"You sent for me, I believe, Mrs. Erlton."
"Yes, Mr. Greyman, I sent for you."
Both voices came reluctantly into the persistent cooing of doves which filled the room, for the birds were perched among a coral begonia overhanging the veranda. But the man had so far the best of it in the difficult interview which was evidently beginning, in that he stood with his back to the French window through which he had just entered; his face, therefore, was in shadow. Hers, as she paused, arrested by surprise, faced the light. For Kate Erlton, when she sent for James Greyman in the hopes of bribing him to silence regarding the match which had been run the evening before between his horse and her husband's, had not expected to see a gentleman in the person of an ex-jockey, trainer, and general hanger-on to the late King's stables. The diamonds with which she had meant to purchase honor lay on the table, but this man would not take diamonds. What would he take? She scanned his face anxiously, yet with a certain relief in her disappointment; for the clean-shaven contours were fine, if a trifle stern; and the mouth, barely hidden by a slight mustache, was thin-lipped, well cut.
"Yes! I sent for you," she continued--and the even confidence of her own voice surprised her. "I meant to ask how much you would want to keep this miserable business quiet; but now----" She paused, and her hand, which had been resting on the center table, shifted its position to push aside the jewel-case; as if that were sufficient explanation.
"But now?" he echoed formally, though his eyes followed the action. She raised hers to his, looking him full in the face. They were beautiful eyes, and their cold gray blue, with the northern glint of steel in it, gave James Greyman an odd thrill. He had not looked into eyes like these for many a long year. Not since, in a room just like this one, homely and English in every twist and turn of foreign flowers and furniture, he had ruined his life for a pair of eyes, as coldly pure as these, to look at. He did not mean to do it again.
"But now I can only ask you to be kind, and generous, Mr. Greyman! I want you to save my husband from the disgrace your claim must bring--if you press it."
Once more the monotonous cooing from the outside filled the darkness and the light of the large, lofty room. For it was curiously dark in the raftered roof and the distant corners; curiously light in the great bars of golden sunshine slanting across the floor. In one of them James Greyman stood, a dark silhouette against an arch of pale blue sky, wreathed by the climbing begonia. He was a man of about forty, looking younger than his age, taller than his real height, by reason of his beardless face and the extreme ease and grace of his figure. He was burned brown as a native by constant exposure to the sun; but as he stooped to pick up his glove which had slipped from his hold, a rim of white showed above his wrist.
"So I supposed; but why should I save him?" he said briefly. The question, thus crudely put, left her without reply for a minute; during which he waited. Then, with a new tinge of softness in his voice, he went on: "It was a mistake to send for me. I thought so at the time, though, of course, I had no option. But now----"
"But now?" she echoed in her turn.
"There is nothing to be done save to go away again." He turned at the words, but she stopped him by a gesture.
"Is there not?" she asked. "I think there is, and so will you if you understand--if you will wait and let me speak." His evident impatience made her add quickly, "You can at least do so much for me, surely?" There was a quiver in her voice now, and it surprised her as her previous calm had done; for what was this man to her that his unkindness should give pain?
"Certainly," he said, pausing at once, "but I understand too much, and I cannot see the use of raking up details. You know them--or think you do. Either way they do not alter the plain fact that I cannot help--because I would not if I could. That sounds brutal; but, unfortunately, it is true. And it is best to tell the truth, as far as it can be told."
A faint smile curved her lips. "That is not far. If you will wait I will tell you the truth to the bitter end."
He looked at her with sudden interest, for her pride attracted him. She was not in the least pretty; she might be any age from five-and-twenty to five-and-thirty. And she--well! she was a lady. But would she tell the truth? Women, even ladies, seldom did; still he must wait and hear what she had to say.
"I sent for you," she began, "because, knowing you were an adventurer, a man who had had to leave the army under a cloud--in disgrace----"
He stared at her blankly. Here was the truth about himself at any rate!
"I thought, naturally, you would be a man who would take a bribe. There are diamonds in that case; for money is scarce in this house." She paused, to gain firmness for what came next. "I was keeping them for the boy. I have a son in England and he will have to go to school soon; but I thought it better to save his father's reputation instead. They are fine diamonds"--she drew the case closer and opened it--the sunshine, streaming in, caught the facets of the stones, turning them to liquid light. "You needn't tell me they are no use," she went on quickly, as he seemed about to speak; "I am not stupid; but that has nothing to do with the question. I want you to save my husband--don't interrupt me, please, for I do want you to understand, and I will tell you the truth. You asked me why? and you think, no doubt, that he does not deserve to be saved. Do you think I do not know that? Mr. Greyman! a wife knows more of her husband than anyone else can do; and I have known for so many years."
