"He shall feed His flock like a Shepherd."
"He shall feed His flock like a Shepherd."
Pure, peaceful, free from every touch of passion; absolutely, utterly, beyond this world and its works, it rose and filled the garden; the orange-scented garden with its fretted marble cascades and water-maze, where the feet of laughing girls had chased each other, the latticed balconies where lovers had sat.
"And He shall gather the lambs in His arms."
"And He shall gather the lambs in His arms."
It floated out over the river where the dead girl had drifted, making a light come to a pair of bronze eyes.
"Come unto Him all ye that labor."
"Come unto Him all ye that labor."
Out beyond the garden, into the city, a faint far echo of the call made men and women pause in the struggle for life, and say, "They are singing in the palace."
"And ye shall find rest unto your souls."
"And ye shall find rest unto your souls."
The promise of all religions, the cry which makes all creeds one, rose and fell, as the afternoon sun, shining into the loggia, put a canopy of stars above the head of the singer.
Some of the audience said "Thank you," politely when she ended. Vincent Dering did not. He stood on one side, and, being musical to the heart's core, gave himself the luxury of silence. Only when Father Ninian, ever mindful of ceremonies and courtesies, crossed to acknowledge the services of the accompanist, he said briefly,--
"Who taught her that?"
The old man looked at him almost wistfully: "I heard her grandmother sing it, nearly sixty years ago. I have never forgotten it."
"I do not wonder," said Vincent Dering, and his eyes, forgetful of others, followed the girl whose dress ought to have been creamy and soft, instead of white and starched.
The river Hara, after skirting the fort, the bathing-steps below the courtyard, the palace, and the palace garden, continued its course, still hemmed in to swift current by a high bank on the opposite side, and on the near one by a wall set with spiked temples sacred to Siva; for Hara is one of his many names. But, on reaching the apex of the triangle formed by the city, the banks fell away, the river spread itself out to greater rest, until, at the uttermost end of a long spit of sandbank and tamarisk, it met the waters of its twin river, the Hari, in the broad placid lagoon which lay between Eshwara and the south; that is the dry stretch of desert, against whose barrenness Western ingenuity--aided by Dr. Dillon's horde of fifteen hundred ruffians--had been digging defiance for months. From the spit of sand you could see the result. A broad seam on the face of patient Mother Earth, a first wrinkle telling of millions to come from the ploughshares of men.
As yet, however, the canal was as dry as the desert around it; and was to remain so until the great Lord-sahibcame in state, on his way to the hills, to open the sluices. There was to be a big camp, a big function on the occasion, and even sleepy Eshwara felt a vague excitement regarding it. For the older men remembered the days when the Hosts of the Lord-sahibshad regularly passed through the city, and had tales to tell about them; a fact which prevented the coming event from being too strange even to be thought about! Then the opening of the canal was another disturber of primeval calm. True, the idea of it had been with Eshwara ever since the first sod had been turned two years before; but now the thing stared it in the face. Within a few days the waters of the sacred rivers would have to lie in a new bed. Would they like it? Would the gods like it? Would men like it?
Those were the questions being asked from one end of Eshwara to another. Even outside it, on the long narrow spit of sand-bank set with sparse tussocks of grass and tamarisk which reached beyond the city's triangle into the rivers--and where, after a flood, the white gypsum silt lay like a robe of righteousness--they were being discussed; for the strange race who lived on it, shifting their wigwams of grass to the low-lying land opposite when the waters rose, lived by the river; by the fish in it, and the logs of wood which came floating down it.
So this question of the canal was in the mind of the naked man, attired in the complete suit of blue beads which marks an aboriginal race, who, in the dawn following, squatted on the highest curve of the spit. He was small, swart to positive inkiness, and his thin legs and arms shewed grey lights on their tense muscles, as if these were truly iron. Behind him rose a wigwam of reeds, at the entrance to which a spear was stuck in the sand in order to display the head of a bottle-nosed alligator impaled on its point. At his right hand was a reed basket, a rude net of reed twine. In front of him lay one of those small shark-like scaleless fishes which the learned call Silurian, and tell us are relics of a creation older than ours.
So might the man have been. So might have been the background of sand and reed, spear and wigwam, the foreground of net and fish. Yet the fisher was not all uncivilized. This little survival of an aboriginal race, shifting about in the shifting river-bed, had always had an attraction for the Missionaries, who, as a rule, find the inferior races easiest to deal with. Gu-gu therefore--his name being as primitive as his appearance, since it is the first effort of infant tongues--belied his looks. He had at any rate a civilized eye to business, a civilized notion of the relations between supply and demand, for he shook his head at the customer opposite him.
"Not a cowrie less, Khân-jee. 'Tis the only one in the market, see you; besides on this day the 'Missen' miss comes to us folk, and she never haggles. She will pay the five annas gladly to be let read her book to my women."
