The Weeping Ash (44 page)

“I can see that you will make an excellent mother-in-law, my dear! Yes, Charley does any amount of work for me on my estate, in between his Fencible activities—and most capably, too; so I pay him the wage of a junior steward, and they have the nicest little cottage, down by the Easebourne gate. At first I was not too inclined to take to your stepdaughter, I thought her a flighty young minx, if the truth be known; but marriage has improved her out of all recognition, and it has worked wonders for Charley too; they seem to deal together admirably and are becoming quite steady and sensible.”

During this speech Fanny had been greatly startled to see a mouse run across the floor, climb the bulbous legs of a Jacobean table, and begin busily nibbling some grain that had fallen from one of the birdcages on the table top. Lady Mountague paid no heed to it, did not even move aside her gray brocade skirts.

“Ma'am! Is not that a mouse?”

“Yes,” replied the old lady calmly. “They come in after the birds' grain. That is why I keep my plates of kickshaws on vases.”

Fanny had indeed wondered why two or three plates containing tarts and wafers were balanced somewhat precariously on the tops of long-necked jugs and candlesticks.

“The mice are very clever,” said Lady Mountague, with an affectionate smile at the one which was nibbling crumbs two inches from her sleeve, “but I am one too many for them there! Now, shall we go out and join the young people? I thought we would take our nuncheon in the grape arbor.—I say
young people
, but you are as young as any of them, my dear,” she added, taking Fanny's arm as she moved somewhat limpingly to the garden entrance. “How does your baby go on? When shall I come to see him? And the other little girl? Have you not a third stepdaughter?”

Discussing Fanny's household, she passed along a grassy path which led down to the river Rother. This was a sizeable stream, wide and deep enough to take a coal or timber barge; Fanny could understand how the smugglers made use of it. Indeed Lady Mountague informed her, with a certain pride, that most of the houses in the town of Midhurst, which could be seen from where they stood, had long underground passages leading from their cellars to the riverbank, for the easier transport of contraband.

“But do you countenance smuggling, ma'am?” inquired the startled Fanny, following Lady Mountague over a footbridge.

“Bless you, yes! I doubt if the tea you are about to drink has paid duty. Foolish laws lead to inevitable infractions.” Beyond the river lay the formal gardens of the ruined Cowdray Castle, where Martha, Bet, and Charley were feeding three peacocks and a couple of swans which had floated to the riverbank. A velvety lawn led to a grape arbor, where a table and chairs had been set, and to this cool and tranquil haven Charley and a footman brought baskets containing a light repast—cakes, fruit, and wine. A syllabub was made on the spot by leading up a brindled cow from a neighboring field and milking her (Charley did this) into a dish of white wine; Fanny thought she had never tasted anything half so delicious.

While Lady Mountague was giving some instructions to her gardener, after the repast, and the two girls were exchanging all the sisterly gossip that, apparently, they had been missing for the last two months, Charley addressed Fanny in a low voice.

“I didn't know whether to trouble you with this, ma'am, or not,” he said. “I talked it over with Marthie, and she thought maybe 'twasn't needful;
she
says she don't care if she never sets eyes on her pa again—and she don't care what becomes of him. But I'm one that likes all things shipshape; if I'd thought there was any chance of the old gentleman giving his consent to the match, I'd have asked him, fair and square. But Marthie said he'd
never
give his permission in a year of Wednesdays—and I've heard the same about him from others, in Petworth—so there was nothing for it but to elope.”

Fanny, somewhat startled to near Thomas referred to as “the old gentleman,” could only agree with Martha that he would never have given his permission but said that for her part she was delighted to discover that Martha had found such a kind husband. However she feared that she could not promise to procure a paternal forgiveness.

“No, no, I'm not making up to ye for that, ma'am, don't take me up wrong,” said Charley quickly. “If Cap'n Paget'll forgive Marthie, very good; if not,
I'll
not weep millstones. We do very well as we are. That wasn't what I was asking ye; no, I was wishful to warn ye. I've many Petworth friends, and it has come to my ears as how there's some in Petworth wishes ill to the cap'n, an' I believe he should be put on his guard.”

“Somebody that wishes him ill? Who can it be? Have you any notion?”