A sudden softness came into her hearer's eyes. That was true at any rate. She must know many things of which she could not speak; a sort of horror at what she must know, with a man like Major Erlton as her husband, held him silent.
"Yet I have saved him so far," she went on, "but if what happened yesterday becomes public property all my trouble is in vain. He will have to leave the regiment----"
"He is not the first man, as you were kind enough to mention just now," interrupted James Greyman, "who has had to leave the army under a cloud. He would survive it--as others have done."
"I was not thinking of him at all," she replied quietly. "I was thinking of my son; my only son."
"There are other only sons also, Mrs. Erlton," he retorted. "I was my mother's, but I don't think the fact was taken into consideration by the court-martial. Why should I be more lenient? You have come to the wrong person when you come to me for charity or consideration. None was shown to me."
"Perhaps because you did not need it," she said quickly.
"Not need it?"
"Many a man falls under the shadow of a cloud blamelessly. What do they want with charity?"
He rose swiftly and so, facing the light again, stood looking out into it. "I am obliged to you," he said after a pause. "Whether you are right or wrong doesn't affect the question from which we have wandered. Except--" he turned to her again with a certain eagerness--"Mrs. Erlton! You say you are prepared to tell the truth to the bitter end; then for Heaven's sake let us have it for once in our lives. You never saw me before, nor I you. It is not likely we shall ever meet again. So we can speak without a past or a future tense. You ask me to save your husband from the consequences of his own cheating. I ask why? Why should I sacrifice myself? Why should I suffer? for, mark you, there were heavy bets----"
"There are the diamonds," she interrupted, pointing to them; their gleam was scarcely brighter than her scornful eyes.
He gave a half smile. "Doubtless there are the diamonds! I can have my equivalent, so far, if I choose; but I don't choose. It does not suit me personally; so that is settled. I can't do this thing, then, to please myself. Now, let us go on. You are a religious woman, I think, Mrs. Erlton--you have the look of one. Then you will say that I should remember my own frailty, and forgive as I would be forgiven. Mrs. Erlton! I am no better than most men, no doubt, but I never remember cheating at cards or pulling a horse as your husband does--it is the brutal truth between us, remember. And if you tell me I'm bound to protect a man from the natural punishment of a great crime because I've stolen a pin, I say you are wrong. That theory won't hold water. If our own faults, even our own crimes, are to make us tender over these things in others, there must be--what, if I remember right, my Colenso used to call an arithmetical progression in error until the Day of Judgment; for the odds on sin would rise with every crime. I don't believe in mercy, Mrs. Erlton. I never did. Justice doesn't need it. So let us leave religion alone too, and come to other things--altruism--charity--what you will. Now who will benefit by my silence? Will you? You said just now that a wife knows more of her husband than a stranger can. I well believe it. That is why I ask you to tell me frankly, if you really think that a continuance of the life you lead with him can benefit you?" He leaned over the table, resting his head on his hand, his eyes on hers, and then added in a lower voice, "The brutal truth, please. Not as a woman to man, or, for the matter of that, woman to woman; but soul to soul, if there be such a thing."
She turned away from him and shook her head. "It is for the boy's sake," she said in muffled tones. "It will be better for him, surely."
"The boy," he echoed, rising with a sense of relief. She had not lied, this woman with the beautiful eyes; she had simply shut the door in his face. "You have a portrait of him, no doubt, somewhere. I should like to see it. Is that it, over the mantelpiece?"
He walked over to a colored photograph, and stood looking at it silently, his hands--holding his hunting crop--clasped loosely behind his back. Kate noticed them even in her anxiety; for they were noticeable, nervous, fine-cut hands, matching the figure.
"He is not the least like you. He is the very image of his father," came the verdict. "What right have you to suppose that anything you or I can do now will overcome the initial fact that the boy is your husband's son, any more than it will ease you of the responsibility of having chosen such a father for the boy?"
She gave a quick cry, more of pain than anger, and hid her face on the table in sudden despair.
"You are very cruel," she said indistinctly.
He walked back toward her, remorseful at the sight of her miserable self-abasement. He had not meant to hit so hard, being accustomed himself to facing facts without flinching.
"Yes! I am cruel; but a life like mine doesn't make a man gentle. And I don't see how this trivial concealment of fact--for that is all it would be--can change the boy's character or help him. If I did----" he paused. "I should like to help you if I could, Mrs. Erlton, if only because you--you refused me charity! But I cannot see my way. It would do no one any good. Begin with me. I'm not a religious man, Mrs. Erlton. I don't believe in the forgiveness of sins. So my soul--if I have one--wouldn't benefit. As for my body? At the risk of you offering me diamonds again,"--he smiled charmingly,--"I must mention that I should lose--how much is a detail--by concealment. So I must go out of the question of benefit. Then there is you----"
He broke off to walk up and down the room thoughtfully, then to pause before her. "I wish you to believe," he said, "that I want really to understand the truth, but I can't, because I don't know one thing. I don't know if you love your husband--or not."
