Voices in the Night
by Flora Annie Webster Steel · English · Gutenberg #40045 · 799,246 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Voices in the Night
Author: Flora Annie Webster Steel
Release date: June 20, 2012 [eBook #40045]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOICES IN THE NIGHT ***
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2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
Voices in the Night
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_Uniform with this Volume, price 6s_.
ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS.
THE POTTER'S THUMB.
FROM THE FIVE RIVERS.
IN THE PERMANENT WAY.
* * *
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 BEDFORD STREET. W.C.
Voices in the Night
By
Flora Annie Steel
Author of
'On the Face of the Waters,' etc.
London
William Heinemann
1900
_All rights, including translation, reserved_
_This Edition enjoys Copyright in
all Countries signatory to the
Berne Treaty, and is not to
be imported into the United
States of America_.
CONTENTS
_Prologue_.
_Chapter_
i. _The Totalisator_.
ii. _The Kite-Flyers_.
iii. _Cobwebs_.
iv. _An Unforgotten Past_.
v. _Shark Lane_.
vi. _The Money of Fools_.
vii. _Crackers and Squibs_.
viii. _The Temple of Viseshawar_.
ix. _Uncertainties_.
x. _The Sinews of War_.
xi. _The Spirit of Kings and Slaves_.
xii. _A Mother's Dirge_.
xiii. _A Valse à deux temps_.
xiv. _In the Toils_.
xv. _The Râm Rucki_.
xvi. _The Prison of Life_.
xvii. _The Pen and the Sword_.
xviii. _The Freedom of Death_.
xix. _On the Bed Rock_.
xx. _The Old Wine_.
xxi. _Red Paint_.
xxii. _The Better Part_.
xxiii. _A Memorable Occasion_.
xxiv. _The Sovereignty of Air_.
xxv. _Secret Despatches_.
xxvi. _Fair Odds_.
PROLOGUE
The new year was already some hours old, but the world to which it had
come was still dark. Dark with a curious obscurity, that was absolutely
opaque yet faintly luminous, because of the white fog which lay on all
things and hid them from the stars; for the sky above was clear, cold,
almost frosty.
That was why the fog, born, not of cool vapour seeking for cloud life
among the winds of heaven, but of hot smoke loving the warmth of dust
and ashes, clung so closely to the earth; to its birthplace.
It was an acrid, bitter smoke, not even due to the dead hearthfires of
a dead day, since they--like all else pertaining to the domestic life
of India--give small outward sign of existence, but to the smouldering
piles of litter and refuse which are lit every evening upon the
outskirts of human habitation. Dull heaps with a minimum of fire, a
maximum of smoke, where the humanity which has produced the litter, the
refuse, gathers for gossip or for warmth.
Even in the fields beyond the multitude of men, where some long-limbed
peasant, watching his hope of harvest, dozes by a solitary fire, this
same smoke rises in a solid column, until--beaten down by the colder
moister air above--it drifts sideways to spread like a vast cobweb over
the dew-set carpet of green corn.
So it was small wonder if here, at Nushapore, with its fifty thousand
and odd dwellers in cantonments, its two hundred and odd thousand
dwellers in the town, the smoke fog hid earth from heaven; hid even the
steady coming of day.
For it was close on dawn. The most silent, most restful hour of an
Indian night, yet one still holding that vague sense of life and
movement inseparable from an environment in which there is no set time
for sleeping or waking; in which folk gossip all night, and sleep all
day, should the humour so take them.
It had so seized on some one, apparently, this New Year's night, for
two voices rose, not in whispers, but monotone, from one of the
verandahs in Government House--rose insistently, until, from within the
closed doors, came a sharp though drowsy order for silence--
'_Chupra'o!_'
The voices ceased; such orders, even when drowsy, must be obeyed, since
they come from the master: at any rate, till he sleeps again.
So the minutes slipped by. Upon the round rim of the level wheatfields
beyond the smoke, the violet sky above the cobwebs faded to grey at the
sun's approach. The fog round Nushapore grew whiter, more luminous.
Then the voices began again; monotonous, insistent. Were they, in
old-world fashion, beguiling the reality of darkness with legends of
some heroic age of light? Were they, more modernly, making that reality
darker by taking thought for the morrow, and discussing, say, the
depreciation of the rupee? Or were they dreamers still, though wakeful,
and were they discoursing of equality and the rights of the individual?
Such theories are to be heard nowadays even in this Indian smoke fog.
'_Chupra'o_, you brutes, or----'
The threatening voice paused as a dull reverberation shivered through
the chill air. It was the first gun of the Imperial salute which every
New Year's morning proclaims that Victoria, _Kaiser-i-hind_, reigns
over the fog, and the voices in it.
Now, when a hundred and one guns, each with its message of mastery,
stand between a man and his sleep, what use is there in commanding
silence elsewhere?
So the threat ceased, and between the beats of the guns the voices had
their say unchecked.
About what?
That is a difficult question to answer, when the voices are in the
night.
CHAPTER I
THE TOTALISATOR
'What's the big blackboard with white sums?' asked little Jerry
Arbuthnot.
Jack Raymond, who was holding the child's hand, looked down at the
six-year-old figure in the natty riding-suit so like his own, save for
the racing silk which he himself wore half-hidden by a covert coat.
'It is the map of India,' he began, then pulled up at the sight of
Jerry's face. 'You shouldn't believe everything you're told, young
man--it hampers the sense of humour! No, Jerry, that's the
totalisator--a calculating machine for doing sums in the compound
rules. Ask Miss Drummond if it isn't?'
The girl thus challenged let the cool disdain, which is nowadays so
often the prevailing expression of young womanhood for manhood, become
slightly more aggressive.
'It is a betting machine, Gerald----'
'Don't profane the word, Miss Drummond,' interrupted the man. 'Betting
is a bracing mental exercise. You back your opinion to be right against
fixed odds. But this five-rupee-in-the-slot-trust-in-Providence
business is a demoralising compromise. You stand neither to win nor
lose.'
'Then, please, what does come to the five wupees?' asked Jerry
urgently.
'Practical boy!' commented Jack Raymond with a laugh. 'It is "as you
was" generally; for you see, Jerry, the world backs the favourite as a
rule. It likes to follow a lead! And, if you divide the total of the
tickets by their number, it's poor fun! So take my advice, young man;
when you totalise, go for a rank outsider and stand to collar the lot!'
Lesley Drummond, being the child's governess, frowned. 'I see your
mother arriving, Gerald,' she said, 'and we were to join her at once.
Come!'
But Jerry held his new-found friend fast by the hand. 'You come too,'
he petitioned, 'my mother is just an orful nice person.'
There was a moment's pause, during which the child's grip on the man
tightened, before the latter replied, 'I know that, Jerry; your mother
and I are old friends; but I have only time to see you safe across the
green. I'm up in this race.'
'I used to wide waces when I was in India once,' began the child, when
Lesley cut him short.
'You never rode a race in your life, Gerald, and I can't allow you to
say that you have.' Then she turned suddenly, in the purely impersonal
confidence of grievance, to the stranger beside her (for they had only
just been introduced to each other), and said, 'I can't think why, but
ever since Gerald landed in Bombay, just a week ago, he has had a bad
habit of claiming to have done all sorts of things he never _could_
have done. Lady Arbuthnot thinks it is because the child really does
remember India a little. You see he was past four when he went home.
But that,' she added magisterially, with a frown for the culprit, 'does
not excuse telling stories--does it?'
The man's blue eyes, so curiously overshadowed by thick bushy fair
eyebrows, sought the child's cool grey ones, and a sudden reflection of
the perplexed obstinacy he saw in them came to his own.
'How the deuce do you know he hasn't?' he muttered, half to himself.
'This isn't England, where you can bet your last _dib_ on certainties.'
Then he looked at the immaculate white collar and cuffs of the figure
in a tailor-made coat and skirt beside him, and gave in to convention
by adding resignedly, 'But you mustn't tell whackers, you know,
Jerry--must you?'
'I don't!' protested the six-year-old. 'I weally thought I had. But I
will, anyhow, when I'm big. An' I'll bet wif the bookies evewy time,
Mr. Waymond, like you do.'
That glance at the collar and cuffs showed guilt in it this time. 'Not
a bit of it,' said the conscious sinner stoutly. 'You'll be a mighty
big swell like your father, Sir George----'
'Please, they call my daddy "His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor" now,'
interrupted Jerry, 'and his salute is twenty-one whole guns. They made
an orful booming at the wailway station. But I liked it. An' the twoops
pwesented arms to him to-day at the Queen's pawade--didn't they, Miss
Dwummond?'
'Of course, dear! As Lieutenant-Governor, your father is entitled to
these honours,' replied Lesley, head in air.
'Of course!' echoed the man beside her, making her, in her turn, glance
at him, and wonder if contempt or envy brought that odd note to his
voice. Either way, she admitted reluctantly, he would have carried such
honours bravely; but then so would have half the Englishmen she had
seen since landing at Bombay. The environment of India had a trick of
giving an air of distinction to the Anglo-Saxon.
Radical as she was, inevitably, seeing that she had led the life of a
definitely independent woman in England for six years, she felt a
sneaking satisfaction as she walked across the enclosure with the tall
spare man, whose haggard face looked still more haggard above his gay
racing colours.
The afternoon sun sent blue-black shadows behind them. The golden glory
in front of them lay lavishly on the shifting kaleidoscope of many-hued
dresses. To one side, the pipers of a Highland regiment strutted their
floating tartans through a pibroch. To the other, rose white mess-tents
decorated with flowers and bunting, each centring its knot of crowding,
colourful guests.
But the densest, most colourful crowd gathered round the totalisator
which stood between the first and second-class enclosures, so that
the sergeants in uniform could attend at the same time to both its
five-rupee board fronting the grand stand and its one-rupee board
giving on the mixed multitude; could attend even to the slender dark
hands which sometimes stretched over the barrier with five rupees in
their palms, and a petition to be allowed the higher stake. Hands
unable to grasp the fact that five lesser gains may equal one greater
gain; an inability provocative of much needless discontent all over the
world.
Lesley Drummond's eyes, as she walked across the lawn, grew dazzled at
the unusual glitter and colour of the crowd, her ears grew confused by
the gamut of civilisation struck by the varying costumes. There, was
the first note of Western influence in a pair of patent-leather shoes;
yonder, the last echo of the East in a white turban above a frock coat.
'It's a queer crowd,' said Jack Raymond suddenly, as if in explanation
of her look. 'And I could tell you a lot of queer tales. That man, for
instance'--he nodded after a burly figure in a tinsel biretta which had
just thrust a flabby waxen hand at him with a liquid Persian compliment
on the New Year--'is the biggest brute in India. A Delhi pensioner by
rights, but he does Buckingham here to the Rightful Heir, that young
sweep to the left, in cloth of gold.'
'Rightful Heir!' echoed Lesley captiously, 'rightful heir to what?'
Anglo-Indians in her limited experience oscillated between supposing
her crassly ignorant or absolutely omniscient; and either treatment
annoyed her, for she was accustomed to consider herself, and be
considered, thoroughly well informed.
'The whole caboodle,' replied Jack Raymond tolerantly. 'You see there
were kings in Nushapore----'
'I know _that_, of course!' she interrupted impatiently, 'but do they
still claim?'
'Great Moses! Claim? Nushapore is a _vox clamavi_, chiefly to mutiny
pensions which, being mortgaged up to the hilt, are of no use to any
one but the usurers. But _they_ will generally lend the bankrupts
enough for the entrance-fee to the races, so of course they come here
in crowds.'
'Why?' asked the girl, feeling herself a mere mark of interrogation.
'It's a change from betting on cocks and kites. Besides, there's the
position.'
'What position?' she asked, with a prayer for patience.
He laughed easily. 'All races are equal on a course, Miss Drummond; and
a racecourse is, practically, the only place where the native meets us
on equal terms. Look! there's the biggest brute in Asia elbowing Mrs.
Member-of-the-Board Collins at the totalisator! If he tried it on
elsewhere, some one would kick him, and quite right too.'
Lesley's disdain became active, though she told herself the remark was
only to be expected from 'that type of man.'
'May I ask why?' she said superbly.
'Because it is contrary to his own estimate of the proprieties, and it
is impossible to be virtuous on another person's decalogue, isn't it?'
he replied coolly; then, ere she had time to reply, went on: 'There are
a lot of chaps want kicking in this crowd, I can tell you. For
instance, do you see that man buttonholing the Rightful Heir?'
'With the red tie?' she asked, feeling interested in spite of herself.
'Is he English?'
'God forbid!' said her companion piously. 'Grecian Archipelago, I
should say for choice; but he won't let on. Anyhow, he's a merchant;
wheat, diamonds, dust, bones--everything out of which he can screw a
_pice_. And Jehân Aziz, the Rightful Heir, has the finest table emerald
in the world--the old king's signet-ring. Now I don't mind betting it
will be in Paris before the year's out.'
'In Paris!--why in Paris? I don't understand--nobody could be
expected--nobody could understand,' protested Lesley.
Jack Raymond smiled. 'Filthy Lucre--his real name is Philip
Lucanaster--does, I assure you, Miss Drummond! He knows that heirlooms
always pay debts of honour.' He paused to lift his cap elaborately to a
well-dressed fair woman who passed with a tall dark man, whose face had
a wistful look. 'There's a case in point,' he went on carelessly. 'That
fellow--he is a pure-bred Brahmin, Miss Drummond--is paying his
heirlooms through the nose because he contracted a debt of honour in
marrying an Englishwoman. She has made him sacrifice home, friends,
relations; prints his cards Mr. and Mrs. Chris Davenant--his real name
is Krishn Davenund--and so tries to hang on to the frayed edge of
society'-he glanced at an effusive greeting between the lady in
question and Mr. Lucanaster.
'Poor thing!' ejaculated Lesley with the wholesale defence of all
things feminine which belongs to her type. 'What a terrible experience
for her--'
'And for him,' retorted her companion drily. 'Matrimonial mistakes,
though women will not recognise the fact, come inevitably in pairs.'
Apparently there was some suggestion in his own words, for he looked
ahead hastily, and finding himself closer to an advancing group than he
wished to be, told Jerry he must be off, and turned back towards the
paddock.
'Who was that, Lesley?' asked Lady Arbuthnot, who, with her husband,
formed the centre of that little knot of advancing notables. She was a
beautiful woman, beautifully dressed, and with the beautiful manners
which a perfectly calm consciousness of beauty always gives to a woman.
Her soft voice softened still more as she spoke to her child's
governess; so there was small wonder that the latter's face, as she
replied, told yet one more tale of modern girlhood--the tale of one
woman's blind hero-worship of another.
'A race steward. Jerry took a violent fancy to him and I didn't! But he
said he knew you--a Mr. Raymond----'
A faint echo of the name was checked on Grace Arbuthnot's lips by a
greeting to a new arrival, which, when she returned to the subject,
lent them the continuance of a set smile of welcome.
'Yes! I knew him very well years ago. I shall be glad to meet him
again.' The faint unreality which previous rehearsal gives, even to
truth, was in her voice.
'He's up in this wace,' quoted Jerry sagely, 'or he'd have come, for he
said you was orful nice. Oh, mum! do be quick, or we shan't see him
win.'
'Win? How do you know he's going to win, sonnie?' asked Grace
Arbuthnot, and there was no unreality in her voice now, only a slightly
troubled curiosity.
''Cos he will,' answered the child in childish fashion; whereat his
mother flushed faintly, but smiled also.
Jerry was a good prophet. Five minutes after, he was dancing on his
chair, as crimson and gold came in first. 'Oh! did you see, mum?' he
cried. 'He was quite quite first.'
Lady Arbuthnot held out her hand to steady the child, and her voice
seemed to need support also. 'Of course I saw, dear; and I am glad.'
'So's every one, Lady Arbuthnot,' said young Nevill Lloyd--captain by
virtue of his A.D.C.-ship--who stood behind her. 'Raymond is our most
popular win.'
It seemed so by the cheer which rose as the winners went by.
'I suppose he has won a lot of money,' sniffed Lesley, noting the
rider's pleased face.
'Not a penny, Miss Drummond!' protested the young fellow. 'Raymond is
only _on_ the saddle when he rides another chap's horse, as he's doing
to-day; and it _is_ safer, you know.'
'I do _not_ know, Captain Lloyd,' she retorted loftily. 'I know nothing
about horse-racing. _Why_ is it safer?'
He coughed uneasily. 'Ah! I thought you would know, you know, and it's
a bit hard to explain. You see, Indian racing is sometimes a trifle
odd--considering, I mean, that we are all gentlemen--or supposed to be
so. But Raymond,' here he brightened up, 'is always a straight win.
That's why Lucre and his crew----'
He stopped short as one of a group of men, amongst whom Mr. Lucanaster
showed conspicuous by his red tie, paused in the general exodus to
answer a bystander's question.
'Luck? How the deuce is any one to have luck when you can't get a fair
bet placed? Even the Devil's Own didn't get on with His Royal
Highness.'
Mr. Lucanaster acknowledged another of his nicknames by a lavish smile.
'There is faith as mustard in Raymond among our nigger friends,' he
said, with the eccentricity of accent and idiom which, following him
into every language he knew, made his nationality an insoluble problem.
He glanced back as he spoke towards a cluster of native gentlemen who,
following a lead as ever, were also making their way from the stand.
The similarity of their oval yellow faces, their thin curves of
moustache trained to a fine sweep above the full betel-stained lips,
proclaimed them of the same family; but Lesley singled out the Rightful
Heir by his cloth-of-gold coatee, and by something which, rather to her
own surprise, thrilled her unexpectedly--a green gleam of sovereignty
on the small supple hand raised in a _salaam_ of servitude as its owner
passed the Lieutenant-Governor and his party.
'I'm always glad,' continued Nevill Lloyd virtuously, when Lucre and
his crew are hit! They get betting with the Nawâbs and offering 'em
drinks. Shocking bad form--by the way, Miss Drummond, come to our tent
and have a peach-brandy!'
Lesley, with another trait of the modern girl--her toleration of the
male sex up to the age of twenty-five--laughed good-humouredly.
'It isn't bad form with a lady, apparently, for that's the fifth
peach-brandy I've been offered in half an hour!'
'Well! aren't there five tents? And you haven't been to ours,' argued
the lad quite gravely. 'Do come! It needn't be a peach-brandy, you
know. Have tea, or a chocolate caramel, just to show there isn't any
ill-feeling.'
She smiled in sisterly fashion at his kindly, clean-looking young face,
and--Jerry having gone with his father--passed with it into that
marvellous golden glory of Indian sunshine which still struck her
Western eyes as the most noticeable factor in her Eastern environment.
The rest, barring the native costumes, was hopelessly Western, she told
herself, as she stood listening to the scraps of talk around, while
Nevill Lloyd struggled for her cup of tea. Polo talk, polite talk,
political talk; then something she could not classify as two natives
drifted by with an air of aloofness.
As they did so a plaintive woman's voice rose close to her. 'I shall
send baby home, as we've been transferred to Cawnpore.'
'Isn't she rather young?' said some one in answer.
'Oh! it isn't that,' replied the first voice, 'I mean that I couldn't
take a child to Cawnpore. I should always be thinking of the well!'
_Always thinking of the well!_
The words brought home to Lesley Drummond in an instant--a
never-to-be-forgotten instant--that _something_ which so often chills
the golden glory of the Eastern sunshine, that vision of the sentinel
of memory which, for both races, bars the door of reconciliation that
might otherwise stand open for comradeship.
She had read books on that past tragedy, she had told herself that it
_was_ past, that it should be forgotten; and now--
'Drink your tea sharp!' said Nevill Lloyd with kindly familiarity, 'or
you'll be getting ague. That's the worst of this beastly hole. It's
always in extremes. Hot as blazes one moment, chill as charity----' He
paused, for the iron hand beneath the parti-coloured velvet and brocade
glove of India was resolved to have the girl in its grip at once, and a
rattling thud, followed by a dull reverberation, rose from the near
distance, making more than one in the chattering crowd pause also,
until the sound came again, when the pause ended cheerfully in fresh
chatter.
'It's a funeral,' explained Nevill Lloyd in answer to Lesley's look.
'The cemetery is close to the course, and enteric is shocking bad in
barracks just now. Young Summers of ours is down with it, too. Awful
ill, poor chap--couldn't be worse, I'm afraid.'
A lady, passing, turned to listen, and, as she went on, said to her
companion in a whisper, 'I do hope they won't have to put off the ball
to-night--I've got such a jolly new dress from Paris for it.'
Another vision came to Lesley, the vision of a dead lad and a Paris
dress.
'Come for a turn--you're positively shivering,' said Captain Lloyd
concernedly.
They had barely escaped from the crush, however, when Sir George
Arbuthnot appeared in the important fuss of new authority. A cipher
telegram had come from England, he must return to Government House at
once, if Captain Lloyd would kindly order the carriage.
'It's an orful nuisance, Miss Dwummond,' commented Jerry, tucking his
hand into hers after his fashion with every one he liked, 'for dad and
I was going to put five whole wupees on the blackboard thing for the
Cup wace. And now he can't, of course. But I can. Can't I, dad?' he
added, artfully appealing to a weak point in his parent, 'for you
pwomised, didn't you?'
Now the keeping of promises had always been a prop to Sir George's
somewhat irresolute mind, so he promptly gave Jerry the five rupees,
and, with a suggestion that Miss Drummond would help him to get the
ticket, bustled off, leaving the latter no time for remonstrance.
She stood looking resentfully at the pieces of silver which were to
betray her principles, then said with chill dignity--
'We had better take the ticket at once, I suppose, if it has got to be
taken. Come, Gerald!'
But Jerry's face was the face of Jerry when he forgot his hymn, and his
hands, holding the five rupees, went behind his back to match his
consciousness of error.
'I'm afwaid I don't know, please,' he began.
