The Mercy of the Lord
by Flora Annie Webster Steel · English · Gutenberg #40136 · 523,444 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Mercy of the Lord
Author: Flora Annie Webster Steel
Release date: July 3, 2012 [eBook #40136]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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The Mercy of the Lord
The Mercy of the Lord
By
Flora Annie Steel
Author of
'On the Face of the Waters,' 'A Sovereign Remedy,' etc.
New York
George H. Doran Company
_Printed in England_
NEW YORK; GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, 1914.
CONTENTS
THE MERCY OF THE LORD.
SALT DUTY.
THE WISDOM OF OUR LORD GANESH.
THE SON OF A KING.
THE BIRTH OF FIRE.
THE GIFT OF BATTLE.
THE VALUE OF A VOTE.
SALT OF THE EARTH.
AN APPRECIATED RUPEE.
THE LAKE OF HIGH HOPE.
RETAINING FEES.
HIS CHANCE.
THE FLATTERER FOR GAIN.
A MAIDEN'S PRAYER.
SILVER SPEECH AND GOLDEN SILENCE.
THE FOOTSTEPS OF A DOG.
THE FINDING OF PRIVATE FLANIGAN.
REX ET IMP:
THERE AROSE A MAN.
DRY GOODS.
THE REGENERATION OF DAISY BELL.
A SONG WITHOUT WORDS.
SEGREGATION.
SLAVE OF THE COURT.
THE MERCY OF THE LORD
"God movesn--a--mystere'ras way
Iswon--derstuper--form."
Craddock was polishing the brass of his safety valve and singing the
while at high pressure between set teeth: his choice of a ditty
determined by one of his transitory lapses into conventional
righteousness. The cause of which in the present instance being an
equally transient admiration for a good little Eurasian girl fresh from
her convent.
As the sun--which shines equally on the just and the unjust--flamed on
his red face and glowed from his corn-coloured beard it seemed to
me--waiting in the comparative coolth of the pointsman's mud-oven
shelter till the one mail train of the day should appear and disappear,
leaving the ribbon of rail which spanned the desert world to its
horizon free for our passaging--that both he and his engine radiated
heat: that they gave out--as the burning bush or the flaming swords of
the paradise-protectors must have given out--a message of fiery warning
that suited the words he sang:
"Eplants 'isfootsteps--inthesea."
Craddock punctuated the rhythm with an appropriate stop of shrill steam
which ought to have startled me: but it did not, because my outward
senses had suddenly become slaves to my memory. The desert was a garden
full of cool fragrance which comes with the close of an Indian day, and
the only sound to be heard in it was a glad young voice repeating these
words:
"Oh! God of the Battle! Have mercy! Have mercy! Have mercy!"
"Bravo! young Bertram!" said someone--even those who scarcely
knew whether Bertram were his Christian or his surname called him
that--"Easy to see you're fresh from the Higher Standard."
Young Bertram smiled down on us from the plinth of the marble steps
leading up to the marble summer house which stood in the centre of this
Garden-of-Dead-Kings.
Posed there on his pedestal, holding orb-like in his raised right hand
the battered bronze cannon ball whose inscription--roughly lettered in
snaky spirals--he had just translated, young Bertram reminded me of the
young Apollo.
"You bet," he answered, gaily. "But what does it mean, here on this
blessed ball? Who knows the story?--for there is one, of course."
The company looked at me, partly because as a civilian such knowledge
was expected of me; mostly because I was responsible for the invasion
of this peaceful Eastern spot by a restless, curious horde of Westerns;
my only excuse for the desecration being, that as the most despicable
product of our Indian rule, a grass widower bound to entertain, I had
naturally clutched at the novelty of a picnic supper and dance some few
miles out of the station.
Perhaps, had I seen the garden first, I might have relented, but I took
it on trust from my orderly, who assured me it held all things
necessary for my salvation, including a marble floor on which a drugget
could be stretched.
It held much more. There was in it an atmosphere--not all orange
blossom and roses, though these drugged the senses--which to my mind
made a touch of tragedy lurk even in our laughter.
Though, in sooth, we brought part of the tragedy with us: for a
frontier war was on, and all the men and half the women present, knew
that the route might come any moment.
Some few--I, as chief district officer, the colonel and his
adjutant--were aware that it probably would come before morning:
but ours were not the sober faces. Our plans were laid; all things,
even the arrangements for the women and the children and the
unfit-for-service, were cut and dried: but the certainty that someone
must--as the phrase runs--take over documents, and the uncertainty as
to who the unlucky beggar would be, lent care to a young heart or two.
Not, however, to young Bertram. As he stood questioning me with his
frank blue eyes, even the white garments he had donned (because, he
said, "It might be a beastly time before he wore decent togs again")
told the same tale as his glad voice--the tale of that boundless hope
which holds ever the greatest tragedy of life.
"Who is that pretty boy?" said a low soft voice at my elbow.
I did not answer the spoken question of the voice, but as I replied to
the unspoken question of many eyes I was conscious that of all the many
incongruous elements I had imported into that Eastern garden this
Western woman who had appraised young Bertram's beauty was the most
incongruous. It was not the Paris frock and hat, purchased on the way
out--she had only rejoined her husband the day before--which made her
so. It was the woman inside them. I knew the type so well, and my soul
rose in revolt that she should soil his youth with her approval.
"I've no doubt there are stories," I replied; "but I don't happen to
know them. I'm as much a stranger here as you all are. So come! let us
look round till it's dark enough to dance."
"Dark enough to sit out, he means," said someone to the Paris frock and
hat, whereat there was a laugh, but not so general and not half so
hearty as the one which greeted young Bertram's gravity as he replaced
the cannon ball on the plinth with the profound remark:
"Something about a woman, you bet."
"Do introduce me!" pleaded the Paris frock and hat as the lad came
down, bearing the brunt of chaff gallantly; but I pretended not to
hear, though I knew such diplomacy was vain with women of her
type--women whose refinement makes them shameless.
Yes! she was a strange anomaly in that garden, though, Heaven
knows, it appealed frankly enough to the senses. So frankly that it
absorbed even such meretricious Western additions as cosy corners
and iced champagne--on tables laid for two--without encroaching a
hair's--breadth on the inviolable spiritual kingdom of the ivory orange
blossom, the silver jasmine stars, even the red hearts of the roses.
They were lighting up the lines of the cressets about the dancing floor
when we began to reassemble, and as each star of light quivered into
being, the misty unreal radiance grew around the fretted marble of the
summer house until arch and pilaster seemed to lose solidity, and the
whole building, leaving its body behind in shining sleep, found freedom
ass a palace of dreams.
And there, as a foreground to its mystical beauty, was young Bertram
dangling his long legs from the pedestal and nursing the battered old
bronze ball on his lap as if it had been a baby.
"I've found out all about it," he said, cheerfully. "That chap"--he
pointed to a figure below him--"told me a splendid yarn, and if you
lite,"--he turned to me--"as they haven't done lighting up yet, and we
can't dance till they finish, he could tell it again. I could
translate, you know, for those who can't understand."
The innocent pride made me smile, until the Paris frock said, "_I_
shall be so grateful if you will, Mr. Bertram," in a tone of soft
friendliness which proclaimed her success and my failure. Both,
however, I recognised were inevitable when I remembered that she was
the wife of the lad's captain, a silent, bullet-headed Briton of whom
he chose to make a hero--as boys will of older men who are not worthy
to unlatch their shoes.
The figure rose and salaamed. It was that of a professional snake
charmer, who had evidently come in hopes of being allowed to exhibit
his skill: for his flat basket of snakes, slung to a bambu yoke, lay
beside him.
"And it _was_ about a woman, as I said," continued young Bertram, with
the same innocent pride. "She was of his tribe--the snaky tribe, and
so, of course, he knows about it all."
I had my doubts--the man looked a cunning scoundrel--but there was an
awkward five minutes to fill up, so chairs and cushions were
requisitioned, and on them and the marble steps we circled round to
listen: the Paris dress, I noticed, choosing the latter, close to the
translator.
He performed his task admirably, catching not only the meaning of the
words but the rhythm of the snake charmer's voice, and so quickly, too,
that the message for the East, and for the West, seemed one; yet it
seemed to come from neither of the speakers.
"'Oh, God of the Battle! have mercy, have mercy, have mercy!' Such was
her prayer to the Bright One, and this is the tale of it:
"Straight was her soul as the saraph who tempted Eve-mother, but
crooked her body as snakes that deal death in the darkness--crookt in
her childhood--crookt in the siege of the town by a spent shot which
struck her, asleep in her cradle (the ball that you nurse on your knee,
sahib--they found it beside her--her crushed limbs caressing the foe
that destroyed her).
"She grew in this garden, a cripple, but fair still of face, and twice
cursed in such gifts of beauty all barren and bitter--so bitter she
veiled it away, hiding loveliness, hatefulness, both, from the eyes of
the others: a soul stricken sore ere the battle began, yet insatiate of
life, insatiate of blessing and cursing, insatiate of power. And, look
you! she gained it! Most strangely, for fluttering through thickets
like birds that are wounded and dragging herself like a snake to the
blossoms, she threaded the jasmine to necklets and pressed out the
roses to perfume, so giving to women uncrippled love-lures for the
fathers of sons.
"Hid in the jasmine and screened by the trails of the roses, here, on
this spot stood her chamber of charm for the secret distilling of
_itr_, the silent repeating of ritual, the murmur of musical _mantras_.
"And none dare to enter since Death lurked unseen in the thickets, and
serpents, her kinsmen, slid swift to the threshold to guard it, and
watched with still eyes her command.
"'It was witchcraft,' they said, with a shudder, those fortunate women,
yet came in the dusk for her charms!
"But she gave them not always, for years brought her wisdom. She learnt
the love lore of the flowers, the close starry heart of the jasmine,
the open red heart of the rose, told their dream of fair death through
the ripening of seed, and her voice would grow bitter with scorn....
"'Go! find your own lures for your lovers--I work for the seed--for the
harvest of men.'
"High perched on the wall of the city the balcony women waxed wroth. It
was money to them till the cripple who fought them with flowers
prevailed in the battle for life to the world.
"And Narghiza, the chief of them all, felt her youth on the wane....
"So, one night in the darkness, ere dawning, men crept to the garden
where only the women might enter. Men, heated by wine and by lust,
inflamed by the balcony lies--yea! the witch who wrought evil to
all--who had killed Gulanâr in her prime by a wasting--whose frown was
a curse, must be reckoned with, killed, and her devilish chamber
destroyed.
"But the sound of the rustling leaves as the snakes slid soft in the
darkness made even the wine bibbers think, so that secret and soft as
the snakes in the thickets they crept back to safety; till there--in
the darkness, the fragrance of flowers, but one man remained, a man who
grew old! Beautiful, tired of the life he had squandered, and reckless,
yet angered because of the girl who had wasted to death--a girl he had
paid for.
"'Cowards!' he said with a smile, and crept on in the dark. A rustle,
but not of a snake! In the leaves a faint glimmer of white, and a
voice--such a beautiful voice!
"'In this garden of women what seek you, my lord?'
"'I seek _you_, for your death.' But as swift as his hand with the
dagger, around him there rose in a shimmering shelter the wide-hooded
curves of the serpents, their still, watchful eyes giving out a cold
gleaming that shone like a halo about her.
"'What harm have I done?' Such a beautiful voice! 'Come and see, if you
will.'
"On his head fell the spent leaves of roses, the frail stars of jasmine
were hers as she dragged herself on, and he followed through darkness
and fragrance and flowers. The serpents lay thick on the threshold; she
stayed them with this:
"'Wait, friends, till he touches me.'
"Opened the door and said scornfully:
"'There stands my charm.'
"The dim light of the cresset showed emptiness save for yon ball with
its legend ('tis scratched, as you see, in the shape of a snake,
sahib). She read it aloud, and then turned to him:
"'Yea! that is all! I appeal to the God of the Battle of Life, and I
call unto Him to have mercy, have mercy, have mercy--What mercy He
chooses----'
"Her voice sank to silence. The cresset's dim light showed the folds of
her veiling to him, and to her showed his beauty of face as he knelt to
her crippledom.
"'Mercy!'--his voice was a whisper--'have mercy--the charm lies
within--let me see it....'
"His hand sought the folds of her veil and, responsive, the shelter of
snakes rose about her.
"'Wait, friends, till he touches me!'
"Swift, with quick fear in it, came the stern warning, and then there
was silence.
"Oh! beautiful night with spent stars of the jasmine, spent leaves of
the roses, spent life nigh to death 'mid its darkness, its fragrance.
"Oh! beautiful face, free of veiling with spent stars of eyes and spent
rose leaves of lips.
"'My beloved!'
"Like a sigh came the whisper, and slowly as stars in the evening their
eyes grew to brightness, and closer and closer their lips grew to
kisses.
"'_Wait, friends, till he touches me_.'
"That was her order, and swift to the second, the snakes struck between
them.
"Oh, beautiful death by the kiss of a lover! Oh, merciful poison of
passion."
The sing-song ceased, and, as if to take its place, the first notes of
the _Liebestraum_ waltz sounded from the rose and jasmine thicket in
which the band had been concealed.
"That's a mercy of the Lord, anyhow," laughed some young Philistine. "I
thought they'd never stop, or the band begin!"
In a moment the listening circle had changed into an eager hurrying of
couples towards the dancing floor.
But young Bertram still sat on the pilaster nursing the old bronze
ball, his glad young face strangely sober.
"I think this is our dance," said the Paris frock, in a voice of icy
allurement which positively rasped my nerves.
Young Bertram sprang to the ground hastily.
"I beg your pardon! By George, what's that?"
He had upset one of the snake charmer's flat baskets, and there was a
general stampede as the occupants slid out.
"Don't be alarmed," I cried, "they always have their fangs drawn, and
he will get them back in a moment."
Even as I spoke the hollow quavering of the charmer's gourd flute
began, and three snakes stayed their flight to sit up on their tails
and sway drowsily to the rhythm.
"There was a fourth one, wasn't there?" said young Bertram. "It slipped
our way, didn't it?"
He spoke to the Paris frock, which had taken refuge on the opposite
pilaster, so that the whole expanse of the wide marble steps now lay
between them.
"Huzoor, no!" interrupted the owner of the snakes, hastily, "there were
but three--there could only have been three--for see! my serpents obey
me."
He was slipping the brutes back to prison again as he spoke, but I
noticed his eyes were restless.
"Are you quite sure?" I asked.
He gave me a furtive glance, then carelessly held up a loathsome
five-footer. "Cobras like these are very easily counted, Huzoor;
besides, as the Presence said, they are all fangless."
The one whose jaws he as carelessly prized open certainly was, and I
should have dismissed doubt had not young Bertram at that moment taken
up the flute gourd, and with the gay remark, "Let me have a shot at
it," commenced--out of fastidiousness as to the mouthpiece, no
doubt--to blow into it upside down.
I never saw fear better expressed in any face than on the snake
charmer's when he heard the indescribable sound which echoed out into
the garden. It grew green as without the least ceremony he snatched the
instrument away.
"The Presence must not do that--the snakes do not like strangers."
Young Bertram laughed, "Nor the noise, I expect! The beastly thing
makes a worse row wrong side up than right--doesn't it?"
What the Paris frock replied I do not know, as they were already
hurrying up to make the most of the remaining dance.
Not that there was any necessity for hurry to judge by the number of
times I saw his white raiment and her fancy frills floating round
together during the next hour or so.
The Adjutant--a man I particularly disliked (possibly because he seemed
to me the antithesis of young Bertram)--remarked on it also when he
found me out seeking solitude in one of the latticed minarets.
"Going it!" he said, cynically. "He won't be quite such a young fool
when he comes down from the hills."
I turned on him in absolute dismay. "The hills? but surely you're going
on service?"
The Adjutant shrugged his shoulders. "Someone has to take over, and
he'll soon console himself."
I felt I could have kicked him, and was glad that the "Roast Beef"
called me to my duties as host.
They had laid the supper table where we had listened to the snake
charmer's chant; somehow through all the laughter I seemed to hear that
refrain going on: "Oh! God of the Battle! have mercy! have mercy! have
mercy!"
What mercy would she show him? None. And what chance would he have in
an atmosphere like that of Semoorie? None. Even the husband, whom
rumour said was bullet-headed to some purpose, would be away.
We were very merry in spite, or perhaps because of, an insistent trend
of thought towards impending change, and I was just about to propose
the health of my guests with due discreet allusion to the still
doubtful future when it was settled by the appearance of a telegraph
peon.
In the instant hush which followed, I observed irrelevantly that our
brief feasting had made a horrid mess of what not half an hour before
had seemed food for the gods!
Then the Colonel looked up with a grim conscious smile which fitted ill
with the fragrant lantern-lit garden behind him.
"The route has come, gentlemen, we start to-morrow at noon."
He checked a quick start to their feet on the part of some of the
youngsters by addressing himself to me:
"But as everything has been cut and dry for some days we needn't spoil
sport yet awhile. There's time for a dance or two."
"In that case I'll go on," I replied, "and with greater will than
ever."
Somehow it never struck me what was likely to happen, seeing that young
Bertram was junior subaltern and in addition the pride of his fellows,
until I heard the calls for "our speaker" to return thanks. He had been
sitting, of course, next to the Paris frock, and beside him had been
the Adjutant, looking, I had noticed, as if he thought he ought to be
in young Bertram's place. I wish to God he had been.
They both rose at the same moment; the Adjutant to work, no
doubt--for, pushing his chair back, he left the table; young Bertram to
his task of responding.
I saw at once that he knew his fate. I think he had that instant been
told of it by the Adjutant: and perhaps in a way it was wiser and
kinder to tell him before--so to speak--he gave himself away.
He stood for an appreciable time as if dazed, then pulling himself
together, spoke steadily, if a trifle artificially.
"Mr. Commissioner, Ladies, and Gentlemen! I thought a minute ago that I
was the last person to return thanks for our host's regrets and good
wishes. I know now that I am really the only person in the regiment who
could do it honestly; because I am the only person who can sympathise
with him thoroughly--who can, like he does, regret the regiment's
departure, and--and at the same time give it God-speed, while I--I----"
He paused, and suddenly the strenuous effort after conventional
banalities left his young face free to show its grief--almost its
anger.
"It's no use my trying to talk bosh," he broke out, and swept away by
realities: "As you know, I'd give everything not to say God-speed, but
I suppose I must."
And then a sudden remembrance seemed to come to him, he turned in swift
impulse, his face alight, leapt to the pedestal behind him, and there
he was again with that blessed battered old ball in his raised right
hand.
"And I don't think I can do it better than this does it. This----" his
voice had the notes of life's divine tragedy of hope in it--"fits us
all--fits everything!--And so," his eyes sought mine, "we thank you,
sir, for all and everything, and wish that the God of the Battle may
have mercy all round."
For a second he stood there, almost triumphant, beautiful as a god,
below him the guttering candles and disorder of the supper table, above
him the stars of heaven: then, with a light laugh, he was calling for
the band to begin and heading the hurried return to the dancing floor.
As he passed me, gallant and gay, I heard the Paris frock quote in a
consoling whisper, "They also serve who only stand and wait."
The grateful admiration of his eyes told the delicacy of her art. I
realised this again when shortly after I had an opportunity for one
word of consolation also.
"She said that, too," he replied, his voice trembling a little. "She's
been awfully good to me, you know--but so you all are--and I daresay it
is all right."
I knew that to be impossible, but I resolved to do my level best to
protect him.
Then my duties claimed me. Despite the Colonel's coolness, the party
began to drift away to preparations, their measure of responsibility
shown by the order of their going, until only a dozen or so of
lighthearted youngsters were left for another and yet another waltz,
the prime instigator of delay being, of course, young Bertram.
I never saw the lad look better. An almost reckless vitality seemed to
radiate from and invade the still scented peace of the whole garden.
I found myself trying to evade it by wandering off to the furthest,
stillest corner, where I could smoke in peace till called on finally to
say good-night--or good-morning--to my guests.
I must have fallen asleep in one of the latticed minarets, and slept
long, for when I woke a grey radiance was in the sky that showed above
the scented orange trees. Dawn was breaking, the garden held no sound
save a faint rustle as of leaves. And not a sign remained of Western
intrusion. The swiftness of Indian service had taken away as it had
brought. As I made my way to where we had danced and supped, the
immediate past seemed a dream, and I strained my eyes into the starred
shadows of the jasmine thicket half expecting to see a white veil
creeping like a snake.
What was that? I had no time to find fancy or fact--my eyes had caught
sight of something unmistakable at the foot of the marble pedestal.
It was young Bertram.
He was lying as if asleep, his cheek caressing the battered bronze ball
that he had encircled with his arms.
His face turned up to the stars showed nothing but content.
* * * * *
He must have stayed on after the others had gone, probably to think
things out--the legend of appeal must have drawn him back to the very
spot where the snake charmer's basket had been upset--like it had to
me, the fragrant peace must have brought to his weariness sleep.
For the rest. Had there really been a fourth snake? Was it true that
serpents always revenged themselves for wrong charming? Or were those
two faint blood spots on the rose leaves of young Bertram's lips ....
* * * * *
"An 'E' willmakeit--plain."
Craddock's rolling baritone mingled with a shriek of steam welcoming a
swift speck on the horizon.
