The Weeping Ash (33 page)

Since it now wanted but a very few minutes to dinnertime, Fanny walked slowly into the parlor to wait for the gong; although very doubtful whether her distress and the fearfully constricting stays would allow her to swallow any food, she did not wish to give Thomas the satisfaction of seeing her completely subdued or crushed. Aware of a rebarbative atmosphere in the parlor, where Thomas was reading the daily paper, while little Patty teased the cat, and Bet darned a pair of stockings, Fanny quietly took her seat in a rocking chair.

Thomas suddenly flung down his paper with an inarticulate exclamation of disgust.

“Tcha! It passes all bounds!”

“What does, Papa?” demanded little Patty, who had lately been promoted to eat dinner with the rest of the family, since none of the servants was prepared to carry her food up two flights of stairs.

Addressing himself to nobody in particular, Thomas went on:

“That
Mr. Pitt
—that the first minister of England—a man whom I have been used to esteem as a model of superior sense—should become involved in a
duel
—it is beyond comprehension!”

“A duel, Pa? Whom did he fight?” Even Bet, who rarely occupied herself with public affairs, was interested in this.

“Where did the affair take place?” Fanny softly inquired.

“Upon Wimbledon Common! Upon my word, I do not know what outrage we shall be hearing of next! Pitt was obliged to fight some rogue of an Irishman named Tierney, who had the insolence to challenge him in the very House of Commons itself! And, furthermore, there has been an abominable uprising in Ireland—close on thirty thousand armed ruffians are laying waste the country around Wexford. If the French should land in Britain now, we should, I daresay, be quite at their mercy!” He glared at his womenfolk as if all this were their fault. “The army hardly numbers more than thirty thousand men, all told, and most of them must have been sent to Ireland to put down the revolt.”

Although these were distressful tidings, Fanny could not help being relieved that Thomas had something other than her own shortcomings to occupy his mind.

“Do you truly think that the French will invade us, Papa?” Bet inquired presently, over the boiled chicken, the roasted bullock's heart, and the mutton-and-apple pie. “Mrs. Dawtry says a French scientist named Monsieur Monge has constructed an armored raft two thousand feet long, capable of carrying a whole army across the sea! It is propelled by windmills and guarded by hundreds of cannon. Boney and all his men could be here by next week!”

She looked as if she quite relished the prospect.

“Fiddle-dee-dee, girl,” said Thomas disagreeably. “Such notions are nothing but moonshine. Why, a raft of such dimensions would weigh upward of fifty thousand tons. Pray, how could it be constructed? Where is there a forest large enough to supply timber for such a vessel? Still, it is by no means impossible that the French
may
land,” he added gloomily enough.

“La!” exclaimed Bet, her eyes sparkling at the thought. “Imagine the Frogs marching into Petworth in their shakos? I should die laughing—would not you, Stepmama?”

Fanny shook her head without reply. Thomas cast a sour look at her and requested Bet to keep her mouth shut if she had nothing to offer but stupidities; but it was evident that he, too, was occupied by unpleasant apprehensions as to the likelihood of a French invasion.

That Thomas was not the only person to entertain such forebodings was evidenced by a note that arrived after dinner, brought by one of the Petworth House footmen.

Thomas digested its contents in silence:

“Lord Egremont presents his compliments to Captain Paget, and requests the pleasure of his company at a Meeting to discuss the formation of a Petworth Volunteer Corps which Ld. Egremont proposes to finance. Ld. Egremont ventures to hope that Capt. Paget will do him the Honor of captaining the troop, and requests his suggestions as to uniform, equipment, service pay, types of belts, cartouche boxes, firelocks, haversacks, canteens, pistols, swords, etc. The time suggested for the Meeting is Wednesday, May 30, at noon, if convenient to Capt. Paget.”

“Humph,” remarked Thomas, not wholly displeased, after reading this missive from the third earl. “Well—at least that shows some sense! I don't like the man—can't stand his Whig affectations and his rakehell friends—but he certainly displays a proper feeling and respect—very proper—in applying to me during such an emergency. Mind, I have my hands full as it is, with my impress duties—he might remember that—but still, I daresay I
am
the best-qualified person to take over the command of such a troop.” And it will show those local tow-row rogues a thing or two, he added inwardly, for Thomas received very little respect in the town, partly because of his unpopular calling, partly owing to his miserly ways.

“What does Lord Egremont write to you about, Pa?” demanded Bet, agog with curiosity. Thomas explained, his pride and gratification at the invitation growing, as he reread it. “‘A nuncheon will be provided,' it says—as if I cared for that. Still, I daresay other gentlemen may have rid in from some distance. Ha! Here is a postcriptum.