'Don't know what? Speak up, don't be stupid!'
The flaming flag which always heralded the child's confessions of
ignorance flew to his face; but, after his habit, he looked his
inquisitor full in the eyes.
'What, please, a wankest outsider is.'
Lesley hid her smile deftly; she had ample practice in the art with her
pupil. 'And _I_ don't know which is the rankest outsider, so we must
take it on chance,' she replied tartly.
The little laddie's face fell, but he stood firm. 'Please, I'd _wather_
take it on the--the other; for Mr. Waymond knows lots about betting and
you don't know nothing.'
'I'm glad I don't!' she retorted, feeling quite nettled, for Jerry's
obstinate adherence to his ideal was not to be set aside with a high
hand. 'And what is more, I don't wish to; so if you're not satisfied,
we needn't take the ticket at all!' So far she got almost spitefully,
then something smote the womanhood and motherhood in her. 'Or,' she
went on, 'suppose we take one on Kingscraft--every one says he is sure
to win.'
The boy's face was a study of pitying contempt. 'Kingscwaft!' he
echoed. 'Why, he's the favourite, and I'm not going to foller a
lead--_I_'m going to collar the lot!'
A sudden mist came to the girl's eyes; and through it she seemed to see
the sturdy little soul enshrined in the sturdy little body. She held
out her hand and said simply, 'Come, there's Mr. Raymond--he'll know.'
'The rankest outsider?' echoed Jack Raymond quite gravely. 'Let's have
a look at the card, Jerry.' Then, as he stooped over the child, he
added, 'Shall I read out the names, or can you?'
The confessional scarlet flew to the little lad's very ears this time.
'Only some, I'm 'fwaid. That one's Kitten. An' I know that other
one--least one end of it I do, 'cos it's Miss Dwummond's name.'
'Which? Bonnie Lesley?' asked Jack Raymond, and the scarlet flag flew
to another face.
'Only the other end of it, please,' corrected Jerry; whereat one flush
vanished in two laughs.
'My name doesn't matter, dear; read the next,' began Lesley, when Jack
Raymond interrupted her.
'Excuse me, we gamblers believe in omens.--H'm! country-bred
mare--undersized--maiden--Of course I remember! a post entry, railed
down this morning--owner up--that looks good--white and green
sleeves--better--the fellow knows his border ballads. Bonnie Lesley it
is, my boy, for the luck'--'of the name' trembled on his tongue, but
the immaculate collar and cuffs made him alter the phrase to 'the
thing.'
The next instant he and Jerry were elbowing their way to the
totalisator, Lesley waiting for them out of the crush, and watching
fresh white strokes come as fast as they could to number two on the
blackboard. That, she thought, must be the favourite's number, while
poor Bonnie Lesley, tho rankest outsider, was probably thirteen, with
but one white stroke!
She turned to the bookmakers' booths to see if she could verify her
guess by their lists, but all save one, round which a few determined
old stagers were lounging, had already closed. However, she saw what
she wanted there--Kingscraft, No. 2, Bonnie Lesley, No. 13!
When she turned back again, the little and the big covert coats had
disappeared in the crowd; indeed, she was beginning to wonder what had
kept them so long, when Jack Raymond's voice called her from behind.
'This way, Miss Drummond, everything's full up this side, but I'll take
you across to the other.'
Jerry, leaning over the railings below the judge's stand, beamed with
delight, but Lesley, finding Mr. Lucanaster and the Rightful Heir next
her, felt herself mixed up with the extreme racing set and their
nefarious practices. So she glared at her guide resentfully, though he
was too much absorbed in his race-glass to notice it.
'Just in time,' he said, looking round with a cheerful smile. 'Now,
Jerry, my man! steady to win, or lose--that's the game!'
He followed his own advice, anyhow, and Lesley, watching his hands,
felt instinctively that the man must be a first-class rifle shot. But
Jerry followed the advice also, though, with a wonder as to whether the
strain was good or bad for the child, she noticed his fingers clenched
white on the white railings in his effort to be calm.
'They're off!'
The familiar stir of relief ran through the crowd.
Then came the familiar silence, while every eye was riveted on the
confused onward sweep over the curved tan--that silent half-seen sweep,
which, for all its dimness, its silence to the outward ear and eye,
holds in it from the first, a sob, a strain of fiercest effort for the
inward sight and hearing.
So, at the curve, the trail of horses clustered, spread out again,
settled for the straight run home!
'Bonnie Lesley's had it in her pocket from start to finish, Jerry,'
said Jack Raymond, suddenly lowering his glasses.
'By Jove! I wish I'd----' He broke off and raised the glasses again.
But by this time others had seen that the little brown mare was coming
home to her stables cheerfully, and a blank half-irritated surprise
began to leaven the suspense.
Then a voice--Mr. Lucanaster's--said, 'What a rotten race!'
It was, to many; yet as the little mare neared the spectators, there
was something in the bronze gleam of her straining muscle, something in
the deer-like bound of her forward sweep, something in the eager head
with its full anxious eye, outstretched as if to pass the post a second
sooner, something in the slack swing of a pair of green sleeves telling
of a win, hands down, which made every sportsman present forget
personal disappointment in a surge of admiration for the game little
beast.
'By Jove! Raymond!' said one of the judges as he passed out, 'what a
flyer! I'd give something to own her!'
'I'd give something to have known her,' corrected another. 'Twenty to
one! Ye Gods! What a chance for my widow and orphans!'--
'Who gave _you_ the tip, Jack?' asked an envious voice.
'What tip?' replied Jack Raymond imperturbably.
'Oh! don't fizzle--I saw you--just at the last--you must have about
broken the----'
'Totalisators don't break, my dear fellow,' interrupted Jack. 'Now,
Jerry, if Miss Drummond is ready, we can go and claim your winnings.'
She made no answer till the comparative solitude of re-crossing the
course was reached, then she turned to him and said, in a voice to
match his own--
'And your winnings also.'
Their eyes met, and he took his cue once more from what he saw. 'I'll
get _them_ after. It is a good lot, for I backed the little mare
properly because she had your name. Only depreciated rupees though!
Jerry! can you do sums yet? What is five thousand rupees at one
shilling and threepence farthing? That, I think, is to-day's quotation,
is it not, Miss Drummond?'
His reflected defiance made the original stronger.
'Tell Mr. Raymond, Jerry, that you haven't yet begun his system of
compound multiplication, and, as I hope you never will, he had better
drop the subject.'
She had not looked at the straight line of those bushy fair eyebrows,
or she might have realised the futility of high-handedness; but she did
realise it, with a certain respect, from the first words he spoke.
'You have no right to object,' he said coolly. 'The coincidence of name
was not your doing--nor mine! Nor are you responsible for the mare's
win. Therefore, since neither Jerry nor I consider ourselves in your
debt for our ill-gotten gains, we leave you out of the question, and
for the life of me I can't see why you should insist on being in it
when you dislike it.'
His sledge-hammer common-sense left her gasping, and ere she found
words he had reverted to negligent banter. 'But, of course, if you feel
guilty, I'll put the rupees into the poor-box---that is always the
refuge of the conscience-stricken! I can afford it easily, for I've had
a regular run of luck today. So let it be peace and charity with this
man! Now, Jerry! for the rupees, and after your pockets are stuffed,
I'll take you to your mother and explain.'
Lesley, feeling limp, admitted to herself that the suggestion was
thoughtful. She also yielded the point of manners as she watched him
standing before Lady Arbuthnot with Jerry's hand, as ever, tucked
confidingly into a bigger one; and yet Grace Arbuthnot was one of those
women who, as a rule, make men look rough.
'I'm sorry to begin by bringing you a bad boy,' he said, evading her
set welcome rather abruptly, 'but Miss Drummond will tell you how
demoralising I am, so you must forgive the young sinner for the sake of
the old one.'
The words held no intent, and yet as Grace Arbuthnot stood listening
and looking at those two--the man and the child hand-in-hand--the faint
shrinking which tells of a sudden enlightenment, bodily or spiritual,
came to her eyes. 'You can hardly be held responsible, Mr. Raymond,'
she said slowly when the tale was done. 'It is Sir George's fault, and
I will tell him----' Then, as if to escape from the situation, she
turned to Lesley, 'By the way, have you seen him lately? Gone home, did
you say! Why?'
The reply seemed to take her from the present and the past also, so
that her manner had all the elaborate graciousness she accorded to mere
acquaintances as she said, 'Then I will follow his example and say
good-bye, Mr. Raymond. These English telegrams are so interesting,
aren't they? Especially now the general election is on; for it means so
much to India, doesn't it?'
'Possibly,' he replied coolly, 'but it means very little to me, Lady
Arbuthnot. I am no politician nowadays.'
Lesley Drummond, as, driving away, she watched the haggard face pass
under the big blackboard with its white sums which rose from the motley
crowd to show clear against the dusty levels of India, wondered once
more if his tone meant contempt or envy.
Grace Arbuthnot, however, did not notice the tone at all. She was
absorbed in something else, and, as soon as they reached Government
House, went straight to her husband's writing-room.
After ten minutes she was still standing where she had paused beside
him, and was drawing her dainty pale gloves through her hands
impatiently as she stared at the telegram Sir George had shown her. For
he trusted her absolutely in such matters; and in so doing showed his
sense. She came, to begin with, of an Anglo-Indian family which had
written its name large on the annals of Empire. An only daughter, she
had kept house for her father, the Lieutenant-Governor of his time, and
so from her earliest girlhood had listened to the talk of the ablest
men in India, and become familiar with the problems of its government.
Then, of herself, he knew her to be as capable of giving a sound
opinion as he was; knew that no one from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin
took a keener interest than she did in the welfare of the people.
'Yes! I, too, thought they might perhaps withdraw it, but still it is
mean, inexpressibly mean!' she said at last.
Her voice was loud and firm, and Sir George glanced uneasily at the
door of his secretary's room; for the fear of a certain proverb about
grey mares lingered with him. It dies hard in Indian bureaucracy.
'Horribly mean,' she went on, 'for it does not lessen your
responsibility; or alter the position, so far as you're concerned.'
Sir George took up his pen a trifle irritably--a sign that he was
beginning to weary of the discussion. 'Pardon me, I think it does. So
long as these secret instructions were in my confidential box I was
bound, in any crisis, to follow them; but now they are destroyed'--he
paused at her look, pointed to a pile of grey ashes in the fireplace,
and went on heartily--'upon my soul, it's a relief! The contents can't
leak out now; and I've been awfully nervous about that ever since
Ewebank took to asking questions about a secret plan of campaign in the
House. Some one got a hint of it somehow; and, as you know, that
pestilent paper here, the _Voice of India_, has been on the bad-faith
tack. And I can't imagine anything more disastrous, just at present
when the city is seething about the plague and the withdrawal of
municipal powers, than that this policy--which, frankly, subverts all
our professions--should be got at. Even at home it would be ruination
during the elections; a regular party cry.'
'And yet,' said Lady Arbuthnot with a fine scorn, 'every sane man knows
we can't proclaim everything from the housetops in India; knows we
_must_ have secret orders. And, paper or no paper, we have them still!
If there is a row, Government will expect you----'
A sudden obstinacy came to her husband's face. 'I should telegraph home
for orders.'
Her hands closed tighter; she frowned. 'No, you wouldn't, George;
everything might depend on accepting the responsibility of immediate
action--you----'
He drew his chair close to the table and dipped his pen in the
ink--sign that he meant to hear no more.
'I should do what I thought best, of course; but I should also be more
cautious to avoid doing'--he changed his phrase, 'to avoid receiving a
slap in the face. Anyhow, I'm not exactly sorry the instructions _have_
been withdrawn. Even delay in action seems to me to involve less
risk--of permanent injury, I mean--than the upset there would
infallibly be if our intention leaked out before the event.'
She paused at the door with a look of tolerant affection. 'But why
should it have leaked out? Besides, it did strengthen your hands
enormously--that is why I got father to speak to the Council--that is
why I was so glad when he succeeded. And he was glad too--he knows the
advantage of having it in black and white.'
She said the last words, half to herself, as she went slowly up the
wide shallow stairs, so un-English, so still more un-Indian, which led
to the upper story of Government House.
She was thinking, as she spoke, of her father's letter, in which
he had told her of his success, and given her an outline of what the
demi-official notification to follow would be. That letter was still in
her jewel-box upstairs, where she had placed it as a sort of hostage
against the more definite letter to come. And suddenly the temptation
not to destroy that _précis_ of policy came to her. Supposing she kept
it just to show George--whose disinclination to accept responsibility
she recognised as a source of danger--that, if the worst came to the
worst, he could still prove a private knowledge in black and white of
what had been the Government policy. The letter was very definite, very
explicit.
The thought came to her as she passed into her room, and as she did so,
she saw the reflection of her English maid's face in the looking-glass,
as she stood rummaging hastily in the dressing-table drawers.
'What is it, Needham?'
The maid turned, with a cry of mingled relief and alarm, 'Oh, milady!
I'm so glad you're back. I can't find the little jewel-box nowhere--it
'adn't so much in it, milady, for I'd took out the diamonds last
night--that was when I seen it last. It 'ad your string of pearls, and
_ayah_ says she's not seen it either, but there was people in the
verandah last night, for Captain Lloyd he threw boots at 'em, for
disturbin' him. Oh, dear! oh, dear! why did I ever come to Ingiar!'
Here Needham dissolved into tears.
Grace Arbuthnot turned very pale. 'The little jewel-box,' she echoed.
Then she pulled herself together, and said calmly, 'Well, it is lucky
it was only the pearls. Go down and ask Sir George to come to me at
once; for if the box has really been stolen, the sooner the police know
the better.'
Half an hour afterwards she was answering the police officer's
questions still more calmly.
'Only a string of pearls--large ones--they belonged to my mother, who
got them, I believe, from one of the late Nawâb's wives, and a few
small trinkets--there is a list of them--that was all.'
'A letter or two, milady,' suggested Needham, who had been giving her
evidence.
'Of no value to any one save the owner,' smiled Lady Arbuthnot, and her
husband smiled back at her, for he knew she kept his letters.
'Well, it is lucky it wasn't worse!' he said consolingly, 'it might
have been the diamonds. And if I were you, he added to the police
officer, 'I'd let Mr. Lucanaster know at once, even if, as you say,
it's wiser to keep the matter dark for a day or two. He is always
buying jewels, and even if the thieves don't take the pearls to him
direct, they might try and trade them off to the royal family, and then
he is sure to hear of it in the end--he is always having dealings with
them.'
CHAPTER II
THE KITE-FLYERS
'Bring me more paste, women, and see there be no lumps in it; the last
was fit to ruin a body's reputation,' said Lateefa, the kite-maker, as
he sate on the ground in one of the arched nooks which surrounded the
wide sunlit courtyard of a large native house. It had been a sort of
city palace to the dead dynasty, and was now occupied by Jehân Aziz,
the Rightful Heir's, family. It was built of stucco, simulating marble;
stucco decayed, fast crumbling to dust, so leaving scars, where once
there had been ornaments.
The speaker was an old man, though his sleek oiled hair, square-cut in
the royal fashion just below the ear, showed no streak of grey. On one
side of him lay the raw material of his craft; on the other a
swift-growing pile of the manufactured article ready for sale in the
bazaar, after his master, Jehân Aziz, prince of kite-flyers, should
have taken his choice. That Lateefa himself was prince of kite-makers
could be judged from the way in which he bent the bamboo slips to a
perfect curve, and held them thus by three dabs of paste and a sheet of
tissue paper. It was a miracle of dexterity.
There were two women in the courtyard, one a girl about sixteen, who
was lounging lazily behind Lateefa, the other a woman of sixty, dressed
in ragged dirty garments, who was spinning as for dear life an arch or
two farther down. After a pause, during which she looked almost
appealingly at the girl, the latter rose and limped towards an inner
court, for Khôjeeya Khânum was slightly lame; slightly deformed also,
owing to her lameness.
'Keep the lumps to our dinners, Auntie Khôjee!' called the girl with a
pert titter; 'for what with paste and the kites it makes we good women
have scarce flour left to fill our stomachs!'
Lateefa, after watching the limp disappear, glanced round at the girl.
She was a buxom creature, over-developed for her years, and
over-dressed in the cheap finery of Manchester muslin at six _pice_ a
yard and German silver earrings at two _annas_ a dozen.
'Thy sort of good woman need never starve, niece Sobrai,' he said (for
he was connected by some by way of blood to the Heirs of All Things or
Nothing), 'I have told thee that before. There is not a drop of her
blood in thee,' he nodded to the inner door. 'I mean no blame; some
daughters must favour the father. Indeed, I marvel ever there be so few
to do it in this family, since, God knows! we men be debauched enough
to outweigh the virtue of the sainted Fâtma herself.' He shook his head
and began on a new kite.
'Thou knowest _that_ better than I,' retorted Sobrai sharply; 'though
thy memory, Uncle Lateef, can scarce hold the poor souls thou hast
injured thereby.'
His deft hands left their work, and the supple fingers spread
themselves in emphatic denial. 'Not a one! niece, not a one!' he
protested, 'Lateefa makes kites, not souls. I take men and women as
they came from their Maker's hands--as I came. For, see you, if my
kites fly, as I make them fly, why not His souls?'--he paused for a
thin musical laugh which suited his thin acute face--'I say not,' he
went on, 'that thou art botched by being built another fashion, but
that her life,' he nodded again to the inner or women's court, 'is not
for such as thee--that thou hadst best appraise thine own needs
betimes.'
'May be I have already,' sneered the girl insolently, 'and without thy
help, pander!'
He turned on her swiftly. 'Have a care, girl! have a care! In vice, as
in virtue, the old ways are safest. So listen not to that woman from
cantonments whom the Nawâb brings hither when he entertains. Ah! think
not I have not seen thee stealing down on the sly to have a word with
her.'
Sobrai gave a half-abashed titter. 'And to Dilarâm _thy_ friend of the
city also! Lo! uncle! What is there to choose between them or their
trade either? "_If one comes to dance, what matters a veil?_" And if
the Nawâb would keep his women old-fashioned, why doth he bring Miss
Leezie to the house? Ah! say not 'tis only to this outer court where we
virtuous need see nothing; for "_'tis only the blind cow which hath a
separate byre_," and my sight is good----'
'And thy heart bad,' added Lateefa dispassionately, as she stood
shifting one foot to and fro after the manner of dancing-girls. 'Still,
since God made thee, as I make kites, thou wilt doubtless fly thine own
way--if thou canst find some one to hold the string! It needs that
ever.'
She began a retort, but checked herself as Khôjeeya reappeared with the
paste in a green leaf cup.
'Thy work brings quick return, Lateef,' said the old lady, pausing to
look wistfully at the growing pile of kites, 'but my wheel twirls for
two hours to a farthing tune.' She edged closer and brushed a speck of
dirt from the kitemaker's board in wheedling fashion, then went on,
'Couldst not spare me something to-day, Lateef, against the boy's
medicine? He needs it sorely, and Noormahal hath not had a _cowrie_
from the Nawâb since the races. Dost know what he lost? He says all,
but he lies often.' She spoke without a suspicion of blame, simply as
if the fact--being a dispensation of Providence--was neither to be
questioned nor resented.
Lateefa laughed airily. 'Lose!' he echoed, 'Jehân hath naught to lose,
not even credit. He sets free of fate! "_He who bathes naked has no
clothes to wring!_" 'Tis Salig Râm, his usurer, whose fat flesh quivers
lest his tame pensioner should die prematurely. So take heart, my good
Khôjee! Things cannot grow worse, or, for that matter, better, since
Jehân's affairs are as a slipped camel in the mud. They can neither go
back nor forward. For, see you, he must not die of starvation, lest the
pension lapse; nor must he live riotous beyond reason, lest once more
the pension lapse through his death by surfeit. Would to God I had such
leading-strings to comfortable, clean living myself! But none cares for
Lateefa's soul or body. So fret not, Khôjee, concerning Jehân. And as
for the boy, canst not take the child to the "Duffri'n Hospitar'l" and
get physic free? Plenty women go thither, they tell me.'
'Ay! of sorts; but not we,' replied the old lady.
She drew her ragged veil tighter, but Sobrai tittered.
'Hark to her gentility! Yet she goes to the pawnshop, Uncle Lateef, and
does the house-marketing to boot--tut! auntie, wouldst pretend it is
not so? As if our neighbours did not know us all but servantless! as if
they could not tell worshipful Khôjeeya Khânum, king's daughter, below
the domino, by the limp!'
The old worn face--it was one of those Providence meant for beauty,
then marred--turned in deprecating apology to Lateefa, as
representative of outraged propriety and proprietor.
'Some one must, _meean_,' she said meekly, 'for Ameenan hath but two
hands and two feet; yet another set would mean another mouth to feed.
Besides, I grow so old, brother; there is no fear.' The faint
forlornness and regret of the excuse made Lateefa's sharp face soften.
'Heed not what Sobrai says, sister,' he replied. 'Lo! thy virtue would
stand stiff in a brothel; hers grows giddy looking over a wall; so she
doth not understand----'
'Not understand!' retorted the girl shrilly. 'Mayhap I understand too
much for old folk and old ways. I hold not with lick-spittling men-folk
who wander "Englis fassen," yet would keep us in the old path--who say,
as their granddads did, that "_cattle and women must rub along in their
tethers_," but claim a long string to their own kites.'
Lateefa interrupted the tirade with a chuckle. 'Since they are able to
hold it! but as I told thee, 'tis the mud in the gutter for the gayest
of gay petticoats'--he laid his hand on the growing pile of kites-'if
they try to soar alone.'
'I will not ask thee to hold mine, anyway,' she retorted, flouncing off
in a meditated whirlwind. For Lateefa was right. Sobrai was not born of
those who are patient in well-doing. Even without experience, her
manners were those of a different model.
