It is a May morning in the north of India--such a morning as comes when the hot wind has been blowing for three weeks, and has shrivelled everything before it, like tea-leaves under the fan of a drying engine. The Grand Trunk Road, a long line of grey dotted in with dust-coveredkikurtrees, stretches for three hundred miles to the frontier, and to the right and left of it, beginning at the village of the Well of Lehna Singh, which lies but a quoit-cast from the roadside, spreads a plain, dry, arid, and parched--agape with thirst--the seams running along its brown surface like open lips panting for rain, the cool rain which will not come yet, although, at times, the distant rumble of thunder is heard, and dark clouds pile up in the horizon, only to melt away into nothing. The tallsirpatgrass has been cut, and its pruned stalks, stiff as the bristles on a hair-brush, extend in regular patches of yellow, spiky scrub, with bands of mottled brown and grey earth between them. Here and again it would seem there are scattered pools, for the eyes, running over the landscape, shrink back from a sudden flash, as of water reflecting the fierce light of the sun. It is not so, however, for, except what the groaning Persian wheels drag up from the deep wells, there is never a drop of water for man, for beast, or for field. Those gleaming stretches from which the pained eyes turn are nothing more than the bare earth, covered with a saline efflorescence, soft and silver white, as if it were dry and powdered foam. It is yet early, and the light is not so dazzling as to prevent the eye resting on the patchwork of the plain, studded here and there with clumps of trees, that mark a well and the hamlet that has grown up around it. To found a village here it is only necessary to dig a well, and behold! mud huts spring up like fungi, and a hamlet has come into being. Right across the plain is a dark line ofkikurandseesumtrees. That is where the dry bed of the Deg torrents lies. Only let it rain, and the Deg will come down, an angry yellow flood, alive with catfish, and bubble its way to the wide but not less yellow bosom of the Ravi. Beyond the dry bed of the torrent, and towards the east, are a number of sand dunes covered with the soda plant, and looking like anthills in the distance. In the east itself the sun looms through a red haze, and against this ruddy, semi-opaque mist, a dust-devil rises in a spiral column, and opening out at the top, like an expanding smoke wreath, spreads sullenly against the sky line. On a morning such as this, two men are beating for a boar in a large patch ofsirpatgrass. One man is at each end of the grass field, and between them are twenty or thirtySansis, a criminal tribe, who make excellent beaters whatever their other faults may be. With the man to the right of the field we have little concern. It is with the man to the left that this story deals. As he sits his fretting Arab, and the sunlight falls on his features, it would need but a glance to tell he was a soldier. The careful observer might, however, discover in that glance that there was something wrong about the good-looking face. The eyes were too close together, the bow of the mouth both weak and cruel, although the chin below it was firm enough. If the grey helmet he wore were removed, it would have been seen that the head was small and somewhat conical in shape, the head of a Carib rather than that of an European. As he slowly advanced his horse along the edge of the field, keeping in line with the beaters, it was evident that he was in a high state of excitement, and the shaft of his spear was shivering in his hand.
Whirr!whirr!A couple of black partridge rise from the grass and sail away till they look like cockchafers in the distance. Then there is a scramble, a hare dashes out, and scurries madly across the plain, his long ears laid flat on his back, and his big eyes almost starting out of his head with fright. The beaters yell at this, and the Arab plunges forward; but the rider, who is growing pale with excitement, holds him in, and he dances along sideways in a white sweat--both horse and man all nerves. Two mangy jackals slink out of the grass, give a sly look around, and then lope along in the direction taken by the hare. It will be bad for puss if they come across him. As yet not a sign of the boar, and the Arab is almost pulling Sangster's arms off. He looks across at his friend, and sees him well to the right, on his solemn-looking black, and he catches sight of a pale blue curl of smoke from Wilkinson's pipe.
"By George!" he muttered, "only think of smoking now! Steady----" He might as well have tried to stop an engine. There is a chorus of yells, shrieks, and howls from the beaters, a sudden waving of crackling grass, the plunge of a heavy body, and in a hand-turn an old boar breaks cover, and, with one savage look about him, heads at a tremendous pace for the Deg. The Arab has seen it, and lets himself out like a buck, and then all is forgotten except the fierce excitement of the chase. Sangster can hear the drumming of the black's hoofs behind him, and fast as he goes Wilkinson draws alongside, his teeth still clenched over the stem of his pipe. The boar is well to the front, a brown spot bobbing up and down, racing for his life, as he means to fight for it when the time comes. He is not afraid, his little red eyes are aflame with wrath, and as he goes he grinds his tusks till the yellow foam flies off them on to his brindled sides. He is not in the least afraid, and he fully intends, at the proper time, to adjust matters with one or both his pursuers. It is his way to run first and fight afterwards--that is, providing the enemy can run him to a standstill. If not--well, the fight must be deferred to another day, and in the meantime it is capital going, except over that ravine-scarred portion of the plain called the "Gridiron," where, at any rate, the advantage will lie with him.
Side by side the two men race. Wilkinson knows perfectly well that when the time comes he can draw away from the Arab, which, with all its speed and pluck, is no match for a fifteen-hand Waler. He is calculating on gaining "first spear" with a sudden rush; but has missed out of this calculation the consequences of an accident. In the middle of the "Gridiron," the Waler makes a false step between two grass-crowned hummocks, and Sangster is left alone, with the boar, whilst Wilkinson, with a sore heart, crawls out of a water-cut, and, after many an ineffectual effort, succeeds in catching his horse and following the chase, now almost out of sight.