She raised her head quickly with a fear behind the resentment of her eyes. "Put me outside the question too. I have told you that already. It is the simplest, the best way."
He bowed cynically. She came no nearer to truth than evasion.
"If you wish it, certainly. Then there is the boy. You want to prevent him from realizing that his father is a--let us twist the sentence--what his father is. You have, I expect, sent him away for this purpose. So far good. But will this concealment of mine suffice? Will no one else blab the truth? Even if concealment succeeds all along the line, will it prevent the boy from following in his father's steps if he has inherited his father's nature as well as his face? Wouldn't it be a deterrent in that case to know early in life that such instincts can't be indulged with impunity in the society of gentlemen? You will never have the courage to keep the boy out of your life altogether as you are doing now. Sooner or later you will bring him back, he will bring himself back, and then, on the threshold of life, he will have an example of successful dishonesty put before him. Mrs. Erlton! you can't keep up the fiction always; so it is better for you, for me, for him, to tell the truth--and I mean to tell it."
She rose swiftly to her feet and faced him, thrusting her hair back from her forehead passionately, as if to clear away aught that might obscure her brain.
"And for my husband?" she asked. "Have you no word for him? Is he not to be thought of at all? You asked me just now if I loved him, and I was a coward. Well! I do not love him--more's the pity, for I can't make up the loss of that to him anyhow. But there is enough pity in his life without that. Can't you see it? The pity that such things should be in life at all. You called me a religious woman just now. I'm not, really. It is the pity of such things without a remedy that drives me to believe, and the pity of it which drives me back again upon myself, as you have driven me now. For you are right! Do you think I can't see the shame? Do you think I don't know that it is too late--that I should have thought of all this before I called my boy's nature out of the dark? And yet----" her face grew sharp with a pitiful eagerness, she moved forward and laid her hand on his arm. "It is all so dark! You said just now that I couldn't keep up the fiction; but need it be a fiction always? What do we know? God gives men a chance sometimes. He gives the whole world a chance sometimes of atoning for many sins. A Spirit moves on the Waters of life bringing something to cleanse and heal. It may be moving now. Give my husband his chance, Mr. Greyman, and I will pray that, whatever it is, it may come quickly."
He had listened with startled eyes; now his hand closed on hers in swift negation.
"Don't pray for that," he said, in a quick low voice, "it may come too soon for some of us, God knows--too soon for many a good man and true!" Then, as if vexed at his own outburst, he drew back a step, looking at her with a certain resentment.
"You plead your cause well, Mrs. Erlton, and it is a stronger argument than you perhaps guess. So let him have this chance that is coming. Let us all have it, you and I into the bargain. No don't be grateful, please, for he may prove himself a coward, among other things. So may I, for that matter. One never knows until the chance comes for being a hero--or the other thing."
"When the chance comes we shall see," she said, trying to match his light tone. "Till then, good-by--you have been very kind." She held out her hand, but he did not take it.
"Pardon me! I have been very rude, and you----" he paused in his half-jesting words, stooped over her outstretched hand and kissed it.
Kate stood looking at the hand with a slight frown after his horse's hoofs died away; and then with a smile she shut the jewel case. Not that she closed the incident also; for full half an hour later she was still going over all the details of the past interview. And everything seemed to hinge on that unforeseen appeal of hers for a chance of atonement, on that unpremeditated strange suggestion that a Spirit might even then be moving on the face of the waters; until, in that room gay with English flowers, and peaceful utterly in its air of security, a terror seized on her body and soul. A causeless terror, making her strain eyes and ears as if for a hint of what was to come and make cowards or heroes of them all.
But there was only the flowerful garden beyond the arched veranda, only the soft gurgle of the doves. Yet she sat with quivering nerves till the sight of the gardener coming as usual with his watering pot made her smile at the unfounded tragedy of her imaginings.
As she passed into the veranda she called to him, in the jargon which served for her orders, not to forget a plentiful supply to the heartsease and the sweet peas; for she loved her poor clumps of English annuals more than all the scented and blossoming shrubs which in those late March days turned the garden into a wilderness of strange perfumed beauty. But her cult of home was a religion with her; and if a visitor remarked that anything in her environment was reminiscent of the old country, she rejoiced to have given another exile what was to her as the shadow of a rock in a thirsty land.
So, her eye catching something barely up to western mark in the pattern of a collar her tailor was cutting for her new dress, she crossed over to where he squatted in the further corner of the veranda.