Aunt Khôjee looked after her fearfully, then once more turned to
representative man in apology. 'Here are ill words, _meean_,' she began
tremulously, 'yet God knows how hard it is to keep girls silent when
the world about them hath grown so noisy. In the old days neighbours
were of one's own sort; now, if they be ready to pay full rent, that is
enough. I say naught against ours--though, good or bad, it was ill done
of Alidâd, our cousin, to let the house his fathers died in. Still they
be decent folk enough, though the son is a _balister_.[1] But, see you,
since he returned from England he hath taken his wife to live as a
_mem_ beyond the city. And she hath set his sisters agog to learn, as
she learns, of a _miss_ from the _missen_. So what with all this talk,
and the railway whistle so close, and Sobrai gossiping as girls will
over the partitions----'
Lateefa's thin laugh positively crackled. 'Said I not her virtue would
not withstand a wall? But heed her not, sister. She is right, _for
Sobrai_! Thou art right, for _Kôjeeya Khânum!_ Ye are both God-bred,
God-fed! Except concerning houses--_there_ thou art wrong,' he added,
giving the old lady a shrewd tentative look. 'Dead folk should remain
in their graves and leave the letting of houses to the living. I deem
Alidâd wise, for, as the old saw says, "_an empty house is the wasp's
estate_." Jehân should do the like with this, if the Nawâbin would
consent to live elsewhere.'
'Elsewhere?' echoed Khôjee, aghast. 'Where else should Noormahal live
but in her own house?'
'In a smaller one. Look! saw you ever such a wilderness of a place for
five women and a child!'
He swept a derisive finger round the wide courtyard, the terraced
arcades, the storied vista of the _zenan-khana_, the half-fortified
gateway, where the royal peacocks still spread their broken plaster
tails. And as he did so the flood of yellow sunshine, as if in answer,
betrayed every cranny in the cracked brickwork, every scar in the
mouldering stucco.
'Tis as a stone on the tail of a kite, sister,' he went on, 'a burden
not to be borne by frailty that can scarce support itself.' He had, as
he spoke, been tying his morning's work together ere taking it to the
bazaar, and now he stood balancing a balloon-like bundle, almost as big
as himself, upon his hand; but he emphasised his remark by withdrawing
that support, then, ere the kites touched ground, catching the bundle
again, so holding them suspended. 'It needs some one to keep feather
brains from the gutter,' he continued gravely, 'and thou, Khôjee, art
the only body in this house with sense. Khâdjee, thy sister, hath
decorum, Sobrai desires, and Noormahal, poor soul, dreams! So let me
speak thee soberly. Thou hast heard of this plague, sister?'
Khôjee cracked all her fingers wildly, to avert evil, ere quavering,
'Who hath not? Hath it come, Lateefa? Shall we be all sent to hospital
and poisoned?'
The crackling laugh echoed again. 'Fools' tales, woman, fools' tales.
Why should the _Huzoors_ trouble? Have they not soldiers and guns
wherewith to kill?'
'But they have driven out the _Mimbrâns_[2]-committee; they have taken
possession of all things. Hâfiz Ahmad's wife, who lives as a _mem_,
said so. She said her husband----'
The laugh crackled again. 'Ay! he is _mimber_, yet he knows which side
of the wall to jump. And what be the rights and wrongs of the quarrel,
I know not; but, as thou sayest, the _Huzoors_ have taken the reins
once more, for the plague is nigh. So they are meddling with God's
work, and finding _hospitar'ls_ and who knows what. And Hâfiz Ahmad,
for all his grievance, hath recommended his father's--yea! Khôjee, the
neighbouring house--as _hospitarl_. So, see you, sister, if folk were
wise the _hospitarl_ might come to them, and a swinging rent beside;
since Behâri Lai, the town clerk, told me the doctors said they must
have both houses or neither--they were so nigh. Here, then, is
Noormahal's chance. Let her claim a writing for half-rent, since,
having right of occupancy by her marriage-dowry, Jehân cannot let
without her consent. That would stop wheel-spinning for bare bread,
sister.'
But Khôjee's thoughts were not for herself. 'Can the _Huzoors_ make us
go,' she quavered; 'can they force her?'
Lateefa shrugged his shoulders. 'Nay! nay! but if she choose.'
'Then is that the end,' interrupted Khôjee, with a sigh of relief.
'Noormahal will never choose. She hath but two things left of
kingship--and it comes closer through her than through Jehân, mind you,
though, being woman she hath no claim like he-two things, the house and
the ring! And she will keep both--for her boy.'
Lateefa had his gay balloon balanced afresh on his palm.
'If she can keep the boy,' he said sardonically; 'but even kites are
ill to hold with a rotten string.' So, balancing his burden of
nothingness from one hand to another, as jugglers play with a ball, he
passed out under the broken plaster peacocks, singing significantly, in
his high reedy voice, the dirge of motherhood which so often echoes out
into the Indian sunshine from behind closed doors--
'O child! who taught thee to deceive!
O child! who taught thee thus to leave
My throning arms? Didst thou not say
Thou wert their king for aye!
So soon dost thou deceive?
So soon hast learnt to leave
Thy sonship's crown?
To fling it down.
Thy throne
Is lone.
Ah, me! ah, me!'
It fell on Khôjeeya Khânum's ears, making her heart sink with its
implied warning; for a child doomed to disease, like little Sa'adut,
the heir to the Heirship of Nothingness, was but faint hold on the
soaring honours of royalty. And Jehân Aziz, his father, was a fainter
one still. Rumours had come, even to the wide ruined courtyard, of
official reprimands, of threats. What wonder, when even the more
reputable members of the royal family looked askance at his doings?
Still he was master in that house, and as that was his day for the
weekly visit of ceremony he vouchsafed to his lawful wife, it behoved
Khôjee to prepare for it after established rule.
Khâdeeja Khânum, Khôjee's twin sister, had already done her share of
preparation. She had put on her best pink satin trousers and a spangled
green veil, in which she sate, squatted on a string bed set in the
women's court, and sewed at a tinsel cap for the head of the
house--that being the correct etiquette on such occasions.
And Khâdeeja was far more correct than Khôjeeya. In fact, her position
in the household was quite different, seeing that she had been
betrothed in her youth to an ancient suitor who died before she was old
enough to be claimed, while no one had ever made a bid for Khôjee's
limp. So, while the latter's few trinkets had a trick of remaining with
the pawnbroker, Khâdjee's never paid even a temporary visit to that
official.
Then her clothes, from that decorous sitting on string beds instead of
breathless spinning in the dust, remained so spick and span, that
Noormahal, poor soul! when money ran scarce for the heir's medicine,
would accuse the general scapegoat of extravagance in providing them.
On these occasions Khôjee never retorted that the white muslin in which
the Nawâbin denied herself was, in the end, more expensive. Neither did
she meet Khâdjee's demand for more tinsel with the brutal truth that
the caps were too old-fashioned for Jehân Aziz to wear. Family facts of
this sort she did not even divulge in her prayers; for Khôjeeya
Khânum's religion, like her life, was strictly impersonal. It could be
nothing else, since it was barely decent for a woman to intrude even
her own salvation on a Creator whose attributes were distinctly
masculine!
So, while Khâdjee sewed and Noormahal cuddled the sleeping Sa'adut
as she crouched on another bed, Khôjee dragged out the state
carpet--whence all the state and most of the carpet had retired in
favour of bare string--set the cushions, prepared the pipe, the
sherbet, and the hand punkah, lest the master should be fatigued by his
condescension; for, to her, all these ceremonies were a sort of
sacrament to any intercourse between the sexes, without which it was
distinctly improper, and with which it was possible to receive even a
scapegrace with benefit to yourself.
Having done all this, she crossed to Noormahal, and, crouching beside
the bed, began, with a crooning song, to massage the long slender limbs
tucked up under the long slim body. For her niece, though not half her
age, was Nawâbin--as such, mistress of the house.
'Nay, auntie,' remonstrated Noormahal in a deep full voice; 'thou also
wert up all night with the boy, and art as tired as I.'
'Trra!' retorted Khôjeeya; 'old hemp hath fibre, young hemp flower; and
'twill freshen thee against thy man's coming.' The almost pathetic
raillery in the old face which had never known a lover's kiss was quite
charming, but Noormahal frowned.
'Better prepare the child's food,' she said, shrinking even from the
touch of _those_ caressing hands. 'Mayhap his father will be glad if
_he_ looks better.'
Her voice, low for her race and sex, suited the fine aquiline face,
whose fairness was enhanced by the exceeding darkness of the large
melancholy eyes. These in their expression matched the extreme
passivity of face and figure--a passivity which held no trace of
supineness. For the rest, there was much ignorance and obstinacy in the
face, but nobility in both.
She sate, curiously immovable, until Khôjee reappeared with a cup of
milk. It was a Jubilee cup, with clasped hands of union upon it, and a
portrait of the Queen-Empress surrounded by flags and mottoes. And
Noormahal held it to the lips of the little heir to Nothingness or All
Things with tender cajoleries.
'Wake up, my heart! Wake! light of mine eyes! Wake! little king!' she
murmured, and under her lavish kisses the boy roused to smile, first at
her, then at the cup, finally at the old woman who knelt, holding his
little bare feet in her wrinkled hand, as if they were a gift. He was a
pretty child, despite the ominous scars on the brown velvet of his
skin, the hoarse pipe in his childish treble. A lively laddie too, and
arrogant from kinglike ignorance of denial.
So Khôjee limped for more sugar, Noormahal wheedled him into another
sip or two, Khâdeeja from her tinsels murmured blessings, and even
Sobrai (dismissed by the proprieties from the court against the
master's visit) giggled from a balcony at Sa'adut's insolence, and
called to her girlfriends over the wall that he was a pea of the right
pod and no mistake!
Certainly his lordliness was matched by Jehân Aziz when the latter
stalked in, without a word of welcome for the three women who stood up
_salaaming_ profoundly. Yet even he paid court to the child, and,
yielding to the implied command of outstretched arms, took Sa'adut to
share the cushion of state on the state carpet.
They were a quaint pair this father and son, dressed alike in wrinkled
white calico tights, velvet vests, flimsy gauze overcoats, and round
tinsel caps set far back on the white parting of their sleek hair; such
a startling white parting, considering the brownness of their skins!
The likeness between the two was, in a way, ghastly; the more so
because the man's face bore no trace of the suffering which was written
so clearly on the boy's.
Noormahal, watching them with empty arms, noticed this with a fierce
unreasoning jealousy for her child. Yet there was a deeper, fiercer
jealousy than this in the big brooding eyes which took in every detail
of the man who, scented, oiled, was all too perceptibly attired for
conquest elsewhere. She hated him, it is true, but in India the
marriage-tie is not a sentiment, it is a tangible right. And so, still
young, still comely, Noormahal felt none of the passionate repulsion
which a Western woman would have felt. Her wish, her claim, was to
force her husband back to her with contumely. Was he not hers, to be
the father of other heirs, if this one found freedom?
But contumely was out of the question. Jehân Aziz still had the green
gleam of the kingly emerald on his finger. That must first come back to
her safe hoarding, as, by solemn agreement, it always came after the
rare occasions--such as the race meeting--when it had to blazon its
claims before the world. And now the races were over, where Jehân said
he had lost all. All the more reason the ring should come quickly. So,
when Sobrai, from above, challenged Jehân's leer by peeping and
nodding, there was no need for Aunt Khôjee to sidle between the
mistress of the house and the flagrant impropriety, like a hen between
her ducklings and the water. Noormahal would have allowed more insult
than that to pass unnoticed. She sate passive, brooding, wondering when
Jehân would begin on the subject. And all around the group the still
sunshine burdened the half-ruined courtyard with a cruel light.
It was one of Khâdeeja's pious benedictions with which she embroidered
truth as she embroidered her tinsel caps, which drove the stillness
from that elemental group of man, woman, and child, that Trinity for
Good or Evil in which the veriest agnostic must believe.
The sight, she asserted, of such a father and such a son filled her
soul with certainty that a Merciful Creator would preserve the child to
take his father's place.
'And wear the signet of his kingly ancestors,' put in Noormahal,
seizing her opportunity. Her challenge smote the sunshine keen as a
sword-thrust; with all her desire for diplomacy she could not help it
coming. Jehân glared at her furiously for a second; but irritation at a
wife soon passes when, as in India, she is no tie--unless she is
beloved, and Noormahal was not. Besides, the broaching of the subject
was a relief, since it had to be broached somehow; even though the
negotiations with Mr. Lucanaster had gone no further than a promise of
first refusal should the ring be sold. Not that he, Jehân, had as yet
seriously considered sale; but even so, if Salig Râm, the usurer, were
to be persuaded to loan money on the ring's security, it must not be
returned to Noormahal's keeping.
Therefore, seeing that little Sa'adut would be at once his shield and
his weapon in the fight which was bound to come between himself and the
passionate woman whose eyes blazed at him, he turned to the child with
a laugh and a caress. 'Yea, Sa'adut! thou shalt wear the ring; father
will keep it for thee.'
The answer came swift. 'And why not mother, as heretofore?' Auntie
Khôjee sidled again in deprecation of such a tone towards the master.
Jehân himself would have given his fighting quail (source of his only
steady income) to answer this woman as he answered other women; but he
could not. The child, the only child which had come to his reprobate
life, was her shield, her weapon also. He looked at this tie between
them almost resentfully, and thrust it once more to the van of fight.
'Because, Sa'adut, mother hath had it long enough. Hath she not,
sonling? It is father's turn now, is it not?'
Sa'adut's big black eyes--they had all his mother's melancholy, with a
childish wistfulness superadded to their velvet depths--looked from the
woman's face to the man's, from his mother's face to his father's; and
a vague perplexity, a still vaguer consciousness of a hidden meaning,
came to his childish mind. What did they want, these big people who
always took so much upon themselves? Unless _he_ expressed a wish, when
theirs had to give way.
Suddenly he rose to his feet, a mite of mankind between those two
imperious, undisciplined natures which had so thoughtlessly called his
into being. The veriest atom of humanity, and yet, by reason of its
frailty, its inexperience, more imperious, more undisciplined than that
from which it sprung.
'Give it to me, myself!' came his hoarse pipe arrogantly; 'give it to
Sa'adut! He will keep it himself. Give it, I say? Give it!'
The claim to individual life in a thing to which you have given life,
startled even this father and mother. They paused, uncertain.
So in a second, ear-piercing shrieks of amazed disappointment rent the
air, and there was Khôjee on her knees attempting pacification, while
Khâdjee from her tinsels implored immediate gratification.
'Give it him, Nawâb-_sahib_!' she fluttered. 'Lo! he will die in a fit;
it is ill denying a child; thou canst take it back when he tires of the
plaything.'
'Yea! give it him, _meean_,' pleaded Khôjee, all of a tremble. '"_A
child's cry in a house is ill-luck_"; thou canst take it back when he
sleeps.'
The suggestion struck the keynote of another resentment in Noormahal,
making her forget the vague opposition which the child's claim had
raised. She caught Sa'adut to her sharply, making that claim her own;
for now, thinking only of his helplessness, his cries hurt her
physically, making prudence impossible.
'Yea, give it him, Jehân Aziz, Son of Kings!--give it him in jest for a
while. It is easy for a father to steal his son's right from him while
he sleeps!'
Jehân sprang to his feet with a fearful curse; for the tempest of
ungovernable anger which had come to that elemental group in the still
sunshine, had brought with it the usual sense of personal outrage on
personal virtue which alone makes quarrel possible.
'Steal--didst say steal?' he echoed. 'Ay, but 'tis as easy for a wife
to steal from her husband when he wakes! Fool! When I wrung the
betrothal pearls from thee last year, didst think I did not know there
was a string short? Didst think I could not count them round my
mother's neck when she held me, a child----'
Noormahal paled, yet faced him with a scornful laugh. 'Thou didst
forget to count the string she sold when thy father refused her bread;
it runs in the blood, Nawâb-_jee_!'
His look was fiendish now. 'That is a lie, woman! and thou knowest it.
The English took them, as they take all things. Besides, have I not
dallied with them round thy neck since then, at my pleasure? What! are
they there still?' he went on mockingly, as Noormahal's hand all
unconsciously found the slim throat hidden by the folds of her veil.
'Didst keep them against the chance of my return?'
She glared at him helplessly, yet almost forgetful of the brutality of
his insult in a greater wrong. 'It was for the child, thou knowest,'
she said, in a muffled voice; 'for his bride--as it was for thine,
Jehân; as it hath been ever for every bride in the king's house.'
Her words which came, not from meekness but red-hot rage, made even
Jehân Aziz flinch, so that he had to bolster himself up with fresh
anger ere replying.
'And _I_ let thee think me a fool. _I_ took no notice for the boy's
sake too.' This new reading of his own cowardice restored his sense of
virtue, and with it his courage. 'But now, thief!' he went on, 'since
thou hast dared to even me to thyself, as well as think me fool, give
me my pearls! Dost hear?--the pearls!'
She drew herself up superbly. 'I called thee traitor,' she cried; 'that
is enough for thee.'
'And thief for thee. Well, traitor and thief are fitting mates! Let us
kiss and make friends on that comradeship!
She returned his insolent leer with a cold stare for one second; then,
in the headlong repulsion from the least tie to him, tore the pearls
from their hiding-place and flung them on the ground. They fell; the
string snapping, to scatter a few of its milk-white beads about the
worn carpet of state.
Even Jehân hesitated; then the sight of what meant money overcame his
dignity, and he stooped to gather up the prize. The action gave him
time for quick thought. This windfall might serve a double purpose. By
selling it cheap to Lucanaster-_sahib_ he could stave off the bigger
question of the emerald for a bit, and at the same time raise enough to
pay his more pressing debts. Both these considerations brought such a
flavour of pure piety to his task, that by the time he had finished it
he turned magnificently to his heir who, silenced from all save sobs by
his elder's passion, was being comforted by Khôjee, while Khâdjee
whimpered like a puppy on her string bed.
'Lo! Sa'adut,' he said, 'take thy ring, sonling! but give it not to thy
mother to hoard if thou wouldst grow to wear it, since thou mayst
starve the while! But that is her doing, not mine, who would let this
house--where I was _called_ thief, and _found_ one--and give thee
proper care, if I had my choice. So, I take my leave of it for ever!'
Khôjee, still on her knees beside the child, turned in swift alarm.
'Peace go with my lord,' she said, her head at his very feet; 'the
outer courtyard will be ready as ever for the entertainment----'
He interrupted her mockingly. 'I must learn to take my pleasure
elsewhere, noble aunt; 'twill be an easier task than finding it here.'
So, with an insolent stare at his wife, he strutted out jauntily.
'Didst hear?' quavered Aunt Khôjee. Khâdeeja Khânum's answering whimper
was almost a howl; but Noormahal said nothing. She was thinking of her
tormentor's words about the child. Was it true that the price of the
ring might save her darling?
For the present, however, the ring itself satisfied him. Appeased even
from sobs, he was engrossed in finding out which of his tiny fingers
went nearest to filling up its gold circlet. As he did so the green
gleam of the emerald shone broadly, unbrokenly; for, as Mr. Lucanaster
had often told his Paris principals, the legend scratched on it was so
faint that a turn of the wheel would obliterate it. Yet there it was as
yet.
'_Fuzl-Ilahi, Panah-i-deen_.'
Which, being translated, is, 'By the Grace of God Defender of the
Faith.'
Words which have caused much shedding of blood and tears.
But Sobrai Begum found laughter in the storm they had provoked.
''Twas only Jehân and Noormahal squabbling over the old ring,' she
tittered over the wall in answer to a query. 'In the end, she gave him
the last of the pearls to pacify him. I would have used them to better
purpose had I had the luck to have my hand on them!' And as she
sullenly obeyed Aunt Khôjee's call to help, she told herself that two
or three even of the pearls would have brought her freedom; would have
given her, as Uncle Lateef had expressed it, that some one to hold the
string of her kite, without which aid independence was impossible. For
Sobrai had no mind for the gutter.
So the pearls, if she had them----
She gave a little gasp; in folding up the state carpet, four milk-white
beads rolled out from its worn strings.
She glanced round her hastily.
Khâdjee was wiping the dimness of past tears from her spectacles,
Khôjee was replacing the cushions, Noormahal was brooding over Sa'adut,
who had fallen asleep with both his thumbs thrust into the ring, as
they thrust the fingers of a corpse which might otherwise come back to
disturb the living with what should be buried and forgotten.
There was no one to see. And no one to know; for Jehân would sell or
pawn the remainder, none the wiser. Even if he suspected anything he
would make no inquiries, since these sales were done in secret.
She had no pocket, and to tie her prize in the corner of her veil would
attract attention. So she slipped the pearls into her mouth, and held
her tongue even when Aunt Khôjee scolded at her for not being quicker.
Such silence paid better than any retort, and it also gave her time to
mature her plans. One thing was certain, she must make her push for
freedom before there was any chance of discovery, for it was just
possible Jehân might know the number of the pearls. The sooner the
better, as far as she was concerned, since she had long made up her
mind to accept Miss Leezie's offer--with a suitable fee--of educating
her to that walk in life. She could not remain dowerless, unwed, within
four walls all her life! And if one had to amuse oneself, was it not
better to do it openly, in a recognised, almost respectable fashion,
which was countenanced even by the _Huzoors_?
As she made her plans, Jehân on his way to his bachelor quarters in the
worst bazaar in Nushapore was making his, and settling that he would
certainly lead that pig of an infidel, Lucanaster, to think he would in
the end yield the emerald, by letting him have the pearls cheap, under
promise of silence.
This was imperative, partly for the sake of honour; mostly because
Salig Râm, the usurer, might object to any one else getting them.