“There's more than one, ma'am, so the tale goes. One's a woman—but she's a poor, crazed being, I doubt
she'd
do him much harm. But she might stir up those as would. I told Marthie about her and she said directly, ‘Oh, that sounds like our old governess that Pa turned off; Miss Fox, her name were!'”

“Miss Fox—good God!” said Fanny, aghast. “Why, I believe I have even met her—I myself suggested…”

She fell silent, remembering her meeting with the strange woman on the morning after Mrs. Paget's death. “But surely that poor deranged woman cannot harm my husband?” she said presently.

“There's another, ma'am, so I understand. As to who it be, I know not, but that there Miss Fox has been heard a-mumbling and a-muttering threats. ‘Now I've got me an ally,' says she, ‘I'll
surely
have my revenge on him, and he'll live to rue the day he slighted Maria Fox. Now I've got an ally I have power over him.'”

“Good heavens. How very shocking! Whom can she have been referring to?”

“That's all I can tell ye, ma'am,” said Charley Penfold soberly.

And, apparently feeling better now that he had disburdened his conscience of this weight, he turned to pick up the nuncheon baskets and carry them back to Lady Mountague's sylvan cottage.

Martha was very urgent that her sister and stepmother should visit
her
cottage and see how nicely it was appointed. “It is all so neat and snug! It is the best little house in the world! And there is even a bed for you, Bet, should Papa ever allow you to visit us.”

Fanny, however, decided that this visit of inspection must wait for a subsequent occasion. She had two motives for this decision; firstly, she could see that Bet was falling back into her old habit of envying her sister's superior good fortune. The novelty of the meeting had at first allayed those bad feelings, but now the familiar sour, jealous expression was visible in her face, the grudging ill-natured note in her voice; Fanny feared that the sight of the cottage might prove the last straw and wreck the better relationship that at first had seemed to be springing up. Also, for herself, Charley's warning had stirred in her a vague but profound uneasiness; she could not wait to be back at home again and make certain that all was well with her household.

Without further ado she said to Lady Mountague, “Ma'am, this day spent with you has been the happiest for me since—since I left my father's house. But Martha's husband has told me something that has made me anxious to return home and make sure all is well there. Also I am persuaded that we have tired you long enough! But I thank you more than I can express for all your kindness.”

“My dear, I have enjoyed it quite as much. Come, give me a kiss! And let me see you again soon—I trust your husband will permit?”

“Of course, ma'am!”

“Then I shall come and take my nuncheon with you, as informally as you please, one of these fine days.”

Fanny made such undertakings as she could, kissed Martha good-bye, shook hands very cordially with Charley Penfold, and climbed after Bet into the waiting carriage.

Bet was somewhat markedly taciturn during the drive home; she huddled her shawl discontentedly around her shoulders. The evening had turned cool and cloudy; a dark gray thunderous bank in the western sky promised a storm later; and a light rain was beginning to fall.

The streets of Petworth were empty as they drove through the town. Fearing the storm, doubtless, the townspeople had retired early; the place seemed unnaturally quiet. But, strangely enough, as they passed down the Hermitage lane the sound of voices could be heard ahead—quite a number of voices, it seemed.

“How curious!” exclaimed Bet, listening. “One would think there was a crowd of people assembled in our garden! Do you suppose that Papa can have returned home already? Can they be assembling the troop—or some such thing?”

“We shall soon see,” said Fanny, who found herself unaccountably trembling.

When they rounded the curve of the lane and came in sight of the house, they could see that, indeed, quite a large group of people had assembled in the garden—all the members of the household, Tess, Jemima, Mrs. Baggot, Goble—besides a number of other persons whom she did not know. They were all crowded around the well.

Tess came flying over the grass as soon as the carriage appeared.

“Oh, ma'am! We was about to send a messenger for you! Oh, the most dreadful thing—!”

Mrs. Strudwick followed her, arriving just as Fanny stepped out of the carriage.

“Ma'am, thank God you are come—though I hardly know how to tell ye—”

Behind Mrs. Strudwick came Jemima, the nurse girl, her face all streaked with tears.

“I only left him for two minutes!” she sobbed. “As God's my witness, 'twas not longer man that!”

