Dan, his hand on the whisky bottle, paused, surprised in his turn; but George seemed to feel that key in his pocket outline itself against the thumping of his heart.

'Are you afraid I won't leave you any?' asked the elder quickly. 'I'll send you a bottle by post, if that's it. Come! hands off, youngster; don't be a fool! That's enough.'

The angry red was not on his cheek only. It had spread to the boy's, as he stood back in a sudden flare of utterly unexpected dignity.

'Quite enough, Mr. Fitzgerald. 'I've been your guest for two months, I know; but you are mine now. This is my house, and that's my bottle.

I'll trouble you to put it down.'

For an instant it seemed on its way to the speaker's head; then it was pushed aside scornfully; the next Dan held out his hand.

'Thanks. No one has taken that trouble for years. What made you do it?'

But the English boy's shame at his own impulsiveness was on George now, and he laughed uneasily. 'I--I believe it was that confounded key,' he began. Dan's smile was transfiguring.

'G.o.d bless the boy!' he cried, with the ring of tears and laughter in his rich brogue. 'So you're the Keeper of the Key of the King's conscience, are you? The saints protect you; for see! your sort don't know mine. We leave off the effort after virtue where you begin, and I spend more solid holiness in refusing a gla.s.s of sherry than you do in keeping all the Ten Commandments. Sure the sun's got into my head, and I must be off to the water cure.'

He was out of the room, out of the house, standing on the bridge abutment and stripping as for dear life before George caught him up breathlessly and asked if he were quite mad.

'Not yet!' came the joyous voice. 'I'm going to swim up stream till I'm beat, and come down with the current--an epitome of my life!'

The rapid Indian twilight had fallen into night, but the moon had risen, and the air was warm with tho first touch of spring which in Northern India treads close on the heels of the new year. Fitzgerald pausing for a second showed like a white statue on the b.u.t.tress; then his curved body shot into the shadow with the cry--

'I come, Mother of All!'

Tristram's cry when he sprang to 'the sea's breast as to a mother's where his head might rest,' thought George, watching with the vague anxiety inseparable from the disappearance of life beneath the water.

Ah! there he was--safe; turning his head to call out 'Don't wait, please! Tell the syce to have the mare ready for me in half an hour.'

Yet George did wait, watching the arrowy ripple cleaving the steel-grey path which led straight up to the steel-grey sky where the stars hung sparkling. If, he thought, they were reflected in the still water ahead as they were in the still water below the bridge, Dan must feel as if he was swimming in the ether!

Decidedly, imagination was catching. George Keene was reminded of the fact again as he stood looking over to the mound of Hodinuggur, and listening to the last echo of the horse's hoofs bearing Dan away from the wilderness. There was a light in the Diwan's tower, another in the potter's hut. He wondered vaguely which was really the highest; then, to check such idle thoughts, began on the first duty of youth in a foreign land--home letters.

'Dear father,' he wrote fluently, 'I arrived at Hodinuggur, my headquarters, to-day. It is----'

Half an hour afterwards he tore up the sheet angrily and went to bed.

CHAPTER II

It was band-night in the public gardens; mail night also; a combination of dancing and picture papers, ensuring a large attendance in the big hall, which had been built, gravely, as a memorial to some departed statesman. But now English girls hurried through its dim corridors to the ladies' dressing-room, intent on changing tennis shoes for dancing slippers. English women took possession of the comfortable nooks between the pillars where there was room for two. English boys lounged about the vestibule, finishing their cigars and waiting for the band to strike up. English men drifted to billiards and whist, or to their own special corner in the reading-room.

A weird-looking place even at noon was the big hall set round with paste and paper mementoes of the semi-historic festivals held beneath its high arched roof; with shields from the Prince of Wales' ball, flags from the Imperial installation, trophies from the welcome given to our soldiers after an arduous campaign. But seen now by the few lamps lit at one end it looked positively ghostly, as if it must be haunted by a thousand memories of dead men, and women, and children who had flitted across the kaleidoscope of Rajpore society. Up in the gallery the native band, after playing 'G.o.d save the Queen' to the Aryan brother outside, was tuning up for dance music. And by-and-bye a couple would come waltzing out of the shadows into the bright reflections of the polished floor, and waltz back again. Then three or four couples, perhaps ten or a dozen; not more. Viewed from the other end, where the non-dancers sat in darkness, the scene looked like a dim reflection of something going on in another world.

And outside, under the rising moon, the builders of the hall trooped home to the packed highways and byways of the native city, full, no doubt, of that silent, evergreen wonder at the strange customs of the ruling race which is an integral part of native life; that ruling race which, with all its eccentricities, rules better than even the fabled Vicramiditya himself!

