Ida Craven

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New Novels at the Libraries. HEALEY : A ROMANCE. By Miss JESSIE FOTHER- GILL. Three vols., crown 8vo. " Very clever is the sketch of the heroine's cousin,|Louis Kay, a subtle and polished sneak, who through the whole development of the plot dosen't bow before or attempt to control circumstances, but quietly wriggles through their interstices." — Daily Telegraph. "The plot of the book is well constructed and clearly worked out." — A tJienœum. THE HIGH MILLS. By KATHERINE SAUNDERS, Author of "Gideon's Rock," "The Haunted Crust," etc. Three vols., crown 8vo. " Extremely well drawn," — Atlienœum. " A good story." — Standard. " Interesting to a very high degree." — Graphic. LOVE ME, OR LOVE WE NOT. By Mrs. FRANCIS G. FAITHFUL. Three vols., crown Svo. "Interesting." — Saturday Revi&af* 76 I " Exceedingly good." — Standard. *J " WeU written." — Graphic.

" Mrs. Faithful writes with ease and i-tiency."— Athenæum. " Most refreshing to come across.**— John Bull. HIS QUEEN. By ALICE FISHER. Three vols. , crown 8vo. " The heroine is admirably conceived." — Acade?>ty, " Vividly delineated characters." — British Quarterly Review. Henry S. King & Co., London. BY H. M. CADELL. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. Henry S. King & Co., London. 1876. [The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.] TO A-F-/5- * i-P-P CONTENTS. VOL. II. PAGE

Chapter I. Fact And Fiction

The next day the station was ringing with many coloured accounts of Mrs. Craven's adventure up the Khyber. The coffee-shop of the 5th N. I. had got hold of one of these to this effect, that Linwood and Mrs. Craven had been wandering about the Khyber hills on horseback, and had been set upon by a dozen ruffians. Linwood had killed three, and the rest had run away with their horses. And some one was improving it with the further addition that they, Mrs. Craven and Linwood, had been carried to a tower and had there found Craven, Stanley, and Saadut Khan holding a conference ; and this VOL. II. B of course lent itself to the suggestion that Linwood was running away with Mrs. Craven, and had been brought back by the virtuously indignant Momunds. Major MacPherson, who had listened for long in silence, here broke in, " You fellows are talking awful rot.

That little Mrs. Craven has a deal too much sense. As for that dandy Linwood, he's a good enough rider, but he is no better than his brethren, and all those irregulars are cox combs. As to the attack, and the rescue, I don't believe a word of it. Some one will have fired a shot because his brother was married, or his grandmother was dead — something of the sort ; and doubtless the Cravens did go picnicking in the direction of the Khyber : hence the story." " You unbelieving heretic ! You always doubt everything. But Hudson told me that there was a shot fired at Mrs. Craven," said a young sub with an air of great im portance. " Well it did not hit," said Mac. "As for the attack and the stealingof horses and that nonsense, I saw them all riding into the station together yesterday myself." " But Linwood was with them," said one of the lovers of the marvellous.

"Which does not prove anything you may see fit to say about him," said another, " but I went to tiffin at their mess my self the very day to find out what was up. Stanley did not seem to know what I was talking of. He's a bit supercilious in his civil way; and said at last, Oh yes, Mrs. Craven had been a little alarmed, but there was really no cause for it ; and Linwood said he did nothing, and never saw any one less frightened than Mrs. Craven. And when I asked whether some one did not fire a shot, Stanley took me up short, and said, " Yes, perfect volleys ; I went up the Khyber with Craven and Max well, and Faize Mohammad's people fired to welcome us." The well-meant effort of Stanley and Hugh to make no clatter about Mrs. Craven's name, resulted in the opinion that there was some thing very bad indeed, and that they wanted to hush it up.

" You may just as well," said MacPherson, "for anything you know about it, shut up, you fellows ; and if you can't, put some one else's name into the story, keep off Mrs. Craven's. She is not that sort of woman ; and Linwood 's her first cousin ; he and Craven are the best friends in the world. I met them together this morning. The truth of it is that Craven sent Linwood recon noitring somewhere, and that Stanley got into trouble trying to buy horses up the pass." With these bold assertions, which were so far founded on fact, that he had heard that Linwood was some one's cousin, and thought the rest was very likely to be true, did the good-natured old soldier muddle the story with the result of taking the sting out of it. It was a system of his. " People will talk scandal in India," he would say, "but the best way to make it harmless is to muddle it.