“What has happened, Mrs. Strudwick?”

Fanny spoke as quietly as she could, but with a knifelike feeling in her heart.

“'Tis Master Thomas, ma'am! Oh, ma'am, he've tumbled down the well!”

After spending three days in the castle of the Bai Mir Murad Beg, Scylla became decidedly restless and impatient. She longed to resume their journey and said as much to Cal, in one of the rare chances she found to catch a word alone with him.

The male guests were being lavishly entertained—hunting parties in pursuit of musk deer and a beast called rero, hawking parties, shooting matches—and, at night, much feasting, from which the females judged it prudent to absent themselves.

“It is very fine for
you
,” Scylla said to her brother. “But all that is thought suitable for us is endless gossip with the Bai's ladies and being taught how to weave blankets and ferment goat's milk.”

“
I
wouldn't object,” said Cal. “All this target practice is a dead bore! I haven't had a moment to work on my poem since we arrived here. I would be happy to sit at home with the Bai's wives—one of them is uncommonly pretty.”

Scylla glanced at him a trifle anxiously. There had been a note of sincerity in his voice; and it had not escaped her notice that during the last feast his gaze had been frequently attracted to the Bai's youngest wife, a beautiful kittenish laughing creature called Sripana, hardly more than fourteen, the pet of the whole establishment. Once or twice Cal had achieved a short conversation with her, mostly conducted in dumb show, since she spoke only a Kafir dialect; Scylla had been rather horrified to see him teaching her the game of cat's cradle, which she learned with much laughter and teasing. Theoretically the ladies of the castle were not debarred from converse with men, but Scylla had caught a look of what she thought was decided disapproval on the Bai's countenance as he observed this interchange. She said now:

“I
wish
Colonel Cameron could collect his debt from the Bai so that we might be off. I have had enough of washing wool and pounding up barley for porridge!”

The ladies of the household lived, indeed, an extremely active and hardworking life. Although the Bai was a rich man and a landowner, a noble and local administrator, there was no idling in his establishment, which was like that of a wealthy farmer. Hens in the great courtyard were tended and their eggs collected; sheep and goat wool was sheared or carefully collected from the low-growing shrubs on the mountainsides, washed, carded, spun, and woven; the Bai's wives, it was true, did not engage in the rougher work, but they spent their days in spinning, weaving, embroidery, and the more complicated forms of cookery, shaking milk into cheese, cream into butter, pounding dried mulberries, apricots, and honey into tremendously sweet confections. Two or three days of participating in this life was interesting enough, and Miss Musson, enjoying the spell of leisure, occupied herself by learning about the dyes the Kafirs used for the brilliant colors in their rugs and tunics; but Scylla, after the adventures of the journey and living on an equality with her male companions, found such an exclusively female existence heartily tedious.

“You must see that Cameron cannot just turn up here and ask for his money!” Cal objected. “I am sure that wouldn't be etiquette. The matter has to be treated with proper formality. I daresay in two or three days' time he will come around to it.”

“
I
don't think the Bai intends to pay him,” said Scylla. “I don't like the look in his eye.”

Here she did the Bai an injustice. Mir Murad was a highly honorable man who would not have dreamed of defaulting on a debt, but at present he was rather short of cash, having recently been obliged to find a dowry for the daughter of his middle wife. He therefore cunningly suggested to Cameron that the latter should accompany him on a raid against a neighboring and rival chieftain whom he suspected of having purloined some of his cattle.

“From that rogue's stolen goods, Arb Shah, you may collect half your debt, and I can provide the other half; thus, honor will be satisfied.”

Cameron demurred; his party had no time to waste in raiding; the Angrezi ladies were anxious to resume their journey and press on toward their far-distant destination.

The Bai was greatly disappointed. “The Yagistani chieftain has lost his delight in battle?” he remarked with a slight touch of scorn in his voice. “I had hoped to ride into a fight again with my old comrade at my side.”

Cameron was not to be drawn. “We are older now, Mir Murad, and I have women under my care; suppose I should be killed in battle. How would they ever win through to Europe?”

The Bai looked sideways at Cameron under his bushy gray brows.

