"You are tired to death as it is--why should you fuss any more over a pack--"
"Ssh! sir; don't talk rubbish. I am all right; and Eugene is so anxious everything should be a success that I must. Besides I--I like it."
Mrs. Walsall Smith sent the hostess' gathering smile round her long luncheon table, and rose. So did Vincent Dering, who had sat at her right hand--a position due to his rank as commandant of Eshwara--and, as he did, he drew his chair aside to let the girl on his left pass, with his usual somewhatvoyantcourtesy, though it was only Laila Bonaventura. He had met her several times during the past few days, and the effect which her singing had made on him had vanished before her general failure to interest him in the least. And to-day she actually wore a blue sash! In addition she had filled up the time between her monosyllables in methodically crumbling her bread and ranging the results in a pattern, until the inanity of it had got on his nerves, and he had felt inclined to beg her to desist.
And yet, as in passing her black eyes looked into his with one curious yet comprehensive flash, a memory of the extreme regularity of the curves and lines which had annoyed him, made him--quite irrelevantly--wonder hastily if he could have said anything to Muriel which--
He broke off in his own thought impatiently, and gave an apologetic glance after Mrs. Walsall Smith's fragile figure. There never was anything, never! Never a word said, never a deed done, which all the world--even Eugene Smith himself--might not hear and know. Vincent Dering felt a pulse of sheer virtue as he looked down the long table at his host, with the vague irritation which the possessors of women often arouse in those who are not their possessors. For Muriel Smith's half-playful, half-wistful rejection of sympathy had held that faint hint of dutiful martyrdom which seems so purely angelic to selfish man--unless he happens to be the wretch who inflicts it!
Curious, he thought; Eugene wasn't much of a gentleman, but he wasn't a bad sort, and he was fond of his wife, in a way. Yet he was blind to the fact that Muriel was not fit to go trapesing about his blessed old canal works with the pack ofpadrésand people he had got together to do honour to his skill. She would do it, of course, and get through with it, too! Here he helped himself to a glass of sherry, and felt incoherently that she was the dearest and best woman in the world,--the one woman in the world, so far as he was concerned.
As he sat between those two empty chairs where those two women, so absolutely unlike, had fenced him in on either side, a faint wonder tinged his virtue in comparing the last three years with the time before it.
If anyone had told him, then, that he would write every day to a woman and expect her to write to him without a word or a deed--
"Please, Dering-darlin'," said an imperious small voice, "mum wants 'oo, 'tos pup'll go off, she says, wis' all a gemplemen, an' she wants 'oo to go off wis' a ladies!"
"All right, little 'un," he laughed gladly, finishing his sherry at a gulp, and, ere catching the little mite in his arms, giving himself that smartening pull together which was so characteristic of the man.
He looked very handsome, very happy, as he came up, with Gladys shaking her curls at him in outrageous flirtation.
"How kind!" said Muriel. "I don't know what I should do without you."
That was all; but it sent him off in absolute content to tackle the stoutest lady in the room.
"Ifyoumake the move, Mrs. Campbell," he said diplomatically, "everyone will follow, and I know Mrs. Smith is anxious we should start, as it will take some time to go round."
"Ay! that it will!" assented the good lady in a mournful Scotch accent. "'Deed if it were not for Dr. James--" she glanced fearfully at a tall man in a black frock coat--a man whose patriarchal beard had once been red and was now the colour of a carpet whisk--who was buttonholing Father Ninian; the latter, with his straight slenderness, looking almost youthful beside the other's burly bulk.
"I wouldn't go if I didn't want to," put in a sharp-featured lady who belonged to another black frock coat--a small one. "You spoil the doctor, Mrs. Campbell. As I tellmyhusband, I yield to him in spiritual matters--the mission, you know, and all that; but when it comes to realities--the housekeeping, and what we are to eat, and do, and that sort of thing--that is my province."
Mrs. Campbell turned her fat good-natured face on her neighbour's placidly. "Ay, my dear; but ye didn't promise to be a wife to Dr. James, an' I did. So, Captain Dering, if you can find my niece--"
"Miss Shepherd is quite safe, Mrs. Campbell. Carlyon's looking after her," interrupted Vincent, feeling another spasm of sheer virtue. He had seen the two sitting together at lunch, apparently interested in each other, and he had noticed how Lance, on entering the drawing-room, had made his way straight to those coils of red-bronze hair which had a trick of being the most conspicuous point in any group of which they formed part. So Lance would enjoy himself simply; he would not have to gain pleasure in complex fashion by dragging about aposseof uninteresting old ladies, for the sake of a lady who was neither. Vincent's face had a bored look as he began his task by piloting his charge into the verandah, and so on into the open.