In the meantime the boar has all but reached the Deg, and safety lies there. Could he only gain one of the hundred ravines that cobweb the plain, a quarter mile or so from the dry bed of the torrent, he would yet live to run, and maybe fight, on another day. He strains every nerve to effect this object, and Sangster, seeing this, calls on his horse, and the Arab, answering gallantly, brings him almost up to the boar with a rush. Sangster can see the foam on the boar's jowl, necked with bright spots of red; blood-marks from the hunted animal's lips, wounded by the sharp tushes as he ground them together in his wrath; already has he reached out his arm to deliver the spear, when, quick as lightning, the boar jinks to the right, and, dashing down a deep and narrow ravine, is lost to view. Sangster saw the bristles on his back as the beast vanished, and the speed of his horse bore him almost to the edge of the steep bank of the Deg before he could stop and turn him. When Sangster came back to the point where he had lost the boar he realized that it was useless to make any attempt to find the animal. In a hasty look round he had given when Wilkinson came to grief he had seen that the accident to his friend was not serious, and he now resolved to cross the Deg by an old bridge known as "Shah Doula's Pool," and make his way back to the beaters along the "soft" that bordered the metalling of the Grand Trunk Road. It would be shady there, and he was parched with thirst, and very much out of temper. Failure in anything made this nervous man extraordinarily irritable, and he was in a mood to pick a quarrel on the slightest provocation.
Sangster reached the bridge in this frame of mind, and as he crossed it came upon a curious scene. Under the shade of a peepul, whose heart-shaped leaves sheltered him from the sun, sat a devotee staring fixedly into space with his lustreless eyes. Beyond a cloth around his waist he had no clothing, his body was smeared with ashes, and on his ash-covered forehead was drawn a trident in red ochre. His hair, which was of great length, and had been bleached by exposure from black to a russet brown, fell over his thin shoulders in a long matted mane. Sitting there, he was, up to this point, like any one of the hundred wandering mendicants a man might meet in a week's march in India; but here the resemblance ceased, for this man was of those who, in the fulfilment of a vow, was prepared to inflict upon himself and to endure any torture. He sat cross-legged, and what at first Sangster thought was the dry and blasted bough of a stuntedkikurtree behind the man he saw, at a second glance, was nothing less than the devotee's arm, which he had held out at a right angle to his body, until it had stiffened immovably in that position, and had shrunk until it seemed that the cracked skin alone covered the bone. How long the arm had been held to reach this condition no one can say. But it was long enough for the nails to have grown through the palm of the clenched hand, over which they curled and drooped like tendrils. The ascetic's gourd lay before him, into which some pious passer-by had dropped a handful of parched rice, and behind him gambolled a grey monkey, an entellus orlungoor, who gibbered and mowed at Sangster as he rode up, but made no attempt to retreat--evidently he was tame, and used to people.
Although Sangster had nearly seven years of service, he knew nothing about the East; his knowledge of its peoples and their characters expressed itself in two words, brief and strong. He knew nothing and cared less for the complex laws, the mystic philosophy, the immemorial civilization of the great empire which he, in his small way, was helping to hold for England. He fortunately represented only a small class of the servants of the Queen, that class who hold the native to be a brute, a little, if at all, better than the grey ape who leered over the devotee's shoulder at the Arab and his rider. Sangster, however, knew something of the language, and some devil prompted him to rein in, and imperiously ask the sitting figure if the boar had gone that way. He might as well have asked the ape, for that figure, seated there in the dust, with its rigid arm stretched out, and dull look staring into vacancy, would have been oblivious if a hundred boars had passed before it, and was so lost in abstraction that it was even unconscious of the presence of the fiery champing horse and equally impatient man, who were right in front of its unwinking eyes. Of course there was no answer, and Sangster angrily repeated the question, lowering the point of his spear as he did so, and slightly pricking the man below him. What came into the little brain of the ape it is hard to say; but it was an instinct that told him his master was in danger, and with a dog-like fidelity he resolved to defend him. Springing forward the beast grasped the shaft of the lance, and, with chattering teeth, pushed it violently on one side. All the little temper Sangster had left went to shreds; with an oath he drew back his arm, the spear-head flashed, and the next moment passed clean through the shrieking animal, and was out again, no longer bright but dripping red. With a pitiful moan the poor brute almost flung itself into the devotee's lap, and died there, its arms clasped around the lean waist of its master. All this happened so suddenly, so quickly, that Sangster had barely time to think of what he had done; but, as he raised his red spear, a horror came on him, so human was the cry of the dying ape, so like a child did it lie in its death-agony. He would have turned away and ridden off, but a power he could not control kept him there, and for a space there was a silence, broken only by the drip from the spear-head, and the soft whistle of ahuryalor green pigeon from the shade of the leaves overhead.
The ascetic gently put aside the dead ape, and rose, a grey phantom, to his feet. So large was his head, so small his body, and so long the withered bird-like legs that supported him, that he appeared to be some uncanny creature of another world. He was overcome with a terrible excitement, his breast heaved, his lips moved with a hissing sound, and he unconsciously tried to shake his rigid right arm at the destroyer. Then his voice came, shrill and fierce, with a note of unending pain in it, and he dropped out slowly, and with a deadly hate in each word: "Cursed be the hand that wrought this deed! Cursed be thou above thy fellows! May Durga dog thee through life, and let thy life itself end in blood! Now go!"
