cautiously 
 alongside, watching for an auspicious moment to 
 throw my leg over him. But that wicked eye, 
 
144 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 peering at us so satanically out of its corner, that 
 ever-ready hoof, were too much for us we were 
 compelled to resort to stratagem. One native 
 flung a cloth over " The Sahib's " face, and blind- 
 folded him, while another seized and held up 
 one of his fore-feet. In an instant I was up, and 
 then, " Let go ! " and we were off! 
 
 No, / wasn't though, hard as " The Sahib " 
 tried to throw me. He had found his master ; 
 and, from that moment, when once on his back, 
 I never had any trouble with him. 
 
 What a pony he was on the polo-ground ! I 
 verily believe he loved the game as much as I 
 did. No jibbing or skulking with him, as with 
 some. No having to blindfold him to get him 
 to cross the fateful boundary on to the ground. 
 "The Sahib," stretched out to his top-speed, 
 would follow with his keen eye every turn and 
 stroke of the ball, and twist and turn and pull 
 up short, like a pony of half his size and power. 
 
 " The Sahib" had great discrimination of char- 
 acter, too, and loved a joke, as you will hear. 
 There was a certain major in the " onety-oneth," 
 whom we will call Blazeby, a conceited Jack-in- 
 office, exceedingly full of his own dignity. One 
 day, as we were returning to barracks from an 
 adjutant's parade, we beheld Major Blazeby in 
 
THE HUNTING OF THE MAJOR. 145 
 
 full uniform, mounted grandly on his charger, 
 going round barracks on some duty. Close to 
 the spot where the parade was dismissed, Mohun 
 was waiting with " The Sahib " to carry me back 
 to my bungalow (for in India no one ever dreams 
 of walking a yard if he can help it, and I lived 
 at least a quarter of a mile off). At " The 
 Sahib's" head patiently squatted the groom, hold- 
 ing the bridle, when the major and his charger 
 came suddenly round the corner in full view of 
 the whole regiment. The sight raised " The 
 Sahib's " ire. With a kick and a plunge he freed 
 himself from the sleepy groom, and went for the 
 major. He tore up to him, kicking and squealing 
 and showing his teeth. Then he turned sharp 
 round and kicked at the charger, and then he 
 came on again and bit at the major's legs. This 
 latter tried to drive him off with his cutting- 
 whip ; he even beat at him with his scabbard, 
 but "The Sahib" was undaunted. Natives 
 rushed up in every direction and attempted to 
 capture him ; but the pony would waltz round 
 and unexpectedly scatter them with a sudden 
 flinging up of his heels. 
 
 Then the major turned and fled, But "The 
 Sahib" followed. It was a ludicrous sight the 
 riderless pony so small, the major on his big 
 
H6 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " Waler " mare, so gorgeous. We subs, enjoyed it 
 immensely. The major dodged the pony round 
 the barrack building ; but size told. The lesser 
 animal could turn the quickest, and came on 
 with a vicious squeal. The major was utterly 
 discomfited. After a narrow escape of his 
 breeches from the pony's teeth, he dismounted 
 hastily, and sought shelter in a barrack-room, 
 while the honour of war remained with "The 
 Sahib." 
 
 We drank his good health that night at mess, 
 while Blazeby looked daggers at us over his high 
 collar ; for we all felt we owed " The Sahib " a 
 debt of gratitude for taking the major down a peg. 
 
bat Cbrietmas at Curnpore, 
 
 QUEENIE lay back in an arm-chair and let the 
 ayah put the shoes and stockings on to her 
 pretty pink feet. Though the shoes were only 
 threes, Queenie was out of the nursery indeed, 
 nearly out of her teens. But this was in India, 
 where lazy, grown-up people are washed and 
 dressed like babies, and Queenie was pondering 
 other things than dolls. 
 
 When her ayah had arrayed her in her neat 
 little dark riding-habit, Queenie took up her 
 whip and gloves, and sauntered through the 
 curtains into the verandah. It was 7 A.M., and 
 though the air was crisp and cool (there had 
 been the nearest possible approach to a frost 
 between 2 A.M. and 4 A.M.), the sun was shining 
 hotly, and Queenie wore that most hideous of 
 head-gears, a pith-helmet, which, however, failed 
 to make her look plain. The smoke was rising 
 straight and evil-smelling from the long line of 
 servants' huts in the corner of the compound, 
 
148 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 betokening the culinary operations for the day's 
 one meal. In the verandah, the gardener, 
 meagrely attired in a dirty waist-cloth, was 
 watering Mrs. Moulton's flower-pots, taking 
 especial care of her violets, the most delicate and 
 valuable of her floral possessions. Outside, the 
 garden was a blaze of crimson bougainvilleas 
 climbing up the stems of the mango trees, of roses 
 of all kinds, of climbing alamandas and giant 
 convolvuli. Greedy crows cawed expectantly in 
 the branches above the detached cook-house, 
 and pert little crested hoo-poos hopped about 
 the drive, and cocked their heads to look at 
 Queenie as she stood on the steps. 
 
 Down the tree-planted mall, outside the gate- 
 less entrance, kicking up the dust which lay 
 thick on either side the central macadam, came 
 first a shambling camel, bearing a native 
 cavalry orderly in gay turban, then a flock of 
 gaunt goats, picking up a scant meal of dry 
 leaves and grass. Next, there was a sound of a 
 horse's hoofs. A smart little polo pony with a 
 hogged mane came cantering up the drive at a 
 hand-gallop, and its rider pulled up in front of 
 the bungalow, and threw the reins to a breath- 
 less groom who had flown behind him. 
 