It was hot work crossing the stretch of sand which lay between the bungalow and the red brick abutments of the canal head; but once there, with the broad still basin of the united rivers before you, a cool breeze blew pleasantly from that blue barrier of hills with the gold-spiked temples of Eshwara enamelled against it, and a soft white mist hiding the feet of the far-distant snows; so hiding the "Cradle of the Gods! The floods had gone, however, and so had the robe of righteousness. The sandbanks lay bare, of the earth, earthy. The logs, too, were no longer dipping and dancing in the currents. Some were piled criss-cross on the spit, awaiting ransomers, and a few lay like straight shadows, half in, half out of the receding water.
"A log! not a bit of it!" said someone, stooping for a stone. "Look!"
The missile fell far short of the low streak of sand and shadow, but did its work. The shadow disappeared, as a bottle-nosed alligator slipped silently into the stream. Most eyes watched it, but Lance Carlyon's turned to Erda Shepherd. He had only met her once, casually, when he was out fishing on the spit, since the day when Father Ninian had introduced them, and they had seen something else in the river that was also not a log.
"Do you remember," he began impulsively, "the first time we met?"
A shadow slipped into her limpid bronze eyes also. "Certainly," she interrupted coldly. "It is not so very long ago--is it?"
She had fenced with his assumption of friendliness more than once already; feeling vexed with herself, the while, that she should do so. Since what did it matter? However much she might regret--and she had regretted with foolish unseen blushes as she had lain awake at night wondering what had possessed her--the almost indecent unveiling of realities in that first five minutes, she could not undo it. Besides, she had told herself, he had in all probability forgotten it in polo, and partridge-shooting, fishing, and such things.
But he had not, apparently; and he parried her fence with a still more friendly laugh.
"I didn't mean that, of course; but we won't talk of it, if you'd rather not. It isn't a very Mark Tapleyish subject, is it, for an afternoon party?"
The blush was to be seen this time. "So I have been thinking myself, Mr. Carlyon, ever since last Wednesday," she began, still more coldly, "and I am sorry--"
He interrupted her quite cavalierly. "I didn't mean that, either, and you know I didn't. However, we'll leave it alone. So you're not coming to the ball! Do you know, I think it's an awful pity; I'm sure you'd dance beautifully."
She felt outraged, in a way, and yet she smiled. He seemed so much younger than she was. Younger; but stronger and more vital. That calm assertion, too, that she knew she was playing feminine tricks with him, had been manly and dignified to quite a crushing degree. She could not help being at once meek and indulgent.
"I don't dance, Mr. Carlyon," she said quietly; adding, as a rider and salve to her conscience, "I--I think it wrong."
"I thought you might," he returned, evidently pleased at his own acumen, "but I don't see it that way. Of course if--if you go in for those ideas, you know, you can make it seem--well--awful low; but I--" he paused before even a possible sounding of his own trumpet--"you see I think it's awfully jolly; besides, it's such ripping good exercise, and I have to be careful, I tell you, not to put on flesh. I ride thirteen-four, as it is." His face grew grave over the confession.
"Is that much?" she said, her eyes caught and held by the splendid figure beside her. "You are very tall, surely." There was almost a pride in her tone, certainly a tenderness.
He shook his head. "Not so tall as my people are generally. We Carlyons run to size. My uncle, Sir Lancelot's, six-three, and his son is six-four; but he's a bit weedy. So when you're only six-one and a half you can't afford to wax fat; you've got to keep the body in subjection. That's right, isn't it?" His pride in his Scriptural knowledge made it impossible for her to be stern, though she felt she ought to be.
"Quite right, Mr. Carlyon," she assented, hurriedly, "but see! the others have gone on, and I don't want to miss--She stumbled, in her haste to end the tête-à-tête, on a loose brick, and for an instant was over-near the edge of the abutment.
"Take care!" he said, his hand on hers to give support; a cool, strong hand, with an insistence in its clasp which seemed to single her out from the world to stand so, hand fast in hand. "You were very nearly over that time," he said, smilingly, as he released her. "Now let's come on, or, as you say, we shall be too late for the fair. Smith's going to show off his electric light in the tents, you know."
Perhaps it was the slip which had made her dizzy, but she walked beside him feeling as if she were in a dream. And, in truth, the scene which grew upon them as they went on had a strange unearthliness and unreality. She paused, and gave a little gasp of pleasure and surprise. "It seems impossible!" she said. "A week ago, when I was here, it was all sand, sand; and now--"
Her eyes met the wide, flower-set walks, the stately white palaces of the Vice-regal camp with absolute incredulity. "Did you do all this?" she asked, doubtfully. "Why, you've made a new world!" She felt inwardly as if he had, somehow, for her.
"Oh! Vincent did a lot of the decorations, you know. He's that sort. We--my fellows, I mean, and Dillon's gaol-birds--dug, and did the dirty work. But it looks all right, doesn't it?"
It did, indeed,--absolutely and entirely all right. So white, so straight, so disciplined; even to the very twist on the tent ropes.
"That peg's out of line," said Lance, pausing suddenly. "Here, sergeant!"
A following had gathered in their rear, bringing up the little procession of Englishmen and women, with a knot of dark faces, and from it a man in dust-coloured drill stepped, and saluted.
"Two inches, or, say, an inch and a half." Erda caught so much in the order given as she walked on.
Two inches, or, say, an inch and a half!No more than that wrong in this dream city; and over yonder? Her eyes travelled past the snowdrift of the camp, rising against the blue background of wide water, to Eshwara, rising against its background of blue hill.
"I thought so; a good inch and a half," said Lance exultantly, coming up with measured strides. "It makes a lot of difference though."
She looked at him critically. Older by some months than he, full of strong character, almost overfull of strong convictions, she was yet--as women must be until experience of work-a-day life teaches them, as it has taught men, the value of subordination--curiously undisciplined, curiously lawless. And this striving after uniformity impressed her.
"I suppose you learn that sort of thing in the army," she said, with a new respect.
He laughed. "I should think so; buttons and bootlaces all to pattern. It's an awful bore, but it keeps things going. Now, here we are! Now, you can see properly."
They stood in the centre of the camp, in front of the hugedurbartent, that wandering throne of an empire fixed and immovable as the stars. In front of them, rising out of a wilderness of roses, blossoming where nothing but sand had shown since the primeval sea receded from the hills, was the flag of that empire, its folds drooping round the mast. And beyond it, past the two brass guns pointing down the long vista, was an avenue of palms, bordered by green grass and beds of flowers, and intersected by broad paths leading back to the solid white squares of the tents. At the farther end, a quarter of a mile or more from the flagstaff, a triumphal arch at the entrance showed, until the palm-leaves cut it short, a legend:
"WELCOME TO THE LORD----"
and above it, far at the feet of those distant snows, lay that wreath of white mist hiding the "Cradle of the Gods."
Erda's eyes travelled to it, and from it to the other vistas, similar yet smaller, stretching to the right and left of her. Then to the orderly rows on rows of tents, looking like solid blocks of marble behind her. The whole shut in from the world by a high white wall; still, silent, empty, waiting for the Hosts of the Lord. A snow-drift facing that mist-drift on the hills. And between them? Eshwara, and all that Eshwara held of evil and of good.
The dreaminess left her eyes, startled at a band of dark figures which at this moment appeared rounding the corner of a tent--figures in scanty striped clothing with a broad arrow on it; figures with shaven, close-capped heads and leg irons clanking, as their bare feet threaded through the flowers. And behind them, half-hidden, as ever, under his mushroom of a hat, came George Dillon. He had noticed, as he passed with the others, that the roses were flagging a bit under the hot sun, and had gone back to summon a fatigue party of his criminals to water them.
"Bring another go,mate," he ordered, as the gang, filing past the flagstaff, emptied their earthen pots; "then go back to the road. And be quick. There's no time to lose. The Lord-sahibcomes to-morrow."
They obeyed with grins; and Dr. Dillon, as he paused beside Lance and Erda, looked after them approvingly. "They like this better than picking oakum, and I've had to set some of 'em to do that, now the digging's done. I shall be glad when this show's over, and we move on."
"Move! where?" asked Erda.
"Where there is work to be done, Miss Shepherd. Satan finds mischief, you know, especially with his own hands." He paused and smiled. "They're a queer lot. Do you know some of them are in a blind funk because they think a percentage of them have to be sacrificed before the water will run." He grew grave again. "Poor devils!" he added, in a softer tone--"as if they hadn't paid tribute already. I lost over a hundred last year, what with pneumonia and malaria, but they don't seem to count that--that is the will of the gods. But I say, hadn't you better be going into the tent if you want to see the light-up? Smith went off to his plant five minutes ago with his gang, so it's about time."
It was almost pitch dark in the huge tent, and as they slipped in through the closed portieres, Vincent Dering's voice called to them.
"Be quick, please; and, Carlyon, tell them to shut down the outer screens. We want to have a real flash-up, and I believe we are all here now."
Whether that was so or not Erda could not tell. The brief ray of light caused by their entrance had only shown her Captain Dering's figure beside his hostess, and given her a glimpse of Laila Bonaventura's white dress close by. So it was eerie, in a way, to wait in the darkness, knowing it to be full of people she knew; yet to have consciousness of nothing save their voices, since age, sex, position, even race, were alike awaiting this new light which was to make them manifest. Perhaps the eeriness struck her companions also, for the voices came clearly; not in a babel, but answering each other in the listening, waiting silence.
"We are all full of sparks, I assure you, Mrs. Campbell."
"I am weel aware o' it, Doctor Dillon; but it's too much like a brand snatched frae the burning to my taste; for Doctor James will have it--"
"Undoubtedly, my dear Ann. It appears to me, sir, and I trust it will to you, as a most interesting scientific fact, calculated to confound those who scoff at the possibility of eternal punishment in a fire that is not quenched--"
"Or to comfort those who believe in a cleansing one--who seek a place in the crown of stars about their Mother's head--who feel the flame of immortality." Its faint hesitancy betrayed this voice, as the dryness did the next.
"If I've got to generate my own heaven or hell, I prefer to pass; but if one could turn on a fifty-candlepower reflecting lamp during apost mortemor a bacillus hunt, it would be useful."
"Yes! Fancy being able to get up at night and see, at once, in all corners of the room if there were snakes!"
This brought a laugh till a fragile voice said plaintively, "That's just the worst of it. When one begins to see things too clearly, they are so apt to be nasty."
"That, my dear Madam, has always appeared to me as an additional argument against those who contend that Perfect Wisdom could not wisely have produced so imperfect a being as Man."
"Surely, Dr. Campbell," interrupted a tart voice, "the necessity for something on which to exercise our faith proves that; but then I am only a woman. I confine myself to realities."
"Then what a bore it would be if there were no delusions! By Jove! it would be dull. Who is it says the soul of man lies in his imagination?" Captain Dering's voice could not be mistaken.
"Just so--and nowhere else."
This came in an aside, and was followed in the same tone by the eager, hesitating voice. "Scoffer! When you men of Science spend your lives in listening--to the things which cannot be heard--looking for the things that cannot be seen-- Ah! doctor!--you can't impose on me. I know you--I have seen you."
The very darkness seemed abashed, and there was silence; till a new voice, young, full-throated, broke it. "But how can you tell if things are nasty till you have seen them--they may be nice. Ah-h-h!"
It had come like a creation, flooding all things with irresistible light.
A sort of sigh made itself heard; a sigh of vague relief. "By Jove!" said Captain Dering, "it will make a difference to thedurbar. As a rule you can't see the diamonds and jewels; and they are half the show."
Palpably there could be no fear of that. To the uttermost corner of the vast tent, the pattern of its lining of shawls was visible; each boss on the parcel-gilt poles glittered and shone; the very legend round the arms of England above the Vice-regal chair stood out clear "Dieu et mon droit." And the expression on the two groups of dark faces, the one which had come by invitation to see, the other which had crept in at the further end, could not be mistaken. In the one, indifference struggled with curiosity; in the other assent was mingled with awe.
"What are they saying?" asked Lance, who, having come late, stood close to the latter group. "Something aboutDee-puk-râg. What's that?"
Erda shook her head. "Father Ninian will know--he knows all these things--that is why they call him Pidar Narâyan, and let him do anything. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't the best way." The last, spoken to herself, was interrupted by Father Ninian's echo.
"TheDee-puk-râg!Why, yes--of course!" He turned to the dark faces in sheer delight. "Yea! brothers!" he said in Hindustani, "ye are right! It is theDee-puk-râg--the sign of kingship. Have I not told ye always that the Lord is with us--and with you?" Then he turned back to his other hearers: "It means the Song of Light--a charm--a spell which the great men of old knew. Is it not so, Ramanund?"
A half-reluctant voice from the invited replied, "The ignorant say so, sir."
A faintly sarcastic smile came to the fine old face. "And they believe its possession marks the born ruler of men--the God-sent guide; since, when it is sung, the light comes from the stars to help the world on its way--to dispel the darkness! Ah-h-h!"