The mumble-apparently a pious aspiration that the Most High would smite infidels hip and thigh--was the only recognizable point in the figure on the other side of the fish; for Akbar Khân, doorkeeper, messenger, assistant waiter, had not only discarded Saturn's rings--the loss of which about his head made his baldness something of a shock--but also every article of clothing except his waist-cloth. The reason for this was, in a way, like many another thing about the old sinner, pathetic. Briefly he liked to dissociate his inner self from occupations which he considered were beneath the dignity of the Akbar Khân of the past. Therefore being, for the nonce, a bazaar coolie in search of fish for his master's breakfast, he got up for the part; so finding it, at once, easier to forget, and to remember that past.
He mumbled of it as he strenuously opposed the price.
"Everything grows dearer, every day," yawned the aboriginal Gu-gu. "Even women, as thou shouldst know."
Akbar Khân clucked a pious denial. "We spread no nets for that game in the palace nowadays. Those evil times are gone; we live sober and virtuous." The piety held a distinct flavour of regret.
"And as for fish," continued Gu-gu, "they will be dearer ere they are cheaper. When the deep water begins to run canalwards, the fish will run too. Then good-by to our trade, since theHuzoorsallow us nothing in their waters without payment."
He whined, however, to the wrong quarter for sympathy, the old retainer's views on preserving being absolutely those of a Shropshire squire who is also a J. P.
"Neither did we," he replied, indifferently. "Thy like, Gu-gu, would have had to bring thy fish to the palace and be satisfied with our leavings. Out on thee for an upstart! Take thy four annas, and be thankful--slave!"
Gu-gu's ill-tempered face became aggressive. "Not I!--the Miss will give it; nay! six, mayhap, since the child is sick, and she will be wanting leave to dose it. So--hands off--eunuch!"
The title, once dignified, was opprobrious now, and old Akbar rose in a perfect fury, his bald head wobbling, the flaming fringe of red hairs about his face giving him a ludicrous resemblance to a toothless old man-eating tiger, face to face with his lawful prey, yet unable to injure it.
"Oh! for the bastinado!" he stuttered, impotently. "Oh, for the cutting off of bodily members! Oh! even, for the tying up of heels, and roastings and duckings. But theHuzoorshave taken them from us, and gifted them to the police, who know not the proper methods. Yâh! Gu-gu, had I but had thee fifty years ago!" his anger lessened with sheer wistful regret. "Fifty years ago when the Nawab gifted me as body-servant to the newWazeerBun-avatâr[1]-sahibbecause he brought him a bird that would sing of itself from Italywilayat."
"But all birds do that," cavilled Gu-gu, feeling nevertheless a reverent curiosity about those legendary days.
Akbar gave a crackling, contemptuous laugh. "Not palace birds! they have to be wound up; and Bun-avatâr-sahibsent for this across the black water. So he kept favour with the Nawab. Birds that sing, and flowers that smell, and boxes that make music, and dolls that dance when you wind them. Lo! these, Gu-gu, are the pleasures of palaces; but how canst thou know, who hast not lived in them even, as I--"
The sense of his own superiority soothed him still more; he squatted down again, and hubble-bubbled for a space at thehookahwhich was an integral part of all his impersonations.
"Yea! those were times," he mumbled half to himself. "Even Pidar Narâyan--may Heaven protect him--could not say 'please God' to every mouthful, as he does now--as we all do now, and rightly, seeing that we have grown old." Once more the piety smacked of pity, and the old man, finding a listener, went on with a certain gusto. "Look you! he had to walk like the tongue among thirty-two teeth in those days, with Bun-avatâr-sahib, my master, like two peas in one pod with the Nawah. Except for women. Pidar Narâyan took his way there--mostly!"
The interrupting gurgle of thehookahgave time for an elaborate wink of a wicked old eye. Possibly this was due to the smoke, for the old voice went on as before almost dolorously.
"He had the money-bags, you see, and looked after the rents. But my master, Bun-avatâr--lo! thou shouldst have seen him when he came first--the picture of a man!--they say he was a prince in his own country, but fell into trouble; so came to make his fortune here with Pidar Narâyan--was calledWazeer. And let me tell thee, Gu-gu, it means something to be body-servant to aWazeer!Lo! to think I might have been it still but for that jade, Anâri Begum!"
Despite the epithet, he smiled, and his pipe this time gave out quite a chuckling sound.
"As ill to keep within walls as a butterfly!" he muttered. "Up and down the garden, in and out the balconies, and the Nawab in two minds to use force, or put her in a sack. For she flouted him. The prettiest ones play that game for power always, and she was Walidâd, her brother's, last hope of favour. Walidâd,Kanjara, who had been king's caterer for years before my master, Bun-avatâr-sahib, came to make all the court cry sour buttermilk! Walidâd, who had once stood so high, that, in a drunken bout, the Nawab promised him his half-sister to wife. And he got her too! She wept on her wedding day, but we in the lower storey heeded not tears in the upper. For, see you, mine uncle was chief eunuch--we kept the honour thus in the family from generation to generation--so I was in and out, seeing what went on. Until somehow (mine uncle with the bowstring round his neck--as was right, honest man--swore he knew not how) Bun-avatâr-sahibcaught a sight of her! Some say it was a plot, from beginning to end, of Walidâd's; others thathisenemies feared lest Anâri should succeed. There be balls within balls, even in a plaything, if the workmen are cunning! Anyhow, he saw her.