De fend the principal person accused^and then load the story with ornament. It will amuse a greater number of people, and then tumble to pieces sooner for its own weight. As for abolishing scandal, abolish the heat, and the niggers, and brandy and soda, and then you may have a chance. Not before certainly. Why if an angel from heaven were to come and live in an Indian station, every coffee shop in the place would have a story about her in a week, unless she were vilely ugly, which one would not expect." In the commissioner's home came some days of incessant anxiety. The day of the picnic had brought tidings that something very serious was up, and that the storm which had been for some time brewing had begun to blow. The threatened movement on the part of the Syuds and their Hindustani followers had taken place, and meant nothing less than the reoccupation of their old stronghold of Sittana, backed by the Jydoons and the Otmanzais, the holders of the country for which they were moving, in direct defiance of treaty obligations.

The fortress of Sittana was very near the British frontier, and had been for a very long time a hotbed of all sorts of mischief. From thence had issued innumerable plun dering parties, and to Sittana had been for long taken the wealth subscribed for the purpose of religious resistance on the plains of India. After the great convulsion of 1857, the co lony had been reinforced by the unsuccessful Mohammadan ruffianage of Oude and the North-West ; and though never at best very strong in numbers, was really unique in the quality of its seditious and bitter feeling towards the ruling power. This had been so patent that the unseating of the colony had been the object of an expedition in 1858. But the nest of scorpions had only been made to change its quarters ; and at Mulka, on the northern slope of the Mahabun, was soon as active as ever.

The tribes who held these northern slopes being a con siderable distance from our frontier, it had not been easy to reach them ; but we had taken distinct pledges from the Jydoons and Otmanzais that they should not again occupy the nearer and more dangerous post. But tired of the comparative unsatisfactoriness of the Mulka retreat, and taking advantage of a tribal dispute among the Otmanzais, they had now returned to their old ground, and the work of 1858 was undone, and would have to be done over again. The state of the British side of the frontier was peculiar. Much of the land along it being held by the families of the old chiefs on military tenure. The con ventional supposition was, that the feudal chief could always take care of himself, and on any occasion of trouble, send a contingent to help the imperial forces.

As a matter-offact they were utterly helpless, and in a great fright as soon as any real danger made its appearance. Telegrams, orders, and reports poured in on the commissioner from all hands, and had to be read and thought over; and measures had to be taken for immediate safety, and foresight was needed to prepare for even tualities. All this Arthur Craven did to very great purpose, writing, planning, organizing. It was well for England that she had such a man on the spot at the time. The frontier was at once put in a state of defence, and preparations were made for establishing a state of blockade, to check any present efforts on the part of the Syuds ; and all with a view to future punishment for them, and for the tribes who had so far aided them. Saadut was despatched along the frontier to see as much and be seen as little as possible ; even to cross it sometimes, and feel to the bottom of the loyalty of such chiefs as were still minded to be civil to us.

He was to cross the Indus, and go up its left bank (the British bank), and bring back some information* as to the temper of Shifar Khan, the minister and man of supreme power in Umb, — a district much exposed, and which we should probably have to defend ; and it was therefore important that our plans for their good should not, if we could help it, be disconcerted by the half heartedness of the Umb authorities. Thus Saadut Khan had his full part in the work and anxiety of the time, and was able to help his friend in a most important de gree. He had known Syud Mohammad Shah well at one time ; and though it formed no part of his official instructions, it was among the possibilities that in the hot-bed of sedition itself, Saadut would try to reason the Syud out of his state of infatuation. He had very little time or thought left for minor matters, though what he had seen and heard at Jumrood had made a great impression on him.

He liked less than ever Arthur's fair young wife, who seemed so listless at home, and yet who could get into such a scrape in company with some stranger gentleman. Too quiet at home, too adventurous abroad, seemed a very bad account to give of any woman, and that woman his friend's wife. Ida, heedless of the talk of the coffee shops, or the ill will of her husband's friend, was in her way a good deal excited by the turn public affairs had taken. She was proud that Arthur should be holding in his .hands the springs of the big machine of state in such troublous times, and was not sorry that things were in disorder that he might show how capable he was ; but all in an outside way, for she could not lose the feeling of only artifically belonging to him and to this bit of life. Mrs. Maxwell had had still more anxiety about her little son since the day of the picnic.