 " A merry Christmas to you, Miss Quinlan ! " 
 
CHRISTMAS AT CURRIPORE. 149 
 
 He was a tall, thin man, over thirty, with dark, 
 interesting eyes, dressed in a tweed riding-suit 
 and a pith-helmet. 
 
 "Don't!" said Oueenie. "It's a mockery! 
 It doesn't seem a bit like Christmas ! " 
 
 " But look at your decorations ! " objected her 
 companion, flicking with the end of his cane the 
 festoons of marigolds, hanging by their stalks, 
 with which the servants had adorned the arches 
 of the verandah and made an arch over the gate. 
 
 " And we've decorated the church with scarlet 
 poinsettias ! " Queenie pursued. " The whole 
 thing is a sham." 
 
 " Not to me," said her companion, looking up 
 at the dainty figure on the steps, " / am having 
 a very merry Christmas ! " he added, in a 
 meaning tone, and with a glance of his dark 
 eyes to correspond. 
 
 " You are very late this morning ! '' was all 
 Queenie vouchsafed. " The Baby " has been 
 waiting ages. " Here, idJier lao ! " And she 
 beckoned to a groom squatting on the drive, who 
 brought up a pretty little bay Arab, as smart 
 and fresh as paint. 
 
 Her companion put her up, and then lingered, 
 perhaps an unnecessary time, settling her little 
 foot in the stirrup. 
 
150 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 "I'm so sorry," he apologised. "It was not my 
 fault. Ruffleby he and I share a bungalow, 
 you know has had a friend turn up by the 
 morning mail, and, as Ruffleby was on duty, I 
 had to take him over to the mess and give him 
 some chota hazari (little breakfast)." 
 
 Then he jumped on to the polo pony, and 
 telling the grooms to wait where they were for 
 them, they passed out through the gate. 
 
 Mrs. Moulton, in the intervals of housekeeping, 
 the giving out stores from the store-room in the 
 corner of the verandah, and wrangling with the 
 white-robed cook over his peculations, watched 
 them ride down the mall in the deep dust under 
 the millingtonia trees, which scented the air 
 with their white blossoms. 
 
 " It's an awful responsibility having a pretty 
 girl like Queenie Quinlan, so young, so new to 
 India, to stay ! But, of course, I'd do anything 
 for Joe's greatest friend and Arthur Appleton 
 is so gone over her, poor fellow ! I wish 1 knew, 
 I wish I did, what she really thinks about him. 
 Arthur's much too good a fellow to be trifled 
 with." 
 
 And Mrs. Moulton turned away to inspect 
 her progeny, just starting for their morning 
 walk big boy on pony, little girls in panniers 
 
CHRISTMAS AT CURRIPORE. 151 
 
 on another, little boy in perambulator, and small 
 baby laid out flat on a kind of cushion in his 
 ayah's arms quite a procession, and each with 
 at least one servant in charge of its tiny 
 self. 
 
 Captain Appleton and Miss Quinlan cantered 
 down the mall, meeting many riders and several 
 corteges of children ; for, being Christmas Day, 
 the Government offices were shut, and the 
 parade-grounds deserted. Queenie was lively 
 as a cricket. A gallop round the racecourse 
 brought a flush of colour into her cheeks, of 
 which some months of India had robbed them. 
 But Appleton was rather silent and engrossed. 
 
 " You are coming to dine to-night ? " he 
 asked, as he took her home again. " We always 
 have the regimental ladies to dine at mess on 
 Christmas Day, and of course you come with 
 Mrs. Moulton. 
 
 " Of course ! " cried Queenie. " It will be 
 such fun dining at mess ! " 
 
 In the drawing-room she found Mrs. Moulton 
 engaged in receiving " dollies." In honour of 
 the " Sahib's big day," all the establishment, 
 clad in rustling white garments, advanced to 
 present gifts flowers, vegetables, groceries, 
 cakes, and sweetmeats in return for which they 
 
152 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 received the Indian equivalent of Christmas- 
 boxes. 
 
 Then they went to breakfast, and, after break- 
 fast, while the Moulton babies shouted and 
 wrangled over their Christmas presents in the 
 back verandah, which represents the day- 
 nursery in Anglo-Indian households, Queenie 
 heard the sound of " Church Bells " played in 
 barracks by the band, and knew it was nearly 
 church time. 
 
 She put on her best frock, and picked a 
 " Gloire " rose for the front of her dress. The 
 gaunt barn of the station church was but a 
 quarter of a mile off, but, like everyone else, 
 she and Mrs. Moulton drove thither. Under 
 the great portico they waited to greet their ac- 
 quaintance, and to watch the troops march up, 
 the band playing and the pipers at their head. 
 
 The men passed in, but the officers waited 
 without in knots till the last moment. Queenie 
 found Captain Appleton close behind her, greet- 
 ing her with a grave salute. 
 
 The church was gay with evergreens and 
 poinsettias ; the punkahs had disappeared for 
 a few brief weeks. The band formed the choir, 
 and sang and played lustily. The lofty, bare 
 building rang again with the familiar strains of 
 
CHRISTMAS AT CURRIPORE. 153 
 
 " Hark ! the Herald," till the voices drowned the 
 brass instruments. All sorts of people were in 
 church who never went there as a rule, because 
 it was Christmas Day. Not only the officers on 
 duty, who were obliged, but civilian officials who 
 know no ecclesiastical laws, and, far down by 
 the doorway, a knot of Eurasian shopkeepers 
 and clerks, desirous of keeping up their British 
 nationality. 
 