Without a word Sangster turned to the left, and galloped along the banks of the Deg. At any other time he could have found it in his heart to laugh at the curse of the mad ascetic, for so he thought the man to be; but the limp body of the dead ape was before him, and its pitiful cry was ringing in his ears. As he rode on he caught a glimpse of his dull spear-point. It was only the blood of an animal after all; but he flung the lance away with a jerk of his arm, and it fell softly into the broad-leaveddakhshrubs and lay there, long and yellow in the sunlight. He pressed on madly; the white line of the Grand Trunk Road was now close, and he could make out a gigantic figure on a gigantic horse. It was Wilkinson; but how huge he looked! Sangster's head seemed bursting, and there was a drumming in his ears. Somehow he managed to keep his seat, and at last heard Wilkinson's cool voice.
"Got the pig, old man? Good God!----" For Sangster, with a flushed red face, slid from his saddle, and lay senseless in the white burning dust.
In a moment Wilkinson had sprung to earth and was bending over his friend.
"Sunstroke, by Jove! Must get him back at once."
One does not recover from sunstroke in a little, and in most cases it leaves a permanent mark behind it. Sangster was no exception to the rule. For weeks he lay between life and death. There were times when he tottered on the brink of that dark precipice, down which we must all go sooner or later; but he rallied at last. Finally he was well enough to travel, and the sick man came home. He had never mentioned to a soul what he had done at Shah Doula's Pool. If he had spoken of it during his illness, it was doubtless set down to the ravings of delirium. When at length he recovered his senses, he could only recall what had happened to him in a vague manner. But he was no longer his own cheery, somewhat noisy self. He was listless, moody, and apathetic. Over his mind there seemed to brood a shadow that would take to itself neither form nor substance, and against which he could not battle. The doctors said the long sea-voyage home would set him right in this respect. They were wrong, and day after day the man lay stretched on his cane deck-chair, or paced up and down in sullen silence, exchanging no word with his fellow-passengers. At last they reached Plymouth, and although it was seven years since he had left England, he never even glanced out of the windows as the train bore him to his Berkshire home. He arrived at last and was made much over. Kind hands tended him, and loving hearts were there to anticipate his slightest whim. It was impossible to resist this, and in a little time the clouds seemed to roll away from his mind, and he was once more gay and bright. One warm sunny day, as he was lying in a hammock under the shade of a sycamore, hardly conscious that he was awake, and yet knowing he was not asleep, his mind seemed to slip back of its own accord into the past. In an instant the soft turf, the mellow green trees, the restful English landscape faded away. A wind that was as hot as a furnace blast beat upon him. All around was a dreary waste, and above, the sky was a cloudless, burning blue. He was once again holding in his fiery Arab, and listening to the curse hissing out from the lips of the devotee. He almost heard the blood dropping from his spear on to the grey dust below his horse's hoofs, and from the heart-shapedpeepulleaves--it was no longer a sycamore he was beneath--the whistle of the green pigeon came to him soft and low. A strange terror seized him. He sprang out of the hammock. He had not been asleep. It was broad daylight, and yet he could have sworn that for the moment time had rolled backwards, and that he was eight thousand miles away from the square, red brick parsonage, in the firwoods of Berkshire. And then he began to understand.
He went into the house his old brooding self, and in a week, finding life there insupportable, ran up to town. Here he took chambers close to his club, and plunged into dissipation. He was not naturally a man given that way, and he did not take to it kindly. But he held his course and broke the remains of his health, and wasted his substance in a vain effort to shake off the weight from his soul. But it was useless, and now a weariness of life fell upon him, and something seemed to be ever whispered in his ear to end all. The temptation came upon him one evening with an almost irresistible force. He was to dine out that evening, and had just finished dressing when his eye fell on a small plated Derringer that lay on the table before him. He took it up and held it in his hand. But a little touch on the trigger, and there would be an end of all things. It was so easy. Only a little touch! He placed the round muzzle to his temple, and stood thus for a second. He could hear the ticking of his watch, he could feel the pulse in his temple throbbing against the cold steel of the pistol, he could feel his very heart beating. His whole past rose up before him. He closed his eyes, set his teeth, his finger was on the trigger, when he heard a low laugh, a mocking laugh of triumph, that, soft as it was, seemed to vibrate through the room. Sangster's hand dropped to his side, and he looked round with a scared face. At the time this occurred he was standing at his dressing-table, and the only light was that from two candles, one on each side of the glass. The bedroom was separated from the sitting-room by a folding door, overhung by a heavy crimson curtain, and this part of the room was in semidarkness. As Sangster turned his white face to the curtain he saw nothing, although the laugh was still ringing in his ears; but, as he looked, a pale blue mist rose before the curtain; a mist that seemed instinct with light, and in it floated the body of the devotee, the rigid arm extended towards him and a smile of infernal malice on the withered lips. For a moment Sangster stood as if spell-bound--a cold sweat on his forehead. Then, for he was no coward, he nerved himself, and advanced towards the vision. As he stepped up, mist and figure faded into nothing, and he was alone. But he could bear to be so no longer, and thrusting the pistol into the breast pocket of his coat, hurried outside. Once in the street, he hailed a hansom and was driven to his destination.
During his stay in town he had sought every class of society, and chance had thrown him in the way of Madame Régine. Who she was is not material to this story, but she was the one person he had met who could for the moment make Sangster forget his gloom.
