"My breast is restAnd rest is Death.Ye who have breathSay which is best?Death's Sleep is rest!"
"My breast is restAnd rest is Death.Ye who have breathSay which is best?Death's Sleep is rest!"
Was it so? As he stood, still looking down on the sleeper, something in the lack of comfort, of all the refinements and luxuries which seem to belong by right to the sickness of dear ones in the West, smote him suddenly with a sense of deprivation, of division. And though he told himself that Death came in far more friendly fashion out there in the sunlight, where you could hear the birds, watch the squirrels, and see the children's kites go sailing overhead in the blue sky; still the bareness of it seemed somehow to reveal the great gulf between his complexity, his endless needs and desires, and the simplicity of that human creature drifting to death, almost as the animals drift, without complaint, without fears, or hopes. It seemed so pitiful. The slender figure, still gay in tinsel and bright draperies, all cuddled up on the quilt, its oval face resting hardly on the thin arm where the bracelets hung so loosely, had an uncared-for look. It seemed alone, apart; as far from Death in its nearness to Life, as it was from Life in its closeness to Death. In swift pity he stooped to risk an awakening by gathering it into his warm friendly arms. It would at least feel the beating of another human heart when it lay there. It would at least be more comfortable than on the bare, hard, pillowless bed.
But he paused. How could he judge? How dare he judge even for that wasted body, which, despite its softness, had never known half the luxuries his claimed? So he left her lying as he had often seen her sleep, all curled up on herself like a tired squirrel, and passing to the parapet leaned over it looking moodily down into the darkening orange trees. Their heavy perfume floated upward, reminding him of many another night in springtime spent with Zora upon this terraced roof.
And suddenly his hand fell in a gesture of sheer anger.
Before God! it had been unfair; this idyl on the housetops. The world had held no more for her save her passion for him, pure in its very perfection. His for her had been but a small part of his life. It never was more than that to a man, in reality, and so this sort of thing must always be unfair. That she had been content made it worse, not better. Poor little soul! drifting away from the glow and the glamour.
A resentment for her, more than for himself, made him go to where Tara sat gossiping with her fellow-servant on the other roof and bid them wait downstairs. If the silence were indeed about to fall, if the glow and the glamour were going, then she and he might at least be alone once more beneath the coming stars; alone in the soft-scented darkness which had so often seemed to clasp them closer to each other as they sat in it like a couple of children whispering over a secret.
Closer! As he leaned over the parapet his keen eyes stared down into the half-seen city spreading below him. Wide, tree-set, full of faint sounds of life; the wreaths of smoke from thousands of hearths rising to obscure it from his view. Obscuring it hopelessly with their tale of a life utterly apart from any he could lead. Even there on the housetop he had only pretended to lead it. It was not she, drifting to death so contentedly, who was alone! It was he. Yet some men he had known had seemed able to combine the two lives. They had been content to think half-caste thoughts, to rear up a tribe of half-caste children; while he? How many years was it since he had seen Zora weeping over a still little morsel of humanity, his child and hers, that lay in her tinseled veil? She had wept, mostly because she was afraid he might be angry because his son had never drawn breath; and he had comforted her. He had never told her of the relief it was to him, of the vague repulsion which the thought of a child had always brought with it. One could not help these things; and, after all, she had only cared because she was afraid he cared. She did not crave for motherhood either. It was the glow and glamour that had been the bond between them; nothing else. And, thank Heaven! she had never tired of it, had never seen him tire of it--for Death would come before that now.
A chiming clash of silver made him turn quickly. She had awakened, and seeing him by the parapet, had set her small feet to the ground, and now stood trying to steady herself by her thin, wide-spread arms.
"Zora! wait! I am coming," he cried, starting forward. Then he paused, speech and action arrested by something in her look, her gesture.
"Let me come," she murmured, her breath gone with the effort. "I can come. I must be able to come. My lord is so near--so near."
A fierce pity made him stand still. "Surely thou canst come," he answered. "I will stay here."
As she stood, with parted lips, waiting for a glint of strength ere she tried to walk, her swaying figure, the brilliance of her eyes, the heaving of her delicate throat, cut him to the very heart for her sake more than for his own. Then the jingle of her silver anklets rose again in irregular cadence, to cease at the next pillar where she paused, steadying herself against the cold stone to regain her breath.
"Surely, I can come; and he so near," she murmured wistfully, half to herself.
"Thou art in too great a hurry, sweetheart. There is plenty of time. The stars are barely lit, and star-time is ever our time."
He set his teeth over the words; but the glow and the glamour should not fail her yet. He would take her back with him while he could to the past which had been so full of it.
"Come slower, my bird, I am waiting," he said again as the jingling cadence ceased once more.
"It is so strange," she gasped; "I feel so strange." And even in the dim light he could see a vague terror, a pitiful amaze in her face. That must not be. That must be stopped. "And it is strange," he answered quickly. "Strange, indeed, for me to wait like a king, when thou art my queen!"
A faint smile drove the wonder away, a faint laugh mingled with the chiming and clashing. She was like a wounded bird, he thought, as he watched her; a wounded bird fluttering to find shelter from death.
"Take care! Take care of the step!" he cried, as a stumble made him start forward; but when she recovered herself blindly he stood still once more, waiting. Let her come if she could. Let her keep the glamour.
Keep it! She had done more than that. She had given it back to him at its fullest, as, close at hand he saw her radiant face, and his outstretched hands met hers warm and clasping. The touch of them made him forget all else; he drew her close to him passionately. She gave a smiling sob of sheer content, raising her face to meet his kisses.
"I have come," she whispered. "I have come to my king." Her voice ended like a sigh. Then there was silence, a fainter sigh, then silence again.
"Zora!" he called with a sudden dread at his heart. "What is it? Zora! Zora!"
Half an hour afterward, Tara Devi, obeying her master's summons, found him standing beside the bed, which he had dragged out under the stars, and flung up her arms to give the wail for what she saw there.
"Hush!" he said sternly, clutching at her shoulder. "I will not have her disturbed."
Tara looked at him wonderingly. "There is no fear of that," she replied clearly, loudly, "none shall disturb Zora again. She hath foundthatfreedom in the future. For the rest of us, God knows! The times are strange. So let her have her right of wailing, master. She will feel silent in the grave without the voices of her race."
He drew his hand away sharply; even in death a great gulf lay between him and the woman he had loved.
So the death wail rang out clamorously through the soft dark air.
"I can't think," said a good-looking middle-aged man as he petulantly pushed aside a pile of official papers, "where Dashe picks these things up. I never come across them. And it is not as if he were in a big station or--or in the swim in any way." He spoke fretfully, as one might who, having done his best, has failed. And he had grounds for this feeling, since the fact that the diffident district-officer named Dashe was not in the swim, must clearly have been due to his official superiors; the speaker being one of them.
Fortunately, however, for England, these diffident sons of hers cannot always hide their lights under bushels. As the biographies of many Indian statesmen show, some outsider notices a gleam of common sense amid the gloom, and steers his course by it. Now Mr. Dashe's intimate knowledge of a certain jungle tract in this district had resulted in a certain military magnate bagging three tigers. From this to a reliance on his political perceptions is not so great a jump as might appear; since a man acquainted with the haunt of every wild beast in his jurisdiction may be credited with knowledge of other dangerous inhabitants. So much so that the military magnate, being impressed by some casual remarks, had asked Mr. Dashe to put down his views on paper, and had passed them on to a great political light.
It was he who sat at the table looking at a broadsheet printed in the native character, as if it were a personal affront. The military magnate, who had come over to discuss the question, was lounging in an easy-chair with a cheroot. They were both excellent specimens of Englishmen. The civilian a trifle bald, the soldier a trifle gray; but one glance was sufficient to judge them neither knaves nor fools.
"That's the proclamation you're at now, isn't it?" asked the military magnate, looking up, "I'm afraid I could only make out a word here and there. That's the worst of Dashe. He's so deuced clever at the vernaculars himself that he imagines other people----"
The political, who had earned his first elevation from the common herd to the Secretariat by a nice taste in Persian couplets suitable for durbar speeches, smiled compassionately.
"My dear sir! This is not evenshikust[broken character]. It is lithographed, and plain sailing to anyone not a fool--I mean to anyone on the civil side, of course--you soldiers have not to learn the language. But I have a translation here. As this farrago of Dashe's must go to Calcutta in due course, I had one made for the Governor General's use."
He handed a paper across the table, and then turned to the next paragraph of the jeremiad.
The military magnate laid down his cigar, took up the document and glanced at it apprehensively, resumed his cigar, and settled himself in his chair. It was a very comfortable one and matched the office-room, which, being in the political light's private house, was under the supervision of his wife, who was a notable woman. Her portrait stood in the place of honor on the mantelpiece and it was flanked by texts; one inculcating the virtue of doing as you would be done by, the other the duty of doing good without ceasing. Both rather dangerous maxims when you have to deal with a different personal and ethical standard of happiness and righteousness. There was also a semicircle of children's photographs--of the kind known as positives--on the table round the official ink-pot. When the sun shone on their glasses, as it did now through a western window, they dazzled the eyes. Maybe it was their hypnotizing influence which inclined the father of the family toward treating every problem which came to that office-table as if the first desideratum was their welfare, their approbation; not, of course, as his children, but as the representative Englishmen and women of the future. Yet he was filled with earnest desires to do his duty by those over whom he had been set to rule, and as he read, his sense of responsibility was simply portentous, and his pen, scratching fluently in comments over the half margin, was full of wisdom. This sound was the only one in the room save, occasionally, voices raised eagerly in the rehearsal going on in the drawing room next door. It was a tragedy in aid of an orphan asylum in England which the notable wife was getting up; and once her voice could be heard distinctly, saying to her daughter, "Oh, Elsie, I'm sure you could die better than that!"
Meanwhile the military magnate was reading:
"I, servant of God, the all-powerful, and of the prophet Mohammed--to whom be all praise. I, Syyed Ahmed-Oolah, the dust of the feet of the descendants ofHuzrut Ameer-Oolah-Moomereen-Ali-Moortuza, the Holy." He shifted uneasily, looked across the table, appeared discouraged by that even scratching, and went on:
"I, Syyed Ahmed, after preferring my salaams and the blessings of Holy War, to all believers of the sect of Sheeahs or the sect of Sunnees alike, and also to all those having respectful regards to the Faith, declare that I, the least of servants in the company of those waiting on the Prophet, did by the order of God receive a Sword of Honor, on condition that I should proclaim boldly to all the duty of combining to drive out Infidels. In this, therefore, is there great Reward; as is written in the Word of God, since His Gracious Power is mighty for success. Yea! and if any fail, will they not be rid of all the ends of this evil world, and attain the Joys and Glories of Martyrdom? So be it. A sign is ever sufficient to the intelligent, and the Duty of a servant is simply to point the way."
When he had finished he laid the document down on the table, and for a minute or so continued to puff at his cigar. Then he broke silence with that curious constraint in his tone which most men assume when religious topics crop up in general conversation. "I wonder if this--this paper is to be considered the sign, or"--he hesitated for a moment, then the cadence of the proclamation being suggestive, he finished his sentence to match--"or look we for another?"
"Another!" retorted his companion irritably. "According to Dashe the whole of India is one vast sign-post! He seems to think we in authority are blind to this. On the contrary, there is scarcely one point he mentions which is not, I say this confidentially of course, under inquiry. I have the files in my confidential box here and can show them to you now. No! by the way, the head clerk has the key--that proclamation had to be translated, of course. But, naturally, we don't proclaim this on the housetops. We might hurt people's feelings, or give rise to unfounded hopes. As for these bazaar rumors Dashe retails with such zest, I confess I think it undignified for a district-officer to give any heed to them. They are inevitable with an ignorant population, and we, having the testimony of a good conscience,"--he glanced almost unconsciously at the mantelpiece,--"should disregard these ridiculous lies. Of course everyone--everyone in the swim, that is--admits that the native army is most unsettled. And as Sir Charles Napier declared, mutiny is the most serious danger in the future; in fact, if the first symptoms are not grappled with, it may shake the very foundations. But we are grappling with it, just as we are grappling, quietly, with the general distrust. That was a most mischievous paragraph, by the way, in theChristian Observer, jubilant over the alarm created by those first widow remarriages the other day. So was that inThe Friend of India, calling attention to the fact that a regular prayer was offered up in all the mosques for the Restoration of the Royal Family. We don't want these thingsnoticed. We want to create a feeling of security by ignoring them. That is our policy. Then as for Dashe's political news, it is all stale! That story, for instance, of the Embassy from Persia, and of the old King of Delhi having turned a Sheeah----"
"That has something to do with saying Amen, hasn't it?" interrupted the military magnate, with the air of one determined to get at the bottom of things at all costs to himself.
The political light smiled in superior fashion. "Partially; but politically--as a gauge, I mean, to probable antagonism--Sheeahs and Sunnees are as wide apart as Protestants and Papists. The fact that the Royal Family of Oude are Sheeahs, and the Delhi one Sunnees, is our safeguard. Of course the old King's favorite wife, Zeenut Maihl, is an Oude woman, but I don't credit the rumors. I had it carefully inquired into, however, by a man who has special opportunities for that sort of work. A very intelligent fellow, Greyman by name. He has a black wife or--or something of that sort, which of course helps him to understand the natives better than most of us who--er--who don't--you understand----"
The military magnate, having a sense of humor, smiled to himself. "Perfectly," he replied, "and I'm inclined to think that perhaps there is something to be said for a greater laxity." In his turn he glanced at the mantelpiece, and paused before that immaculate presence. "The proclamation, however," he went on hurriedly, "appears to me a bit dangerous. Holy War is awkward, and a religious fanatic is a tough subject even to the regulars." He had seen a rush of Ghâzees once and the memory lingered.
"Undoubtedly. And as we have pointed out again and again to your Department, here and at home, the British garrisons are too scattered. These large accessions of territory have put them out of touch with each other. But that again is being grappled with. In fact, personally, I believe we are getting on as well as can be expected." He glanced here at the semicircle of children as if the phrase were suggestive. "We are doing our best for India and the Indians. Now here, in Oude, things are wonderfully ship-shape already. Despite Jackson and Gubbins' tiffs over trifles they are both splendid workers, and Lucknow was never so well governed as it is to-day."
"But about the proclamation," persisted his hearer. "Couldn't you get some more information about it? That Greyman, for instance."
"I'm afraid not. He refused some other work I offered him not long ago. Said he was going home for good. I sometimes wish I could. It is a thankless task slaving out here and being misunderstood, even at home. Being told in so many words that the very system under which we were recruited has failed. Poor old Haileybury! I only hope competition will do as well, but I doubt it; these new fellows can never have the oldesprit de corps; won't come from the same class! One of the Rajah's people was questioning me about it only this morning--they read the English newspapers, of course. 'So we are not to have sahibs to rule over us,' he said, looking black as thunder. 'Anykrani's(lit. low-caste English) son will do, if he has learned enough.' I tried to explain--" Here a red-coated orderly entering with a card, he broke off into angry inquiries why he was being disturbed contrary to orders.
"The sahib bade me bring it," replied the man, as if that were sufficient excuse, and his master, looking at the card, tossed it over the table to the soldier, who exclaimed: "Talk of the devil! He may as well come in, if you don't mind."
So James Greyman was ushered in, and remained standing between the civilian and the soldier; for it is not given to all to have the fine perceptions of the native. The orderly had unhesitatingly classed the visitor as a "gentleman to be obeyed"; but the Political Department knew him only as a reliable source of information.
"Well, Greyman! Have you brought any more news?" asked the civilian, in a tone intended to impress the Military Department with the fact that here was one grapnel out of the many which were being employed in bringing truth to the surface and securing safety. But the soldier, after one brief look at the newcomer, sat up and squared his own shoulders a bit.
"That depends, sir," replied James Greyman quietly, "whether it pays me to bring it or not. I told you last month that I could not undertake any more work, because I was leaving India. My plans have changed; and to be frank, I am rather hard up. If you could give me regular employment I should be glad of it." He spoke with the utmost deliberation, but the incisive finality of every word, taking his hearers unprepared, gave an impression of hurry and left the civilian breathless. James Greyman, however, having said what he had come to say, said no more. During the past week he had had plenty of time to make up his mind, or rather to find out that it was made up. For he recognized frankly that he was acting more on impulse than reason. After he had buried poor little Zora away in accordance with the customs of her people, and paid his racing bets and general liabilities,--to do which he had found it necessary to sell most things, including the very horse he had matched against Major Erlton's,--he had suddenly found out, rather to his own surprise, that the idea of starting again on the old lines was utterly distasteful to him. In a lesser degree this second loss of his future and severing of ties in the past had had the same effect upon him as the previous one. It had left him reckless, disposed to defy all he had lost, and prove himself superior to ill-luck. Then being, by right of his Celtic birth, imaginative, in a way superstitious, he had again and again found himself thrown back, as it were, upon Kate Erlton's appeal for that chance, to bring which the Spirit might be, even now, moving on the waters. It was that, that only, with its swift touch on his own certainty that a storm was brewing, which had made him yield his point; which had forced him into yielding by an unreasoning assent to her suggestion that it might bring a chance of atonement with it. And now, in calm deliberation, he confessed that he might find his chance in it also; a better chance, maybe, than he would have had in England. His only one, at any rate, for some time to come. Those gray-blue northern eyes with the glint of steel in them had, by a few words, changed the current of his life. The truth was unpalatable, but as usual he did not attempt to deny it. He simply cast round for the best course in which to flow toward that tide in the affairs of men which he hoped to take at its flood. Political employment--briefly, spy's work--seemed as good as any for the present.
"Regular employment," echoed the civilian, recovering from his sense of hurry. "You mean, I presume, as a news-writer."
"As a spy, sir," interrupted James Greyman.
The political light disregarded the suggestion. "Your acquirements, of course, would be suitable enough; but I fear there are no native courts without one. And the situation hardly calls for excess expenditure. But of course, any isolateddouceur----"
His hearer smiled. "Call it payment, sir. But I think you must find job-work in secret intelligence rather expensive. It produces such a crop of mare's-nests; at least so I have found."
The suspicion of equality in the remark made the official mount his high horse, deftly.
"Really, we have so many reliable sources of information, Mr. Greyman," he began, laying his hand as if casually on the papers before him. The action was followed by James Greyman's keen eyes.
"You have the proclamation there, I see," he said cheerfully. "I thought it could not be much longer before the police or someone else became aware of its existence. The Moulvie himself was here about a week ago."
"The Moulvie--what Moulvie?" asked the military magnate eagerly. The civilian, however, frowned. If confidential work were to be carried out on those lines, something, even if it were only ignorance, must be found out.
"The Moulvie of Fyzabad--" began James Greyman.
"And who--?"
"My dear sir," interrupted the other pettishly. "We really know all about the Moulvie of Fyzabad. His name has been on the register of suspects for months." He rose, crossed to a bookshelf, and coming back processionally with two big volumes, began to turn over the pages of one.
"M--Mo--Ah! Ma, no doubt. That is correct, though transliteration is really a difficult task--to be consistent yet intelligible in a foreign language is---- No. It must be under F in the first volume. F; Fy. Just so! Here we are. 'Fyzabad, Moulvie of--fanatic, tall, medium color, mole on inside of left shoulder.' This is the man, I think?"
"I was not aware of the mole, sir," replied James Greyman dryly, "but he is a magnificent preacher, a consistent patriot, a born organizer; and he is now on his way to Delhi."
"To Delhi?" echoed the civilian pettishly. "What can a man of the stamp you say he is want with Delhi? A sham court, a miserable pantaloon of a king, the prey of a designing woman who flatters his dotage. I admit he is the representative of the Moghul dynasty, but its record for the last hundred and fifty years is bad enough surely to stamp out sentiment of that sort."
"Prince Charles Edward was not a very admirable person, nor the record of the Stuarts a very glorious one, and yet my grandfather----" James Greyman pulled himself up sharply, and seeing an old prayer-book lying on the table, which, with the alternatives of a bottle of Ganges water and a copy of theKoran, lay ready for the discriminate swearing of witnesses, finished his sentence by opening the volume at a certain Office, and then placing the open book on the top of the proclamation. "It will be no news to you, sir, that prayers of that sort are being used in all the mosques. Of course here, in Lucknow, they are for my late master's return. But if anything comparable to the '15 or the '45 were to come, Delhi must be the center. It is the lens which would focus the largest area, the most rays; for it appeals to greed as well as good, to this world as well as the next."
"Do you think it a center of disaffection now, Mr. Greyman?" asked the military magnate with an emphasis on the title.
"I do not know, sir. Zeenut Maihl, the Queen, has court intrigues, but they are of little consequence."
"I disagree," protested the Political. "You require the experience of a lifetime to estimate the enormous influence----"
"What do you consider of importance, then?" interrupted the soldier rather cavalierly, leaning across the table eagerly to look at James Greyman. There was an instant's silence, during which those voices rehearsing were clearly audible. The tragedy had apparently reached a climax.
"That; and this." He pointed to the Proclamation, and a small fragment of something which he took from his waistcoat pocket and laid beside the paper. The civilian inspected it curiously, the soldier, leaving his chair, came round to look at it also. The sunny room was full of peace and solid security as those three Englishmen, with no lack of pluck and brains, stood round the white fragment.
"Looks like bone," remarked the soldier.
"It is bone, and it was found, so I heard in the bazaar to-day, at the bottom of a Commissariat flour-sack----"
James Greyman was interrupted by a relieved pshaw! from the Political.
"The old story, eh, Greyman! I wonder what next these ignorant fools----"
"When the ignorant fools happen to be drilled soldiers, and, in Bengal, outnumber our English troops by twenty-four to one," retorted James Greyman sharply, "it seems a work of supererogation to ask what they will do next. If I were in their place---- However, if I may tell you how that came into my hands you will perhaps be able to grasp the gravity of the situation."
"Won't you take a chair?" asked the soldier quickly.
James Greyman glanced at the Political. "No, thanks, I won't be long. There is a class of grain carriers called Bunjârahs. They keep herds of oxen, and have carried supplies for the Royal troops since time immemorial. They have a charter engraved on a copper breastplate. I've only seen a copy, for the original Jhungi and Bhungi lived ages ago in Rajpootana. It runs so:
"While Jhungi Bhungi's oxenCarry the army's corn,House-thatch to feed their flocks on,House-water ready drawn.Three murders daily shriven,These rights to them are given,While Jhungi Bhungi's oxenCarry the army's corn."
"While Jhungi Bhungi's oxenCarry the army's corn,House-thatch to feed their flocks on,House-water ready drawn.Three murders daily shriven,These rights to them are given,While Jhungi Bhungi's oxenCarry the army's corn."
"Preposterous," murmured the civilian. "That's at an end, anyhow."
"Naturally; for they no longer carry the corn. The method is too slow, too Eastern for our Commissariat. But the Oude levies used to employ them. So did I at the stables. This is over also, and when I last saw mytanda--that's a caravan of them, sir--they were sub-contracting under a rich Hindoo firm which was dealing direct with the Department. They didn't like it."
"Still you can't deny that the growth of a strong, contented commercial class with a real stake in the country----" began the civilian hurriedly.
"That sounds like the home-counties or a vestry board," interrupted his hearer dryly. "The worst of it, in this case, being that you have to get your content out of the petty dealers like these Bunjârahs. I came upon one yesterday telling a circle of admirers, in the strictest confidence of course, lest theSirkarshould kill him for letting the cat out of the bag, that he had found that bit of bone at the bottom of a Commissariat sack he bought to mend his own. The moral being, of course, that it was safer to buy from him. But he was only half through when I, knowing the scoundrel, fell on him and thrashed him for lying. The audience approved, and assented to his confession that it was a lie; but only to please me, the man with the stick. And as for Jhungi, he will tell the tale with additional embellishments in every village to which the caravan goes; unless someone is there to thrash him if he does."
"Scoundrel," muttered the soldier angrily.
"Or saint," added James Greyman. "He will be that when he comes to believe his own story of having burned the sack rather than use it. That won't be long. Then he will be much more dangerous. However, if there is no place vacant for me, sir----"
"If you would not mind waiting a minute----" began the military magnate, with a hasty look at the Political.
James Greyman bowed, and retired discreetly to the window. It looked out upon just such another garden as Kate Erlton's, and the remembrance provoked the cynical question as to what the devil he was doing in that galley. Racing was a far safer way of making money than acting as a spy; to no purpose possibly, at least so far as his own chance was concerned.
Yet five minutes after, when the Political was writing him out a safe conduct in the event of his ever getting into difficulties with the authorities, he interrupted the scratching of the pen to say, suddenly:
"If you would make it out in my own name, sir, I should prefer it. James Sholto Douglas, late of the ----th Regiment."
"Hm!" said the military magnate thoughtfully when the new employee in the Secret Intelligence Department left the room. "So that is Jim Douglas, is it? I thought he was a service man by the set of his shoulders. Jim Douglas. I remember his case when I was in the A.-G.'s office."
"What was it?" asked the civilian curiously.
"Oh, a woman, of course. I forget the details, she was the wife of his major, a drunken beast. There was something about a blow, and she didn't back him up; saved her reputation, you understand. But he was an uncommonly smart officer, I know that."
The Gissings' house stood in a large garden; but though it was wreathed with creepers, and set with flowers after the manner of flowerful Lucknow, there was no cult of pansies or such like English treasures here. It was gay with that acclimatized tangle of poppies and larkspur, marigold, mignonette, and corn cockles which Indian gardeners love to sow broadcast in their cartwheel mud-beds; "powder of flowers" they call the mixed seeds they save for it from year to year.
In the big dark dining room also--where Alice Gissing, looking half her years in starch, white muslin, and blue ribbons, sat at the head of the table--there was no cult of England. Everything was frankly, stanchly of the nabob and pagoda-tree style; for the Gissings preferred India, where they were received into society, to England, where they would have been out of it.
It had been one those heavy luncheons, beginning with many meats and much bottled beer, ending with much madeira and many cigars, which sent the insurance rate for India up to war risks in those days.
And there was never any scarcity of the best beer at the Gissings', seeing that he had the contract for supplying it to the British troops. His wife, however, preferred solid-looking porter with a creamy head to it, and a heavy odor which lingered about her pretty smiling lips. It was a most incongruous drink for one of her appearance; but it never seemed to affect either her gay little body or gay little brain; the one remained youthful, slender, the other brightly, uncompromisingly clear.
She had been married twice. Once in extreme youth to a clerk in the Opium Department, who owed the good looks which had attracted her to a trace of dark blood. Then she had chosen wealth in the person of Mr. Gissing. Had he died, she would probably have married for position; since she had a catholic taste for the amenities of life. But he had not died, and she had lived with him for ten years in good-natured toleration of all his claims upon her. As a matter of fact, they did not affect her in the least, and in her clear, high voice, she used to wonder openly why other women worried over matrimonial troubles or fussed over so slight an encumbrance as a husband. In a way she felt equal to more than one, provided they did not squabble over her. That was unpleasant, and she not only liked things to be pleasant, but had the knack of making them so; both to the man whose name she bore, and whose house she used as a convenient spot wherein to give luncheon parties, and to the succession of admirers who came to them and drank her husband's beer.
He was a vulgar creature, but an excellent business man, with a knack of piling up the rupees which made the minor native contractors, whose trade he was gradually absorbing, gnash their teeth in sheer envy. For the Western system of risking all to gain all was too much opposed to the Eastern one of risking nothing to gain little for the hereditary merchants to adopt it at once. They have learned the trick of fence and entered the lists successfully since then; but in 1856 the foe was new. So they fawned on the shrewd despoiler instead, and curried favor by bringing his wife fruits and sweets, with something costlier hidden in the oranges or sugar drops. Alice Gissing accepted everything with a smile; for her husband was not a Government servant. The contracts, however, being for Government supplies, the givers did not discriminate the position so nicely. They used to complain that theSirkarrobbed them both ways, much to Mr. Gissing's amusement, who, as a method of self-glorification, would allude to it at the luncheon parties where many men used to come. Men who, between the intervals of badinage with the gay little hostess, could talk with authority on most affairs. They did not bring their wives with them, but Alice Gissing did not seem to mind; she did not get on with women.
"So they complain I rob them, do they?" he said loudly, complacently, to the men on either side of him. "My dear Colonel! an Englishman is bound to rob a native if that means creaming the market, for they haven't been educated, sir, on those sound commercial principles which have made England the first nation in the world. Take this flour contract they are howling about. I'm beer by rights, of course, and, by George, I'm proud of it. Your men, Colonel, can't do without beer; England can't do without soldiers; so my business is sound. But why shouldn't I have my finger in any other pie which holds money? These hereditary fools think I shouldn't, and they were trying a ring, sir. Ha! ha! an absurd upside-down d----d Oriental ring based on utterly rotten principles. You can't keep up the price of a commodity because your grandfather got that price. They ignored the facility of transport given by roads, etc., ignored the right of government to benefit--er--slightly--by these outlays. Commerce isn't a selfish thing, sir, by gad. If you don't consider your market a bit, you won't find one at all. So I stepped in, and made thousands; for the Commissariat, seeing the saving here, of course asked me to contract for other places. It serves the idiots uncommon well right; but it will benefit them in the end. If they're to face Western nations they must learn--er--the--the morality of speculation." He paused, helped himself to another glass of madeira, and added in an unctuous tone, "but till they do, India's a good place."
"Is that Gissing preaching morality?" asked his wife, in her clear, high voice. The men at her end of the table had had their share of her; those others might be getting bored by her husband.
"Only the morality of business," put in a coarse-looking fellow who, having been betwixt and between the conversations, had been drinking rather heavily. "There's no need for you to join the ladies as yet, Mrs. Gissing."
Major Erlton, at her right hand, scowled, and the boy on her left flushed up to the eyes. He was her latest admirer, and was still in the stage when she seemed an angel incarnate. Only the day before he had wanted to call out a cynical senior who had answered his vehement wonder as to how a woman like she was could have married a little beast like Gissing, with the irreverent suggestion that it might be because the name rhymed with kissing.
In the present instance she heeded neither the scowl nor the flush, and her voice came calmly. "I don't intend to, doctor. I mean to send you into the drawing room instead. That will be quite as effectual to the proprieties."
Amid the laugh, Major Erlton found opportunity for an admiring whisper. She had got the brute well above the belt that time. But the boy's flush deepened; he looked at his goddess with pained, perplexed eyes.
"The morality of speculation or gambling," retorted the doctor, speaking slowly and staring at the delighted Major angrily, "is the art of winning as much money as you can--conveniently. That reminds me, Erlton; you must have raked in a lot over that match."
A sudden dull red showed on the face whose admiration Alice was answering by a smile.
"I won a lot, also," she interrupted hastily, "thanks to your tip, Erlton. You never forget your friends."
"No one could forget you--there is no merit----" began the boy hastily, then pausing before the publicity of his own words, and bewildered by the smile now given to him. Herbert Erlton noted the fact sullenly. He knew that for the time being all the little lady's personal interest was his; but he also knew that was not nearly so much as he gave her. And he wanted more, not understanding that if she had had more to give she would probably have been less generous than she was; being of that class of women who sin because the sin has no appreciable effect on them. It leaves them strangely, inconceivably unsoiled. This imperviousness, however, being, as a rule, considered the man's privilege only, Major Erlton failed to understand the position, and so, feeling aggrieved, turned on the lad.
"I'll remember you the next time if you like, Mainwaring," he said, "but someone has to lose in every game. I'd grasped that fact before I was your age, and made up my mind it shouldn't be me."
"Sound commercial morality!" laughed another guest. "Try it, Mainwaring, at the nextGymkhâna. By the way, I hear that professional, Greyman, is off, so amateurs will have a chance now; he was a devilish fine rider."
"Rode a devilish fine horse, too," put in the unappeased doctor. "You bought it, Erlton, in spite----"
"Yes! for fifteen hundred," interrupted the Major, in unmistakable defiance. "A long price, but there was hanky-panky in that match. Greyman tried fussing to cover it. You never can trust professionals. However, Iand my friendswon, and I shall win again with the horse. Take you evens in goldmohursfor the next----"
There was always a sledge-hammer method in the Major's fence, and the subject dropped.
The room was heavy with the odors of meats and drinks. Dark as it was, the flood of sunshine streaming into the veranda outside, where yellow hornets were buzzing and the servants washing up the dishes, sent a glare even into the shadows. Neither the furniture nor appointments of the room owed anything to the East--for Indian art was, so to speak, not as yet invented for English folk--yet there was a strange unkennedness about their would-be familiarity which suddenly struck the latest exile, young Mainwaring.
"India is a beastly hole," he said, in an undertone--"things are so different--I wish I were out of it." There was a note of appeal in his young voice; his eyes, meeting Alice Gissing's, filled with tears to his intense dismay. He hoped she might not see them; but she did, and leaned over to lay one kindly be-ringed little hand on the table quite close to his.
"You've got liver," she said confidentially. "India is quite a nice place. Come to the assembly to-night, and I will give you two extras--whole ones. And don't drink any more madeira, there is a good boy. Come and have coffee with me in the drawing room instead; that will set you right."
Less has set many a boy hopelessly wrong. To do Alice Gissing justice, however, she never recognized such facts; her own head being quite steady. But Major Erlton understood the possible results perfectly, and commented on them when, as a matter of course, his long length remained lounging in an easy-chair after the other guests had gone, and Mr. Gissing had retired to business. People, from the Palais Royale playwrights, downward--or upward--always poke fun at the husbands in such situations; but no one jibes at the man who succeeds to the cut-and-dried necessity for devotion. Yet there is surely something ridiculous in the spectacle of a man playing a conjugal part without even a sense of duty to give him dignity in it, and the curse of the commonplace comes as quickly to Abelard and Heloise as it does to Darby and Joan. So Major Erlton, lounging and commenting, might well have been Mrs. Gissing's legal owner. "Going to make a fool of that lad now, I suppose, Allie. Why the devil should you when you don't care for boys?"
She came to a stand in front of him like a child, her hands behind her back, but her china-blue eyes had a world of shrewdness in them. "Don't I? Do you think I care for men either? I don't. You just amuse me, and I've got to be amused. By the way, did you remember to order the cart at five sharp? I want to go round the Fair before the Club."
If they had been married ten times over, their spending the afternoon together could not have been more of a foregone conclusion; there seemed, indeed, no choice in the matter. And they were prosaically punctual, too; at "five sharp" they climbed into the high dog-cart boldly, in face of a whole posse of servants dressed in the nabob and pagoda-tree style, also with silver crests in their pith turbans and huge monograms on their breastplates; old-fashioned servants with the most antiquated notions as to the needs of the sahiblogue, and a fund of passive resentment for the least change in the inherited routine of service. Changes which they referred to the fact that the new-fangled sahibs were not real sahibs. But the heavy, little and big breakfasts, the unlimited beer, the solid dinners, the milk punch and brandypâni, all had their appointed values in the Gissings' house; so the servants watched their mistress with approving smiles. And on Mondays there was always a larger posse than usual to see the old Mai, who had been Alice Gissing's ayah for years and years, hand up the bouquet which the gardener always had ready, and say, "My salaams to the missy-baba." Mrs. Gissing used to take the flowers just as she took her parasol or her gloves. Then she would say, "All right," partly to the ayah, partly to her cavalier, and the dog-cart, or buggy, or mail-phaeton, whichever it happened to be, would go spinning away. For the old Mai had handed the flowers into many different turn-outs and remained on the steps ready with the authority of age and long service, to crush any frivolous remarks newcomers might make. But the destination of the bouquet was always the same; and that was to stand in a peg tumbler at the foot of a tiny white marble cross in the cemetery. Mrs. Gissing put a fresh offering in it every Monday, going through the ceremony with a placid interest; for the date on the cross was far back in the years. Still, she used to speak of the little life which had come and gone from hers when she was yet a child herself, with a certain self-possessed plaintiveness born of long habit.
"I was barely seventeen," she would say, "and it was a dear little thing. Then Saumarez was transferred, and I never returned to Lucknow till I married Gissing. It was odd, wasn't it, marrying twice to the same station. But, of course, I can't ask him to come here, so it is doubly kind of you; for I couldn't come alone, it is so sad."
Her blue eyes would be limpid with actual tears; yet as she waited for the return of the tumbler, which the watchman always had to wash out, she looked more like some dainty figure on a cracker than a weeping Niobe. Nevertheless, the admirers whom she took in succession into her confidence thought it sweet and womanly of her never to have forgotten the dead baby, though they rather admired her dislike to live ones. Some of them, when their part in the weekly drama came upon them, as it always did in the first flush of their fancy for the principal actress in it, began by being quite sentimental over it. Herbert Erlton did. He went so far once as to bring an additional bouquet of pansies from his wife's pet bed; but the little lady had looked at it with plaintive distrust. "Pansies withered so soon," she said, "and as the bouquet had to last a whole week, something less fragile was better." Indeed, the gardener's bouquets, compact, hard, with the blossoms all jammed into little spots of color among the protruding sprigs of privet, were more suited to her calm permanency of regret, than the passionate purple posy which had looked so pathetically out of place in the big man's coarse hands. She had taken it from him, however, and strewn the already drooping flowers about the marble. They looked pretty, she had said, though the others were best, as she liked everything to be tidy; because she had been very, very fond of the poor little dear. Saumarez had never been kind, and it had been so pretty; dark, like its father, who had been a very handsome man. She had cried for days, then, though she didn't like children now. But she would always remember this one, always! The old Mai and she often talked of it; especially when she was dressing for a ball, because the gardener brought bouquets for them also.
Major Erlton, therefore, gave no more pansies, and his sentiment died down into a sort of irritable wonder what the little woman would be at. The unreality of it all struck him afresh on this particular Monday: as he watched her daintily removing the few fallen petals; so he left her to finish her task while he walked about. The cemetery was a perfect garden of a place, with rectangular paths bordered by shrubs which rose from a tangle of annual flowers like that around the Gissings' house. This blossoming screen hid the graves for the most part; but in the older portions great domed erections--generally safeguarding an infant's body--rose above it more like summer-houses than tombs. Herbert Erlton preferred this part of the cemetery. It was less suggestive than the newer portion, and he was one of those wholesome, hearty animals to whom the very idea of death is horrible. So hither, after a time, she came, stepping daintily over the graves, and pausing an instant on the way to add a sprig of mignonette to the rosebud she had brought from a bush beside the cross; it was a fine, healthy bush which yielded a constant supply of buds suitable for buttonholes. She looked charming, but he met her with a perplexed frown.
"I've been wondering, Allie," he said, "what you would have been like if that baby had lived. Would you have cared for it?"
Her eyes grew startled. "But I do care for it! Why should I come if I didn't? It isn't amusing, I'm sure; so I think it very unkind of you to suggest----"
"I never suggested anything," he protested. "I know you did--that you do care. But if it had lived----" he paused as if something escaped his mental grasp. "Why, I expect you would have been different somehow; and I was wondering----"
"Oh! don't wonder, please, it's a bad habit," she replied, suddenly appeased. "You will be wondering next if I care for you. As if you didn't know that I do."
She was pinning the buttonhole into his coat methodically, and he could not refuse an answering smile; but the puzzled look remained. "I suppose you do, or you wouldn't----" he began slowly. Then a sudden emotion showed in face and voice. "You slip from me somehow, Allie--slip like an eel. I never get a real hold---- Well! I wonder if women understand themselves? They ought to, for nobody else can, that's one comfort." Whether he meant he was no denser than previous recipients of rosebuds, or that mankind benefited by failing to grasp feminine standards, was not clear. And Mrs. Gissing was more interested in the fact that the mare was growing restive. So they climbed into the high dog-cart again, and took her a quieting spin down the road. The fresh wind of their own speed blew in their faces, the mare's feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground, the trees slipped past quickly, the palm-squirrels fled chirruping. He flicked his whip gayly at them in boyish fashion as he sat well back, his big hand giving to the mare's mouth. Hers lay equably in her lap, though the pace would have made most women clutch at the rail.
"Jolly little beasts; aint they, Allie?"
"Jolly altogether; jolly as it can be," she replied with the frank delight of a girl. They had forgotten themselves innocently enough; but one of the men in a dog-cart, past which they had flashed, put on an outraged expression.
"Erlton and Mrs. Gissing again!" he fussed. "I shall tell my wife to cut her. Being in business ourselves we have tried to keep square. But this is an open scandal. I wonder Mrs. Erlton puts up with it. I wouldn't."
His companion shook his head. "Dangerous work, saying that. Wait till you are a woman. I know more about them than most, being a doctor, so I never venture on an opinion. But, honestly, I believe most women--that little one ahead into the bargain--don't care a button one way or the other. And, for all our talk, I don't believe we do either, when all is said and done."
"What is said and done?" asked the other peevishly.
There was a pause. The lessening dog-cart with its flutter of ribbons, its driver sitting square to his work, showed on the hard white road which stretched like a narrowing ribbon over the empty plain. Far ahead a little devil of wind swept the dust against the blue sky like a cloud. Nearer at hand lay a cluster of mud hovels, and--going toward it before the dog-cart--a woman was walking along the dusty side of the road. She had a bundle of grass on her head, a baby across her hip, a toddling child clinging to her skirts. The afternoon sun sent the shadows conglomerately across the white metal.
"Passion, Love, Lust, the attractions of sex for sex--what you will," said the doctor, breaking the silence. "Nothing is easier knocked out of a man, if he is worth calling one--a bugle call, a tight corner---- God Almighty!--they're over that child! Drive on like the devil, man, and let me see what I can do."
There is never much to do when all has been done in an instant. There had been a sudden causeless leaving of the mother's side, a toddling child among the shadows, a quick oath, a mad rear as the mare, checked by hands like a vise for strength, snapped the shafts as if they had been straws. No delay, no recklessness; but one of these iron-shod hoofs as it flung out had caught the child full on the temple, and there was no need to ask what that curved blue mark meant, which had gone crashing into the skull.
Alice Gissing had leaped from the dog-cart and stood looking at the pitiful sight with wide eyes.
"We couldn't do anything," she said in an odd hard voice, as the others joined her. "There was nothing we could do. Tell the woman, Herbert, that we couldn't help it."
But the Major, making the still plunging mare a momentary excuse for not facing the ghastly truth, had, after one short, sharp exclamation--almost of fear, turned to help the groom. So there was no sound for a minute save the plunging of hoofs on the hard ground, the groom's cheerful voice lavishing endearments on his restless charge, and a low animal-like whimper from the mother, who, after one wild shriek, had sunk down in the dust beside the dead child, looking at the purple bruise dully, and clasping her living baby tighter to her breast. For it, thank the gods! was the boy. That one with the mark on its forehead only the girl.
Then the doctor, who had been busy with deft but helpless hands, rose from his knees, saying a word or two in Hindustani which provoked a whining reply from the woman.
"She admits it was no one's fault," he said. "So Erlton, if you will take our dog-cart----"
But the Major had faced the position by this time. "I can't go. She is a camp follower, I expect, and I shall have to find out--for compensation and all that. If you would take Mrs. Gissing----" His voice, steady till then, broke perceptibly over the name; its owner looked up sharply, and going over to him laid her hand on his arm.
"It wasn't your fault," she said, still in that odd hard voice. "You had the mare in hand; she didn't stir an inch. It is a dreadful thing to happen, but"--she threw her head back a little, her wide eyes narrowed as a frown puckered her smooth forehead--"it isn't as if we could have prevented it. The thing had to be."
She might have been the incarnation of Fate itself as she glanced down at the dead child in the dust, at the living one reaching from its mother's arms to touch its sister curiously, at the slow tears of the mother herself as she acquiesced in the eternal fitness of things; for a girl more or less was not much in the mud hovel, where she and her man lived hardly, and the Huzoors would doubtless give rupees in exchange, for they were just. She wept louder, however, when with conventional wailing the women from the clustering huts joined her, while the men, frankly curious, listened to the groom's spirited description of the incident.
"You had better go, Allie; you do no good here," said the Major almost roughly. He was anxious to get through with it all; he was absorbed in it.
So the man who had said he was going to tell his wife to cut Mrs. Gissing had to help her into the dog-cart.