 At intervals during the sermon, Queenie look- 
 ed at Appleton's clear-cut profile as he sat in one 
 of the front seats with the other officers, but her 
 reflections over him were not complimentary. 
 
 " He's grown very grave and dull down here, 
 at Curripore ! He was ever so much jollier in 
 the hills last season. Yet T know he got Mrs. 
 Moulton to ask me to stay with her while papa 
 was away in camp. I wonder what's come to 
 him ! He was so jolly at the picnics at Douglas- 
 dale, and the boating on the lake ! " 
 
 She was wrong in one way. Appleton was 
 never what you call jolly. He was always 
 rather a quiet, reserved man, though Miss 
 Quinlan had found him interesting enough to 
 single out from among her many admirers, as 
 her favourite partner at tennis and dances, dur- 
 ing the last season at Nynee Tal. His was a 
 
154 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 deep, strong nature, and he was desperately in 
 love. Moreover, just now, he was harassed and 
 tortured with anxiety as to Queenie's real feel- 
 ings towards him. Her stay at Curripore was 
 drawing to a close. He felt he could bear the 
 uncertainty no longer. 
 
 After church, as he walked over to the 
 barrack-room of his company, where the heavy 
 Christmas festivities in the gaily-decorated room 
 both the result of days of preparation on the 
 part of the men were being inaugurated with 
 much drinking of the captain's health in the 
 liquor he had provided, he came to a decision. 
 As the roof rang with cheers, and they sang, 
 " He's a Jolly Good Fellow ! " in his honour, the 
 captain forced rather a sad smile. 
 
 " I will ask her to-night," he said to himself 
 " I will ask her to-night." 
 
 Twice the ayah had peeped in through the 
 curtain to see if the " Miss Sahib " was ready to 
 dress for dinner. But Queenie lay still on her 
 bed, reading a letter brought by the letter- 
 orderly from the evening post. It ran : 
 
 " MY OWN DARLING QUEENIE, I do wish 
 you would write oftener. You don't know how 
 I long for your letters. It seems ages since I 
 
CHRISTMAS A'T CURRIPORE. 155 
 
 bade good-bye to you at Bombay years since 
 that jolly voyage, that so utterly did for me, 
 ended. I sit and stare at your photo, and write 
 to you, to try and comfort myself. And then I 
 get nearly mad when I think how long we have 
 to wait. Nearly a year more. Your father has 
 behaved very cruelly and harshly, I must say. 
 But this is Christmas we are on the edge of 
 a new year, which will see us happy I won't 
 grumble. But, there's a darling, do write me a 
 nice long letter, telling me all about your sweet 
 little self." 
 
 And so on, and so on. The reader can fill in, 
 ad libitum, from his or her private experience of 
 such letters. 
 
 A vision rose before Queenie's face of a good- 
 looking, boyish face, with frank eyes of a Saxon 
 blue, and she heard the ring of a merry laugh. 
 She smiled complacently, and then she pouted. 
 
 " What a bother men are ! Always so im- 
 patient 1 I'm sure I'm in no hurry to be mar- 
 ried. Lionel's a dear, darling boy, and I love 
 him awfully, but I'm having a very good time." 
 And she called the ayah to come and dress her 
 in her white tulle frock, and to get her a fresh 
 " Gloire " to put in her golden coils of hair. 
 
156 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 Outside the bungalow shared by Captain 
 Appleton and Lieutenant Ruffleby, the sporting 
 character of the regiment, was waiting, about 
 7.45 P.M., a venerable grey Arab, that had once 
 been somebody's charger, held by a groom, 
 armed with a lantern. Ruffleby and Appleton 
 stood in the verandah in mess-dress, the latter 
 impatient. 
 
 " What an age the fellow is ! The first bugle 
 went ever so long ago ! I don't want to be late." 
 
 " I daresay you don't," replied Ruffleby who 
 loved horses, and never spoke to a lady if he 
 could help it with a wicked look. "And I 
 don't want to get cold soup ! " 
 
 " What on earth's he doing ? " asked Apple- 
 ton. 
 
 "Writing a letter to his wife to catch the 
 home mail ! That's what comes of having made 
 an ass of yourself in the matrimonial line at 
 such an early age, and " 
 
 " Having two babies down with the measles ! " 
 interrupted Ruffleby 's guest, with a cheery laugh, 
 as he emerged from the bungalow. " Awfully 
 sorry, my dear fellows ! " 
 
 "Get up on 'the omnibus,' old man," cried 
 Ruffleby, wherewith they all three mounted the 
 ancient quadruped who rejoiced in that sobriquet, 
 
CHRISTMAS AT CUERIPOEE. 157 
 
 and shambled off to the mess, the groom run- 
 ning before with a lantern, whereby all three 
 saved the polish on their mess-boots. 
 
 Of course, Appleton had arranged matters. 
 Major Spanks took in Miss Quinlan, for there 
 were, of course, only ladies enough for just the 
 senior officers. But she found Captain Apple- 
 ton sitting on her other side. Queenie was very 
 gay, and he had a good time. Major Spanks, a 
 man of discernment, who had once been young, 
 devoted himself with much attention to his 
 dinner, criticising the specially-fattened turkey, 
 and the khausamatts efforts in plum-pudding 
 and mince-meat, and the mess-president's taste 
 in tinned sausages, asparagus, and such delights. 
 The major and the colonel sat in the middle of 
 the long table, the few ladies near them. At each 
 end was a sea of mess-jackets, but the two sides 
 were almost hidden from each other by a long line 
 of mess-plate trophies of racing and promotion. 
 