In her way, too, Régine was attracted by this man, so grave and silent, yet who was able to speak of things and scenes she had never heard of, and who looked so different from the other men she came across in her literary and artistic circle.
Of late, with a perversity which cannot be accounted for, he had avoided seeing her, and she was more than glad he was coming that night; and as for him, he almost had it in his heart to thank God he was to see Régine that evening.
Madame knew how to select her guests. There were but half a dozen people, and it was very gay. At first Sangster could not shake off his depression, but as the wine went round and the wit sparkled he pulled himself together, and in a half-hour had forgotten what had happened before he came to the house. They were late that evening; but the time came to go at last. Sangster, however, lingered--the latest of all to say good-bye.
As he went up to her she put aside his hand with a smile.
"I have not seen you for ages. You might stay for another ten minutes and talk to me."
"I shall be delighted."
"That is nice of you--and I will show you a present I have had from India. You can smoke if you like."
"I suppose it is little things like this that you do that make you so charming a hostess."
"Thank you," she laughed, a pink flush in her cheeks, "and now wait a moment and I will give you a surprise."
And Sangster heard the same sneering laugh that he had heard in his rooms. It came from nowhere; but it chilled him to ice, and the answer in his lips died to nothing. He alone heard it, loud as it was, for Madame looked for a moment at him as she spoke and then there was a swish of trailing garments, and she was gone. A little time passed, and Sangster thought he would smoke. In an absent manner he put his hand in his breast pocket and pulled out--not his cigarette case, but the pistol. He smiled grimly to himself as he held it in his hand.
"Might as well do it here as anywhere else," he muttered.
On the instant he felt two soft furry arms round his neck, and something sprang lightly to his shoulders. He gave a quick cry and looked up to meet the grinning face of an entellus monkey leering into his eyes.
"My God!" he gasped, and the sharp report of the Derringer cut into Régine's peal of laughter, and changed its note to a scream of horror. When the police came she was bending over the body of the madman, laughing in shrill hysterics, and the ape gibbered at them from his seat on the high back of a chair.
The sunbirds, hovering and twittering over theneemtrees, signalled to me the approach of the coming hot weather. The sky was a steel grey, and over the horizon of the wide plain before my bungalow, on which the short grass was already dry and crisp, hung a curtain of pale brown dust. Here and there on the expanse of faded green were small herds of lean kine, and, almost on the edge of the road bordering the plain, a line of water-buffaloes sluggishly headed for a shallow pool about a mile or so westward, where they would wallow till the sun went down, and then be driven home with unwilling steps to their byres. The herd bull came last of all, and on his back sat a little naked boy, a pellet bow in his hand, and a cotton bag full of mud pellets slung over his shoulder. He was singing in a high-pitched tuneless voice, and his song seemed to enrage the "brain-fever" bird in the mango tree, where he had hidden silent since the dawn. The bird objected in a shrill crescendo of ringing notes that brought the pellet bow into play, and then there was a whistle of grey-brown wings as he flew to a safer spot, and a silence broken only by the monotonoustink,tink,tinkof the little green barbet or coppersmith. There were times, when fever held me in its grip, that the maddening iteration of its cry was almost unbearable, and to this day I nurse a hatred to that little green-coated and red-throated plague--of a truth "the coppersmith hath done me much evil." I stood in my veranda watching the retreating figure of the Judge, as he drove away full of a project of spending a month in Burma--an enterprise he had been vainly tempting me to share; but I had other fish to fry: my way was westwards, not eastwards, and besides I had slaved for six long years in Burma, and knew it far too well. One glance at the Judge as he turned the elbow of the road, and was lost to view behind the siris trees, one look at the thirsty plain, and the shivering heat haze, through which glinted, now and again, the distant spear-heads of a squadron of Bengal Lancers trotting slowly back to their barracks, and I turned in to my study. I had determined to devote the day to the destruction of old papers, and set about my task in earnest. There was one drawer in particular that had not been touched for three years. I had forgotten what it contained, and opened it slowly, thinking it was possibly an Augean Stable; but nothing met my eyes except a small packet of papers. Yet with that one look came back to me the memory of a life's tragedy. The papers should have been destroyed long ago, and now--I hesitated no longer, but tore them up into the smallest fragments, glad to be rid, as I thought, of the miserable record of a man's folly, of his crime, and of his shame.
But an awakened memory is not easily set at rest, and, in the stillness of that Indian day, the whole thing returned with an insistent force, dead voices spoke to me once more, and bitter regrets hummed of the past, the past that can never be retrodden--and then there arose out of the shadows in vivid distinctness the memory of that supreme moment when John Mazarion cast his soul to hell. It all came back like a picture: that lonely Himalayan mountain side, the black pines, the silent eternal snows, Mazarion with his pale white face, and Rani with her laughing eyes. An eagle screamed above us, I remember, and with a hissing of wings dropped over the abyss into the blue mists that clung to the mountain side.
John Mazarion and I had been friends at school, and we met again as young men with a common interest in our lives, for we had both adopted an Indian career. Mazarion had gone into the Indian Marine, and I--I wanted in those days to build empires as did Clive and Hastings, and so I sought honour in another service, and got sent to Burma for my pains and--the empires have yet to be built. There was yet another interest between John and myself, and that was Nelly. Being young men we did as young men do, and both fell in love; but unfortunately we both fell in love with the same woman, and Nelly took Mazarion. It was a bitter thing for me then; but now that I have come to an age when I can argue with myself, I can see it was but natural. John was a big handsome man with fair hair and limpid blue eyes, and Nelly--well, a man does not care to write about the woman he loves; she was Nelly and that is enough. Though I never spoke of it, I fancy Nelly must have known I loved her, for in that tender womanly way which good women alone have she gave me strength to endure, and for her sake I wished Mazarion good luck, and sailed for the East. John followed in a few weeks, and I understood they were to be married in three years, when Mazarion got his step--a long engagement; but the purse of an Indian officer is mostly a lean one, and Nelly's people were not rich. Well, as I said before, I began my Eastern career in Burma, and Mazarion's duties led him to the Bay of Bengal and to the Burman waters. We never met for close on four years; but occasionally I came to Rangoon, the capital of Burma, and there I heard much of him, and always in connection with some story of stupid folly. The best of men would shrink from daylight being thrown on all their actions; but what would have been wrong in any man's case became doubly so, and doubly dishonourable, in the case of John Mazarion--at least I thought and think so, for Nelly's face used to rise before me with a look of patient waiting in the sweet eyes.
At last we met in the club at Rangoon and lunched together. He incidentally let out that he had got his step in promotion nearly a year ago, and went on to answer the unspoken question in my look.
"Nelly will have to wait a year or so more, I'm afraid--I'm deuced hard up. But I suppose you're in the same street. Come and have a smoke."
I was not in the same street; but I went and had a smoke. We talked of many things, and when I left I knew that John had slipped down, but how far down I was yet to know. Before I left the club I accepted an invitation to supper with him in his rooms; he had received a port appointment, and was for the present stationed in Rangoon. I went to that supper. There were two or three others there, and a lady--God save the mark!--who did the honours of the house. I could have struck Mazarion where he sat brazening the whole thing out; but I held myself in somehow and saw it through. I was the first to go, and Mazarion followed me to the door--shame was not quite dead in him. "Look here, old man," he said, "you're off home, I know, and will see Nelly. You needn't--and--you know what I mean--" holding out his hand.
I drew back. "Yes, I know what you mean, and I will keep silent. But I would to God I hadn't accepted your cursed hospitality!"
And I turned and walked down the stairway, leaving him on the landing, white with rage. In a month from that day I was in England, and a week later I had seen Nelly. I well remember it was with a beating heart that I came to the door of the suburban villa with the May tree in bloom near the gate, and in a minute or so was in the little drawing-room I knew so well. In the place of honour was a large photograph of Mazarion in his naval uniform, and near it was a vase with a votive offering of fresh flowers. I felt who had placed them there, and swore bitterly under my breath. Then the door opened and Nelly came in with outstretched bands.
"I'm so glad to see you, Mr. Thring, after all these years."
"And it seems to me as if I had never been away. I shook off the East with the first grey sky I saw."
Then we sat and talked, but I carefully avoided the subject of Mazarion, and now and again parried a leading question because I did not know what to say, and felt miserable when I saw the eager light in Nelly's eyes fade into a look of disappointment. Finally Mrs. Carstairs, Nelly's mother, came in, and it was a relief, for I had to go over my experiences again. But I struck on the rocks at last when Mrs. Carstairs said: "Well, I suppose you are lucky in getting back in four years--though that does seem such a long time."
"Yes, I suppose I am, Mrs. Carstairs. There are men who have been away ten years and more, and whose prospects of seeing home again are still far."
I thought I heard the faintest echo of a sigh, and grew hot all over. My hand shook so that I could hear the teacup I held rattle on the saucer. I was a tactless fool.
"How hard!" said Mrs. Carstairs, "and there is poor John still out there, waiting for his step. I wonder when he will get it and be able to come home."
I looked at Nelly. Her eyes were ablaze and her cheeks flushed, and the words "waiting for his step" rang in my ears. Mazarion had got his step a year ago--he had told me so himself. I could say nothing.
"I suppose you have seen John," Mrs. Carstairs went on. "You and he used to be such friends. When did you last meet?"
"About six weeks ago, in Rangoon; he was looking very well."
"I am so glad. We--that is, Nelly has not heard for nearly two months, and when he last wrote he said he was very busy, and likely to go on a long cruise."
Now I knew Mazarion had held that port appointment for nearly six months, and would hold it for a year or so to come without any likelihood of going on a cruise, and I of course knew that he was lying--lying to the dear heart that loved him so well. To this day I know not whether I did right or wrong in holding my tongue, in saying nothing, and when I left them I left them still in that fool's paradise of trust and love and hope. I saw them once again before I left. I could not go back without one more look at Nelly. As I said good-bye she timidly slipped a small packet into my hands, and I promised it would reach John Mazarion in safety.
On the voyage back I thought of many things, and reproached myself for having parted with Mazarion as I had. For her sake I should have made some effort to pull him right, and as it were I had simply kicked him down a step lower, for I had made him feel his infamy, and that is not the way to help a man to recover his own self-respect. I had been hasty--for the moment my temper had got the better of me--with the usual result. And so I determined not to send him Nelly's gift, but, on reaching Rangoon, to deliver the packet with my own hands.
I found him in his office on the river face, and, as I expected, there was a coldness and constraint in his manner. Our eyes met--his still with anger in them--and then he dropped his look.
"I have brought this," I said, "from Miss Carstairs. I promised it should reach you safely."
He took the packet from me in silence, but I saw his hands shake and the crow's-feet gather about his eyes. He fumbled with the seals, then let the packet drop on the table, and looked at me again as I blurted out: "I have said nothing--not a word."
"I do not understand, sir."
"John Mazarion," I cut in, "you are still to her what you have ever been. Man! you know not what you are throwing away. See here, John! You are my oldest friend, and I can't let you go like this. Pull up and turn round; give yourself a chance. If--if money is wanted--well, I've saved a bit----"
He simply leaned back in his chair and laughed. And such a laugh! There was not a ring of mirth in it--a tuneless, mocking laugh such as might come from the throat of a devil. Then he stopped and looked at me, the hard lines still in the corners of his mouth and round his eyes.
"Thring, you're a meddlesome fool! Take my advice and let each man stir his own porridge. I want no interference and none of your damned advice. I mean to live my own life."
"It isn't of you alone I am thinking."
He fairly shook with rage. "Go!" he burst out. "Go! I hate the sight of you, with your lips full of talk about duty and self-respect and honour. Go!"
I left the man, but for all his violence I felt that his anger was really against himself, and that my words had gone home.
A year, two years passed. Three times in this interval I had heard from Nelly, and on each occasion the letter was not so much for me as to obtain news of Mazarion. She was still watching and waiting--wasting the treasures of her heart as many another woman has done on men as worthless as Mazarion. And I--I was powerless to help her for whom I would have given my life. Twice I had answered to say that I had no news to give; but on the third occasion it was on the heels of her letter that news reached me. It came from the commander of a river steamer who dined with me in my lonely district house on the banks of the Irawadi.
"The man has practically gone to the devil," said Jarman in his blunt outspoken way; "he got a touch of the sun about a year ago."
"I never heard of that."
"I'm not surprised at that; it's a wonder you hear anything in this doggone hole. Well, when Mazarion came round again the pace was faster than ever. I can't help thinking that his brain never really righted itself; but he acted like a fool, and a madman, and a blackguard combined--with the usual result."
"You don't mean to say he's broken!"
"About as good as broke. Government is long-suffering, but in common decency they couldn't overlook the things Mazarion did. They've given him a chance, however. He's had six months' sick leave to settle his affairs, and he's cleared off to some hill station or other in India."
So it had come to this. And late that night I took the bull by the horns and wrote to Mrs. Carstairs, telling her exactly how things were, and in the morning my heart failed me and I tore up that letter and wrote another one to Nelly, in which all that I said of Mazarion was that he had gone on leave to the Indian hills; and this letter I posted.
I little knew how near the time was when I should go myself. My tour of service in Burma was coming to an end, and that end was hastened by the rice-swamps of Henzada. A medical certificate did the rest, and within the month I was ordered to India, and, best of good luck, to a Himalayan station. In a fortnight I was out of Burma--in India--in the Himalayas.
How I enjoyed that journey from the plains! How strength seemed to come back by leaps and bounds as we rushed through the belt of forest that girdled the mountains, past savannahs of waving yellow tiger-grass, through purple-blossomed ironwood and lilac jerrol, through stretches of bamboo jungle in every shade of colour, with their graceful tufts of culms a hundred feet and more from the ground, through giant sal and toon woods whose sombre foliage was lightened by the orange petals of the palas, and the blazing crimson bloom of the wax-like flowers of the silk cotton! Higher still, and the tropical forest is now but a hazy green sea that quivers uneasily below. Now the hedgerows are bright with dog-roses, and the shade is the shade of oak and birch and maple. In the long restful arcades of the forest, by the edges of the trickling mountain springs, the sward is gay with amaranth and marguerite, the pimpernel winks its blue eyes from beneath its shelter of tender green, and a hundred other nameless woodland flowers spangle the glades. Higher still and the whole wonder of the Himalayas is around me, one rolling mass of green, purple, and azure mountains, with a horizon of snow-clad peaks standing white and pure against the perfect blue of the sky.
There was a window at the club which used to be my favourite seat, for it commanded a matchless view, and it was here that I used to sit and positively drink in strength with every puff of fresh, pure air that came in past the roses clustering on the trelliswork outside. A friend joined me--one who like myself had escaped to the hills after wrecking his health in a Burman swamp. He had known Mazarion, and somehow the conversation turned upon him, and Paget asked me to step with him into the hall. Once there he pointed to a small board which I had noticed before, but never had the curiosity to examine. On that board was posted the name of John Mazarion as a defaulter.
"He has gone under utterly," said Paget as we regained our seats, "for this is not all that has happened."
"Could anything be worse?"
"Well, I rather think so. Do you know the man has flung away all shame and has gone to live like a beastly Bhootea--a hill man--a savage on the mountain side?"
"What!"
"Why, every one knows it here. It happened about three months ago--just after that affair," and he indicated the board in the hall with a turn of his hand.
"The man must be mad."
"Not he; only he hasn't pluck enough to blow his brains out. He's not alone either, but has taken a wife--a Bhootea woman. They're not far off from here--over there on that spur," and he pointed to a wooded arm of the mountains that stood out above a grey rolling mist.
"My God!" and I put my head between my hands. "The cad! the worthless brute!" I burst out. "See here, Paget: perhaps you're wrong--perhaps this story isn't true?"
Paget carefully dusted a speck from his coat-sleeve.
