Miss Stuart's Legacy

With an Essay From The Garden of Fidelity Being the Autobiography of Flora Annie Steel, 1847 - 1929 By R. R. Clark

Flora Annie Steel, R. R. Clark

• Publisher: Read & Co. Classics
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781528714525
• eBook ISBN: 9781528788816
• Subtopic: Classics

Flora Annie Steel (1847 – 1929) was an English writer who notably lived in British India for 22 years and is best remembered for her books set or related to the sub-continent. Steel's 1917 historical novel "Miss Stuart's Legacy" offers the reader a glimpse into colonial India that is typical with her fiction, weaving a delicate story to the backdrop of British imperialism in an exotic land. An entertaining and insightful read, this book is highly recommended for those with an interest in India's history and will not disappoint those who have read and enjoyed other works by this author. Also by this author: "Tales of the Punjab" (1894), "The Flower of Forgiveness" (1894), and "The Potter's Thumb" (1894). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with an essay from "The Garden of Fidelity" by R. R. Clark.

MISS STUART'S LEGACY

CHAPTER I.

An Indian railway station in the first freshness of an autumn dawn, with a clear decision of light and shade, unknown to northern latitudes, lending a fictitious picturesqueness to the low-arched buildings festooned with purple creepers. There was a crispness in the air which seemed to belie the possibility of a noon of brass; yet the level beams of the sun had already in them a warning of warmth.

The up-country mail had just steamed out of the station after depositing a scanty store of passengers on the narrow platform, while the down-country train, duly placarded with the information that it carried the homeward-bound mail, had shunted in from the siding where it had been patiently awaiting the signal of a clear line. The engine meanwhile drank breathlessly at the tank, where, in a masonry tower overhead, a couple of bullocks circled round and round, engaged in raising the water from the well beneath to the reservoir beside them. Round and round sleepily, while the primeval wooden wheel creaked and clacked, and the clumsy rope-ladder with its ring of earthen pots let half their contents fall back into the bowels of the earth; round and round dreamily, with the fresh gurgle of the water in their ears, and the blindness of leathern blinkers in their eyes; round and round, as their forebears had gone for centuries in the cool shade of sylvan wells. What was it to the patient creatures whether they watered a snorting western demon labelled "homeward mail," or the chequered mud-fields where the tender wheat spikelets took advantage of every crack in the dry soil? It was little to them who sowed the seed, or who gave the increase, so long as the goad lay in some one's hands. So much the cattle knew, and in this simple knowledge were not far behind the comprehension of their driver, who, wrapped in his cotton sheet, lay dozing while he drove.

The sweetmeat-seller dawdled by, pursued even at dawn by his pest of flies. The water-carriers lounged along uttering their monotonous chant, "Any Hindu drinkers? Any Mussulman drinkers?" while in their van, dusky hands stretched out holding metal cups and bowls, from the very shape of which the religion of the owners might be inferred, owners sitting cheek by jowl in third-class compartments with a gulf unfathomable, impassable, between them in this world and the next. The lank yellow dogs crept among the wheels, licking a precarious meal from the grease-boxes. The grey-headed carrion-crows sat in lines on the wire fencing with beaks wide open in unending yawns. Nothing else appeared to mark the passage of time; indeed the absence of hurry on all sides gave the scene a curious unreality to Western eyes, a feeling which was plainly shown in the expression of a young girl who stood alone beside a small pile of luggage.

"A new arrival," remarked a tall man in undress uniform, who was leaning against the door of a first-class compartment, and talking to its occupants.

"Yes, to judge by complexion and baggage," was the reply. "You'd hardly believe it, but Kate was as trim once; now!—just look at the carriage!"

A gay laugh came from behind a perfect barrier of baths, bundles, and bassinettes. "We hadn't four babies to drag about in those days, George, and I can assure Major Marsden that I'm not a bit ashamed of them, or my complexion. George, dear! do for goodness' sake get baby's bottle filled with hot water at the engine; if he doesn't have something to eat he will cry in ten minutes, and then you will have to take him."

While George, with the proverbial docility of the Anglo-Indian husband and father, strolled off on his errand, the feminine voice came into view in the shape of a cheerful round little woman with a child in her arms and another clinging to her dress. She looked with interest at the girl on the platform. "She seems lonely, doesn't she?"

Major Marsden frowned. He had been thinking the same thing, though he was fond of posing as a man devoid of sentiment; a not unusual affectation with those who are conscious of an over-soft heart. "I wonder what she is doing here," he said, kicking his heels viciously against the iron step of the carriage.