 At length the cloth was removed, and the 
 dark mahogany, an heirloom of the corps, stood 
 revealed in all its swarthy beauty, glistening 
 with plate. There was a moment's pause : 
 
 " Mr. Vice, the Queen," said the mess-president 
 at one end, standing up and nodding to the 
 vice-president at the other. 
 
158 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 Everyone filled their glasses and drank 
 
 "The Queen God bless her !" 
 
 And then the talking was resumed, and the 
 time for crackers had come. 
 
 Pop ! pop ! The long voyage had affected 
 Mr. Tom Smith's productions in some cases, and 
 they missed fire. Queenie pulled a good many 
 with several different people for was she not 
 the guest of the evening, they told her? But 
 Appleton had his share. 
 
 " This was quite true quite true, believe me," 
 he hazarded, after reading the motto which fell 
 from the last they had exploded. "Will you 
 keep it as a little remembrance of this Christmas," 
 he added, with a very pleading look. 
 
 " Sweetest eyes were ever seen ; 
 They belong to you, my queen." 
 
 She blushed, and laughed. 
 
 " What nonsense ! " 
 
 But, all the same, she stuck it in the glove 
 which she was buttoning; for the ladies had 
 risen to depart. 
 
 When Appleton with the others rejoined them 
 in the ante-room, he spied Queenie, who, weary 
 of looking at stale English papers and listening 
 to station gossip, was sitting on a low chair in 
 
CHRISTMAS AT CURRIPORE. 159 
 
 the dim verandah. He drew another to her side 
 and sat down. 
 
 The moon had risen a great Indian moon 
 shining with a marvellous clearness, and casting 
 inky shadows. Across from the barracks came 
 faint snatches of songs, as if Christmas revelry 
 was still going on, broken now and again by the 
 hour struck on the guard-room gong, or the 
 challenge of the sentry. Inside, the room was 
 crowded : whist parties were settling down to 
 play, and there came a click of balls from the 
 billiard-room. Queenie idly watched the people 
 talking. 
 
 But Appleton's head bent lower and lower 
 over the little white figure in the chair. He 
 hardly knew how he began, or what he said ; 
 but he found himself pleading with a passion 
 that Queenie could not stop. 
 
 Suddenly, however, her face grew quite white ; 
 she caught her breath, and laid her hand on his 
 arm. A figure had come and sat down in a chair 
 opposite the window, taking up a newspaper. 
 It was Ruffleby's guest. 
 
 " Lionel ! here ! " gasped Queenie. " And you 
 never told me ! " 
 
 Appleton followed her eyes, bewildered. 
 
 " Lionel," he echoed. " Who's Lionel ? " 
 
160 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 " My Lionel ! " she said, faintly. " Lionel 
 Banks." 
 
 He looked at her, utterly puzzled. He knew 
 Banks was the name of the visitor. 
 
 " Your Lionel ? '' he repeated. 
 
 " Yes, of course ; we're engaged, you know ! " 
 
 She did not even look at him (though he 
 staggered as if he had received a blow, and 
 clutched the door-post for support), but rose and 
 advanced eagerly into the room. 
 
 But within two paces of the stranger, who had 
 laid down his paper and risen, she stopped short. 
 
 " I I beg your pardon ! I have made a 
 mistake ! " 
 
 " Not at all," said RufHeby's guest. " I asked 
 who you were, so may I introduce myself as 
 Lionel's twin-brother, of whom he has probably 
 told you. I know all about your little affair, 
 and you have my best wishes," 
 
 She grasped his hand warmly. Then she 
 turned her head to look for Captain Appleton, 
 whom she had left in the doorway. 
 
 But at Banks's last words the latter had 
 vanished, and was seen no more that night. 
 
 It was Christmas Day again, a year after. 
 But all our actors have left Curripore. The 
 regiment, after a long march, have arrived at 
 
CHRISTMAS AT CURRIPORE. 161 
 
 Guramabad. But it is by no means so cheerful 
 a Christmas they are spending there. For 
 Arthur Appleton, the best fellow in the corps, 
 everyone's friend, despite his quiet, grave ways, 
 lies dying. 
 
 A sickly hot weather, with no leave to the hills 
 (he would not take any), the long march, have 
 told upon him. Typhoid fever, that fiend of 
 India, had set in, weary, fluctuating, but ever 
 sapping away at the strength. The doctor 
 shakes his head, and gives little hope from the 
 first. " He has no heart in him to pull through," 
 is his verdict. 
 
 The prayer for the sick has been read, amid a 
 hush, in the middle of the bright Christmas Day 
 morning service. There were tears in hard eyes 
 and lumps in strong men's throats in B company 
 barrack-room at the Christmas dinner, when the 
 subaltern proposed, as usual, the captain's health. 
 The cheers died away on the lips with a sigh. 
 The toast is drunk in silence, but from the hearts 
 of all there. 
 
 At the officer's mess a gloom hangs over the 
 dinner. Major Spanks has sat up many a night 
 with Appleton, and little Ruffleby has stayed 
 away from the Bulamabad race meeting, where 
 he was to ride in the Cup. The fellows talk 
 
 L 
 
1 62 /^ TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 low, and with an evident effort, for the doctor 
 has said Appleton will not last through the 
 night. 
 
