"What a strange thing!" said Shere Ali.

"The explanation," continued Hatch, "is not very important to my story, but what followed upon it is; for the very next day, as I was walking alone, I heard a voice in my ear, whispering: 'The Englishwoman would like to see you this evening at five.' I turned round in amazement, and there stood the shopkeeper of whom I had made the inquiries. I thought, of course, that he was laying a trap for me. But he repeated his statement, and, telling me that he would wait for me on this spot at ten minutes to five, he walked away.

"I did not know what to do. One moment I feared treachery and proposed to stay away, the next I was curious and proposed to go. How in the world could there be an Englishwoman in Mecca--above all, an Englishwoman who was in a position to ask me to tea? Curiosity conquered in the end. I tucked a loaded revolver into my waist underneath my jellaba and kept the appointment."

"Go on," said Shere Ali, who was leaning forward with a great perplexity upon his face.

"The shopkeeper was already there. 'Follow me,' he said, 'but not too closely.' We pa.s.sed in that way through two or three streets, and then my guide turned into a dead alley closed in at the end by a house. In the wall of the house there was a door. My guide looked cautiously round, but there was no one to oversee us. He rapped gently with his knuckles on the door, and immediately the door was opened. He beckoned to me, and went quickly in. I followed him no less quickly. At once the door was shut behind me, and I found myself in darkness. For a moment I was sure that I had fallen into a trap, but my guide laid a hand upon my arm and led me forward. I was brought into a small, bare room, where a woman sat upon cushions. She was dressed in white like a Mohammedan woman of the East, and over her face she wore a veil. But a sort of shrivelled aspect which she had told me that she was very old. She dismissed the guide who had brought me to her, and as soon as we were alone she said:

"'You are English.'

"And she spoke in English, though with a certain rustiness of speech, as though that language had been long unfamiliar to her tongue.

"'No,' I replied, and I expressed my contempt of that infidel race in suitable words.

"The old woman only laughed and removed her veil. She showed me an old wizened face in which there was not a remnant of good looks--a face worn and wrinkled with hard living and great sorrows.

"'You are English,' she said, 'and since I am English too, I thought that I would like to speak once more with one of my own countrymen.'

"I no longer doubted. I took the hand she held out to me and--

"'But what are you doing here in Mecca?' I asked.

"'I live in Mecca,' she replied quietly. 'I have lived here for twenty years.'

"I looked round that bare and sordid little room with horror. What strange fate had cast her up there? I asked her, and she told me her story. Guess what it was!"

Ralston shook his head.

"I can't imagine."

Hatch turned to Shere Ali.

"Can you?" he asked, and even as he asked he saw that a change had come over the young Prince's mood. He was no longer oppressed with envy and discontent. He was leaning forward with parted lips and a look in his eyes which Hatch had not seen that evening--a look as if hope had somehow dared to lift its head within him. And there was more than a look of hope; there was savagery too.

"No. I want to hear," replied Shere Ali. "Go on, please! How did the Englishwoman come to Mecca?"

"She was a governess in the family of an officer at Cawnpore when the Mutiny broke out, more than forty years ago," said Hatch.

Ralston leaned back in his chair with an exclamation of horror. Shere Ali said nothing. His eyes rested intently and brightly upon Hatch's face.

Under the table, and out of sight, his fingers worked convulsively.

"She was in that room," continued Hatch, "in that dark room with the other Englishwomen and children who were murdered. But she was spared.

She was very pretty, she told me, in her youth, and she was only eighteen when the ma.s.sacre took place. She was carried up to the hills and forced to become a Mohammedan. The man who had spared her married her. He died, and a small chieftain in the hills took her and married her, and finally brought her out with him when he made the pilgrimage to Mecca. While he was at Mecca, however, he fell ill, and in his turn he died. She was left alone. She had a little money, and she stayed. Indeed, she could not get away. A strange story, eh?"

And Hatch leaned back in his chair, and once more lighted his cigar which for a second time had gone out.

"You didn't bring her back?" exclaimed Ralston.

"She wouldn't come," replied Hatch. "I offered to smuggle her out of Mecca, but she refused. She felt that she wouldn't and couldn't face her own people again. She should have died at Cawnpore, and she did not die.

Besides, she was old; she had long since grown accustomed to her life, and in England she had long since been given up for dead. She would not even tell me her real name. Perhaps she ought to be fetched away. I don't know."

Ralston and Hatch fell to debating that point with great earnestness.