“If you, their protector, were killed, I would offer them honorable asylum here to the end of their days; or,” he added reluctantly, “an escort as far as Baghdad if they wished it.”

Cameron considered him with care. He could see plainly that the Bai was still suffering from some slight disappointment over the misapprehension regarding Scylla; it was most unfortunate that he had taken her for a beautiful slave from the Kirghiz obligingly brought for him as a present by his friend Arb Shah; apparently he had always wanted a Kirghiz woman for his collection and now found it difficult to put the mistake out of his mind. Several times he had said to Cameron wistfully, “You are
sure
, Arb Shah, that she is an Angrezi and that young boy's sister? They seem so different!” eyeing Scylla in a manner that made Cameron a trifle fidgety; Mir Murad was the soul of honor, he knew, within his own code, but within that code many things were possible; if Scylla had but known it, Cameron was as eager as she to quit the Bai's hospitable precincts. Moreover he, as well as Scylla, had observed that Cal was dangerously prepossessed by Mir Murad's youngest wife; to be sure, it was only a fit of calf love, the boy meant no harm in the world, was perhaps hardly aware of his own state, but his eyes followed Sripana continually, he seized every chance to approach her, and this had not escaped the keen attention of her husband. The whole situation, in fact, was fraught with awkward possibilities, and Cameron was blaming himself for having brought the party to the castle in the first place.

Now the Bai, still thinking yearningly of exotic additions to his female entourage, had another and even better idea for raising the rest of the money owing to Cameron.

“I have heard,” he observed, “that the chief wife of the Amir in Kandahar, Shuja' ul-Mulk, greatly desires an heir. I have it on good authority that on the first day of the Afghan New Year the Shahzada, together with all the ladies of the harem, set forth on a pilgrimage to the great shrine at Hazrat Imam, with an escort of fifty sowars and a great treasure in gold and rubies, to pray for an heir. And God He knows they need one! Since the Amir Thaimur died, leaving none of his twenty-three sons designated as his successor, there has been nothing but civil war among the princes and the cities of this land.—
I
stay in my castle, on my own hills, I take no part in it.—But for your sake, Arb Shah, my old friend and comrade, I will ride out, as in the bygone days, and raid that queen's procession. What are fifty sowars to such as you and me and my brave sons? We can dispatch them in one morning. And then you may take your pick of the queen's treasure. And we could ransom her,” he went on, his eyes brightening, “for three thousand gold tillals, I daresay!”

“What!” said Cameron, scandalized. “Raid a procession of pilgrims on their way to a holy shrine? And
queens
, into the bargain? No, no, Mir Murad Beg, I am a fighting man, but I do not engage in battle with pilgrims or women—nor do I recall your doing so, in the bygone days! Furthermore the lady is the wife of your own Amir!”

“Persian dogs!” The Bai spat disgustedly. “What are the Persians to us? We Kafirs are from Scythia. It would be no more than shearing a flock of sheep, Arb Shah. At this very time, probably, they are traveling through the Kundera Pass; we could fall on them like a thunderbolt.”

But Cameron said it was not to be thought of.

At this negative reception of his good idea, the Bai became very silent and morose.

“I beg you, my dear friend,” said Cameron, “forget the debt! What is such a trifle between brothers? I will come back to you when I have escorted the Angrezi ladies to Baghdad—or maybe Damascus or Acre—when I can be certain they are assured of a passage on a boat to their own lands—then I will return to your castle and we shall have great feasting and hunting and maybe, if God wills it, a battle or two against your enemies, and much talk about the happy days of long ago. And then, if Providence has smiled upon you, you may let me have such few monies as are still owing.”

“But it is
now
that you need the money,” said Mir Murad, glumly pulling on his gray mustaches. Then he brightened again. “After all, it is the New Year! I will send out messengers to inform my people that they must pay their spring taxes before the wild rose trees are in flower. I will dispatch my killadar immediately.”

Cameron was greatly relieved. He could see that the Bai considered this a poor-spirited way of raising money, in comparison with a foray against enemies, but it seemed a satisfactory compromise. Even Miss Musson's delicate conscience need not scruple to make use of money received as proceeds from a tax (she would certainly have been appalled had she heard the Bai's plans to abduct the Amir's ladies and hold them up for ransom); and Mir Murad was, by the standards of his country, an excellent overlord, who protected his people from bandits and did not tax them unduly.

