Read Ebook: The Advanced-Guard by Grier Sydney C

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Ebook has 1487 lines and 112149 words, and 30 pages

Major Keeling's brow darkened. "I knew this would come. You assured me you could stand the isolation, but I knew better. Of course you want female society; it is quite natural you should. But you professed to understand that on the frontier you couldn't have it."

"Not society--just this one girl," pleaded Lady Haigh.

"Who is she? a sister of yours or Haigh's?"

"No relation to either of us. She is Mr Ross's sister--your old friend's daughter--an orphan, and all alone."

"Engaged to any one who is going with me?"

"No--o." The negative, doubtful at first, became definite. "I won't say a word about Ferrers, even to get him to let her come," was Lady Haigh's resolute determination.

"Then she can't come."

"Oh, Major Keeling! And if I had said she was engaged, you would have said that the man would be always wasting his time dangling round her."

"But as she isn't, the whole force would waste their time dangling round her," was the crushing reply. "No, Lady Haigh, we have no use for young ladies on the frontier. It will be work, not play."

"Play! Do you think a girl with that face wants to spend her life in playing?" demanded Lady Haigh, very much in the tone with which she had once been wont to crush her family. "Look there!"

She drew him to the open window of the drawing-room and made him look through the reed curtain. The light fell full on Penelope's face as she sang, and Lady Haigh felt that the beholder was impressed.

"What's that she's singing?" he growled. "'County Guy'? Scott? There's some good in her, at any rate."

Lady Haigh forbore to resent the slighting imputation, and Major Keeling remained watching the singer through the curtain. Penelope's contemporaries considered her tall and queenly, though she would now be thought decidedly under middle height. Her dark hair was dressed in a graceful old fashion which had almost gone out before the combined assault of bands and ringlets,--raised high on the head, divided in front, and slightly waved on the temples,--a style which by rights demanded an oval face and classical features as its complement. Judged by this standard, Penelope might have been found wanting, for her features were at once stronger and less regular than the classical ideal; but the grey eyes beneath the broad low brow disarmed criticism, they were so large and deep and calm, save when they were lighted, as now, by the fire of the ballad she was singing. Those were days when a white dress and coloured ribbons were considered the only evening wear for a young girl; and Penelope wore a vivid scarlet sash, with knots of scarlet catching up her airy white draperies, and a scarlet flower in her hair. As Major Keeling stood looking at her, Lady Haigh caught a murmur which at once astonished and delighted her.

"That is a woman who would help a man--not drag him back." Then, apparently realising that he had spoken aloud, he added hastily, "Yes, yes, as you say. But who's the man with the unlucky face?"

His finger indicated a tall thin youth who stood behind the singer. The face was a remarkable one, thin and hawklike, with a high forehead and closely compressed lips. The hair and small moustache were fair and reddish in tint, the eyes grey, with a curious look of aloofness instead of the keenness that would have seemed to accord with the rest of the features.

"That? Why, that's Colin Ross, Penelope's brother. What is there unlucky about him?"

"Oh, nothing--merely a look. Her brother, do you say?"

"Yes, her twin brother. But what look do you mean? Oh, you must tell me, Major Keeling, or I shall tell Penelope that you say her brother has an unlucky face."

"You will do nothing of the kind. Hush! don't attract their attention. I can't explain it: I have seen it in several men--not many, fortunately--and it has always meant an early and violent death."

"But this is pure superstition!" cried Lady Haigh. "And, after all, he is a soldier."

"Very serious, I believe," answered Lady Haigh. The word still had its cant meaning, which would now be expressed by "religious."

"So much the better for him. I can trust you to say nothing to his sister about this?"

"Now, is it likely? But the least you can do now is to let her come with us. His twin sister! you couldn't have the heart to separate them when he may have such dreadful things before him?"

"How would it be better if she were there?" he asked gloomily; but, as if by a sudden impulse, parted the curtain and advanced into the room. Penelope, her song ended, was toying with the knot of scarlet ribbons attached to the guitar, while her hearers were trying to decide upon the next song, when the group was divided by the abrupt entrance of a huge man, as it seemed to her, in extraordinary clothes. It struck her as remarkable that every man in the room seemed to stiffen into attention at the moment, and she rose hesitatingly, wondering whether this could possibly be Sir Henry Lennox.

"Do me the honour to present me, Lady Haigh," said the stranger, in a deep voice which seemed to be subdued for the occasion.

"Major Keeling, Miss Ross," said Lady Haigh promptly. She was enjoying herself.

"I hear you wish to come up to Alibad with us," said Major Keeling abruptly. "Can you ride?"

"Yes, I am very fond of it."