“Lady Mountague of Cowdray is convening a meeting of local ladies in Petworth House at the same time, regarding measures to be taken in the event of an Invasion—such as establishment of field hospitals, evacuation of women and children from the battle area, etc., etc. The attendance of your wife and grown daughters is respectfully solicited for this purpose.”

Thomas knitted his brow very doubtfully over this last, but Bet was already exclaiming, “What,
we
are bidden to Petworth House also? Oh, famous—is it not, Stepmama? We shall see all the nobs—Lady Mountague! Just fancy! I daresay the Duchess of Richmond may be there also, it is not far to Goodwood House.”

“Quiet, miss!” said her father. “I have not yet said that you may go.”

“But for
such
a purpose, Pa? It would be patriotic. Do you not wish to go, Stepmama?”

Fanny said quietly that she was not sure of feeling strong enough. Constricted in what, by now, felt like a suit of chain mail, she really did not see how she could enjoy or play any active part in such a function. It was therefore to her intense astonishment that Thomas, after long meditation, said finally:

“Well, I think you had best go, Frances. I know Lady Mountague to be a very excellent and distinguished personage—of the
highest
respectability—she might, should she take a liking to you, prove a most useful patron and neighbor. She lives at Cowdray Park, only seven or eight miles off; her acquaintance could do you nothing but good.—Yes; you had better go. Bet must accompany you.”

And as Bet, amazed and delighted at this unlooked-for indulgence, began clapping her hands for joy, Thomas added in his most quelling manner:

“Mind, no dressing up too fine for this affair, now. It is not a party, nor an assembly. Neatness and propriety will be all that is required.”

The first few hours after the escape from Ziatur were passed in somewhat unprofitable recriminations between Colonel Cameron and Miss Musson.

“Stealing that baby, ma'am, was probably the most arrant piece of folly you have committed in your entire existence. Indeed I do not scruple to assert that it was downright suicidal! Before, we might have had some tolerable hope of leaving the country without pursuit and the threat of vengeance;
now
there is virtually none. How
came
you to be so muttonheaded?”

“My dear Rob”—Miss Musson glanced placidly at the exasperated colonel as if he were a sixteen-year-old schoolboy—“you are not about to teach me my Christian duty, I hope? Where there was an opportunity to save life, I must seize it—particularly in the case of this little innocent.” She looked fondly at the dark downy head of the sleeping baby. “I might say that it was an equal piece of foolhardiness on
your
part to steal an elephant from the royal stable—”

“Not
this
one,” Cameron replied grimly.

“How in the world
did
you manage to purloin the beast, sir, without its mahout?” Cal put in at this point. “As a rule these fellows stick to their beasts as if they were their children.”

The stolen elephant was being guided, with his customary efficiency and calm, by Cameron's Therbah servant. He glanced around now, from his position on her head, to remark:

“We stop, I think, tomorrow, to buy goat, yes, sahib?”

“I was able to purloin the elephant because its mahout was dead,” Cameron answered Cal shortly, ignoring the Therbah's suggestion. “
He
had been strangled by Mihal's personal order.”

“But why?” demanded Scylla, astonished. “Mihal is a monster, we all know that—but why should he require to have a mahout strangled?”

“Because this is the beast—her name is Parvati—that killed his father.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Miss Musson in affright. “Then, is the animal safe? Will it not run amok with us?”

“Have no fear, ma'am; that death was no accident. The elephant was made drunk on palm toddy, I imagine.”

“Oh, I see,” said Scylla. “And that was why the mahout must be killed.”

“Just so. To prevent any possibility of his confession. This beast was regarded by all the stablemen as unlucky; it would probably have been slaughtered too, if I had not appeared with a large bribe; so very likely its absence would not have been considered important, my dear Miss Amanda, but for your little essay in child snatching.”

Ignoring this shaft, Miss Musson imperturbably replied, “Your Therbah is right, Rob; we must stop somewhere tomorrow and purchase a milch goat.”

“A milch goat!” The colonel flung up his hands to heaven. “And I suppose we must also purchase swaddling bands—gowns—gripe water—doubtless shawls and a rush basket—our course will be as noticeable as if we were traveling in a royal progress! Your having saddled us with this little encumbrance materially changes our prospects, ma'am. We must on no account now think of attempting the Khaiber Pass. It would be sheer madness to leave the country by such an obvious route. Mihal's assassins will follow us farther than that, I can assure you.”

“What route
must
we take, then?” calmly inquired Miss Musson. “I am sure that you will know what is best to be done, my dear Rob.”

