then we may be callers?" interrupted by "Can not you be not at home,' just for this one day?" "But is it not a shame to give people the trouble of coming all the way out along that hot dusty road from the cantonment, merely to go back again without stopping to rest? I am sure I never drive into cantonments myself in the day-time without bringing a headache back." "But this amount of heat and dust is like the Arctic regions compared with what we are going to have by-and-by. Besides, are you always so considerate? I have heard of people coming out along that hot dusty road to find the Residency doors closed, and that not so very long ago." "Ah, I deserve your reproaches, and, will you believe me, I felt very penitent when I saw your card. But we really did not expect anybody that day, and papa was unwell, and I was keeping him company in his room. However, I owe you amends; so will you please give the order about our not being at home, and we will have chairs taken out under the trees." The young man, enraptured at the success of his scheme, gave the needful order; and but that, with a dozen servants at hand, it would have been a perfectly useless excess of zeal, he would have carried out the chairs and camp-table himself. As it was, he was fain to content himself with taking charge of the young lady's sketching-block and colour-box, while she went to get her garden-hat. The day was one of those towards the end of an Indian winter when the climate is perfect; the chill air of the cold weather had passed away, but the season for high winds, heat, and dust had not arrived; and as Yorke arranged the chairs under a tree from which a good view could be obtained of the little encampment, and where the fair artist would, while enjoying the light genial air, be protected from the bright sun overhead, and also be concealed from sight of any visitors driving up to the portico, he thought with an unwonted exaltation of feeling that in this long morning passed together the opportunity must surely arise, in some encouragement let fall, or some understanding expressed, for the avowal of his love. Alas! on returning from the encampment, where he had been grouping the men according to the artist's instructions, he saw a servant in the act of placing a third chair by side of the other two, to be occupied a few moments later by the inevitable Justine, armed with enough embroidery to last through the day silent herself, and the cause of silence in others. The opportunity, then, was gone, although there still remained the long morning to be passed in this sweet companionship, becoming each moment, as he felt, more friendly. "And I should be an ungrateful brute to find fault with my lot," thought Yorke to himself. "I might have lived for a dozen years in the cantonment and not have become so intimate with her as the luck of this treasure-party, following the steeple-chase, has made me already. And if she seemed charming and gracious before, when I had scarcely spoken to her, how much more admirable and perfect does she not appear to my better knowledge now! With all her beauty and accomplishments, how modest and humble-minded she is! and yet there is no want of humorous appreciation of character. She is shrewd enough to see through people, yet without any ill-nature in her remarks. Can she have failed," he added, "to have seen through me and my secret?" Thus thought the lover to him self, as the Commissioner, who had come over for a few minutes from the court-house, led the way to the house for a late luncheon. The meal ended, they were again about to resume the morning's occupation, when a messenger announced the arrival of the Nawab's guard to take over the treasure, thus shattering the hope which Yorke had cherished of spending Sunday at the Residency. Putting on his uniform, he repaired to the spot where the detachment was encamped. The transfer of the money was a tedious affair; and when finished it was time for the detachment to set off on its march back to cantonments, and Yorke despatched them accordingly, returning to the house to pay his adieus. He found the Commissioner in his study smoking a cigar, and his daughter sitting by him, reading a book; while the open carriage drawn up outside announced that they were about to take their evening drive. Already, thought Yorke with bitter heart, and yet ashamed of himself for harbouring such a feeling, they have their occupations and plans in which I hold no share. "Good-bye!" said the Commissioner, holding out his hand, but without rising; "it was unfortunate the Nawab was so punctual-we should have been glad if you could have stayed till Monday. But cannot we drive you down to cantonments? we may as well go that way as anywhere else." Yorke would fain have clutched at even this brief respite, but he had to explain that his horse was waiting, and he must overtake his detachment presently and accompany it on foot into cantonments. "Good-bye!" said Miss Cunningham, who had risen, holding out her hand; "it is so provoking of the Nawab to cut short your visit, was you mustWhat she going to say he could not tell, for something in the expression of his earnest gaze caused her to drop her eyes, and with a slight blush withdraw her hand. On the following Monday Yorke would have ridden out to the Residency, notwithstanding the shortness of the interval since he had last been there; a call after a dinner being proper, much more he argued should one be proper after a day's visit; but an order reached him in the morning to proceed on courtmartial duty to a neighbouring station some fifty miles off, where officers were