A twinkle of mischief lurked in his companion's blue eyes as she replied:

"'What are you doing here, my pretty maid?'
'Going a-marrying, sir,' she said.

Can't you see the square wooden box which betrays the wedding cake?"

"Then if you want to do a Christian act,—and you ladies love aggressive charity—just step out of your car as dea ex machine, and take her home again. India is no place for Englishwomen to be married in."

"Now don't go on! I know quite well what you are going to say, and I agree,—theoretically. India is an ogre, eating us up body and soul; ruining our health, our tempers, our morals, our manners, our babies."

The laugh died from her lips at the last word, for the spectre of certain separation haunts Indian motherhood too closely to be treated as a jest. Instinctively she held the child tighter to her breast with a little restless sigh; a short holiday at home, and then an empty nest,—that was the future for her! So she went on recklessly: "Oh, yes! Of course we are all bad lots,—neither good mothers, nor good wives."

"My dear Mrs. Gordon! I never said one or the other. I only remarked that Englishwomen had no business in India."

"What's that?" asked George, returning with the bottle.

"Only Major Marsden in a hurry to get rid of me," replied his wife.

"Don't believe her, Gordon! For all-embracing generalities, convertible into rigid personalities at a moment's notice, commend me to you, Mrs. Gordon. But there, I regret to say, goes the last bell."

The train moved off in a series of dislocations, which, painful to witness, were still more painful to endure, and Philip Marsden was left watching the last nod of George Gordon's friendly head, with that curious catching at the heart which comes to all Anglo-Indians as they say good-bye to the homeward-bound. He was contented enough, happy in his work and his play; yet the feeling of exile ran through it all,—as it does always, till pension comes to bid one leave the interests and friends of a lifetime. Then, all too late, the glamour of the East claims the heart, in exchange for the body.

The girl was still standing sentinel by her luggage, and as he passed their eyes met. In sudden impulse he went up and offered help if she required it. His voice, singularly sweet for a man, seemed to make the girl realise her own loneliness, for her lips quivered distinctly. "It is father! I expected him to meet me, and he has not come."

"Should you know him if you saw him?" She stared, evidently surprised, so he went on quickly, "I beg your pardon! I meant that you might not have seen him for some time, and—"

"I haven't seen him since I was a baby," she interrupted, with a sort of hurt dignity; "but of course I should know him from his photograph."

"Of course!" He scanned her face curiously, thinking her little more than a baby now; but he only suggested the possibility of a telegram, and went off in search of one, returning a minute afterwards with several. Behind him came the stationmaster explaining, with the plentiful plurals and Addisonian periods dear to babudom, that without due givings of names it was unpermissible, not to say non-regulation, to deliver telegrams.

"I forgot you couldn't know my name," said the girl frankly, when a rapid scrutiny had shown that none were addressed to her. "I'm Belle Stuart; my father lives at Faizapore."

"Not Colonel Stuart of the Commissariat?"

"Yes! Do you know him?"

A radiant smile lit up her face with such a curve of red lips, and flash of white teeth, that the spectator might well have been infected by its wholesome sweetness into an answering look. Major Marsden's eyes, however, only narrowed with perplexed enquiry as he said bluntly, "Yes, slightly."

"Then perhaps father sent you to fetch me?"

This time he relaxed; confidence is catching. "I'm afraid not; but possibly if he had known I was to be here he might. At all events I can make myself useful."

"How?"

"I can get you a gharri—that is a carriage—and start you for Faizapore. It is sixty miles from here as you know."

She bent down to pick up her rugs. "I did not know. You see I expected father."

Philip Marsden felt impelled to consolation. "He has been delayed. Most likely there has been"—in his haste to put forward a solid excuse he was just about to say "an accident," but floundered instead into a bald "something to detain him."

"There generally is something to detain one in every delay, isn't there?" she asked dryly; adding hastily, "but it is very kind of you to help. You see I have only just arrived in India, so I am quite a stranger."

"People generally are strangers when they first arrive in a new country aren't they?" retorted her companion grimly. Then as his eyes met her smiling ones, he smiled too and asked with a kinder ring in his voice, if there were anything else he could do for her.

"I'm so hungry," she said simply. "Couldn't you take me to get breakfast somewhere? I don't see a refreshment-room, and I hate going by myself."

"There is the dâk bungalow, but," he hesitated for an instant and stood looking at her, as if making up his mind about something; then calling some coolies he bade them take up the luggage. "This way please, Miss Stuart; you will have to walk about half a mile, b...

Table of contents

• SUMMER
• MISS STUART'S LEGACY