"That isn't right. Give me something to cut--here! this will do."
She drew a broad sheet of native paper from the bundle of scraps beside him, and began on it with the scissors; too full of her idea to notice the faint negation of the man's hand. "There!" she said after a few deft snippings, "that is new fashion."
"Huzoor!" assented the tailor submissively as, apparently from tidiness, he put away the remainder of the paper, before laying the new-cut pattern on the cloth.
His mistress looked down at it critically. There was a broad line of black curves and square dots right across the pattern suggestive of its having been cut from a title-page. But to her ignorance of the Persian character they were nothing but the curves and dots, though the tailor's eyes read clearly in them "The Sword is the Key of Heaven."
For he, in company with thousands of other men, had been reading the famous pamphlet of that name; reading it with that thrill of the heart-strings which has been the prelude to half the discords and harmonies of history. Since, quaintly enough, those who may hope to share your heaven are always friends, those who can with certainty be consigned to hell, your enemies.
"That is all right," she said. "Cut it well on the bias, so that it won't pucker."
As she turned away, she felt the vast relief of being able to think of such trivialities again after the strain and stress of the hours since her husband had come home from the race course, full of excited maledictions on the mean, underhand bribery and spying which might make it necessary for him to send in his papers--if he could. Kate had heard stories of a similar character before; since Major Erlton knew by experience that she had his reputation more at heart than he had himself, and that her brain was clearer, her tact greater than his. But she had never heard one so hopeless. Unless this jockey Greyman, who, her husband said, was so mixed up with native intrigue as to have any amount of false evidence at his command, could be silenced, her labor of years was ruined. So long after her husband had gone off to his bed to sleep soundly, heavily, after the manner of men, Kate had lain awake in hers after the manner of women, resolving to risk all, even to a certain extent honesty, in order to silence this man, this adventurer; who no doubt was not one whit better than her husband.
And now? As her mind flashed back over that interview the one thing that stood out above all others was the bearing, the deference of the man as he had stooped to kiss her hand. For the life of her, she--who protested even to herself that such things had no part in her life--could not help a joy in the remembrance; a quick recognition that here was a man who could put romance into a woman's life. The thought was one, however, from which to escape by the first distraction at hand. This happened to be the cockatoo, which, after a bath and plentiful food, looked a different bird on its new perch.
"Pretty, pretty poll," she said hastily, with tentative white finger tickling its crest. The bird, in high good humor, bent its head sideways and chuckled inarticulately; yet to an accustomed ear the sound held the cadence of the Great Cry, and the tailor, who had heard it given wrathfully, looked up from his work.
"Oh, Miffis Erlton! what a boo'ful new polly," came a silvery lisp. She turned with a radiant smile to greet her next door neighbor's little boy, a child of about three years old, who, pathetically enough, was a great solace to her child-bereft life.
"Yes, Sonny, isn't it lovely?" she said, her slim white hand going out to bring the child closer; "and it screams splendidly. Would you like to hear it scream?"
Sonny, clinging tightly to her fingers, looked doubtful. "Wait till muvver comth, muvver's comin' to zoo esectly. Sonny's always flightened wizout hith muvver."
At which piece of diplomacy, Kate, feeling light-hearted, caught the little white-clad golden-curled figure in her arms and ran out with it into the garden, smothering the laughing face with kisses as she ran.
"Sonny's a little goose to be 'flightened,'" came her glad voice between the laughs and the kisses. "He ought never to be 'flightened' at all, because no one in all the wide, wide world would ever hurt a good little childie like Sonnykins--No one! No one! No one!"
She had sat the little fellow down among the flowers by this time, being, in good sooth, breathless with his weight; and now, continuing the game, chased him with pretense booings of "No one! No one!" about the pansy bed, and so round the sweet peas; until in delicious terror he shrieked with delight, and chased her back between her chasings.
It was a pretty sight, indeed, this game between the woman and the child. The gardener paused in his watering, the tailor at his work; and even the native orderly going his rounds with the brigade order-book grinned broadly, so adding one to the kindly dark faces watching the chasing of Sonny.
"My dear Kate! How can you?" The querulous voice broke in on the booings, and made Mrs. Erlton pause and think of her loosened hair pins. The speaker was a fair, diaphanous woman, the most solid-looking part of whose figure, as she dawdled up the path, was the large white umbrella she carried. "Here am I melting with the heat! What I shall do next year if George is transferred to Delhi, I don't know. He says we shan't be able to afford the hills. And he has the dogcart at some of those eternal court-martials. I wonder why the sepoys give so much trouble nowadays. George says they're spoiled. So I came to see if you'll drive me to the band; though I'm not fit to be seen. I was up half the night with baby. She is so cross, and George will have it she must be ill; as if children didn't have tempers! Lucky you, to have your boy at home. And yet you go romping with other people's. I wouldn't; but then I look horrid when I'm hot."
