"Yes! it's pretty good," a.s.sented the doctor, placidly, as, keeping step, the two pa.s.sed out of the tent, so down the palm avenue towards the gaol, which the Commissioner was going to inspect. "It comes of their being idle. Wait till I get them digging again. I'll work the mischief out of them. When are we going on; and where?"

His companion shook his head. "Can't get an answer out of the Public Works. Is there anything you would like done, meanwhile?"

Dr. Dillon laughed sardonically. "Pretty considerable, rather! Only it would take months to get sanction. But, if you pa.s.s it, Smith says he could put a wire on from the Fort easily in a day. It would save sending by road if there was trouble, and the great thing is to hit back as quick as you can. The mutiny taught us that."

"Ay," said the Commissioner, musingly, "that's the straight tip; and that's why steam and electricity rule India. One can be ready without letting people know. If that had been the case in the mutiny--" he shrugged his shoulders, then went on--"these things come so easily; a touch starts them; but you mustn't show that you know it. Still, if you thought there would be any difficulty--I mean if you mightn't be able to hold your own till they came from the Fort--we might make some excuse for quartering a troop closer."

Dr. Dillon shook his head. "It isn't worth it. I believe myself they'll settle down when that big brute, Gopi, I told you about, gets his ticket to-morrow. If I didn't want to get rid of him I'd put him in cells for six weeks. And there's a warder, too,--or perhaps more. But there's no fear. I could hold the whole 'biz' myself, till the brutes managed to get off their leg irons, and as I keep every tool _extra mural_, I don't believe there's a bit of iron within the walls--except the shackles themselves. So I should have an hour or two, anyhow--"

"Now, here you are," he continued, with pardonable pride, as they pa.s.sed under the mud archway which led into the gaol; a long archway with a ma.s.sive door at either end, tunnelling a square block of flat-roofed building. "You'll find everything spick and span, I can tell you, for I've been making the beggars polish their own leg irons, so as to keep 'em a bit busy."

It was, indeed, spick and span, as only an Indian gaol can be, where everything, including the prisoners' beds, is freshly mud-plastered every week. Spick and span in a mere monotony of mud and lack of colour. The prisoners, fifteen hundred of them or more, stood in four long, straight rows, naked save for their waistcloths and the eared caps on their shaven heads; their blankets, folded to a small square under their feet, giving them a strangely wooden appearance, as if they stood on stands, like the figures in Noah's ark.

A couple of policemen fell out and drew their truncheons to walk close behind the Commissioner; but Dr. Dillon waved his pair back.

"Never show you expect anything," he said laconically, "and as I've always refused a guard, I can't take one now."

Nor was there any apparent need for one. Some faces scowled at him, but most were occupied with the Commissioner, who, when a prisoner raised his hand, paused to take the written pet.i.tion which, nine times out of ten, was ready for presentation.

"There must be a good many warders in it," remarked the Commissioner, dryly. And the doctor nodded.

"Now there's only the hospital," said the latter, when the solitary cells had been inspected, the cook room interviewed, and the dinner to come tasted. "It won't take you long. There was only one case in this morning."

But as they entered the long open ward, like a cloister, mud-plastered as all else, but with iron beds looking strangely at variance with their surroundings, two of these were occupied, and at one, a hospital dresser was standing, looking somewhat scared.

Dr. Dillon gave a hasty exclamation as he stepped up to the bed and looked at the sick man.

"When did he come in?" he asked briefly.

"Ten minutes ago, _Huzoor_; the _baboo_ hath given him--"

"Never mind what he hath given him," interrupted the doctor, holding up his hand in warning, "go on with it, and tell the _baboo-sahib_ to come to me for orders--at once. Now then, sir, that's all--and a bit too much too--" he added in a lower voice, as they pa.s.sed out together, "for it's a case of cholera."

The Commissioner looked grave. "That will complicate matters, won't it?"

"Can't say. You never can tell. They may take it as a dispensation, or there may never be another case. That fellow's done for, anyhow--he'll be dead in an hour."

"That's quick, isn't it?" asked his companion, calmly.

"Rather. I've seen a man go out in ten minutes, though. The worst of it is," he added, with a frown, "if there really is some conspiracy at the bottom of the discontent, it is as likely as not the devils who are working it, may take advantage of this--I don't mean of this death--_that_ goes without saying. But when cholera is about, poison is hard to detect, and even if I stamp out the _disease_, which I mean to do, they may simulate it." He bit at his thumbnail viciously as he strode on, thinking and muttering. "By G.o.d!" he murmured, "if I could catch 'em at it! However," he added aloud, "it's no good fussing. If the thing comes, it comes, and I've kept you here too long as it is, sir. Do you know it's close on half-past ten?"

"Be jabers!" exclaimed the Commissioner, "only twenty minutes to bathe, shave, breakfast, and put on me gold lace continuations. Well, ta, ta!

I'll see you at the show, of course."

Dr. Dillon looked puzzled for an instant; the puzzledom of a man whose thoughts are recalled from afar. "The show? Oh, yes! I was forgetting.

Rather, sir. Why! it is as much my ca.n.a.l as Smith's, for we've done every inch of it together; besides, I have got to drive his wife down."