"I know what you're thinking of, Thring. That girl at home. I heard something about the affair. I used to feel inclined to kick him when I saw her picture in his rooms at Rangoon beside that of the other one--you know whom I mean. Yes, it's all true, and you can go and see if you like. The Boothea girl is called Rani; she's devilish pretty. It's the 'squalid savage' business, you know; but the man is a moral hog--damn him!"
Saying this, Paget, who was a good fellow after his kind, lit another cigar, and nodding his head in farewell went off to the billiard-room, and I sat still--thinking, thinking, with fury and shame in my heart. At last I could endure it no longer, and then suddenly rose and walked to my rooms--I lived in the club. I was hardly conscious of what I did, but I remember ordering my pony, and then my eyes fell on a case containing a small pair of dainty revolvers. I took them mechanically from their velvet-lined beds, loaded them carefully, and slipped them in a courier-bag. Then I mounted the pony and rode off to find Mazarion. The road was longer than I thought; but it seemed as if some instinct guided me--some power, I know not what, was over me, and led my steps straight to my goal.
It is curious how in moments like this unimportant and trivial incidents impress themselves on the mind. I remember tying the pony to a white rhododendron, and that in so doing I dropped my cigar. It was the only one I had, and it lay smouldering before me, crosswise on the petals of one of the huge lemon-scented flowers that had fallen from the tree. I kicked it from me, and then went onwards on foot. In about half an hour I came to a little tableland of greensward, which hung over a grey abyss. Huge black pines rose stiffly on the rocks that beetled over the level turf, and to the edge of the rocks there clung, like a wasp's nest, a wretched hut, with a thin blue smoke rising from between the rafters of its moss-grown roof.
It was touching sunset, and the west was a blaze of crimson and gold. The face of the pine-covered crag towering above me was in black shadow; but the mellow light was bright on the green turf at my feet. It cast a ruddy glow over the withered trunk of a huge fallen pine that lay athwart the open, and then fell in long rainbow-hued shafts on the uneasy mists that filled the valley, and stole up the mountain side in soft-rolling billows of purple, of grey, and of silver-white. The pine trunk was not ten paces from me, and walking up to it I took out the pistols from the courier-bag and placed them on the rough bark, and from their resting-place the polished barrels glinted brightly in the evening light. I knew I was near my man, and if ever there was an excuse for doing what I meant to do, I had that defence. As I stood there, one hand on the tree trunk and still as a stone, a red tragopan crept out from the yellow-berried bramble at the edge of the steep. For a moment we looked at one another, and then he dropped his blue-wattled head an was off like a flash, and at the same instant there was a scream and a rush of wings, as a homing eagle dropped like a falling stone over the pines, and whizzing past me was lost to view. I walked to the edge of the precipice over which he had flown to his eyrie on the face of the cliffs below; I could see nothing but that heaving swell of billows, and now some one laughed--a sweet, melodious laugh like the tinkling of a silver bell. I turned sharply, and Rani stood before me. It could be none other than she. Bhootea, savage, Mongol--whatever she was, she was of those whom God had dowered with beauty, and she stood before me a lithe, supple elf of the woods. The rounded outlines of her form were clear through the single garment she wore, clasped by an embroidered zone at the waist, and holding forth a pitcher with a shapely arm, she offered me some spring water to drink. I shook my head, and she laughed again like the song of a bird, and asked in English, speaking slowly:
"You want--my--man?"
Before I could answer, the door of the hut opened and Mazarion and I had met again.
"You--you!" and he paled beneath his sunburnt cheeks.
"Even I." And we stared at each other, my temples throbbing and my hands clenched. He was dressed as a native of the hills, in a long loose gabardine, with a cloth wound round his waist. His fair hair hung in an unkempt tangle to his neck, and he had a beard of many weeks' growth. All the beauty had gone from his face, and sin had set the mark of the beast on him; he had become a savage; he had gone back five thousand years, to the time when his cave-dwelling ancestors hunted the aurochs and the sabre-toothed tiger. There was that in our gaze which stilled the laughter in Rani's eyes, and she crept closer to him, standing as if to cover him. His head drooped slowly forwards, and the fingers of his hands opened and shut; he was fighting something within himself.
"Send the woman away," I said. "You know why I have come," and I pointed to the pistols on the fallen tree trunk.
Rani saw the gesture. Her glance shifted uneasily from one to the other of us, and then rested on the weapons, and now, trembling with an unknown fear, she clung to her man.
"Send her away. You hear." My own voice came to me as from a far distance.
He put her aside gently, where she stood shivering in every limb, and came forwards a step.
"I cannot," he said thickly, and speaking with an effort; "I cannot--not with you----"
"I will force you to." I spoke calmly enough, but there was a red mist before my eyes and a drumming in my ears. Fool that I was to think that God would give His vengeance to my hands! And then I struck him where he stood, struck him twice across the face, and with a cry like that of a mad beast he was on me.
We were both strong men, and he was fighting for his life; but I--I had the strength of ten then; all the pent-up rage of years was roaring within me, and there was a pitiless hate in my heart. I would kill him like the unclean thing he was should be killed. With all my force I struck him again and again, and I felt as if something crashed under the blow. We fell together and rose again, and with a mighty effort I flung him from me. He staggered to his feet, his face white and bleeding, his blue lips hissing curses. He was then facing me, his back but a yard from the edge of the abyss, against which the mists were beating like a grey sea. He read the meaning in my look, and made one last straggle, one last rush for safety, but I hit him fair on the forehead, and he threw up his arms with a gasp, staggered back a pace, and was gone. Far below there sounded something like a dull thud and a cry, and then all was still. Nelly was avenged.