CHAPTER III
COBWEBS
The noonday sun lay shadowless in every nook of the narrow
evil-smelling courtyard which formed a common exit to Jehân Aziz's
bachelor quarters and three or four other houses whose fronts faced the
most disreputable bazaar in Nushapore. One of these belonged to
Dilarâm, the dancer, and the remaining ones were tenanted by folk of
similar tastes, such as Burkut Ali, the Delhi pensioner, whom Jack
Raymond had styled the biggest brute in Asia; but he had a double
reasoning for choosing the courtyard, in that it enabled him better to
play his part of Buckingham to the Rightful Heir.
Despite its character, however, the courtyard was peace and propriety
itself in the perpendicular glare of noon; peaceful and proper with a
dreamy drugged peace, a satiated propriety that was in keeping with the
heavy yellow sunshine.
And Dilarâm herself matched the general drowsiness as she sate, muffled
in a creased shawl, yawning, blowsy, ill-kempt, upon a wooden balcony
overlooking the courtyard. She matched the squalor of the scene also; a
squalor which seemed to put the pleasure that has its marketable value
out of possibility in such surroundings.
Jehân Aziz, who sate on a string bed below, looked a trifle less
dilapidated than Dilarâm, for his morning toilet had extended to the
making of that white parting down the middle of his oiled hair, and a
due shaving into line of his thin moustache. Not that these results
were due to any energy on his part. They were the work of the barber,
who was now occupied, nearer the door, in paring Burkut Ali's nails,
while the Heir to Nothingness, in no hurry to proceed, chewed betel
thoughtfully, and looked at a caged quail which he meant to fight
against a rival's so soon as he could rouse himself sufficiently to
dress; for he had got no further in the way of clothing than the
wrinkled white calico trousers which, by reason of their tightness,
have to be tenant's fixtures during the term of occupation.
'So Sobrai Begum hath flitted at last!' yawned Dilarâm (who was within
an aside of Jehân) with a sudden causeless access of indifference and
malice. 'And Nawâb Jehân Aziz, _Rukn-ud-dowla-Hâfiz-ul-Mulk_, hath in
consequence one less mouth to feed! Peace be with him!'
'Speak lower, fool, or the barber will hear, and the tale be spread
over the town,' muttered Jehân savagely, scowling at the sarcasm of the
titles.
A day and a night had passed since Aunt Khôjee, veiled to her
finger-tips and fluttering like any pigeon, had fled through the
bazaars to tell the head of her house that--not three hours after he
had left it in wrath--Sobrai had disappeared. Jehân Aziz, after
established custom, had kept the scandalous secret to himself and his
immediate family, with the exception of Dilarâm, to whom he had gone at
once, as the most likely person to have an inkling of the girl's
intentions. For the only way to deal with such cases is to get the
truant back as speedily as possible, and ensure a virtuous silence in
the future. The silence, as a rule, of the grave. So the chance of the
barber having extra long ears was horrible.
Dilarâm, however, glanced idly at the group by the door, which gave
unreservedly on the gutters of a cramped alley, and yawned again. 'Not
he! Burkut hath him gaping over signs and wonders that will be God's
truth ere the whole of Nushapore be shaved! They are more to the
barber's trade than a girl's flight; though that also goes far
nowadays, what with all the talk about such things. And _this_ would go
far indeed, if set agoing--with a head of lie, and sparks of truth in
its tail, like the powder in an E'ed[3] squib.'
'The truth!' echoed Jehân, in swift suspicion; 'then thou dost know
somewhat, after all?'
She yawned again, smiling. 'Not I! Had none but my sort danced, as in
old days, in kings' houses, Dilarâm would have known who else sought to
flutter in her footsteps. But with new pleasures, Nawâb-_sahib_, come
new pains. She is not of us in the city; that is sure. But there are
baggages with bleached hair and powdered faces outside it. Ask Miss
Leezie! I heard her say she lacked apprentices.' Her lazy spitefulness
was effective, and Jehân clenched his fine hands viciously. He did not
particularly desire to get Sobrai back--except for punishment--provided
scandal could be avoided. He was, indeed, well quit of a girl for whom
no suitor could be found, and who was not to his own personal taste;
but the suggestion of Dilarâm's words stung horribly.
'God smite their souls to the nethermost hell!' he muttered, making the
dancer flick her fingers with a giggle.
'Lo! hearken to virtue! "_Not a rag for the child and a coat for the
cat!_" Men be no worse in cantonments than here in the city!
Nevertheless the tale, as I said, could be told to a purpose by a
clever tongue. It would rouse the common folk more than Burkut's lies
about portents, or the _baboo's_ about the plague, if they only knew
it!'
Jehân Aziz turned on her like a snake, sleepy yet swift, ready for
dreams or death.
'If thou dost _dare_ to tell----'
She held out her bare brown arm in a quick gesture of silence, and
rising, swept him a _salaam_ that set the hidden anklets beneath her
dirty draperies a-jingling, and proclaimed her what she was--a passed
mistress in the oldest of professions for women.
'There is no need, my lord, she said superbly, 'to teach Dilarâm her
duty to the virtuous women who sit free of shame in the noble houses
where she dances. _We_ learn that first of all.'
There was an indescribable grace in her attitude, a cadence in her
utterance, which proved her claim. She was of the old school, educated
to her craft.
The jingle of anklets brought a man's face to a neighbouring balcony. A
face hollow-cheeked, haggard, with dissipation written on it. Brought
thither by curiosity, it remained in approval of the studiously-posed
figure in the creased shawl. Jehân's face, too, showed a like
attraction, and Burkut Ali, the nail-paring over, lounged up with a
savage sort of discontent at his own inward admiration--a regret, as it
were, for the vices of his ancestors. As a rule, Dilarâm and her
dancing did not amuse him in the very least. He had passed from the old
style to the new, and, indeed, was chiefly responsible for the
introduction of Miss Leezie and her like to the nobility and gentry of
Nushapore. But now he was conscious that this, in its way, was better;
and the fact formed a fresh item in his general grievance against those
who, having taken the reins of government from such as he, had driven
India into change--even in its wickedness!
The secret cherishing of this general grievance of his own in the minds
of others was Burkut Ali's whole occupation in life. The dilatory
disaffection of his neighbours, a disaffection inevitable in a society
which this change had literally ruined, could, he had discovered, be
turned to his own profit in two ways. First, because, as confidant to
seditious utterances, he gained a hold on the utterer; secondly,
because, as the repeater of them to persons in high places, he gained a
hold on the hearer. For the rest his manners were perfection, his
Persian a pure pleasure to the ear. And both these were at their best
when--his present part in the farce of vague conspirings being that of
general backer-up of Jehân's spasmodic belief in his own claims to
royalty--he paused before the heir in the most elaborately courtly
fashion and began mellifluously--
'Hath it, perchance, found place in the memory of the Most High that
this, being the death-day of the sainted lady ancestress Hâfiz Begum,
the dirge for her soul will be intoned by the appointed canons at the
family mausoleum? And as this will be the last time----'
'The last time?' echoed Jehân haughtily, 'how so?'
The man's face in the balcony sharpened with sudden interest. Between
his dissipations he was editor of the vilest broadsheet in the town, a
broadsheet which existed simply by virtue of its unfailing basis of
firm falsehoods.
Burkut knew this, and had cast his fly dexterously. Now, feeling the
rise, he allowed grave concern to overlay the yellow mask of his
face--it was one of those which never change except by an effort of
will. 'Because, sire,' he replied, in tones to be heard of all, 'it is
known, beyond doubt, that the English Government, being hard pressed by
reason of famines and the yearly tribute to the City of London, which
the low value of the rupee causes to be greater every year, hath an eye
on the endowment of the mausoleum.'
Govind the editor stifled a yawn of disappointment. 'That tale
is old,' he put in contemptuously, 'I heard it a week past from the
Secretariat Office. My cousin is clerk--as I should have been but for
injustice--and saw the papers. It is true; for see you, they closed the
mints so as to make the poor folk sell their silver hoards cheap, and
now the rupees are scarce.'
He nodded sagely over his own political economy, and as he spoke in
Urdu, the barber, as newsmonger of an older type, paused in the
sharpening of a razor to listen.
'Impossible!' interrupted Jehân angrily. 'The Government is bound to
uphold the shrines and services by strict promises. My fathers only
lent them the money on those conditions. The interest was to be
spent----'
Govind burst into boisterous laughter; for his head was muddled, his
nerves unstrung by an overnight debauch.
'Ay! Nawâb-_jee_. Crores and crores of rupees lent in the old days, and
the interest spent now in gardens for the _mems_ to play games in, and
statues to their own Queen! But it is no new thing, I tell you. I am no
ignoramus--I am _middle fail_.[4] I have read their histories, and I
know. They took all the religious endowments in their own land,
and'--he added louder, as an ash-smeared naked figure which had been
passing along the alley with the beggar's cry of '_Alâkh Alâkh_' paused
to listen--'would have killed the religious also but for those among
them like Gladstone and Caine-_sahib_ who say, as we do, that the
others are tyrants and have no right to India.'
The hotch-potch of history was interrupted by Dilarâm's yawn. '_Hai!
Hai!_ brother!' she said, 'keep that dreary stuff for Burkut or the
barber--they can spread it over folk's hot imaginings like butter on a
hearth cake! Or give it to _jogi-jee_ yonder,' she swept her fingers to
the weird figure at the door; a figure whose right hand and arm,
withered in the ceaseless task of appealing to high heaven for
righteousness, showed like a dry stick pointing upwards, 'though he and
his like are never at a loss for lies. Hast a new one to-day, Gopi? Or
is it still the old wonder of the golden paper which fell from the sky
into one of Mother Kali's many embraces!'
'Jest not of Her, sister,' said the _jogi_ in a theatrically hollow
voice, as he thrust his left arm--lean as a lath, yet round in
comparison with that raised claim to virtue--towards her in menace.
'Thou art Hers, even in thy denial of Her. Woman as She, spreading
disease and death. Mother of Pain, embracing the world, biding thy time
to slay.'
Despite the palpable striving for effect, something in the words
thrilled the woman beneath the courtesan; and though she flicked all
her supple fingers in derision, there was a note of triumph in her
voice.
'Talk not to me, saint, as to thy Hindoo widows who believe in golden
papers and gods. Yet 'tis true! We of the bazaar lead the world by the
nose! Govind may blacken what he likes with ink. Burkut's craft may
spend itself in spider's webs. The plague may come. Yea! even the
sniffing out of other folk's smells--ay! and the payment for
silence!--may be taken from the _Mimbrâns_-committee, and yet the world
will wag peaceful. But touch _us_ and it is different. Let none meddle
with the men's women or with our will, or they meddle to their cost!'
She tucked the creased shawl closer around her, and squatted down once
more in the sunshine; the heavy sunshine in which those others sate
also with a sudden fierce approval in their hearts.
It was highest noon, and the sky was a blaze of molten light; so that
the shadow from a wheeling kite overhead, as it sought with keen eyes
amid the refuse of the city for some prize, circled in sharp outline
about the squalid courtyard, falling on one figure, flitting to
another, linking them together, as it were, by its hungry restless
desire.
So, for a space, there was a drowsy silence, on which the beggar's cry
for alms, as he went on his way pausing at every door in the cramped
alley, rose monotonously.
After which, Burkut, stifling a yawn, suggested that if the Heir to all
Things wished to receive his due recognition as head of the family at
the mausoleum, it was time to commence dressing; whereupon Jehân yawned
also, and demanded his shoes from Lateefa, who had just come in with a
selected bundle of kites for choice against the evening flight.
'I shall need none to-day,' said Jehân sulkily. 'My good time hath to
be wasted in dirges and prayers for a dead old woman who is naught to
me. Then,' he added aside, half to himself, with a frown, 'I must see
Lucanaster--may he roast with fire!'
'If it please God!' assented Burkut piously. Then he added, 'If it is
aught I can do--the hell-doomed being in my debt for some things--I
might drive a better bargain, perhaps.'
Jehân had not breathed a word to any one of his windfall of pearls, but
certain evidences during the last two days that he had, or expected to
have cash, had raised Burkut's curiosity.
But Jehân had no intention of having any witness to his interview,
least of all one to whom he owed money, so he turned on Burkut
insolently.
'I need no man's offices, so keep thy right hand to wash thy left!'
If there was resentment behind Burkut Ali's yellow mask, the latter hid
it successfully. 'Then I will but accompany the Nawâb to the
mausoleum,' he said deferentially. 'Its owner cannot go unattended!'
It was a motley cargo which the rickety, red-flannel-lined wagonette
(which Jehân's usurer allowed him as part of the stock-in-trade
necessary for a pension-earner) carried to the stucco tombs of dead
kings--for everything, including the dynasty itself, had been stucco at
Nushapore! First there was the Heir in his second-best coatee of
flowered green satin, then Burkut, burly in a yellow one to match, and
Lateefa, despite his calico, gayer than either by reason of his
inevitable kites. Finally there was the coachman in ragged livery, and
three attendants in rags without the livery; literal hangers-on,
clinging to the great scraper-like steps which seemed the only reliable
portions of the vehicle.
It had not far to go, however, over the white road and through the
clouds of dust; for the mausoleum stood just outside the city in a
garden that was irresistibly suggestive of a _café chantant_ by reason
of its stucco statuary, its preparations for nightly illumination, and
a generally meretricious scheme of decoration.
The tomb itself--squat, and bulging with inconsequent domes--stood on a
plinth towards one end of the garden, and from it, as the wagonette
discharged its load at the gates, came the sound of monotonous
chanting. But this hesitated, paused, ceased in a murmur of 'the
Nawâb!' as Jehân, with a new dignity in his manner, passed up the
steps, and so--with a _posse_ of cringing officials who had hurried to
meet him buzzing round like bees--entered the wide hall; for despite
the domes, despite the minarets outside, this tomb of dead kings was
nothing else within. It was just a vast oblong hall hung throughout its
length with huge, dusty, cobwebbed, glass chandeliers which, taken in
conjunction with the empty polished floor, were suggestive of a
ballroom; the dancing-saloon of the _café chantant_!
In the very centre, however, of the emptiness was a low roly-poly tomb,
above which rose a musty-fusty baldequin which had once been stately in
velvet and pearls. But the moth had fretted new patterns on the
curtains, and the cobwebs lay like torn lace on the canopy.
Nevertheless, two faintly-smouldering silver censers, standing at the
foot of the tomb, showed it not all neglected. And something else,
witness to memory, lay between the censers, under a common glass shade
such as covers the marble-and-gilt timepiece of a bogus auction, or the
dusty waxen flowers of a cheap lodging.
It was the last Nawâb's turban of state.
For the rest, the hall lay empty save for its officials; the minor
canons as it were, who still received the stipends set apart by the
deceased kings for due daily chantings of dirges, and so clustered
round Jehân with courtier-like _salaams_.
But not for long; since almost before they had conducted him to the
royal pew--an inlaid square of flooring close to the baldequin--a fresh
arrival sent them cringing and fluttering to greet it, with greed in
their hungry faces; the faces of custodians to whom strangers give
tips.
And this party of English tourists looked promising, if only
from the reluctant way in which, in obedience to a notice
on the door, they took off their hats, and then glanced round with the
'Thank-the-goodness-and-the-grace-which-on-my-birth-hath-smiled'
expression which our race learns in the nursery. For this is a frame of
mind which leads to a contemptuous tipping of inferior races.
'Guide says that's the last Johnnie's cap--beastly dirty, isn't it?'
said one in a churchy whisper, and the others nodded in churchy
silence. So, decorously--barring a faint desire to try the waltzing
capabilities of the floor on the part of a brother and sister in one
corner--they hesitated round the building with the half-shy,
half-defiant, 'thus far I _will_ go but no further' reluctance to admit
any interest in strange places of worship, which is also a sign of
race.
And Jehân from his royal square watched them, oblivious of his prayers,
until quite calmly, innocently, they included him as part of the show.
Then he rose and said to Burkut, who was praying to perfection
behind----
'I stay not for this. And we are too soon, for all thy fuss of being
late. 'Twill be a good half-hour ere the dirge begins. So I go to
Lucanaster's.--Nay!' he added hastily, as Burkut began to rise also,
'thou canst stay here, and if any of note come in my absence, tell them
I return.'
So with a cunning smile leavening his scowl at the tourists, he passed
out. In truth he was glad of the excuse which made it possible to take
no one but Lateefa, who was to be trusted--who indeed had to be trusted
in all things, since he knew all things--with him to Mr. Lucanaster's
house; for even if he had left Burkut outside during his interview,
there was no saying what the latter might not have discovered, or say
he had discovered, which would answer his purpose of pressure quite as
well! For Jehân, like most of Burkut's acquaintances, was quite aware
of the latter's method.
Five minutes after, therefore (since Mr. Lucanaster's house lay
conveniently close to the city and his numerous clients there), Jehân
found himself _tête-à-tête_ with a shrewd commercial face intent on the
scientific counting of a string of pearls with a paper-knife.
'Three, six, nine, twelve,' came Mr. Lucanaster's voice as the ivory
slipped between the triplets of pearls.
'Fifty and five,' he said finally, and Jehân nodded.
'Fifty and five,' he assented. 'What will you give me for them,
_Huzoor_?'
Mr. Lucanaster drew a despatch-box towards him, opened it, looked at a
paper, and smiled lavishly.
'Nothing, Nawâb-_sahib_,' he said calmly; 'for, to begin with, there
are five short on the string. There were sixty on it when it was
stolen.'
Jehân nearly jumped from his chair. 'Stolen!' he echoed. 'It is a
lie--they are mine--they were my mother's.'
The lavish smile continued. 'Exactly, Nawâb-_sahib_, the description
says so; and they were stolen from Government House two nights ago.'
'But I tell you it is impossible--my house was wearing them----'
'Excuse me; but you sold your mother's pearls last year! I happen to
know, because Gunga Mull, who bought them, was acting for me. You had
refused my direct offer, if you remember, and you lost a thousand
rupees in consequence. It is safer to trust me in the end,
Nawâb-_sahib_,' put in Mr. Lucanaster suavely.
'But not one string,' protested Jehân, trying to be haughty. 'This one
I kept, and if the _Huzoor_ does not wish to buy, I can sell it
elsewhere, as I did before.'
He stretched his hand for the string, but Mr. Lucanaster sate back in
his chair dangling the pearls, and looked at the Rightful Heir as a
spider looks at a fly.
'I wouldn't try if I were you, Nawâb-_sahib_,' he said slowly. 'It
might lead to--to difficulties. And the coincidence is not very--very
credible. But if you are really in need of money'--he spoke still more
slowly--'there is always the emerald. Let me see! I offered you six
thousand, didn't I?--well, let us say eight; and--and nothing to be
said about--about these----' He passed the pearls deftly through his
fingers as if appraising them, and added, 'They are really very fine
pearls, Nawâb-_sahib_, quite noticeable pearls. I haven't seen better
for a long time, so it is a pity they are unsaleable at present. By and
by, perhaps, or in some other place----'
'Does the _Huzoor_ mean----' began Jehân blusteringly.
Mr. Lucanaster looked up suddenly, sharply, drew the open despatch-box
closer, dropped the pearls into it, and closed the box with a snap. 'I
mean nothing, Nawâb-_sahib_, except that, for your own sake, those
pearls had better stay there for the present. You will only be tempted
to raise money on them in the bazaar, and as I--if I were asked my
opinion, as I certainly should be--would say they were the stolen
pearls, it is better not to run the risk of my having to give
evidence.'
'I--I will complain--I will go to the commissioner,' stammered Jehân,
completely taken aback.
'I wouldn't if I were you; a police inquiry would be the devil
to a man of your character; and meanwhile--until you let me have the
emerald--here's something for current expenses.'
Jehân looked for a moment as if he would dearly have liked to fling the
notes which Mr. Lucanaster pushed over the table to him back in the
donor's face; but he refrained. Money was always something, and some of
it might even go to pay the poisoning of this hell-doomed infidel, who
dared to pretend he thought the pearls were stolen; for Jehân was
shrewd enough to see the other's game. Not that it mattered whether he
pretended to think, or really thought. The pinch lay in that threat of
a police inquiry; and neither the truth nor the falsehood of a charge
mitigated or increased the sheer terror of that possibility.
So Jehân, _minus_ his pearls, but with five hundred rupees in his
pocket, drove back to the tomb of his dead ancestors in a tumult of
impotent anger. He felt himself closer in the toils than he had been,
and--naturally enough in a man of his sort--the utmost of his rage was
expended on the person over whom he had most power of retaliation--that
is, on Noormahal.
Why, he asked himself, had he been fool enough to let her get hold of
the emerald again? It had been within his reach, and now it was gone
again--hoarded by a foolish woman for the sake of a barren honour.
Barren? No! not altogether barren! As he stood once more in the arched
doorway of the mausoleum, this feeling came to assuage the sting of his
treatment by Mr. Lucanaster, and yet to make its smart more poignant.
For the assemblage had gathered. The chandeliers were lit, and the
myriad-hued flash of their prisms hid the dust, hid the cobwebs, and
gave a new brilliance to the mourners gathered in their appointed
places. The tourists were gone now. These were his own people. They
were waiting for him.
As he paused, a new arrival entering by a side door paused also--paused
right in front of him before the glass case containing the last king's
turban of state. So, after _salaam_-ing to it profoundly, sought the
square belonging to his rank.
Jehân gave a low savage laugh of satisfaction, and passed on to his.
Here it was the first! Here, at any rate, honour was his!
Burkut, watching him swagger over to his prayers, smiled. If this sort
of thing went on, he would have his choice of fostering a real
conspiracy or denouncing it. That was the best of having an open mind;
at least two courses were always open to one.