"It was horrible, wasn't it?" she said suddenly when, in silence, they had left the little tragedy far behind them. "We were going an awful pace, but you saw he had the mare in hand. He is awfully strong, you know." She paused, and a reflectively complacent smile stole to her face. "I suppose you will think it horrid," she went on; "but it doesn't feel to me like killing a human being, you know. I'm sorry, of course, but I should have been much sorrier if it had been a white baby. Wouldn't you?"
She set aside his evasion remorselessly. "I know all that! People say, of course, that it is wicked not to feel the same toward people whether they're black or white. But we don't. And they don't either. They feel just the same about us because we are white. Don't you think they do?"
"The antagonism of race----" he began sententiously, but she cut him short again. This time with an irrelevant remark.
"I wonder what your wife would say if she saw me driving in your dog-cart?"
He stared at her helplessly. The one problem was as unanswerable as the other.
"You had better drive round the back way to the Fair," she said considerately. "Somebody there will take me off your hands. Otherwise you will have to drive me to the Club; for I'm not going home. It would be dreadful after that horrid business. Besides, the Fair will cheer me up. One doesn't understand it, you know, and the people crowd along like figures on a magic lantern slide. I mean that you never know what's coming next, and that is always so jolly, isn't it?"
It might be, but the man with the wife felt relieved when, five minutes afterward, she transferred herself to young Mainwaring's buggy. The boy, however, felt as if an angel had fluttered down from the skies to the worn, broken-springed cushion beside him; an angel to be guarded from humanity--even her own.
"How the beggars stare," he said after they had walked the horse for a space through the surging crowds. "Let us get away from the grinning apes." He would have liked to take her to paradise and put flaming swords at the gate.
"They don't grin," she replied curtly, "they stare like Bank-holiday people stare at the wild beasts in the Zoo. But let us get away from the watered road, the policemen, and all that. That's no fun. See, go down that turning into the middle of it; you can get out that way to the river road afterward if you like."
The bribe was sufficient; it was not far across to peace and quiet, so the turn was made. Nor was the staring worse in the irregular lane of booths and stalls down which they drove. The unchecked crowd was strangely silent despite the numberless children carried shoulder high to see the show, and though the air was full of throbbings of tomtoms, twanging ofsutaras, intermittent poppings and fizzings of squibs. But it was also strangely insistent; going on its way regardless of the shouting groom.
"Take care," said Mrs. Gissing lightly, "don't run over another child. By the way, I forgot to tell you--the Fair was so funny--but Erlton ran over a black baby. It wasn't his fault a bit, and the mother, luckily, didn't seem to mind; because it was a girl, I expect. Aren't they an odd people? One really never knows what will make them cry or laugh."
Something was apparently amusing them at that moment, however, for a burst of boisterous merriment pealed from a dense crowd near a booth pitched in an open space.
"What's that?" she cried sharply. "Let's go and see."
She was out of the dog-cart as she spoke despite his protest that it was impossible--that she must not venture.
"Do you imagine they'll murder me?" she asked with aninsouciant, incredulous laugh. "What nonsense! Here, good people, let me pass, please!"
She was by this time in the thick of the crowd, which gave way instinctively, and he could do nothing but follow; his boyish face stern with the mere thought her idle words had conjured up. Do her any injury? Her dainty dress should not even be touched if he could help it.
But the sightseers, most of them peasants beguiled from their fields for this Festival of Spring, had never seen an English lady at such close quarters before, if, indeed, they had ever seen one at all. So, though they gave way they closed in again, silent but insistent in their curiosity; while, as the center of attraction came nearer, the crowd in front became denser, more absorbed in the bursts of merriment. There was a ring of license in them which made young Mainwaring plead hurriedly:
"Mrs. Gissing!--don't--please don't."
"But I want to see what they're laughing at," she replied. And then in perfect mimicry of the groom's familiar cry, her high clear voice echoed over the heads in front of her: "Hut! Hut! Ari bhaiyan! Hut!"
They turned to see her gay face full of smiles, joyous, confident, sympathetic, and the next minute the cry was echoed with approving grins from a dozen responsive throats.
"Stand back, brothers! Stand back!"
There were quick hustlings to right and left, quick nods and smiles, even broad laughs full of good fellowship; so that she found herself at the innermost circle with clear view of the central space, of the cause of the laughter. It made her give a faint gasp and stand transfixed. Two white-masked figures, clasped waist to waist, were waltzing about tipsily. One had a curled flaxen wig, a muslin dress distended by an all too visible crinoline, giving full play to a pair of prancing brown legs. The other wore an old staff uniform, cocked hat and feather complete. The flaxen curls rested on the tarnished epaulet, the unembracing arms flourished brandy bottles.
It was a vile travesty; and the Englishwoman turned instinctively to the Englishman as if doubtful what to do, how to take it. But the passion of his boyish face seemed to make things clear--to give her the clew, and she gripped his hand hard.
"Don't be a fool!" she whispered fiercely. "Laugh. It's the only thing to do." Her own voice rang out shrill above the uncertain stir in the crowd, taken aback in its merriment.
But something else rose above it also. A single word:
"Bravo!"
She turned like lightning to the sound, her cheeks for the first time aflame, but she could see no one in the circle of dark faces whom she could credit with the exclamation. Yet she felt sure she had heard it.
"Bravo!" Had it been said in jest or earnest, in mockery or---- Young Mainwaring interrupted the problem by suggesting that as the maskers had run away into a booth, where he could not follow and give them the licking they deserved because of her presence, it might be as well for her to escape further insult by returning to the buggy. His tone was as full of reproach as that of a lad in love could be, but Mrs. Gissing was callous. She declared she was glad to have seen it. Englishmen did drink and Englishwomen waltzed. Why, then, shouldn't the natives poke fun at both habits if they chose? They themselves could laugh at other things. And laugh she did, recklessly, at everything and everybody for the remainder of the drive. But underneath her gayety she was harping on that "Bravo!" And suddenly as they drove by the river she broke in on the boy's prattle to say excitedly: "I have it! It must have been the one in the Afghan cap who said 'Bravo!' He was fairer than the rest. Perhaps he was an Englishman disguised. Well! I should know him again if I saw him."
"Him? who--what? Who said bravo?" asked the lad. He had been too angry to notice the exclamation at the time.
She looked at him quizzically. "Not you--you abused me. But someone did--or didn't"--here her little slack hands resting in her lap clasped each other tightly. "I rather wish I knew. I'd rather like to make him say it again. Bravo! Bravo!"
And then, as if at her own mimicry, she returned to her childish unreasoning laugh.