Belle, recovering from the shock healthily, looked for a like forgetfulness in her husband, but she was disappointed. "There is nothing to make such a fuss about, John," she said, when a few days brought no cessation of his regret at her having been mixed up in such a scene. "It hasn't hurt me, you see; and as for the notoriety, people will soon forget all about it."
"At any rate it shows you that I was right in saying that the philanthropical dodge doesn't do in the wife of an official," he replied moodily. "A thing like that might do a man a lot of harm."
"I can't see how; besides, there isn't much philanthropy in watching men--Oh, John! don't let us talk of it any more. It makes me feel ill; I want to forget all about it."
"But you can't. I don't want to be disagreeable, Belle; but have you ever considered that there must be a trial, and that you, as an eye-witness, must--"
She turned pale, and clutched the arm of her chair nervously.
"No! I see you haven't,--that's always the way with women. They want all the fun of the fair without the responsibility. The ring-leaders will be tried for their lives of course; eight of the poor beggars were killed, and two more are dying, so they must hang some one. You had a box-seat, so to speak, and are bound to give your evidence."
"But I could only see the tops of their heads. I couldn't possibly recognise--"
"You must have seen and heard that fool of a preacher, my dear child. That's the worst of it; if you hadn't studied the language it would have been different. As I said before, it all comes of taking what you call an interest in the people. I don't see how you are to get out of being called on for evidence, and I tell you honestly I'd have given pounds to prevent you putting yourself in such a position. It may mean more than you think."
"But I couldn't give evidence against that boy," said Belle in a very low voice. "I told you, John, I thought it was he who,--who--"
"It doesn't matter a straw if he did help you. The question is, if he excited the crowd. Of course he did, and with your predilection for abstract truth, you would say so, I suppose, even if it was,--well, unwise."
"What,--what would the punishment be?" she asked after a pause.
He looked at her with unfeigned surprise. "Really, Belle! you surely see that some one must be hanged? The question is, who?"
"But he used such long words."
He had been quarrelling with a cigarette during the conversation, and now threw it away impatiently. "You are certainly a very ingenuous person, Belle. On the whole, perhaps youhadbetter stick to the truth. You couldn't manage anything else satisfactorily."
"Of course I shall stick to the truth, John," she replied hotly.
"Well, I don't want to be disagreeable, you know; but in your place I shouldn't, and that's a fact."
"Why?" she asked, in a startled voice.
"For many reasons. To begin with, the boy comes of decent folk; Marsden used to swear by the father. There were three brothers in the regiment, and one of them saved the Major's life, or something of that sort. Why, Belle, what's the matter?"
She had risen, and was now fain to catch at his outstretched hand to steady herself. Why, she scarcely knew; finding the only explanation in an assertion, made as much for her own edification as his, that her nerves must be out of order.
"Nerves!" he echoed, as he placed her with half contemptuous kindness in his chair, and brought her a scent-bottle. "I'll tell you what it is, dear, no woman should have both nerves and conscience. It's too much for one frail human being. It is no use my advising you to forget all about this wretched business, or to suppress the disagreeable parts; and yet, in your place, I should do both."
"Oh, John!"
"Yes, I should, from a sense of duty,--to myself first, and then to society. What will be gained by hanging that blatant windbag of a boy?"
Murghub Ahmad, who, in his cell awaiting trial, was meanwhile comforting himself with the belief that the fate of nations depended on his life or death, would no doubt have resented this opinion bitterly. Yet it was all too true. The evil lay much further back than the utterance of the half-realised words which had poured from his lips like oil on the flame. He had said things as wild, as subversive of the law, dozens of times before, and nothing had happened; no one had taken any notice of it. And now! The boy buried his face in his hands, and tried to think if he was glad or sorry for martyrdom.
Mahomed Lateef, stern and indignant, hurried from far Faizapore to see his Benjamin, and in the sight of the pale half-starved face forgot his anger, and pledged his last remaining credit to engage an English lawyer for his son's defence. And then he girt his old sword about him, counted over the precious parchments of olden days, and the still more precious scraps of modern note-paper, which were all that was left to his honour, and thus armed set off to see the big Lordsahibat Simla. He came back looking years older, to await, as they bade him, the usual course of law and order.
So it came to pass that as her husband had foretold, Belle found herself one day saying in a low voice: "I heard him call on the people to fight. I saw him wave his hand towards the Hindus."
"You mean,--pray be careful Mrs. Raby, for it is a point of great importance--that, as the butchers were coming up, you saw the prisoner wave them on to the conflict?"
"I cannot say if that was his intention. I saw him wave his hand."
"As they were passing?"
"As they were passing."
"Should you say,--I mean, did it give you the impression that he was encouraging them, urging them on?"
Belle Raby, before she answered, looked across the court at the boy, then at her husband, who with a slight frown, sat twiddling a pen at the Government Advocate's table. "It did. I think it would have given that impression to any one who saw it." And with these words every one knew the case was virtually at an end so far as Murghub Ahmad was concerned.
"Roman matrons are not in it," thought John Raby as he flung the pen from him impatiently; "and yet she will regret it all her life, and wonder if she didn't make a mistake, or tell an untruth, to the end of her days. O Lord, I'm glad I wasn't born a woman! They won't hang him, if that's any consolation to you, my dear," he said as they drove home; "though upon my word, it isn't your fault if they don't. I'm beginning to be a bit afraid of you, Belle. Your conscientiousness would run me out of that commodity in a week; but I suppose some people are born that way."
The fresh wind blew in her face, the sun was shining, the little squirrels skipping over the road. The memory of that drive to her father's funeral returned to her, sharply, with a sort of dim consciousness that something else in her life was dying, and would have to be buried away decently ere long. "Why didn't you tell me before that he would not be hanged?" she asked in a dull voice.
"Why? For many reasons. For one, I thought you might be more merciful, and,--but there's an end of it! They'll give him fourteen years over in the Andamans. By George, the boy will learn that the tongue is a two-edged sword! Pity he wasn't taught it before."
Perhaps it was. At all events Mahomed Lateef, his father, went back to his sonless house with a vague sense of injustice not to be lost this side the grave, and a palsied shake of his head only to be stilled by death. Not to stay there long, however, for he was ousted even from that dull refuge by the necessity for selling it in order to redeem his pledges. So he flitted drearily to his last hold on life. A scrap of land between the Indus and the sand-hills, where, if the river ran high, the flooding water raised a crop, and if not the tiller must starve,--or go elsewhere; if only to the six feet of earth all men may claim whereon to sow the seed for a glorious resurrection.