So, when the dirge was sung, he went and paid his respects to one or
two officials, and then, the time for gossip and kite-flying having
arrived, joined the worst company in Nushapore, where he talked
sedition and backed the paper nothingnesses as they dipped and rose an
inch or two, only to fall again, until the dusk blotted their gay
colours from the sky. But below the bastioned river wall abutting on
the railway bridge, which was the favourite meeting-place of
kite-flyers, the dusk brought out other colours to take their place;
close at hand and farther off, half-way across the river, and right
upon its farther shore, came red and green lights, steady as stars.
Until, in the far distance, a red changed to green, the signals which
had stood against the evening express dropped, and it showed upon the
bridge like some huge glowworm, slackening speed as it came; for the
station lay not two hundred yards from where the bridge ended in a
semi-fortified gateway.
So the train slid past below the bastioned wall almost at a foot's
pace, and half a dozen or more English lads, part of a fresh draft from
England just up from Bombay, thrust their heads out of the window
curious to see what this strange place, what this strange race with
which they were to have so much to do, were like.
'Well! I am blowed if they aren't flyin' kites like Christians,' said
one in a hushed voice, an' I thought they was all 'eathen, I did----'
CHAPTER IV
AN UNFORGOTTEN PAST
'Mr. Raymond!'
Lady Arbuthnot's voice was insistent, yet soft. She wanted to rouse the
sleeper without attracting attention, and now that the waning of
daylight had ended out-door amusements, people had begun to drift into
the club. The library tables were being rifled of the new picture
papers, the smoking bar was fast filling with men, and sounds of
women's laughter came from the quaint vaulted rooms where Badminton was
being continued by electric light.
But an almost Eastern peace still lingered in certain nooks between the
interlacing aisles of the building (which had once been the palace of
kings)--and in one of these Grace Arbuthnot had run her quarry, Jack
Raymond, to earth in a lounge-chair fast asleep over a French novel.
The remains of a stiff whisky-peg stood on a small table, and Grace
Arbuthnot looked at it vexedly, then at the face, but half visible in
the dim light; for the lamp had been deliberately turned down.
She had not seen it closely for twelve years except for those brief
minutes at the race-meeting, now nearly a week ago; for, rather to her
indignation, Mr. Raymond had not followed up the renewal of their
acquaintance by calling. What is more, he had emphasised the omission
by writing his name in the visitor's book, as a perfect stranger might
have done. The fact had roused her antagonism; she had told herself
that she would decline to have that past of theirs treated as if it
were not past and forgotten. For though, ten years ago, she had
certainly been engaged to Jack Raymond, they had broken off their
engagement by mutual consent, with their eyes open; so it was foolish
to fuss about it now. And so, partly from this antagonism, partly from
a diametrically opposite motive--the inevitable woman's desire to keep
some hold on the man she has once loved--it had occurred to her, when
the days passed and brought no news of the missing jewel-box, that if
she were to consult any one regarding the letter, it might be well to
choose Jack Raymond. He was one, she knew, absolutely to be trusted by
any woman; his position--miserable as it was from an official point of
view--gave him unusual opportunities of being able to help her; and
finally---- Why! Oh! why should he go off at a tangent and make her
feel responsible?
And yet, as she looked at his sleeping face, noting its change, the
unfamiliarity where once all had been so familiar, she frowned and
turned as if to go, wondering what had induced her to think of
consulting this man. What could _he_ do now? Once upon a time, when he
was different--when he was, as she recollected him----
The thought softened her face, and sent her back to call again, 'Mr.
Raymond!'
He did not stir. Was the whisky-peg responsible for the soundness of
his sleep? And was she responsible for the whisky-peg? She had
known for years that he had drifted away, as it were, from everything
that made life seem worth living to her, but the contrast between her
fate and his had never come home to her before. The wife of a
Lieutenant-Governor--as _he_ might have been if he had not thrown up
the service in a pet--and the Secretary to the club! What a miserable
failure for such a man! A man who for two long years had been her
ideal--who even now could do, should do---- She bent towards him
suddenly, quite irrationally, and whispered, '_Jack!_'
As she paused expectant, there was a half-mischievous smile in her
pretty eyes; and yet they held a suspicion of tears. It was such an odd
world. Why could not a woman forget when she had ceased to care? Men
did; this one certainly had--no!----
The still small voice had apparently taken time to filter through to
its destination; but it had found the chord of memory, and struck it
sharply.
'Yes! what is it, dear?' came the answer drowsily. Then Jack Raymond
stirred, stared, finally woke to facts.
'I beg your pardon, Lady Arbuthnot,' he began, rising hurriedly, 'I had
been playing some hard games at racquets and----'
'But you always do sleep about this time, don't you? I've noticed you
in the distance,' she said coolly. The suggestion in her words that she
still had some right to criticise, added to his surprised irritation at
finding that he had somehow gone back to the past. Why the deuce should
the memory of the very inflection of her voice as she used to say
'Jack' have come back to confuse his brain, and absolutely make his
heart beat?
'Yes!' he replied, with palpable hardihood, 'you're right. I generally
do sleep. There's nothing else to do, you see, between tennis and
whist. But if you want any stores from the go-down,[5] I am quite at
your commands. There is an awfully good Stilton on cut, if you'd like
some.'
She beat her foot impatiently. This thrusting forward of his duties as
a sort of high-class grocer was _impayable_! He _could_ not think she
had sought him out in order to buy Stilton cheese of him! And yet--how
like the old headstrong Jack it was!
'Do tennis and whist make up your day now, Mr. Raymond,' she said
swiftly. 'It used not to be so.'
The reproach in her voice was plain, and he resented it. She had left
him to go his own way, and he had gone it. What business was it of hers
now?
'You forget the racing and the betting,' he answered coolly; 'and my
incurable idleness has at least this virtue--it leaves me, as I said,
at Lady Arbuthnot's disposal.'
He gave a little formal bow, which sent another pang of memory through
her. The fact annoyed her. How intolerable it was, that despite his
degeneration into a high-class grocer--here she smiled faintly--he
could scarcely speak a word to her, here in the semi-darkness--they two
alone--without bringing back---- Ah! so much! Yes! it was intolerable.
It must be ignored; or rather the solid, sensible facts must be dragged
out into the daylight and given their real significance.
'I am glad of that,' she replied, 'for I want you to help me. But let
us sit down--people will be less likely to disturb us then.'
He obeyed, feeling restive under her calm superiority, yet admiring it.
She was no failure, anyhow; he had been right in his choice, years ago.
Not that it mattered; since all that had once been between them had
been forgotten--by him at any rate. Absolutely forgotten.
'Mr. Raymond!' she began suddenly, leaning closer to him over the
table, 'surely it would be foolish in either of us to be ashamed, or to
pretend forgetfulness of the close tie that was between us--once.'
'I have not forgotten,' he said involuntarily, then paused disconcerted
at his own collapse. Which was true, his denial or affirmation of
memory? Both, in a way.
She smiled, as women do, at remembrance, even when they believe they
wish forgetfulness.
'I said pretend, Mr. Raymond!' she corrected. 'We are not likely to
forget. Why should we?'
'On the other hand, why should we remember?' he asked. 'The past, Lady
Arbuthnot, is past.'
The very idea of his thinking it necessary to assert this made her
frown.
'Exactly so; therefore I come to you because memory gives me a friend,
nothing more. And I need a friend just now.'
'You have plenty of them to choose from,' he began, 'you always
had----'
'And I choose you,' she put in, with a charming little nod.
He sat bewildered for a moment, then said stiffly, 'May I ask why?'
'If I may answer by the question, why not? Surely we need not be
strangers? And besides----'
'And besides?'--he echoed grimly, 'a woman's second reason is generally
better than her first.'
Lady Arbuthnot's face grew grave. 'Mine is, Mr. Raymond, infinitely
better. What I want your help for is no mere personal matter;
it is something in which you might do a yeoman's service to the
Government----'
'You are very kind,' he interrupted brusquely; 'but, as I thought you
knew, I found out twelve years ago that the Government could do very
well without my services.'
'It might have done better with them----'
'You are very kind,' he repeated; 'and this difficulty of yours?'
She flushed up. 'Excuse me! It was you, not I, who wandered from the
point. I knew my reasons for choosing your help. However, let us stick
to business. I have lost a jewel-case.'
'So I heard,' he said, 'and I am sorry it should have contained your
pearls.'
Pearls! she thought vexedly; did he think she had come to him about the
pearls? That was but a step better than Stilton cheese. His following
words, however, disarmed her.
'They belonged to your mother, I remember; they were beautiful pearls!'
'Yes!' she assented softly, and paused. 'But it is not the pearls,' she
went on. 'I will tell you what it is, and why I am anxious.'
He sat listening to her story with rather a bored look.
'It is most unlikely the letter will turn up,' he said at last. 'An
Indian thief would throw it away, even though, as you say, it was in a
sealed official envelope; he knows nothing of the value of documents.
But it is a pity you kept it; for that matter, had it. That sort of
thing is a mistake.'
Something in his tone made her say quickly, 'You blame father--why? You
know how he trusted me-how you----' She felt inclined to remind
him of his own confidence in her, but she refrained. 'Remember I have
always----'
'Been in the swim,' he suggested.
'Could I help that?' she asked, feeling him unfair. 'What I mean is,
that every one, even my husband----'
'I have always heard you do a great deal for Sir George,' he said
nastily, regretting his unfairness even as he spoke. He need not have
done so, save for his own sake, since her defence annihilated him.
'As I would have done for you, Mr. Raymond.'
'I--I beg your pardon,' he said limply, feeling himself a brute. 'This
paper or letter, then, as I understand it, would have been a sort of
safe-conduct to prevent the authorities rounding on Sir George after
the event, as they are apt to do. As--a thought seemed to strike him,
and he looked at her sharply--'as they did on me. Your experience has
been useful to you, Lady Arbuthnot!'
She flushed up again. 'How could I prevent its being so? I am not a
fool. But you know quite well I do not come to you on his account. It
is because I am so afraid of the contents of that unfortunate letter
leaking out. With this general election going on----'
He shrugged his shoulders and rose. 'I am no politician, as I told you;
but as a personal matter----'
She rose also and challenged him with eyes, voice, and manner. 'I do
not choose it to be a personal matter. It is more than that; it might
concern the prestige, the honour of our Government! Surely you must
still care for that? You used----'
He interrupted her with a laugh. 'It would be in a parlous state if it
depended on me. I don't trouble my head about patriotism nowadays, I
assure you.'
She came a step nearer, as if to bar a hint he gave of leaving. 'Is
that possible?' she asked, almost sternly; 'within gunshot, as we stand
now, of a place where Englishmen died in hundreds to keep the hand of
their race upon the plough of India.'
The lightness had no choice but to pass from his face.
'Mine left it ten years ago, Lady Arbuthnot,' he said, his voice
matching hers; 'and yours, excuse me, is not the one to wile it back.
But for your husband's sake--not for yours, that past is past--I
will----'
She lost her temper absolutely then. 'Who thinks, who wishes it
otherwise? Can you not understand my motive in coming to you?'
'Perfectly,' he said coolly. 'You feel responsible--why, God knows!--
for the hash I have made of my life. I speak from your point of view,
remember. Of course, nothing I can say will mitigate this feeling; it
is a habit you good women have. Now I, as a man, should have thought
that the palpable result of my going my own way, instead of yours,
would have given you the certainty of having been right in refusing to
countenance it.'
She did not speak for a second, and when she did there was a tremor
in her voice. 'That doesn't lessen--the--the pity of it,' she said,
half to herself; 'it is pitiful. Even if you had any one, wife or
child----' She broke off and added apologetically, 'One can scarcely
help regrets.'
Once more the man in him felt annihilated by the revelation of the
woman in her. 'My--my dear, kind lady,' he said, touched in spite of
himself, 'I can assure you I get along splendidly all round. You're
all too kind. And as for the kids,' he added half nervously, for she
looked as if she would cry, and he wished to cheer her up, 'I'm chums
with the lot of them. Jerry, for instance! What a ripping little chap
he is--such a lot of go; but he isn't a bit like you.'
She stood looking at him without replying for a moment, and the
half-puzzled expression which had been in her face when she had watched
him and the child standing hand-in-hand at the racecourse returned to
it. 'No!' she said. 'Nor like his father. He has harked back in face to
my mother's people--she was a distant cousin of your father's, you
remember. And in mind--who knows? But I'm glad you like him; he returns
the compliment.'
It seemed so, indeed, for Jerry himself, appearing that instant, had
his hand tucked into Jack Raymond's even before he delivered his
message, which was to the effect that dad was wanting mum to go home.
He gabbled this through, in order to say, with a military formality
learned, to his great delight, from Captain Lloyd, 'Ah, sir! I'm glad
it's you; 'cos it isn't weally dark, an' Miss Dwummond's weading the
_Spectator_, so it's just the time for you to show me the pwoperest
places in the Garden Mound, please, as you pwomised you would. I mean
the places where people was blown up--or deaded somehow!'
'You bloodthirsty young ruffian!' laughed Jack Raymond, feeling
relieved at the interruption. 'All right! come along! I promised to
take him round and tell him about the defence, Lady Arbuthnot,' he
explained; 'but perhaps you will allow me to find your carriage for you
first.'
'Thanks,' she replied curtly, 'my husband will do that. Good-night, Mr.
Raymond. I am sorry I was not so successful in my request as--as my
son.'
He stared after her yet once more. Women were inexplicable. Here was
this one quite happily married--he had known that for years--and yet
she would have liked--what the deuce would she have liked? He turned
half impatiently to the child, and said, 'Come along, young Briton, and
be sentimental over the past! Come and contemplate the deeds of your
ancestors and make believe you're a hero. That's the game!'
'But I _am_ going to be one when I'm growed up, you know,' protested
Jerry.
The man paused and looked down at the child. 'If you get the chance,
dear little chap,' he said bitterly, 'but the mischief is that what
with express trains and telegrams, you've seldom to do more than you're
told to do. And so most of the C.B.'s and V.C.'s are given for doing
one's simple duty.'
'My dad's a C.B.,' commented the child sagely; 'but then he can do his
compound duties too. Can you?'
'Can I?' echoed the man, and his voice belied the inevitable smile on
his face. 'Well! I don't know. I expect I could, Jerry--if I tried.'
So hand-in-hand the two, boy and man, crossed the carriage-drive which
lay between the club and the rising ground beyond it. Ground kept as a
garden in memory of the deeds which had blossomed in its dust. For on
that scarce perceptible mound, the English flag, taking advantage of
every available inch to stand its highest, had floated for nine long
months over the rebel town of Nushapore. Had floated securely, though
the hands which held it grew fewer and weaker day by day. Had floated
royally, though kings' palaces challenged it from the right, challenged
it from the left.
And now, more than forty years after, the mound--set thick with
blossoming trees--stretched as a peaceful lawn between those palaces
still; but the one was an English club and the other Government House.
'That's the gate, Jerry,' said Jack Raymond, 'where Gunner Smith asked
the mutineers--they were only three feet from the wall, you know--to
oblige him with a pipe light, because he had been so long on duty that
he had run short.'
Jerry laughed vaingloriously, uproariously.
'That was to cheek 'em, sir, wasn't it, sir? For, of course, _he_
didn't care if he never smoked no more, so long as he kept 'em
outside! Oh! isn't it just orful nice?'--here he heaved a sigh of pure
delight--' and now, please, I want where boys like me did sentry, an'
where the guns got wed-hot and boomed off of 'emselves, an' where every
one blowed 'emselves up like in a stwawbewwy-cweam smash, becos' the
enemy was cweepin', cweepin' in, don't you know?'
The child's voice ran on, eager, joyous, hopeful, and the man was
conscious of a thrill that seemed to pass into his own veins from that
little clasping hand.
'All in good time, Jerry! don't rush your fences,' replied Jack
Raymond, and the thrill seemed to have invaded his voice.
So across the lawns, and along the winding walks bosomed in tall
trees, where the birds were twittering their nightly quarrel for the
uppermost roosting-place, those two, boy and man, the present and the
future of the race, with its unforgotten past linking them, strolled
hand-in-hand.
And the daylight lingering with the moonlight lay hand-in-hand also;
lay softly, kindly, upon all things.
'This is the east battery, Jerry,' said the man in a hushed voice, to
match the peace of the garden. 'Campbell--he was a relation of your
mother's, by the way, and so a sort of relation of mine--never left it
for five months. He is here still, if it comes to that, for he was
literally blown to bits at last by a shell he was trying to throw back
on the enemy. He'd done it dozens of times before, but this time--was
the last!'
There was not much to see. Only a slab in the dim grass with 'East
Battery' cut upon it.
'Mum told me about that,' said Jerry in an awed whisper. 'His name was
Gerald, same as mine,'--he paused to look doubtfully at the face above
him--'she said it was an eggsample to me. But I'm not goin' to be
blowed up first. My shells'll always burst just in the vewy wightest
places, bang in the middle of the enemy, so I can laugh at 'em before I
dead.'
Jack Raymond, passing on, felt a pang. 'Always in the very rightest
places!' That had been the dream of another boyhood.
The sky was as a pearl overhead; a pearl set in a darkening tracery of
trees. The moon began to stretch faint fingers of shadow after the
retreating day, and still those two, man and boy, passed from one
immemorial deed to another, while the small hand sent its thrill to the
big one, so that Jack Raymond wondered at the tremor in his voice as he
said, pointing through the trees--
'And there's the general's house with the English flag flying still!'
Jerry stiffened like a young pointer on its first covey, every inch of
him centred on the grey tower, its flagstaff draped dimly with the
royal ensign, which rose against the sky. Then, standing square, head
up, he saluted.
'Mum told me to do that always when I saw it,' he explained,
'because it's the only place in all the wide, wide world where the
flag flies day and night, to show, you know, that it never was hauled
down--never--never.' He heaved another sigh of satisfaction, but his
face took a puzzled expression. 'Only, you know, I've been here before.
I weally have. I wemember it quite, quite well. An' the guns was
booming, an' they was wanting to pull down the flag, an' I wouldn't let
them.'
Jack Raymond looked down at the child and smiled. 'You, or some one of
your sort, dear old chap; and I'll bet you'd do it again, wouldn't you,
Jerry?'
Jerry pulled himself together from the mysterious inheritance of the
past. 'I'm goin' to, some day,' he said succinctly. 'An' now, please, I
want where they buried 'em after dark. All pwoper wif surplices an'
"Safe, safe home in port," and all that; but torches and crack-bang
firings over the walls--though they was deaders already.'
The description, confused though it was by excess of picturesqueness,
sent Jack Raymond unerringly towards the little cemetery where so many
heroes rest. But ere they reached the gate, a woman's figure showed
upon a side-path.
'There's Miss Drummond; you'll have to go home now, young man,'
remarked Jack Raymond, feeling that though Jerrys enthusiasm did not
bore him, Lesley's might. But Jerry would have no excuse.
'Oh!' he said confidentially, '_she_ is only a woman. You tell her to
come, and she'll come all wight.
Jack Raymond looked towards the springy step and determined pose of the
head which was approaching him with alarm; but Jerry had already run
forward, slipped his hand into the girl's, and said--
'He says you're to come too, because he is going to tell us all about
the gwaves.'
'Not all,' protested Jack Raymond resignedly; 'but if Miss Drummond can
spare us a minute, I'll show you John Ellison's.'
The girl's face lit up. 'Isn't that about all?' she asked quickly. 'The
very name seems to dominate the place still. _Jân-Ali-shân!_ That's
what the natives call him, your father says, Jerry. It means the
"Spirit of Kings." A good name, isn't it, for the man who held this
garden against all comers, even starvation?'
Her head was up, her voice rang; but the thrill did not pass to the
man's heart from these as it had from the clasp of that little hand,
which some day would have a man's grip.
'There was a heap of bunkum talked, though, about the actual physical
privations of the mutiny time; they had iced soda and Moselle cup on
the ridge at Delhi, you know, Miss Drummond,' he said, out of pure
contrariety.
'I should like to be sure of that,' she began indignantly.
'I should like to be sure of a lot of mutiny tales,' he interrupted;
'but there's a halo of romance on our side and a shadow of fear on
theirs, which plays the deuce with abstract truth. I wish we could
forget the whole business.'
'Forget! Forget our glorious past!'
'Was it so glorious? I asked Budlu once'--he pointed to a white
ghostlike figure which had begun to follow them from the cemetery
gate--'how a mere handful of us here kept their thousands at bay.
Budlu is supposed to have been inside, during the siege, as a child's
bearer--that's why they made him caretaker; but I've reason to believe
he was outside--not that it matters now! Well, his answer was: "The
_sahibs_ had nothing to do with it. It was the dead women and the dead
babies. Every one knows that the strength of the strongest man is water
before the ghost of a mother and child."'
They had reached the slope of that gentle hollow where, even in their
bitterest stress, the living had crept obstinately, under cover of
night, to lay their dead to rest in the shadow of the deserted church,
and he paused to point downwards to a tall cypress and add, 'There is
John Ellison's grave.'
Lesley paused too. Calm and still in the moonlight, the grassy slopes,
set with flowers and blossoming shrubs, seemed to centre on that hollow
of heroes' graves, as they, in their turn, centred round the plain
plinth, with its marble slab under the cypress tree.
There were but two words on it--'John Ellison'--but they filled the
eye, the heart, the brain.
Lesley Drummond stood looking at them silently, and Jack Raymond stood
watching her, approving her silence. But Jerry, whose round childish
face had a curious ghostly look on it, as if he were seeing visions,
went creeping on round the plinth, his grey eyes wide; a stealthy
little figure dreaming of torches and deaders and crack-bang firings
over walls. But he was back in a second, his face eager, startled.
'Oh, if you please--he's quite, quite shot--lyin' there close by.
Hadn't we better buwy him?'
'Bury him? who?' asked Lesley; but Jack Raymond had grasped the child's
meaning, and was passing to the other side of the plinth to see for
himself. Then he looked up from the figure of a man which lay on its
back, its head supported on the first step of the plinth, asked a
question of Budlu the caretaker in Hindustani, and finally turned
reassuringly to Lesley.