"And I, his body-servant, was able to come and go where Pidar Narâyan hath made his church nowadays. But there! what matters it? 'Tis all one. Love and the Faith are in and out of men's minds like a shelldrake in weedy water; a body cannot tell which way its head may be and which its tail! Nevertheless I felt a choke at my throat, Gu-gu, many a time, as I waited for him in the boat below the balcony; yet in the end, it was not my throat, but mine uncle's. He died in the faith, Gu-gu, cursing women.His head was that way at the last!--'Tis mostly so--he--he--"
The chuckle of his pipe was fiendish, yet his wizened face was wistful. "Still, God knows, one could scarce look on at such a wooing, and not beat the drum in time, as musicians to a dancer. And it runs in our blood, see you, to watch, and beat the drum. That is our profession; and, by mine ancestors! I deemed it enough for mortal man. But Bun-avatâr-sahib, see you, was not of our race. He was of Italywilayatand a prince. So, one day, my liver dissolved hearing that the butterfly was over the walls! But, as I said, it was mine uncle's neck, not mine. Yet the game ended for me when Bun-avatâr-sahibdied."
"They poisoned him, folk say; is't true?" asked Gu-gu. It was a point in the oft-told tale which was still discussed by Eshwara gossips.
"That is other folks' news, not mine," replied Akbar, discreetly. "May be, may be not. TheHuzoors, anyhow, sent the Nawab to die in Calcutta on apinson[2]for it; but they have ever an excuse to take land! Pidar Narâyan had a hard fight to keep Bun-avatâr-sahib'sgrants--the Nawab was ever generous to his favourites, look you--for Anâri Begum's baby; ay! though he showed a writing of marriage, and had made the infant Christian after their habit. Still he got them, land and palace and all. So I stayed on serving my master's child, and when she died, her child, the Miss-baba, even to the haggling for fish. Lo! slave! it grows late. Give it to me and have done with it--Thou wilt not. Oh! for the devil that was in her grandmother Anâr to be in this Miss-baba, and for her to come to Bun-avatâr-sahib'srights asWazeer--then would there be loppings and--"
"Or if Roshan Khân should come to his," sneered Gu-gu. "The canalsahib'sayah was telling me thou didst prostrate thyself in the dust as if he were indeed Nawab! Have a care! eunuch-jee, the police are agog nowadays to find disloyalty even in newspapers."
"May her gossiping tongue be slit!" stuttered the old retainer. "Can a body not do obeisance to his masters? For look you, Roshan is true grand-nephew to the Nawab through his grandmother, Walidâd's wife--ay! and for that matter, cousin to the Miss, through Anâri Begum, Walidâd's sister! I did but welcome him; I did but my duty--I did but show my manners--I did but what we have done from generation to generation." He moved away muttering, full of virtuous resentment that a suspicion of anything save sheer servility should have been imputed to him. After a lifetime of trucklings and bootblackings, to be credited with higher motives was too bad. To prove his innocence he would that very evening, he told himself, seek out Roshan, not at the Fort,--that might be misunderstood,--but at his grandmother's. His grandmother, who, though she had been upstart Walidâd's wife, was still the late Nawab's half-sister! His sister!! What could be nearer than that!!!
And he would prostrate himself again, and assure the family of his services.Thatwas his birthright.
Meanwhile Gu-gu looked after him, and laughed. He was a clever fellow, was Gu-gu, and in a previous generation of scholars had been pet pupil in a little school started by another Miss from anotherMissen. He had got pennies for attending it, which had come in useful before he was big enough to face the river.
But now he was the best man on either the Hara or the Hari, save one. And he?
Gu-gu's beady black eyes, watching the curve of the current mechanically, gave a sudden flash. He was on his feet in a second. There was something dipping, diving, sidling, drifting, out yonder which might be secured for his wigwam before anyone else saw it! But as, silently, like a seal's, his black head came up from his first forge under water which was to give him a fair start from the shore without even a splash to attract notice, another black head showed to the right of him, a yard or two behind.
But it washishead! Am-ma's head! Am-ma, the frog-like, Am-ma, whose wide hands and feet looked as if webbed in the water. Am-ma, the only man who could touch him. He set his teeth, gave up silence, and surged ahead with an overhand stroke, his hand seeming to clutch and hold the water. It was a faster stroke than Am-ma's; for a time the swifter. Then with a backward glance he drew a quick breath, knowing it would be a race indeed, for the black head had gone, and only a faint wale on the smooth water told where his rival, avoiding the slight resistance of the air, swam like a fish. Dangerous tactics for most men, ending often in a sudden collapse, bleedings from nose and ears, or, at least, time lost in coming to the surface. But Am-ma was not as other men. Half-witted, except in river lore, uncouth, misshapen, he was practically amphibious.
