The Potter's Thumb. Flora Annie Webster Steel
right angles along the canal. Owing to this and some good sport on the way, every one had started by daybreak through the Bâr; that is to say, hard waste land dotted with tufts of grey caper-bushes, and stunted trees, just high enough and thick enough to prevent one seeing more than twenty or thirty yards in any direction, since beyond that the clumps became a continuous hedge shutting out the world. Colonel Tweedie and his immediate staff having ridden on in haste, the shooting party, beguiled by the prospect of bustards, had spread themselves through the jungle on one side of the track, followed by their horses and grooms. Mrs. Boynton, however, preferring such road as there was, had been walking her horse along it in the expectation of being rejoined, when the sudden firing of an unseen gun made her Arab bolt. First along the track, then missing it at a bend, the beast had swerved into some bushes, where a thorny branch had caught in his long tail, making him perfectly unmanageable. After a mile or more, he had apparently broken into the track again, and sobered down to a walk, much to her delight. Then a solitary native traveller had passed, and assured her, as she imagined, that she was right for the sahib-logue's camp; so she had trotted on, until, fearing she might lose the track once more, she had been foolish enough to walk her horse back on its traces, thus completely losing all her bearings. Finally, at a fork in the almost invisible path, she had been forced to confess that she had not the least idea in which direction her destination lay, north or south, east or west; the sun, therefore, being of little use to her as a guide. (Here her pretty smile growing a trifle tremulous, made George profusely indignant with the desert.) Then, regaining her head, she remembered to have heard Mr. Fitzgerald--who, as Mr. Keene would know, had of course joined the camp on its entrance into the division--say that the more open country lay eastward, and so she had ridden as straight as she could into the shadows, that being her best chance of steering aright. (Here George grew clamorous over her courage.) Nevertheless, it had almost failed, she said, when on a sudden the great silver streak of the canal had appeared from among the bushes, and she had ridden along its banks till she came to a treeless waste with a big mound looming in the far distance.
'I knew it must be Hodinuggur,' she finished with a sort of caress to her own comfort among the pillows, 'by Mr. Fitzgerald's description, and I knew you from Rose Tweedie's, so I felt it was all right. And now, Mr. Keene! don't you wonder I didn't snore, considering I had been in the saddle for eight hours?'
George protested it was virtue itself for her to wake at all; but that she would have the whole day to rest, as it was manifestly impossible for her to return to the camp; absurd also, since the latter was to come on to Hodinuggur next day. So he would send to the Diwân and borrow a camel sowar, who would ride over with a note telling of her safety in the bungalow, and asking for anything she might require. For the rest, all he had was at her service.
'But I shall be turning you out of house and home, shan't I?' she asked kindly.
The young fellow's eyes softened. 'I don't think I ever thought of it as a home before,' he said with an embarrassed laugh at his own words; 'but won't you come to breakfast? It's awfully nasty, I'm afraid----'
'Then we can fall back on the sardines and the marmalade,' she interrupted gravely. This gravity was with her a perfect art, and gave a great charm to her gentle raillery.
Perhaps the food was nasty; if so, George, for one, did not mind except for her sake. He thought of nothing but her comfort; of how he could welcome her to take possession of everything, himself included. Was she not the most beautiful, the most fascinating, the most perfect woman he had ever seen? Did she not deserve the best he could give her? So, while she was writing the note for the camel sowar, George slipped away to give instructions to the factotum. The bedroom must be swept and garnished, and the things pitched away anywhere. The drawers must be re-papered, a towel put on the dressing-table, and---- What a beastly hole it was, he thought ruefully as he left the man to his own devices; but half an hour afterwards his face cleared; for the factotum, having been in good services, had risen to the occasion. Not only was there a towel on the dressing-table, but two empty beer-bottles had been modestly draped into candlesticks, with the gilt ends of the pugree he had received from the Diwân, while the remainder of the muslin was festooned about the looking-glass. Azîzan's portrait stood on the mantel-shelf with the Ayôdhya pot in front, and two dinner plates on either side, the arrangement being completed by two of his best ties knotted in bows about his hunting crop, and the kitchen fan. A tinsel veil, borrowed from the compounder of egg-sarse, did duty as a bed-spread, supported by his Cooper's Hill tennis muffler as an antimacassar. In the middle of the room the factotum still lingered, benign and superior, one hand holding a hammer and tacks, the other a pair of striped silk socks, with the decorative effect of which he was evidently enamoured. In addition, a figure swathed in white sat modestly behind the dressing-room door.
'It is my house,' said the man, with a large smile. 'Since it is not to be tolerated that the abode of princes should lack a female slave, the woman, at my command, takes the part of ayah. The Huzoor may rest satisfied. Azîzan's knowledge of the mems equals this slave's of the sahibs.'
Azîzan! The smile left George's lips at the name; and before leaving the room he thrust the portrait into a cupboard, replacing it by an illuminated text which was lying neglected under a pile of wire cartridges.
'The Huzoor is right,' declared the factotum cheerfully. 'The mems have them ever in their rooms. Lo! nothing is amiss.'
George, as he turned at the door for a last look, felt that the advice, 'Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together' emblazoned in Gothic characters, holly, and mistletoe, which a maiden aunt had sent him as a Christmas present, did indeed put the finishing touch to the solitude of the wilderness.
'But where are you going?' asked Gwen.
'I? Oh! they'll give me quarters in the palace, I expect. Perhaps I'd better go over now and see about it. Then I've inspection work, and--and a heap of other things. So perhaps I'd better say good-bye. I've told the servants about lunch and all that sort of thing. And your traps will be here before dark.'
A very nice boy, indeed, thought Mrs. Boynton, and showed her thought. So George went over to the palace feeling quite intoxicated because he had been instructed without fail to dine in his own house; and after he had settled about his quarters with Dalel, and had ridden off on his fictitious tour of inspection, he dug the spurs into his pony out of sheer lightness of heart, and went sailing away over the desert, careless even of the direction in which he went.
Dalel meanwhile had repaired to the shadowy arches in a state of boastful superiority. His friend Keene was coming over to stop in the palace. They would play cards, and be jolly, and drink. And the lad always carried the key of the sluice-gate on his watch-chain.
'It is a chance indeed,' said Chândni, with a queer look. Then after a time broke in on Dalel's vapourings by snatching the banjo from the wall and breaking into a respectable and plaintive love-song.
'Lo! thou hast thy way, and I have mine,' she laughed recklessly. 'Let us see who succeeds best.' So slipping on the decent white domino, she set off for the palace, and turned down the dark passage leading to the women's apartments. Doubtless it was a chance which must not be neglected.
Between his desire not to disturb Mrs. Boynton's kindness too early, and his dislike to becoming a prey to Dalel at the palace, George in the end had to gallop his pony the last four miles, and then found himself with but ten minutes in which to dress. But he dashed up the narrow stair leading to the odd little arcaded room placed at his disposal by the Diwân, feeling confident in the factotum's forethought; and, sure enough, on the silk coverlet of the high lacquered bed lay his dress-clothes and white tie complete. Nothing else, except his sleeping-suit; so, choice being denied him, he flung himself into ceremonious black, discovering as he did so that two or three jasmine blossoms and a sprig of maidenhair fern had been pinned into the button-hole of his coat. The factotum was evidently determined he should play the right game. As he ran down the stairs again he wondered whence the man could possibly have procured the fern, and then remembered having seen a few fronds clinging, far down on the masonry of his well, into which the canal water filtered. The seed of this hill-born plant must have filtered with it; just as these strange items of knowledge--the shibboleth of dress-clothes and button-holes--filtered into the brains of these odd people.