 He lies apparently unconscious, on his little 
 camp-bed, which they have drawn near the 
 window to catch the cool air. The moonlight 
 is flooding the verandah and casting unearthly 
 shadows in the compound. The world is very 
 still. Only the occasional bark of a prowling 
 pariah, or the distant yell of a jackal, breaks the 
 stillness. 
 
 Suddenly, the sick man moves. His dark 
 eyes open, looking strangely large. His lips 
 move. RurHeby, sitting by the bedside, bends 
 eagerly over him. 
 
 " What's to-day ? " asks Appleby, feebly. 
 
 " Christmas Day, old man," replied RurHeby, 
 in an unsteady voice. 
 
 A wistful look comes into the dark eyes. 
 
 " Ah ! last Christmas Day at Curripore," 
 he murmurs. 
 
 They were his last words. His eyes close, 
 and, by the morning's dawn, he is dead. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lionel Banks are honeymooning 
 in that favourite resort of newly-married couples, 
 the great Akbar's deserted City of Victory, near 
 
CHRISTMAS AT CURRIPORE. 163 
 
 Agra. They have taken up their quarters in 
 that exquisite little pavilion of carved pink stone 
 and marble which the passion of a magnificent 
 monarch built for his Christian wife, and which 
 alone in all the ruined city is still fit for habita- 
 tion. They have been out shooting black-buck 
 all day, on the plains around. Now they sit on 
 camp-chairs in the pretty pillared verandah, 
 resting. 
 
 " By Jove ! " suddenly exclaims Lionel Banks, 
 removing his cigar for a moment. " I never 
 thought of it, Queenie it's Christmas Day ! " 
 
 Queenie does not answer. Her eyes are gaz- 
 ing somewhat thoughtfully out into the quiet 
 moonlight. 
 
 Lionel leans over the back of her chair, and 
 kisses her pretty hair and forehead. 
 
 " You are very silent, little wife ? " 
 
 Was she, too, thinking of last Christmas at 
 Curripore ? 
 
Sucb a Suspicion. 
 
 ONE of the things which surprise the new arrival 
 in India most is the prevalence of camp-life, and 
 the luxury of its conditions. For this, the 
 climate is answerable. Certainly to me, not 
 many weeks out from " home," our existence 
 under canvas during the great Durbar of 187 
 seemed like a chapter out of some Eastern 
 story. 
 
 Everyone who was in the shiny East at the 
 time will remember that Durbar. It was no or- 
 dinary progress of civilian commissioner through 
 his district, or a visit of a governor, with his can- 
 vas village, to the outskirts of some great city 
 of his province. It was not a purely business- 
 like camp for great military manoeuvres, com- 
 prising acres of soldiers' lines, of picketed horses, 
 and of parked guns. No, the Durbar of Pugreepur 
 
 was merely a pleasure performance. The great 
 164 
 
SUCH A SUSPICION. 165 
 
 Panjandrum himself, with his satellites, the 
 Supreme Government, was there, his huge re- 
 ception-tents the centre of the canvas city, to 
 which miles of white canvas street converged. 
 
 There were governors galore, commissioners, 
 agents, and rajahs' bear-leaders innumerable, 
 and soldiers of every sort and hue, in a bewilder- 
 ing kaleidoscope of uniforms. But what most 
 impressed my unaccustomed eyes was the camps 
 of the native princes such a mixture of wealth 
 and shabbiness, of dirt and diamonds, of gold- 
 lace uniforms and pink-dyed tails of horses, of 
 elephants and camels, of weirdly-braying bands, 
 squalid tag-rag and bobtail, of perpetual 
 squabbles for precedence, and of contentions as 
 to the exact number of guns they were entitled 
 to in the way of salutes. 
 
 Put the whole picture into a glittering, glaring 
 setting of cloudless blue sky overhead, and of 
 white dust below, and you will have some idea 
 what the Pugreepur Durbar was like that 
 January. 
 
 The days were devoted to endless receptions, 
 to races and reviews ; the nights, to solemn 
 official dinners and balls. There did not seem 
 
1 66 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 to be a moment's breathing time. But we girls 
 enjoyed ourselves hugely. 
 
 And who were we ? 
 
 We both owned, as mutual uncle, Mr. Wood- 
 house, B.C.S., Commissioner of the Bundelabad 
 district of the East-by-West Provinces that is 
 to say, he was my uncle, and his wife Ida's aunt. 
 I had come out to spend the six months' cold 
 weather with the Woodhouses, and Ida, who 
 had been left an orphan about a year before, 
 had lived with them ever since. My uncle had 
 come to the Durbar in the train of his Governor, 
 him of the East-by-West Provinces, and our 
 tents were next to the gubernatorial ones in the 
 long street of the camp of the East-by-W T est 
 officials. 
 
 In front, opening on to a hastily improvised 
 little flower-bed of pots and shrubs, planted in 
 the sand with much effectiveness in a land where 
 turf is not, was the mess-tent, where we enter- 
 tained at every meal, when we were not being 
 entertained ourselves. Behind that came the 
 drawing-room tent, crowded with chintz-covered 
 wicker-work settees and easy-chairs. The red- 
 and-yellow striped linings of the tents gave a 
 
SUCH A SUSPICION. 167 
 
 most becoming " dim religious light " to the in- 
 teriors, which was very acceptable after the glare 
 without. Of course the walls were devoid of 
 ornament, and the doorways somewhat low. 
 Otherwise, to such a perfection is camp-life 
 carried in this land of perpetual picnic, that it is 
 almost impossible to tell that you were not in 
 ordinary and luxuriously furnished apartments 
 Behind, again, came two adjoining sleeping tents 
 and bath-rooms one occupied by our uncle and 
 aunt, the other by us girls. These opened into 
 a little yard surrounded with canvas walls, where 
 the servants came and went, and performed 
 their culinary mysteries. 
 