It was all over. I could see nothing as I peered into the mist before me, and then I was brought to myself by the sound of sudden sobbing, and there was Rani stretched on the grass and plucking at the turf like a mad thing. She was a woman after all, and, poor, wild waif of the jungles, hers was no sin and no wrong. But her sobs and the agony on her face brought on a sudden revulsion and a horror at my deed. It was as sudden, as swift, as the tumult of passions which had driven me to kill the man, and now the blackness of night had settled on my soul. I made no attempt at speech with the woman, but silently took up the pistols, gave one last shivering glance at the deep and at the prostrate figure of Rani, and then fled through the forest, my one thought to put miles between me and my deed. By the time I had found the pony and mounted him I was able to reflect a little, and it was with a guilty start that I realized there was a witness, and--and--But the place was a lonely one. And Rani--would her word count against mine? Never! And then I laughed shrilly and galloped on.
I reached the club just in time to dress for dinner. Strange! I could not bear the thought of being alone--I who had lived for a year at a time a solitary. I dressed in haste, and as I came out my servant handed me my letters--the English mail had just come in, he said. I would have flung them from me, but that the first letter in my hand was in Mrs. Carstairs' writing. With a vague presentiment of evil I opened and read. Nelly was ill, Nelly was dying. Some fool had told her of John Mazarion, and had killed her as surely as with the stroke of a knife. As I read, the lines blurred one into the other, and something seemed to give way in my brain. I rose and staggered as one drunken, and then--and then, strong man as I was, I fainted and remember no more.
It was a long illness. I do not know what the doctors called it; but they pulled me through, as they thought. It was another thing, however, that cured me. I remember how, when my brain first righted itself, the awful memory of Mazarion's end came back again and sat over me like a dreadful vampire. Each whispered word of the nurses in attendance on me, each noise I heard, seemed to presage the announcement that my guilt was known. One day I asked the nurse whether I had been delirious, and what I had said.
She flushed a little. She was a good woman, and an untruth was hateful to her. Then she fenced:
"Oh, one always says strange things in delirium; but you're getting quite strong now, and Captain Paget is coming to see you to-day. It was he who found you insensible, and he has been as good as any ten of us----"
"Paget--Paget found me?"
She put her finger to her lips and a cool hand on my eyes, and I seemed to fall asleep.
How long I slept I cannot quite say, but I became conscious of whispering voices in the room.
"There's no doubt about it, and it's his only chance, I think. Just give him the news quietly when he awakes. Yes, he may have a glass of port before."
I lay still, but trembling under my covers. It had come at last. Oh, the shame of it! the sin of it!--I a common murderer. It was too much, and I tried to start up, but fell back weakly, and saw Paget sitting by the bed, smiling kindly at me.
"Not yet, old man--in a day or so. Take this port, will you?"
I drank it with an effort; but it warmed me and gave me strength.
"You're to be shipped home in a few days--lucky beggar! Wouldn't mind getting ill myself if I could get leave."
I smiled in spite of myself.
"That's right. Feeling better, I see. We had another interesting patient also, but he cleared out a week or so ago from hospital. It was that fellow Mazarion. Remember him?"
"Mazarion!"
"Yes. Fell over the edge of a precipice and on to a ledge of rock. Got his fall broken somehow by the branches of a tree, and the wild raspberry bushes, or he'd have been in Kingdom Come--eh? What?"
"Thank God!" I felt a load lifted from my heart, the shadows had passed from my soul. I lay back, my eyes closed and a peace upon me. And then I prayed for the first time in many a long day, and whilst I prayed I fell once more asleep. There came to me in that sleep a dream of Nelly--of Nelly robed in white with a glory around her, and she smiled and beckoned me to come.
Well, I was once more in England, and because she wished it I was allowed to see Nelly. She lay on her cushions very pale and white, but for the red spot on each cheek, and an unnatural brightness of the eyes. I knew it was a matter of time, and all that we could do was to wait and hope.
It came at last, one dreary evening, when the lamps were burning dimly in the streets through the ceaseless, insistent drizzle. I cannot linger over this or my heart would break. We stood by her, sad and silent, waiting for the end. It was not long in coming. She had been as it were asleep, when suddenly she awoke and her voice was strong with the strength of death. She called to me:
"Mr. Thring, you know that story about John. Is--is it true?"
Oh, the chattering ape who had killed her! Her mother's eyes met mine; but I could see nothing but Nelly--Nelly looking at me with a wistful entreaty. I could not; right or wrong, I could not.
"It is not true, dear. He will come back to you."
"Say that again."
"He will come back to you, Nelly."
"He must follow," and she closed her eyes with a sweet smile on her lips.
Then my dear's hand went out to clasp mine in thanks, and I held the chill fingers in my grasp.
"Mother--kiss me. John--you will come," and she was gone.
I had stolen out of the house, leaving them with their dead. As I closed the gate, and stepped on to the pavement a ragged figure came out of the mist and, standing beside the lamp-post, looked towards the house and the drawn blinds. The light fell on the wasted form and haggard features. I could not mistake; it was John Mazarion.
I went up to him and touched him on the shoulder. He started back and stared at me vacuously.
"She lies there dead," I said.
"Dead!"
"Ay, dead. She died with your name on her lips."
He looked at me stupidly. Then something like a sob burst from him, and with bowed head and shambling steps he turned, and crossing the road went from my life.