scarce, and he was fain to express his thanks in a note, which it is needless to say consumed a quantity of best paper before it got itself written to his satisfaction; the expression that the Friday and Saturday spent at the Residency had been the happiest moments of his life being eventually toned. down to the effect that this had been the pleasantest visit he had ever paid. The court-martial lasted for several days. When it was ended, Yorke determined to return by easy marches, stopping for a few days to shoot on the road, the plains round Mustaphabad being fairly supplied with game. In this way he would kill time till the month's absence of the Commissioner and his daughter should be completed, every day of which had been ticked off as it passed, for he felt that life in cantonments would be insupportable till their return. Thus spinning out the time allowed for his own return, he pitched his camp for the last day at a village about eight miles from Mustaphabad, and walking off his impatience by a long morning and evening tramp with his gun through the surrounding country, slept the sound sleep of fatigue in his little tent, and rode into cantonments early the next morning. Spragge was away in the lines at the orderly room when he reached the bungalow; so, calling for tea, and throwing off his coat, for the days were now getting hot, he sat down in the veranda till his chum should return. That gentleman soon came into view cantering into the compound, his long legs upheld at a short distance from the ground by his diminutive pony; and after bestowing a few cuffs and blessings on that animal's patient attendant for some faults of omission and commission, greeted his friend in his usual hearty manner. The first topic of conversation was, of course, the amount of Yorke's bag; next followed Yorke's inquiry what the news was. "News? there never is any news in this blessed place, except that it's getting infernally hot already, which you can find out for yourself. A lot of fellows have gone off to the hills for six months' leave, and almost all the ladies have started; I should like to have gone off myself, but can't afford it; and now we are in for the regular hot-weather dulness. Nothing but billiards and rackets left for a fellow to do. But I say, you ought to have been here, my boy, to come in for the goings-on of my cousin Ted while officiating commissioner. He has been doing the big official in tremendously set -bachelor parties, ladies' parties, handing in mother Polwheedle to dinner, and all the rest of it; hermetically-sealed soups and claretcup poured out like water. Ted's been going it, and no mistake. Pity he's got such a short tether of the office !" "Yes, indeed," said Yorke, trying to assume an air of indifference; "the Commissioner is to be back again this week, isn't he?" "Comes back to-morrow, but only for a few days, you know; and I think they might have given Ted the acting appointment." "Acting appointment!" said Yorke, starting up, and at once thrown off his guard, "what do you mean?" "Why, bless me!" replied Spragge, "you don't mean to say you haven't heard the news? Why, it's been in all the papers a week ago. I thought, of course, you must have seen it. The Commissioner has been very unwell-liver gone wrong, I believe and has been ordered home sharp, and Colonel Falkland is appointed to succeed him.” "Colonel Falkland !" cried Yorke, feeling suddenly as if something more remained to be told. "Yes, of course," answered his friend; "he is engaged to Miss Cunningham, you know. They are to be married in a fortnight." CHAPTER XIV. When Mr. Cunningham lost his young wife, which event happened just twenty-one years before the time at which this history begins, and within a year of his marriage, he was left with a little daughter on whom the poor mother had scarcely time to bestow a parting kiss before she died. The friendly wife of a brother civilian, who was present on the occasion, proposed to carry off the infant to her house and bring it up for the time with her own children; but the young widower was averse to parting with the charge, and the lady was fain to be content with coming over daily to bestow an occasional super intendence on his nursery establishment. A still more frequent supervision over the child's welfare was given by his friend, Lieutenant Falkland, who, although he declined the young widower's proposal that he should give up his bungalow in cantonments, and share the other's more comfortable house in the civil lines, spent almost as much time there as if he had been a permanent occupant of it. The subaltern had plenty of leisure; and his friend's servants were never sure during their master's long absence in court at what moment they might not receive a visit from Falkland, and even if they had been disposed to neglect the child would have been prevented by his vigilance. But indifference to their master's children is not a fault of Indian servants; their weakness is rather in the way of too much petting and indulgence. In the case of a baby, however, there was not much room for injudicious kindness; the little Olivia's wants were sufficiently ministered to by the stout young mussalmáni woman who had been engaged from a neighbouring village to fulfil the office of wet-nurse; and the young civil surgeon of the station, Dr. Mackenzie Maxwell, declared in his daily visits that no child could be better cared for, or more thriving. As the little Olivia grew out of babyhood, almost the first person she came to recognise after her nurse and the old bearer who was appointed her special attendant, was the young officer; and