Gu-gu ground his teeth impotently as the faint wale crept up and up. The man must have air in his stomach like a fish! Ah! if the river had been in flood, if this had been a race with air bladders, indeed,--one black head of inflated skin under each arm, and your own in the middle--the issue would have been certain; for no one, in the whole tribe, knew the backward rip of a knife from below which would leave a rival helpless, lopsided, bound to seek safety on shore, so well as Gu-gu! But it was not flood time, so he must risk all. Like a porpoise at play the curve of his dark back disappeared, and now there were two wales upon the water side by side.
And ahead, sidling, dipping, diving to the current was a deodar log with the broad arrow of government on it, now visible, now out of sight.
It was a question of steering; steering without eyes, steering by instinct, steering by sheer experience of logs and their ways, of the meeting currents of the two rivers and their ways.
And over against them, to the right across the broad lagoon, were low brick buildings, and a horde of fifteen hundred ruffians with fascines and earth-baskets finishing a dam that was to alter the currents, and protect the canal! They looked like swarming ants in the sunshine.
The wales were neck and neck now, side by side, straight as a die on the log. Then suddenly, the right-hand one swerved outward. Only a yard or two; a yard or two nearer to the ants in the sunshine.
A second after the log swerved also--swerved to the right. The next, two black heads rose silently; but one of them was two yards to the left of that dancing, dipping prize!
Gu-gu, breathless as he was, gave an inarticulate cry of rage, and shook his fist at the swarming ants. Already their work was altering the currents he had known for so long. That it was possible to allow for this, as Am-ma had done, did not comfort him. He swam back sulkily, his wrath increased by the knowledge one glance had given him, that the log on which his rival was paddling to shore triumphantly bore its broad arrow so lightly, and so near its end, that a little dexterous manipulation would have left the runaway unmarked, and so given its captor the right, not merely of ransom, but of sale!
Truly, it was an ill world for the poor!
But Lance Carlyon laughed, as he lounged over his early tea and watched the river through his field-glass, in a balcony of the fort, dressed in a gorgeous ring-streaked sleeping suit which he could only wear when on outpost duty, as the regiment had tabooed it. In truth it made him not unlike Tom Sawyer's "Royal Nonsuch."
"The little 'un's got it! I say! Dering, I believe I shall like Eshwara. It's--it's--new--don't you know." His eyes rested, as he spoke, on the low, bastioned building, all hemmed in by temple spires, at the very point of the city's triangle, which Erda Shepherd had told him was the mission house. Truly, he thought, she was in the thick of it!
"New!" echoed Vincent Dering captiously, "I should have called it old. I thought that sort of thing had died with the pagoda tree."
"What sort of thing?"
Vincent nodded towards the palace with an odd, cynical laugh. "That; it's ghostly. Doesn't belong to the nineteenth century!"
Lance turned curiously. "I said that to--to Pidar Narâyan--I can't call him anything else, somehow--when he was showing me over yesterday. And--you know that inscrutable smile of his--he just pointed up to the telegraph wires--they go right across the garden you know--and said, 'There is half the news of half the world over our heads, anyhow.' It knocked me over, I tell you, to think of it; and by Jove! Dering, next week when the Lord-sahibcomes--"
Vincent Dering laughed boisterously. "There'll be the millennium, of course. Come along, Lance! It's time we were off to prepare his way. Dashwood wants it done A1. They are going to lay on electric light, and all that. By the way, Mrs. Smith told me to tell you she expected you to breakfast."
Ten minutes afterwards they were riding over the boat bridge to superintend the laying out of the Vice-regal camp against the coming of the Lord-sahiband his hosts.
Mumtâza Mahal, Roshan Khân's grandmother, lived in a queer little backwater of a house which had eddied itself away from the main stream of the town, and jammed itself against a wall of the palace as if seeking dignity thereby. For all that it belonged irredeemably to the city, and to its evil-smelling lanes. The word house, however, is misleading to western ears, since this was simply a well-like courtyard, with a great wooden bed set in the centre under a miserable attempt at a tree which was used as a clothes-peg, a rack for saucepans, and a variety of other domestic purposes. It fulfilled them to the perfect satisfaction of its proprietress, a roundabout old lady, plump as a button-quail, who, when she was not asleep inside the arcaded slip of a room on one side, passed her time on the bed in the scanty shade, keeping company with a sausage-roll of a pillow and a quilt, both covered in faded, greasy silk. As a rule she did nothing save eatpân; though sometimes, as a favour to Erda Shepherd, who came to read to her once a week, she would give a few more stitches to a knitted comforter which never seemed to get any longer. It had been begun, indeed, under the auspices of another "Miss," who had returned to England only to die, as so many do, from exposure, and overwork, and homesickness. For the rest, Mumtâza was an arrogant, yet good-natured old soul, who, despite those tears on her wedding-day, had kept dissolute Walidâd under her thumb, and his son also. Therefore, it was one of her pet grievances--and she had many--that Roshan, her grandson, should have defied her authority and entered the army. The great standing grievance, however, was that the "pinson" she received from Government because her husband had been deported with the Nawab to Calcutta, was not so large as one received by a neighbour and gossip whose husband had been hanged in the mutiny! The two old ladies came to loggerheads over their respective claims once a month, regularly, when pay-day came round; Mumtâza asserting shrilly that to die in a strange country was more painful than hanging, Ashrâf-un-nissa contending roundly that if Walidâd had had as much respectful affection for his widow as her husband had had for his, he could easily have caused himself to be hanged; since he had certainly deserved it.