He pondered. “We had best travel into Kafiristan by river. That is our most likely means of slipping away unobserved. Not the Kabul River—that is too close—but farther north, the Kunar. We must go through the Lowacal Pass north of Arnawai, then over the Weran, and then turn south, down through Kafiristan, toward Jellalabad.”

“There! You see! I knew that you would have a capital plan for us,” Miss Musson said.

“It is
not
a capital plan, ma'am!” he said wrathfully. “From Peshawur to Jellalabad is barely ninety miles. What would have taken us not more than three or four days on mule- or camelback now becomes a journey of more than three times the length, and through dangerous country—we must travel at least seventy miles to the north, then west through mountainous regions, then south again. I had proposed to dispose of the elephant in Peshawur and purchase camels there, but now I am doubtful if we dare do that. I think we had best avoid all large towns entirely until we are well out of India.”

“I am sure you are very right, my dear Rob.”

Scylla could not help quietly laughing; Miss Musson, having decided on a course of action that meant abandoning all her previous occupations, her whole way of life, and confiding herself to the colonel's care, had done so in her usual thoroughgoing manner, she appeared serenely certain of his ability to undertake this charge.

“You will have to climb some exceedingly high mountains!” he said irascibly.

“Oh, that will be like old times when I was a child in New England,” Miss Musson replied with unimpaired calm.

“No, it will not be, not in the least! These mountains, my dear Miss Amanda, are not the Berkshires! The Weran Pass is fifteen thousand feet up.”

“I am sure we shall manage very well.”

At this moment the baby woke and began to cry; a thin, mewing, threadlike sound that caused Parvati, the elephant, to snort and spread out her large ears inquisitively.

“Have no fear, royal lady,” the Therbah muttered to her in Pushtu. “It is only the memshahib's little piece of foolishness.”

Miss Musson produced from among her black draperies a large gourd full of milk and capably fed the baby, who went back to sleep again.

As the sun rose, shining on their backs and right shoulders, it became plain that already they were entering more hilly country. Beyond them, to the north and west, great serrated ranges of the Hindu Kush sliced the sky, their snowy peaks flashing crimson and gold with the first rays. The party were crossing, at present, a wide, cultivated vale intersected with many streams and small rivers. Some of these Parvati waded; others she swam, while her riders maintained a vigilant lookout for crocodiles. “Plenty of the brutes in the Indus,” said Cameron, “and all these little tributaries flow into it, only fifty miles off; crocodiles can travel great distances when water is low, as it has been this summer.”

“What a fortunate thing it is, Rob, that you are so familiar with this country,” Miss Musson said comfortably.

“It will be by far the best course, ma'am, to leave that infant of yours at some monastery along the way,” Colonel Cameron remarked brusquely when the baby had to be given its noontide drink of milk. “How are we to procure milk for it all the way across Afghanistan—a most mountainous, rugged, and inhospitable region—”

“Why not take a goat with us, as the Therbah suggested?”

“—whereas in a monastery—I can think of several excellent and suitable ones—he would be reared to a harmless life of useful piety and fruitful activity.
Why
you should be so resolved on dragging him all the way to
England
—”

“So that he can go to Eton. It was his late father's wish.”

“And what will be the outcome of that?” demanded the irate colonel. “When he is grown he will return to Ziatur—foment civil war if it is not already raging—probably get himself killed and all to what purpose?”

“You know as well as I, Colonel Cameron, that if only more Western-educated rulers could be introduced into Indian states there might be some chance of inculcating a system of democracy and equality such as we have in America. As it is: look at the condition of this wretched land—Tippoo Sahib intriguing with the French in the south—the Maratha princes all at odds—three hundred and sixty-two independent, warring states in the Punjab alone—civil war and chaos everywhere.”

“And you believe that dragging one puling infant all the way to England—”

“How remarkably fast this elephant moves,” tranquilly put in Scylla at this point—she felt the argument would never be resolved and had much better be shelved. “What a very fortunate choice of yours she was, dear Colonel Cameron. At what pace would you imagine her to be proceeding?”

Cameron's mouth twitched in a reluctant grin under his red-gold mustaches.

“I should think she may be capable of achieving so much as fifteen or even twenty miles an hour, Miss Paget—certainly faster than a man can run—so long as we are on level ground, that is. But very soon, unfortunately, we shall not be.”

By now they had left the wide vale and were crossing a series of narrow tributary valleys on their way northward. The orchards, pomegranate and orange trees, and the banyans were giving way to deodar and rhododendron forest, through which Parvati crunched and crashed her way, displacing great drifts of aromatic scent, wonderfully refreshing to the travelers accustomed to the dry and fetid odors of their enclosed town.