Kate laughed. She did not, and as she rearranged her hair seemed to have left years of life behind her. "I can't help it," she said. "I feel so ridiculously young myself sometimes--as if I hadn't lived at all, as if nothing belonged to me, and I was really somebody else. As if----" She paused abruptly in her confidences, and, to change the subject, turned to the group behind Mrs. Seymour:--an ayah holding a toddler by the hand, a tall orderly in uniform carrying a year-old baby in his arms; such a languid little mortal as is seldom seen out of India, where the swift, sharp fever of the changing seasons seems to take the very, life from a child in a few hours. The fluffy golden head in its limp white sun-bonnet rested inert against the orderly's scarlet coatee, the listless little legs drooped helplessly among the burnished belts and buckles.
"Poor little chick! Let me have her a bit, orderly," said Kate, laying her hand caressingly on the slack dimpled arm; but baby, with a fretful whine, nestled her cheek closer into the scarlet. A shade of satisfaction made its owner's dark face less impassive, and the small, sinewy, dark hands held their white burden a shade tighter.
"Sheisso cross," complained the mother. "It has been so all day. She won't leave the man for an instant. He must be sick of her, though he doesn't show it. And she used to go to the ayah; but do you know, Kate, I don't trust the woman a bit. I believe she gives opium to the child, so that she may get a little rest."
Kate looked at the ayah's face with a sudden doubt. "I don't know," she said slowly. "I think they believe it is a good thing. I remember when Freddy was a baby----"
"Oh, I don't believe they ever think that sort of thing," interrupted Mrs. Seymour. "You never can trust the natives, you know. That's the worst of India. Oh! how I wish I was back in dear old England with a real nurse who would take the children off my hands."
But Kate Erlton was following up her own doubt. "The children trust them----" she began.
"My dear Kate! you can't trust children either. Look at baby! It gives me the shudders to think of touching Bij-rao, and see how she cuddles up to him," replied Mrs. Seymour, as she dawdled on to the house; then, seeing the bed of heartsease, paused to go into raptures over them. They were like English ones, she said.
The puzzled look left Kate's face. "I sent some home last mail," she replied in a sort of hushed voice, "just to show them that we were not cut off from everything we care for; not everything."
So, as if by one accord, these two Englishwomen raised their eyes from the pansy bed, and passing by the flowering shrubs, the encircling tamarind trees framing the cozy, home-like house, rested them on the reddening gold of the western sky. Its glow lay on their faces, making them radiant.
But baby's heavy lids had fallen at last over her heavy eyes as she lay in the orderly's arms, and he glanced at the ayah with a certain pride in his superior skill as a nurse.
It was a quaint house in the oldest quarter of the city of Lucknow, where odd little groves linger between the alleys, so that men pass, at a step, from evil-smelling lanes to cool, scented retreats, dark with orange and mango trees; where birds flutter, and squirrels loll yawning through the summer days, as if the great town were miles away.
It was in the furthest corner of such a flowerless, shady garden that the house reared its lessening stories and projecting eaves above its neighbors. The upper half of it was not unlike an Italian villa in its airiness, its balustraded roof, its green jalousies; but the lower portion was unmistakably Indian. It was a perfect rabbit warren of dark cells, crushed in on each other causelessly; the very staircase, though but two feet wide, having to fold itself away circumspectly so as to find space to creep upward.
But no one lived below, and the dark twists and turns of the brick ladder mattered little to Zorabibi, who lived in the pleasant pavilions above; for she had scarcely ever left them since the day, nearly eight years past, when James Greyman had installed her there with all the honor possible to the situation. Which was, briefly, that he had bought the slip of a girl from a house of ill-fame, as he would have bought a horse, or a flower-pot, or anything else which he thought would make life pleasanter to him. He had paid a long price for her, not only because she was beautiful, but because he pitied the delicate-looking child--for she was little more--just about to enter a profession to which she was evidently a recruit kidnaped in early infancy; as so many are in India. Not that his pity would have led him to buy her if she had been ugly, or even dark; for the creamy ivory tint of her skin satisfied his fastidiousness quite as much as did the hint of a soul in her dark, dreamy eyes. Romance had perhaps had more to do with his purchase than passion; restless, reckless determination to show himself that he had no regrets for the society which had dispensed with his, had had more than either. For he had begun to rent the pleasant pavilions after a few years of adventurous roving had emphasized the gulf fixed between him and his previous life, and forced his pride into leading his present one as happily as he could.