 The time was 8 A.M. We girls, who had been 
 out for a morning canter round the racecourse, 
 were lounging in our riding-habits in easy-chairs, 
 after the discussion of the 7.30 " little breakfast." 
 Our aunt, in & peignoir > sat at her writing-table, 
 having just dismissed Kodar Bocus, the caterer, 
 after inspecting his accounts and the menu for 
 the day. 
 
 Ida Macmorres, a handsome Irish girl, lay 
 languidly back in her chair, holding before her 
 in one hand a man's visiting card, and with the 
 
1 68 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 other striking at flies upon the sofa with her 
 riding-whip. Her fair brow was somewhat 
 ruffled, and she did not look particularly 
 amiable. 
 
 " Aunt Jane/' she began again, after a pause, 
 taking up the conversation where it had dropped 
 a few minutes before. 
 
 " Five, ten, thirteen, fourteen, twenty dear 
 me, what a lot of eggs Kodar BOGUS does charge 
 for," murmured Aunt Jane from the writing-table. 
 
 " Aunt Jane," repeated Ida, imperiously (she 
 could be very imperious when she chose), " am I 
 to understand you that I am to ' cut ' him, 
 then ? " 
 
 She waved the pasteboard toward us. I knew 
 quite well the inscription it bore : " Captain 
 Arthur Blantyre, 3Oth Bengal Cuirassiers." 
 
 "My dear child," remonstrated Aunt Jane, 
 looking worried, "twenty, twenty-five twenty- 
 five chittacks of butter. Good gracious ! Yes, 
 my dear child, your uncle, you know ' 
 
 " By ' cutting,' I mean not to bow, not to 
 speak, not to dance. I merely inquire, for guid- 
 ance during the next six months, till my twenty- 
 first birthday," went on Ida, icily. 
 
SUCH A SUSPICION. 169 
 
 "Oh, Ida!" remonstrated Aunt Jane, ready to 
 cry, " you are the most unfeeling " 
 
 " And what are you and my uncle, I should 
 like to know ? " retorted the girl, fiercely, drop- 
 ping down on a fly dexterously with the lash of 
 her riding-whip. 
 
 " You know it's for your good. Oh, don't go 
 on!" 
 
 " You didn't think of my good in the hills this 
 year," Ida continued, bitterly. " We might ride, 
 and dance, and boat, and picnic, at Nynee Tal as 
 much as ever we liked together. And then, 
 when we get back to uncle, and Arthur writes 
 you turn round upon me ! " 
 
 " My dear child ! your uncle must know best." 
 And Aunt Jane tried to go back to her work. 
 " Kodar BOGUS is just ruining me ! I must com- 
 pare books with Mrs. de Ferret. Dear Ida, do 
 drop the subject ; it is closed. Girls, go and 
 take your habits off ; it's getting near breakfast- 
 time, and I've so many notes to write. Eleven 
 fourteen and two make " And so on, while 
 Ida stalked off angrily to her tent, and I sought 
 out my uncle in his office tent. 
 
 As usual, he was surrounded with papers and 
 
1 70 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 red-uniformed cJiupprassees. But he never would 
 allow I was in the way, and now he looked up 
 at me with a smile. " Uncle," I began with the 
 freedom of a privileged person, " what's all the 
 row about ? What does Captain Blantyre 
 do?" 
 
 " What doesn't he do ? " returned my uncle, 
 wearily. " I'm sick of him and the subject. If 
 your poor aunt ever saw farther than the end of 
 her nose, she would never have thrown the reins 
 on Ida's back as she did this summer in the hills, 
 and make the job harder for me now." 
 
 " But what is there against him, uncle except 
 that he's awfully good-looking, and dances de- 
 liciously, and rides splendidly, and '' 
 
 " Plays hard and high, is deeply dipped in the 
 banks, hadn't a penny to bless himself originally, 
 and lives on other people's now, is not above 
 riding a horse in a race to suit his own pocket, 
 and do you want any more reasons ? " 
 
 " Oh, uncle!" 
 
 " And to conclude, that, as I am Ida's guar- 
 dian, and as she will come into a hundred a 
 year of her own when she's of age, I most de- 
 voutly wish the 30th Bengal Cuirassiers and 
 
SUCH A SUSPICION. 171 
 
 Captain Arthur Blantyre had not been ordered 
 to the Pugreepur Durbar ! " 
 
 When I returned to our sleeping-tent I found 
 Miss Ida in anything but an engaging frame of 
 mind. As I watched her scolding the patient 
 ayah who was brushing her hair, I could not 
 help wondering if, had Captain Blantyre been 
 able to see her at that moment, he would have 
 admired her as much as he professed to do. 
 But then she was a girl who had had all her 
 own way in life very much hitherto, though 
 now, between the weak aunt, the stern, matter- 
 of-fact guardian, and a pertinacious and undesir- 
 able lover, she seemed to be faring badly. 
 