With a roar and a rush it was on us, past us.
"Ef that 'ymn 'ad bin wrote these times, sir," remarked Craddock
blandly, as he turned on steam, "the h'author might 'ave put in a
H'engin. There ain't anythin' more mysterious in its goin's on--except
per'aps wimmen. I'd ruther trust for grace to the mercy o' the Lord
than to them any day."
SALT DUTY
I
"Lo! nigh on fifty years have passed since that dark night; just such a
night as this, O! Children-of-the-Master! and yet remembering the
sudden yell of death which rose upon the still air--just such an air as
this, hot and still.... Nay! fear not, Children-of-the-Master! since I,
Imân (the faithful one so named and natured), watch, as I watched
then ... and yet, I say, the hair upon my head which then grew thick and
now is bald, the down upon my skin which then was bloom and now is
stubble, starts up even as I started to my feet at that dread cry, and
catching Sonny-_baba_ in my arms fled to the safer shadows of the
garden. And the child slept...."
The voice, declamatory yet monotonous, paused as if the speaker
listened.
"It is always so with the Master-Children," it went on, tentatively,
"they sleep...."
The second and longer pause which ensued allowed soft breathings to be
heard from the darkness, even, unmistakable, and when the voice
continued something of the vainglorious tone of the _raconteur_ had
been replaced by a note of resignation.
"And wherefore not, my friends, seeing that as masters they know no
fear?"
Wherefore, indeed?
Imân Khân, whilom major-domo to many sahibs of high degree, now in his
old age factotum to the Eurasian widow and children of a conservancy
overseer, asked himself the question boldly. Yet the heart which beat
beneath the coarse white muslin coatee starched to crackle-point in the
effort to conceal the poorness of its quality, felt a vague
dissatisfaction.
In God's truth the memory of the great Mutiny still sent his old blood
shivering through his veins, and some of the tribe of black-and-tan
boys who slept around him in the darkness were surely now old enough to
thrill, helplessly responsive, to the triumphal threnody of their race?
Yet it was not so. The tale, on the contrary, was a sure
sleep-compeller; indeed, he was never able to reach his own particular
contribution to the sum total of heroism before sleep came--except in
his own dreams! _There_ he remembered, as he remembered so many things.
How to decorate a ham, for instance--though it was an abomination to
the Lord!--how to ice champagne--though that also was damnable!--when
to say "Not at home," or dismiss a guest by announcing the carriage--
though these were foreign to him, soul and body.
Out there, beyond the skimp verandah, amid the native cots set in the
dusky darkness in hopes of a breath of fresher air, old Imân's
imagination ran riot in etiquette.
And yet the faint white glimmer of the Grand Trunk Road which showed
beyond the cots was not straighter, more unswerving than the
_khânsâman's_ creed as to the correct card to play in each and every
circumstance of domestic life.
His present mistress, a worthy soul of the most doubtful Portuguese
descent, knew this to her cost. It was a relief, in fact, for her to
get away at times from his determination, for instance, to have what he
called "sikkens" for dinner. But then she did not divide her world into
the sheep who always had a savoury second course in their menu, and the
goats who did not. To him it was the crux of social position.
So, an opportunity of escape having arisen in the mortal illness of a
distant relation, she had gone off for a weeks holiday full of tears
and determination, while away, to eat as much sweet stuff as she chose,
leaving Imân Khân in charge of the quaint little bastion of the
half-ruined caravanserai in which she was allowed free quarters in
addition to her pension.
He was relieved also. He had, in truth, a profound contempt for her;
but as this was palpably the wrong game, he covered his disapproval
with an inflexible respect which allowed no deviation from duty on
either side. Yet it was a hard task to keep the household straight.
Sometimes even Imân's solid belief in custom as all-sufficing wavered,
and he half regretted having refused the offers of easier services made
him by rich natives anxious to ape the manner of the alien. But it was
only for a moment. The claims of the white blood he had served all his
life, as his forbears had before him, were paramount, and whatever his
faults, the late _E-stink Sahib_, conservancy overseer, had been
white--or nearly so! Did not his name prove it? Had not _Warm E-stink
Sahib_ (Warren Hastings) left a reputation behind him in India for all
time? Yea! he had been a real master. The name was without equal in the
land--save, perhaps, that which came from the great conqueror,
_Jullunder_ (Alexander).
Undoubtedly, _E-stink Sahib_ had been white; so it was a pity the
children took so much after their mother; more and more so, indeed,
since the baby girl born after her father's death was the darkest of
the batch. It was as if the white blood had run out in consequence of
the constant calls upon it. For Elflida Norma, the eldest girl--they
all had fine names except the black baby, whom that incompetent widow
had called Lily--was....
Ah! what was not Elflida Norma? The old man, drowsing in the darkness
after a hard day of decorum, wandered off still more dreamily at the
thought of his darling. _She_ did not sleep out on the edge of the high
road. Her sixteen years demanded other things. Ah! so many things. Yet
the Incompetent one could perceive no difference between the claims of
the real Miss-_Sahiba_--that is, _E-stink Sahib's_ own daughter by a
previous wife--and those of the girl-brat she herself had brought to
him by a previous husband, and whom she had cheerfully married off to a
black man with a sahib's hat! For this was Imân Khân's contemptuous
classification of Xavier Castello, one of those unnecessarily dark
Eurasians who even in the middle of the night are never to be seen
without the huge pith hats, which they wear, apparently, as an effort
at race distinction.
The Incompetent one was quite capable of carrying through a similar
marriage for the Miss-_Sahiba_. Horrible thought to Imân; all the more
horrible because he was powerless to provide a proper husband. He could
insist on savouries for dinner; he could say "the door is shut" to
undesirable young men; he could go so far in weddings as to provide a
_suffer_ (supper) and a wedding cake (here his wrinkles set into a
smile), but only God could produce the husband, especially here in this
mere black-man's town where sahibs lived not. Where sahibs did not even
seek a meal or a night's rest in these evil days when they were whisked
hither and thither by rail trains instead of going decently by road.
Through the darkness his dim eyes sought the opposite bastion of the
serai. In the olden days any moment might have brought someone....
But those days were past. It would need a miracle now to bring a sahib
out of a post carriage to claim accommodation there. Yea! a real
heaven-sent car must come.
Still, God was powerful. If he chose to send one, there might be a real
wedding--such a wedding as--there had been--when--he....
So, tired out, Imân was once more in his dreams decorating hams, icing
champagne, and giving himself away in the intricacies of sugar-piping.
When he woke, it was with a sense that he had somehow neglected his
duty. But no! In the hot dry darkness there was silence and sleep. Even
Lily-_baba_ had her due share of Horatio Menelaus' bed. He rose, and
crept with noiseless bare feet to peep in through the screens of
Elflida Norma's tiny scrap of a room that was tacked on to the one
decent-sized circular apartment in the bastion, like a barnacle to a
limpet. One glance, even by the dim light of the cotton wick set in a
scum of oil floating on a tumbler of water, showed him that she was no
longer where an hour or two before he had left her safe.
Without a pause he crept on across the room and looked through the door
at its opposite end, which gave on the arcaded square of the serai.
All was still. Here and there among the ruined arches a twinkling light
told of some wayfarer late come, and from the shadows a mixed bubbling
of hookahs and camels could be heard drowsily.
She was not there, however, as he had found her sometimes, listening to
a bard or wandering juggler; for she was not as the others, tame as
cows, but rather as the birds, wild and flighty. So he passed on, out
through the massive doorway, built by dead kings, and stood once more
on the white gleam of the road, listening. From far down it, nearer the
town, came the unmelodious hee-haw of a concertina played regardless of
its keys.
"Hee, hee, haw! Haw, hee, hee!"
His old ear knew the rhythm. That was the dance in which the
sahib-logue kicked and stamped and laughed. This was Julia Castello's
doing. There was a "nautch" among the black people with the sahib's
hats, and the Miss-_Sahiba_--his Miss-_Sahiba_--had been lured to it!
Once more, without a pause, the instinct as to the right thing to do
coming to him with certainty, he turned aside to his cook-room, and,
lighting a hurricane lantern, began to rummage in a battered tin box,
which, bespattered still with such labels as "Wanted on the Voyage,"
proclaimed itself a perquisite from some past services.
So, ten minutes afterwards, a starched simulacrum of what had once been
a Chief Commissioner's butler (even to a tarnished silver badge in the
orthodox headgear shaped like a big pith quoit) appeared in the
verandah of Mrs. Castello's house, and, pointing with dignity to the
glimmer of a hurricane lantern in the dusty darkness by the gate, said,
as he produced a moth-eaten cashmere opera-cloak trimmed with moulting
swansdown:
"As per previous order, the Miss-Sahiba's ayah hath appeared for her
mistress, with this slave as escort."
Elflida Norma, a dancing incarnation of pure mischief, looked round
angrily on the burst of noisy laughter which followed, and the pausing
stamp of her foot was not warranted by the polka.
"Why you laugh?" she cried, passionately. "He is my servant--he belongs
to our place."
Then, turning to the deferential figure, her tone changed, and she drew
herself up to the full of her small height.
"Nikul jao!" she said, superbly; which, being interpreted, is the
opprobrious form of "get you gone."
The old man's instinct had told him aright. There, amid that company,
the girl in the white muslin she had surreptitiously pinned into the
semblance of a ball dress, her big blue eyes matching the tight string
of big blue beads about her slender throat, showed herself apart
absolutely, despite her dark hair and 'almost sallow complexion.
"The Huzoor has forgotten the time," said Imân, imperturbably;
"it is just twelve o'clock, and _Sin-an-hella_ dances of this
description"--here he looked round at the squalid preparations for
supper with superlative scorn--"always close at midnight."
There was something so almost appalling in the answering certainty of
his tone regarding Cinderellas, that even Mrs. Castello hesitated,
looking round helplessly at her guests.
"In addition," added the old man, following up the impression,
"is not the night Saturday? and even in the great _Lat-Sahib's_ house,
where I have served, was there no nautch on Saturdays--excepting
_Sin-an-hellas_."
He yielded the last point graciously, but the concession was even more
confounding to Mrs. Castello than his previous claim. Besides, old
Imân's darkling allusion to service with a Governor-General was a
well-known danger-signal to the whole Hastings family, including
Elflida Norma, who now hesitated palpably.
"I t'ought you more wise," insinuated her partner, who had actually
laid aside his hat for the polka, "than to have such a worn-out poor
fellow to your place. Pay no heed to him, Miss 'Astin', and polk again
once more."
Elflida drew herself away from his encircling arm haughtily.
"No, thanks," she drawled, her small head, with its short curls in air.
"I am tired of polking--and he is a more better servant than your
people have in your place, anyhow."
"But Elfie!" protested Mrs. Castello.
The girl interrupted her step-sister with an odd expression in her big
blue eyes.
"It will be Sunday, as he says, Julia; besides, the princess always
goes home first from a Cinderella, you know, because----"
"Because why?" inquired Mrs. Castello, fretfully; "that will be some
bob-dash from the silly books she adores so much, Mr. Rosario."
Elflida stood for a moment smiling sweetly, as it were appraising all
things she saw, from the greasy tablecloth on the supper table to old
Imân's starched purity; from the cocoanut oil on the head of one
admirer, to the tarnished silver sign of service on the head of the
other.
"Because she was a princess, of course," she replied, demurely; and
straightway stooped her white shoulders for the yoke of cashmere and
swansdown with a dignity which froze even Mr. Rosario's remonstrance.
"Thank you," she said, loftily in the verandah, when he suggested
escort; "but my ayah and my bearer are sufficient. Good-night."
So down the pathway, inches deep in dust, she walked sedately towards
the glimmer of the lantern by the gate, followed deferentially by Imân.
But only so far; for once within the spider's web halo round the barred
light, she sprang forward with a laugh. The next instant all was dark.
Cimmerian darkness indeed to the old man as he struggled with the
moulting swansdown and moth-eaten cashmere she had flung over his head.
"Miss-_Sahiba!_ Miss-_baba_! _norty_, _norty_ girl!" he cried after
her, desperately, in his double capacity of escort and ayah. Then he
consoled himself with the reflection that it was but a bare quarter of
a mile to the serai along a straight deserted high road. Even a real
Miss-Sahiba might go so far alone, unhurt; so, after pausing a moment
from force of habit to re-light the lantern, he ambled after his charge
as fast as his old legs could carry him. Suddenly he heard a noise such
as he had never heard before close behind him. A horrid, panting noise,
and then something between a bellow and a whistle. He turned, saw a red
eye glaring at him, and the next instant the infernal monster darted
past him, whirring, snorting. In pursuit, of course, of Elflida Norma!
What tyranny was here! What defiance of custom! Saw anyone ever the
like?--on a decent metalled road--and only the ayah--God forgive him
the lie!--wanting to make all things in order?
These confused, helpless thoughts ran swifter in the old man's mind
that his legs carried his body, as he followed in pursuit of the
monster. The lantern, swinging wildly, hindered such light as there
might have been without it, but he knew the Thing was ahead of him, by
the truly infernal smell it left behind it.
And then from the darkness ahead came a curiously familiar cry, "Hut,
hut! (get out of the way). Oh, damn!"
A crash followed; then silence. A few seconds afterwards he was gazing,
helplessly bewildered, at two figures who were looking at each other
wrathfully across the white streak of road.
One he knew. It was Elflida Norma, her impromptu ball dress
metamorphosed by her race into loose white draperies out of which the
small dark head and slim throat, with its circlet of big blue beads,
rose as from clouds. The other, unknown, was that of a tall, fair young
man.
"If you had only stood still," the latter was saying angrily, "I could
have managed, but you dodged about like--like----" His eyes had taken
her in by this time, and he paused in his simile. But hers had wandered
to the monster prone in the dust; and she stepped closer to it
curiously.
"I suppose it is named a motor bicycle," she said, coolly. "I have not
seen one in our place before, only in picture books. I am glad."
There were no regrets or apologies. And even Imân Khân, when he
recovered his breath, made no inquiries as to whether the young man had
hurt himself in getting out of the Miss-Sahiba's way He simply looked
at the wheels of the bicycle and then at its stalwart young rider.
God had been kind and sent a husband in a miraculous car!
II
Imân Khân sate in the early dawn, putting such polish as never before
was put on a pair of rather large size Oxford shoes. So far all had
gone well. His own vast experience, aided by the stranger's complete
ignorance of Indian ways, had sufficed for much; and Alexander
Alexander Sahib (all the twelve Imâns be praised for such a name!) was
now comfortably asleep in the bastion opposite the widow's quarters,
under the impression that the hastily produced whisky and soda, with a
"sand beef" (sandwich) in case hunger had come on the road, the simple
but clean bedding, and briefly, all the luxuries of a night's sleep
after a somewhat severe shaking, were due to the commercial instincts
of a good old chap in charge of the usual rest-house: that being
exactly what Imân had desired as a beginning.
The sequel required thought, and, as he polished, his brain was full of
plans for the immediate future. One thing was certain, however, quite
certain. The husband God had sent in a car must not be allowed to ride
away on it before seeing more of the Miss-_Sahiba_. Arrangements must
be made, as they always had to be made in the best families. Generally
it began with a tennis party--but this, of course, was out of the
question--and perhaps the accident on the road might be taken as
an equivalent for that introduction. Then there were dances, and
"fools-food" (picnics). The one might be considered as taken also, the
others were out of season in the heats of May. There remained drives
and dinners. Both possible, but both required time; therefore time must
be had. The _chota-sahib_ must not ride away after breakfast, as he had
settled on doing, should he and the monster be found fit for the road.
Now the _chota-sahib_ seemed none the worse for his fall, as Imân, in
his capacity of valet, had had opportunities of judging. The inference,
therefore, was obvious. It must be the monster who was incapable.
Imân gave a finishing glisten to the shoes and placed them decorously
side by side, ready to be taken in when the appointed hour came for
shaving water. Then he went over and looked at the motor bicycle, which
was accommodated in the verandah. It did not pant or smell now as if it
were alive, but for all that it looked horribly healthy and strong. It
was evidently not a thing to be broken inadvertently by a casual push.
Then a thought struck him, and he ambled off to the old blacksmith, who
still lived in the serai arcade and boasted of his past trade of
mending springs, shoeing horses, and selling to travellers his own
manufactures in the way of wonderful soft iron pocket-knives with
endless blades and corkscrews warranted to draw themselves instead of
the corks!
"Ari Bhai," said Imân mildly to this worthy, "thou art a prince of
workmen, truly; but come and see something beyond thy art in iron.
Bâpri bâp! I warrant thou couldst not even guess at its inner parts."
Could he not? Tezoo, the smith, thought otherwise, and being clever as
well as voluble, hit with fair correctness on pivots, cog-wheels, and
such-like inevitables of all machinery, the result of the interview
being that Imân, armed with his kitchen chopper and a bundle of
skewers, had a subsequent _tête-à-tête_ with the monster, in which the
latter came off second best; so that when its owner, fortified by a
most magnificent breakfast (served in the verandah by reason of the
central room of that bastion having an absolutely unsafe roof), went to
overhaul his metal steed, he was fairly surprised.
"It is a verra remarkable occurrence," he said softly to himself as his
deft hands busied themselves with nuts and screws (for he was a Scotch
engineer on his way to take up an appointment as superintendent in a
canal workshop), "most remarkable. And would be a fine example to the
old ministers thesis that accident is not chance. There's just a method
in it that is absolutely uncanny."
In short, even with the smithy on the premises, of which the good old
chap in charge spoke consolingly, it was clear he could not start
before evening, if then. Not that it mattered so much, since he had
plenty of time in which to join his billet.
Thus, as he smoked his pipe, the question came at last for which the
old matchmaker had been longing.
"And who would the young lady be who smashed me up last night?"
In his reply Imân dragged in _Warm E-stink Sahib Bahadur_ and a vast
amount of extraneous matter out of his own past experiences. Regarding
the present, however, he was distinctly selective without being
actually untruthful. The late _E-stink Sahib's_ widow and children, for
instance, being also at rest in the serai, were equally under his
charge. And this being so, since there was but one public room in which
dinner could possibly be served as it should be served--here Imân made
a digression regarding the rights of the sahib-logue at large and
_E-stink Sahib's_ family in particular--it was possible that the Huzoor
might meet his fellow-lodgers and the Miss-_Sahiba_ again.
In fact, he--Imân--would find it more convenient if the meal were eaten
together and at the same time, and the mem--her absence being one of
the eliminated truths--would, he knew, fall in with any suggestion of
his; which statement again was absolutely true.
Alec Alexander, lost in the intricacies of a piston-rod, acquiesced
mechanically, though in truth the likelihood of seeing such a
remarkably pretty face again was not without its usual unconscious
charm to a young man.
This charm, however, became conscious half an hour afterwards, when
hard at work in the smithy, his coat off, his sleeves rolled up,
showing milk-white arms above his tanned wrists, he looked up from the
bit of glowing iron on the anvil and saw a large pair of blue eyes and
a large string of blue beads about an almost childish throat.
It struck him that both were as blue as the sky inarching the wide
inarched square of the old serai. It struck him also that the eyes,
anyhow, had more in common with the sky than with the house made with
hands in which he stood, even though dead kings had built it. Yes! the
whole figure did not belong somehow to its environment; to the litter
of wasted forage, the ashes of dead fires, to the desertion and neglect
of a place which, having served its purpose of a night's lodging, has
been left behind on the road. It seemed worth more than that.
"I gave you a nice toss, didn't I?" said Elflida Norma, breaking in on
his quasi-sentimental thought with a certain complacency. "If you had
got out of my way it would have been more better."
"You mean if you hadn't got in mine," he replied, grimly. "But don't
let us quarrel about that now. The mischief's done so far as I am
concerned."
The blue eyes narrowed in eager interest.
"Have you broken things inside, too?" she asked, sympathy absent, pure
curiosity present in her tone.
"No! I didn't," he said, shortly. "I'm not of the kind that breaks
easily."
She considered him calmly from head to foot. "No-o-o," she admitted,
sparingly. "I suppose not--but your arms look veree brittle, like
china--I suppose that is from being so--being so chicken-white."
"Perhaps," he said, still more shortly, and was relieved when Imân
(having from the cook-room, where he was feverishly feathering fowls in
preparation for the night's feast, detected Elflida's flagrant breach
of etiquette in having anything whatever to do with a coatless sahib)
hurried across to beguile his charge back to the paths of propriety by
reporting that Lily-_baba_ (to whom the girl was devoted) evinced a
determination to eat melons with her brothers, which he, Imân, was far
too busy to frustrate.
"You need not make such pother about big dinner to-night," she said,
viciously, when, with the absolutely accommodating Lily in her arms,
she stood watching the far less interesting process of pounding
forcemeat on a curry stone; "for I heard him tell the smith that he
would go this evening if--well, if somebody kept his temper in boiling
oil. Such a queer idea--as if anybody could!"
Old Imân's hands fell for an instant from the _munâdu_ (Maintenon)
cutlets he was preparing, for he understood the frail foundation on
which his chance of manufacturing a husband stood. Jullunder-sahib must
be making a spring, and if the oil in which it had to be
boiled---- But no! As cook, he knew something of the properties of hot
fat, and felt convinced that the spring would never be fried in time.