As for the girl, those eight years of pure passion on the housetops had been a dream of absolute content. It was so even now, when she lay dying, as so many secluded women do, of a slow decline. To have flowers and fruit brought to her, to find no change in his tenderness because she was too languid to amuse him, to have him wait upon her and kiss away her protests; all this made her soft warm eyes softer, warmer. It was so unlike anything she had ever heard or dreamed of; it made her blind to the truth, that she was dying. How could this be so when there was no hint of change, when life still gave her all she cared for? She did not, to be sure, play tricks with him like a kitten, as she used to; but that was because she was growing old--nearly one and twenty!
"She is worse to-day. I deem her close to freedom, Soma, so I have warned the death-tender," said a tall woman, as she straightened the long column of her throat to the burden of a brass water-pot, new-poised on her head, and stepped down from the low parapet of the well which stood in one corner of the shady grove. Sometimes its creaking Persian wheel moaned over the task of sending runnels of water to the thirsty trees; but to-day it was silent, save for an intermittent protest when the man--who was lazily leaning his back against the yoke--put out his strength so as to empty an extra water can or two into the trough for the woman's use. He was in the undress uniform of a sepoy, and as he also straightened himself to face the speaker the extraordinary likeness between them in face and figure stamped them as twins. It would have been difficult to give the palm to either for superior height or beauty; and in their perfection of form they might have stood as models of the mythical race-founders whose names they bore. For Tara Devi and Soma Chund were Rajpoots of the single Lunar or Yadubansi tribe. She was dressed in an endless scarf of crimson wool, which with its border of white and yellow embroidery hung about her in admirable folds. The gleam of the water-pot matched the dead gold circlets on the brown wrists and ankles; for Tara wore her savings thus, though she had no right to do so, being a widow. But she had been eight years in James Greyman's service; more than eight bound to him by the strangest of ties. He had been the means of saving her from her husband's funeral pyre; in other words of preventing her from being a saint, of making her outcaste utterly. Since none, not even other widows, would eat or drink with a woman rejected by the very gods on the threshold of Paradise. Such a mental position is well-nigh incomprehensible to western minds. It was confusing even to Tara herself; and the mingling of conscious dignity and conscious degradation, gratitude, resentment, attraction, repulsion, made her a puzzle even to herself at times.
"The master will grieve," replied Soma; his voice was far softer than his sister's had been, but it had the effect of hardening hers still more.
"What then?" she asked; "man's sorrow for a woman passes; or even if it pass not, bears no fruit here, or hereafter. But I, asthou knowest, Soma, would have burned with my love.But for thee, as thou knowest, I would have beensuttee(lit. virtuous).But for theeI should have found, ay! and given salvation."
She passed on with a sweep of full drapery, bearing her water-pot as a queen might her crown, leaving Soma's handsome face full of conscious-stricken amaze. His sister--from whom, despite her degradation, he had not been able to dissociate himself utterly--had never before rounded on him for his share in her misfortune; but in his heart of hearts he had admitted his responsibility at one moment, scorned it the next. True, he had told his young Lieutenant that his brother-in-law was going to be burned, as an excuse for not accompanying him after black-buck one morning; but who would have dreamed that this commonplace remark would rouse the Huzoor's curiosity to see the obsequies of a high-caste Rajpoot, and so lead, incidentally, to a file of policemen and the neighboring magistrate dragging the sixteen-year old widow from the very flames?--when she was drugged, too, and quite happy--when the wrench was over, even for him, and she, to all intents, was a saint scattering salvation on seven generations of inconstant males! Much as he loved Tara, the little twin sister who, so the village gossips loved to tell, had left the Darkness for the Light of Life still clasping his hand, how could he have done her such an injury? As a Rajpoot how could he have brought such a scandalous dishonor on any family?
But being also a soldier, as his fathers had been before him, and so leavened unconsciously by much contact with Europeans, he could not help admiring Tara's pluck in refusing to accept the life of a dog, which was all that was left to her among her own people. And he had been grateful to the Huzoor, as she was, for giving her good service where he could see her; though he would not for worlds have touched the hand which had lain in his from the beginning of all things. It was unclean now.
Still he could not forget the gossip's story any more than he could forget that James Greyman had been his Lieutenant, and that together they had shot over half Hurreeana. So when he passed through Lucknow on his way to spend his leave in his wife's village, he always gave a day or two of it to the quaint garden-house.
And now Tara had definitely accused him of ruining her life! Anger, born of a vague remorse, filled him as he watched her disappear up the plinth. If it was anybody's fault it was the Huzoor's; or rather of theSirkaritself who, by high-handed interference with venerable customs, made it possible for a poor man, by a mere slip of the tongue, to injure one bound to him by the closest of ties.