The child had been worse and better for some time past, and the last few days had been so much worse that Henry Maxwell, who had engaged a house for her at Murree, was urging her to go at once. She was very much averse to leaving home and its duties, for the forced idleness of life at a hill station. She doubted much how her husband would stand Peshawur and its fever season, and wished above all things to stay and see. Then her barrack women required more care at this time than any other, though some were away at a standing camp in the hills, not far from Murree, which had been kindly established by the Punjab government. It thus happened that Mary resisted the doctor's orders in the matter of little Hugh for longer than was wise ; and it was not till a day of serious illness on his part brought her to her senses, and the consideration of what was most important, that she decided on flight.

But one morning, when the valley was still ringing with the great news from be yond the frontier, Ida looked in upon Mary after her ride, and found her elbow-deep in a big camel-trunk, and with many other signs of moving about her. "What, Mary! are you really off?" said Ida. "I had no idea you were going so soon." " Nor had I till yesterday," she replied ; "but the child looked so ill, and was so ill all day, that I felt that there was really nothing for it but flight. His eyes have been looking unwholesomely intelligent and sad for some time back ; and after this last attack I could not hope to keep him well through August and September, which people speak of as the worst months here. So I believe I am right, though it is sorely against my will that I go." " To listen to her," said Maxwell from the tea-table, with a look of mischief in his eyes, "you would take her for the martyr mother of the period.

All that sounds perfectly beautiful, but who would believe that I had to say that I would take the child myself, with or without leave, to bring about this desirable state of mind ? " "Dear little man!" said his mother, quite coolly. "It is not lack of care for him, but I unfortunately happen to think of other things and folk too. It is a privilege of the male mind to be only able to take in one idea at a time." "AIL right, Mary," he answered. "But if that idea happens to be the essential one for the occasion, it is all that is wanted." So as the sun was setting that evening, Henry Maxwell and his wife and child went out of the station as fast as two strong horses could carry them. Henry Maxwell did not intend to go far with his home party, but he went to see them fairly started, and to have a play with his little white baby, feeling very thankful to have him at last out of the station of Peshawur, on his way to a more whole some atmosphere, and to see the last of his brave young wife whom he had sent away the more pitilessly that her absence would make an awful blank for him.

They talked cheerfully enough of plans and prospects, keeping as much as possible to the surface of things. Mary was deter mined to part happily, it would be foolish not to do so ; but yet she needed every bit of her motherliness to keep her from rebelling at the necessity that sent her from her' post just at the time she was most wanted. She looked very stern and artificially calm when they came to the place where Harry's favourite charger was standing ready to take him back to the station, and said steadily enough, " Good-bye ; take care of yourself." The boy had gone to sleep, and with one kiss to the child and another to his wife, Maxwell jumped down from the cart and mounted, and they bowled away. Mary put her head down beside the child, and fought it out. A sob or two came as a relief from the artificial calm, then a feeling of misery somewhat disproportioned to the occasion came over her, and she sat up very sorely conscious of the burden of life.

Those of us who know sorrow more real and more bitter than hers, need not be con temptuous of her. She was young, quick of feeling, and strong of will ; and on the whole, when some allowance is made for thoughts of Frankie over the seas, very happy, and it is the happy that sorrow wounds most keenly. They galloped along drawn by government horses at a good ten miles an hour, — along the white road, passing here and there a village, sometimes a train of government bullock carts, with their white bullocks and black tarpaulins, going along at a leisurely pace, with the inevitable but gentle sound of hubble-bubble heard through the creaking of the cart wheels. On — on, past Nowshera and its big barracks, and desolate white gate-posts marking where the old station once stood, before the Cabul River had swept it away ; here and there she saw glimpses of the Cabul River shining white in the moonlight.

Mary got interested at last, and, content that the boy was sleeping, quietly resigned herself to look and think. The new ground and the rapid motion kept her well awake, but she was resting — a thing not to be de spised after the day's fatigue of preparation. At last some hills were seen in the dim uncertain distant light. They were part of the Salt-Range come sooner than she had expected them ; and soon, after a great many jolts, a very sharp descent, and some shouts, they halted at the gate of India. They had now to leave their comfortable carriage. Some men appeared who seized on their little luggage; the ayah took the sleeping child, and they walked down to the river bank. The full moon made it almost as light as day ; of course there vvas no sio-n of a ferry-boat, and the bridge being down there was nothing for it but to wait, and trust to the howls of the men round her to produce the boat, which they did in time.

It was a good strong boat, large, built on an English model ; and Mary, boy, and ayah, got into the stern, the luggage in the centre. It was pulled by half a dozen sturdy boat men who now started with a shout. There had been a good deal of rain in the hills, and the snows were melting higher up, and the grand old river was very full. A little distance above Attock, the Cabul River which we have just mentioned joins the Indus, in a wide shallow bed, forming at some seasons almost an inland sea. Then after descending together for a little distance the united flood narrows suddenly to sweep round the rock on which Attock fort is built. They rowed at first up the river, keeping close to the Khyrabad side, that they might, allowing for the force of the water correctly strike the landing-place on the Attock side : a task requiring strong arms and good management at that season of the year, vol. 11. c when the river rushes through its compara tively narrow channel at a splendid pace.

Mary was keenly alive to the beauties of the scene, and very careless of its risks. Her healthy nature could always enjoy, and here was an exceptional chance for it. It was an entrancing summer night, clear, bright, and breezy. The noble river came tearing down on them, striving its best to carry them off, and across the water she could see the steep black rocks crowned with the battlements of the old Sikh fort, standing clear out against the sky. To the left was another historical building, Akbar's Serai, and above, a meagre trace of India's present masters, — the white travellers' bungalow, which Mary did not care to notice. Years have passed since then, but nothing will ever efface from her memory the scene of that night ; and still the river and the rock, the moonlight and the ruins are as vividly clear to the eye of memory as the rock was then against the sky.

But all pleasures must end, though we must thank God for having given them to us. At last amidst shouts that jarred after the rush of the water and the splashing of the oars, they struck the landing-place successfully. They got out of the boat, and found another carriage waiting for them ; and then Mary slept. Fifty miles more were passed with out accident, and at last they pulled up in the compound of the staging bungalow at Rawul Pindee, just as the sun was getting hot. The night had brought to Mary pain and pleasure, but it was over, and the race for life and health was won. From that time the little fellow gained strength, and when they reached Murree was soon the brightest of English boys, comfort ing his mother better than anything for her forced absence from home.

Chapter II. Hugh And Ida

July passed away without any active steps being taken on the part of the Punjab government to meet the frontier difficulty. Not that there was any hope of reducing the offenders to reason by any other means than a recourse to arms, but the season was unfavourable, and it was decided to keep up a blockade along the border till the end of the hot weather should leave the plains and valleys safe for European troops. After Mary Maxwell's departure, Ida was more alone than ever. Arthur was very little at home, and very busy during the hours of the day that in more peaceable times were given to relaxation. It was a life of ceaseless care and occupation. He was not a man to shrink from responsibility in any form ; indeed, he liked it on the whole, and carried the load lightly enough. At the price of incessant activity and constant thought, he felt he was doing his human best to direct the great affairs and protect the mighty interests under his hand, and so was happy.

What more could man do ? He was often absent from home for days together, riding about the disturbed districts, to hear with his own ears and see with his own eyes the actual state of things, and to bring his personal influence to bear anywhere where it might be wanted. If the helpless feudatories were a great vexation, so often were his active subordi nates no inconsiderable anxiety. To any one who knows the somewhat unhealthy activity of the Anglo-Indian official in presence of a row, this will be easily under stood. They seemed to have a speciality for finding things wrong, almost a power of creating disaffection. Craven's great object for the next few months, till an expedition could be sent to settle the matter, was to keep the quarrel to the point, and to avoid having a national revolt or a foreign war on his hands instead of a frontier row.

Now the love of excitement, much more than the fears, of the men about him, tended to exaggerate the difficulty ; they all longed to save the empire, but the soldier-statesman in charge was determined that the empire should not need saving this time. So, instead of being driven to rebellion by harshness and suspicion, our feudatories were aided in every way, but aided in such sort that the help could at any moment be turned to a practical check on their actions. Matters were to get no worse, and the frontier was to be blockaded. Such was the very simple plan, and the fashion in which it was carried out was very workmanlike ; but as a necessary consequence, Arthur Craven was very busy, and saw little of his young wife. He had again suggested the hills, but had found her so really anxious to stay that he had decided to press it no longer ; and this more particularly, that, though not very bright, she was rather better than worse, and seemed to understand now the need for his frequent absence.

The reason of this was not far to seek, and it was, on the whole, a pity. After the little adventure in the hills that morning, it had seemed quite natural that Hugh Linwood should come more about the Cravens' house. Arthur liked him in the somewhat unappreciative manner that a much older man likes a younger one, and had asked him there. Ida had now got over the uncomfortable feeling of the past, and was willing to take Hugh as a pleasant piece of the present ; only allowing him to be more of a friend than any man had been permitted to be before, because, as she put it to herself, he was a friend, and nothing more could be made of the fact. So her con science being quite quiet on the subject, Hugh was a good deal about. He managed to drop in pretty often to coffee-shop when his work was done for the morning ; and sometimes he and Woolett would come in together of an evening.

It was a way of the house that men friends were welcome for an hour or so after dinner. Colonel Craven had taken a great fancy to Woolett, and liked to talk to the able young enthusiast, who was not so much a doctor but that the scientific and the scholarly side of many subjects found in him a keen student; and who was, by the way, as he was much else, an archæologist of no mean attainments. Then, he had made a duty of speaking, with more or less of fluency, all the tongues that were spoken in the regiment to which he was attached, — and this meant a large command of northern dialects, — and thus was able to pick up a great deal of miscellaneous information from the men. In his short sojourn at Peshawur he had made a considerable acquaintance among the better classes in the city. " I have no time for books," he would say ; " but as I must see a good deal of men I make them do as well."

In his capacity of doctor, he had no opposing interests to his patients, and his talk met, in consequence, with none of the suspicion that must attend the inquiries of a civil or political official. It interested Craven to see the impression made on Woolett by things that were of too much importance to him to be looked at by himself without bias, and often felt glad of some bit of criticism cast up from this fresh point of view. But this is not Hugh and Ida. They were in a way interested in these dis cussions. Ida very genuinely so for the time; and Hugh often enough would enter into them : first that the line of thought was sufficiently familiar, and mainly, that they were among the ways of the house ; and the mere being one of the Cravens' inner circle was a pleasure that it was better not to analyze.

But far more than these evenings of general talk did he like his early morning visits, when he often got a long tete-a-tete with Ida. These occasions were very en joyable to them both ; they seemed to have much in common, there was much natural sympathy between them, and their talk was a real pleasure to both, without the element of personal feeling being any where visible in it. Of course it was very dangerous, taken by any common-sense standard ; but Ida, finding that Hugh did not fit well to any of the rules that governed her conduct with men at large, chose to take high ground about him, and so bade adieu to common-sense. To have had any one else talking of old friends and new books for an hour of a morning would have struck her as not to be stood ; but Hugh was not any one else. The little half-forgotten episode of four years ago was rather a reason for feeling confidence in him.

It was so long ago, she was married, and he was perfectly kind and simple. In her ignorance of the world, she would have expected a more melodramatic attitude from an old lover if there was any need to fear him. It was an interest to have him about, and really so very pleasant that she asked herself very few questions, and so got no warning of the true nature of the ground on which she was standing. To call her innocent would be almost a slur on her, as suggesting a doubt where there was none. Hugh, of course, had not the same excuse to make ; but then he had always had a gift of seeing matters, however much they might involve other people, very much from his own point of view. In this matter he really thought very highly of himself, and was the farther off from qualms of con science that he was thoroughly satisfied that he was behaving unexceptionably.

After the day when he had surprised Ida sleeping, he had never denied to himself that he loved her as much or more than ever. If she had won him as a bright, half-formed child, how much more was her empire strengthened now that she had ripened into a woman, more beautiful, but with a dash of sadness, more than fulfilling the promise of the past. Fair, intelligent, able, womanly, but one thing was needed to make the fascination complete, and that too was not wanting : it was that, though married, her husband did not seem to have filled up her life. With love's instinct, he had seen from the first that she was not happy. A less vain man or a more unselfish one would certainly have kept out of the way ; but it was with a naive and kindly, thouo-h egregious, conceit, that he was willing to try and make life a little brighter to his old love, never doubting his power to do so ; and even had there not been this amiable motive, he had never yet denied himself any practicable pleasure, and did not feel this an occasion to begin.