So all that long hot day he toiled and slaved in company with an
anatomy of a man whom he had unearthed from the city. A man who had
also in his youth served the white blood, but had never risen beyond
the scullery. A man who called him "Great Artificer," and fanned him
and the charcoal fire indiscriminately according to their needs.
And all that long hot day on the other side of the arcaded square work
went on also, so that the clang of metal on anvil or cook-room fire
rose in antagonism on the dusty sunshine which slept between them.
Dinner or no dinner? Spring or no spring? And the circling dark shadows
of the kites above in the blue sky were almost the only other signs of
life, for Elflida Norma had found sleep the easiest way of keeping
Lily-_baba_ from the melons, and the boys slept as they slept always.
But as the sun set Imân knew that fate had decided in favour of the
dinner, for Jullunder-sahib came over from the smithy with empty hands,
and found hot water in his room, and the change of white raiment he
carried in his knapsack laid out decorously on the bed.
He took the hint and dressed for dinner, even to the buttonhole of
jasmine which he found beside his hair-brush.
Elflida Norma, under similar supervision, dressed also. In fact,
everything was dressed, including the flat tin lids of the saucepans
which Imân had impressed into doing duty as side-dishes. Surrounded by
castellated walls of rice paste, supporting cannon balls of alternate
spinach and cochinealed potatoes, they really looked very fine. So did
Imân himself, starched to inconceivable stiffness of deportment. So
even did the anatomy, who, promoted for once to the dining-room,
grinned at the young man and the girl, at the Great Artificer and all
his works, with his usual indiscrimination.
And, in truth, each and all deserved grins. Yet Elflida Norma looked at
Alec Alexander, he at her, and both at the dinner table set out
marvellously with great trails of the common pumpkin vine looped with
the cheap silver tinsel every Indian bazaar provides, and felt a sudden
shyness of themselves, of each other, and the unwonted snowiness and
glitter.
"Cler or wite?" said Imân, his old hands in difficulties with two soup
plates. There was a dead silence.
"He means soup," faltered Elflida Norma desperately, wishing herself
with the boys who were being regaled with curry and rice in her room,
and thereinafter became dumb until the next course, when a sense of
duty made her supplement Imân's "fish-bar'l" with the explanation that
it was not really fish, which was not procurable, but another form of
fowl.
So, in fact, were the side dishes which followed, and in which Imân had
so far surpassed his usual self that Elflida was perforce as helpless
as her companion for all save eating them solidly in due order. The old
man, however, was too much absorbed in the due handling of "bredsarse"
with the fowl, which was at last allowed to appear under the title of
"roschikken," too much discomforted by the subsidence of his favourite
"sikken," a cheese _soufflée_, to notice silence, or the lack of it,
until, just as--the worst strain over--he was perfunctorily apologising
for the impossibility of "Hice-puddeen," a fateful cry came from the
next room and Elflida started to her feet.
"It's Lily," she began; but Imân frowned her into her seat again, and
turned to the anatomy superbly. "Go!" he said with dignity, "and bid
the ayah see to Lily-_baba_."
The result, however, was unsatisfactory, and a certain obstinacy grew
to Elflida's small face, which finally blossomed into open rebellion
and a burst of confidence.
"You see," she said, those blue eyes of hers almost blinking as she
narrowed them with earnestness, "she smells guavas, and they are more
her hobby than melons even."
The young man smiled.
"Who's Lily?" he asked; "your sister, I suppose."
"My half-sister," she replied, solemnly. "But she will cry on, you see,
if she is not let to come to my place."
"Then let her come--why not?"
"It is an evil custom," began Imân, as the order was given. He knew no
graver blame than that even for a whole Decalogue in ruins; but Elflida
Norma stamped her foot as she had stamped it in the polka, so he had to
give in and thus avoid worse exposures.
And, after all, the introduction of the dimpled brown child in a little
white night-shift, who leant shyly against Elflida's blue beads, seemed
to help the conversation. So much so that after coffee and cigarettes
had been served in the verandah, old Imân felt as if success must crown
his efforts--if only there were time! But how could there be time when
the possible husband had arranged, since the motor bicycle refused to
be mended with the appliances at his disposal, to have it conveyed by
country cart overnight to the nearest railway station, five miles off,
whither he must tramp it, he supposed? next morning, to catch the mail
train.
It was when, pleasantly, yet still carelessly, Alec Alexander was
saying good-bye to the blue eyes and the blue beads, with the brown
baby cuddled up comfortably in the girl's slender arms, that Imân, with
a sinking heart, played his last card by saying that there was no need
for the Huzoor to tramp. The Miss-_Sahiba_ and Lily-_baba_ invariably
took a carriage airing before breakfast, and could quite easily drop
the Huzoor at the railway station.
"Yes! I could drop you quite easily at that place. It would be more
better than the walk," assented Elflida Norma, with a Sphinx-like
smile. Her heart was beating faster than usual. She was beginning
to be amused with the tinsel glitter and the general pretence.
It was like playing a game. Still she slept soundly; and so
did the young engineer, and Lily-_baba_, and the boys gorged with
as-a-rule-prohibited native dainties. Even the smith slept, and the
anatomy had already reverted to reality, his transient dignity
vanishing into thin air. So that in that wide ruined serai, built by
dead kings, all were at rest save the Great Artificer, Imân, who sate
among the ruins of his dinner, satisfied, yet still conscious of
failure. Something was lacking, which once more only God could
create--only a miraculous car could bring.
In truth, if any vehicle might from outward appearance claim miraculous
powers, it was the extraordinary sort of four-wheeled dogcart which, in
the cool morning air, appeared as Imân's last card. He had, indeed, not
wandered from the truth in telling Alec Alexander that carriages were
not to be hired in that sahib-forsaken spot, and it had been only with
extreme difficulty that he had raised these four wheels of varying
colours and a body painted with festoons of grapes, all tied together
with ropes.
Still, it held the party. Imân, with Lily-_baba_ in his arms, on the
box by the driver, Elflida and the young engineer disposed on the back
seat. The horse, it is true, showed signs of never having been in
harness before, but this was not so evident to those behind, and Imân
held tight and set his teeth, knowing that success has sometimes to be
bought dearly.
Still, it was with no small measure of relief when they were close on
their destination, and the beast settled down to the two hundred yards
of collar work leading up to the small station level with the high
embankment of the permanent way, that he turned round to peep at
progress on the back seat.
Had anything happened? His heart sank at the cool, collected air with
which the possible husband took his ticket; but it rose again, when,
after saying good-bye to Lily-_baba_ and tipping the coachman, the
young man went off to the platform with Elflida, as if it were a matter
of course she should see him off. In truth, that is exactly what he did
feel concerning this distinctly pretty and rather jolly little girl
with a bad temper.
And Elflida? Her world seemed to have had a fresh start in growth, it
held greater possibilities than before, that was all.
So everything had been in vain, even Imân's sense of duty towards the
white blood he had served so long.
"Good-bye!" He could not hear the words, but he saw the young hands
meet to unclasp again, as with a whistle the mail train rushed out from
behind a dense mango clump, and the Westinghouse brakes brought a
sudden grinding rattle to the quiet morning air.
"All was over!" thought Imân sadly, as still sitting on the box with
Lily-_baba_, he watched. Surely it had not been his fault. He had done
all--only the cheese _soufflée_ had failed, and that happened sometimes
even in the house of Lât-Sahibs. Yet it was over.
It was, indeed. Almost including the miraculous car, as deprived of its
driver, who was spending part of his tip in the sweet stall, the horse,
frightened at the train, reared, bounded forward, and then, finding its
progress barred in front by a railing, swerved on its track, and came
past the station again, heading for that downward incline with the
steep banks falling away on either side.
Elflida grasped the position first, and with a cry of "Lily! Lily!" was
at the horse's head as it passed. The possible husband was not far
behind--just far enough to make the off rein as convenient to his
pursuing feet as the near one, to which she clung, half dragged,
helpless, half in wild determination to keep pace with the terrified
beast.
"Let go!" he shouted. "He'll get you down, and then--let go, I say!"
She did not answer. In truth, she had no breath for words. And,
besides, her mind was not clear enough to grasp his order, though it
grasped something else--namely, that relief from her dead weight on one
side must bring a swerve to the other. And that must not be till the
embankment was passed, or the man holding to the off rein must go
under.
"Let go!" he shouted, again and again, as he, in his turn, grasped her
purpose; but he might as well have shouted to the dead.
* * * * *
"I believe--I hope--she has fainted," said Alec Alexander, with a catch
in his voice not all due to breathlessness, as, the runaway safe held
by other captors, he stooped over the girl who lay in the dust, her
hands still clenched over a broken rein. Then he lifted her tenderly
and carried her back to the station whence the mail train, careless of
such trivialities as miraculous cart, had departed.
And if on his way he kissed the closed blue eyes and the blue beads
round the childish throat, who shall blame him?
* * * * *
Anyhow, the hot dry nights of May were not over before old Imân's voice
rose once more in declamation over the unforgettable story of the white
blood.
But this time sleep did not come to the black-and-tan tribe gathered in
the light of the floating oil wick. For the boys were watching
something they had never seen before--the icing of a wedding cake.
And so the long-deferred personal climax came at last.
"The trouble being over, the masters were masters again, and I took
Sonny-_baba_ back to his people. And wherefore not? Seeing I had eaten
of their salt all my life and they of mine. Yea! even unto wedding
cakes. Look, my sons! That is done, and I, Imân, the faithful one by
name and nature made it."
* * * * *
There was but one flaw in the old man's content on the great day; for
he had managed to get a ham cheap for the "suffer," and Mrs. Hastings,
only too glad of greater freedom in the future, had consented to his
turning his attention to the education of the young couple and
Lily-_baba_, who was to live with them. That flaw was a slight
irregularity in what he was pleased to call a "too-liver-ot" on the
said cake. Not that it really mattered. The true lover's knot itself
was there, though the hands which fashioned it were not so young and
steady as they had been when they caught up Sonny-_baba_ and carried
him to the safe shadows.
Yet, old as they were, those hands had forgotten no duty. _E-stink
Sahib's_ widow, absorbed with a friend in the recipe of a mango pickle
she meant to make on the morrow--a pickle full of forbidden turmeric
and mustard oil--had to be reminded of her _rôle_ as bride's mother
over and over again, but it was Imân who hung a horseshoe for luck on
the miraculous car--drawn this time by an old stager--Imân, who was
ready with rice, Imân, who finally ran after the departing lovers to
fling the old white shoe, in which Elflida had danced the hee-haw
polka, into their laps as they sate on the back seat, and then,
overbalancing himself in the final effort, to tumble into the dust,
where he remained blissfully uncertain as to praise or blame, murmuring
blandly, "What a custom is here!"
THE WISDOM OF OUR LORD GANESH
"The wisdom of Sri Ganêsh--the wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh."[1]
Through and through my fever-drugged brain the words came, compelling,
insistent; forcing me away from reality, forcing me back into the past.
Yet I knew perfectly where I was; I remembered distinctly that having
felt unusually tired after rather a hot day's march I had pitched the
little _tente d'abri_--which was my home during a sketching tour in
Wales--rather closer to the main road than I generally did, and had
thereinafter promptly succumbed to an unmistakable go of fever and
ague, a half-forgotten legacy left behind by many years of Indian life.
Yes, I could remember distinctly the bramble-and-nut-hidden quarry
hole, with its little inner sward of sweet sheep-bitten grass where I
had pitched the tent. I knew that if I were to call, someone of the
rumbling cart wheels, which came at intervals along the road, might
stop and seek for the caller; but I lay still. I was hard-happed round
and round with the curious content which comes as the chills and the
aches are passing into the fire flood of fever that thrills the
finger-tips and sets the brain fizzling like champagne.
"The wisdom of Sri Ganêsh--the wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh."
Why on earth should that haunt me here in Wales? on a piece, no doubt,
of Nat Gwynne's property.
Nat Gwynne! Then I knew. It was because I had seen him in the distance
that day, driving a pair of grey ponies, tandem, with a pretty young
girl beside his coarse, heavy, good looks; heavier than they had been,
though, heaven knows! refinement had never stood much in his way. And
they were to be married to-morrow! Married to Gwynne of Garthgwynne!
Couldn't anyone tell her what she was doing? Couldn't anyone save her,
as the wisdom of Sri Ganêsh had saved that other one?...
And then in a second I was gone. I was under the brassy blue
sky of India, and from the twisted tufts of marsh-grasses by the
elephant's feet came a native beater's lament--"As God sees me it is
invisible--what a tyranny is here."
"Bid Ganêsh seek," said Nat Gwynne's voice, imperatively from the
howdah from which we were both shooting. He was in a Lancer regiment
cantooned in the native State where for many years I had been
consulting engineer.
The _mahout_, seated on the big brute's neck, turned calmly. "It is
against the orders that Sri Ganêsh, King of Elephants and Lord of
Wisdom, should touch carrion even of the Huzoor's."
I looked at my old friend Mahadeo with astonishment. He and I had been
out on Ganêsh, the Rajah's finest elephant, scores of times, and again
and again the cunning old rogue's inquisitive trunk had nosed out and
up a partridge or snipe which the coolies had failed to find.
"He hath a scent like a bed of roses," old Mahadeo would say proudly,
"and as for wisdom! Doth he not hold the Huzoor even as his own
_mahout?_"
Which delicate piece of flattery was true, for old Ganêsh, pad elephant
to the bankrupt young scoundrel of a Rajah, had taken a fancy to me, as
elephants do take fancies.
So, seeing at a glance that something lay beneath the surface of the
bitter hatred in the dark face, and the wild, wicked rage of the white
one, I said, quickly. "Seek! my brother!"
Ganêsh swayed forward, his trunk curling like a snake, his wicked
little eyes alert, a faint _frou-frou_ of a blowing sound seeming to
quiver the grasses; and there, grasped softly in the prehensile end was
a dead jack snipe! As he put it deferentially and politely into my
outstretched hand I seemed to catch a contemptuous flicker in his eye,
as who would say, "What an amount of fuss about such a very little
piece of pork," as the Jew said when a thunderstorm found him eating
sausage.
But that it was _not_ a little piece of pork between those two, still
glaring at each other, was evident.
Mahadeo's usually gentle face had taken on a stony stare that held in
it something of limitless power; while Nat Gwynne's anger was almost
obscured by sheer disgust at having to keep his hands off another man's
servant.
"By God!" he cried. "It's lucky for you, you pig, that I'm not your
master--but--but I'll try to be--I'll buy this big brute when they sell
the bankrupt State up next month, and I'll buy you, curse you, and
I'll ..."
"Do hold your tongue, Gwynne," I said to him in a low voice, for his
temper was notorious, and once he lost control over himself he would
often behave like a madman. As, indeed, he had every right to be, since
the record of the Gwynnes of Garthgwynne was a black one.
Mahadeo, however, supplied the return to calm.
"The Huzoor is _mast_," he said to me, rapidly in low contemptuous
Hindustani, turning the while to sit, immovable as ever, a mere head
and trunk of a man, all else being hidden by the elephant's great
shields of ears. "He is as the beasts that perish. And Ganêsh, too,
nears his time of power--" he pointed to the great head he bestrode
where, oozing apparently from a slight hollow in the skin a few drops
of ichor showed, half hardened into amber, "so let those who would harm
him--or _his friends_ beware!"
But there was nothing of which to be beware thereinafter, for all
became peace. How hot the sun was! And the guns, too! Almost too hot to
hold. But how cool it was in the camp down in a mango-grove beside a
tank with great cane brakes stretching away into the stars under the
moonlight! And how peaceful! How one slept, and slept, and slept,
drowsed to dreamlessness by the great peace of the immovable shadows,
the greater peace of the light behind them....
Ye powers above! What was that? Even now, remembering it, all was as it
had seemed then. Shadow on light, light on shadow ... a curse, a
cry ... something young and slim fleeing, half in light, half in shadow!
Then a sudden trumpet, a rattle as of chained front feet, one little
sob....
How steadily the moonlight shone through the branches on that small
upturned face which was all Ganêsh's feet had spared.
"Who? What?" I gasped, uncomprehending, staring stupidly at Mahadeo on
his knees beside the dead girl, at Gwynne, still dressed, the buttons
on his mess jacket glittering like diamonds, his face all working with
horror and dismay. But there was no room for anything but the old man's
voice, quiet, restrained:
"She was my granddaughter, Huzoor. But a light thing. She must have
gone too near the King of Elephants, being as this slave said, near to
his time of power. What then? _It is the wisdom, of our Lord Ganêsh!
The wisdom of Sri Ganêsh!_"
The sound of his voice died away softly, and the wind carried it
further, and further, and further....
Such an odd wind! Soft, warm, with a faint perfume in it, blowing on my
hands, my face. And behind it a familiar sighing sound with the echo of
a chuckle in it....
Was it possible? I started up, my brain in a whirl. Did I, or did I not
see in the moonbeam which stole through a chink in the tent flap,
something sinuous, that curved and bent caressingly? And beyond it,
where the flap divided, was or was that not a rough image of the
Elephant Headed God of Wisdom painted in hot ochres on an elephant's
fore front? I was out of the blankets in a second, flinging back the
tent flaps with a delirious laugh. Aye! It was true! Earth and air
alike seemed blocked by a huge mass of flesh that quivered all over
with delight. Come! this was something like a fever dream! To have an
Indian Rajah's pad elephant to ride on--to go whither you would for a
fresh breeze--to cool your brain.
"_Baito_, Ganêsh! _Baito!_" I cried, giving the familiar order; but the
next instant my vaingloriousness ended in a shiver, almost of fear, as
the brute obeyed, sinking noiselessly and laying its trunk, curled
round to protect itself against injury, ready for me to mount.
Scarcely knowing what I did I caught familiarly at the big drooping
ears, I felt the trunk beneath my feet tilted gingerly to aid me, and
there I was, my head reeling madly, in the old familiar place!
But around me? Around me half Wales, bathed in broad moonlight, lay
peaceful; with, in the distance, a faint shimmer telling of the
sea--the far sea that still seemed to sound in my ears as if, indeed, I
lay upon its very shore listening to the break and burden of the waves
which came from far away--so very far away.
I think the effort must have made me relapse into unconsciousness, for
the next thing I remember is finding myself propped up by pillows in
the howdah, and hearing a familiar voice break in upon the ceaseless
fall of the waves which filled my ears.
And from the voice I gathered vaguely that it was not a dream at all.
This was indeed Ganêsh, who had been sold because of his great height
to an English showman, and this was no other than old Mahadeo, who
would not leave his charge, and had come over the black water, also,
where there was nothing good to be had save rum; rum that kept the cold
out on these chill September nights when Ganêsh had to do his marches
from town to town, since the sight of an elephant might frighten the
traffic by day. There was evidently some of that rum still in the old
man's voice as he chid Ganêsh glibly for having been restive and thrown
his unsteady _mahout_ on the road. But then had not the animal always
loved the Huzoor, even as his master? And must he not have nosed him
out as he passed, the Lord of Elephants having, as ever, a scent as of
rose gardens? Which was as well, since now the Huzoor would be able to
get a doctor-_sahib_ and medicine....
I tried to understand, but it was hard to get at anything with fever
raging in one's brain, while the rhythmic roll of the elephant's pace
as we lilted away over half Wales seemed to blend with the fall of
those waves from very far away. Once I remember asking how many couple
of snipe we had killed. After that Mahadeo furtively brought out a
bottle and gave me something fiery which seemed to do me good, though
he muttered to himself that he could but do his best--his was not the
wisdom of Sri Ganêsh.
"You--you shouldn't say that to me, you--you old fool," I
murmured, weakly. "You should say it as you said to--to--to
Gwynne-_sahib_--Gwynne-_sahib_, who is going to be married
to-morrow--don't you know? Such a pretty girl--such a very pretty
girl--such a poor, pretty girl...."
I don't know quite what I said; I am glad, indeed, not to be able to
remember, but I have a vague recollection of becoming a trifle maudlin,
and finally of pointing out, amid a cloud-like shadow of trees that lay
on the far horizon, the position--or thereabouts--of Garthgwynne,
whither the young bride was to be led the next evening.
Now, in all this, as I recount it from a blurred, fever-stricken
memory, allowance must be made for illusion. I don't know if it really
happened, I can only vouch for my belief that I actually saw and did
these things. I think now, therefore, that I fell asleep, always with
that recurring fall of distant waves in my ear, until I woke suddenly
to a loud hilarious burst of half-drunken laughter.
"Stop him! Hie! Gone away! Hello! Gwynne! Pity the bride! If you don't
go to bed there'll be no wedding day! Yoicks! Poor devil! wants to
escape the halter. Hie! You there! Best man! You're bound to bring him
up sober."
We were in the deep shadow of the famous cedar trees, and one look at
the old house beyond the lawn was enough for recognition. Yes! it was
Plas Garthgwynne, favoured of picture postcards, favoured of wild,
wicked romance and legend. It was all blazing with lights, so, despite
the waning of the moon, I could see--clustering at the door and
dispersed over the gravel sweep--the mad rush of Gwynne of
Garthgwynne's last bachelor party as it tumbled tipsily in chase of a
reeling figure that came straight towards us across the lawn to lose
itself in the opposite shadows.
And then a hard feminine voice dominated the uproar:
"Leave him alone, you fools! The night air will sober him; and if it
doesn't, there's no hurry to carry on the breed."
Something of brutal truth behind the brutal coarseness of the remark
fell like a wet blanket over the half-fuddled guests; some of them
picked themselves up moodily from the gravel, others found stability
from friends, and so they drifted in unsteadily, dominated once more by
that hard, feminine, unwomanly voice asserting that if he didn't crawl
back to burrow in a quarter-of-an-hour, she'd send the butler to look
for him.
And thereinafter came quiet; while one by one the glittering windows of
the house sank to darkness.
And yet it was not dark, after all, surely? Or was there a curious halo
of light emanating from old Mahadeo's head; a halo which distorted him
somehow, which piled his low turban into a high tiara, and made his
nose show long, so long--almost as long as the Elephant-Faced
God-of-Wisdom ... in the Indian shrines....
Ah! There he was!...
Gwynne of Garthgwynne, standing on a bit of open beyond the
shadow--behind him a grey shimmer of mere set thick with water
lilies--his legs very wide apart, his watch in his hand--it had some
electric appliance about it, and the feeble light streaming upwards
showed his face full of hard, soul-revealing lines. What a face!--the
face of a devil let loose--set free from the fetters of conventional
life.
"Two o'clock," he muttered. "Well! whats'h a--matter. Sh'upposin' am
drunk she'll have to put up--Gwynne Garthgwynne, d--mn her--my
wife--mother of Gwynne's-Garth ..."
"Forward, Sri Ganêsh!" The order came soft but swift, and we were out
of the shadows. What was it out of the shadows, also--out of the Dim
Shadows which shroud Life in the Beginning and the End, which caught me
irresistibly, making me say sharply as one who has waited long, "Come
along, Gwynne! do--there's a good fellow."
For an instant surprise seemed to struggle with satisfaction in his
drink-sodden brain. The tall, heavy figure swayed, lurched. I could see
its every detail, the very buttons on the mess jacket--worn doubtless
out of bravado this last evening of bachelorhood--shone, as they had
done that night years ago amid the shadow and shine of the mango-tôpe;
for a radiance seemed to have sprung from earth and sky in which
nothing could be hidden.
Then suddenly came his old reckless, half-insane burst of laughter.
"Come," he echoed, drunkenly, "Why--why--shno't? Whatsh' larks--chursh,
fl'rs joll'--lit'--bride--no bridegroom!--joll'--good'--larks'h, eh!
Off to Phildelp'ia in the mornin'--see th'other one--joll'--lit' one.
_Bait_, you pig, Ganêsh! _Bait!_"
It all passed like a flash of lightning. The elephant was down and up
again, and the last thing I remember was hearing Gwynne of
Garthgwynne's drunken voice say, "Hello! old Mahadeo, eh! Well! go it,
ol' man. Givs'h some of--wish-dom--Shri Ganêsh--eh--what?"
When I roused again it was dawn; pale primrose dawn over a cloudless
sea.
It was the strange wind that roused me, the soft, warm wind that passed
over my face and sought something else--and found it. Soft as a snake
the elephant's trunk found the drunken man's neck as he lay asleep,
half hanging out of the cushioned howdah, and closed on it. The sight
drove the blur from my mind, and in an instant I saw all things
clearly.
We were on the very edge of a high cliff. Below us lay the scarce
dawn-lit waters of the calm sea. But between me and that tender distant
sky, what form was this with triple crown and wise stern human eyes
looking out of an animal's face?
Wisdom itself! Wisdom come to judgment.
There was a moment's pause. I clung to the howdah's side as if turned
to stone. I seemed to know what was coming--to realise the verdict
which that ultimate wisdom must give. Then in a clarion voice the words
came:
"By the order of the Lord Ganêsh, kill."
The softness, the tenderness of the snaky coil, so sensitive that the
finest thread in God's world can scarce escape it, changed suddenly to
iron. There was no cry, no struggle. Gwynne of Garthgwynne's body swung
high in air, then, flung from it with all leviathan's strength, fell,
and fell, and fell ...
* * * * *
When the roaring of the distant sea ceased in mine ears about a
fortnight afterwards, I found that the nine days' wonder of Gwynne of
Garthgwynne's disappearance on his wedding night had died down. He had
rushed out rollicking drunk--that all knew. He had not returned. The
butler sent out to seek for him had sought other seekers, but all in
vain. They were still dragging the mere for him, but the flood gates of
the river (of which it was a backwater) had been open that night, and
the body might have drifted out to sea. So there had been no wedding,
and a distant heir, barely related to the old stock, was ready to take
possession so soon as doubt was over. As for me, the early postman,
attracted by my moaning, had found me half-in and half-out of my blankets
in the _tente d'abri_ behind the bramble screen of the quarry.
Was it then all a dream? Even if it were not ...
Was it not the wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh?
I decided, at last, to say nothing about that dream of a marvellous
moonlight ride on an elephant over half Wales. Twinges of conscience
assailed me at times, but they were laid to rest for ever about
Christmas-tide, when, going through a small town in the Midlands, I was
met, in passing a new cottage hospital on its environs, by a glad cry--
"The very man I want! I've got a poor soul here who won't die. He ought
really to have been at peace two days ago--but he goes on and on. You
see, he's an Indian or something, and we can't speak the lingo--you
can, I expect?"
I followed the doctor, with whom I had a slight acquaintance, into the
ward, with a foreboding at my heart. I knew it was old Mahadeo, and
that, indeed, he wanted me. And it was. He lay tucked up between clean
sheets on an English bed with two English hospital nurses fadding about
him, speechless, gasping, at the very point and spit of death, yet
waiting--waiting ...
I knew what he wanted, and without a word, his dark eyes following me
in dim gladness, I threw back the clothes and got a firm grip of the
sheet at his head. He should at least die as a Hindu should die. "Now,
doctor!" I said, "if you'll take the feet we will let him find freedom
outside."
A nurse started forward. "But the case is pneumonia--double
pneumonia----"
The doctor hesitated; they always are in the hands of the nurses.
"Look here, Jones," I cried, sharply. "This man doesn't want clinical
thermometers, and draw-sheets, and caps. He wants freedom. He wants to
die as his religion tells him he must die, on Mother Earth--aye--even
if her bosom is white with snow."
And it was, for it was Christmas-tide.
So we lifted him out, the doctor and I, and laid him down on Heaven's
white quilt. He just rolled over, face down, into the cool pillow.
"_Râm-Râm--Sita-Râm_," I whispered, kneeling beside him to give the
last dying benediction of his race. Such a quaint one! Only the name of
what to it, is superman and superwoman. A last appeal to the higher
instincts of humanity.
There was one little sob. I thought I heard the beginning of the old
refrain:
"The wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh----" Then he had found freedom.
"You seem to know their ways, sir," said a horsey-looking man who had
come in with us and who had evidently something to do with the show.
"So, if you could give us a 'elp with this pore fellar's beast, I'd be
obliged. Hasn't touched food this ten days--never since the old man
took worse, and a elephant, sir, is a dead loss to a show. The master
lef' 'im here with me, but I'm blowed if I can do nothing with him."
I found Ganêsh happier than his master, for, no place being large
enough for him, he lay in the open; but they had stretched a tarpaulin
over him like a rick-cover, as a protection.
A glance told me he was far gone, though he lay crouched, not prone;
his trunk--marvellous agent for good or ill--stretched out before him
beyond shelter into the snow.
As I came up to him, I fancied I saw a flicker in his eyes, those eyes
so small, so full of wisdom. Then I laid in front of him the old man's
turban, ragged, worn, which I had begged of the prim nurses. In a
second the whole, huge, inert mass of flesh became instinct with life.
He rose to his feet with incredible swiftness, and softly encircling
the old ragged pugree, raised it gently and placed it in the master's
seat. For a moment I doubted what would come next; but the instinct
which is held in leviathan's small brain is great. He knew by some
mysterious art that the master was dead, that the human mind which had
been his guide was gone.
He took one step forward, threw up his trunk, and the echoes of the
surrounding houses cracked with the roaring bellow of his trumpet as he
swayed sideways and fell dead.
That was all the little smug provincial English town ever knew of the
"Wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh."
THE SON OF A KING
I
"Barring my pay," he said, ruefully, "I haven't a coin in the world."
And for the moment, newly accepted lover as he was, his eyes actually
left hers and wandered away to the reddening yellow of the sunset with
a certain resentment at the limitations of his world.
"Father has plenty!" she put in joyously. And for the moment her hand
actually touched his in a new-born sense of appropriation and right of
re-assurance which made her blush faintly. It also made his eyes return
to hers, whereat she blushed furiously, and then tried to cover her
confusion by a jest. "Well! he has. Hasn't he the best collection of
coins in India?"
"He wouldn't part with one of them, though, for love or money. And I
doubt his parting with you--though I could pay a lot--in love."
He had both her hands now, and the very newness of the position made
her fence with the emotion it aroused.
"He parted with duplicates."
"But you aren't one--there isn't anyone like you in the wide, wide
world. And I'm glad you're not. I don't want anyone else to be as lucky
as I am."
She retreated still further from realities into jesting. "Then
he exchanges quite often, so, if you only set yourself to find
something----" She broke off, and her face lit up. "Oh, Jim! I have
such a delightful idea! You shall find the gold coin--you know the one
I mean--with the date that is to settle, or unsettle, half the history
of the world! Do you know, I really believe, if you helped him to
confound all those German wiseacres, that father would be quite willing
to exchange----"
"His daughter for the ducat! Perhaps. But, unfortunately--and quite
between ourselves--I have my doubts about the existence of that coin.
Or if it does exist it is hopelessly hidden away for ever and ever and
aye, like that blessed old buried city of his that we have all been
hunting after this month past in the wilderness. I don't wish to be
disrespectful to your father, Queenie, but I believe he dreamt of
it--that is to say, if it didn't dream of him--one never knows which
comes first----"
He paused, arrested in the egoism, the absolute individualism of love
by the mystery of the collective life which was part even of that love,
and once more his eyes wandered to the sun setting.
The sky had darkened on the horizon as the dust haze shadowed into
purple, so that the distant edge of the low sand-hills, losing definite
outline, seemed almost level. Yet far and near, from the feet of the
lovers as they sat close together to that uncertain ending of their
visible world, not a straight line was to be seen. Everything showed in
curves--curves that told their unflinching tale of unseen circlings.
The wrinkled ripples left by the last wind upon the sea of sand around
them waved over the endless undulations of the desert, the sparse
tussocks of coarse grass fell in fountains from their own centres, the
stunted thorn-bushes were coiled and twisted on themselves like tangled
skeins without a clue, the faint tracks of the sand-rats and the
partridges wound snake-like in every direction, and even the footprints
which had brought the two lovers in their present resting-place held
the same hint of reference to unseen continuity, for, absorbed in
Love's new world, they had wandered on aimlessly unheeding of the old
one at their feet.
The result stared them in the face, now, in a firm yet undecided trail
that was by far the most salient feature in the indefinite landscape.
Jim Forrester laughed as he directed her attention to it.
"We seem to have gone round and round on our tracks; so the tents, and
your respected father and civilisation generally must be--well! exactly
where I would have sworn they were not. But that just bears out what I
was saying. For all we know the whole thing may be a peculiarly vicious
circle! The world may be going back when we think it is going forward,
and all the fine new things we think we find, may only he ourselves
again. You and I, and the buried city and the gold coin--everything
that we dream of, or that dreams of us, may only be part of the hidden
circle which belongs to the curve of a life which has no straight
lines--My God! take care--what the devil is that?"
That, if anything, _was_ a straight line--straight as an arrow. And an
arrow it was, still vibrating in the soft sand at their very feet. Jim
Forrester stood up angrily and looked round for the archer who had
drawn his bow at such an unpleasantly close venture. But no one was
visible, so he stooped down and drew the arrow out of the sand. He had
seen its like, or almost its like, before in those wild central tracts
of sandy desert where the wandering tribes of goatherds still cling to
the weapons of a past age. His companion, however, had not, and she
bent to examine it curiously. The attitude made the fair coils of her
hair, which were plaited round her head, look more than ever like a
heavy gold crown.
"It takes one back to another world altogether," she said, watching him
as he balanced it critically to appraise the perfection of its poise.
"To a world where it was made, perhaps--for it looks old, doesn't it! I
wonder who----"
She paused, becoming conscious that someone was standing behind her.
Jim Forrester became conscious of the fact also, and showed it in such
an aggressive way that she exclaimed hastily:
"Don't be angry with him, please. It must have been quite a chance--he
couldn't have known we were here."
Even without the plea it would have been difficult for the young
Englishman to refuse the chance of explanation to the figure which had
appeared so unexpectedly. For, though in all outward accessories it was
only that of a wandering goatherd, there was a calm dignity about it
which claimed consideration. The fillet which bound the hair,
sun-ripened to a rich brown on its waves and curls, was only a knotted
bit of goats'-hair string, but the head it encircled had a youthful
buoyancy such as the Greek sculptors gave to the young Apollo, a
resemblance enhanced by the statuesque folds of the rough goats'-hair
blanketing which was sparsely draped over the bare, sinewy yet
fine-drawn frame.
The face, however, was faintly aquiline, and the eyes, deep set between
prominent brow and cheek bone, had the mingled fire and softness which
in India so often redeems an otherwise commonplace countenance.
"I was stalking bustard, Huzoor," said the goatherd frankly, with a
flash of very white teeth, "and being face down on the sand yonder
behind the grasses saw nothing till the Presences stood up, but a glint
of the sun on something."
He spoke to the man, but his eyes were on the girl's golden crown of
hair.
Jim Forrester suddenly broke the arrow across his knee and threw the
fragments from him into the sand ripples.
"Hand me over the bow, too," he said, peremptorily, then paused.
"Hullo! Where the deuce did you get that--it is very old--the oldest
I've seen--with a looped string, too?" he added, handling it curiously.
The goatherd smiled. "The Presence is welcome to keep it if he likes. I
can get plenty more in the old city."
Once again, in speaking to the man, his eyes, askance, were on the
girl.
She started. "In the old city," she echoed, "Jim! do you hear
that--then you know where the old city is?"
The goatherd almost laughed. "Wherefore not, malika sahiba
(queen-lady). Have I not lived in it always?"
"Lived in it! Then where is it?"
He swept a bronze hand in a circle which clipped her and him and the
distant horizon.
"Here, queen-lady."
"Here," echoed Jim Forrester, incredulously; "but there are absolutely
no signs of a city here."
"Plenty, Huzoor!" replied the goatherd, "if the Protector of the Poor
will only use his eyes. Look yonder, how the ground rises to meet the
curve of the sky; yonder, sahib, where the sunset red dyes deepest."
The young Englishman looked and frowned, but the girl gave a quick
exclamation, and laid a hasty, surprised touch on her lover's arm. "He
is right, Jim," she said; "why didn't we notice it before? It stands
out quite clear--an even rise all round centring on the unseen sun. How
very curious! Ask him his name, Jim, and all that, so that father may
be able to get hold of him. Fancy if we find the buried city--it would
be as good almost as the gold coin, though somehow it makes me feel
creepy." She gave a faint shiver as she spoke.
"The queen-lady should not remain in the wilderness when the sun has
set," came in swift warning from the goatherd; "there is a fever fiend
lurks in it and brings strange dreams."
Something almost of familiarity and command in the liquid yet vibrant
voice made Jim Forrester frown again and say, shortly, "Yes; we must
get back; it grows quite cold."
The girl looked half bewildered first to one and then to the other of
the two tall figures that stood between her and the fast-fading light,
against which she still saw clearly that faint swelling domed blue
shadow, as of some other world forcing its way through the crust of the
visible one.
So she stood silent, vaguely disturbed while the few questions
necessary to identify the man who answered them were asked.
She did not speak, indeed, until with faces set on the right path for
their camp and civilisation generally, they paused on the top of the
first sand-rippled wave to look back. The shadowy dome was still there,
swelling towards the vanished sun, and from its side the figure of the
young goatherd rose into the darkening dust haze. He was calling to his
flock, and the words of his old-time chant were clearly audible:
"O, seekers for Life's meat,
Your course is run!
Come home with weary feet,
Rest is so sweet.
What though one day be done?--
Another has begun.
The flock, the fold are one,
Where long years meet!"
"I hope he told us his real name!" she said, suddenly.
II
"My dear child, all your geese are swans--and so were your poor
mother's before you," said her father. And then his eyes grew dreamy,
perhaps over the intricacies of some new coins he was classifying;
though, in truth, the memory of the young wife who had left him alone
with a week-old baby in the days of his youth had somehow come harder
to him during the last few happier, more home-like years since his
daughter had returned to take her mother's place as mistress of the
house; for the girl was very like the dead woman.
She had brought her father his afternoon cup of tea to the
office-tent, cleared for that brief recess of the cloud of clerks and
witnesses, who through the wide canvas-wings, set open to let in the
air, could be seen huddled in groups among the sparse shadows of the
stunted kikar trees amid which the camp was pitched. They could be
heard also, since in the limited leisure at their disposal they were
hubble-hubbling away at their hookahs conscientiously; the noise in its
rhythmic, intermittent insistency seemed like a distant snore from the
sleepy desert of sand that stretched away to the horizon on all sides.
"Of course," he went on, "you could hardly be expected to know--though
really, my dear, you have all your mother's quickness of perception
regarding people and places--but the mere fact of that goatherd fellow
giving his name as Khesroo, and admitting he was low-caste, should have
made you doubt his assertion. I confess I had little hope, for such
knowledge as he professed to have is generally in the keeping of the
priesthood only."
"But Jim was there--I mean Mr. Forrester," she began. Her father
coughed uneasily.
"Because I call my personal assistant, whom I have known as a child,
Jim, that is no reason, my dear Queenie, why you should contract the
habit. I don't think your poor mother would have liked it. Besides,
though he is an able young man--very much so, indeed, and when he
grows older will make an excellent officer--Mr. Forrester--ahem!"
(he made a violent effort over the name) "has no genius for
antiquities. He utterly fails, for instance, to realise the
far-reaching importance--for it would, of course, alter the whole
chronology of the Græco-Bactrian era--of my contention concerning
what Hausmann and the German school generally venture to designate a
post-Vicramaditya. Yet some day, I feel sure, the gold coin of which
Kapala gives so exact a description in B.C. 200, with the date under
the legend and a double profile on the obverse, will turn up, and then
the point will be settled, even if I do not live to see it."
He was fairly off on his hobby and had risen to pace the tent, his
hands behind his back. Many a time and oft she had listened to him
patiently, almost eagerly, for the story of India's golden age always
fired her imagination, but to-day she was thinking of other things--of
her engagement for one, which she must break to him sooner or later. So
she went up to him and tucked her arm into his coaxingly.
"You may, father. It might be found any day. Do you know, I believe you
would give almost anything--even your daughter--for that ducat.
Wouldn't you?"
Absolute jest as it was, her voice trembled over the trivial words, as
voices often do unconsciously when Fate means to turn them to her own
purposes.
He smiled and patted her hand. "Undoubtedly, I would, my dear. But,
nice as you are, no one is likely to offer me that exchange. To begin
with, the coin, as a simple unique, would be worth a fortune, and then
there is the fame. Think of it! Half the philologists, most of the
historians, and all those German fellows routed on their own ground!"
"Who knows?" she said, and then a frown dimmed the amusement in her
eyes. "Though I can't understand," she added, "why that man Khesroo
denied--as you say he did--having met Jim--I mean, us--yesterday. He
can't be the wrong man, can he?"
"Mr. Forrester thinks he is not. But you can see for yourself," replied
her father, returning to his tea and his treasures, "for he is still
over in the orderlies' tent. They had such trouble hunting him out of
the jungles and persuading him to come here that they said they must
keep him overnight, anyhow, in case he was wanted."
An hour or so afterwards, therefore, a yellow-legged constable escorted
the goatherd who had answered to the name of Khesroo into the verandah
of the Miss-Sahiba's drawing-room tent. It, also, was set wide to the
cool of the desert evening, and its easy-chairs and low, flower-decked
tables strewn with books and magazines struck a curiously dissonant
note from that sounded by the wilderness of sandy waste which on all
sides hemmed in the little square of white-winged camp with a certain
hungry emptiness.
"He is the man, Jim," said the girl, in an undertone (for her father
had come over from office and was seated within, reading the daily
papers which the camel-post had just brought). "And yet--he looks
different somehow--and so ill, too."
He did look ill, with the languid yet harassed air which follows on
malarial fever. The buoyancy of his carriage was replaced by an almost
dejected air. Yet it was unmistakably the goatherd they had met the
evening before, who, in obedience to a sign, squatted down midway, as
it were, between the culture inside the tent and the savagery without
it.
"You look as if you had been having fever--have you?" asked the girl
abruptly, for her years of authority had made her knowledgeable in such
things.
"The malika sahiba says right," replied Khesroo, indifferently. "I have
had it much--this long while back."
"And you had it yesterday or the day before?"
"It was yesterday. I was put past by it all day. And yet----" here a
vague perplexity came to the dulled yet anxious face as he looked first
at the girl, then apologetically at Jim Forrester. "What the Presence
said about meeting me is perhaps right after all. Yes! it is right. I
did see the Huzoor. I have remembered from the graciousness of the
queen-lady and the gold crown of her hair."
The young Englishman frowned angrily. "You work miracles in memory, my
dear Queenie," he said, and there was quite an aggrieved tone in his
voice as he turned shortly on the speaker. "Why on earth didn't you
tell the truth before, then? And the old city? I suppose you remember
all about that, too?"
"The old city," echoed Khesroo, doubtfully. "No, Huzoor! What should I
know about it beyond what all know--that there was a city, and that it
is lost? Such as I know only what the wise tell them----" he paused,
and even to his deprecation came a half-resigned self-assertion,
"And yet I had more chance than most, seeing that my mother was
twice-born."
"She was, was she?" put in his hearer, and then looked round towards
his chief. "Do you hear that, sir? His mother was a Brahmani--that may
account for his profile, which you said this morning puzzled you in a
low-caste man."
"I said it was Scythic in type, and so it is," was the answer, as the
speaker laid down his paper and came forward for further inspection.
"So your mother was twice-born," he continued, addressing the goatherd;
"a child-widow, I suppose?"
Khesroo stretched his hand out, the fingers wide-spread in a dignified
assent, which suited him better than his former almost cringing
humility.
"Huzoor, yes! Her people, however, did not find her till I was nigh
six; but after that, of course, I was alone."
A hush fell on the group, for--to those three listeners who understood
them--the simple words told of a common enough tragedy in India; of a
life denied all natural outlet, of unworthy love, of outraged pride of
race followed by sure, if slow, revenge.
"And your father--who was he?"
Kresroo shook his head. "I had no one but my mother, Huzoor."
There was another hush, on which the girl's voice rose clear with a
curious thrill in it.
"And she was very beautiful, was she not?"
"Her son is a good-looking fellow, at any rate," remarked Jim
Forrester, coolly, and moving away, he took up the newspaper, conscious
of a certain irritation, and began to read the latest report of
wireless telegraphy with the unsuspicious and unquestioning assent
which we of these latter days reserve for the marvels of matter only.
Her father having gone back to his papers also, the girl and the
goatherd were left alone midway between civilisation and savagery.
Huddled in his coarse blanketing, his bare arms crossed over his bare
knees, there was nothing distinctive or unusual in Khesroo's figure,
behind which the background of shadowy desert was fast fading into
shadowy sky, except the haggardness of the aquiline face, the
hollowness of the dark eyes. These struck her, and she stretched out
her hand to feel his.
"Have you fever now? No, you are quite cool."
He shivered slightly at her touch, and his eyes, passing hers, seemed
to rest on the plaits of her hair.
"No, Huzoor," he replied, "it is a thief fever--it is hard to catch."
She smiled. "I think quinine will manage it."
He shook his head. "Nothing catches that which robs us of life at its
own time. It will leave me none some day." He spoke unconcernedly, as
if the fact were beyond question.
"Then why do you wear that amulet if it is of no use?" she said,
pointing to the little leathern bag, such as the wild tribes use for
the carrying of charms, which was tied round his arm.
Khesroo shook his head again, but smiled this time, and the flash of
his white teeth must have removed any doubt of his identity, had such
doubt existed.
"The queen-lady mistakes," he said. "It does not contain a charm. It is
my _photongrar_."
"Your what?" she echoed, uncomprehending.
"_Photongrar_. The picture, Huzoor, that the sun holds always of all
things it has ever seen in the world. It showed this to a memsahiba
long ago when I was little, and she showed it to my mother."
"You mean your photograph?"
"Huzoor, yes! Perhaps the queen-lady might care to see it, since it is
like my mother as she was--_before they found her!_"
Perhaps it was the thought of what the poor woman must have been like
_after_ that finding which made the English girl feel a vague
oppression as she took the tight roll of paper that Khesroo unfolded
from a piece of red rag.
"I was five, Huzoor," he said simply, "and my mother loved me much."
Small wonder, was the girl's first thought as she looked at the sedate,
yet childish face, half-concealed by the high turban, which had
evidently been borrowed for the occasion, at the quaint dignity of the
childish figure huddled into finery too large for it, and holding a
flower in its hand as if it had been a sceptre. But as she looked, a
startled expression came over her face; she stood up and hurried to her
father, with appeal in her voice.
"Oh, father! do look here! How very curious! This photograph of Khesroo
when he was a child--I think mother must have taken it, for I am almost
sure there is one like it in her diary--in the volume you gave me to
read the other day, because we were camping through the same country.
Stay! I'll fetch it----"
She was back in a moment with an unclasped book in her hand, and
fluttered hastily through pages and sketches, almost to the end.
"There!" she cried, suddenly, "I was sure of it!"
Her father laid the one photograph beside the other, and Jim Forrester,
looking over his shoulder curiously, compared them also. They were
identical. But underneath the one pasted into the book a woman's hand
had written:
"_The Son of a King!_"
The title fitted the picture, and reminded the girl of something in
Khesroo which had struck her yesterday and which was absent to-day. She
turned over the page, but beyond it all was blank. Those words were the
last in the diary.
"I think I remember something about it now, my dear," said her
father, taking his hand away from the book gently; "it may have been
the last she took, for I was camping round here as assistant just
before--before you were born. And she was always taking children and
giving pictures to the mothers; not that I remember that particular
one--you see it must be fifteen years ago--at least."
"Nearer five-and-twenty, dear," she said, softly, and as she realised
the impotence of what the world counts as time to touch the smallest
thing that once has been, the utter irrelevance of days and weeks and
years in connection with a single thought, the photographs before her
grew dim to her eyes, the fine feminine writing with its verdict, "The
Son of a King," became invisible.
So through her tears she saw only--blurred and indistinct--the
wondering face of Khesroo the goatherd.
"Look!" she said, in sudden impulse. "The sun must have held two
pictures of you."
He stared at the duplicate stupidly. "I did not steal it," he began,
uneasily.
"Of course you didn't," she replied, smiling now. "It was my mother who
took the picture, and gave it to yours--she was the mem-sahiba you
spoke of--perhaps you remember her?"
A look almost of relief came to the goatherd's haggard, anxious face.
"Yes! Perhaps your slave remembers, and that is why he thought he
recollected the graciousness of the queen-lady and the gold crown of
her hair. That will be it, and your slave did not lie to the Huzoor."
He looked apologetically towards the young Englishman; but the latter
had once more an aggrieved tone in his voice as he said shortly in
English:
"Whether he did or did not doesn't much matter. There isn't anything to
be got out of him apparently, so perhaps you had better tell the
orderly to take him back to the tent and see that he takes the quinine
you send--as I suppose you will."
III
"I meant to tell him yesterday, Jim," said the girl, in an undertone,
glancing with almost maternal solicitude at her father, who was writing
within, his grey, somewhat bald head shining out in the light of the
lamp by which he was working, against the intense shadowy darkness of
the tent walls, "but that disappointment about the lost city, wasn't,
so to say, propitious. And to-day there was that letter from Hausmann
about the coin somebody has discovered, which has quite upset him. Poor
father," she added, turning to her lover again, "it will be hard on
him. Did you notice how he said it was but fifteen years ..."
She broke off and looked out into the night. The stars were showing
overhead through the fine fret of the kikar trees, though the horizon
still held a hint of the day that was dead. Against this paler
background she fancied she could see--itself a shadow, yet half hidden
by shadow--that curving dome as of a new world forcing its way through
the crust of the old, or an old one through the new.
"It was odd about those photographs, wasn't it?" she said,
irrelevantly. "He must be five years older than I am."
"His age is honoured by the comparison."
"My dear Jim," she interrupted, opening her eyes, "this unfortunate
goatherd seems----"
"I said he was fortunate, I think. But I admit hating things I don't
quite understand."
"Then you must hate me--now don't be angry," she added: "I mean no
blame. I very often don't understand myself."
"I know that--and that is why I want this business settled and
clear--you--you seem so far off sometimes."
There was a passion in his voice; he stretched his hands out to her as
she stood apart, her filmy dinner dress looking ghostly and elusive
seen half in the dark, half by the feeble light from within the tent.
She stretched out her hands also, but there was all the world between
his almost pathetic appeal and her almost amused repulse.
"You must make haste and find the ducat, Jim. I feel sure that without
it--and especially in his present mood--father will never consent----"
He certainly did not seem in a consenting frame of mind as he came out
to them with the offending letter from Hausmann in his hand.
"I've answered it," he said, sternly, "but as the man is an ass, he
will most likely miss the point, which is, of course, Kapala's
description of this coin. He says distinctly that it has one profile
superimposed on another with the legend beneath, and the date below the
flower on the obverse. Really, child, I think I will get you to figure
it for me, since Hausmann seems unable to understand words."
"You could use the handsome goatherd as a model, you know," remarked
Jim Forrester, vaguely surprised at his own irritation; "your father
said his features were Scythic."
"Yes!" assented the numismatist, abstractedly, as he tried to re-read
part of the offending missive by the distant light of the lamp; "rather
an uncommon type in India, nowadays, though one sees it elsewhere.
Queenie has it partly--your mother had Russian blood in her, you know."
"Perhaps that is why I feel so interested in Khesroo," said the girl,
looking coldly askance at her lover.
"Oh, by the way," put in her father, breaking in on his own indignation
and the silence which ensued between those two who loved each other--a
silence which both felt to be at once incomprehensible yet inevitable,
intolerable yet in a way rascinating--"that reminds me. The orderlies
reported he was bad with fever to-night. Send him over some more
quinine."
"I'll take it, if you like," said Jim Forrester, faintly penitent.
She looked at the two men with disdainful tolerance. "I will see him
first. One never knows what these people call fever--it may be
pneumonia."
She moved off as she spoke, into the night, meaning to cross over
towards the orderlies' tent, then paused to glance back at the
figure--which followed. "Are you coming, too?" she said, curtly. "I can
manage all right."
"Of course I am coming!" replied Jim Forrester. "It is pitch dark,
to begin with, and I can at least help you to find your patient. I
think you had better keep outside the camp, so as to avoid the
tent-ropes--it isn't any longer, really."
It was, if anything, shorter, but it brought them instantly into the
grip, as it were, of the desert, which crept hungrily upon the camp on
all sides; so that, ere they had gone five steps beyond the canvas
wings of the tent, they seemed as much alone, as far from conventional
twentieth-century life, as they had been two days before, when they
first sat together as betrothed lovers in the sunset of a world of
curves telling the tale of eternal, of unseen circlings. Even so much
of Life's secret was invisible now. All they saw was a darkness they
knew to be wilderness, a dim outline of themselves, close together,
hand in hand. For with the knowledge that they were alone--perhaps with
the memory of the wilderness--they had clasped hands instinctively, and
for the time the sense of stress and strain had passed.
It returned again, however, with curious vividness, as, right in their
path, a shadow, dim as their own, showed suddenly.
She knew who it was instinctively before it spoke.
"I thought you had fever," she said. "Why are you here?"
"I have been waiting the graciousness of the queen-lady," came the
reply, and the voice was buoyant with joyous vitality. "I have to tell
her my dreams--the fever always brings dreams, and I remember now! Yea!
I remember all things from the beginning. So, if she will come, I will
show her the lost city where we lived, and she will dream the dream
also."
Dimly, in the darkness, she fancied she could see the shining of his
eyes, see his beckoning hand. What her lover saw was a movement of the
shadow towards the wilderness: what he felt was a faint increase in the
distance between his hand and hers which made him claim it again.
"Queenie!" he cried, "what are you thinking of? You can't possibly go
now. The man is delirious with fever--surely you hear that in his
voice. You had better come back to the tent and let me send someone to
take him into shelter and look after him."
For an instant no one spoke, and then it seemed almost a bodiless voice
from the desert which broke the silence, for in his desire to detain
her, Jim Forrester had drawn the girl back a pace or two, so that the
darkness lay deeper between their two shadows and that third one nearer
the wilderness.
"Let the queen-lady decide for herself. If she comes, I will show her
all forgotten things--the golden crown that is not plaited hair, the
golden coin that was made for the lovers----"
"Jim," she whispered, almost fiercely, "do you hear? It is the gold
coin--it is waiting to be found. I must go----"
"This is pure folly," protested the young Englishman. "If anyone has to
go, I will, of course. But what hurry is there? Why not wait till
to-morrow--now, do be reasonable, Queenie, and consider----"
She ceased trying to release her hand, and when she spoke again it was
in a natural tone.
"Yes. I forgot that. Khesroo, I will come with you to-morrow. It will
be easier by daylight. Go back to the orderlies' tent now, and I will
send you over some more medicine, and when the fever has gone----"
"The dreams will have gone, too," came the voice out of the night; but
it, also, was more natural, more like that of Khesroo the goatherd. "I
shall forget again, and then the gold coin that was struck for her and
her lover----"
"For her and her lover," echoed the girl, softly. "Did you hear, Jim? I
must go and get it for you."
"Long--long ago----" came the voice again.
She echoed the words almost inaudibly this time, and Jim Forrester drew
her closer as he said sharply: "If anyone goes, I will; but I don't
see----"
The voice interrupted him. "But the queen-lady sees. She is like her
mother; she sees pictures in the sun. Of course, the Huzoor can come;
but if the queen-lady really wants this thing--if she believes--if she
trusts----"
"Let me go, Jim! let me go!"
"You shall not," he cried, seizing her round the waist in swift
antagonism to some unseen influence, in sudden consciousness of
conflict.
And so to both him and her in the darkness and stillness of the desert,
within a few steps only of quiet, comfortable, commonplace
civilisation, came like a whirlwind a perfect tumult of bewildering
emotions, and all the deathless forces which never slumber or sleep in
their work of moulding the soul of man, leapt from silence into speech.
Love, jealousy, hatred, resolve, high courage--all these seemed to
sweep through their every fibre of mind and body, leaving them
breathless, wondering, uncertain if they were awake or dreaming, if
they were real or mere shadows of a reality which Time cannot touch or
alter. For an instant only they were conscious of all this--but the
instant might have been an hour in its suggestion of infinite
experience.
Then Time claimed them once more, time and trivialities and
commonsense, so that ten minutes afterwards, Jim Forrester, having made
his preparations for a tramp into the desert, was stooping to say
good-night to his betrothed and to assure her of his speedy return. The
moon would rise in half-an-hour, the distance to the place where they
had first met Khesroo could not be over three miles, he would be back
by midnight.
Meanwhile, she could tell her father he had turned in, but if she chose
herself to sit up--well ...
As their lips met lingeringly, a little breeze that had wandered from
the desert shifted a ripple or two on the sand-waves about their feet,
and died away like a sigh in the fine fret of the kikar trees above the
unseen tents.
IV
It was an hour before dawn.
The desert itself could scarcely have been stiller than the camp. In
the white moonlight the white tents looked like some shrouded city of
the dead, forgotten yet unburied; for, here and there, some out in the
moonlit open, other flecked with the fine shadow of the kikar trees,
lay corpse-like figures swathed in sheets, as if waiting for their
graves. There was no sound, no sign of life, not even where the
moonlight, slanting through the still, wide-set wings of the
drawing-room tent, showed the folds of a woman's dress, the daintiness
of a high-heeled shoe.
The rest of the figure was in shadow, though the light, in its last
effort against the darkness of the tent, claimed the pages of the open
book which lay on the sleeping girl's lap, and turned one of them into
a silver framing for the photograph of a child. So vivid was the light
that even the fine feminine writing beneath it showed in the dead
woman's verdict:
"_The Son of a King!_"
For the girl had been pondering over the strange chance which had
brought her, in her turn, within the influence of this nameless
kingship when, as she waited for her lover's return, she had fallen
asleep in her chair. And yet, as she had sat there, thinking, watching,
she had felt very wide awake indeed. Not with anxiety, however; that
had passed. In fact, as she followed in her mind what had gone before
Jim Forrester's quite prosaic start to walk three or four miles into
the wilderness on a moonlight night to be shown the bearings of a
buried city and possibly to be given proof positive that there were
ruins beneath the sand, she had been in grave doubt as to what had
actually occurred. Had there been conflict? Had love and jealousy and
hatred and resolve risen up and claimed them all? Surely not. Why,
indeed, should it be so? Though, doubtless, in her, in her lover, in
the goatherd, there was something held, as it were, in common, yet
which had struggled to be individual, separate.
And this had been most marked between the young Englishman and the
goatherd. Unaccountable as it was, she felt that in some mysterious
fundamental mind of hers these two were associated indissolubly--that
they stood towards her on the same plane. Nay, more! that it was the
consciousness of this which kept her calm, which overbore the
possibility of future danger, the memory of past conflict. What harm
could happen to the Son of a King or with the Son of a King?
The phrase had been on her lips as she fell asleep. It was on them as
she awoke and stood up suddenly, the open book sliding soundless from
her lap into the soft sand. But the phrase brought no comfort with it
now. Had she been asleep for long! Had her lover returned? Was it past
midnight?
The anxious questions surged up through the crust of calm before she
was half awake, and instinctively she was outside the tent in a moment
on her way towards her lover's, her rapid feet, shod in the dainty
high-heeled slippers, dimpling the shifting sand.
The coming dawn had sent cloud heralds to the west, and an advanced
pursuivant, drifting across the moon, shadowed all things faintly and
seemed to increase the silence.
She called softly; there was no reply, so she looked in. A glance told
her that her lover had not returned, and the light stealing in through
the uplifted screen showed her by the travelling-clock hung to the
tent-pole that it was already past three o'clock.
Three! What had happened--and what was to be done? For an instant the
ordinary inrush of anxiety made her think of rousing the camp, of
sending out search-parties; but the next brought her a curious
conviction that in this case danger lay in seeking outside help: a
certainty that in this matter she must stand alone, that in this
crisis--whatever it was--there must be but three alone--if, indeed,
there were three--herself, her lover, and this nameless Son of a King.
So, almost without a pause, the dimples left by her rapid feet were
curving towards the highest sand-wave within sight of the camp. Thence
she could watch the desert sea, and perhaps find him, even now, close
at hand. But once there, the next sand-wave attracted her as being a
better point of vantage, and so from wave to wave she flitted in her
white dress like some desert bird, leaving behind her a curved track of
dimples in the sliding sand, until a little wind, the herald blast of
the hurrying clouds overhead, crept low down over the world and swept
the dimples back into the old ripples.
"Khesroo!" she called, suddenly, for a shadow seemed beside hers in
that empty wilderness; but there was no answer.
"Jim!" she called again, uncertainly; but there was no reply. Yet she
was not frightened. She knew now, in that mysterious fundamental mind
of hers, that she alone was responsible, that she, and she only, could
solve the riddle. Khesroo had been right. If she wanted this thing, if
she had believed, if she had trusted, she would have gone before. And
now she must hurry, or it would be too late--wherefore or for what she
scarcely considered.
"Khesroo!" she called once more, and this time there was a faint
inflection of fear in her voice; for was that figure Khesroo, the
goatherd, or was it her lover? Or was it neither; but someone only of
whom she had dreamt as the Son of a King?
Should she go back? The wish struck her keenly, but she ignored it, and
went on. She must, she knew, have left the camp far behind her, and, if
she had kept the right direction, would soon be close on the spot where
that straight line of an arrow had startled her by its intrusion into
her dream of love.
If she had kept it! And surely she had, for behind her the east was
faintly lightening with the dawn. Yonder, therefore, in the dark of the
heralding clouds which had huddled upon the western horizon must lie
the domed shadows of the buried city.
"Khesroo!" she cried, instinctively, the very soul of her speaking,
"show it to me! For the sake of the woman who died, as women die for a
life of love, a love of life, show it to me!"
And then, behind her, she heard a voice chanting, as Khesroo, the
goatherd, had chanted, the call of guidance for the wanderers in the
desert. Yet the words were different; for these were they:
"Seekers for sleep, arise!
Your rest is done.
Go forth with weary eyes
To find your prize
In vain, in vain! To none
Will slumber have begun
Till from the heart of one
Desire dies."
Listening, she turned to look, then realised that in her searching she
must once more have circled back on her own footsteps, for behind and
not before her, dark, clear, unmistakable, the domed shadow of the lost
city lay against the lightening east. And on its swelling side, as
Khesroo had stood before, he stood again. Was it the rising sun which
turned the fillet of knotted cord about his head to gold?--which dyed
the coarse blanketing to royal purple, and transformed the wearer into
the perfect kingliness of buoyant youth and beauty? She never knew. She
only felt that something stronger than herself caught her, held her,
clasped her, and yet drew her on, so that with hands outstretched she
ran towards it, crying between smiles and tears:
"The Son of a King! The Son of a King!"
The next instant she had tripped and fallen heavily on her face over a
tangled tuft of grass concealing an unusually deep descent of a desert
wave. As she picked herself up, confused, somewhat dazed, and paused to
free her eyes from the sand grains which clouded them, something almost
at her feet brought her back to realities, and she gave a quick
exclamation. For in the hollow beneath the wave, where he had evidently
sought shelter deliberately, Jim Forrester lay curled up comfortably,
fast asleep. At least, so it seemed, though Khesroo's quaint old bow
must surely make rather an uncomfortable pillow.
She stooped over the sleeping man, and for an instant her face
whitened; she bent lower to listen to his breathing. And as she
listened a couple of startled sand-chaffs fled from a neighbouring
thorn bush, their chuckling cry echoing over the desert like an evil
laugh.
But a minute afterwards, in answer to her touch, Jim Forrester was
staring at her trying to collect his sleep-scattered senses.
"Hullo!" he said, slowly. "How on earth did I--Ah! I remember. That
brute of a goatherd played the garden ass and I lost him, so after
wandering about for hours, I turned in till daylight. But you--my
dearest dear----"
He started to his feet as he realised her presence there, and held out
both his hands to her.
As he did so, something dropped from them and lay glittering on the
sand at his feet. It was a gold coin.
They looked at each other, amazed; then she stooped and picked it up.
"A double profile," she said slowly, holding it so as to catch the
growing sunlight, "and the legend round"--she spelt it out from the
Greek lettering--"'Basileus Basileon.'"
"And the date," he cried, "the date!"
"Yes, the date is there," she replied, still more slowly turning to the
obverse, "the bird and the date--it is all right--but I was thinking of
the other----"
"What other?"
"Basileus Basileon--'the King of Kings,'" she said softly, and looked
out towards the sunrise. But the light had claimed the whole world and
sent all shadows flying.
So happily, prosaically, they went home to breakfast. Yet there was one
thing which she never told anyone, perhaps because it might
have stood in the way of the popular explanation of the whole
affair--namely, that Khesroo had happened on the coin and must have put
it in Jim Forrester's hand after the latter fell asleep. So, not even
when her father proudly pointed out to admirers that the double profile
was that of a man and a woman, and that the latter, curiously enough,
might almost be a portrait of his married daughter, did she ever say
that when she found her husband asleep in the sand that morning, the
looped bowstring of Khesroo the goatherd's bow was loose about his
neck.
But she often wonders if it would have been drawn tighter had she not
gone to seek for what she wanted.
THE BIRTH OF FIRE
The night was clear and silent.
The light-pulse of the stars as they wheeled with slow certainty to
meet the dawn was the only visible movement in the whole expanse of
shadowed earth and sky.
And the only sound audible was my own life breath as I sate beside the
glowing embers of the camp fire.
Strictly speaking, however, there was no camp, for I, and the two
coolies who carried my breakfast, had missed our way in our detour
through the eternal sameness of faint curve and level in the wide
uplands, and finally, in despair of rejoining our tents, had bivouacked
as best we could on the shore of a small frozen lake; one of those
obstinate, rock-bound pools which, even when spring has set seal of
conquest on the world, refuse to melt, and so yield up their treasure
of sweet water to its renewed thirst for Life.
My servants had forced this particular lakelet to philanthropy with
rude blows; wantonly rude it had seemed to me, as I watched the swift
shiver with which the stable unity of surface had split into forlorn
fragments of ice, each adrift at the mercy of that which they had held
prisoner for so long.
The other necessary element, fire, my men had also commandeered by a
raid on the low juniper which crept like moss below the taller grasses
of the plain.
The result had not been altogether satisfactory, for the pungent
smoke of the aromatic wood had--at least, so the sufferers averred,
though, at the time, I suspected a recourse for comfort to my
whisky-flask--produced unmistakable symptoms of intoxication in the
amateur cooks, who, after valiantly serving me up a réchauffé of
breakfast had succumbed to sleep. The mattress of creeping juniper on
which they lay like logs was springy enough to have hidden them from
sight even if the shadowed earth had not been so dark; for it was dark,
formless, void, as only an unbroken expanse of featureless plain can be
when the very sky grows velvet black because of the infinitely distant
brilliance of the stars. Indeed, the uniformity of indefinable shadow
was almost oppressive, although I knew right well the scene that lay
around me; for who that has once seen it can fail of seeing again with
the mind's eye the marvellous mosaic as of white marble and precious
jewels which covers the high upland stretches of the World's Roof, when
the winter snow retreats reluctantly, as if loth to leave the carpeting
of spring flowers which follow on its fleeing footsteps.
I even remembered as I watched the embers that just behind them,
finding faint shelter from a solitary boulder, there grew a tiny azalea
I had never seen before; a fragile, leafless thing set sparsely with
sweet-scented flowers that were flecked rose on saffron like a sunset
sky.
And the silence was oppressive also. I caught myself
listening--listening almost breathlessly--for a sound--for some sound!
But there was not even a whisper among the tall grasses.
In sudden impulse I threw a fresh juniper branch upon the embers, and
the silence, the stillness ended as if by magic; for the green spines
spat and sputtered as they shrivelled, and sent out a dense cloud of
smoke to circle up endlessly into the darkness.
A pungent smoke indeed! Involuntarily I drew back from it and covered
my eyes with my hand waiting until the smouldering should lighten into
flame.
The waiting, however, prolonged itself strangely. No flicker of light
reached me, and I began to wonder dreamily what had happened; so
dreamily, indeed, that when at last I looked up, I did so reluctantly,
and with a curious sense of confusion.
It was this, no doubt, which prevented surprise at finding that I was
no longer the solitary watcher of those dull embers.
Opposite me, nearly hidden in the endless curlings of the juniper smoke
was a man crouching towards the fire as if he felt the cold of the high
uplands. Only his face, and the hands he held towards the heat, showed
clearly; the rest was lost in billowy clouds which, drifting upwards
behind him, obscured the very stars.
I sate silent for a while, disinclined even for curiosity, and then,
rather to my own surprise, I spoke as I might have spoken to a familiar
friend.
"You are cold, I'm afraid."
To this day, I do not know in what language he replied--if, indeed! he
spoke at all. My only recollection is of the eloquence of liquid,
lustrous eyes, the confident certainty of comprehension which is the
child's ere it can speak articulately.
"I am a Star-gazer; so the Fire draws me."
"Why?"
"Why? Surely all know it is the Star Fire which fell when She first
came to me--Hai-me! Hai-me! When She first came and laid her hand in
mine."
The drifting billows parted, showing the stars above his head, then
closed again, blotting them out; blotting out all things, it seemed to
me, even my own self as I sate listening to the faint wail which rose
vaguely, filling the wide shadows.
"Io! Io! Disturber of dreams, why didst thou come? Io! Io! Bringer of
dreams, why didst go? Lo! the Star fire was not thine though thou
earnest with the Fire of the Star."
Through the pungent aroma of the burning branches, a faint breath of
perfume from the sunset-dyed azalea swept, mingling with it, and so
passing with it into the endless circling.
The lustrous eyes drooped, losing their brilliance; but when they
looked up again only serene confident comprehension was there.
"In forest days none of us were Star-gazers, for there was no Rim to
the world on which the following Footsteps could be seen. But when we
left the forest for the upland, with its milch kine and seed grains, we
learnt to look; for there was the Rim. And all things went to stand on
it and disappear among the Stars.
"So, gazing, we saw that the Stars disappeared also; they, too, were
following the Footsteps. But they never came back as they went, like
other things. Their footsteps were faithful; so faithful that you could
foretell by them the ripening of the seed grains, the coming of milk to
the herds.
"So gazing, we wondered. Here by this pool I watched, taking no need of
harvest or milk time; but I saw nothing but the following Footsteps and
the footsteps of the Stars.
"Nothing, though I followed with mine eyes, wheeling as the Stars
wheeled to meet the dawn while the shadows and my kind, and all other
things, slept as they do now."
They slept, indeed! The very smoke had ceased to circle. It hung in
motionless curves, soft, impenetrable, and I could see nothing now save
the lustrous eyes, and the dull glow of the fire.
"So I gazed, until one night, as I stood following the footsteps of the
faithful Stars with mine eyes, the knowledge came to me, that as I
stood watching them, so Someone stood watching me and all things.
Someone who did not move. And I was glad, though I was afraid.
"But that dawn, when I went down after our custom to gather the seed
grains with my kind, they looked at me askance as if I were a stranger.
Only Io, she of the beautiful young one that all cherished, paused as
she suckled it to follow me with curious wondering eyes."
There was a pause, and through it came, soft as a sigh, that faint
wail:
"Io! Io! Disturber of Dreams, why didst come? Io! Io! Bringer of
Dreams, why didst thou go?"
"It was cold here, on the uplands, gazing; but the faithful Stars shone
quite near me. It seemed as if I could reach up and clasp them. And I
was faithful as they in the Footsteps; for I have driven a stake of
wood into the ground firm as the ground itself, and night after night,
as I watched the Stars wheel, I twirled the slender wand I held in my
hands upon it, following their faithful Footsteps so that the Someone
who watched might see me even as they were!
"And I was happy, though I was afraid.
"But one night, when the tall grasses were stiff and the low green
things were white with the cold, my fingers could scarce twirl the
wand, and the fear lest the Someone might grow angry with me came so
strong that suddenly I lifted my head and cried to It to be kind.
"How the stars shone! My hands longed to leave the wand and reach them,
and in me there rose a great new joy, as if I had found myself.
"But that Dawn, when I went after the custom to gather the grain with
my kind, they fled from me as if I had been an enemy.
"Only Io, she of the beautiful young one, with her breasts full of
milk, left the cherished one athirst to follow my footsteps and hold
out a handful of the grain she had gathered for herself.
"But I feared her and she feared me, so she left it lying on the
ground, and afterwards I went and ate it, for I was hungry. But the
touch of her hand that was on the grain touched my lips so that I felt
it even as I gazed.
"Io! Io! Disturber of Dreams, why didst come? Io! Io! Why didst thou
go? The Star fire was not thine, though thou wast in the fire of the
Star!"
Even the lustrous eyes were hidden from me now; I saw nothing but the
fading glow of the embers as I sate listening amid the uttermost peace
of all things to that soft almost voiceless wail.
"The nights grew hot, and the tall grasses crackled in the drought, and
the low green things wilted to greyness. But I cared not, for I had
found myself, and I knew there was a Beginning and an End. And even
that touch on my lips did not disturb my dreams as, faithful as they, I
followed the faithful footsteps of the Stars.
"Until one night--it was so hot that something in me seemed to
out-beat the beating of the Stars--a great Darkness that was not Night
came from the Rim and swallowed up all things.
"I had seen it come before and had hidden my face from it like the rest
of my kin, but now my fear was too strong for hiding. Besides, who
could hide when Someone watched always? And why should I hide if I were
faithful--if I were as the Stars?
"Thus a great joy mingled with my fear, until something in me cried out
with a great longing for something that was not in me, and something
that I had not, seemed to come to me until my wand twirled faster, as
if other hands were on it, and my lips, as I cried out that I was
faithful, felt the touch of other lips upon them.
"So through the Darkness that hid the Stars while the hot wind howled
about me and flung hot earth grains in my face, I shouted to the Stars
to come down to me."
The very fire had gone now, and I strained my eyes into the shadows,
seeing nothing but endless curves as of smoke.
"And lo! One came!
"Just where the wand whirled by my hot hasty hands touched the steady
stake of wood I saw a tiny star.
"But, as I saw it, something came to me also, making me forget the
Star!
"It was Io!
"She had left her cherished one; with her breasts full of milk, she had
left the little drinker athirst; she had followed my footsteps through
the darkness to find me and lay her hand in mine.
"Io! Io! Bringer of Dreams! Io! Io! Disturber of Dreams, thou didst
come!
"And the touch of our hands and our lips together made us forget the
starshine which had come with it.
"But the shine grew and grew, so that when we looked again it was not a
Star at all, but something new and strange. Something that crept among
the dry grasses and the wilted green things, something that leaped and
laughed amid the darkness, something that sent hot arms towards us,
till I caught her in mine and fled from it, leaving the wand and the
steady stake behind.
"So we fled and fled, with the Fire which came from the Starshine
behind us always. Fled in the faithful footsteps of the Stars.... Fled
to find the Dawn!..."
* * * * *
There was silence; a long silence! And was that the Dawn, the gracious
Dawn!
Something, surely, all rose flecked on saffron and suffused with Light
lay before my upturned eyes.
It was an azalea blossom. But, as I rose to my feet from the springy
juniper where I had been lying, my head sheltered by the straggling
branches of the leafless bush, the dawn had come, indeed, on the far
rim of the wide plain.
And between it and me, rising from the retreating snow and the
carpeting of spring flowers, was a white vapour which, lit by the rosy
sun rays behind it, showed like smoke from a prairie fire.
But our fire was out. Only a heap of grey ashes remained, though the
sleep which had come from the juniper branches still held the sleeping
servants.
It needed a rough awakening, as rough as that which had left the
prisoning ice at the mercy of the prisoned water, to rouse them and
make them stand yawning, stretching in the dawn, avowing that
_haschish_ itself could not bring wilder dreams than those which
had been theirs that night. But was it a dream? or does the man,
hand-in-hand with the woman, still fly from the Fire which came from
the Star-shine!
THE GIFT OF BATTLE
"Then you recommend them both," said the mild little Commissioner,
doubtfully; he was a vacillating man, by nature lawful prey to his
superiors.
Tim O'Brien, C.I.E.--the uncoveted distinction had been, to his great
disgust, bestowed on him after a recent famine, in which his sheer
vitality had saved half a province, and earned him, rightfully, the
highest honour of the empire--removed his long Burmah cheroot from his
lips and smiled brilliantly. He was a thin brown man with a whimsical
face.
"And what would I be doing with wan of them on the Bench and the other
in the dock? For it would be that way ere a week was past. It is very
kind of the L.G. to suggest putting either Sirdar Bikrama Singh or Khân
Buktiyar Khân on the Honorary Magistracy, but he doesn't grasp that
they are hereditary enemies and have been the same for eight hundred
years. Ever since the Pathans temporarily conquered the Rajputs, in the
year av' grace 1256! So you couldn't in conscience expect wan of them
not to commit a crime if the other was to be preferred before him. Ye
see, he'd just have to kill someone. But, if ye appoint them both, the
dacencies of Court procedure and the hair-splittin' formalities of the
local Bar will conduce to dignity--to say nothing of their own sense of
justice, which, I'll go bail, is stronger than it is in most people ye
could appoint. Equity's apt to go by the board if ye've too much legal
knowledge; and they have none of that last. But I'll give them a good
Clerk of the Court and guarantee they come to no harrm. Yes, sir, I
recommend them both--to sit _in banco_."
When Tim O'Brien spoke, as he did in the last sentence, curtly and
without a trace of his usual rollicking Irish accent, his superior
officers invariably fell in with his views; it saved trouble.
So, in due course, what answers to a J.P.'s commission at home (with no
small extra powers thrown in) was sent to Sirdar Bikrama Singh, Rajput
at his castle of Nagadrug (the Snake's Hole), and also to Khân Buktiyar
Khân at his fortress of Shakingarh (the Falcon's Nest).
Both buildings had been for some centuries in a hopeless state of
dilapidation, as, from a worldly point of view, were their owners'
fortunes. But, just as the crumbling walls still commanded the wide
arid valley which lay between the rocky steeps of the sandhills on
which they stood, so the position of the two most ancient families of
Hindus and Mahomedans in the district still commanded the respect of
the whole sub-division. Of course, they were antagonistic. Had they not
been so always? But, in truth, the old story of how they came to be so
was such a very old story, that none knew the rights of it: not even
the two high-nosed, high-couraged old men, who, having in due time
succeeded to the headship of their respective families, had done as
their fathers had done; that is to say, glared at each other over their
barren fields, formulated every possible complaint they could against
their neighbour, and denied any good quality to him, his house, his
wife, his oxen, or his ass.
Yet the two had one thing in common. They were both soldiers by race.
Their sons were even now with the colours of Empire, and in their own
youth both had served John Company, and afterwards, the Queen. This
bond, however, was not one of union, but rather of discord. For the one
had belonged to the crack Hindu and the other to the crack Mahomedan
corps of the Indian army, and their respective sons naturally followed
in their fathers' footsteps. Indeed, on occasions the pair of dear old
pantaloons would appear in the uniforms of a past day, hopelessly out
of date as regards buttons and tailoring, but still worn with the
distinctive cock of the turban and swagger of high boots that had
belonged of old days and still belonged to the "rigimint."
Bikrama Singh was seated on the flat roof which had sheltered him and
his for centuries when he received the little slip of silk paper, so
beautifully engrossed, which appointed him to the Honorary Magistracy.
It was a barren honour, since he was not one of those--and there are
many--who make a stipend out of an unpaid post; but his thin old
fingers trembled a little and his eye lost the faintly blue film which
age draws between the Real and the Unreal. Whether his mind reverted at
once to his hereditary enemy--who was not mentioned in the
paper--is doubtful, but he felt it to be an honour in these miserable
days, when a moneylender had more chance of being elected to a district
council than a gentleman of parts to be chosen by the Sirkar. It was a
thousand times better than being "puffed by rabble votes to wisdom's
chair."
"It is well," he said simply, but with a superior air, to his
womenfolk--the wife and daughters and grand-daughters and
daughters-in-law and their kind who filled up the wide old house. "I
shall do my duty and punish the evil doer; notably those who do evil to
my people and my land, since true justice begins at home." And he
curled his thin grey moustache to meet his short grey whiskers and
looked fierce as an old tiger.
Over in Shakingarh also the commission met with approval. "It is well!"
said Buktiyar Khân, as he sate amongst his crowding womenfolk with a
poultice of leaves on his short beard to dye it purple. "I shall do my
duty and punish the evil doer; notably him who has done evil to my
people and my land, since that is the beginning of justice." And his
hawk's eye travelled almost unconsciously from his flat roof to that
other one far over the valley.
Yet, when they met, a few days afterwards, duly attired in their
uniforms on the threshold of _Brine sahib's_ verandah, whither they had
repaired full of courteous acknowledgments to one whom they recognised
as being at the bottom of the appointment, a faint frown came to their
old faces. But _Brine sahib_ broke it to them gently, with the graceful
tact which gained him so much confidence. Government, recognising their
many and great excellencies, had found it impossible to do otherwise
than elevate them both to the Bench, where they would doubtless remain,
as they were now, the best representatives of Hindu and Mahomedan
feeling in the district. And then Tim O'Brien made a few remarks about
the King-Emperor and devoted service which sent both old hands out in
swift stiff salute.
Doubtless it was a shock to find themselves equally honoured; but
regarding the "_in banco_," they both admitted instantly to themselves
that it was better to sit next a hereditary enemy than a stinking
scrivener or a mean moneylender. So Bikrama Singh twirled his grey
moustache and said, "It is well," and Buktiyar Khân twirled his purple
one and said the same thing.
Thereinafter they began work. The women of both houses made the first
court day a regular festival, and sent the two old men from home
dressed and scented and decorated as if for a bridal. The purple of
Buktiyar's beard was positively regal, while the points of Bikrama's
thin trembling fingers were rosy as the dawn.
They were fearsomely stately with each other, of course, but that only
added to the dignity of the Bench. An excellent Clerk of the Court had
been provided for them, and their first cases had been carefully chosen
by Tim O'Brien for their simplicity.
Thus there had seemed no possibility of friction; yet the two new
judges returned to their womenkind vaguely dissatisfied, dimly uneasy.
"The Mahomedan is no fool," remarked Bikrama Singh thoughtfully, "he
saw as quickly as I did that truth lay with the defendant, lies with
the plaintiff."
"By God's truth," admitted Buktiyar Khân grudgingly, "the Hindu is not
such a blockhead as I deemed him. He saw as quickly as I did that lies
were with the plaintiff, truth with the defendant."
It was almost intolerable; but it was true. The hereditary enemies had
agreed about something on God's earth. And as time went on this
unanimity of opinion became the most salient feature of the
newly-constituted court. They agreed about everything. Of different
race, different religion, something deeper in them than these surface
variations coincided. Their innate sense of justice, fostered by the
fact that they had both been brought up in the India of the past, that
they represented its laws, its morals, its maxims, made their judgments
identical.
"We waste time, _babu-jee_," broke in old Bikrama Singh on the lengthy
peroration of a newly passed pleader, eager to air his eloquence.
"Words are idle when facts stare you in the face. 'Who knows is silent,
he who talks knows not,' as the proverb hath it. That is enough. We are
satisfied." "_Wâh Wâh_," assented Buktiyar Khân at once, acquiescent
and regretful. "Truly, pleader-jee! thou hast said that before. Why say
it again? If sugar kills, why try poison? We are satisfied, so that is
enough."
It was more than enough for the local Bar. They went in a body to Tim
O'Brien and complained that they were not treated as lawyers should be
treated.
As usual, _Brine sahib_ met them with sympathy; but it was the sympathy
of inaction.
"I sincerely regret, gentlemen," he said softly, "that sufficient toime
is not allowed you to get all the words you have at command off your
stomachs--I beg pardon, your minds. But, ye see, the judgments of the
Bench are unfortunately quite sound; they'd be watertight against the
full forensic flood of the whole High Court Bar. So I don't see what
the divvle is to be done--do you?"
They did not. In sober truth the sense of equity in the hereditary
enemies was too strong for the lawyers. The old men were honestly
fulfilled with the desire of punishing the evil doer and praising those
who did well. Such flimsy overlays as race and tribe and caste and
family and creed did not touch their agreement on all things necessary
to salvation.
The fact was rather a pain and grief to them. It did not make them
treat each other with less stately dignity or cause them to be one whit
more friendly out of court.