About a month after the trial John Raby came home from office, not exactly in a bad temper, but in that cynical, contemptuously-patient frame of mind which Belle began to see meant mischief to the hero-worship she still insisted on yielding to her husband.
"I've brought you something to read," he said coolly, laying a newspaper on the table and taking up the cup of tea she had poured out for him. "As that unfortunate trial has led to this premature disclosure, I think it only fair to ask you what you would rather I did in the matter. Honestly, I don't much care. Of course I would rather have had a little more time; but as the native papers have got hold of the business I'm quite ready, if you prefer it, to throw up my appointment to-morrow. However, read it,--on the second page I think--and skip the adjectives."
"Well?" he asked, as after a time she laid down the newspaper, and stared at him in a bewildered sort of way. "The main facts are true, if that is what you mean. I was lucky enough to hit on that indigo business; it will pay cent per cent if properly worked."
"I thought," she replied in a toneless voice, "that it was against,--the rules."
"Exactly so; but you see I haven't the slightest intention of remaining in the service. I never had, if once I got an opportunity, and I've got it."
"But the rules?"
"Bother the rules! I am not going to buy a pig in a poke to please propriety. That part of it is done, and I think it is always best to let by-gones be by-gones. If you like me to send in my papers to-day, I'll do it; if not I shall hang on for a time, and defy them. Why should one lose twelve hundred a month for an idea? I do my work quite as well as I did, and there won't be any necessity for personal supervision down in Saudaghur till next spring. But as I said before, if you have scruples,--why, you brought the money, and I'm deeply grateful, I assure you. Don't look scared, my dear; I'll insure my life if you are thinking of the pension of a civilian's widow!"
"Don't laugh, John; I can't stand it. Have any more of the native papers been writing,--things like that?" And she shivered a little as she spoke.
"No, that's the first; but the others will follow suit. They were desperately indignant about the Mohurrim riot. That is why I wanted--"
Belle stood up, and stretched her hands out appealingly to her husband, "Don't say it. Oh, please don't say it! You don't,--you can't mean it!"
He came across to her, taking her hands in his. "That's not consistent, Belle; you're always for having the truth. I do mean it. What harm would you have done to anybody by toning down what you saw? For the matter of that, what harm have I done to any one by investing money in indigo? None, absolutely none! However, it is no use talking about it; we should never agree; people seldom do on these points. But you ought to know by this time that I never mean to hurt your feelings in any way. So which is it to be,--dignity or impudence?"
And Belle, as he kissed her, felt helpless. It was like being smothered in a feather bed, all softness and suffocation.
"Well, I'm waiting. Am I not a model husband? Now don't begin to cry when it's all over; perhaps it is best as it is, for I shall have to build you a house, Belle. Think of that; a house of your very own! And look here! you can go in for doing good to your heart's content when you are no longer the wife of an official. Cheer up! There's a good time coming, and you have to decide if it's to come now, or next spring."
"How can you ask?" she said, breaking from him hurriedly, to walk up and down the room, twisting her fingers nervously. "We must go,--go at once."
"Very well. It's a little hasty; but remember it's your doing, not mine; and for goodness' sake, you poor, little, conscience-stricken soul, don't cry at getting your own way."
John Raby's announcement that he was about to leave the service fell like a thunderbolt on his old friend Shunker Dâs, for that astute gentleman had sketched out a very different programme in which theshaitan sahibwas to figure as chief actor. Indeed, when the latter had first come nibbling round the indigo prize, Shunker had, as it were, asked him to dine off it, chuckling in his sleeve the while at the idea of getting his enemy into the toils. But then he knew nothing of the thirty thousand pounds, which the young civilian rightly considered a sufficient insurance against any punishment for breaking the rules of his covenant. So all the Lâlâ's deft hounding of the native papers on the track of "disgraceful corruption and disregard of law on the part of Mr. John Raby of the Civil Service" had simply resulted in bringing a personal supervision, destructive of account-cooking, into the business.
He went down to Saudaghur shortly after the Rabys, and nearly had a fit over the calm decision with which the young Englishman took possession of the field. New machines were being imported, new vats built, new contracts made with growers throughout a large stretch of the district. On all sides Shunker found himself forestalled, outpaced, left in the cold. He would dearly have liked to break absolutely with this shrewd, unmerciful partner; yet to indulge this desire meant loss, for the Lâlâ, despite his hatred of the work, was not blind to John Raby's supreme capability for making the business pay. He was torn asunder by rage at having been outwitted, and admiration for the wit which had effected the task. He came home one day to the square block of a house he owned on the outskirts of Saudaghur village, cursing freely, and longing for some covert means of relieving his spite. The recipient of his curses took them with stolid indifference. She was a dark-browed, deep-chested lump of a woman, engaged in cooking the Lâlâ's dinner in a dutiful, conscientious sort of way, while she kept one eye on a solid two-year-old boy who was busy over a pumpkin rind. This was Kirpo, the absent Râm Lâl's wife, who had been sent to occupy this empty house of the Lâlâ's for several reasons. Chiefly because it was out of the way of scandal, and it had pleased Shunker to combine pleasure with the business of supporting her during her husband's imprisonment; wherefore, is one of those problems of human perversity best left alone. Kirpo herself had merely adopted the surest way of securing comfort and a pair of gold bangles, during this unpleasing interlude, and in her heart was longing to return to her rightful owner; but not without the bangles. There was, however, considerable divergence of opinion between her and the Lâlâ on this point, resulting, on the one side, in her refusal to retire discreetly before the off chance of any remission of her husband's sentence which might induce a premature appearance; and, on the other, in Shunker's half alarmed desire to let her risk her nose by discovery. Neither of them being altogether in earnest, and each anxiously awaiting symptoms of capitulation in the other.
"I don't care for your words, Lâlâ-ji," she retorted in answer to his abuse. "We women have to eat curses, aye! and blows too; but we get our own way for all that. I mean to have the bangles, so the sooner you unstomach them the better." Her black brows met in determination as Shunker consigned her and all her female ancestors to unspeakable torments. "If you say much more I'll have the evil eye cast on that sickly Nuttu of yours. Mai-Bishen does it. You take seven hairs--"
"Be silent, she-devil!" shouted the Lâlâ turning green. "What ails you to give the mind freedom on such things? Lo! I have been good to you, Kirpo, and the boy there,--would mine were like him!"
Kirpo caught the child in her arms, covering him with kisses as she held him to her broad brown breast. "Thine! Pooh! thou art a poor body and a poor spirit, Shunker. Afraid for all thy big belly; afraid of Raby-sahib!Look you, I will go to him: nay, I will go to hismem, who loves to see the black women, and she will make you give me the bangles."
Now Shunker's evil disposition partook of the nature of an amœba. That is to say, no sooner did a suggestion of food dawn upon it, than straightway the undefined mass of spite shot out a new limb in that direction. Kirpo's words had this effect upon him. After all why should she not go to see themem?How angry theshaitanwould be if he knew that his, Shunker's mistress, had had an interview with the stuck-up English girl. What business, too, had she to bring her husband money when her father was bankrupt? Rare sport indeed to chuckle over when Raby put on his airs. "By the holy water of Gunga!" he cried, "thou shalt go, Kirpo, as my wife. No one will know. Silks and satins, Kirpo, and sheets held up for thee to scuttle through so that none may see! Aha! And I have to take off my shoes at the door, curse him!" He lay back and chuckled at the bare idea of the petty, concealed insult of which no one but himself would know.
Kirpo looked at him in contemptuous dislike. "If I was a bad woman like thy friends in the bazaar I would not go, for they say she is easy to deceive and kind; but I am not bad. It is you who are bad. So I will go; but with the bangles, and with the boy too, in akhim-khâb(cloth of gold) coat. 'Twill be as thy son. Lâlâ-ji, remember, so thou wouldst not have him look a beggar."
Her shrill laughter rang through the empty house, making an old woman glance upwards from the lower court. "Kirpo should go home," muttered the hag, "or she will lose her nose like Dhundei when they let her husband out of gaol by mistake. A grand mistake for poor Dhunnu! oho! oho!"
"Kirpo Devi," returned the Lâlâ, with a grin of concentrated wickedness. "Thou shalt have the bangles, and then thou shall go see thememfirst, and to damnation after. Mark my words, 'tis a true saying." For another suggestion of evil had sprung into vision, and he already had a feeler out to seize it.
Two days later he sat on the same bed grinning over his own cleverness, yet for all that disconcerted. Kirpo had fled, with her boy and her bangles. That he had expected, but he was hardly prepared to find a clean sweep of all his brass cooking-pots into the bargain. He cursed a little, but on the whole felt satisfied, since his spite against Belle Raby had been gratified and Kirpo got rid of, at the price of a pair of deftly lacquered brass bangles. He grinned still more wickedly at the thought of the latter's face when she found out the trick.
As he sat smoking his pipe a man looked in at the door. A curiously evasive, downcast figure in garments so rumpled as to suggest having been tied up in tight bundles for months; as indeed they had been, duly ticketed and put away in the store-rooms of the gaol.
"Holy Krishna!" muttered the Lâlâ, while drops of sweat at the thought of the narrow escape oozed to his forehead, "'tis Râmu himself."
And Râmu it was, scowling and suspicious. "Where's my house?" he asked after the curtest of greetings.
Unfortunately for the truth Shunker Dâs had answered this question in anticipation many times. So he was quite prepared. "Thy house, oh Râmu? If she be not at home, God knoweth whither she hath gone. I sent her here, for safety, seeing that women are uncertain even when ill-looking; but she hath left this security without my consent."
His hearer's face darkened still more deeply as he looked about him in a dissatisfied way. "I went straight to Faizapore; they said she was here." He did not add that he had purposely refrained from announcing his remission (for good conduct) in order to see the state of affairs for himself.
Shunker meanwhile was mentally offering a cheap but showy oblation to his pet deity for having suggested the abstraction of the brass pots to Kirpo. "I say nothing, Râmu," he replied unctuously; "but this I know, that having placed her here virtuously with an old mother, who is even now engaged in work below, she hath fled, nor stayed her hand from taking things that are not hers. See, I am here without food even, driven to eat it from the bazaar, by reason of her wickedness; but I will call, and the old mother will fetch some; thou must be hungry. Hadst thou sent word, Râmu, the faithful servant should have had a feast from the faithful master."
Râmu and he looked at each other steadily for a moment, like two dogs uncertain whether to growl or to be friends.
"Fret not because of one woman, Râmu," added his master peacefully. "Hadst thou sent word, she would have been at home doubtless. She is no worse than others."
"She shall be worse by a nose," retorted his hearer viciously. Whereat the Lâlâ laughed.
He sat talking to his old henchman till late on into the night, during the course of his conversation following so many trails of that serpent, his own evil imaginings, that before Râmu, full of fresh meats and wines, had fallen asleep, Shunker Dâs had almost persuaded himself, as well as the husband, that Kirpo's disappearance had something to do with gold bangles and a series of visits to theshaitan sahibin the rest-house, where, until their own was finished, the Rabys were living.
This scandalous suggestion found, to Râmu's mind, a certain corroboration next day; for on his way to the station in order to return to Faizapore, he came full tilt on his wife, also hurrying to catch the train. The gold bangles on her wrists, and the fact of her having remained in Saudaghur after leaving the Lâlâ's house, pointed to mischief. He flew at her like a mad dog, too angry even to listen. Now the station of Saudaghur was a good two miles from the town, and the road a lonely one; so that the enraged husband had no interruptions, and finally marched on to his destination, leaving his wife, half dead, behind a bush; a brutal, but not uncommon occurrence in a land where animal jealousy is the only cause of women's importance. That evening John Raby, riding back from a distant village in the dusk, was nearly thrown at the rest-house gates by a sudden swerve of his horse.
"Dohai! Dohai! Dohai!" The traditional appeal for justice rose to high heaven as a female figure started from the shadow, and clutched his bridle. It was Kirpo, with a bloody veil drawn close about her face.
The young man swore, not unnaturally. "Well, what's the matter?" he cried angrily; past experience teaching him the hopelessness of escaping without some show of attention. "I'm not a magistrate any longer, thank God! Go to the police, my good woman. Oh!" he continued, in contemptuous comprehension, as the woman, clutching fiercely with both hands, let go her veil, which falling aside, showed a noseless face; "'tis your own fault, no doubt."
"The Lâlâ! the Lâlâ!" shrieked Kirpo. "'Tis his doing."
"Shunker Dâs?" asked John Raby, reining up his horse in sudden interest.
"Yes, Shunker Dâs! He gave me the gold bangles for going to see yourmemand pretending to be his wife. He did it. The ill-begotten son of a hag, the vile offspring of a she-devil!"
So, with sobs and curses, she poured the whole tale of her wrong into the young man's ear. He listened to it with wonderful patience. "All you want, I suppose, is to punish your husband?" he asked, when she paused for breath.
"No!" almost yelled the woman. "The Lâlâ! the Lâlâ! I could choke him on his own flesh."
John Raby laughed. These half savages had certainly most expressive methods of speech, a pity their actions were not as forcible. "Wait here," he said quietly. "I'll send you out a note for the native magistrate; but mind! no word of your visit to my wife. I'm not going to have that all over the place."
Kirpo squatted down at the gate-post, wrapping the bloody veil round her once more; a habit she would have to grow into with the years. Not a stone's throw from this ghastly figure, in the large bare sitting-room of the rest-house, which she had decorated to the best of her ability with Indian draperies disposed after the fashion of the West, sat Belle in a low wicker chair. A tea-table bright with silver and china awaited the master's return, while a pile of music scattered on the open piano showed her recent occupation. "There you are at last, John!" she said. "Cold isn't it?--quite Christmas weather; but your tea is ready."
"And what has my wife been doing with herself all day?" he asked, with the complacent affection which invariably sprang up at the sight of his own home comfort.
"Oh, I? Working, and reading, and practising as usual. There's a very interesting article on the morality of the Vedas in theNineteenth Century. It seems wonderfully pure."
"A little more sugar, if you please, and one of those cakes with the chocolate, dear," was the reply, given with a stretching of the limbs into the curves of a cushioned chair. "Do you know, Belle, India is a most delightful country. If Blanche Amory had lived here she would not have had to say, 'Il me faut des emotions.' They sit at the gate, so to speak, and the contrasts give such a zest to life. You, with that white gown and all the accessories (as the studio-slang has it) are likepâté de foieafter the black bread of the Spartans. If you have done your tea, go to the piano, there's a dear girl, and play me a valse;Rêves d'Amourfor choice; that will put the truffles to thepâté."
Kirpo squatting at the gate, waiting for vengeance, heard the gay notes. "What a noise!" she said to herself; "no beginning or end, just like a jackal's cry. I wish he would send the letter."
It came at last; and Kirpo, for one, always believed that to it she owed the fact that Râmu was caught, tried, sentenced, and imprisoned for a whole year; for as she used to say, in telling the tale to her cronies, "I hadn't a cowrie or an ornament left, so it would have been no use complaining to the police."
The Lâlâ, too, impressed a like belief on the indignant Râmu. "'Tis true enough," he said, "that it is tyranny to deny a man his right to teach his wife caution; but there!--she went straight to Rabysahib, and now you are in for a whole year without a friend to stand treat, my poor Râmu."
Râm Lâl's teeth chattered at the prospect of desertion. "But you will stand by me still, master?" he asked piteously.
"Wherefore, Râmu? Even abuniahleaves old scores alone when there is a receipt-stamp on the paper," chuckled the usurer. "Pray that thou hast not the same warder, oh my son! and come back to me, if thou wilst, when the time is over." He happened to be in high good spirits that morning owing to a slip on John Raby's part in regard to the signing of some contract which promised to put rupees into the Lâlâ's private pocket. So much so, that he went to the rest-house in order to gloat over the prospect in his unconscious partner's presence. It was the first time that the latter had seen him since Kirpo's appeal and confession, for John Raby had purposely avoided an interview until the trial, with its possibility of unpleasantness, was over. Now he calmly shut the door, and made the practical joker acquire a thorough and yet superficial knowledge of the ways of the ruling race, finishing up by a contemptuous recommendation to vinegar and brown paper.
"I've been fighting your battles, dear," he said, coming into his wife's room, and leaning over to kiss her as she lay resting on the sofa. A pile of dainty lace and muslin things on the table beside her, told tales for the future.
"My battles, John? I didn't know I had any enemies here." Or any friends she might have added, for those three months in the rest-house had been inexpressibly lonely; her husband away all day, and no white face within fifty miles.
"Enemies? No, Belle, I should say not; but I have, and what's mine's yours, you know." Then, half amused, half irritated, he told her of Kirpo's visit.
Her eyes sought his with the puzzled look which life was beginning to put into them. "I suppose it was intended as an insult," she said; "but when a man has half a dozen wives, some married one, some another way, it,--it doesn't seem to matter if they are married or not."
"My dear!" cried he, aghast. "I do hope you haven't been reading my French novels."
She smiled, a trifle bitterly. "No; they bore me. It's the gazeteer of this district which is to blame. How many kinds of marriage? I forget; one is called a kicking-strap, I know. It is a mere question of names all through. What difference can it make?"
John Raby walked up and down the room in, for him, quite a disturbed manner. "I'm sorry to hear you speak that way, Belle. It's always a mistake. If you can't see the insult, you will at least allow that it confirms what I have always maintained, the undesirability of mixing yourself up with a social life that doesn't fit in with ours. It has put me into rather a hole at all events."
"A hole, John? What do you mean?"
"Why, even the Lâlâ won't work with me after this, and I must take all the risk; there isn't much of course; but somehow I've been hustled all through. First by that foolish trial--"
"I thought we had agreed to leave that alone, John?" interrupted his wife with a heightened colour.
"True, O queen! And you needn't be afraid, Belle. You and the babies shall be millionaires, billionaires if you like." And a speech like this, accompanied as it was by the half-careless, half-affectionate glance she knew so well, would start her self-reproach on the road to that sanctuary from all her vague puzzles; the fixed belief that she and John were the most attached of couples.
It would, nevertheless, be almost impossible to over-colour the absolute loneliness of the girl's life at this time. Her husband away from dawn till sundown, her only companions a people whose uncouthpatoisshe hardly understood, whose broad simplicity of purpose and passion positively confused her own complexity. It was utter isolation, combined with the persistent reflection that close by in the native town, humanity went to and fro full to the brim with the same emotions of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, though the causes were different. It made her feel as if she had dropped from another world; and being, from physical causes, fanciful, she often thought, when looking over the wide level plain, without one tree to break its contour, which stretched away from her to the horizon, that, but for the force of gravity, she could walk over its visible curve into space. One of her chief amusements was what her husband laughingly called herjardin d'acclimatisation; a dreary row of pots where, in defiance of a daily efflorescence of Glaubers salt, she coaxed a dozen or so of disheartened pansies into producing feeble flowers half the size of a wild heart's-ease. She was extremely patient, was Belle Raby, and given to watering and tending all things which she fancied should adorn a woman's house and home; and among them gratitude. Scarcely a day passed but the thought of Philip Marsden's ill-requited kindness set this irreclaimable hero-worshipper into metaphorically besprinkling his grave with her tears, until countless flowers of fact and fancy grew up to weave a crown for his memory, a frame for his virtues. The extent to which she idealised him never came home to her, for the fact of his having passed finally from life prevented her from having to decide his exact position in her Pantheon. Another thing which intensified her inclination to over-estimate the benefits she had received at Philip's hands was her husband's evident desire for complete silence on this subject. Naturally in one so impulsively generous as Belle, this seemed to make her remembrance, and her gratitude, all the more necessary.
So time passed until, as women have to do, she began to set her house in order against life or death. To-day, to-morrow, the next day, everything familiar, commonplace,--and then? How the heart beats in swift wonder and impatience even though the cradle may be the grave!
A hint of spring was in the air; that sudden spring which in Northern India follows close on the first footsteps of the new year. Belle, with a light heart, sat sorting her husband's wardrobe, and laying aside in camphor and peppercorns, things not likely to be required; for who could tell how long it might be ere she could look after John's clothes again? As she paused to search the pockets of a coat, a building sparrow hopped across the floor to tug at a loose thread in the pile of miscellaneous garments among which she was sitting, and a bright-eyed squirrel, hanging on the open door, cast watchful glances on a skein of Berlin wool, which appeared utterly desirable for a nest. The whole world, she thought, seemed preparing for new life, working for the unknown, and she smiled at the fancy as she began methodically to fold and smooth. More carefully than usual, for this was John's political uniform, and the sight of it invariably brought her a pang of regret for the career that had been given up. Suddenly her half-caressing fingers distinguished something unusual between the linings; something that must have slipped from the pocket, for she had to unrip a rough mend in the latter ere she could remove a sheet of thin paper folded in two, smooth, uncrushed.
The writing startled her; it was Philip Marsden's, and she sat there for a minute staring at it blankly. In after years the smell of camphor always brought her back to that moment of life; the sunlight streaming on the floor beside her, the twittering bird, the watchful squirrel.
The draft of a will,--surelythewill--and yet! How came it in her husband's pocket, in the coat that he must have worn? Then he had known--hemusthave known about the money! Money! Yes, the one passion she had ever seen on his face; the one love--
The sparrow came back again and again robbing one life for another. The squirrel, emboldened at her silence, made off with its heart's desire; but still poor Belle lay in a dead faint on the floor. And there she might have remained, with the accusing paper in her hand to face her husband, had not pain, sharp compelling pain, roused her. To what? To a new life, to something beyond, yet of herself, something to defy fate and carry hope and fear from the present to the future.
A vague understanding of her own position came to her as she lay slowly gathering consciousness, until she rose to her feet and looked round her almost fearfully. "It must not alter anything," she muttered, as the torn shreds of paper fell from her shaking hand. "It cannot,--oh, dear God! it shall not. Not now, not now; I could not bear it; not now, not now!"
All that night Belle Raby fought a strange, uncertain battle, fought hard for the old life and the new, for life or death, scarcely knowing why she did either, and caring little, thinking little, of anything save the blind instinct of fight. And with the dawn the child which was hers, but which she was never to see, gave up its feeble desire, and left nothing but a pitiful waxen image to tell of life that had been and was gone.
But Belle, fast clasping her husband's hand, was in the Land of Dreams; the land to which many things besides the dead child must belong forever.
Death, we are told, changes our vile bodies and minds. It is at any rate to be hoped so, if orthodox heaven is to be endurable to some of us. And when mind and body have gone nigh to death, so nigh that he has stilled us in his arms for long days and nights, when he has kissed the sight of all things mortal from our eyes, and charmed away love and dread till soul could part from flesh without one sigh; does not that sometimes send us back, as it were, to a new life, and make us feel strangers even to ourselves?
Belle Raby felt this as she came back discreetly, decently, according to her wont in all things, from the Valley of the Shadow. Everything was changed, and she herself was no longer the girl who had cried uselessly, "Not now! Ah, dear God, not now!"
When she first floated up to consciousness through the dim resounding sea which for days and nights had seemed to lull her to sleep, it had been to find herself in John's arms, while he fed her with a teaspoon, and she had drifted down again into the dark, carrying with her a faint, half-amused wonder why a man who had so deceived his wife should trouble himself about her beef-tea. Neither was it a fit season for tragedy when, with hair decently brushed for the first time, and a bit of pink ribbon disposed somewhere to give colour to the pale face, she lay propped up on the pillow at last, fingering a bunch of roses brought her by the traitor. Nor when he had carried her to the sofa with pleasant smiles at the ease of the task, could she begin the dreadful accusation, "You knew I was an heiress,--that was why you married me." Horrible, hateful! The blood would surge over her face, the tears come into her eyes at the thought of the degradation of such a mutual understanding. Better, far better, that the offender should go scot-free. And after all, where was the difference? What had she lost? Only ignorance; the thing itself had always been the same. And yet she had not found it out--yet she had been content! That was the saddest, strangest part of all, and in her first bitterness of spirit she asked herself, more than once, if she had any right to truth, when lies satisfied her so easily. He had not chosen her out of all the world because he loved her, and yet she had not found him out. Was it not possible that she had not found herself out either? And what then? Did it make any difference, any difference at all?
During her tedious convalescence she lay turning these things over and over in her mind, almost as if the problem referred to the life of some one else. It was a critical time for the new venture, and long before she could leave the sofa, her husband had to spend a day here, two days there, arranging for labour and machinery; above all for the new house into which he was so anxious for her to settle comfortably before the hot weather came on. All was very natural and right; nevertheless it marked the beginning of the epoch which comes about in most marriages; the time when Adam and Eve leave the garden of Eden, and face the world; the time when different dispositions naturally drift apart to different interests. Belle, still weak and unstrung, found a morbid significance in her husband's growing absorption in the business; she seemed to see the greed of gold in his handsome face as he sat descanting, over his cigarette, on the many projects of his busy brain. Yet she said no word of blame or warning, for she began to lack the courage of criticism. The fact was, she did not want to know the extent of the gulf between them; therefore she kept silence on all points which might serve as a landmark to their relative positions. Even so she came on the knowledge unawares.
"I'm glad you don't fret over the baby," he said to her one day; "but you were always sensible. The poor little thing might have got ill, you know, and it would have been a bore if you had had to go to the hills this year, when there is so much to be done."
