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Mrs. Denvers, you will never forgive me, I know. That jump of the mare's damaged one of the shafts. The wonder is it didn't break altogether. I have had to send the saice back to Farabad to try and get it patched up, and there is very little chance of our getting back to Kundaghat for two or three hours to come."
And without further demur she complied. The moment he lifted her she knew that his strength was fully equal to the venture. His arms were like steel springs. He grunted a little to himself as he bore her across, but he neither paused nor faltered till he set her upon the bank. "The mem-sahib will soon see the road to Kundaghat," he observed then. "She has but three miles yet to go."
It was probably for this very reason that Beryl liked him better than most of the men in Kundaghat, was less distant with him, and usually granted the very little that he asked of her. She turned to him at once with a random remark about the polo-players, wondering if they would be able to hold their own against a native team with whom a match had been arranged for the following week.
'My servant has returned to Farabad to a man he knows. We will rest under the trees but a furlong from this place till he comes back. But, most gracious, he will not come back. There is no place at Farabad at this time of the fair where the work could be done. Moreover, the saice has his orders, and he will not seek one. He will go back to Kundaghat with the mare, but he will walk all the way.
And yet it was to the smallest detail the story she had been warned to expect. "But surely," she said, at last, "we cannot be so very far from Kundaghat?" "No great distance as the crow flies," said Fletcher, "but a good many miles by road. I am afraid there is nothing for it but to wait till the mischief is repaired.
"The mem-sahib will need her servant no more," said her guide, pausing slightly behind her while she studied the landscape at her feet with the road that wound through the valley. She took out her purse quickly, and shook its contents into her hand. He had been as good as his word, but she knew she had but little to offer him unless he would accompany her all the way to Kundaghat.
It promised to be a function of supreme magnificence; it was, in fact, the chief event of the season, and the Anglo-Indian society of Kundaghat attended it in force. Beryl went with the Commissioner and his wife, but in the crowd of acquaintances that surrounded her almost from the moment of her arrival she very speedily drifted away from them.
It made her wholly forget that the man before her was an evil-looking native of whom she knew nothing whatever. With sudden impulse she turned and bestowed her full confidence upon him, the paint-smeared face and mumbling beard notwithstanding. "You must help me," she said imperiously. "You have done so much. You must do more. Tell me how I am to get back to Kundaghat."
He had left Kundaghat on the day following the dinner-party, dropping unobtrusively, without farewell, out of her life. She had told herself a dozen times, and vehemently, that she was glad of it, but the humiliating fact remained that she missed him missed him at every turn; when she rode, when she danced, when she went out in her rickshaw, and most of all in her drawing-room.
When she is there let her discover that she has left behind her some treasure that she values such as the golden bangle that is on the mem-sahib's wrist. Let her show distress, and Fletcher sahib shall come back to seek it. Then let her listen for the scream of a jay, and rise up and follow it. It will lead her by a safe and speedy way to Kundaghat.
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