The sun, after its early morning promise, had retreated behind a bank of cloud, but the full rains had not yet begun; the air was moist, a little cooler here among the foothills, and thunder rolled occasionally in the distance. Miss Musson had prudently equipped herself with an ancient rusty-black umbrella, but as yet there was no occasion for its use.

That night they camped in a belt of rhododendron forest at the head of a narrow valley by a deep rapid brook that came bounding down a rocky stairway from the hills above in clouds of spray. There was enough thick grass growing by the water, and young tree shoots around about, to satisfy the elephant's hunger without beginning on the fodder they had brought for her. After browsing she enjoyably drank and sprayed herself with water from the brook. The Therbah lit a small fire and cooked millet porridge and chupattis for the party, but Miss Musson had come to the end of the milk in her gourd and declared that she must go down to a village which they had glimpsed through the trees some half a mile down the valley and purchase either more milk or a goat.

This was a fresh cause of friction with the colonel.

“Oh, confound it, Amanda! Cannot the infant eat porridge like the rest of us?”

“No, it can
not
!” testily replied Miss Musson.

“I daresay strangers come hardly once in two years to such a little foothill corner as we are in. The news will be all over the province in a flash.”

“By which time we shall be on our way. Come, come, Rob; you know we cannot let the baby starve.”

“Then you had best let me go—or the Therbah,” he replied hastily. “A Feringi lady they will be
sure
to remember.”

“Nonsense, Rob—you are quite as conspicuous yourself, with those red mustaches of yours—whereas I, if I speak Pahari dialect, might be any old hill woman from another region.”

There was some truth in this and reluctantly, at last, Cameron let her go. But she was a very long time in returning, and he became extremely anxious about her, his anxiety bordering on exasperation. “If she is not up to some piece of folly!” he muttered.

His fears seemed justified when at length she returned with a train of interested observers following: country people who all wanted to stare and wonder at the strangers.

At last the visitors were politely shooed away, the baby was fed—“
What
a little angel!” remarked Miss Musson in a self-congratulatory way; “I only wish he
were
an angel,” bitterly replied Colonel Cameron—and the party were left to settle down to sleep, which they did underneath the elephant, who provided them with shelter from a light rain that had commenced to fall—she being shackled by the leg to a couple of trees. However she showed in any case no disposition to move and lived up to the character for docility and good nature that she had so far established.

Dawn came late in their deep valley but they were up long before the sun, breakfasted hastily, and started off while the crows and the blue jays were still waking the forest with their morning screams. From down here the higher mountains were hidden, but the track lay steeply uphill, through dense green forest, and presently, in a dip between two acute hillsides, they could see distant peaks, indigo blue.

Parvati was making slow work of the climb.

“We shall have to dispose of her today,” Cameron said. “She will be no use to us in these hills.”

However she had not yet outlasted her usefulness to the party. There were several more valleys to cross which were bisected by the shallow, shingly, fast-running rivers of the region. These Parvati gallantly forded, struggling sometimes in the deeper channels, slipping on the loose scrambling stones, and trumpeting with anxiety, while the Therbah gentled her and encouraged her with words of praise.

At about the sixth of these rivers—which was, in fact, a confluence of two tributary mountain streams that came together in a flat-bottomed, steep-sided valley to make a quarter-mile stretch of shallow, turbid water studded with sandbanks—Parvati had hardly entered the current when the riders were startled by the sound of rifle shots from downstream.

“Oh, heavens—look!” exclaimed Scylla.

Parvati trumpeted excitedly, and at the same moment Miss Musson exclaimed. “Good gracious, what
can
be the matter with my umbrella?” staring at it in amazement. She had been left with hardly more than the handle—the upper portion had been torn away.

Narrowing his eyes against the light from downstream, Colonel Cameron stared for no longer than five seconds before pronouncing:

“I recognize the uniform of Mihal's bodyguard. The wretches must have been hard on our trail all this time. Therbah—make the elephant go faster. Paget—is your weapon loaded?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then take aim and fire. Aim for the leader—the fellow on the black horse.”

Staring downstream, Scylla perceived a small troop of men. Her vision was by no means so keen as that of Colonel Cameron who, she had discovered, had eyes like a hawk; she could just detect the movement of their horses, the white flash of their turbans, and the puffs of smoke as, having reloaded, they fired again. All their shots this time fell short or wide; she could see the splashes kicked up by their bullets on the water and the furrows carved on a shallow sandbank which Parvati was just approaching.