After that she would have died sooner than mention a grief that was always with her, despite her smiling face. Yet, when he was away, she wept unrestrained tears over a forlorn little spot in the dreary garden where they told her the lost hope lay hidden away, for ever, from her eyes. If she had only seen it once, she used to think; if she could only have shed one tear over the little face of which she used to dream! If she could only have whispered to it that she was sorry, that it was not her fault. Such grief, she told herself, was natural even in the happiest wife; it could not be construed into a complaint, or counted as a surrender to Fate. She was not going to do that, whatever happened. Never, never! That was the ruling idea to which even her own unhappiness gave place; and the cause of this fixed purpose was a curious one. Nothing more or less than a passionate desire not to defeat the purpose of Philip Marsden's legacy. He had meant kindly by her; when, she thought with the glow of ardent gratitude which his memory invariably aroused, had he not meant kindly by her and hers! And no one, least of all she herself, should turn that kindness to unkindness. Poor Belle! She was bound hand and foot to hero-worship, and life had shown her unmistakably that it was safer to canonise the dead. She lived, it must be remembered, in a solitude hard even of explanation to those unacquainted with out-station life in India. The growing gulf between her and her husband had to be bridged over a dozen times a day by their mutual dependence on each other even for bare speech. The saying, "It takes two to make a quarrel," falls short of truth. It takes three; two to fight, and one to hold the sponge, and play umpire. After a few days of silence consequent on his frequent absences, Belle was quite ready to welcome John back with smiles; and this very readiness gave her comfort. Things could not be so far wrong after all. And so every time he went away, she set herself to miss his company with a zest that would have seemed to the spectators--had there been any--right-minded, wrong-headed, and purely pitiful. It was so even to herself, at times, when, for instance, the shadows of day lifted in the night-time, and she woke to find her pillow wet with tears,--why, she knew not. Perhaps because those who had loved her best were lying in unknown graves far away among the everlasting hills. It seemed so strange that they should have met such similar fates; their very deaths mysterious, if all too certain. In her mind they seemed indissolubly mixed up with each other, living and dying, and her thoughts were often with them. Not in sadness, in anything but sadness; rather in a deep unreasoning content that they had loved and trusted her.
And all the while Fate was arranging a cunning blow against her hard-contested peace.
She was expecting her husband one evening when the rapid Indian twilight had begun to fill the large bare room with shadows, and as, driven by the waning light from her books, she sat down at the piano, her fingers found one theme after another on the keys. Quite carelessly they fell on theFrühlingslied, which three years before had wrought poor Dick's undoing. And then, suddenly, she seemed to feel the touch of his warm young lips on hers, to see the fire and worship of his eyes. WasthatLove? she wondered, as her fingers stilled themselves to silence; or wasthattoo nothing but a lie? Dear, dear old Dick! The shadows gathered into an eager protesting face, the empty room seemed full of the life that was dead for ever. Ah, if it could be so really? If those dear dead could only come back just to know how sorely the living longed for them.
A sound behind made her rise hastily. "Is that you, John? How late you are!" she said with face averted, for, dark as it was, the unbidden tears in her eyes craved concealment.
"No! it is I, Philip Marsden."
Her hand fell on the keys with a jarring clang that set the room ringing. Philip! Nervous, overwrought, unstrung as she was by long months of silence and repression, it seemed to her that the dead had heard her wish. How terribly afraid she was! Afraid of Philip? A swift denial in her heart made her turn slowly and strain her eyes into the shadow by the door. He was there, tall and still, for darkness dazzles like day and Philip Marsden's eyes were seeking her in vain by the sound of her voice until he saw a dim figure meeting him with outstretched hands. "Philip, oh, Philip! kindest! best! dearest!"
In the shadows their hands met, warm clinging hands; and at the touch a cry, half-fear, half-joy, dominated the still echoing discord. The next instant like a child who, frightened in the dark, sees a familiar face, she was in his arms sobbing out her relief and wonder. "Ah, Philip, it is you yourself! You are not dead! You have come back to me, my dear, my dear!"
He had entered the room cynically contemptuous over the inevitable predicament into which Fate and his impulsive actions had led him. During his long captivity he had so often faced the extreme probability of her marrying John Raby that the certainty which had met him on his arrival at Kohât two days before had brought no surprise, and but little pain. The past, he had said, was over. She had never liked him; and he? That too was over; had been over for months if, indeed, it had ever existed. He must go down at once, of course, explain about Dick's legacy and settle what was to be done in the meantime--that was all. And now she was in his arms and everything was swept away in the flood of a great tenderness that never left him again.
"Oh, Belle! You are glad, you are glad that I have come back!"
The wonder and joy of his voice seemed to rouse her to realities; she drew away from him, and stood with one hand raised to her forehead in perplexity. "How dark it is!" she cried, petulantly. "I did not see. I cannot,--Why did you come like a thief in the night? Why did you not write? Why?--you should not have come, you should not!"
"I did write," he answered gently, the blame in her tone seeming to escape his ear. "I wrote from Kohât to tell you. The dog-cart was at the station and I thought--"
"It was for John, not for you," she interrupted almost fiercely. "It was for my husband--" She broke off into silence.
"Yes; I heard at Kohât you were married."
He could not see her face, nor she his, and once more her voice was petulant in complaint. "You startled me. No one could have seen in the dark."
"Shall I call for lights now?"
"If you please."
When he returned, followed by a servant bringing the lamp, she was standing where he had left her. Great Heavens, how she had changed! Was this little Belle Stuart with her beautiful grey eyes? This woman with the nameless look of motherhood, the nameless dignity of knowledge in her face; and yet with a terror, such as the tyranny of truth brings with it, in the tired eyes which used to be so clear of care.
"I am sorry," he began; then his thought overflowed conventional speech, making him exclaim--"Don't look so scared, for pity's sake!"
"Don't look like that!" she echoed swiftly. "That is what you said the last time I saw you: 'Don't, Belle, the whole world is before you, life and happiness and love.' It was not true, and you have only made it worse by coming back to upset everything, to take away everything."
"I am not going to take anything. The money--"
"Money, what money? I was not thinking of money. Ah, I remember now! Of course it is yours, all yours."
Then silence fell between them again; but it was a silence eloquent of explanation. So eloquent that Philip Marsden had to turn aside and look out on the red bars of the sunset before he could beat down the mad desire to take instant advantage of her self-betrayal. But he was a man who above all things claimed the control of his own life, and the knowledge that he too had been caught unawares helped him. "It is all my fault, Mrs. Raby," he said, coming back to her, with a great deference in voice and look. "This has startled you terribly, and you have been ill, I think."
"Yes, I have been ill, very ill. The baby died, and then--oh, Philip, Philip! I thought you were dead; I did indeed."
That was the end. Every atom of chivalry the man possessed, every scrap of good in his nature responded to the pitiful appeal. "I do not wonder," he answered, and though he spoke lightly there was a new tone in his voice which always remained in it afterwards when he addressed her. "I thought I was dead myself. Come, let us sit down, and I will tell you how it all happened. Yes, I thought I was dead; at least so Afzul Khân declares--"
"Afzul Khân! That was the name of the sepoy you arrested at Faizapore."
Did she remember that? It was so long ago; long before the day he had seen her last, when he had tried to comfort her, and she had sobbed out her sorrow as to a brother, in just such another bare shadowy room as this. Ah, poor Belle, poor Belle! Had it all been a mistake from beginning to end? The only refuge from bewildering thought seemed speech, and so he plunged into it, explaining, at far greater length than he would otherwise have done, how he came to be sitting beside her, instead of lying with whitening bones in some deep pool in the mountains. He must, he said, have become unconscious from loss of blood, and slipped into the river after he was wounded, for Afzul Khân from his place of concealment on the water's edge had seen him drifting down and dragged him to safety. They were a queer lot, the Afghans, and Afzul believed he owed the Major a life. After that it was a week ere he could be taken to decent shelter, because Afzul was also wounded; but of all this he himself knew nothing. His unconsciousness passing into delirium it was six weeks ere he awoke to find himself in a sort of cave with snow shining like sunlight beyond the opening, and Afzul cooking marmot-flesh over a smoky fire. Even after that there was a rough time what with cold and hunger, for it was an enemy's country, and the people about were at blood-feud with Afzul's clan. At last it became a toss-up for death one way or the other, seeing he was too weak to attempt escape. So he had given himself up to the tribe, trusting that to their avarice an English prisoner might be worth a ransom, while Afzul had gone east promising to return with the swallows.
Then months had passed bringing threats of death more and more constant as the promised ambassador never returned, until towards autumn, being stronger, he managed to escape, and after running the gauntlet of danger and starvation succeeded in reaching Afzul's tribe, only to find him slowly recovering from rheumatic fever brought on by exposure and privation. The poor fellow had been at death's door, and long ere he was strong enough to act as pilot eastwards winter had set her seal on the passes. So there they had remained, fairly comfortable, until spring melted the snows. "And," he added with a smile, for Belle's face had resumed its calm, "I grew quite fat, in comparison! Yet they all took me for a ghost when I walked in to the mess-room at Kohât one evening after dinner,--just as I walked in here."
But her truthful eyes looked into his and declined the excuse. "No! I did not take you for a ghost, except for an instant. I knew it was you, and that you had come back to claim--everything."
"Then you knew wrong. I have come to claim nothing. Perhaps I have no right to claim anything; so it need make no difference--"
"It must make a difference to John," she interrupted coldly. "I was thinking of him. It is hard on him at all events."
"Hard! Of course it is hard," he answered with a sudden pain at his heart. "Yet it is not my fault. I meant no harm."
"You have done no harm as far as I know," was the still colder reply. But in her turn she rose and looked out to that low bar of red still lingering in the horizon. "It is all very unfortunate, but we shall manage,--somehow." There was a pause, then she added in quite her ordinary tone, "I don't think John can be coming to-night, so we need not wait dinner for him. They have taken your things to the end room. I see a light there."
"But I have no right--" he began, crossing to where she stood.
She turned to him with a sudden gracious smile. "Right! you have every right to everything. You have given me,--what have you not given me?"
A tall figure crouching in the verandah rose as they passed through the open French window.
"Who is that?" she asked, half startled.
"Afzul Khân. I can't take him back to the regiment, of course, but he came so far with me. He has business, he says, in Faizapore."
"Afzul Khân! Call him here, please."
It was a curious group: those two bound to each other by such a tissue of misunderstanding and mistake, and the Pathan responsible for part of those mistakes. He stood bysalaamingstolidly; for all that taking in the scene with a quick eye.
"You have brought me back the best friend I ever had," said Belle with a ring in her voice, and all instinctively her hand sought her companion's and found it.
"It is God's will, not mine," was the reply. Not an atom of sentiment in the words, not a scrap of sanctimoniousness; simply a statement of fact. God's will! And stowed away in the folds of his fur coat lay a long blue envelope, ominously stained with blood, and addressed in a free bold hand to Miss Belle Stuart, favoured by Major Marsden of the 101st Sikhs. That was poor Dick's will at any rate. Even in their ignorance those two looked at each other and wondered. God's will! It was strange, if true.
"We dine in the garden now, it is cooler. I shall be ready in ten minutes," said Belle.
She was waiting for him under the stars when he came out from his room, and the slender figure against its setting of barren plain and over-arching sky seemed all too slight for its surroundings.
"You must be very lonely here," he said abruptly.
Her light laugh startled him. "Not to-night at any rate! To-night is high holiday, and I only hope thekhânsâmahwill give us a good dinner. Come! you must be hungry."
Thinking over it afterwards the rest of the evening seemed like a dream to Philip Marsden. A halo of light round a table set with flowers; a man and a woman talking and laughing, the man with a deep unreasoning content in the present preventing all thought for the future. How gay she was, how brilliant! How little need there was for words with those clear sympathetic eyes lighting up into comprehension at the first hint; and with some people it was necessary to have Johnson's dictionary on the table ready for reference! Afterwards again, as he sat in the moonlight smoking his cigar, and the cool night wind stirred the lace ruffle on the delicate white arm stretched on the lounge chair, how pleasant silence was; silence with the consciousness of comprehension. Then when her hand lay in his as they said good-night how dear her words were once more. "I want you to understand that I am glad. Why not? You thought I meant the money, but it was not that. I don't know what I meant, but it was not that. I used to cry because I couldn't thank you; and now you have come, I do not want to."
"Thank me for what?" he asked, with a catch in his voice.
But there was no answering tremble in hers. "You are not so wise as your ghost; it knew. Supposing it was better to be dead after all? That would be a pity, would it not? Good-night. John will be home to-morrow."
He stood and stared at the lamp after she had gone, as if its feeble ray would illuminate the puzzle of a woman's face and words. He did not know that for the first time in her life Belle had turned on Fate. "I do not care," she had said, recklessly, as she walked up and down waiting for him amid the flowering oleanders. "One cannot be always thinking, thinking. He has come back and I am glad. Surely that is enough for to-night."
It was not much to claim, and yet it made the puzzle so much the harder for Philip Marsden. He sat on the edge of his bed, and swore to himself that he did not know what it all meant, that he did not even know his own feelings. To leave a girl with whom you fancied yourself in love and who apparently hated you; to die, and fall out of love, only to find when you came back to life, that she who had scorned you living had taken a fancy to your memory. Nay more, to find that something in you had survived death. What? Were the elements of a French novel born out of such materials? He had never thought over these questions, being one of those men who, from a certain physical fastidiousness, are not brought into contact with them. So he may have been said to be, in his way, quite as conventional in his morality as any woman; and the suggestion of such a situation offended him quite as much as it would have offended Belle. The pride and combativeness of the man rose up against the suggestion even while the very thought of her glad welcome thrilled him through and through. He wished no harm to her,--God forbid! And yet if one were to believe the world--bah! what was one to believe? He was too restless to sleep, and, with the curious instinct which drives most good men to be tempted of the devil in the wilderness, he put on a pair of thick boots, turned up his trousers methodically, and set out to seek peace in a moonlight walk. Bathos, no doubt; but if the sublime borders on the ridiculous, the commonplaces of life must touch on its tragedy. It was a broad white road down which he started at a rattling pace. Before, behind, it merged into a treeless horizon and it led--God knows where! For all he knew it might be the road leading to destruction; the ready-made conventional turnpike worn by the feet of thousands following some bell-wether who had tinkled down to death when the world was young. The moon shone garishly, eclipsing the stars. It seemed a pity, seeing they were at least further from this detestable world than she,--a mere satellite dancing attendance on a half-congealed cinder, and allowing it to come between her and the light at every critical moment! A pretty conceit, but not thought; and Philip was there with the firm intention of thinking out the position. Yet again and again he found himself basking in the remembrance of Belle's welcome. How glad, how unfeignedly, innocently glad she had been, till fear crept in. Fear of what? Of the French novel, of course. He had felt it himself; he had asked himself the same question, doubtless, as she had; and what in heaven's name was to be the answer? Must love always be handfast to something else? Or was it possible for it to exist, not in the self-denying penance of propriety and duty, but absolutely free and content in itself? Why not?
As he tramped along, stunning noises came from a neighbouring village; thrummings of tom-toms, and blares of inconceivable horns mingling in a wild, beast-like tumult. That meant a marriage in all its unglozed simplicity of purpose; a marriage, to use the jargon, unsanctified by love. But after all what had love to do with marriage? What could the most unselfish dream of humanity have to do with the most selfish, the most exacting, the most commonplace of all ties? Love, it is true, might exist side by side with marriage, but the perfection of the one was not bound up in the perfection of the other. Had not the attempt to find an unnecessary fig-leaf by uniting sentiment to passion, only ended in an apotheosis of animalism not much above that which found expression in those hideous yells and brayings? Above! nay below! for it degraded love and passion alike by false shame.
To escape the wedding party he struck away from the road, and felt relieved when he had got rid of its hard-and-fast lines, its arrogance of knowing the way. The clumps of tall tiger-grass shot arrowlike against the velvet sky, and every now and again a faint rustle at their roots told of something watching the intruder; a brooding partridge may be, perhaps a snake with unwinking eyes. And as he walked, his thoughts seemed to lead him on, till something of the truth, something naked yet not ashamed as it had been before mankind ate of the sorrowful tree, came home to him. It could not be true, that verdict of the world. He would defy it.
Suddenly he found himself confronted by a strange barrier, blocking his way. As far as eye could reach on either side rose a wall of shadow twenty feet high, a wall dense and dark below, filmy as cobwebs where the tasselled reeds of which it was composed touched the purple of the sky. The gossamer wings of a day could pass through those feathery tops; but below, even the buffalo had to seek an oozy track here and there. He had often heard of this reed wall, which, following the old river bed, divides village from village as effectually as when the stream ran fast and deep; but its curious aptness to his thoughts startled him. Impenetrable save for those who sought the mire, or those with the wings of a dove. Which was it to be? As he stood arrested by his own fancy a night-heron flitted past; its broad white wings whirred softly, and its plumed head, craning forward, with blood-red eyes searching the shadows, cleft the moonlight. By some strange jugglery of fancy it reminded him of a picture by Gustave Doré, and with the remembrance of Francesca da Rimini came that of the scared look in poor Belle's face.
He turned aside impatiently beset once more by the desire for escape and struck across the plain; coming, after a time, on a footpath which he followed mechanically through the tamarisk bushes, until he emerged on an open space where a hoar frost of salt crystals glittered on rows and rows of tiny mounds. So pure, so white, that the eye might have sworn to a winter's night even while the other senses told of more than summer's heat; a deception increasing the unreality with which Philip recognised that his wandering steps had led him to a village grave-yard. A far cry from the marriage feast! He sat down on the pile of disordered bricks and stucco which marked the resting-place of the saint round whose bones the faithful had gathered, and asked himself what chance there was of standing out against the opinion of the many in life, if even in death it was always follow my leader?
A quaint place it was; no enclosure, no token of hope or grief, no symbol of faith; nothing but the dead, clean forgotten and out of mind. Ah! but Belle had not forgotten him, and if he had remained dead she would have gone on giving him the best part of herself without reproach, without remorse. Was death then the only freedom from the body? He sat so long immersed in his own thoughts that the slow stars were wheeling to meet the dawn ere he rose, and threw out his arms cramped by long stillness. Dead, yet alive,--that was the old panacea. Was nothing else attainable? Must love be killed? Why?
A rustle in the tamarisks beyond the open made him turn sharply, and make his way towards the corner whence it proceeded. As he did so a group of men defiled from the bushes, set down the burden they carried, and, without looking round, began to dig a grave. The hour, the absence of wailing, gave Philip a momentary thought that he might be assisting at the concealment of some crime, but his knowledge of the people reassured him. Yet as he approached, all the party--save a very old man mumbling his beads--scurried into the jungle, and so he judged it wiser to stop and give the orthodox salutation. The patriarch rose in feeble haste. "Allah be praised! we thought you were the ghost already. Come back; come back!" he cried in louder quavering voice. "'Tis only a Presence, seeking sport, doubtless. Come back, and get her under earth ere dawn, or 'twill be the worse for all."
Then, as one by one his companions crept back to their task, he answered Philip's curious looks with waggling head. "Only a wanton woman,Huzoor. Seven months ago meek as a dove, playing about the village with maiden-plaited hair. But when the matrons unbound it for the bridegroom, as in due course of duty, the wickedness came out. It is so with some women; a fancy that hath not bit nor bridle; a wantonness of mind when God made them to be mothers. And she would have been one--ay, a happy one--for all her fancies, had she not wept herself into a wasting and died with her unborn child. Cursed creature, bringing evil on the whole village with her whims! Quick, quick, my sons! Hide her before dawn, with the irons round her thumbs, and the nails through her feet. Then will I sow the mustard-seed in her path homewards, so that cock-crow will ever send her back to the worms ere she hath done gathering. And all for a fancy when God made women to be mothers! A wanton mind! A wanton mind!"
The broken, quavering voice went on accusingly as Philip turned away sick at heart. Here was the other side of the shield; and which was the truth?
He went home feeling he had gained very little from the wilderness.