'It is only an idle sweep of a loafer, Miss Drummond, who has rather a
queer story. Stay! I'll wake him--Budlu reports him sober--and he will
tell the story himself, I've no doubt.' As he spoke, a vigorous shake
roused the sleeper to an oath, then to a stare, finally to a bland
smile as he rose.
'Bin overtook by slumber, sir,' said a rich, mellow voice as (possibly
in evasion of more salient faults in his personality) the owner of it
began to brush away the dust and dry twigs which clung to his dirty
drill-clothing. 'The w'ich we all of us shall be w'en our time comes to
lie within the silent toomb--b.' He prolonged the final syllable into a
reminiscent humming of a funeral hymn until his task was done. Then he
looked up, and showed in the moonlight the face of a man about forty,
smooth shaven, of the bulldog type, with the mobile lips of a born
comedian.
'I done my level best with the job you giv' me down country, sir,' he
continued affably, yet with a furtive apology lurking beneath his
assurance, 'but it done no sort of dooty by me. I gone down two stone
in a six weeks with them pestilential chills, so w'ot with plague
follerin' famine like the prayer-book, sir, I made bold to cut back to
Nushapore. I 'adn't a grave bespoke there, sir, as I 'ave here; an' so
I didn't want no
"Death's bright Angel speakin' in a chord a-ga-ain."'
Once more that prolongation of the final syllable was followed by an
appropriate tune.
'If you don't mend your ways, my man,' said Jack Raymond severely,
'you'll have no grave bespoke here either. The authorities won't
allow----'
'Can't 'elp 'emselves, sir,' interrupted the loafer, touching the
battered billycock hat which he had resumed after a careful dusting.
'It's the Queen's regulations, sir, that them as went through the siege
may wait for the las' trump in an 'ero's grave beside _'is_, if they
choose. An', Lord love you! I do choose, for they chris'en me in token
I shouldn't fear the very day _'e_ died.' He laid his hand on the slab.
'That was why they called you John Ellison, wasn't it?' asked Jack
Raymond, with a side-look at Lesley, which the loafer appraised, for he
replied coolly--
'Yes, m'lady! Mr. Raymon', 'e know the story correc'! My father died o'
the drink a few days afore we come into the Garding Mound, an' my
mother--savin' your presence, m'lady, she didn't 'ave bin to church
with 'im through 'er real 'usband 'aving deserted 'er or died, cruel
uncertain--she popped off a few days after I, so to speak, popped in.
That was nigh on a nine-months' sequent. So I was through the siege,
m'lady, from the beginnin', an' 'avin' no one to promise an' vow when
they Holy baptismed me the day _'e_ died, they called me John Ellison.
And an uncommon good name it is, m'lady, though I've took it to a sight
o' queer places since; for I seen a deal o' life at 'ome an' abroad, as
the sayin' is. Bin in a surplus chore singin' 'ymns seven year, m'lady;
an' pickin' up sticks for a Aunt Sally two. Then I served my way out to
see
"--the place where I was born"'--
he paused for a faint humming--'an' Mr. Raymon', good gentleman, 'e
'ave put me in to a many jobs, but only local demons; they ain't
some'ow bin no sort of permanent. An'
"So the world goes round and round
Until our life with sleep is crowned--d--d."'
He was fairly afloat this time with his rich mellow voice, when Jack
Raymond bid him shut up and not play the fool. Why couldn't he stick to
work when it was given him?
The jauntiness disappeared in a curiously dignified dejection. 'By the
Lord 'oo made me, sir,' he said contritely, 'I dun'no. I begins well;
then--I--I don't! I git on the lap foolin' round them bazaars, until I
'aven't a feather ter fly with. Then _'e_ begin to dror me to 'im--m.'
He paused again to indicate the slab, and the final syllable merged
into the whole first line of 'They grew in beauty side by side.' 'Beg
parding, sir,' he went on, anticipating reproof, 'but the warblin'
fetches me 'ome so often, wot with penny gaffs an' such like, that it
gits a continooal hold on me too frequent.'
'You'll lay hold of nothing else soon,' retorted Jack Raymond. 'You're
out of work now, I suppose?'
'Jes' so, sir; ready for active service.'
'And I've a great mind to let you find it for yourself. However, you're
in the Strangers' Home, I suppose, as usual?'
'As usooal, sir!' came the cheerful reply, and as they passed on, the
mellow rich tenor followed them in a florid rendering of 'Home, sweet
Home.' It echoed through the hollow of heroes, over the grave-set slope
where the descendants of those who held the fort are allowed burial,
and so passed with the little party to the gate. Here Budlu, who had
followed all the time, ghostlike, silent, made some petition in Urdu,
to which Jack Raymond replied with a smile.
'He said something about "_Jân-Ali-shân_," didn't he?' asked Lesley.
'You must excuse the curiosity, but I am naturally anxious to learn
everything about India.'
'A most laudable ambition, I'm sure,' he replied drily. 'Budlu only
wanted to know, Miss Drummond, if _Jân-Ali-shân_ was going back to his
grave to-night; for if not, it would be better to leave the cemetery
gate open--he usually locks it at sundown.'
'_Jân-Ali-shân_!' she echoed aghast. 'He can't call that wretched
creature--he can't think----'
Jack Raymond interrupted her. 'I don't know very much about the
possibilities or impossibilities of India, though I've lived in it for
twenty years; but I do happen to know that half Nushapore has a
sneaking idea that the wretched creature is, well, a sort of emanation
of the great John Ellison. He has the same strain, you see, of sheer
devilry, pluck, ability, call it what you will--the something that
makes its mark on Eastern people. And they think he comes for revenge,
because, as you heard him say, he is in such a mortal funk of being
cheated out of "an 'ero's grave" if he dies away from Nushapore, that
he always comes back when there's trouble about. The natives are quick
to notice such things. Well, he may have his tens of thousands this
year.'
'You mean that the plague will come?'
'And a row, too, if we aren't careful.'
Jerry's hand tightened on Jack Raymond's. 'A weal wow, sir, with sieges
and everything?'
'Sieges? Well, I don't know. What do you want sieges for, young man?'
The child's face showed confident. 'Because I want an 'ero's grave
of my vewy own, like what that man's got. An' it wouldn't be
dog-in-the-mangery, like two pieces of cake, Miss Dwummond, 'cos I
could lend it to other people till I weally did want it; but if it was
my vewy own, you see'--he hesitated, then a sudden comprehension seemed
to come to him--'then I could fight all the vewy biggest big boys
wifout caring. For I could pop into my gwave an' laugh at 'em, even if
I was licked--'cos--'cos I should have won weally--shouldn't I, sir?'
The moon shone clear on the ruins before them, and all around them,
hidden in the shadows of the trees, lay the little world which forty
years before had defied a big one. Through the still silence came only
that twittering of birds fighting for a roosting-place, until the man's
voice said evenly--
'It is a question, Jerry, "_how far high failure overleaps the bound of
low successes_." Ask Miss Drummond; I don't know.'
The answering woman's voice came swiftly. 'Surely this is no place for
an Englishman to talk of failure!'
He turned sharply. So this girl was at it now; she too wanted to rouse
him; she had heard the story--or part of it.
'I almost wish it were,' he answered bitterly; 'then we might forget
it. But the glory of it gets to our heads--we come back to it again and
again.'
He stopped abruptly, for a tenor voice rose in sweet undertones upon
that twittering of birds--
'There is a green hill far away,
Outside a city wall.'
The singing and the faint crush of gravel ceased together, as the
singer, passing them, drew up and touched the old billycock hat.
'Beg parding, sir,' said John Ellison, loafer, 'but p'r'aps you'd care
to 'ear there was a man dead o' plague taken out o' the train I come in
this mornin'.'
'Thanks,' replied Jack Raymond. 'I know there have been several
isolated cases.'
'Jes' so, sir; not as there's so much isolation, not to speak of, in
them third-class cattle-pens,' assented the mellow voice; and as the
footstep passed on, it kept time to the refrain of
'Wait for the wagon, and we'll all take a ride.'
'I expect we shall,' remarked Jack Raymond grimly, and his mind
reverted to Grace Arbuthnot and her husband. There might be need for
that safe-conduct ere long. Well, they must manage things as best they
could; he wouldn't.
'Oh! I do hope there'll be a wow, a weal wow!' came Jerry's prayerful
voice.
CHAPTER V
SHARK LANE
There was no quainter spot in all Nushapore than Shark Lane (as the
road near the public offices where the lawyers congregated was
generally called), though at first sight it seemed to differ little
from its neighbours. Broad, white, its tree-set margins were studded
with the usual inconsequent-looking stucco gate-posts of an Indian
station, which, guiltless of any fence, serve to mark the short
carriage-drives leading back to the houses.
And these again--colour-washed pink, yellow, or blue--were even as
other houses of the second-class. Yet it did not need the placards on
those same gate-posts, announcing that 'Mr. Lala Râm Nâth' or 'Mr.
Syyed Abdul Rahmân,' 'barristers-at-law,' lived within, to tell the
passer-by that the inhabitants were not European.
To begin with, somewhere or another, there was almost sure to be a
grass hurdle visible--the grass hurdle which in India does the duty of
a hoarding and ensures privacy. Indeed, a knowledgable eye could infer
the exact degree to which the social life within was at variance with
the Western architecture in which it dwelt by the number and position
of such hurdles. Two or three, merely blocking in an arch of verandah,
being indicative of a lingering dislike to publicity in some 'new
woman'; a dozen or more, screening in a patch of garden ground, showing
the rigorous seclusion of the old.
True, in not a few cases, this sign was absent, but then a nameless air
of utter desolation, a blank stare out on the world, told its tale of a
keener quarrel still--of family ties, family life, lost absolutely in
the chase after Western ways, Western ideas. In such houses the only
sign of life from dawn to dusk, barring a furtive wielder of a grass
broom raising clouds of dust at stated intervals, would be the rickety
hired carriage, like a green box on wheels, which, every morning and
every evening, would turn out and in between those inconsequent
gate-posts, conveying a solitary young man and a pile of law-books to
and from the courts.
Such a very solitary-looking young man, that the question sprang
inevitably to the spectator's lips, 'Is the game worth the candle?'
There were others, besides spectators, in Shark Lane who asked the
question, and were not sure of the answer. Miriam-bibi, Hâfiz Ahmad's
wife, for instance, who, as Aunt Khôjee put it, had been taken away to
live as a _mem_, felt it was not. Of course it was dignified to eat in
one room, sit in another, and sleep in a third, as if this trinity of
habit were Heaven's decree. Then, undoubtedly, small bronze feet did
look entrancing in small bronze high-heeled shoes. But when there
_could_ be no novel-reading, no writing of notes, no arranging of
flowers and playing of the piano, and when you were accustomed to eat
and sleep when the fancy took you? Then one room was quite sufficient
in which to be dull and solitary, since there were no friends or
relations near to come in for a gossip.
Besides, it was undeniable that the pretty bronze shoes pinched the
toes that were accustomed to greater freedom.
Therefore it was a joy, indeed, when, on Sundays, the green box on
wheels, instead of taking Hâfiz Ahmad to court, took her back to the
close, familiar city; to the evil-smelling bazaars below, and the
scented, sensual woman's life above, so full of laughter and
quarrelling, so full of sunshine and seclusion, with its unending
suggestion of sex.
Full also, to Miriam's intense delight, of betel-chewing and
tobacco-smoking; for though Hâfiz Ahmad permitted neither in Shark
Lane, he never noticed the resultant signs of either on her return. So
proving himself possessed of that master's degree in the art of
compromise which young India has to take before attempting even a
bachelor's in any other.
For even Miriam found single-mindedness impossible in Shark Lane, and
her eulogiums on her new life had to be so strenuous in the city that
even simple Aunt Khôjee remarked that '_wise hens never cackled over
their own nests unless they were empty!_'
On Monday mornings too, after her debauch in city ways, Miriam found it
necessary to be aggressively European. She would even go so far as to
eat the lightly-boiled egg of civilisation for her breakfast--the egg
which calls for saltcellars and spoons, in other words for refinement
and luxury. And when her husband had departed in the green box with his
law-books, she would yawn dutifully in all three rooms, till nature
could no more. So she would send surreptitiously for the cook's wife
and baby, and adjourn to a hurdle-closed verandah where her visitors
could be properly screened from the new world. Since, let the master do
as he chose, there would have been noses on the green in the servant's
house had its womenkind allowed the tips of theirs to be seen by
strangers!
So Miriam would be comparatively content till the advent of the green
box sent her back to three rooms, and a pair of bronze slippers.
On the whole, this double life of hers was a very fair example of most
lives in Shark Lane where, despite all the high aspirations after truth
and reality, it was quite impossible to reach either; since every one
was quite aware that they were trying an experiment, and that a
doubtful one.
This was the case more especially in the last house in Shark Lane, just
where it merged into the more fashionable River Road. Here, at the
corner, a very decorative pair of posts announcing that Mr. Chris
Davenant lived within, stood cheek by jowl beside a similar pair with
Mr. Lucanaster's name upon them; and though one of the two houses was
screened, it was screened by trellises and creepers, behind which a
pale pink dress could often be seen fluttering in company with the
owner of the other house. For Mrs. Chris Davenant claimed her full
share of Western liberty.
So large a share, indeed, that one morning a few days after the races,
Krishn Davenund, as Shark Lane persisted in calling him, sate looking
hopelessly at his untouched breakfast; in this case also that
lightly-boiled egg of civilisation. It stood in a correct silver
egg-stand beside a charming arrangement of ferns and flowers; for Miss
Genevieve Fuller, now Mrs. Chris, had been that curious product of
latter-day London, a vulgar girl of good taste. As she had walked along
the streets, her fringe delicately wanton beneath the white veil whose
black spots were never permitted to rest in unbecoming places, her cold
blue eyes had settled unerringly on all the daintiest creations in the
shop windows. And she would pause before a hand-painted _sortie de bal_
or a belaced silk undergarment, and say with equal frankness to her
companion, male or female, 'My! that would give poor little me a
chance, wouldn't it?'
Even some of the third-rate young men from the city, over whom she had
wielded a cheap empire at her mother's boarding-house down the
Hammersmith Road, had found such remarks reminiscent of the princess
from whose pretty lips toads fell instead of pearls, but Krishn
Davenund, student at the Middle Temple, did not know his Mother Goose.
Having an all too intimate acquaintance with the poets, however, the
superficial refinement of the girl, seen against the background of the
only English life he knew, had made him think of the Lady in Comus; for
he could have no standard save that of books.
She looked dainty enough for any heroine's part even now, after
eighteen months' disillusionment, as she stood before him, in a paucity
of pink muslin negligé (which had mostly run to frills) and a plenitude
of powder. She had an open note in one hand, a half-smoked Turkish
cigarette--of Mr. Lucanaster's importing--in the other, and a rather
bored good-nature on her face as she looked at the man she had married
because her good taste had told her the truth, namely, that he was
better-looking and better-bred than any of her other admirers.
It had been a hideous mistake, of course; but she was shrewd enough to
see that the shock of finding, on his return to India, that there was
literally no place for him in it had been quite as painful to her
husband as to herself. So she exonerated him of blame, with a sort of
contemptuous pity and an absolute lack of sympathy. It was nothing to
her, for instance, that, apart from the temporal loss of finding
himself only the son of a Hindoo widow who had reverted to the most
bigoted austerity on her husband's death, instead of the son of a man
high up in Government service, whose position had made unorthodoxy
tolerable to relations and friends alike, he should have come back to
find a change in himself, to feel a wild revolt against the renewed
contact with things which he had, literally, left behind him five years
before. The things themselves were too hopelessly, incredibly trivial
and childish for her to do anything but laugh at them, so he had soon
ceased even to mention them; though they meant far more to him.
Despite the mission school training which is the foundation-culture of
nearly all young India, his religion was a mere ethical sense, an
emotional yielding to the attraction of everything to which the epithet
'Higher' could be applied--mathematics and morals alike. And the
giving-in to the disgusting rites necessary before he could re-enter
native society on equal terms with those, even, who were of lower caste
than himself, had seemed to him degrading. So, despite his mother's
prayers and the advice of other men who, in like position, had
purchased comfort by acquiescence, he had refused to be made clean on
the offered terms. With this result, that the only familiar touch left
to him was that which this woman in the _demi-mondaine_ pink negligé
laid on his shoulder as, after a time, she flung the note down on the
table, and with a tolerant laugh paused beside him on her way from the
room.
'Don't be a fool, Chris!' she said cheerfully. 'You can't be expected
to understand, of course, so I'm not really angry. It is all right, old
man. Heaps of English women do that sort of thing; and I'm going to,
anyhow, so it's no good fussing.'
He made no reply. He seemed, even to himself, to have nothing to say;
nothing that could be said, at any rate, since the fierce claim for
silence and submission (even if it entailed the disposal of a corpse!)
which he had inherited from his fathers, had to be smothered. So he
only stared at the note, which lay face uppermost. It began 'Dearest
Jenny'; and _he_ called his wife Viva!
The difference of style epitomised the situation, since she preferred
the Jenny; it reminded her of bank clerks and the top of the
Hammersmith omnibus. He realised this now, for he was no fool; only a
reader of books, a believer in theories, a dreamer of dreams, who, in
the almost brutal blaze of an Indian sun, had awakened, not to
realities--that was impossible to one who still had no guide save
books--but to a new attempt at dreams. One which made him say
pompously, after the fashion in novels, 'I do not wish it, Viva; and
you will please to remember that I am your husband.'
His English, barring a faintly foreign intonation, was perfect; but his
wife laughed.
'Don't, Chris! It doesn't suit the part. Besides, we were only married
at the registrar's. So if you want a wife of that sort, Lucanaster says
you can marry one, if I don't object. I've been thinking about it, and
I don't think I should----'
He stood up and threw his hands out passionately ere covering his face
with them; and the action, utterly un-English as it was, suited him
better than his previous calm.
'It--it's a lie to begin with,' he cried hoarsely. 'And even if it
weren't--I wont have it said--it--it makes me lose myself.'
She drew back a bit and looked at him. 'You've done that already,
Chris, and so've I,' she said calmly. 'Now don't interrupt, please;
I've been fizzling for this talk the last month, for we shall rub along
together so much better when we thoroughly understand each other. So,
I'm not going to pretend any more, Chris! It doesn't work. I tried it
at first because--well! because you mean well, and I like to make
things comfy while I can. But I'm sick of Shark Lane. Some of the men
wouldn't be bad, if they weren't so awfully high-toned--that's what's
the matter with you, Chris!--but the women beat me. I went to see that
little fool Hâfiz Ahmad's wife yesterday, because I'm a good-natured
fool myself and she said she was dull, and you asked me; and as I say,
I like things comfy. Well! she wanted me to play old maid, and the
cards were--oh! filthy! That finished me. Of course it was only a
trifle, but it did the trick. I've chucked. I won't play the game any
more, Chris. I am going my own way; and if you want to see Shark Lane
here, I shall be somewhere else. You needn't bother or fuss. I can take
care of myself perfectly--I went about London a lot, you know. Besides,
doesn't it stand to reason that I'm a better judge of what an English
lady can do than you are? Why! I might as well try and teach you the
etiquette of those disgusting temples where your precious stay-at-home
women worship in--in the _altogether_!' She giggled modestly, and then,
seeing his face, gave him a final pat. 'Cheer up, Chris! I'm sure you
could marry one--a cousin or something--if you tried.'
He interrupted her with a listless, nerveless dignity. 'You seem to
think it all pretence, but I couldn't go back to the old ways;
this--this has meant more to me, than that----' his lips quivered as if
with coming tears, he had to pull himself together visibly. 'For the
rest,' he went on drearily, 'I am not quite so ignorant as you deem me.
One reads of--of this sort of situation, and I can shape my course as
other men have shaped theirs; only--only do not try my patience too
far.'
He meant the last in all seriousness, but neither the thought nor
the words were his own; and the pathos of this despairing clutch on
book-knowledge being, of course, lost on her commonplace vulgarity, she
laughed once more.
'Why, Chris! you've got that as pat as pat! quite the injured hub in
domestic drama. Goody me! to think I might be going down still on the
top of the dear old red 'bus to the mouth of the pit on a first night!
Well, that's over, so we must just both be as chirpy as we can.
Goodbye, Chris! I've got to dress, for Lucanaster 's coming for me in
half an hour. And don't expect me till you see me. They did talk of
tents out, a dance, and a regular night of it. You really needn't fuss,
Chris; you _can't_ understand, you see.'
When she had gone, he sate staring helplessly at the boiled egg, as if
he expected something to hatch out of it. Even thought forsook him, for
the first to come was that this woman was his wife. Wife! the word
conjured up such a different idea in the hereditary experience which
inevitably underlay all things in him, that he could go no further in
bewilderment.
So, in the effort to escape from the thraldom of the old wisdom, which
such as he have to make so often, he took up the newspaper which lay
beside him, telling himself passionately that the old order had
changed, that life held more than his fathers had dreamt of. Yet even
as he told himself this, the burden of doubt which such as he have to
bear came upon him, a sense of unreality, even in himself, closed round
him.
Unreal! Unreal! Unreal!
The word typed itself on the columns of the _Voice of India_ as he read
them. The paper was the recognised organ of his class, the exponent of
its desires, its beliefs. Yet here even that word pursued him. Here on
the first page was a leader stigmatising the temporary withdrawal of
independent powers from the Municipal Committee as an unwarrantable
piece of tyranny. Unwarrantable! Was it possible for any sane man to
call it so, knowing, as all knew, the grievous tale of neglect and
wrongdoing in that Committee? Was it possible, even apart from that,
for any wise man not to see that with plague clamouring for an
entrance, the good of the many claimed a more energetic sanitary reform
than the Committee seemed able or willing to introduce?
And as for the hints thrown out that the newly-published plague
regulations were but a sop, a blind, hiding a very different policy;
what then? Was it possible for any government to do more than legislate
for the _present_? Who but fools imagined that it could or would bind
itself to definite action in conditions which could only be guessed at?
So the tale of unreality went on. Here was a well-written,
well-reasoned article on the cow-killing grievance; but Chris, being a
wielder of the pen himself, happened to know the writer, and could
remember seeing him eating beefsteaks at the Temple dinners.
Again, in a paragraph headed 'Government Greed and Peasant Poverty.'
Could any detail overcome the indubitable fact that India had the
cheapest civilised government in the world?
He ran his eye down another column, and caught the phrase 'social
progress' above a signature which he knew to be that of a man who had
just married a child of ten.
And what was this? '_The Government to which is opposed the entire
intelligence of the nation!_' Brave words these, when the proportion
between such intelligence and the general ignorance was withheld! What
was it? Ten thousand to one!
'_The political training of the mass of the people is still, it is
true, somewhat incomplete_.' It might well be that when the percentage
of mere literates was almost negligible.
'_Even the Mohammedan policy was better than the English one. True, it
did not allow freedom of the press_....'
Ye gods! Freedom of the press when there was not a newspaper in all the
length and breadth of the land! Could unreality, bunkum, call it what
you will, go further than that?
Chris pushed himself back from the table, back from the boiled egg,
back from the newspaper, back, so far as he could, from himself, with
an odd sound between a laugh, a sob, and a curse.
Was that all? Was that sort of ungenerous, unreliable, almost
unimaginable drivel the only indictment which such as he had to bring
against those who had depolarised life? Who had neither given India a
creed, nor taken one away? Was that the only arraignment for the
tyranny of pain such as his?
No! a thousand times no! There was more to be said than that!
So to him came the fatal facility for words which is the betrayal of
his race. He sate down to write, and, heedless of the sound of dogcart
wheels and a man's and a woman's laughter which came after a time, did
not rise until he stood up with sheets on sheets of scarce-dried
manuscript in his hand, feeling for the first time in his intellectual
life that he was alone. Hitherto he had always followed the thoughts
of the great masters. Hitherto there had always been some one on the
road before him. Now the question, a burning one to his enthusiasm,
was--'Would any one come after him?'
Hâfiz Ahmad's house, the rallying-point of young India in Nushapore,
lay close by. It was a court-holiday, and therefore the chances were
great that some meeting or another was being held; since meetings are a
recognised holiday amusement with those who, amid all the unreality of
their lives, are still terribly in earnest.
He would go there and seek an audience.
On his way out, however, he saw Jack Raymond riding up the drive. Jack
Raymond, one of the few Englishmen he could count on to be kind, yet
who, despite that, had never called on his wife. Was he going to do so
now? As a matter of fact, Jack Raymond had had no such intention; he
had come over to ask Chris himself about a post which was vacant, and
which might keep John Ellison, loafer, out of more mischief; but seeing
Chris coming towards him with a pleased expectant look on his somewhat
pathetic face, a half-irritated pity made him ask if Mrs. Davenant was
at home.
'I'm sorry she has gone out with Lucanaster,' he repeated, unaware of
the emphasis he laid on the qualification till he saw poor Chris
flinch, when he said hurriedly, 'but I'll come in if I may. I've a
question or two I want to ask.'
Whereupon Chris, who, despite his five years of England and his wife's
incessant instructions, had never been able to grasp that exclusive use
of certain rooms to certain uses, took Jack Raymond straight into the
dining-room, where, amongst the litter of an unfinished breakfast, a
note, on which quite inadvertently the visitor set his riding-whip, lay
face uppermost.
That 'Dearest Jenny,' therefore, stared Jack Raymond in the face all
the time he was settling that John Ellison should go for a week's trial
as foreman on the new goods station which Chris was building. He knew
the writing, and had, what poor Chris had not, a fixed standard of
inherited and acquired experience by which to judge the writer. And so
a curious mixture of pity and repugnance came to the Englishman as he
looked at the face opposite him--the gentle face so full of
intelligence, so devoid of character--and thought of that other
coarser, commoner one. It was a question of the two men only; the
woman, dismissed briefly as a bad sort, counted for nothing in Jack
Raymond's mind.
Yet if Lucanaster had been an Englishman, it is ten to one that Jack
Raymond would not have said abruptly, as he did say when he rose to
take up his riding-whip, 'If I were you, Davenant, I wouldn't let my
wife be seen with that man Lucanaster. Of course you can't be expected
to--to know--but he's an awful sweep!' As he spoke, his knowledge of
himself made him clutch his whip tightly; but Chris only stood silent
for a moment with a wild appeal in his soft eyes. Then he tried to
speak; finally he sate down again, and buried his face in his hands.
The straining of the long brown fingers, tense in their effort to keep
back tears, the long-drawn breath trying to keep back sobs, made Jack
Raymond's pity fly before impatient contempt.
'I'm sorry. It's evidently worse than I thought,' he said; 'but that
sort of thing isn't a bit of good, Davenant. Put your foot down. Say
you won't have it.'
Chris Davenant's face came up from his hands with the dignity of
absolute despair. 'How can I? Didn't even _you_ say just now I couldn't
be expected to understand? She says it too. And I've no answer. How can
I have one when there is no place for me--or for her? That is it. If
she had friends--if there was any one to care--any one even to be
angry; but there is no one.'
His head went into his hands again, and the pity born of clearer
comprehension came back to the Englishman, like the dove of old, with
widespread white wings. And like the dove of old, it brought a
suggestion of calmer days to come with it.
'I hadn't thought of it that way,' he said slowly; 'but I see your
point. A lead over keeps many a horse between the flags. And I'll
get one for your wife if I can. Lady Arbuthnot is an old friend of
mine,'--he was faintly surprised at himself for this remark, which came
quite naturally--'and I'm sure she will send an invitation to the
Government House garden-party. Then there's the fête and the Service
ball. It may seem a queer cure to you----'
'Everything is queer,' admitted Chris, trying to be cheerful. 'But I
know she felt not being asked--I remember her saying----' He broke off;
for the remark had been, briefly, that it was no use considering the
proprieties if the proprieties didn't consider you.
'Well! that's settled. She'll find the invitations when she comes back;
then there'll be the dresses, you know, and all that.'
Chris shook his head. 'I am not sure if I do. It is all new. But it is
more than kind of you. If I could do anything for you in return----'
The unreserved gratitude in his face was sufficiently womanish not to
rouse the English distaste to all expression of emotion, though, even
so, Jack Raymond put it aside jestingly.
'Thank Lady Arbuthnot, my dear fellow; she'--he paused, a remembrance
coming to him--'By the way--you're in, I know, with all the _Voice of
India_ scribblers--write for it yourself, don't you? Well, what is the
meaning of those hints about the plague policy? What have they got hold
of? anything definite?'
'So far as I know, nothing,' began Chris. 'It is, I fear, a regrettable
fact that there is seldom good foundation----'
Jack Raymond, reins in hand, swung himself into his saddle lightly.
'Yes, thank God! Well! if you should hear of anything, or if you
should have a chance of--say, burking anything likely to upset the
apple-cart--the times are a trifle ticklish in the city--take your
gratitude to me, or rather to Lady Arbuthnot, out in that.'
Chris flushed up. 'Surely,' he began volubly, 'it is the bounden duty,
as I have just been writing, of the educated portion of the community
to leave themselves free for reasonable criticism by supporting
Government, wherever possible, by throwing heart and soul----' The
Englishman, holding his impatient mount in a grip of iron, looked down
with a bored expression.
'No doubt--no doubt; but the body fills a gap better on the whole.
Good-bye. I'll see to the invites, and you can drop me a line if you
hear anything definite.'
CHAPTER VI
THE MONEY OF FOOLS
'Finally, sirs,' came a high straining voice as Chris Davenant entered
Hâfiz Ahmad's house, 'the educated youngster of India refuses to let
his soaring aspirations remain cribbed, cabined, confined, in the cruel
shackles of a political despotism without parallel in the whole history
of civilisation!'
The peroration, though it seemed to afford the speaker much
satisfaction, only induced that faint desultory clapping which in
England is reserved for prize-days at school; that impersonal applause
for the results of diligence which remembers that other pupils have yet
to speak.
This was the case here, and Chris had barely wedged himself into a
chair between a writing-table and a waste-paper basket before another
orator was in full swing of adjective.
The row of bicycles in the verandah, and a knot of those green-box
hired carriages outside on the road, had told Chris already that he had
been right in calculating on an assemblage of young India; but this was
a larger gathering than he had expected, and he remembered suddenly
with a vague shame--since he was a prominent member of the
organisation--that it must be the monthly meeting of the Society for
Promoting the General Good of People. He had quite forgotten all about
it; still here he was, and here was his audience for that roll of
manuscript he held.
He glanced round the double room,--for both dining and drawing-room had
been thrown open, rather to Miriam-bibi's relief, since she could now
sit unreservedly in the screened verandah and play 'beggar my
neighbour' with her foster-mother, who did duty as ayah--and recognised
almost every one of note in young Nushapore.
Hâfiz Ahmad was in the chair, of course; a rather fat young man of the
coarser Mohammedan type, with a short curly beard. Like many others in
the room, he wore a scarlet fez; though why this distinctive bit of a
Turk's costume should be grafted on a _quasi_-English _quasi_-Indian
one is a mystery not to be beaten in incomprehensibility by any other
minor problem of our Indian Empire.
Beside him was Lala Râm Nâth, the head, in Nushapore, of the only real
political organisation in India; that is the Arya Somaj; an
organisation all the more dangerously political because it denies the
basis of politics, and appeals to that of religion.
He, Chris knew, would be the last to admit the position taken up in the
roll of manuscript, namely, that it was suicidal on the part of the
little leaven of educated natives to pose as the party of opposition,
since that was, briefly, to array itself permanently, inevitably,
against what none could deny was the party of progress; the party which
had made this little leaven itself a possibility.
Râm Nâth, the breath of whose nostrils was adverse criticism to
Government, who, in bewildering defiance of the laws which govern
Indian life, had swallowed red-hot Radicalism wholesale, like a juggler
swallowing a red-hot poker, was not likely to admit this at any time;
still less now, when he was the champion of a wrongfully dispossessed
Municipal Committee. Chris knew exactly what the Lala would say, and
what the majority of the young men--there was not one over thirty-five
in the room--would say also. And yet their faces were brimful of
intelligence, of a certain eager earnestness. It could hardly be
otherwise, since the mere fact of their being in that room proved them
to be of those whose faculty and desire for acquiring knowledge was so
far superior to that of the average man, that it had taken them, as it
were, to a place apart. To be tempted of the devil perhaps; though,
none the less, the fact bore witness to a certain nobility of type.
So it was all the more strange that when--the next speaker having
finished in a calculated chaos of words--Govind, the dissipated editor,
who had yawned his tacit approval of Dilarâm the dancer, rose to
denounce some trivial iniquity in the ruling race, his middle-school
English, and cheap abuse, was received with just the same desultory
applause. It seemed to Chris, listening impatiently, as if the faculty
of criticism had been lost in its abuse, as if the one thing needful
was antagonism _pur et simple_.
The great event of all such meetings in Nushapore followed next--a
paper by Râm Nâth. He spoke admirably, and if he wandered occasionally
from the point, the vast scope of his subject, 'The Political,
National, and Social aspect of Modern India,' must be held responsible
for that!
An Englishman listening would, of course, have challenged his facts and
denied his conclusions; but Chris did neither. He gave an unqualified
assent to many and many a point. And yet when he listened to the
assertion that 'the cup of our political evils is so full, the burden
of our social inequalities so intolerable, and the tyranny of custom
stands out so red and foul, that some militant uprising has become
essential to national salvation, and armed resistance the only hope of
amendment,' he wondered with a certain shame how many of the millions
of India would find a personal grievance in social equality or
political evil. And as for the tyranny of custom? What militant
uprising was possible among willing slaves?
For all that he listened, not without an answering heartbeat, to the
Lala's eloquence, as he skilfully fanned every burning question with a
wind of words, and let the fretting fingers of subtle suggestion
undermine the foundations of fact. He was specially bitter against the
plague precautions, and his hints that there was more behind them than
met the eye, aroused the only spontaneous applause of the evening. Yet
once more, when the well-reasoned, admirably-delivered address was
over, the audience listened with exactly the same receptive expression
to the recitation, by its author, of a hymn for use in the approaching
Congress in which delegates were told they should--
'To croaking fools their folly leave,
Their canting puerile rant;
To noble mission steadfast cleave
And sprouts devoutly plant.'
It was a very long hymn, and it alluded, amongst other items, to the
'blazing sun of Western lore,' to 'duty's trumpet call,' to 'England,
dear home of every virtue, sweet nurse to Liberty,' and to 'India's
crying woes.'--It secured a rather more hearty meed of applause than
anything else, possibly because the audience--being above all things
scholastic--appreciated the difficulty of making English verse!
So, with a resolution that the 'Good of People' must be encouraged at
all costs, and a vote of thanks to Mr. Râm Nâth, the actual business of
the meeting ended, but not the speechifying. Half a dozen minor men
stood up with a surcharged look; but one, a tall young fellow with a
charmingly gentle, emotional face, caught the chairman's eye first. He
was a schoolmaster, and at his own expense brought out a monthly
magazine which was, briefly, the most high-toned bit of printing that
ever passed through a press. Bishops might have read it and confessed
themselves edified.
'Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,' he began, 'although formal recognition of
our distinguished townsman's magnificent elocutionary effort has not
been wanting, I wish to record my humble admiration, and to state my
belief that his forecast of possible difficulties regarding plague
precautions may amount to prophecy. Since, alas! our poor folk have
been strangers to beneficent sanitations from birth, and are now, as
another honourable speaker pointed out, in considerable states of
ebullition. Yet, instead of applying salutary balms to these uneducated
minds, I grieve to say that efforts are being made to increase terror;
witness the golden paper falling from Heaven, as bolt from the blue, in
the so-called Temple of Viseshwar. This trick of greedy Brahmins----'
Râm Nâth was on his feet in an instant, recognised champion of his
faith.
'I beg to submit, Mr. Chairman, that these words are out of order. This
society is pledged to neutrality, and "trick of greedy Brahmins" is
calculated to wound pious feelings.'
'I second the protest,' put in another eager voice, 'and beg the
objectionable phrase be withdrawn.'
A murmur of approval ran through the larger part of the audience, and
Hâfiz Ahmad, with the scowl of the true idol-hater on his face, asked
the speaker to withdraw the words; which he did, protesting that, as a
member of the Brahmo Somaj, he had only spoken with a view to eternal
and abstract truth. The paper, he continued, though possibly only the
outcome of the quarrel which, his hearers must know, had been going on
for some time between the priests of the two rival temples regarding
the relative supremacy of Kâli-_mâ_ and her consort Shiv-_jee_----
Here the chairman himself called with alacrity, 'Order! Order! This
meeting does not deal with such dogmatics,' and another and smaller
murmur of assent followed.
The gentle-faced schoolmaster apologised again. There could be no
doubt, at any rate, he said almost pathetically, that the uneducated
mind was, as the poet said, liable to be tickled by straws, and so he
conceived it to be his duty to draw the attention of the 'Society for
Promoting the General Good of People' to this paper, which, he might
add, he was going to pillory in his publication with scathing
criticism. So, drawing a slip from his pocket, he began to read in the
vernacular--
'_I, Kali, will come. In my dark month I will come for blood. Woe to
them who seek to stay me in the city, since I will have blood on my
altar whether the hands of strange men stay Me, or smite Me. For I am
Kali the Death-Mother of all men, whether they will it or no. Yea! I
will come_.'
The vague phrases, besprinkled with hollow-sounding mysterious Sanskrit
words, brought a curious hush even to that assemblage, till Hâfiz Ahmad
laughed arrogantly.
'Is that all, _pandit-jee_?' he asked; 'that bogey will do little.'
'As much, I venture to suggest,' put in Râm Nâth suavely, 'as the bogey
of supposed invasion of domestic privacy for women.'
The Mohammedan, though he professed himself above such considerations,
frowned. 'I demur. The caste prejudices will, in my opinion, be more
difficult to place on common-sense footings.'
They had embarked on the fencing-match which, as often as not, ended
discussion between these two recognised leaders of the two communities,
Hindoo and Mohammedan, and the attention of the meeting had wandered
after them, when a new voice brought it back. It was Chris Davenant's.
Taller than most there, fairer, and of better birth than the generality
of those who brave the dangers of foreign travel, he was the show man
of young Nushapore for pure culture, as Râm Nâth was for ability; and
as such he commanded attention.
'Gentlemen!' he said, 'it seems to me that this paper, which _pandit_
Narain Das has just read, will give our society an opportunity for
practical work. It means nothing, or at most little, to any of us here.
But none will deny it will mean much to many; to our friends--let us
face the facts!--to our own families. And it is a dangerous paper,
gentlemen! None know that better than we, who have passed from the
influence of such words,'--here that faint desultory clapping became
audible--'and it is just because we have so passed, that I ask this
meeting what it is prepared to do in order to combat the possible, the
probable effect of these mysterious threats?'
'Hear! hear!' came several voices. And then came silence; until the
_pandit_ said, in hurt tones--
'I have already told this meeting that I will publish in my
monthly magazine, together with criticisms of the most scathing
character----'
'And,' put in Râm Nâth, rising to the challenge in Chris Davenant's
face, 'I venture to suggest, Mr. Chairman, that this meeting pass a
resolution condemning----'
'And who will know what resolutions we pass, Mr. Secretary?'
interrupted Chris, with a sudden passion which gave his face a look
that was half hope, half wistful doubt; 'who will read your diatribes,
Mr. Editor? _We!_ We only, who pass the resolutions, who write the
criticisms, who know already how to appraise that paper! Printed words,
gentlemen, are no use to those who cannot read, resolutions are naught
to those who never hear of them. But we have tongues; we can speak! We
can, if we choose, throw the whole weight of our personal influence on
the side of truth, even though that side be also the side of a
government with which we have many a righteous feud.'
As he paused for breath, there was a murmur of approval for the
eloquence, none for the thought it held. 'Gentlemen!' he went on, 'it
is futile for any one here to deny that this paper aims at rousing
religious opposition to _any_ precautions whatever against the plague!
Well! some of us here, myself among the number, hold that many of the
precautions in the government programme _are_ objectionable----'
'And more in the private instructions, if rumour says true,' put in Râm
Nâth spitefully.
'I have listened to reasonable criticism, reasonable resentment, and I
have agreed with it. But is there any one of us here who would throw
all precautions to the winds?' went on Chris, passing by the
interruption; 'is there any one who really believes that this golden
paper fell from heaven? If there are, I let them pass. But for the rest
of us, I call upon you not to write, not to resolve, but to speak; to
speak to our wives, our mothers, our sisters--to the timid women whom
such threats alarm; briefly to throw our whole personal influence on
what we know to be the side of truth.'
There was an instant's silence; then Hâfiz Ahmad, as chairman, said
perfunctorily: 'I am sure we are all completely at one with our
honourable friend. Such manifest attempts at preposterous intimidation
deserve the heartiest contempt of educated minds.'
'I second that proposition,' added Râm Nâth as head of his following.
'We are morally bound to give heartiest co-operation in the difficult
task before government, in so far as is compatible with strict
deference to the private religious feeling of all parties concerned.
That is the groundwork of true liberty.'
A fine scorn showed on Chris Davenant's face; he was about to speak
when _pandit_ Narain Das turned to him with a wistful apology in his,
and said: 'Without demurring to his general principle, I would remind
our honourable friend, whose educational career is a credit to our
town, that our influence, alas! is but a broken reed. Our position, in
a society of ignorami, is anomalous, not to say precarious. And if we
too freely kick against the pricks, we are in danger of losing what we
have, which would be undesirable. As John Morley says in his valuable
work on compromise----'
Chris turned on him almost savagely. 'There is no need to preach
compromise, _pandit-jee_! We practise it. We do not let our opinions
influence our own conduct, yet we expect them to influence the conduct
of our rulers! We write these opinions. Oh, yes! we write them! Why?
Because we know that only those read them who agree with us! But which
of us will go from here to-day, and braving opposition, disregarding
personal considerations, tell, even their own immediate families, that
the Brahmins who wrote that paper are--are _splendide mendax_!'
He could not help it! He was keenly alive to the legitimate fun made by
the opponents of young India, out of its intolerable aptitude for
unsuitable quotation, but he fell a victim to it sometimes himself. So,
as he paused before his own words--a house, as it were, divided against
itself--he lost his opportunity. For a dapper little gentleman who, by
reason of a high appointment under government, was generally allowed to
apply the closure to heated or unwelcome discussions, had risen, and
caught the chairman's eye.
'What our honourable and esteemed townsman, Mr. Krishn Davenund, has
just said, must receive consensus of universal opinion, since it is
doubtless of supreme importance to national life. Priest-craft,
supernaturalism, _et hoc genus omne_, are clearly traits of low
civilisation, just as popular government, enlargement of franchise, and
diffusion of evolutionary theories are significant of higher. Still,
Rome was not built in a day. Nor is there use in raising the wind, if
we can't ride the whirlwind, or control the storm. Therefore, in the
_interim_, pending wider liberty of speech, I propose that this meeting
pass a unanimous resolution condemning such paltry attempts at
cockering up superstitious feelings, and that the same be duly recorded
in the minutes of our society.'
Before the relieved applause which greeted this diplomacy was over, the
waste-paper basket beside Chris Davenant had received another
contribution. His roll of manuscript, torn to shreds, lay in it, in
obedience to a sudden, swift intuition that if he was ever to rise
beyond the chaos of lofty aspirations, the strictly impersonal
admiration for great deeds in his fellows, he must leave words behind.