In the far corner of the inner reading-room a girl stood looking at the new number of the _Scientific American_, keeping a stern watch the while on the present possessor of the _Sat.u.r.day Review_. A tennis bat lay on the table beside her, and her workmanlike flannels and tan shoes showed what her occupation had been. For the rest, a well-made, well-balanced girl, looking as if she walked well, rode well, danced well, and took an honest pride in doing so. Her face was chiefly remarkable for a pair of beautifully arched eyebrows, and her best point was undoubtedly the poise of her head with its closely plaited coif of hair.

A sort of snore followed by a thud, told that people were pa.s.sing in and out through the swing-doors of the outer room. Here, however, as befitted the abode of more serious literature, all was peaceful; almost empty in fact, and its only other female occupant was a medical lady deep in the _Lancet_.

'Oh Gordon!' called a voice from the outer room, 'have you seen my daughter?'

'Miss Tweedie is here, sir,' replied the young man addressed. 'She has been for the last five minutes trying to make up her mind whether to go and dance, or brain Dr. Greenfell for keeping the _Sat.u.r.day_ so long.'

'Really, Mr. Gordon!' cried Rose Tweedie aghast. 'No indeed not--Dr.

Greenfell! I didn't really--I mean I was of course, but I don't now--Oh, it's awfully good of you.' Then as the apologetic little doctor moved away, pausing to say a few words to a tall grey-haired man who was entering, she turned aggressively to the offender: 'Why did you say that, Mr. Gordon?'

'Why, Miss Tweedie? Because you insisted yesterday that women preferred the truth, even when it was rude. And it was true. I suppose, as your father wants you, I have no hope of this dance; and I'm engaged for all the others.'

Rose Tweedie's eyebrows went up. 'How lucky for you--I mean, of course, how unlucky for me.' Then she added in more conciliatory tones, 'I'm not dancing to-night; these shoes won't do.' She thrust out her shapely foot with the careless freedom of a child.

'I can see no fault,' he replied artificially, putting up his eye-gla.s.s, 'they appear to me quite perfect.'

'Your knowledge of women doesn't apparently extend to their understandings,' she retorted quickly, her voice, as usual when she was irritated, showing a trace of Scotch accent. 'Oh father! if you want me to come home, I'm ready.'

Colonel Tweedie hesitated. A single glance at him suggested that the late Mrs. Tweedie must have been a women of strong individuality, or else that Rose had reverted to some ancestral type.

'Not, not exactly, my dear. I only--wanted to--er--speak to you.'

'Good-bye, Miss Tweedie,' said Lewis Gordon, taking the hint. 'Oh! by the way, sir, if your daughter will remember I'm a personal a.s.sistant, and excuse shop for an instant--Fitzgerald came back to-day from Hodinuggur.'

Rose Tweedie's face lit up. 'Did he say how Mr. Keene liked it?' she asked eagerly.

'I'm afraid not; but he can scarcely be expected to like the desert after--Rajpore. I shouldn't--under the circ.u.mstances. That is all, sir; except that he reports everything satisfactory, so far.'

The Colonel gave a little cough; it was his way of starting the official machine inside the social one. 'I hope--for Mr. Fitzgerald's sake it--it--er--may remain so. The past scandals have been a disgrace--er--to the Department.

'Not to him, though,' broke in Rose hotly. 'I think he is quite one of the nicest people I ever met.'

'And what is more, the ablest man we have in our service,' added Lewis Gordon heartily. The girl's face softened at his tone. If he would only speak like that always, instead of simpering and sc.r.a.ping!

'Well, father, what is it?' she asked when he had gone. The other readers had drifted away, and the medical lady looked as if even the last trump would not rouse her from the post-mortem she was perusing, so to all intents and purposes they were alone. Colonel Tweedie gave another little cough; it was an unusual occurrence in private matters, and she repeated her question with quickened interest.

'I want you, my dear, to go and speak to--to Mrs. Boynton. I've--I've asked her to come into camp with us this time.'

'Why?'

Pages full of words would fail to give a better idea of Rose Tweedie's mental outlook than this simple interrogation. Briefly, she must have a reason, good, bad, or indifferent, for everything. Her father, being her father and knowing this, had several ready.

'Dacre's wife isn't strong enough to face the sand, and you must have a chaperon--I mean another lady--you never need a chaperon of course, my dear--but if anything happened--besides, we shall be very busy, and it will be lonely--I thought it better than leaving you at home--it isn't as if she were quite an outsider--she is Gordon's cousin, and he is my personal----'

'The widow of a cousin, you mean,' she interrupted with emphasis. 'A cousin he scarcely knew; and he never even saw _her_ till he returned from furlough last year.'

'Didn't he, my dear?' said the Colonel feebly. 'Still, they are relations. Call each other by their Christian names, and----'

This time a laugh interrupted him; rather a hard laugh for a girl.

'What a number of cousins the Rajpore ladies must have!' she began.