Neither of them paid heed to Shere Ali, and when he rose they easily let him go. Nor did their thoughts follow him upon his way. But he was thinking deeply as he went, and a queer and not very pleasant smile played about his lips.

CHAPTER XVIII

SYBIL LINFORTH'S LOYALTY

A fortnight after Shere Ali had dined with Ralston in Calcutta, a telegram was handed to Linforth at Chatham. It was Friday, and a guest-night. The mess-room was full, and here and there amongst the scarlet and gold lace the sombre black of a civilian caught the eye.

Dinner was just over, and at the ends of the long tables the mess-waiters stood ready to draw, with a single jerk, the strips of white tablecloth from the shining mahogany. The silver and the gla.s.ses had been removed, the word was given, and the strips of tablecloth vanished as though by some swift legerdemain. The port was pa.s.sed round, and while the gla.s.ses were being filled the telegram was handed to Linforth by his servant.

He opened it carelessly, but as he read the words his heart jumped within him. His importunities had succeeded, he thought. At all events, his opportunity had come; for the telegram informed him of his appointment to the Punjab Commission. He sat for a moment with his thoughts in a whirl.

He could hardly believe the good news. He had longed so desperately for this one chance that it had seemed to him of late impossible that he should ever obtain it. Yet here it had come to him, and upon that his neighbour jogged him in the ribs and said:

"Wake up!"

He waked to see the Colonel at the centre of the top table standing on his feet with his gla.s.s in his hand.

"Gentlemen, the Queen. G.o.d bless her!" and all that company arose and drank to the toast. The prayer, thus simply p.r.o.nounced amongst the men who had pledged their lives in service to the Queen, had always been to Linforth a very moving thing. Some of those who drank to it had already run their risks and borne their sufferings in proof of their sincerity; the others all burned to do the like. It had always seemed to him, too, to link him up closely and inseparably with the soldiers of the regiment who had fallen years ago or had died quietly in their beds, their service ended. It gave continuity to the regiment of Sappers, so that what each man did increased or tarnished its fair fame. For years back that toast had been drunk, that prayer uttered in just those simple words, and Linforth was wont to gaze round the walls on the portraits of the famous generals who had looked to these barracks and to this mess-room as their home. They, too, had heard that prayer, and, carrying it in their hearts, without parade or needless speech had gone forth, each in his turn, and laboured unsparingly.

But never had Linforth been so moved as he was tonight. He choked in his throat as he drank. For his turn to go forth had at the last come to him.

And in all humility of spirit he sent up a prayer on his own account, that he might not fail--and again that he might not fail.

He sat down and told his companions the good news, and rejoiced at their congratulations. But he slipped away to his own quarters very quietly as soon as the Colonel rose, and sat late by himself.

There was one, he knew very well, to whom the glad tidings would be a heavy blow--but he could not--no, not even for her sake--stand aside.

For this opportunity he had lived, training alike his body and mind against its coming. He could not relinquish it. There was too strong a constraint upon him.

"Over the pa.s.ses to the foot of the Hindu Kush," he murmured; and in his mind's eye he saw the road--a broad, white, graded road--snake across the valleys and climb the cliffs.

Was Russia at work? he wondered. Was he to be sent to Chiltistan? What was Shere Ali doing? He turned the questions over in his mind without being at much pains to answer them. In such a very short time now he would know. He was to embark before a month had pa.s.sed.

He travelled down the very next day into Suss.e.x, and came to the house under the Downs at twelve o'clock. It was early spring, and as yet there were no buds upon the trees, no daffodils upon the lawns. The house, standing apart in its bare garden of brown earth, black trees, and dull green turf, had a desolate aspect which somehow filled him with remorse.

He might have done more, perhaps, to fill this house with happiness. He feared that, now that it was too late to do the things left undone. He had been so absorbed in his great plans, which for a moment lost in his eyes their magnitude.

d.i.c.k Linforth found his mother in the study, through the window of which she had once looked from the garden in the company of Colonel Dewes. She was writing her letters, and when she saw him enter, she sprang up with a cry of joy.

"d.i.c.k!" she cried, coming towards him with outstretched hands. But she stopped half-way. The happiness died out of her. She raised a hand to her heart, and her voice once more repeated his name; but her voice faltered as she spoke, and the hand was clasped tight upon her breast.

"d.i.c.k," she said, and in his face she read the tidings he had brought.

The blow so long dreaded had at last fallen.

"Yes, mother, it's true," he said very gently; and leading her to a chair, he sat beside her, stroking her hand, almost as a lover might do.