So silent, alone, he walked home to his empty house, his empty life.
But others, though they passed homewards in batches still full of
discussion, still drunk with words, were passing to environments which
were, in a way, even more empty than his. So empty of the sentiments
they had just been formulating, so much at variance with the ideals
they had just professed, that the very imagination grows bewildered in
the effort to reconcile the two.
Govind the editor, however, had less difficulty than most in
accommodating his mental position to a stool stuck over the reeking
gutter of a liquor shop, where he refreshed himself with a
brandy-and-soda and an infamous cigar. He was in an evil temper,
because the meeting, which he frequented chiefly because the speakers
provided him with ideas wherewith to spice his own broadsheet, had been
unusually discreet; so he would have to write his own sedition; unless
he could pick up some scurrilous news instead.
'Nay, friend! I know naught to suit thy purpose,' replied the stout
sergeant of police who frequented the same liquor shop, to whom he
applied; 'save the finding of the Lady-_sahib's_ jewel-box.'
'And the pearls?' asked Govind, taking out a greasy stump of pencil.
'The pearls!' echoed the policeman scornfully, 'as if pearls were to be
found by us! They can be hid in a body's very mouth, and then, if there
be not another mouth with a tongue in it, there is silence! But the box
is enough to keep the file of the case open, and the inspector content
for a while.'
'How many are in the lock-up concerning it?' asked Govind, out of the
fulness of his knowledge regarding police methods.
'Six,' yawned the sergeant. 'The coolie who found the box broken and
empty, flung in the bushes by the Lat-_sahib's_ house; he was setting
the fireworks for the big spectacle to-morrow. He sold it to a
pawnbroker. That makes two for us. Then a woman bought the velvet
lining from a rag-merchant. That makes four. She gave it to Hashim,
tailor, who works for the _Huzoors_, as a cap to her grandchild.
And he, having doubts, informed us. So he makes five. Then the
firework-maker's people were turbulent, therefore we arrested one of
them to show diligence.'
'And there was naught in the box when it was found?' asked Govind. He
was writing now on one of the smoothed-out squares of white waste-paper
which lay in a pile beside the liquor seller, who used them for wiping
the rims of the tumblers, out of deference to the caste prejudices of
his customers against a general cloth.
'God knows!' yawned the policeman piously. 'The man saith not; but
there were letters besides the trinkets and the pearls, and we may find
_them_, if not the others. Folk will not lose a _cowrie's_ worth of
waste-paper these hard times.'
'Ay!' assented the liquor seller, eyeing Govind askance. 'Mine had to
be paid for, though some seem to think not. And paid high too, since
the firework-makers were in the market for their squibs and crackers
for to-morrow.'
A man lounging outside in the gutter laughed suddenly, viciously. 'They
will find enough for _them_ anyhow, even if they _have_ the police at
their tails!' he said, moving off with a defiant _salaam_ to the fat
policeman.
'I would I had handcuffed a pair of them,' remarked the latter mildly.
''Twould have been one trouble, and 'tis well to save oneself what one
can these hard times.'
'Trouble!' echoed a passer-by, shaking his head, 'there will be no
saving of that in Nushapore. Jân-Ali-shân hath returned and brought the
plague, so folk say.'
The liquor seller turned in quick interest to the sergeant of police.
'Dost know if he hath returned?' he asked; for the loafer was a
customer who owed money, and must be got hold of while money was in his
pockets.
For answer the policeman chucked away his cigar end, stumbled off the
dais of the shop, and stood to attention, as a figure rounded the angle
of the next crossway street, followed by a crowd of ragged half-naked
urchins. It was Jân-Ali-shân himself, washed, shaved, spruce, in a
second-hand suit of _khaki_ uniform and a white helmet which he had
redeemed from a pawnshop on the credit of his new appointment as
foreman of works. Jân-Ali-shân, who, from sheer habit, had, on finding
himself in the city with money in his pocket, gone straight for his old
haunt. From the new resolutions, however, which with him always began
with new work, he called for a 'gingerade plain' in a voice of
authority, which made a little circle gather round him admiringly, as
after humming a stave of 'Drink to me only with thine eyes,' while he
was opening the bottle, he proceeded to pour its fizzing contents down
his throat.
The interest of the crowd seemed to amuse him, he sate down on the
plinth and drew out a handful of _pice_ in lordly fashion.
'Two anna, over an' above,' he said, holding up the coins, 'and I don't
want no change. So which of you noble earls,' here he turned to his
following of lads, 'is goin' to fight for the balance? You understand?
_Lurro abhi, jut put_, an' be _burra burra pailwân_ for two pice a 'ed
(fight now immediately and be great heroes).'
The vile admixture of tongues seemed quite comprehensible to those
acquainted with Jân-Ali-shân's methods, for two urchins stepped forward
at once, and the rest joined with the other loungers to form a ring.
John Ellison, loafer, leant back against the wall at his ease.
'Now then, _nap_,'[6] he began, 'back to back fair and square. None o'
yer _nigger blarney_,[7] you young devil! Fight _seeda_,[8] or it ain't
worth fightin' at all. And I won't 'ave no buttin' in the stummick.
You're _pailwâns m'henda nahin_ (heroes, not fighting rams). _Sumjha?_'
The boys professed to understand, and, having divested themselves of
their last rag, stood like slim bronze statues in the sunlight.
'Are you ready?' asked Jân-Ali-shân with superb gravity. 'Then _chul_
(go), an' may the Lord 'ave mercy on your souls.'
They were locked in each other's grip in a second in true Western
fashion.
'_Shab-bash!_' said the holder of the stakes with an approving nod
'That's wrestlin'. None o' yer slappin's an' buttin's and boo-in's.
_Shab-bash!_ boys. _Shab-bash!_'
The crowd grinned widely at the praise, and, as the combatants
struggled and swayed, discussed their family history and took sides,
after the manner of crowds all over the world. Quite a breath of
anxiety ran through it as a fall came, but came sideways. There was no
dust on the back yet!--there would not be!--yes! there would.
Aha! aha! there _was_, surely!
There would have been, doubtless, for the uppermost boy's small brown
hand had freed itself for a second from its grip and sought blindly on
the ground for that recognised weapon in Indian wrestling, dust for the
adversary's eyes, had not Jân-Ali-shân, seeing the action, sprung to
his feet, stooped over the writhing figures, and seizing the top one by
the scruff of its neck, held it up by one hand and shaken it as a
terrier shakes a rat.
'None o' yer monkey tricks, none o' yer _niggar blarneying_, you young
sneak,' he said roughly, as he dropped his whimpering prisoner from mid
air, 'or I'll make _mutti_[9] of you. _Bus!_ (enough). T'other Johnny's
_jeetgia_ (won). Here, sonny! take your _do paisa_.'
The crowd, however, which had been betting freely on the event,
hesitated; the supporters of the dust-thrower grumbled. They were
headed by Govind, who began with great pomp--
'I would have you aware, sir, that use of dust is not non-regulation in
our code; therefore the other boy is victor.
John Ellison looked at him condescendingly, and turned up the cuffs of
his coat with unnecessary elaboration.
'Ain't it in your code, _baboo_?' he said, with equally elaborate
civility, 'an' t'other chap 'as won, has he? I'm glad t'hear it. But
this is my show, and, 'by the Lord 'oo made me! I'm goin' to run it
myself. An' if any gentleman 'as a objection to make, let 'im make it
now, or for ever after 'old 'is peace.'
The crowd made way for him hastily, as he drove a three-feet passage
through it with his elbows; but as he walked jauntily down the bazaar,
the boys fell in behind him and kept step, as he did, to the 'Wedding
March,' which he whistled in reminiscent continuation of his last
words. For they knew Jân-Ali-shân of old as one who, drunk or sober,
always had a reward for fair fighting.
'What did the _M'lechcha_[10] say?' asked a grumbler who did not know
English.
'That 'twas nothing to him what was our custom. It was his, and that
settled it. It is their word! Well! let them say it! We will see,
brothers, if it is true, will we not?' replied Govind viciously.
A murmur of approval ran through the bystanders, but an old dodderer
with a white beard, who, in Eastern fashion, was dozing through his
days, waiting for death, crouched up comfortably on a string bed set in
the sun, said dreamily--
'Didst say it was Jân-Ali-shân? Yea! it was his word. I have heard him
say it; and he keeps it, my sons! he keeps it!'
Govind turned on the speaker scornfully. 'Those were other times,
_baba_, and another Jân-Ali-shân. The times have changed and men
too----'
A thin musical laugh interrupted him. It came from Lateefa, the
kite-maker, who was passing with his bundle of kites for sale.
'Lo! _baboo-jee_!' he said. 'I know naught of time but my poor portion
of it, nor of man save my poor self! But I change not, and I am as
others. We are like kites; the form changes not unless the maker
chooses, and God, so say the Moulvies, changes not at all. He makes men
on the old pattern ever; the rest is but dye and tinsel.'
So he passed on, tossing his bundle, and chanting the street-seller's
cry--
'Your eyes use, and choose!
Use your eyes and choose!'
CHAPTER VII
CRACKERS AND SQUIBS
'_Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star. Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_.'
'Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star. Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_.'
'Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star. Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_.'
The damnable iteration went on and on, the fiddles twangled and
squeaked, the drum bangers banged, the nautch-girl sidled, and smirked,
and shrilled.
'_Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star. Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_.'
Lesley Drummond, sitting in the front row of guests at the reception
given by the nobles and landed proprietors of the Province to welcome
Sir George Arbuthnot to his new office, shut her eyes at last in sheer
despair of being able to reconcile the senses of hearing and sight;
then opened them again to stare with unappeasable curiosity into the
blaze of light, veiled by a fine film of misty smoke, in which all
things seemed clear, yet dim.
It came from the prism-hung chandeliers which hid the low white-marble
ceiling, from the wretched paraffin wall-lamps hung against the
white-marble pillars, from the paper lanterns swinging from the
scalloped white-marble arches. But it came most of all from the garden
beyond the arches in which this white-marble summer-palace of a dynasty
of dead kings stood, centring the formal walks and watercourses; for it
was lit up in long close rows of soft twinkling lights stretching away
into the purple shadows of the night, until, climbing to every line,
every curve of the purple shadow of the distant city, they showed like
new stars upon the purple shadow of the sky.
The radiance of it, the brilliance of it, dazzled the eyes; the
dimness, the misty dreaminess of it clouded the brain. She felt
drugged, hypnotised out of realities, as she looked towards the dais
where Sir George, the Star of his Order almost hidden by one of the
huge tinsel garlands which had been thrown round the neck of the guests
as they entered, sat in a gilt chair, his solitary figure outlined
harshly, by reason of his dark political uniform, against the
background of white-marble tracery. Thence she looked to the English
ladies in gay _décolletés_ dresses who, with a sprinkling of black
coats and red tunics, banked the dais on either side. So to the line of
officials and soldiers edging the gangway below the dais. Finally, on
to the hosts themselves who sate behind in rows. Rows on rows ablaze
with colour and sparkle. Rows on rows imperturbable, passive, without a
smile or a frown for the scene in which they bore so large a part.
So far, however, despite those great tinsel garlands which were so
distracting a novelty upon black coats, scarlet tunics, and
_décolletés_ dresses, a certain relevancy to the central idea, embodied
in that solitary figure of an elderly Englishman raised above the rest,
was not wanting in the details of the spectacle.
But what, thought Lesley, could be said of that group upon the square
of red and green-flowered Brussels carpet spread immediately in front
of the dais? Spread between the gilt sofa where she sat with Jerry
between her and Lady Arbuthnot, and a similar gilt sofa on the other
side occupied by the general's wife and her two daughters.
What an inconceivably unsuitable surrounding they made, five
Englishwomen and a child, to those other five and a child? Two
ragged drum bangers, two dissipated fiddle and guitar twangers, a
dreamy-looking boy doing nothing, and the usual posturing dancer, stout
as to figure, bunchy as to petticoats, with glued bandeaux of hair and
a nasal quavering voice which paused only for furtive swallowings of
the betel-nut she was chewing all too palpably!
'_Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star_.' She trilled with an affable,
opulent curve of hip and hand towards the _sahib logue_ collectively,
for whose delectation she was singing 'Englis fassen'; an
accomplishment she had learned from a girl who had been taught hymns in
a mission school.
'_Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_'--she simpered with a special coquettish
flirt of her fingers and full petticoat for that respectable father of
a family, Sir George, who, honest man, sat horribly conscious, still
more horribly bored, yet patient, waiting for the master of the
ceremonies to ask him if he had had enough.
Enough?
He looked past the pirouettings to that thin line of white faces, bored
yet patient like his own, which fringed those rows on rows of impassive
dark ones, and stifled his yawns duteously for the sake of the Empire.
No such reasons of state, however, swayed Jerry, who, dapper and dainty
in knee-breeches, silk stockings, ruffles, and a little garland of his
own, sate fidgeting and yawning, yawning and fidgeting. As he looked
across the pirouettings he could see his dearest Mr. Raymond dozing
with dignity in a chair opposite, with a peculiarly magnificent garland
festooned over him. It was bigger than anybody's but dad's, Jerry told
himself, feeling a trifle aggrieved, and he wanted to ask why it was so
large, when Mr. Raymond was sitting oh! ever so far back!
'_Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star!_'
The drums banged, the fiddles squeaked, the dancer postured, and Jerry
yawned with commendable monotony, till, suddenly, the little lad's
patience gave way at the two hundred and fifty-sixth time of asking the
question--'_Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_.'
'Please!' he said, in his clear child's voice, 'it is the Star of India
dad's wearin'. The Queen gave it him for doin' his duty.'
'Hush--hush, Jerry!' came breathlessly from his guardians, but the
connection of ideas had been too palpable. A titter which broke from
the ladies behind him made Nevill Lloyd--who as aide-de-camp flanked
the dais, resplendent in his horse artillery uniform--absolutely choke
in his effort to be dignified, and the joyous crow which resulted quite
upset the general commanding. Then this chuckle from the right row of
officialdom did for the Secretary-to-Government heading the left, so
that his gurgle was the signal for a general roar of laughter to go
echoing up into the arches; general so far only as the white faces were
concerned. The dark ones of the hosts were immovable, keeping even
their surprise to themselves.
'Some one ought, surely, to explain,' said Lesley with a half-puzzled
frown, as, the laughter ending, a general stir of relieved chatter
showed that the audience had seized on the interruption as an end.
'Explain, my dear?' echoed Sir George, when his wife took advantage of
the stir to repeat Lesley's suggestion, and point out the dancing-girl
standing sullen, uncertain, whispering to the drum and fiddle; 'I don't
think it's worth it, and I don't see how it's to be done. Besides,
they ought to have laughed too--they really ought! That crow of
Lloyd's----'
'I'm awfully sorry, sir,' put in the offender, trying to be penitent
through his smiles; 'I'll tell you what I'll do, Lady Arbuthnot.
Raymond is bossing the supper for them from the club, and all that.
He's president of the committee of entertainment, so I'll get him----'
Sir George frowned. 'We needn't trouble Mr. Raymond, Captain Lloyd.
And as for the interruption, Grace, it rested with me to stop the
nautch-girl at any time, and they saw we were amused. That is really
all they want.'
'Just so, sir,' assented the Secretary-to-Government, a trifle ashamed
of his lapse from strict etiquette. 'And she had been at it nearly the
proper time. Only five minutes short of the half-hour we gave them. And
you can use those, sir--as the fireworks will barely be ready--in
having some of the notables up for a talk. That will set the business
more than right.'
It seemed so, indeed, judging by the radiant faces of the favoured few,
and the hopeful interest of the many, who crowded round, grateful for a
word, even, from some lesser light.
So from its Eastern formality the scene changed to Western ways. The
crowd of well-dressed women became interspersed with red coats and
political uniforms, a buzz of voices and laughter replaced the silence
broken only by the shrillings and twanglings.
The change was a peculiarly welcome one to Mrs. Chris Davenant, who,
having, of course, been seated in strict accordance with her husband's
rank, right at the back among the commercial set, had been growing
sulky over her chance of getting into better society. She had not, for
the last two days, snubbed Mr. Lucanaster persistently, in order that
she and half a dozen tailors summoned hastily should have time to turn
out a gown worthy of Paris, simply for the purpose of having _him_
compliment her on the result. She flew at higher game, and the movement
of the crowd brought her the quarry.
'Married a native, did she?' commented a big man in political uniform
with a row of medals, who was in from an out-station for the show, and
had asked who the wearer of the flame-coloured satin was; flame-colour
with ruby sparklings on the curves of hip and bosom out of which the
fair white shoulders rose barely. 'Well! I, personally, don't find the
husband in it, if the wife's pretty! Introduce me, will you, or get
some one else to do it who knows her, if you don't.'
The man to whom he spoke looked round helplessly, and, his eye falling
on Jack Raymond, he appealed to him. People in Nushapore had a trick of
applying to the secretary of the club for odd jobs.
'Ask Lucanaster,' said Jack Raymond grimly, 'he knows her awfully well,
and I don't.'
And thereinafter he watched this seething of the kid in its mother's
milk with an almost fiendish amusement. It relieved him, for one
thing, of the necessity for speaking to Mrs. Chris himself. But as he
passed the group which was every instant growing larger round the
flame-coloured satin, he said a word to Chris who was standing
listlessly on the outside of it.
'Seeing a lot of old friends, I expect.'
Chris Davenant's flush made him curse the careless remark, and at the
same moment some one came hurriedly up behind him and laid a hand on
his arm. It was a tall old man with a dash and a swing about him still;
gorgeous still, though his brocades were worn and old, and with great
ropes of pearls wound round him, and a straight bar of grey moustache
on his keen brown face, matching the grey heron's plume in his low
turban. Briefly, a Rajpoot nobleman of the old style.
'_Ai!_ counsellor of the old,' he said, affectionate confidence
struggling with vexation in his face, 'give me some of thy wisdom once
more.'
'Hullo, Rana-_sahib_! what's up? something gone wrong with the
fireworks?' asked Jack Raymond, turning at once. His tone was
friendliness itself. And no wonder. Many a time had he, hard rider as
he was, wondered at the old Thakoor of Dhurmkote's dash and pluck after
boar. Many a time had they sate up in _machâns_ after tiger together,
and many a time had Jack--wiser for the reckless, proud old sinner than
he was for himself--urged him to retrench, to keep from the usurers. In
vain. The old man, head of his clan, would only say, 'Not so, _sahib_.
If the son had lived, perhaps. But the tiger took advantage of his
youth. So let me live and die as my fathers lived and died.' And then
he would launch out into further extravagance, as fine a specimen of
the native gentleman before we meddled with the mould, as could be
found in the length and breadth of the land.
'Wrong with my fireworks?' he echoed indignantly. 'There is nothing
wrong with them, though the others stinted me, from the beginning, out
of jealousy! Yet I had fooled them. But now, because folk laughed at
God knows what, they want them earlier. It is jealousy again. It is to
ruin my reputation as _connoisseur_. I, who have spent lacs on
fireworks. I, who to prove what I could do with the miserable pittance
assigned to me, have paid Meena Buksh, firework-maker, five thousand
rupees extra--I had but two allowed me, _Huzoor_--out of mine own
pocket, or rather out of Salig Râm the usurer's, since I reft it from
him with threats--he owns land, see you, as well as money----'
Here the old man, who had been carried away thus far by his grievance,
became aware that Jack Raymond's companion was not, as he had deemed,
some young Englishman who would either not care to listen or would not
understand if he did; and in any case would not make mischief out of
the confidence. For Chris Davenant, hemmed in a corner beyond escape,
had been unable to repress a smile at the old chieftain's method of
proving his good management and economy.
'Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Krishn Davenund, Rana-_sahib_,' said
Jack Raymond hastily, noticing the old man's haughty stare. 'I think
you knew his father, _Pandit_ Sri Pershâd, judge of the Small Cause
Court.'
Considering that the magistrate in question, being more or less in
feudal relations with the Thakoors of Dhurmkote, had strained many a
point in favour of their extravagance, the acquaintance was
indisputable; yet the Rana-_sahib's salaam_ was of the curtest
compatible with courtesy to the introducer, and he drew Jack Raymond
aside to continue in a lower voice--
'They want me to be ready in ten minutes, and that means ruin; for some
fool set fire to a bit of my best set piece, and 'twill take twenty to
repair.'
'But why not begin with something else?' suggested his hearer.
The Thakoor's face was a study in triumph and disappointment. 'Because
it is a welcome to the Lât-_sahib_, and a welcome must come first. And
it is new also--a welcome in roman candles and sulphur stars; my
reputation is in it.'
'Then why not show it as it is, and explain the accident?'
The Thakoor looked uncertain. 'That might be. How would it look, think
you, _sahib_, "God," then a blank--for that is where the damage comes
in--"our new Lieutenant-Governor"? Would it be understanded, think you?
Would it look well--in Roman candles and sulphur stars?'
'God blank--that is where the damage lies,' repeated Jack Raymond
thoughtfully, and then he laughed. He had to recover himself, however,
hastily at the old man's bewildered face, and say gravely, 'I don't
think it _would_ look very well, Rana-_sahib_, especially in Roman
candles and sulphur stars.' Here another laugh obtruded itself, and
he added as a cover to it, 'But I can tell you what I _can_ do for
you--refreshments. I know _they_ are ready. I'll go off now and get the
"roastbeef" sounded.'
The old chieftain stood looking after him as he went off
enthusiastically.
'May the gods keep him! that is a man,' he said aloud to himself. 'If
all the _sahibs_ were as he, a friend----'
'India would be the happier. She needs such friends,' said Chris
Davenant suddenly. He had been trying to make up his mind ever since
the meeting at Hâfiz Ahmad's house, to take some decided step towards
organising a real party of progress. To do this in a way that would
ensure confidence with both the Government and the people, it was
necessary to secur
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