"It will leave us naught to ourselves soon," he muttered sulkily as he went out to the doorstep to finish polishing the master's sword; that being a recognized office during these occasional visits, which, as it occurred to him in his discontent, would be still more occasional if among other things theSirkar, now that Oude was was annexed, took away the extra leave due to foreign service. They had said so in the regiment; and though he was too tough to feel pin-pricks in advance, he had sneered with others in the current jest that the maps were tinted red--i. e., shown to be British territory--by savings stolen from the sepoy's pocket.
It was very quiet on the paved slope leading up from the alley to the carved door beyond the gutter. The lane was too narrow for wheeled traffic, the evening not sufficiently advanced for the neighbors to gather in it for gossip. But every now and again a veiled figure would sidle along the further wall, passing good-looking Soma with a flurried shuffle. Whereat, though he knew these ghostly figures to be old women on their way to market, he cocked his turban more awry, and curled his mustachios nearer his eyes; from no set purpose of playing the gay Lothario, but for the honor of the regiment, and because War and Women go together, East and West.
After a time, however, the workmen began to dawdle past from their work, and some of them, remembering Soma, paused to ask him the latest news; a stranger in a native city being equivalent to an evening paper. And, of course, there were questions as to what the regiment thought of this and that. But Soma's replies were curt. He never relished being lumped in as a simple Rajpoot with the rest of the Rajpoots, for he was inordinately proud of his tribe. That was one reason why he stood aloof, as he did, from much that went on among his comrades. He drilled, it is true, between two of them who were entered as he was--that is to say, as a Rajpoot--on the roster. But the three were in reality as wide apart as the Sun, the Moon, and the Fire from which they respectively claimed descent. They would not have intermarried into each other's families for all the world and its wealth. A causeless differentiation which makes, and must make, a people who cling to it incomprehensible to a race which boasts as a check to pride or an encouragement to humility that all men are born of Adam, and which seeks no hall-mark for its descendants save the stamp of the almighty dollar.
Soma, therefore, polishing his master's sword sulkily, grew irritable also; especially when the frequenters of the opium and hemp shops began, with wavering steps and lack-luster eyes, to loaf homeward for the evening meal which would give them strength for another dose. There were many such habitual drug-takers in the quarter; for it was largely inhabited by poor claimants to nobility who, having nothing to do, had time for dreams. That was why people from other quarters flocked to this one at sundown for gossip; since it is to be had at its best from the opium-eater, whose imagination is stimulated, his reason dulled, beyond the power of discriminating even his own truth or falsehood. One of these, a haggard, sallow fellow in torn muslin and ragged embroidery, stopped with a heavy-lidded leer beside Soma.
"So, brother, back again!" he said with the maudlin gravity of a hemp-smoker; "and thou lookest fat. The bone dust must agree with thee."
It was as if a bomb had fallen. The Hindoo bystanders, recognizing the rumor that ground bones were mixed with commissariat flour, drew back from the Rajpoot instinctively; the Mohammedans smiled on the sly. Soma himself had in a moment one sinewy hand on the half-drunk creature's throat, the other brandishing the fresh-polished sword.
"Bone dust thyself, and pigs meat too, foul-mouthed slayer of sacred kine!" he gasped, carrying the war into the enemy's country. "Thou beast! Unsay the lie!"
His indignation, showing that he appreciated the credence some might be disposed to give to the accusation, only made the Hindoos look at each other. The Mohammedans, however, dragged him from the swaying figure of the accuser, who, after all, was one of themselves.
"Heed him not!" they chorused appeasingly. "'Tis drug-shop talk, and every sane man knows that for dreams. Lo! his sense is clean gone as horns from a donkey! Sure, thy mother ate chillies in her time for thou to be so hot-blooded. It is not morning, brother, because a hen crows, and a snake is but a snake, and goes crooked even to his own home!"
These hoarded saws, with physical force superadded, left Soma reduced to glaring, and renewed claims for a retraction of the insult.
The hemp-smoker looked at him mournfully. "Wouldst have me deny God's truth?" he hiccuped. "Lo! I say not thou didst eat it. Thou sayst not, and who am I to decide between a man and his stomach, even though he looks fat? Yet this all know, that as a bird fattens his tail shrinks, and honor is nowhere nowadays. But this I say for certain. Let him eat who will, there is bone dust in the flour--there is bone dust in the flour----"
He lurched from a supporter's hold and drifted down the lane, half-chanting the words.