 We had scant time, however, for any further 
 discussion or reflection. To the 10.30 breakfast 
 dropped in two or three intimates. No sooner 
 was the meal concluded than calling-time began, 
 and we girls had to help our aunt receive a 
 seemingly endless stream of callers, paying the 
 stiffest and shortest of official visits. Then 
 came a formal lunch, or " tiffin," at two o'clock, 
 beginning with soup and ending with dessert, to 
 which people armed each other in as to a dinner- 
 party. By the time the " after-tiffin " coffee and 
 
IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 cigarettes were discussed, the landau with the 
 grey country-breds, pheasants' feathers at their 
 ears, and with two grooms, armed with yak's 
 tails as fly-switches, standing on the board be- 
 hind, rumbled up to take us for our afternoon 
 drive. To-day the attraction was a polo match, 
 on a ground which had been improvised near 
 the native city, and where we found everyone, 
 from H. E. downwards, watching, amid clouds of 
 dust, the scurrying ponies of the 3oth Bengal 
 Cuirassiers versus the Crimson Lancers (British). 
 Captain Blantyre, playing for his regiment, 
 and the captain of the polo team, was in 
 brilliant form. Murmurs of admiration over his 
 splendid rushes and neat hits rang out from all 
 around, and Ida's eye flashed proudly, and she 
 looked very handsome and triumphant as she 
 watched the slim, well-knit figure in the red-and- 
 white striped jersey. 
 
 But, when the game was over, and the players, 
 after refreshing themselves at the peg-table, 
 sauntered round to greet their acquaintances, 
 cautious Aunt Jane peremptorily ordered her 
 coachman to turn off the ground, and we took 
 an unexciting drive round the civil lines and 
 
SUCH A SUSPICION. 173 
 
 past the cemetery. Ida bit her lip and looked 
 very sulky. 
 
 There was one of the biggest balls of the 
 Durbar on that night. But, first, we all went to 
 a very dull and stately dinner at the Military 
 Member of Council's, the War Minister, as it 
 were, of the Viceroy's cabinet, an old friend of 
 Uncle Woodhouse's. I recollect how handsome 
 Ida looked, in yellow tulle, as we girls went in 
 ready-dressed to my aunt's tent before start- 
 ing. 
 
 Aunt Jane was rather late : she generally was 
 the most unpunctual of mortals, though Uncle 
 Woodhouse tried to circumvent her, when they 
 were at home in their bungalow, by keeping the 
 clocks all half-an-hour fast She was very 
 flurried now, hastily pinning on her diamond 
 ornaments, while the ayah, with the usual per- 
 spicacity of her kind, kept bringing her gloves 
 with no buttons and the wrong fan. 
 
 But she found time to cast a critical eye over 
 us girls. 
 
 " Yes, you'll do, Ida. Most becoming, that 
 yellow ! Mollie " (to me) " can't you settle 
 those flowers more smartly ? Oh ! ayah, quick, 
 
i;4 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 I don't think I've got all my diamonds on. One 
 two three four ; I never quite can remember 
 how many there ought to be. ' 
 
 For Aunt Jane was dressed in all her glory 
 a blue-velvet gown, Europe make, of three sea- 
 sons ago London style, her piece de resistance, 
 and she wore all her diamonds. Now, Aunt 
 Jane's diamonds were famous throughout the 
 East-by-West Provinces, and would have been 
 noticed even in a London drawing-room. They 
 were part of her late father General Rice Curry's 
 loot from the sack of the Maharajah's palace at 
 Cumberbund, in the first Sikh war. She was 
 literally blazing now that we had bedecked her 
 podgy little person with the brooches and neck- 
 laces. 
 
 " Gracious, aunt ! " I exclaimed, " I should be 
 afraid of being robbed and murdered in my 
 sleep if I were you ! So easy for a ' slithering ' 
 native to creep in under the kanaut (canvas side 
 of the tent)." 
 
 But then Uncle Woodhouse was heard raving 
 that we were late for dinner, and we all hurried 
 out, and thought no more about the diamonds. 
 
 After the dinner-party, uncle went home and 
 
SUCH A SUSPICION. 175 
 
 to bed, but Aunt Jane took us girls on to the 
 Viceroy's ball. It was the most brilliant scene I 
 had ever beheld such a mass of superb, full- 
 dress uniform, and, in corners, begemmed Rajahs, 
 with diamond aigrettes in their turbans worth 
 millions, looking stoically on at our strange 
 mania for dancing. 
 
 Ida looked very handsome, and was much 
 sought after. But Aunt Jane kept a lynx eye up- 
 on her, and saw that she did not dance with the 
 objectionable Captain Blantyre, at least till 
 supper-time. But, when that great moment 
 came, always a solemn one in an Indian official 
 ball, Aunt Jane was too engrossed with seeing 
 that she got her rightful precedence, to think of 
 anything else. 
 
 I was sitting out one of the supper dances in 
 a very dim, small tent, pitched in the Viceroy's 
 garden enclosure for the guests, when the night 
 air struck me as chilly, and my partner went off 
 to the cloak-room to fetch my cloak. I was left 
 sitting alone in a dark corner. To me enter, 
 without perceiving my presence, another couple, 
 who evidently, to judge by the following con- 
 versation, imagined the spot unoccupied. 
 
1 76 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 She : " I am directly disobeying them in even 
 speaking to you. But I do not care another 
 six months !'' 
 
 He (in a low tone) : " Six months oh ! my 
 poor girl, you don't know it will be too 
 late!" 
 
 She : " Too late ! What do you mean ? " 
 
 He : " That I'm in a devil of a mess done 
 for ruined ! " 
 
 She : " Oh, Arthur ! " 
 
 He : " The last three nights' poker at the 
 the Hussar mess ; then ' True Blue ' losing by a 
 head. Ida, I'm ruined, dishonoured ! " 
 
 She : " Dishonoured, Arthur ?" 
 
 He : "I mean it. My troop-money deficient : 
 it will be found out in two days, and I can't lay 
 my hands on a farthing ; not a shroff (money- 
 lender) will look at me. But I won't face it ; 
 my mind's made up we must say good-bye 
 forever ; there's but one way for me out of 
 it all" 
 
 She (wildly): "Arthur! Arthur! don't talk 
 like that ! Something must, shall be done ! 
 I" 
 
 He : " My poor child, what can you do ? Even 
 
SUCH A SUSPICION. 177 
 
 if you had power over your own poor little money, 
 it would not go far enough." 
 
 She (excitedly, after a moment's pause) : " But 
 how much would what would tide you over a 
 few thousand rupees ? " 
 
 He : " They would tide me over, could I get 
 them. But, darling, what's the use of deluding 
 ourselves with vain " 
 
 They were suddenly interrupted by the en- 
 trance of my partner with the cloak, and left me 
 filled with dismay, for they were my cousin Ida 
 and Captain Blantyre. 
 
 I didn't enjoy the rest of the ball a bit, I felt 
 so unhappy and uneasy, and was delighted when 
 Aunt Jane, who was very sleepy, took us back 
 to our tents. 
 
 The excitement had tired me out, and I hur- 
 ried into bed and soon fell fast asleep. Only 
 once I was half aroused A figure was crossing 
 the tent. I jumped up, alarmed, but saw it was 
 only Ida in her dressing-gown, and with her 
 hair down. 
 
 " Go to sleep, MolKe," she said ; " I've got such 
 a headache that I have been to get a whiff of 
 air." 
 
1 78 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 When I awoke again it was broad daylight. 
 Ida's bed was empty, but by mine stood the 
 ayah, wringing her hands. 
 
 " Oh ! Miss Sahib, something dreadful other 
 miss gone ride ; Mem Sahib still sleep snore ; 
 but, oh ! in night dreadful thief come all Mem 
 Sahib's di'monds gone. Oh ! poor ayah ; ayah 
 be beaten." And she began to howl. 
 
 I was up in a moment. Instantly my remark 
 of the night before, when my aunt was putting 
 on her jewels, flashed into my mind. I stole 
 into her room. There she lay, snoring peace- 
 fully, but her jewel-case upon the dressing-table 
 was empty ; every one of the little velvet recep- 
 tacles which contained the priceless brooches 
 and pendants vanished ! 
 
 " Chokedar (watchman) he sleep Miss Sahib, 
 Mem Sahib all sleep. Thief he come very, 
 very gentle so " (and the ayah pointed to the 
 aperture between the tent and the ground). 
 11 No one see ! " And she beat her breast. 
 
 I stared bewildered at the place she pointed 
 at, when a slight rustle behind the curtain which 
 separated the tent from the next caught my ear. 
 I looked up and saw Ida's face peeping through 
 
SUCH A SUSPICION. 179 
 
 a face so white that my heart stood still ; for I 
 suddenly remembered how I had seen it bending 
 over me in the night. 
 
 In a moment there came back to me the 
 dreadful conversation I had overheard at the 
 ball, and the most horrible suspicions flooded 
 my mind. 
 
 Without a word I crept back to bed, thankful 
 that Ida remained in the verandah of the tent, 
 where I could hear her (one hears everything 
 under canvas) having chota hazari with our uncle, 
 the clatter of the teacups, the bearer coming in 
 with the English letters (it was mail morning), 
 and my uncle's comments over the new 
 Times. 
 
 But suddenly, amid it all, I heard the clatter 
 of a horse's hoofs, a sudden stoppage in front of 
 our tents, and a familiar voice, strong, firm, and 
 cheerful : 
 
 " Mr. Woodhouse, I am Captain Blantyre, of 
 whom you have heard. I know you have for- 
 bidden me your house, and to speak to your 
 ward ; but I have just received by the mail un- 
 expected intelligence, which places me in a 
 position entitling me to ask you to give her to 
 
i So IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. 
 
 me. My uncle in Scotland, Sir Alexander 
 Blantyre, has suddenly lost his two sons 
 drowned, bathing. I am his heir, and he wishes 
 me to leave the service at once, and come and 
 live near him and look after his property. May 
 I take Ida with me ? " 
 
 " Oh, the villain ! The consummate liar ! 
 The plot they have hatched ! " I said to myself, 
 with a groan. 
 
 Then Aunt Jane, awakened by the noise, 
 called me hurriedly. 
 
 " Mollie," she cried, " the ayah's gone mad ; 
 she says my diamonds are stolen ! " 
 
 " Indeed, my poor aunt," I said, gently, " every 
 case has been clean swept off." 
 
 " Rubbish ! " said Aunt Jane. " I was too 
 tired to put them away last night. See 
 here!" 
 
 And, hopping out of bed, she snatched up 
 her best lace cap, which lay on the dressing- 
 table. 
 
 Beneath it reposed the diamonds, intact. 
 
 The police found the velvet cases a few days 
 later in the bazaar, sold by a dismissed 
 servant 
 
SUCH A SUSPICION. 181 
 
 Ida and Captain Blantyre were married at the 
 close of the Durbar, and went home directly. 
 But I have never kept up Sir Arthur and Lady 
 Blantyre's acquaintance. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by Cowan & Co., Limited, Perth. 
 
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