Sirdar Bikrama Singh went home to his womenfolk and railed as ever
against his neighbour, and Khân Buktiyar Khân, as he rolled his little
opium pill betwixt finger and thumb, would do the same thing. But in
their heart of hearts they knew that, since a judge must always be "an
ignorant man between two wise ones" (the plaintiff and defendant), it
must be some common ground in themselves which made their views
coincide.
Meanwhile the fame of the collective wisdom grew amongst the litigants,
and indignation at its brevity increased amongst the lawyers. Tim
O'Brien, however, when the timid little Commissioner showed him a
numerously signed petition from the local Bar protesting against the
"strictly non-regulation curtailment of eloquence," only smiled
suavely. "They get at the rights of a case by congenital intuition,
sir. The High Court have upheld their judgments in the few appeals the
pleaders have cared to make; so I don't see what the div---- I mean,
sir, I don't see what is to be done--do you?"
Once again there was no answer, and Tim O'Brien, as he dashed off here
and there to institute enquiries in obedience to the cipher telegrams
which came pouring in from Calcutta by day and by night, felt comfort
in knowing that one sub-division of his district at any rate was being
well administered.
For they were troublous days for officers in charge. Someone somewhere
had been unwise enough to take the thumb-marks of a peripatetic
preacher who was suspected of being an anarchist. He was proved to be
an apostle of unrest; he was also unfortunately a man not only of
thumb-mark, but of mark. A professor, briefly, in some far-away
college. So the official who had ordered the indignity in the interests
of public order was degraded; and thereinafter, naturally, began a
campaign of would-be terrorism amongst the schoolboys and students of
the province which shattered the nerves of government.
"By the Lord who made me," ejaculated Tim O'Brien angrily, as he flung
aside the last urgent _communiquée_ from headquarters, "one would think
from that bosh, we were in danger of losing India to-morrow. Can't they
see it's only schoolboy rot, sheer daredevil schoolboy mischief, like
throwing caps under a motor car and heads you win tails I lose, you're
over last. I'll tell you what it is, Smith,"--here he addressed his
assistant, a pale-faced boy not yet recovered from the strain of
examinations--"if I was worth my salt and had the courage of my
opinions, I'd have up those boys' masters and give 'em each thirty with
the cane for not keeping their pupils in order. That 'ud stop it.
Instead of that, I have to arrest a poor child of thirteen who threw a
badly made bomb, as harmless--it turned out--as a squib. However! my
pension stares me in the face. There isn't even a House of Lords left
to which I could appeal. So here goes for the innocent victim av'
education! Inspector! arrange the arrest, please!"
Naturally, of course, as Tim O'Brien had known, every other schoolboy
in the district marched about singing patriotic songs and doing wanton
mischief to their hearts' content; thus there was quite a crop of minor
arrests.
In fact, when the Bench of Hereditary Enemies held its next sitting it
was confronted with a lengthy police case against a gang of boys whose
ages varied from ten to thirteen.
Bikrama Singh listened gravely to the details and twirled his grey
moustache. Buktiyar Khan also listened gravely and stroked his purple
beard. They listened very patiently, yet a vague impatience came to
their old faces. Then they looked in each other's eyes, and at last the
wisdom of their hearts found speech.
"Where is the teacher of these children? Bring him hither that he may
show cause for himself."
To be brief. That night the head master of the sub-divisional school
could neither sit down nor stand up comfortably. But the streets were
quiet; the boys peacefully in their beds.
"Glory be to them," cried Tim O'Brien exultantly, when the news was
brought to him. "They've more spunk than I have--so now to get them out
of the scrape."
He did his best, and that was a good deal, but the law and lies were
against him. The schoolmaster happened to be somebody's nephew by
marriage, and though there was ample evidence to prove that he had
misused his position as a Government servant, the utmost favour Tim
O'Brien could screw out of the Powers was permission for the offenders
to retire instead of being dismissed from the Honorary Magistracy.
He broke this to the old men with his usual tact, applauding them
between the lines for their courage. To his surprise and relief they
accepted the position calmly. The better the subordinate, they said,
the less likely he was to be always in agreement with others. During
their three years' work, which, in truth, had been laborious, not one
of their decisions had been upset on appeal. How many judges could say
the same! And as for head master-_jee?_ Would _Brine sahib_, if he
could, remove those thirty stripes from the miscreant's back. "Ye have
me there, _sahiban_," Tim O'Brien replied, with conviction, "I would
not; an' that's God's truth."
So the old men sent in their resignations, not altogether regretfully.
For one thing, the unanimity of their opinions had been disturbing; the
old antagonism seemed more natural. And there the matter should have
ended. Unfortunately for all, it did not. To be brief. Tim O'Brien was
asked one day, as District Officer, to sign a warrant for the arrest of
Sirdar Bikrama Singh and Khân Buktiyar Khân on a charge of assault and
battery against the head master-_jee_, who turned out to be sib to half
the local Bar.
There is no reason to go into the legal points of the incident, or to
tell of the vain efforts of Tim O'Brien to save the whilom Bench from
this last affront. An epidemic of cases against magistrates had set in,
and late one evening the District Officer started to ride over and
break the news of the coming arrest to the Hereditary Enemies.
Nagadrug stood on the nearest scarp of sand, so he went there first. He
found the old Sirdar, looking rather frail, engaged as usual in glaring
out over the arid fields to Shakingarh.
But this time all Tim O'Brien's tact did not avail for calm.
Incredulous anger, half dazed indignation, took its place. It could not
be true. What! was he, Rajput of Rajput, to be dragged to court at the
bidding of a miserable hound whom he had whipped, and rightly whipped?
Had not _Brine sahib_ himself applauded the act? Had they not done
right?--the plural pronoun came out naturally. Was not a false _guree_
God's basest creature? Did not the law say so: "He who teaches false
teaching, who kills his own soul and another, let him die." Why had
they not given the vile reptile an hundred stripes and so got rid of
him altogether.
And now were they to have a degree (decree) against them! Shinjee! It
should never be, never! never! They would not have it! The old tongue
found no difficulty in thus claiming companionship in revolt, the old
heart knew it was certain of sympathy in the ancient enmity.
Utterly sickened at a tragedy he could not prevent, the District
Officer went, tactfully as ever, to Shakingarh; only to meet with even
deeper indignation. Innocent though he knew himself to be, the
Englishman positively writhed under the contemptuous unsparing scorn of
the old Pathan. What! was the Sirkar not strong enough to protect
itself? Then let it pack up its bundle and get out of Hindustan. Let it
leave India and its problems to _his_ people--those northern folk who
had harried Bengal in the past, who, God willing, would harry it again.
Had _Brine sahib_ not heard the saying: "He who uses his public office
to betray the State commits a crime against himself, his country, and
his God." And had not the base hound betrayed the State? A thousand
times, yes! it was a pity they had not flogged him to death.
The moon rose over the low sandhills before the District Officer,
bruised and broken by the verdict of past India on the present, rode
back to the sessions bungalow, where he meant to pass the night. For
with the dawn he would go up with the police officer and so soften the
arrest of the Hereditary Enemies so far as it could be softened.
They would be let out on bail, of course, and, at the worst, a fine
more or less heavy would see them through. It was not so bad--not so
very bad.
The District Officer tried to comfort himself with such reflections; in
his heart he knew they were futile; that nothing would soften the
degradation to those two old warriors.
Nothing! unless it was the calm moonlight that lay over the arid valley
and turned the round old fortresses to dim mysterious palaces of light.
Perhaps the peace of it sank into the wearied hot old eyes that looked
out from the ancestral roofs with a new feeling of comradeship, each
for each, dulling the hereditary hatred, yet bringing with it old
memories, old tales of past enmity.
"Bring me my uniform, women!" said Bikrama Singh, suddenly. Half a
dozen weeping daughters and daughters-in-law and an old wife too blind
to see did as they were bid, and in a short time the old man stood
arrayed as for a bridal, his sword buckled tight to his bowed back.
"And the shield, women--the shield of my fathers that hangs in the
entry. I shall need it, too!"
Over in Shakingarh, Buktiyar Khân, impelled likewise by those memories
of the past, that hatred of the present, had donned his uniform
likewise; and so the moonlight shone on cold steel and damascened gold
as, silently obeying some inward community of thought, the two old men
started silently alone, leaving all behind them, to seek for Peace in
their own way.
Steadily over the arid fields, nearer and nearer to each other. The
fields had been cut and carried; the harvest was over; it was nigh time
to plough again for a fresh crop----
Of what?
"The Peace of the Unknown be upon you, oh, mine enemy," said Bikrama
Singh, when at long last they stood face to face in the open.
"And the Peace of the Most Mighty be on you, my foe," answered Buktiyar
Khân.
So for a moment there was silence. Then the Rajput spoke, his old voice
full of fire, full of vibration.
"In the old days to which we belong, oh, Mahomedan! did brave men wait
for Fate?"
"They did not wait, oh, Hindu," came the answer. "When brave men found
sickness or dishonour before them: when there was no longer hope of
victory: when that which lay ahead was hateful, and they left sons to
carry on the race, did not the ancestors of my race claim of their
enemies the glorious gift of battle?"
"They did so claim it, oh, Bikrama Singh! Dost claim it now!"
The reply, quick, vibrant, rang through the moonlight; a veritable
challenge.
"Yea, Pathan--robber! thief! I claim it now! _Jug-dân, Jug-dân_--the
Gift of Battle to the Death."
"Take it, pig of an idolator! Jug-dân, Jug-dân--the Gift of Battle!"
The still, hot air became full of faint chinkings, as buckles were
settled straight, scabbards thrown aside. Then there was an instance
silence as the two old warriors faced each other.
"Art ready ... friend?" The question came softly.
"Yea! I am ready ... friend!" The reply was almost a caress.
So, with a quick clash of sword on sword, youth and health and strength
came back to the Hereditary Enemies.
* * * * *
It matters little if the combat ended in quarter of an hour, half an
hour, or an hour; whether Bikrama Singh or Buktiyar Khân got in the
first blow. The moon shone peacefully on the Gift of Battle. She still
hung a white shield on the grey skies of dawn when Tim O'Brien and the
police officer, coming to do their disagreeable duty, found the two old
men lying stone dead within swords' thrust of each other on the
stubble.
"They are really an incomprehensible lot," said the police officer,
almost mournfully; "why the deuce should the two poor old buffers come
out and kill each other, as presumably they have----"
Tim O'Brien smiled a grim smile. "You haven't heard, I suppose--why
should ye--of what they call the Gift of Battle! Well! I have. It's an
ould Rajput custom by which a man who feared he'd die in his bed or be
put to it any way by any other stupid inept limitations, could claim a
decent death from his nearest foe."
"Well! they've done it. That's all, and small blame to them."
"By God who made me, it's a protest with a vengeance. But the worst of
it is, the Government won't see it and I can't explain it. Cipher
telegrams won't run to it So ... peace be with you, friends!"
THE VALUE OF A VOTE
A SKETCH FROM LIFE
He was an old man; a very old man. A Syyed--that is, a Mahomedan who
claims direct descent from the prophet--by trade a Yunani hakeem, or
physician according to the Grecian system, introduced to India,
doubtless, by Alexander the Great. He had a little sort of shop, close
to the principal gate of the city, where he was in touch with all those
who, with its ship the camel, went out, or came back from the desert
beyond, and with all strangers and sojourners in the land. So all day
and every day you might see wearied travellers resting on the hard
wooden platform set in a dark archway, of which his shop consisted,
drinking out of green glass tumblers some restorative sherbet of things
hot or things cold, things dry or things wet, while he showed dimly in
the background, a visionary outline of long grey beard and high white
turban. In this way he heard a good deal of what was going on both
inside and outside the city, and as he was of the old school of the
absolutely loyal outspoken Mahomedan, who, while he holds our rule to
be inferior to that of his own faith, emphatically believes it to be
superior to all others, I used often to pause in riding into or out of
the city for a chat with the old man; seldom without benefit to myself.
One morning--I remember it so well!--the _gram_ fields outside the city
were literally drenched with dew, making the fine tufts look like
diamond plumes, amongst which the wealth of tiny purple blue pea
blossom showed like a sowing of sapphires--I found him sitting with a
troubled look on his high, wrinkled forehead, peering through his horn
spectacles at a blue printed paper.
A patient was snoring contentedly on the boards, with, tucked into the
hollow of his neck, a hard roly-poly bolster which made me ache to look
at. Nothing brings home to one the impossibility of any Western judging
what is, or is not pleasant or convenient to an Eastern more than the
ordinary rolling pin, two feet by six inches, stuffed hard with cotton
wool, which the latter habitually uses as a pillow. The sight of it
makes a Western neck feel stiff.
I recognised the paper at once. We were then in the throes of "Local
Self Government," and a violent effort was being made to induce this
little far-away town, inhabited for the most part by Pathans (exiled
these centuries back from northern wilds to the Indian plain) to elect
a Municipal Committee.
I had spent the better part of the day before in explaining to various
Rais'es or honourable gentlemen of the city, that no insult was
intended by asking them to put themselves up to auction as it were by
the votes of their fellow citizens, instead of being discreetly and as
ever nominated to the office of Councillor by the "hated alien." A few
had gravely and dutifully given in to this new and quite
incomprehensible fad of the constituted authorities, others had
hesitated, but one, a fiery old Khân Bahadur, who was a retired
risseldar from one of our crack native cavalry regiments, had sworn
with many oaths that never would he take office from, amongst others,
the perjured vote of Gunpat-Lal, pleader, who belonged to his ward, and
whose evil, eloquent tongue had deliberately diddled him out of
ancestral rights in a poppy field in the Huzoor's own court. No! He had
served the Sirkar with distinction, he had, with his own hands, nearly
killed an agitator he had found in the lines; nay, more! he had
absolutely sent his daughter to school to please the _sahib logue_; but
_this_ was too much. It had been all I could do to prevent the
hot-tempered old soldier from giving up the sword of honour with which
he had been presented on retirement, as a signal of final rupture with
the Government.
So, as I say, I recognised the blue paper at once as one of many voting
papers which had been sent out for marking and return; for in these out
of the way places in those days, the secret ballot-box was not the best
blessing of the world, as it is now. And my old friend the hakeem was,
I knew, on the Aga Khân's ward.
"What have you got to do with it?" I echoed, in reply to an anxious
question. "Why, put a mark against the Aga Khân's name and give it back
whence it came."
He salaamed profoundly. "Huzoor! that was the settled determination of
this slave, thus combining new duties with old--which is the philosophy
of faithful life; but, being called in last night to an indigestion in
his house, which I combatted with burnt almonds, he told me that if I
so much as went near his honourable name with my stylus, I should cease
to be physician-in-ordinary to his household. And, father and son, we
have been physicians to the Aga Khân ever since our fathers followed
his fathers from Ghazni in that capacity with the Great Mahomed--on
whom be peace."
"Then mark one of the other names--which you choose, and send it in," I
replied, taking no notice of the scandalous attempt at coercion on the
old Aga Khân's part.
A still more profound salaam was the answer. "That also would have
occurred to me," came the suave old voice, "but that the Aga Khân said,
with oaths, that if I so much as made a chance blot on this cursed
paper against any of the names thereon, I should be cast for life from
his honourable company."
I felt quite nettled. Her Majesty's lieges must not be intimidated in
this fashion. "Well! you must think of the person whom you consider
most fitted to fulfil all the many duties which will devolve on him,
and put down his name," I said, for in these days when we really wished
to get at the wishes of the people, we were not so strict about
nominations and proposings and secondings as we are now, "and I will
speak again to the Khân Bahadur and see if I cannot induce him to
stand." (I meant to do so by threats of exposure for using force to Her
Majesty's lieges!)
As I rode off, my horse picking its way through the piles of melons,
the bags of corn, the jars of milk, the nets of pottery and all the
_olla podrida_ of trivial daily merchandise which finds pause for a few
minutes about an active gate at dawn time, the patient sat up straight
from his backboard and yawned, then asked for another violet drink. But
the hakeem was absorbed in the problem of voting.
I happened that day to have business in the city in the evening also,
but I entered by another gate, so that the sun was nigh setting when,
on my homeward way, I saw my old friend the Yunani hakeem sitting with
his pile of little medicine bottles and tiny earthenware goglets of
pills and ointments beside him.
He was pounding away at something in a minute jade mortar and looked no
longer disturbed, but weary utterly.
"Have you settled that knotty point, hakeem sahib?" I asked.
He gave a sigh of relief, but pounded away faster than ever. "I give
God thanks I have been led into the way of wisdom," he replied, "else
would I be harried, indeed! Never, within the memory of man, have so
many gentlemen of rank been sick as during this day. I am but now
compounding the 'Thirty-six-ingredient-drug' for one honourable house,
and have but just finished the 'Four-great-things' for another. 'Tis
anxiety about the elections, methinks, for they talk of nothing else.
Hardly had your Honour left this morning, than Gunpat-Lal sent to say
he had a belly-ache which his idolatrous miracle-monger could not
touch. I had it away in half an hour with cucumber and lemon juice.
Cold things to cold. And Lala-ji full of compliments and regrets that
the Aga Sahib would not be elected." A faintly worried air crept over
the high old face.
"Did he ask you to give him your vote?" I enquired, with a sinking at
my heart.
"Yea!" replied the Yunani hakeem cheerfully, "and offered me five
rupees for it."
Ye Gods above! How soon political corruption seizes on the innocent, I
thought.
"But others have offered more," continued the old man, with a certain
self-satisfaction. Then his face clouded. "Yonder pasty-faced
knock-kneed student, who calls himself 'Hedditerlile--jackdaw'" (Editor
Loyal Objector) "told me it was his by right, since he and his like were
Hindustan. But I told the lad God had ordained otherwise--for look you,
Huzoor, we Mussalmans came from the north many long years before the
_sahib-logue_ came from the west. So I let him talk, having, by God's
mercy, come to a decision."
"What is that, hakeem-ji?" I asked, curious to know what had influenced
the old man.
He salaamed quite simply. "The Huzoor bade me think who could best do
the work, so I decided to vote for him. He is noble, and he knows what
has to be done. He knows _santation_ and _inspekshon-conservance_. Also
_new-tense_, and _karl-ra-pre-kar-sons_, and"--he added, with the most
beautiful supplementary salaam of pure flattery--"all other noble arts
and philosophies." It quite gave me a pang to tell him that this scheme
of his would not work. That I was _ex officio_ president of the
Municipal Committee, and thus beyond the reach of voters.
His face was illumined by a vast relief even amidst his perplexities.
"That is as it should be," he said simply. "The Sirkar then, has not,
as they say, quite lost its head; the Huzoor retains it still. But what
am I to do?"
I left him looking the picture of woe, absolutely unheeding of two
patient travellers who had been awaiting my departure with that calm
stolid disregard of the passing hour which brings with it to the
Western such a sense of personal grievance; whereas to the Eastern it
only emphasises his trust in Providence by proving the omnipotence of
Fate.
Next morning, however, the whole aspect of affairs had been changed.
Hakeem-ji was alert, spry, surrounded by quite a congregation of
would-be patients, to whom he was giving out his _dicta_ with quite a
lordly air.
There was no need to ask him if he had settled his vexed question. That
was apparent. I simply asked him what he had done about the paper.
"Huzoor," he said again, with that lucid candour which--was so marked a
feature of the man himself, "the Lord mercifully directed me. Therefore
I ate it, and it hath done me much good."
"Ate it?" I echoed. "You don't mean to say----"
"Huzoor!" he interrupted cheerfully, "this is how it was. After your
Honour left, it was the time of evening prayer. So I went, after my
usual custom, to the House of God, to await the cry of the Muazzim and
prepare myself for the presence of the Most High by the necessary
ablutions. And as I sat squatted on the edge of the Pool of
Purification, my hands in the cool water, I felt as if naught could
cleanse me from that accursed paper that lay folded in my breast. So I
cried in my heart to the prophet that he should show me a way, and then
in one moment I saw where the error lay. I was arrogating to myself
decisions that should be left to the Almighty. So I did what I do ever
when life and death are at issue; when even the mighty skill of
medicine has to stand on one side and do nothing.
"I took my stylus, and I wrote all over that paper the attributes
of the Most High--His mercy, His truth, His wisdom, His great
loving-kindness. And then, Huzoor, I crushed it into the form of a
bolus, covered it with silver foil, and swallowed it as a pill.
"It hath done me much good. I am now free from anxiety. The decision of
all things rests with the Most Mighty."
THE SALT OF THE EARTH
"The Huzoor is the salt of the earth," said Hoshyari Mull,
submissively. He had been educated, he asserted, at a mission school:
thus the words of Scripture came handy to him. So also did a variety of
other things.