Soma glared, now, at those doubtful faces which remained. "'Tis a lie, brothers! But there, 'tis no use wearing the red coat nowadays when all scoff at it. And why not? when theSirkaritself mocks our rights. I tell thee at the father-in-law's village, but now, a man who titled me sahib last year puffed his smoke in my face this. And wherefore not? May not every scoundrel nowadays drag us to court and set us a-bribing underlings as the common herd have to do? We, soldiers of Oude, who had a Resident of our own always, and----"
"Nothing lasts for always, save God," said a long-bearded bystander, interrupting Soma's parrot roll of military grievances, "as the Moulvie said last night at our mosque, it is well he remains ever the same, giving the same plain orders once and for all. So none of the faithful can mistake. God is Might and Right. All the rest is change."
"Wah! wah!" murmured some respectfully; but the Rajpoot's scowl lost its fierceness in supercilious indifference.
"That may suit the Moulvie. It may suit thee and thine,syyed-jee," he replied, with a shrug of the shoulders. "It suits not me nor mine, being of a different race. We are Rajpoots, and there is no change possible to that. We are ever the same."
The pride in his voice and manner reflected but faintly the inconceivable pride in his heart. Yet he was on the alert, salaaming cheerfully, as James Greyman came riding with a clatter down the alley, and without drawing bridle, passed through the low gateway into the dark garden heavy with the perfume of orange-blossom. His arrival ended the incident, for Soma followed him quickly, and in obedience to his curt order to see the groom rub down the horse while it waited, as it had been a breather round the race course, walked off with it toward the well. It was such an opportunity for ordering other men about as natives dearly love; so that the more autocratic a master is, the better pleased they are to gain dignity by serving him.
James Greyman, meanwhile, had paused on the plinth to give a low whistle and look upward to the terraced roof. And as he did so his face was full of weariness, and yet of impatience. He had been telling himself that he was a fool ever since he had left Kate Erlton's drawing room half an hour before, and even his mad gallop round the steeple-chase course had not effaced the curious sense of compulsion which had made him promise to let her husband go scot-free. Even now, when he waited with that dread at his heart, which of late had been growing stronger day by day, for the answer which Zora loved to make to his signal, his fear lest the Great Silence had fallen between them was lost in the recollection that, if it were so, his freedom had come too late. He hated himself for thus bracketing death and freedom together, but for all that he would not blind himself to its truth. Now that his profession had gone with the King's exile, Zora was, indeed, the only tie to a life which had grown distasteful to him, and when the Great Silence came, as come it must, he had made up his mind to leave James Greyman behind, and go home to England. He was nearing forty, and though the spirit of reckless adventure was fading, the ambitions of his youth seemed to be returning; as they so often do when the burden and heat of passion passes. He was tired of perpetual sunshine; the thought of the cold mists on the hilltops, the wild storms on the west coast, haunted him. He wanted to see them again. Above all, he wanted to hear himself called by his own familiar name, not by the one he had assumed. It had seemed brutal to dream of all this sometimes, while little Zora still lay in his arms smiling contentedly; but it was inevitable. And so, while he waited, watching with the dread growing at his heart for the flutter of the tinsel veil, the half-heard whisper "Khush amud-eed" (welcome), it was inevitable also that the remembrance of his promise to Kate Erlton should invade, and as it were desecrate, his real regret for the silence that seemed to grow deeper every second. It had come too late--too late! There could be no solace in freedom now. That other silence in regard to Major Erlton's misdeeds meant the loss of every penny he had scraped together for England. He might have to sell up almost everything he possessed in order to pay his bets honorably; and that he must do, or he gave away his only hope of recouping his bad luck. Why had he promised? Why had he given up a certainty for that vague chance of which he had spoken, he scarcely knew why, to these cold blue northern eyes with the glint of steel. The remembrance brought a passionate anger at himself. Was there anything in the world worth thinking of now, with that silence new-fallen upon him, except the soft warm eyes which were perhaps closed forever? So, with a quick step, he passed up the stairs and gave his signal knock at the door which led on to the terraced roof.
Tara, opening it, answered his look with finger to her lip, and a warning glance to the low string-bed set close to the arches of the summer-house so as to catch the soft-scented breeze. He stepped over to it lightly and looked down on the sleeper; but the relief passed from his face at what he saw there. It could only be a question of hours now.
"Why didst not send before?" he asked in a low voice. "I bid thee send if she were worse and she needed me." Once more the anger against that other woman came uppermost. What was she to him that she should filch even half an hour from this one who loved him? He might so easily have come earlier; and then the promise would not have been made. Was he utterly heartless, that this thought would come again and again?
"She slept," replied Tara coldly. "And sleep needs naught. Not even Love's kisses. It is nigh the end though, master, as thou seest; so I have warned mother Jewuni, the death tender." She had spoken so far as if she desired to make him wince; now the pain on his face made her add hurriedly: "She hath not suffered, Huzoor, she hath not complained. Had it been so I would have sent. But sleep is rest."
She passed on to a lower roof softening her echoing steps with a quaint crooning lullaby: