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Had he been the only one to recognize him, the secret would have been safe. He had done his best to guard it, but Fate had been against them. And the mem-sahib the mem-sahib had turned and gone away as one heart-broken. Peter yearned to comfort her, but the whole situation was beyond him. He could only mount guard in silence.
Suddenly she made a movement as if to rise, but checked herself as one reminded by exertion of physical infirmity. "The mem-sahib weeps for her lord," she said. "How shall Hanani comfort her? Yet never is a cruel word. May it not be that he will even now return?" "He is dead," whispered Stella. "Not so, mem-sahib." Very gently Hanani corrected her. "The captain sahib lives." "He lives?"
And that my lord the captain sahib lives is also true. Hanani swears it by her grey hairs." "Then where where is the captain sahib?" whispered Stella. The ayah shook her head. "It is not given to Hanani to know all things," she protested. "But she can find out. Does the mem-sahib desire her to find out?" "Yes," Stella breathed.
Some one must go down to Allahabad for her! Are you all ready for her coming?" "Perfectly!" smiled Ram Lal. "The Mem-Sahib could give a dinner of twenty covers in an hour after her arrival! You know that the bungalow was fitted up for " he bent his head and whispered to Major Hawke, who laughed intelligently and viciously. "All right, then!
Hafiz will tell the mem-sahib." But Stella shook her head in hopeless unbelief. "I don't trust Hafiz," she said wearily. "Yet Hafiz would not lie to old Hanani," insisted the ayah in that soft, insinuating whisper of hers. Stella reached out a trembling hand and laid it upon her shoulder. "Listen, Hanani!" she said. "I have never seen your face, yet I know you for a friend."
Peter the Great looked at him with reproach in his eyes. Monck stopped short. He accosted the man in his own language, but Peter made answer in the careful English that was his pride. "Even so, sahib, I watch over my mem-sahib until you come to her. I keep her safe by night as well as by day. I am her servant." He stood back with dignity that Monck might pass, but Monck stood still.
"What happened?" questioned Stella, still half-doubting the evidence of her senses. "Where where is my baby?" Hanani knelt down by her side. "Mem-sahib," she said very gently, "the baba sleeps in the keeping of God." It was tenderly spoken, so tenderly that it came to her afterwards she received the news with no sense of shock. She even felt as if she must have somehow known it before.
"Surely surely not!" she said, as though seeking to convince herself. "Mem-sahib, how should I know?" the Indian murmured soothingly. She became suddenly aware that further inaction was unendurable. She must see for herself. She must know the whole, dreadful truth. Though trembling from head to foot, she spoke with decision. "Peter, go outside and wait for me! Keep that old beggar too!
The same may be said of the sketches "The Grass-Widow," p. 139; "Mem-Sahib," p. 157, by many considered the best sketch of all; and "Sahib," p. 181. All of them full of that pathos and tenderness akin to, but yet differing widely from, the bantering style of the others, which are also full of allusions and covert references to individuals and affairs of the Anglo-India of thirty years ago.
Wherefore he followed him to the mountains and commanded him to be gone, and thus he went." "But who told Hafiz?" questioned Stella, still struggling against unbelief. "How should Hanani know?" murmured the ayah deprecatingly "Hafiz lives in the bazaar. He hears many things some true some false. But that Dacre sahib returned last night and that he now is dead is true, mem-sahib.
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