"Where the deuce is Dering?" asked the Commissioner, quite ingenuously; but George Dillon flushed up. It was visible even under his leather-like tan.

"I really can't say, sir; otherwise engaged, I presume."

His elder turned to him, surprised, yet with instant apology. "I'm sorry; I shouldn't have said it; but I really meant nothing."

Dr. Dillon gave a dry, sardonic laugh. "Oh! it is all right, sir. I quite believe you didn't. n.o.body does mean anything in that sort of connection. It's left for the doctors to face facts as they are really; and then you call us brutal." He turned back, as he spoke, to the hospital.

Half an hour afterwards, however, having in the interim provided for every contingency he could foresee, including the bare possibility of his carrying infection, he appeared in Mrs. Smith's drawing-room, looking--for him--quite smart and spruce; since, as he had said, this end to three years' work was an event in his life also.

He found her, dressed in her daintiest, in a rocking-chair; and as he entered, his quick trained ear took in the petulance of the recurring push of one daintily shod foot. The room was darkened, and full of the scent of flowers. It was a familiar room to him, yet he never entered it without a glad recognition of the extreme feminine refinement shown in its every detail; for its mistress was one of those women whose fragility comes less from physical delicacy than from sensitiveness of mind.

She was leaning back in her chair listlessly; yet the white ringed hands which clasped the fair curls on her forehead showed an almost pa.s.sionate strain of muscle.

"I believe you'll have to go without me," she said, as he approached, "I've such a racking headache. I don't believe I can face it--I'm sure I can't."

He pa.s.sed on to her side, and laid his hand on one of hers for an instant, while his quick eye took in the details around him. A note had slipped from her lap to the floor. It lay face up, and the words "Dear Mrs. Smith, so sorry--" showed in Vincent Dering's writing. So, not content with the message of excuse sent her by the offender through him, she must have written! That was a dangerous development of the situation. He stood looking down at her indulgently, as he might on a fractious child who did not understand. And she did not--poor soul!

"You're nervous," he said. "Let me give you half a whiskey-and-soda before we start. It'll make you all right."

"Nervous!" she echoed irritably, her foot setting her chair a-swing to match her tone. "I'm never nervous--you know that is not one of my failings--is it?"

"No," he replied, "but you are a bundle of nerves for all that. You wouldn't be the woman you are if you weren't. And you are nervous at this moment. Nervous, despondent, out of heart. Come! make an effort!"

She gave a petulant little giggle of impatience. "You speak as if I were a Mrs. Dombey; but I'm not that sort. Besides, it killed her. I am not coming. It doesn't really matter, you know; n.o.body will miss me--it will be all right."

George Dillon, watching her, felt sorry, for once, at the correctness of his own diagnosis. He knew her so well that it seemed imperative to give her a hint of the reality. The danger of a final _eclairciss.e.m.e.nt_ with Captain Dering seemed imminent, and the shock of it might lead to anything, if the knowledge of her own weakness came to her in the presence of the man she had cheated herself into calling a friend.

"Your husband would. It is a great day for him," he said, laying his dexterous surgeon's hand full on the raw. As he expected, the answer came pa.s.sionately, and gave him an opening.

"He! O, he is quite happy as it is! He wouldn't miss me a bit. Why should he? I am not complaining, mind you--but why should he? He has interests enough without me."

Dr. Dillon deliberately sought for the nearest chair, drew it close, and sat down beside his patient in professional fashion, his eyes on her face, his hands on his knees.

"My dear lady," he said, "don't talk--excuse me--rubbish. Try and remember what women are always forgetting--that they _are_ women, and that, while Eve swallowed her portion of the fatal apple, his stuck--thank G.o.d for it!--in Adam's throat."

She ceased her rocking, to sit and stare at him with a growing resentment, which belied the words that came at last, almost sullenly.

"I don't understand what you mean in the very least. What has Eve's apple to do with--my headache?"

"A very great deal," he answered coolly, "and with more than your headache, which, by the way, is only a symptom, not a cause. The real evil is--is something different. If you do not understand--though I think you do a little--" she shook her head--"I can only repeat my advice about the whiskey-and-soda; for I cannot explain to you crudely what I mean."

She interrupted him angrily. "You have no right to hint at things you dare not say."

Her very indignation betrayed her, and he smiled kindly. "Perhaps not,"

he said. Then he paused, hesitated, finally leant nearer, with a look of resolve in his queer, intelligent face. "But I will tell you what I can do. I can sacrifice my self-respect and tell you a bit of my personal history which I never meant you to know, but which may help to cure--your headache." His voice, usually so dry, had a softness in it, though he went on without the faintest emotion. "Mrs. Smith, I have done myself the honour for nearly three years, of considering you as near perfection as a woman can he. Allow me to finish, please! I have done more. I have been, as the phrase runs, in love with my ideal of perfection; but I think you will admit that I have never allowed my feelings to give you, myself, or anyone else a--shall we say, a nervous headache? Now, after that, don't you think we had better start?"

He rose in quite a matter-of-fact way, took up his hat, and waited for her answer.

He had to wait some time, while the petulance of her renewed rocking ceased gradually in a determined rhythm, and he felt his courage going down to his boots. It was heroic treatment, but she was a healthy subject, and her anger would pa.s.s. Anything was better than letting her perfection suffer.