Eased in his mind, therefore, Cameron accepted an invitation from two of the Bai's sons to go out after a mountain leopard which had recently been troubling their father's flocks. He hoped very much that, by the end of the day, sufficient rents and taxes would have been collected to remit the larger part of the debt and satisfy the Bai's sensitive conscience; then they could take their departure on the morrow, or perhaps the day following, without loss of face to anybody concerned.

* * *

Scylla and Miss Musson, meanwhile, had been making the acquaintance of an old lady named Khalzada who, by virtue of her years and wisdom, had acquired a very important status in the Bai's household. She came from north of the Kirghiz—possibly, Miss Musson thought, from Samarkand or Tashkent; she had been a slave belonging to the Bai's grandfather, had won a position of respect owing to her knowledge of herbs, oracles, and omens, graduated from slave to wife, and had managed to survive into a gnarled and revered old age.

Except in high summer, Khalzada remained mostly in her own chamber, reached by a narrow flight of stone stairs. Here they found her, seated in state on layers and layers of differently colored felts and supported by a bolster. Khalzada spoke neither Urdu nor Punjabi, but Habiba, the Bai's second wife, who came from Kabul and had respectfully led them into the old lady's presence, remained to act as an interpreter.

The room was fustily warm: a dung fire burned in a brazier, and a couple of girls stood behind Khalzada wielding dyed yaks' tails to keep off the flies. The guests were offered tea in small copper pots and a dish of maing, made from curds and butter, also pinches of snuff and wizened little black objects, which, Miss Musson murmured to Scylla, were probably dried snow mushrooms. Miss Musson valiantly accepted both the snuff and the mushrooms; Scylla politely declined them, which at once brought the old lady's sharp scrutiny on her, and Khalzada asked some question.

“She says,” translated Habiba, “does the Angrezi lady refuse snuff because she is bearing a child?”

“No, no,” said Scylla. “Tell her that I am not yet a married lady.”

“Not married, and yet you travel abroad with two men? This is very singular!”

“One of them is my brother, sahiba,” replied Scylla. “And this lady”—she laid her hand on that of Miss Musson—“is my adopted mother.”

“The younger man is your brother? The other, Arb Shah, I know from many years already.”

Evidently the old lady bad been observing the visitors from some point of vantage.

“The young man—what is his name?”

“Cal Bahadur,” said Miss Musson.

“There is something very strange about him—I think he is afflicted by a djinn.”

“What makes you think that, sahiba?” asked Scylla, startled.

“I have seen others thus afflicted. There is a look about the eyes, the skin, the hands, the whole bearing—do not his eyes, on occasion, go red? Does he not cry out in a strange tongue?”

“Yes, this has been known to happen, certainly, sahiba—or something like it,” agreed Miss Musson. It was true that after one of his epileptic spasms Cat's eyes were often very bloodshot.

“I knew it. He has a djinn,” repeated the old lady, nodding. “It is a bad one or a good one?”

“Oh, a good one,” asserted Miss Musson. “It inspires him to write wonderful charms on paper.”

“I thought so,” said Khalzada. “My grandson the Bai is not easy in his mind about that young man, because he gazes too often at the lady Sripana, but I told Mir Murad that it would be wrong, even dangerous, to harm somebody who is possessed of such a powerful spirit.”

“Yes,
indeed
it would,” exclaimed Miss Musson, startled and anxious.

“Also,” pursued the old lady, “I do not think any harm will come to our household from the young man. I have looked into the salt bowl and I see no danger from him. And yet I
do
feel danger—I feel trouble. It seems to come from among your party. Give me your hand, Angrezi lady.”

Miss Musson stretched out her hand; Khalzada scrutinized it intently.

“No, there is no harm there; only great wisdom and goodness.” She peered closer, seemed about to speak, checked herself, and looked sharply into Miss Musson's eyes. The American lady sustained her regard calmly but sighed a little, as if, Scylla thought, the two women had exchanged some unspoken message, as if Khalzada had told her something she knew already, something, indeed, that she had been told a wearisome number of times.