the child would hold out her little arms to greet him as he came up the avenue of an evening while she was taking her walk in the old man's arms, attended by the nurse and another female, while a tall officemessenger with a red belt, brass plate, and gigantic umbrella brought up the rear. Long before she could understand the use of them, the self-appointed guardian began to pour in consignments of toys, which soon littered the young civilian's house; Benares lacquered bricks, little wooden elephants and camels, cups and saucers, and tea equipages; a swing to be hung up in the veranda; with a rocking-horse as large as a Burmah pony. A visitor to Mr. Cunningham's house in those days of a morning would generally find the same group assembled there: the father, in an easy-chair smoking his cheroot; his friend sitting more erect, as became a man with strict military ideas, and not smoking, the two watching the child and the old bearer on the floor together, engaged in the joint task of erecting a tower, which, from the number of bricks strewed about the room, promised to assume the proportions of a very Babel. Thus passed the child's earliest years, when just as she was beginning to prattle freely, and had been advanced to the dignity of a seat on a raised chair at her father's breakfasttable, a disruption took place of the small commonwealth which had conducted the government of the little Olivia's household. Falkland was appointed to the staff of the army on the frontier, and the good doctor was transferred to another station; while the advent of his successor was heralded by a reputation for his power of subduing the strongest constitutions of adults, and a perfectly ogre-like capacity for the massacre of children; such as escaped the first onslaught of his calomel, it was rumoured, invariably succumbed to the subsequent treatment. The arrival of this terrible official caused a general panic in the station. Mrs. Spangle, the wife of the brother civilian already referred to, determined to anticipate by a year or two the time fixed for the inevitable homevoyage; and Cunningham, thus left without his friends, accepted her offer to take his little daughter to England with her own children, to be made over on arrival to the charge of his only sister. To Mrs. Maitland, Cunningham's sister, who had no children of her own, the arrival of her little niece was a very welcome event; she soon came to love the child as her own, and Olivia found in her house a happy home, where even the dimmest recollections of India soon faded away. Nor were the father's letters calculated to recall them. Cunningham did not possess the sort of literary power which alone could have enabled those unacquainted with the scenes among which it was spent to realise his mode of life; and, under the feeling that his letters had no real interest for the reader when they passed beyond mere personal topics, his correspondence, though still affectionate, gradually became brief and infrequent. His sister's letters were longer and more regular, for all home allusions could be understood by the parent, and full accounts of his daughter, her health, progress, and occupation, made up an interesting letter; and as soon as the child was able to write herself, each mail carried a letter from her to her unknown father, all to be carefully filed by the Indian exile, and containing a complete record of progress, beginning with the uncertain link-tracings over her aunt's pencilled outlines, and so through the large round-hand and short stiff sentences of childhood and all the various developments of girlish hands, to the easy writing and ready expression of the accomplished young woman. When Olivia was about twelve years old her uncle died, and his widow was shortly afterwards ordered for her health to the south of France; and having now no ties with England, and finding con tinental life and climate to her taste. Mrs. Maitland had continued from that time to reside with her niece in various parts of the south of Europe. Meanwhile Cunningham remained in India; although not a brilliant man, his industry, temper, and judgment had gained for him a considerable reputation in his service, and whenever he was on the point of taking a furlough, the transfer to some new employment had always happened to prevent his doing so; now a neglected district to be brought into proper form; now a newly-annexed province to be reduced to order, some call in the way of preferment appealing to his sense of duty and the love of distinction, and tempting him to stay in the country. Thus year after year passed away without the intended furlough being taken; till at last, when Olivia was arrived at womanhood, and the question arose whether instead of his going home the daughter should not rejoin her father in India, he was invited by the Government to assume charge of the province ceded by the Nawab of Mustaphabad, and to introduce the blessings of British rule into the districts so long misgoverned by that unfortunate prince. Such a request could not be refused; and Cunningham, feeling that his daughter was more at home with the aunt who had been a mother to her for so many years, than she could be with the father who had now become little more than a name, and being, it must be confessed, now quite reconciled to his solitary life, had just proposed a scheme for completing his new task and eventually retiring on the pension which he had now earned to join his sister and daughter in Italy, when the plan was upset by the news that Mrs. Maitland had accepted the offer of marriage from an Italian nobleman. To Cunningham |