"I don't mean trotting along an English road. Can you ride on through the sand hour after hour, so as to keep up with the column, and not complain? Complaints would mean that you would go no farther."

"I can promise I won't complain. If I feel I can't stick on my horse any longer, I will get some one to tie me into the saddle." Penelope smiled slightly. This catechism was not without its humorous side.

"Can you cut down your baggage to regulation limits? Let me see, what did I promise you, Lady Haigh? A camel? Well, half that. Can you do with a camel between you?"

"I think so." Penelope was conscious of Lady Haigh's face of agony.

"You must, if you come. Can you do what you are told?"

"I--I believe so. I generally do."

"If you get orders to leave Alibad in an hour, can you forsake everything, and be ready for the march? That's what I mean. If I find it necessary to send you down, go you must. Can you make yourself useful? Oh, I daresay you can do pretty things like most young ladies, but can you put yourself at the surgeon's disposal after a fight, and be some good?"

"I would try," said Penelope humbly. It was before Miss Nightingale's days, and the suggestion sounded very strange to her. Major Keeling stood looking at her, until his black brows relaxed suddenly.

"All right, you can come," he said. "And," he added, as he left the room, "I'll allow you a camel apiece after all."

"What an interesting-looking man Major Keeling is!" said Penelope to her friend the next morning.

"Some people think so. I don't particularly admire that kind of swarthy picturesqueness myself," was the meditative answer. "I won't praise him to her on any account," said Lady Haigh to herself.

"Why, you are as bad as the girls at Bombay. One of them told me they all perfectly doated on dear Major Keeling; he was just like a dear delightful bandit in an opera."

"Really, Elma!" Penelope's graceful head was lifted with dignity, and Lady Haigh, foreseeing a coolness, hastened to make amends.

"I was only in fun. We don't doat, do we, Pen? or gush, or anything of that sort. But it was only the happiest chance his letting you come with us. If he had caught you singing Tennyson, or your dear Miss Barrett--Mrs Browning, is it? what does it signify?--there would have been no hope for you. But it happened to be Scott, and that conquered him at once. They say he knows all the poems by heart, and recites them before a battle. Dugald heard him doing it at Umarganj, at any rate. The troopers like it, because they think he is muttering spells to discomfit the enemy. Isn't it romantic?"

"How funny!" was Penelope's disappointing comment.

"He was very fond of Byron once, but he has given him up for conscience' sake," pursued Lady Haigh.

"For conscience' sake?"

"Yes; Byron was a man of immoral life, and his works are not fit for a Christian's reading."

"Yes," admitted Penelope. "He asked me such strange things, and in such a solemn voice. I should have liked time to think before answering."

"Well, it was nothing to what he asked me. I had to promise never to keep Dugald back--or even to try to--from anything he was ordered to do. Wasn't it barbarous? You see, in that fight at Umarganj Dugald had got his guns up just in time to take part, and they decided the battle. Major Keeling was so pleased that he said at once, 'We must have you at Alibad,' and of course Dugald was delighted. But when the Chief found out he was married he almost refused to take him, for he had sworn he would have no ladies on the frontier. And there was I, who had said over and over again that I would never stand between Dugald and his chances! It really looked like a romantic suicide, leaving pathetic letters to break the cruel Major's heart, didn't it? But Sir Henry Lennox interceded for me, and I told Major Keeling I would promise anything if he would only let us both go. And now I wake up at night dreaming that the Chief has ordered Dugald to certain death, and I mustn't say a word, and I lie there sobbing, or shaking with terror, until Dugald hears me, and asks me why I don't control my imagination. That's what husbands are. What with keeping them in a good temper when they are there, and missing them when they are away, one has no peace. Don't invest in one, Pen."

"Of course I mean it all depends on your getting the right man." Lady Haigh was uncomfortably conscious that she might one day wish to explain away her last remark. "Only find him, and he shall have you with my blessing. Pen, did you notice anything about Major Keeling's eyes? I mean"--she went on, talking quickly to cover her sudden realisation that the transition must have appeared somewhat abrupt to Penelope--"did he seem to be able to read your mind? The natives believe that he can, and say that he can tell when a man is a spy simply by looking at him. He seems to have funny ideas, too, about being able to foretell a person's fate from his face. He was very much struck by--at least"--she blundered on, conscious that she was getting deeper and deeper into the mire--"he said something last night about Colin's having a very remarkable face."

"Colin ought to know better than to have anything to do with Ferrers. He will get no good from him."

"Why, Elma, he has always been so devoted to him, and George used to seem quite different when he was with us. Colin is terribly grieved about what you--I--did yesterday. He says it was very wrong to break off the engagement altogether, that I was quite right not to marry George at once, but that I ought to have put him on probation, giving him every possible hope for the future."

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