"And you are the biggest scoundrel unhung. I know that, though I can't
find you out--yet," retorted the Boy, almost savagely. He was really a
Boy, a round-faced, fresh-coloured English Boy, though his years
numbered twenty-four, and he was a full-blown Salt Patrol on the Great
Customs Hedge, which, in the 'fifties and 'sixties, still stretched
between the river Indus, as it flows to the Arabian Sea, and the
Mahanuddi river that finds its way to the Bay of Bengal; in other
words, stretched for fifteen hundred miles across the vast continent of
India. It was a strange, weird barrier, this vast hedge of cactus and
thorny acacia, of prickly palms, and still more prickly agaves, that
thrust out their spiked swords boldly from a buckler of spine-set
thicket. It was fully fourteen feet high, and of its width one could
only guess, in passing through the break, every ten miles or so, where
some first-class road claimed a long passage-way through it. Here it
was that the Patrols had their bungalows, and it was at one of these
that the Boy lived. It was a very important post, because it was, so to
speak, the gateway between the South-West and the North-East; that is
to say, between Bombay and the Central Provinces, and Delhi, Oude,
Bengal. Then, lying as it did, right in the Rajputana Desert, with no
other roadway within twenty miles of it on either side, it needed a
sharp look out all along the line to prevent isolated attempts at
smuggling. But the Boy was quick at his work, and spent all his
youthful energy in preserving the intactness of his Customs Hedge. The
life, however, was as strange and weird as was the barrier. Absolute
loneliness, absolute isolation. For long months together not one word
of your mother-tongue. With luck, a weekly post. No books, no
newspapers, no civilisation of any kind. On the other hand there was
endless sport, unfailing interest for those who loved wild things. And
the Boy had never been one for books. Harrow had left him, one may say,
uncontaminated by them; examinations had passed him by; so, though both
his grandfathers had been high Indian officials, he had drifted
naturally into the Salt Department; the last refuge, not of the
incompetent, but the unlearned. There, to be a man was all that was
asked of you. Without manhood the salt had lost its savour; there was
no possibility of salting it with all the 'ologies in existence.
Hoshyari Mull paused in his deft winding-on of the Huzoor's putties, to
say submissively, "The Salt of the Earth speaks truth." Whereat the Boy
laughed.
He and Hoshyari were at once friends and enemies. The latter was chief
native supervisor, a man of about forty, above middle height, smooth
faced and lissome. There was nothing, the Boy soon found out, which he
could not do; which, in fact, he did not do. An excellent accountant,
he was also an excellent shot. If he knew, or said he knew, every
smuggler of salt between Attock and Cuttack, he also knew every bird
and beast and butterfly by name, and could tell you the habits of all
and sundry. He knew the history of Ancient India by heart, and could
pour forth legend and tale by the yard. He was a magnificent swordsman,
and could teach the Boy, who had learnt singlestick, many cuts and
thrusts.
In short, he was all things to the Boy; without him, life in the Patrol
bungalow would, indeed, have lost its savour. And yet the Boy
mistrusted him, for no reason, except vaguely that he was too clever by
half. Hoshyari, for his part, regarded the Boy as he had regarded no
other master. He had been, as it were, _impresario_ of amusement to
several Huzoors of the ordinary type. This one was different. This one
was as the Angels of God. That is how Hoshyari put it to himself, and,
on the whole, it was a sufficiently comprehensive description, and led
to thoroughly wholesome treatment. Here was no necessity for _itr_ of
rose, no distilled waters of any description, save the dew of heaven,
as it gathered on the gram fields where the black buck lay, or hung
like a diamond on a cactus flower over which some rare butterfly
hovered.
But there was no dew this hot May dawn, when Hoshyari Mull, with the
deftness of an expert, was putting the woollen bandages on the Huzoor's
long legs. It was not his work; but then half the things he did were
not that. "I thought you were a Brahman; but I don't believe you are
even a Hindu," the Boy had said scornfully to him one day, when,
foraging for breakfast in a village, Hoshyari had come back,
triumphantly, with half a dozen eggs in his high caste hand. Hoshyari
had smiled. "I am a Srimali Brahman, Huzoor," he had replied
tolerantly. "The Maharajah of Jaipur salaams to me. There are none here
in the wilderness able to say Hoshyari hath defiled himself."
So he made no ado about this putting on of putties. They were, as he
had proved to the Boy, the best of all protection against snake bite.
With them on you might almost venture on trying to find a gap in the
Great Salt Hedge; without them it was madness; for is not the prickly
pear called in the vernaculars, _naga-pan_, or serpent shelter? And on
these hot May mornings, as well as at noontide, were there not along
the Customs line many pairs of watching, unwinking eyes lying in wait
for the unwary, beside those of the fourteen thousand humans who
patrolled its long length day and night?
Truly there were. As they cantered along it, after passing through the
gateway, many a faint rustle among the colocynth apples at its base
told of death among the flowers. For the Hedge was at its blossom time.
Thorny salmon-coloured capers began it, with here and there a yellow
cactus bloom, or, perhaps, a rare red one, on whose stems the wild
cochineal insect lay like tiny spots of blood. Above it, a wilderness
of these same cactus flowers, big as a tea cup, primrose within, the
white stamens ranged sedately round the whiter star-pistil; then yellow
without, shading to purple. Above them the violet-scented puff-balls of
the thorny mimosa, with every now and again a great lance of aloe
blossom, brown and white, all set with flower bells.
And above all, butterflies, dragon flies, moths, flitting in myriads.
"That is the gap, Huzoor, where the ill-begotten hound of a Poorbeah
managed to smuggle in a back-load of salt last week. He was going to
carry it all the way to Kashi (Benares) he said. As the Salt of the
Earth will see, it is now thoroughly mended," remarked Hoshyari, with a
debonair smile of superiority.
The Boy frowned. There was too much, to his liking, of these petty
discoveries. That long line of Hedge had not been planted, was not kept
up, to prevent the smuggling of a poor back-load of salt. He looked at
Hoshyari with dissatisfaction in his face.
"When are we going to find something worth finding out?" he asked
cavalierly.
"If it is God's will, before long, Huzoor," was the reply, and there
was a curious undertone of certainty about it. "Look, my lord! yonder
are the buck. They are on the move already; we must hasten."
They were off at a gallop, rifles crossed on the saddle bow, over the
hard white _putt_ ground that was interspersed by ribbed drifts of fine
white sand. Hoshyari sate his horse like an Englishman. Indeed, the
Boy, looking at him, used often to think that, barring his colour, he
seemed of kindred race; as, in truth, he was, since the Srimali Brahman
is Aryan of the Aryans. There was, in fact, only that vague distrust to
keep them apart; and that always vanished before sport.
It was a hot day, they followed the buck far, then, the Boy having a
sudden headache from the sun, paused by Hoshyari's advice at some
wandering goatherd's thatch for a hearth-baked cake, a drink of milk,
and a rest till noon should have passed.
A very hot day; and the Boy rested in the shade of _jund_ tree on a
string bed, and slept profoundly.
When he woke, the shadows were lengthening, and Hoshyari, squatted on
the ground beside him, had a new look on his face; a look of anxiety
mingled with satisfaction.
"Huzoor!" he said, "I have news for you! What I have always prophesied,
what I have always told you would happen if the Sirkar were not more
careful, has come to pass. The native troops in Meerut have mutinied;
they have gone to Delhi and murdered the _Sahib-logue_. I rode back
to the depôt while the Salt of the Earth slept, to see all was right,
and--and I heard it at the gate."
"At the gate," echoed the Boy, still stupid with sleep. "Who brought
the news--has the post come in?"
Hoshyari's face was a study. He must break this thing gently to the
Boy, who was a full-blown Salt Patrol, or he would see red, try to kill
and be killed. And that must not be; quite a pang at the very thought
shot through heart and brain, making him realise that this Boy of an
alien race had grown dear to him.
"The post had not come in, Salt of the Earth," he said evasively. "Men
brought it from the South."
"The South," echoed the Boy again, with a relieved yawn; "then it's a
lie. How could they know, if we didn't?"
How? Hoshyari could have answered that question easily; he knew the
strange wordless rapidity with which news travels in India; in Delhi
to-day, in Peshawur to-morrow. A mystery that has passed undiscovered
with the coming of telegraphs and telephones that do it for pennies and
twopences.
Yes! he knew, but his task was to prevent this Angel of God from
putting his life into the hands of men who, at best, were devils; as he
was, himself, at bottom. He knew that also. Most men with brains did.
"It is not a lie, Huzoor," he said, simply. "These men are mutineers
themselves. They are going to join those at Delhi, murdering all the
Sahibs they can on the way."
He had laid his plan while the Salt of the Earth slept, and watched the
effect of his words upon the Boy narrowly; hoping that even the defence
of a post might take second place before the duty of giving a warning--
and that would mean being out of danger--for the time.
The Boy's face blanched. He had been away to the nearest station, fifty
miles off, for a three days' holiday at Christmas, and the remembrance
of a laughing girl with blue eyes came back to him now with a rush.
Hoshyari saw his chance, and went on----
"The plans were laid for later on, Huzoor, so they are taken by
surprise themselves; yet it gives them advantage also, since everywhere
the Sahibs are taken by surprise also; if only they had been prepared
it might be different."
The cunning told; the Boy's face hardened into thought. Fifty miles on,
along the road. He might do it.
"When did they come in? I suppose they forced the guard," he added, his
voice almost breaking in its resentment.
"About noon, Huzoor," came the wily tones. "They were wearied out."
So much the better; they would not start, likely, till just before dawn
next day. If he could give warning. He rose and looked round for his
horse.
Hoshyari rose also. "The Salt of the Earth cannot ride through the
gate," he said--the time for dissuasion had come now. "He will only be
killed in the attempt."
The Boy rounded on him instantly. "Didn't I always tell you you were
the greatest scoundrel unhung? Now I've found you out, you skunk!"
"Has this slave not always said the Huzoor was as the Salt of the
Earth," came the instant rapid reply. "My lord, listen! This is the
Hand of Fate. Wise men bow to it. You are here, safe, alone, none know
of you. Come with this slave and he will save you ..."
"D--n you, you scoundrel," shouted the Boy blindly, and fumbled for the
stirrups.
"Huzoor! that is useless!" came Hoshyari's voice, quiet now; all
entreaty gone. In its place almost command. "You cannot force the
barrier. Where we had one man, they have ten."
"I will try," muttered the Boy, doggedly. "I can but try."
"The Huzoor can do better," said Hoshyari. "He can come with me. I know
a way."
Even in his excitement the full meaning of this came home to the Boy.
"You know?" he echoed under his breath, "didn't I always say you were
the greatest scoundrel unhung?"
"And the Huzoor is the Salt of the Earth," came the unfailing reply.
The rapid Indian dusk was falling as they made their way on foot to a
village which, though almost exactly opposite the barrier, still lay
the orthodox half mile from the Hedge, within which, by rule of the
Salt Department, no building might be erected. The Boy was now in
native dress, for Hoshyari had utilised the interval of time in
arranging for the former's midnight ride of warning.
In reporting on these arrangements, he had given scope to his
imagination as to their difficulty. In reality, he had only had to ride
up to the barrier, give the password, and enter, to be welcomed as one
of the party within. Whether he was at heart one of them, or whether,
all things considered, his cleverness had come to the conclusion that
it was best for his purpose to fall in with their mood for the time
being, is uncertain; but that purpose was clear, namely, to get the Boy
out of the danger zone if he could. So he raised no objection to the
looting of the Salt Patrol's bungalow--the little Salt Patrol who,
doubtless, had run away into the jungle in the hope of escape, being
but a mere boy--but the office must be let alone. There must be no
tampering with books and registers, since he, Hoshyari Mull, Srimali
Brahman, whose father--God rest him--had been Prime Minister to a
Prince, was accountable for them to the powers that be--be they John
Company or the Badshah. Therefore the doors must be locked and the keys
given to him. And that Kathyawar mare in the stable was his; so that
was an end of it. Whoever laid hands on the beast would rue the deed.
But all this was past: now he had to get the Boy through the Hedge,
incredible though it seemed. "The furthermost house in the village is
mine, Huzoor," said Hoshyari, gravely. "It is thence that, in disguise,
I penetrate the evil designs of the smugglers."
The Boy ground his teeth, and was silent. He knew what he would say;
but this was not the time to say it; this was the time to warn his
countrymen.
They found the tiny hamlet deserted; as all knew, half India fled
before the mutineers.
"It is as well," remarked Hoshyari, hardily, "since they might talk,
though none know of the secret save this slave and Suchet Singh, the
waiting--house keeper."
But as they came upon what was called the waiting-house, since here
salt that arrived without proper papers, or that failed to pay the
toll, was held up, they found Suchet Singh the Sikh lying dead at his
post. The Boy ground his teeth again. So would he be lying but for his
desire not only to die, but to do.
"Look sharp, will you," he said, roughly, to his companion, "we lose
time. The moon will be up ere long."
Hoshyari led the way across a yard; an ordinary village house yard with
a row of three or four native corn granaries standing against one wall.
These are huge basketwork erections, each taller than a man, in shape
not unlike a big pickle bottle, fixed to the ground and carefully
plastered over with mud and cow dung.
"They are all full," said Hoshyari, with a curious smile, as he passed
one; and, sure enough, as he lifted the little sliding door at the
bottom, a tiny moraine of wheat fell forward in the half light. But the
next instant, with a dexterous twist of his hand, the whole _kothe_
slid round as on a pivot, disclosing a round well-like hole.
"We shall need a light," said Hoshyari in a matter-of-fact tone, and
produced a tinder box and a candle from a niche at his feet.
Once again the Boy ground his teeth. So this was the way, was it? and
all the time this biggest scoundrel that ever went unhung was
discovering miserable back-loads of smuggling! Words had failed him
long since; now thought failed him also; he plodded on, his head bent,
down the narrow subterranean passage that scarcely showed in the
flickering candle light.
But here, surely, there was less gloom and more room. He stood upright
and glanced above him. A star showed through a tangle of branches.
"We are under the Great Hedge, Huzoor," said Hoshyari, deferentially,
in answer to his look. "The passage needed air, and we also required to
have a store closer at hand." He held up the light, and it fell faintly
on rows on rows of sacks of salt ranged round a central space. "It is
quite light here in the daytime, Huzoor," he went on cheerfully.
"Sometimes the sun actually shines in; and the snakes do not fall down
now that we have put a net across the opening."
So this was one of the things concealed in the great width of the
Hedge. Who would have dreamt of it? Who _could_ have dreamt it?
Something of the comicality of the whole affair was beginning to filter
into the Boy's brain; he caught himself wondering where the passage
ended--under his bed, maybe!
It was almost as bad. "We are there, Huzoor," said Hoshyari, mounting
some steep steps, and then swung a panel blocking the passage
backwards. It had shelves on it, and books. He heard the turning of a
key, he followed his leader, and the next minute stood in the growing
light which presages a rising moon, inside the office room, looking
stupidly at what lay behind him; only a cupboard in the mud wall where
the ledgers were kept.
Dazed as he was, he yet realised partly how it was done. The wall must
be thicker than it seemed--twice, three times, perhaps four times as
thick--but who would have dreamed! And for the rest? He looked at
Hoshyari defiantly--the latter answered in words.
"It was quite easy, Huzoor," he replied, lightly. "We could always
replace salt that was taken from the Government storehouse next door
with salt from our storehouse yonder. And that paid nothing."
The Boy gave a little gasp. But there was no time for that sort of
thing now. The Kathyawar mare was waiting, the moon would be up in ten
minutes or so, and he must be beyond sight of the chattering devils he
could hear outside before them; but perhaps--yes! perhaps he might be
able to come back--to come back and give these fellows their deserts.
"I'll pay you out yet--you're the greatest scoundrel unhung," he said,
thickly, as Hoshyari held the stirrup for him.
"And the Huzoor is the Salt of the Earth," came the urbane reply.
After that there was silence on the far side of the office for five
minutes--for ten minutes. Then, faint and far, only to be heard of an
anxious listener, came the sound of a horse's hoofs as it was let into
its stride.
The Huzoor had got through the picket, and if he only remembered
instructions, might be considered safe for those fifty miles across
country. Hoshyari drew a breath of relief, shut the door, and lay down
placidly to sleep, feeling he had done his best. It is true he had sent
the Angel of God on a wild goose chase; for, briefly, the mutineers had
gone on straight that morning, only leaving a strong guard at the gate
to keep it until the second body of rebels should come in next day.
So by this time, doubtless, the fate of Englishmen--aye, and every
Englishwoman, too, on the route to Delhi must have been settled. But
the ride would keep the Salt of the Earth out of danger, since it
prevented him from doing rash things; which otherwise he was sure to
have done; for what was the use of losing one's life in fighting two to
a hundred; still less if it were only one. And these things were on the
knees of the Gods. No! there was no use, especially when the store
ammunition was in the hands of the enemy and you had expended your
pouch full on black buck. The Huzoor was best away. With luck he would
only find the cold ashes of outbreak. The hurricane of revolt would
have spent itself, for, after all, it was only the soldiers who would
mutiny. The rabble in the towns might follow suit; but there was safety
yet in the country.
So he fell asleep.
When he woke it was broad daylight. Daylight? Why, it must be nigh on
noon. He stepped to the door and looked through the panes. Aye! the
sentry in the verandah was eating his bread. And the other detachment
had come in. The courtyard was crowded with men. So much the better,
for they would only rest during the heat of the day, and go on at
sundown. Thus there would be peace before the Salt of the Earth could
possibly return--if he did return; but once away from his post he
would, most likely, and wisely, make for security to the north.
Meanwhile, it was time for him to think of himself. There was gold in
the safe yonder, and it would be folly to leave it to new masters who
had no more right to it than he. He went over to it, set the iron door
open and began to gather together what he found.
The room was very still, but on the one side came the clamour of the
newly-arrived rebels. He gave one last glance at them through the
closed door, then slipped into the verandah on the other side. Then he
paused before a dusty swaying figure that, throwing up its arms as it
saw him, came at him like a wild beast. It was a time for calm--with
those men in the courtyard, a time of calm for both!
He stood back a step and said, quietly, "So you have returned--Salt of
the Earth."
The Boy seemed for an instant dazed, then a loud, reckless laugh rang
out, "Come back! Yes! I've come back to kill you, you d--d scoundrel.
I've come back as I said I'd come."
"I saved the Huzoor's life," interrupted Hoshyari, quietly, "and I'll
save it again, if he will not speak so loud; the sentry will hear, and
then----"
"Let him hear--I'll have time to kill you first," went on the Boy,
blindly; for all that he lowered his voice; the instinct of belief in
Hoshyari's wisdom was strong.
"The Huzoor would not have time," whispered the latter, blandly. "I am
no fool at wrestling, as he knows; and he knows also that I tried to
save him."
There was a sudden unexpected appeal in the tone which surprised even
the man himself. He could have cried over this Angel of God who refused
to be saved.
The Boy looked at him with dry hot eyes; there were no tears there--he
had seen too many horrors for that. And he had ridden all night, all
day, till the Kathyawar mare had dropped with him; then he had stumbled
on as best he might, intent on revenge. And now the sight of Hoshyari
was as the sight of a friend's face: it brought back the memory of so
many jolly times they had had together. And what he said was true: the
man had tried to save him.
He had to bolster up his anger. "It--it's the other thing you've got to
answer for, you--you thief."
Hoshyari's eyes gleamed. "Don't call me that again, Huzoor. I am no
thief. I was only--cleverer than other folk."
"I'll call you it ten times over if I choose. Thief! mean, miserable,
petty thief."
There was something more savage in the whispered quarrel than if the
two had been shouting at each other, and Hoshyari's gasp of rage fell
on absolute silence, as, breathing hard, they looked at each other.
Then the Boy passed his hand wearily over his forehead. "No!" he said.
"I can't--you're right--I can't kill you like a dog--we must fight it
out--there are foils or swords somewhere--foils with the buttons
off--where are they?"
His dependence on the elder man showed in his helplessness; he asked as
a child might have asked.
There was almost a sob in his throat, but the voice which answered was
firm.
"They are on the wall, Huzoor; but we cannot fight here; the sentry
would hear, and----"
"D--n the sentry," said the Boy again, helplessly. "What can we do?"
Hoshyari thought for a moment. "There is light enough in the storehouse
under the Great Hedge----" he began.
The Boy leapt up, fire in his eyes. "By God in heaven, it shall be
there--and, mind you, it's to the death, you cursed smuggler."
"To the death, Salt of the Earth." A minute later the false back to the
record cupboard swung to its lock with a click, and the office was
empty.
* * * * *
The cactus flowers bloomed and faded; the violet-scented mimosa
puff-balls fell in gold showers on the green lobes, the aloe bells
withered in silence, the waiting, watching eyes waited and watched in
vain. If the snakes, as they slid over the netting-covered round hole
in the thickness of the great Salt Hedge, had looked down into the
widening sunlit circle below them, what would they have seen?
Who knows, since Suchet Singh the Sikh lay dead at his post.
AN APPRECIATED RUPEE
She was a poor Mahomedan widow, and lived in an unconceivable sort of
burrow under the tall winding stair of a big tenement house, which in
its turn was hidden away in a long, winding, sunless alley. The stair
centred round a sort of shaft, barred at each storey by iron gratings,
narrow enough to admit of refuse being thrown down--the shaft being,
briefly, the rubbish shoot of the building, so that old Maimuna--who
seldom left her seclusion till the evening--had, in passing to and fro,
to step over quite a pile of radish parings, cauliflower stalks, fluff,
rags--a whole day's sweepings and leavings of the folk higher up in the
world than she.
And even when she reached the odd-shaped cell of a place, whose only
furniture consisted of a rickety bed with string--halt in two of its
emaciated legs, a low stool and a spinning wheel, she was not free from
her neighbours' off-scourings; for down the wall beside the low
latticed window, where, perforce, she had to set her spinning wheel,
crept a slimy black streak of sewage from above, which smelt horribly,
on its way to join
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