Bertram Mitford - The Sirdar's Oath - A Tale of the North-West Frontier

Sunday had come round, and Cynthia had got up in a bad temper – we have observed that upon some people the first day of the week has that effect – consequently, when Raynier hinted at the possibility of his not going to church it exploded. The idea of such a thing! Why, of course he must go, staying at the Vicarage as he was. What would be said in the parish?

“But it didn’t matter what was said in the parish last Sunday. You wouldn’t let me come then because I was too ugly,” he urged, with a mischievous wink at Sylvia.

“Well, so you were, but your face is nearly all right again now,” answered Cynthia, briskly, and with acerbity, for she had no sense of fun.

“Not it. You’ll see it’ll keep all the choir boys staring, and they can’t warble with their heads cocked round at right angles to the rest of them.”

Sylvia spluttered.

“All the more reason why you should come, Herbert,” she said. “I want to see that. It’ll be good sport.”

“If you were a boy you’d be a typical parson’s son, Silly,” he laughed.

“Shut up. I’ll throw something at you if you call me that.”

“Do, and you’ll keep up the part,” he returned.

Worthingham Church was in close resemblance to a thousand or so other village churches of its size and circumstance, in that it was old and picturesque, and gave forth the same flavour of mould and damp stones. There was the same rustic choir with newly-oiled heads and clattering boots and skimpy surplices, singing the same hackneyed hymns, and the Vicar’s sermon was on the same level of prosiness, not that he could not have done better, but he had long since ceased to think it worth while taking the trouble. But Cynthia Daintree, seated in the front pew, well gowned and tastefully hatted, and withal complacently conscious of the same, was the presiding goddess, at whom the rustics aforesaid never seemed tired of furtively staring – in awe, which somewhat outweighed their admiration – therein well-nigh overlooking the discoloured countenance of her fiancé .

“Cynthia always looks as if she’d bought up the whole show,” pronounced Sylvia, subsequently and irreverently.

Raynier had answered one or two inquiries after his “bicycle accident” – Cynthia having deftly contrived to let it be understood, though not in so many words, that such was the nature of his mishap – and they were re-entering the garden gate. Suddenly she said, —

“Where’s your stick, Herbert? The malacca one. Why, you haven’t used it at all this time.”

It was all up now, he thought. As a matter of fact his main reason for endeavouring to avoid going to church that morning was that it would be one opportunity the less for her to miss that unlucky article.

“No, I haven’t. The fact is I’ve lost it.”

“Lost it? Oh, Herbert!”

She looked so genuinely hurt that he felt almost guilty.

“Yes. I’m awfully sorry, Cynthia. I wouldn’t have lost it for anything, but even as it is I’m sure to get it back again. I’m having inquiries made, and offering rewards, in short doing all I can do. It’ll turn up again. I’m certain of that.”

“But – how did you lose it, and where?”

He told her how; that being a detail he had purposely omitted in previous narration of the incident. It was but frowningly received.

“I didn’t think you would attach so little value to anything I had given you, and yet I might have known you better.”

What is there about the English Sunday atmosphere that is apt to render contentious people more quarrelsome still, and those not naturally contentious – well, a little prickly? Raynier felt his patience ebbing. She was very unreasonable over the matter, and, really – she was quite old enough to have more sense.

“I don’t think you’re altogether fair to me, Cynthia,” he answered, his own tone getting rather short. “The thing was unavoidable, you see. Unless you mean you would rather the man’s brains had been knocked out by that bestial mob than that I should have given him some means of defending himself. I value the stick immensely, and am doing all I can to recover it, but I should have thought even you would hardly have valued it at something beyond the price of a man’s life.”

“Only a blackamoor’s,” she retorted, now white and tremulous with anger.

“Sorry I can’t agree with you,” he answered shortly, for he was thoroughly disgusted. “I have seen rather too much of that sort of ‘blackamoor,’ as you so elegantly term it, not to recognise that he, like ourselves, has his place and use in his own part of the world. I repeat, I am as sorry as you are the stick should have been lost, but I should have thought that, under the circumstances, no woman – with the feelings of a woman – would have held me to blame.”

“That’s right. Sneer at me; it’s so manly,” she retorted, having reached the tremulous point of rage. “But why didn’t you tell me of it at first? Rather underhand, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, no. I don’t deal in that sort of ware, thanks. I did not tell you, solely out of consideration for your feelings. I had hoped the thing might have been recovered by this time – then I would have told you. And look here, Cynthia. Would it surprise you to learn that I am getting more than a little sick of this sort of thing. I am not accustomed to being found fault with and hectored every minute of the day. In fact, I’m too old for it, and much too old ever to grow used to it. And since I’ve been down here this time there’s hardly a moment you haven’t been setting me to rights and generally finding fault with me. Well, if that’s the order of the day now, what will it be if we are to spend our lives together? Really, I think we’d better seriously reconsider that programme.”

She looked at him. Just her father’s warning. But she was too angry for prudent counsel to prevail.

“Do you mean that?” she said, breathing quickly.

“Certainly I do. It is not too late to warn you that mine is not the temperament to submit to perpetual dictation.”

“Very well, then. It is your doing, your choice, remember.” And turning from him she passed into the house.

Peaks – jagged and lofty, peaks – stark and pointed, cleaning up into the unclouded but somewhat brassy blue. Rock-sides, cleft into wondrous, criss-cross seams; loose rocks again, scattering smoother slopes of shale, where the white gypsum streaks forced their way through. Beneath – far beneath – winding among these, a mere thread – the white dust of a road. Of vegetation none, save for coarse, sparse grass bents, and here and there a sorry attempt at a pistachio shrub. A great black vulture, circling on spreading wing, over this chaos of cliff and chasm, of desolation and lifelessness, turns his head from side to side and croaks; for experience tells him that its seeming lifelessness is but apparent.

“Ya, Allah! and are we to wait here until the end of the world? In truth, brother, we had better seek to serve some other chief.”

Thus one dirty-white-clad figure to another dirty-white-clad figure – both resembling each other marvellously. The same bronze visage, the same hooked nose and rapacious eyes, the same jetty tresses on each side of the face, and the same long and shaggy beard, characterised these two no less than the score and a half other precisely similar figures lying up among the interstices of this serrated ridge, watching the way beneath. The dirty-white turbans had been laid aside in favour of a conical dust-coloured kulla , the neutral hue of which headgear blended with the sad tints of the surrounding rocks and stones.

“I know not, brother,” rejoined the second hook-nosed son of the wilderness. “Yet it seems that since the Sirkar 1 1 Government ordinarily. In this instance the representative of Government. has been changed at Mazaran, a great change too has come over our father the Nawab.”