Whereat there would be war, until some one in the alley, or round the corner did something outrageous,--threw slops over some one, or had twins, or imported a new mother-in-law! Then, friendly discussion becoming a necessity of life, the big wooden bed would once more hold two old ladies, two roly-poly bolsters, two quilts--also two tongues! But these confined themselves, for a time, to lesser grievances; such as the general decadence of the age, manifested by the reluctance of young people to obey the old.
There was, however, no sign of displeasure in the reception prepared for Roshan, when one afternoon, immediately after his arrival at Eshwara, he appeared to prostrate himself at the feet of age; at least so he had said in his letter of intimation. Mumtâza Mahal knew her duty towards men-folk better than to show temper at once; knew also the suffocating effect of ceremonials. So the tarnished treasures of past state had been dug out of the mounds of litter heaped up in all four corners of the arcaded room, and set about the courtyard. An old elephant-housing covered the wooden bed, and to it Roshan was conducted: his grandmother, despite her best green satin trousers, squatting below, on a mat.
The young soldier felt and looked thoroughly uncomfortable. Out of sheer funk of the old lady's remarks if he had appeared in his usualmuftiof English tweed and a close-fitting turban, he had reverted to the airy muslins and embroidered smoking-caps of his forbears. He felt chilly, barely decent in them; and, indeed, the whole environment was absolutely repugnant to him. His grandmother's tramways could scarcely be otherwise to one who had gone ahead by express train like Roshan Khân. Thoroughly well-educated, he knew himself to be considered one of the smartest native officers in the army. A first-class polo player, a fair cricketer, able to handle cue and racket, and without equal at the foils, he had for years met Englishmen on equal terms in sporting matters. What wonder, then, that he sat looking inexpressibly bored beside thehookahwhich was the pride of his grandmamma's heart, in that it had belonged to many dead and gone Nawabs? He was simply longing for the solace of a smoke, yet he did not dare to use the silver cigarette case with his initials, "R.K." on it, which Lance Carlyon had given him at Christmas in return for the fencing lessons. Fortunately, however, boredom and yawns are correct during visits of ceremony, so Mumtâza Mahal crossed her little fat hands over her little fat green-trousered legs, and told herself the lad was improved in both manners and looks; was distinctly more like her brother, the late and sainted Nawab. The fact emphasized her regret that, after a brilliant career in a mission school, a career which must have led to a minor clerkship, her grandson should have taken the unheard-of course of entering the army! If he could even have gone as the Nawab's grand-nephew, with a dozen troopers or so as following, it might have been bearable; but, as Walidâd's extraction barred all claim to noble descent, enlistment meant something very different. The old lady, accustomed to obedience all round, when the dreadful defiance had occurred, ten years before, had called the stars to witness that it was all--that everything was--Pidar Narâyan's fault! And then she had fallen a-whimpering, knowing right well that but for the latter's intercession, she herself would have had no "pinson"; since Government bars those who can be proved to be personally implicated in evil doings. And now, as she sat looking at her grandson, the same conflicting estimates made her irritable. Why had Pidar Narâyan ever put his finger in the Eshwara pie? Yet, without him, where would they all have been? Still, he need not have taught the lad to fence, and so turned him into a mean, common soldier.
Now, whether this was true, whether his skill with the foils had turned Roshan's thoughts towards a fighting life, or whether it was simply the result of natural aptitudes that way, the choice of professions had been wise. His Colonel,--of the old school though he was,--had admitted, when pressed, that the young Mahomedan,given practice, might be able to lead the regiment as well as a fresh-joined English subaltern. The newer school, again, playing theKrieg spielagainst him at Simla, and finding itself in grips with a genuine gift for tactics, had shaken its head and confessed the hardship of such a talent being barred from finding its proper level. Still it was impossible to legislate for exceptions without upsetting the every-day army apple-cart.
Roshan himself, being sensible--above all, being of a nation which accepts limitations as a law of God--was, as a rule, satisfied with his futurerisaldarmajorship, and, if he was lucky,Aide-de-Camp to the Queen, and a few other titles tacked on to it. Like all natives of India he lived largely on the approbation of his immediate superiors, and this he had without stint; besides, his whole line of thought had become too military for any subversion of rule and discipline to seem desirable.
Yet the curb made itself felt sometimes; never more keenly than at his grandmother's scornful look, when, in reply to her catechising, he named his income.
"Only that!Bâh!Tis the pay of a coolie!"
"'Tis the pay of my rank, anyhow," he replied sulkily, "and I cannot expect promotion yet; the rules--"
She waggled her be-veiled, be-jewelled head cunningly. "Rules! What have rules to do with favour, either for men or women? Lo! thy grand-uncle, the Nawab, gave twice that to a coachman who had one eye black and the other blue because he fancied him! So, if thou art in favour, as thou sayest, ask for more. TheHuzoorswill give it, sooner than lose thee."
Roshan did not attempt explanation; he simply evaded the point by asserting that the pay was sufficient for his wants. In a way it was an unfortunate remark, since it precipitated the lecture lurking in the old lady's mind.
"And for the wife's that is to come?" she asked, not without dignity,--the dignity of age reminding youth that its turn for duty has come. "And for the son's that has yet to be born? Why are these old arms still empty of thy children, Roshan?"
He had his answer ready; one that had hitherto baulked even the matrimonial desires of his mother, who, having gone to live with her own people, was backed up by sisters and sisters-in-law.
"Because the Most High decreed freedom for wife and son."
It was true. The wife found for him as a boy had died in child-birth.
But Mumtâza had made up her mind to refuse this excuse any longer. Matters were getting desperate. Here was Roshan past thirty, and never a child's voice to soothe the passion which seems to come back, vicariously, to Indian women in their old age. She had been brooding over an appeal ever since she had heard that, after ten years' absence, the lad was once more to be within reach of her tongue. So she edged closer to him, an almost pathetic authority in her face.
"That is but the skin of the orange, Roshan; I take not that as a gift! There be more wives than one, if the one die, even for theHuzoorswhom thou apest. Nay! Light of the house! frown not," she continued, in sudden alarm at his look. "I did but mean that thou wert different from thy fathers. How canst help it? Think not the old woman cannot understand. Was I not young once? Was I not wedded with tears to thy grandfather--on whom be peace! So I know the heart hath fancies, and thine--listen while I whisper it--is--is for a wife like amem!Wherefore not? Thou hast seen and talked with them--they have seemed better to thee than a cow of a black girl! What then? Have notmemsmarried our people ere now? And with thee,"--she looked round quickly, to be certain of privacy, then leant closer still,--"with thee it would be easy--for there is thy cousin."
"My cousin?" he echoed stupidly.
"Yea! thy cousin, when all is said and done," she repeated, with faint scorn. "Is not the Miss at the palace Anâri Begum's granddaughter? Was not Anâri Begum thy grandfather's sister? If that is not cousin, what is it?"
He had known these facts before, of course, but they had never presented themselves to him in this connection. Yet they came instantly, accredited by custom. His cousin; if so, his wife, if he chose, almost by right. And yet from custom also, he--too sensible not to have gauged the vast difference between his position as regards Englishmen, and his position as regarded their wives, sisters, mothers--was conscious of distinct revolt. "Thou shouldst not say such things," he exclaimed almost angrily; "the Miss-sahib--"
"Miss-sahibindeed!" interrupted Mumtâza with a forced giggle. "Who knows she is that? Not even Pidar Narâyan."
"Wherefore?" asked Roshan coldly. "Her mother was Bonaventura-sahib'schild and heir. That is certain; else the Government would not have continued the grants given to him by the Nawab."
An expression of infinite cunning crossed the old lady's face; she tucked another budget ofpâninto her cheek, preparatory to a lengthy explanation.
"Not if it was payment for evidence given, by which Government could find excuse for seizing the rest, and sending innocent people to die in Calcutta? Thou knowest the tale, Roshan? How Pidar Narâyan said no word when everyone was searching, after Bun-avatâr's death, for Anâri Begum, who had disappeared, and how, when the land was being taken, he appeared with a baby, a baptized baby, and swore it was Bun-avatâr's lawful heir--that he himself had married them. Mayhap he did. But, look you, Anâri was in the palacezenânaere she disappeared. Who is to say she is not thy cousin twice over?... I say not that she is, look you, but who can tell. Yet this is certain, Roshan; she hath Anâri Begum's eyes. For I have seen her; but a month ago the Miss who reads brought her, not knowing of these tales; for Pidar Narâyan keeps a silent tongue. Her name is Laila,[3]and thine Roshan.[4]Is not that a fate? and she hath thy grand-aunt's eyes; ay! and thy grandfather's land too; for would it not have been Walidâd's, if Bun-avatâr had not ousted him from thewazeer-ship with singing birds?"
Roshan Khân stood up feeling as if he was being suffocated. It was ten years since he had had experience of the fine-drawn meshes of vague, almost useless, conspiracy for which Indian women have such vast capability; it was ten years since, with eyes open to his own advantage, he had cast in his lot loyally with the Government he served. In that time there had not been wanting--there never is in India--others, less scrupulous, ready to trade on his connection with a dispossessed family, and his possible sense of injustice. He had known how to treat them. But this idea bit shrewdly at a feeling which men of his stamp have inevitably--the desire for a wife more suitable to their own culture than they can hope to find among their own people. He gave an uneasy laugh. "These be dreams, indeed, grandmother. To begin with, Pidar Narâyan--"
"Pidar Narâyan! Pidar Narâyan!" echoed the old diplomatist tartly, "Art turned Hindoo, that thou dost count Narâyan[5]the Creator of all?" Then she suddenly clapped her hands together in absolute impatience and anger. "Yet is it true. Heisthe cause of all! But for him Bun-avatâr would have been as an over-fried fritter, a burst bladder, a drum on a hen's back! But for his teaching thee to fence--"
A quick frown came to her hearer's face. "Teaching! Ay! but only enough to make me fit for his skill to play with. I know that now. Well! let him try it again--" Roshan's sudden fierceness died down to sombre discontent--"but that is fool's talk. He is too old. I could not meet him on equal terms." He drew himself up proudly; yet he felt a vague regret at his own acquired sense of fair play. Below it lay a savagery that could rejoice in revenge at any price, and Mumtâza Mahal, watching him, thought him still more like his ancestors, and nodded approvingly.
"Think of it, at least, Roshan," she said, "and remember that it is not as if the girl were a realmem. Pidar Narâyan, for all he is so clever, was put to it to find a husband for the mother, the baptized baby! He took a poor creature from Martin's school at Lucknow, at last, who could not even speak English like aHuzoor--"
"Because he was Italian and a Catholic," put in Roshan, then shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "But thou canst not understand. 'Tis impossible! Dreams, grandmother, dreams!"
"Dreams come true even when forgotten, and torchbearers never see their own way," retorted the old lady, ending the discussion with proverbial wisdom as a clincher. "So think of it, since thoughts cost nothing, and tell no tales."
Roshan felt as if they did the former at any rate, as he strode back toward the fort, telling himself he would feel better when he had on his uniform once more. This was hismetier, not marriage. The best soldiers, the really great soldiers--he paused, the knowledge that he could never rise to real greatness coming to make him clinch his right hand as if on his sword-hilt. The tempest of revolt which swept through him left him dazed, for he had reasoned the matter out with himself thoroughly, and thought he had accepted the situation, thought that he had realized that his dignity in the regiment under the present system went side by side, and not behind, that of the English officers. Yet here he was at the mercy of something too strong for acquired wisdom. He walked on faster to escape into a more wholesome environment, and by sheer force of will succeeded in driving away all thought of the past interview save a triviality. That was the remembrance that her name was Laila, his Roshan. Light and Darkness, Day and Night. A fate indeed.
As he passed into the courtyard, however, on his way to the door in the river bastion, a group in its centre, round the old gun, brought his attention back to realities, and he went towards it, his slipper-shod feet making no martial clank, this time, on the union-jack of raised paths. The group consisted of half a dozen or so of men listening to something which was being declaimed, with much gesticulation, by an ash-smearedjogi, whose wide-pierced ears, distended by conch-shell rings, and transverse bar of white on his forehead, showed him to belong to the sect which claims to have transcendental powers.
Apparently he had been making the claim, for a young man, whose costume smacked of Western culture, and whose face was acute, litigious, interrupted him impatiently.
"Yea, yea; possibly thou couldst come over the obstruction, Gorakh-nâth-jee; but the question is whether the obstruction be legal. Is it not so, Lala Ramanund?"
Lala Ramanund, whose dress was even more Western, and who had a certain air of distinction, due, evidently, to position, assented; adding, as a rider, and with some contempt, that at present they had onlyjogiGorakh-nâth's word that any interference was intended.
Gorakh-nâth, a tall, muscular man, naked save for his grass-rope girdle, his wild hair twined and twisted to a tiara, his wild, half-insane eyes telling of drugs, shot a glance of absolute defiance at Ramanund. "Thy name,pundit-jee, is not likely to give friendly witness to mine," he began, alluding to the fact that they were respectively called after the founders of their absolutely antagonistic sects, "and yet methinks thou couldst, seeing--"
Here Dya Ram, the first speaker, alarmed in his lawyer's soul at the militant tone of thejogi, suggested hastily that they might inquire, say at the gate; or stay! there was therisaldarcoming; he must know.
Once more, as he listened to the question put to him, the expression of his race and creed came to Roshan's face, hiding its culture.
"Of a certainty!" he replied haughtily. "The gun belongs to the Fort. It is not to be used as a shelter for--for saints!" His contempt was palpable.
"I deny your premise," put in Dya Ram eagerly. "The gun is the people's by prescriptive right. I can use it if I choose. The Government professes neutrality; therefore, no one has a right to interfere with my religion."
Roshan's face was a study. "Lo! Dya Ram, for thou art my old class-fellow surely, hast gone back to the old beliefs since the days when thou didst sign thyself at the end of thy essays, and in thy books, 'Dya Ram, Agnostic'?"
Dya Ram gave an uneasy cough. "It is a question of legality--" he began.
"And of money also," put in a new voice cringingly. "The pilgrims come hither to see the saint, and then bathe. But if there is no saint, many will not come, and I, who have my right on the steps as marker of the caste marks--"
"Right!" echoed the Mahomedan curtly. "Have a care, caste-marker, lest we do not claim the courtyard also."
Here Ramanund, who had hitherto listened indifferently, took up the cudgels. "That can scarcely be,risaldar-sahib," he said; "our pious folk have come hither to perform their offices since time began."
Gorakh-nâth turned on him at once. "Not so,Vaishnava!" he said. "Thou and thine know naught of the Beginning of Things. Come to us and Holy Shiv-jeefor that! Thou art as far from the great wisdom as he"--here he pointed wildly to Roshan--"yea! further, despite thy pretence of purity! Despite thy hunger yesterday when, returning to thy lost faith, thou didst come here to eat as the twice-born should, and a shadow fell upon thy food! Despite thy deafness to this world just now,"--here he laughed jeeringly,--"which kept thee back from bearing witness to my truth, to the truth of Shiv-jee'sservant!"
Dya Ram looked at him, then at Ramanund perplexedly. "What means he?" he said aside. "Didst thou really come hither?"
"My wife was dying," replied Ramanund in a low, rapid undertone, "and I--you understand--there--there is nothing certain, you see--and any chance--one goes back at such times--" he broke off almost desperately in his confession.
Dya Ram, who had signed himself Agnostic, nodded. He understood what it was to be rudderless in a familiar current, and came to the rescue of his friend's consistency by asserting that any such decision regarding the gun, if one had been made, would certainly be disputed. That he and his--though they demurred to its being counted against them for faith in the worshipping of mere matter--would, if necessary, carry the case to the High Court.
"Carry it to the Court of thy god Indra, if need be, Dya Ram," retorted Roshan, and as he strode off he spat deliberately in the dust. That also surprised him faintly, for he had thought he had learnt tolerance of theHuzoors. So, with a frown and yet with relief, he put his hand on the latch which would open the way back to a less disturbing environment. As he did so, another hand was on it also. The door opened from within, and Father Ninian stood on the threshold barring it; but barring it with smiles.
"Ah! my pupil," he said in English. "I have been listening to your praises from Captain Dering, and from Mr. Carlyon too. He says you are the best fencer in the army. You and I must cross foils again sometime, eh, my pupil?"
Roshan, as he stepped aside elaborately to let the old man pass, drew himself up and saluted.
"If you please, sir; but I have learnt new things since--since those days."
His tone made Father Ninian pause to look at him for an instant; then he replied, "And I have not forgotten the old; that makes us equal."
Roshan gave a little hard laugh as he went in; if the old man liked to think so, let him.
But Father Ninian's face as he passed--a black shadow in the sunshine--across the level steps leading down to the river wore a wistful smile. Old and new, he thought. New and old. Senseless, useless words, fit only for humanity to juggle dreams from, since no man knew the unseen beginning, knew the unseen end; knew even his own birth and death. In the endless band of life, naught came first, naught last, and the things of to-day might be old, the things of yesterday might be new.
"Margherita!"
The name came soundless to the priest's lips, and a quick flush of youth, and hope, and joy seemed to smooth away the wrinkles of his face. A faint laugh, a happy laugh, went further towards a hearing than the name. It was sixty years ago, nearly, since he had left her. An old story indeed, and yet how new. The new wine of it ran in his old veins, thrilled to his old brain, and took him back absolutely to a palazzo on the outskirts of Rome, with the pale flood of the Tiber flowing beneath a marble loggia. He had never looked on running water since without remembrance, and now--his feet having led him unconsciously to the river's edge--he stood smiling at the pale flood of the Hari. For he knew that he had fought a good fight, that he had kept the promise he had made in order to still her soul; that he had kept her boy, Pietro Bonaventura, so far as he could, from harm, and his child, and his child's child, gathering them as lambs into the arms of Holy Church.
And then something in the last thought drove the tender human smile from his face. He murmured a "Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa," bent to the stream, and dipping his fingers in it, crossed himself.
"May Shiv-jee'sblessing go with his holy water,Baba-jee," said a voice behind him. It was Gorakh-nâth thejogi, who, his sympathizers having departed, had come to fill his gourd.
Father Ninian turned; so for a space they stood face to face; representatives of the two great supernaturalisms of the world; the one which has held the West, the one which has held the East.
The old man's face, at first, returned to kindly human tolerance; for his fifty years of Eshwara had widened his sympathies. But, as he stood before thejogiit hardened, and the priestly arrogance of the naked ash-smeared figure, stretching a right hand in claim over the sanctifying power of the river, was reflected in Father Ninian's as he spread his left hand upwards, and turned on his heel with the words, "Vade retro Satanas!"