Rujub, the Juggler by G. A. Henty (ebook reader .TXT) 📖

“Now, Isobel,” he went on, as the girl joined them, and they all started along the road, “tell me how it is I find you here.”

“Mr. Bathurst must tell you, Doctor; I cannot talk about it yet—I can hardly think about it.”

“Well, Bathurst, let us hear it from you.”

“It is a painful story for me to have to tell.”

Isobel looked up in surprise.

“Painful, Mr. Bathurst? I should have thought—” and she stopped.

“Not all painful, Miss Hannay, but in parts. I would rather tell you, Doctor, when we have finished our journey this evening, if your curiosity will allow you to wait so long.”

“I will try to wait,” the Doctor replied, “though I own it is a trial. Now, Isobel, you have not told me yet what has happened to your face. Let me look at it closer, child. I see your arms are bad, too. What on earth has happened to you?”

“I burnt myself with acid, Doctor. Mr. Bathurst will tell you all about it.”

“Bless me, mystery seems to thicken. Well, you have got yourself into a pretty pickle. Why, child, burns of that sort leave scars as bad as if you had been burnt by fire. You ought to be in a dark room with your face and hands bandaged, instead of tramping along here in the sun.”

“I have some lotions and some ointment, Doctor. I have used them regularly since it was done, and the places don't hurt me much now.”

“No, they look healthy enough,” he said, examining them closely. “Granulation is going on nicely; but I warn you you will be disfigured for months, and it may be years before you get rid of the scars. I doubt, indeed, if you will ever get rid of them altogether. Well, well, what shall we talk about?”

“I will take pity on you, Doctor. I will walk on ahead with Rabda and her father, and Mr. Bathurst can then tell you his story.”

“That will be the best plan, my dear. Now then, Bathurst, fire away,” he said, when the others had gone on thirty or forty yards ahead.

“Well, Doctor, you remember that you were forward talking to the young Zemindar, and I was sitting aft by the side of Miss Hannay, when they opened fire?”

“I should think I do remember it,” the Doctor said, “and I am not likely to forget it if I live to be a hundred. Well, what about that?”

“I jumped overboard,” Bathurst said, laying his hand impressively upon the Doctor's shoulder. “I gave a cry, I know I did, and I jumped overboard.”

The Doctor looked at him in astonishment.

“Well, so did I, like a shot. But what do you say it in that tone for? Of course you jumped overboard. If you hadn't you would not be here now.”

“You don't understand me, Doctor,” Bathurst said gloomily. “I was sitting there next to Isobel Hannay—the woman I loved. We were talking in low tones, and I don't know why, but at that moment the mad thought was coming into my mind that, after all, she cared for me, that in spite of the disgrace I had brought upon myself, in spite of being a coward, she might still be mine; and as I was thinking this there came the crash of a cannon. Can it be imagined possible that I jumped up like a frightened hare, and without a thought of her, without a thought of anything in my mad terror, jumped overboard and left her behind to her fate? If it had not been that as soon as I recovered my senses—I was hit on the head just as I landed, and knew nothing of what happened until I found myself in the bushes with young Wilson by my side—the thought occurred to me that I would rescue her or die in the attempt, I would have blown out my brains.”

“But, bless my heart, Bathurst,” the Doctor said earnestly, “what else could you have done? Why, I jumped overboard without stopping to think, and so did everyone else who had power to do so, no doubt. What good could you have done if you had stayed? What good would it have done to the girl if you had been killed? Why, if you had been killed, she would now be lying mangled and dead with the others in that ghastly prison. You take too morbid a view of this matter altogether.”

“There was no reason why you should not have jumped overboard, Doctor, nor the others. Don't you see I was with the woman I loved? I might have seized her in my arms and jumped overboard with her, and swam ashore with her, or I might have stayed and died with her. I thought of my own wretched life, and I deserted her.”

“My dear Bathurst, you did not think of your life. I don't think any of us stopped to think of anything; but, constituted as you are, the impulse must have been overpowering. It is nonsense your taking this matter to heart. Why, man, if you had stopped, you would have been murdered when the boat touched the shore, and do you think it would have made her happier to have seen you killed before her eyes? If you had swam ashore with her, the chances are she would have been killed by that volley of grape, for I saw eight or ten bodies lying on the sands, and you yourself were, you say, hit. You acted upon impulse, I grant, but it was upon a wise impulse. You did the very best thing that could have been done, and your doing so made it possible that Isobel Hannay should be rescued from what would otherwise have been certain death.”

“It has turned out so, Doctor,” Bathurst said gloomily, “and I thank God that she is saved. But that does not alter the fact that I, an English gentleman by birth, thought only of myself, and left the woman I loved, who was sitting by my side, to perish. But do not let us talk any more about it. It is done and over. There is an end of it. Now I will tell you the story.”

The Doctor listened silently until he heard of Isobel's being taken to Bithoor. “The atrocious villain!” he exclaimed. “I have been lamenting the last month that I never poisoned the fellow, and now—but go on, go on. How on earth did you get her away?”

Bathurst told the whole story, interrupted by many exclamations of approval by the Doctor; especially when he learned why Isobel disfigured herself.

“Well done!” he exclaimed; “I always knew that she was a plucky girl, and it needed courage, I can tell you, to burn herself as she has done, to say nothing of risking spoiling her beauty for life. No slight sacrifice for a woman.”

Bathurst passed lightly over his fight in the courtyard, but the Doctor questioned him as to the exact facts.

“Not so bad for a coward, Bathurst,” he said dryly.

“There was no noise,” Bathurst said; “if they had had pistols, and had used them, it might have been different. Heaven knows, but I don't think that then, with her life at stake, I should have flinched; I had made