It had gone! and in the black night which settled blankly on speaker and audience, a faint, far cry came from outside. More than one woman's voice echoed it with a little startled gasp of suspense.
"It is all right!" called Vincent Dering, "the thing is always popping in and out--I've seen it at Euston--it will come back directly." And then, in response to something he alone had heard, he whispered, "Don't be alarmed; Eugene will set it right in a moment--really--"
As he bent his head a scent of violets--the scent she always used--assailed him; and that half-heard appeal--"Oh, what is it, Vincent?" seemed still in his ears. Even in the darkness he knew she must be close to him. He felt the soft ruffle of the lace about her hand upon his wrist. It trembled, surely. Did it? Or was it only his own bounding pulse. A sudden imperious desire to know--to be certain--swept through him.
Then, with a sort of suffocating rush to heart and brain, came the knowledge that his clasp was answered by that small hand--so small, so clinging, so trustful--so dear--so absolutely dear--so dear!--so very dear!!
As he stood in the darkness, he knew that every mooring was gone, knew that this--this thing--would change--must change--the whole position. It was a light, indeed; a light showing the way--a different way! A sort of fierce exultation took possession of him. He knew, now, that he had been dreaming till then; that he had been blind.
"Ah! what a relief! That dreadful darkness was getting on my nerves," said a calm voice coming to him from out of the flood of white light which seemed to have rent their hands asunder.
Their hands--when she stood yonder? He turned, bewildered, to find a pair of grave black eyes fixed critically on him.
"I--I--he began.
"It doesn't matter," said Laila Bonaventura, with stolid indifference. "You thought it was her hand, of course. I quite understand."
Did she? Did--could--anyone? even he himself?
God! How content--how happy he had been--how certain--
"Dillon! Dillon! For God's sake, where's Dillon?" came an excited voice, as Eugene Smith burst into the tent, bringing the afternoon sunshine to war with that unearthly light. "Come along, man! There's been an accident in the workshop! I warned them not to touch--one--a mere boy--did. Got startled, I suppose, and fell over--onto the circular saw--it was going. His leg--I've tried atourniquet, but I can't stop--"
The remainder was inaudible; the caller and the called, followed by Vincent, glad of any interruption to the intolerableness of his confusion, were already running as for dear life down the palm-set avenue towards the canal workshop outside the walls.
That it was for death, however, not life, Dr. Dillon saw at a glance; though, without a pause, he knelt down in the fateful, irresistible tide of life blood which was ebbing and flowing with such awful insistency, and set his teeth in fight.
Yet once he gave an upward glance to the long, low roof so full of driving bands and wheels and levers, so full of men's power, so empty of men's passion; and then a straight one to the circle of ignorant, awe-stricken, dark faces closing in round him. And as he did so, he muttered to himself:--
"I wouldn't have had this happen for a thousand pounds--and a high-caste man, too!"
Undoubtedly; the sacred thread showed on the shoulder under the broad arrow--for the twice-born are twice-born even in gaol.
"Lay him on Mother Earth to die, ye of his caste!" said a voice from behind. It was Father Ninian's. His haste had driven the colour from his face; he stood breathless, yet calm, his right hand raised. In the awestricken circle none stirred; there was no sacred thread upon their shoulders.
"Give me a hand, please, Dr. Dillon," said the old man quietly; "he will not die easy there." So, between them, they shifted the slight figure from the wooden platform on which it had fallen, to the ground all sodden and stained with that tide of blood. A faint content seemed to come to the half-conscious face; the head nestled itself into the soft earth as if to rest.
The circle of dark and white faces fell back alike, leaving the doctor and the priest alone with death,--the doctor with both hands detaining that ebbing tide of life, the priest with theviaticumof another faith on his lips speeding it on its way.
"Lo!" whispered some of the circle. "Hark to his 'Ram Ram!' He knows--Pidar Narâyan knows."
Am-ma was fishing. Breast deep in the water, which in the early dawn stretched like a shining shield to meet the pale primrose vestments of the coming day, his bodiless head and shoulders slid sedately over the surface like some strange kind of wild-fowl; for his hands, clasped at the back of his curly frizz of hair, held the apex of a conical, reed-distended net, shaped like a pair of wings. His eyes were closed, and, despite all lack of visible movement, the tenseness of every muscle, the strained look of every curve, showed that he was on the alert for something; that something, being the first hint of possible prey sent by his hidden feet as they felt, like hands, over the bottom. Felt lightly, buoyantly, with scarce more pressure than the water itself, until, at the first suspicion of a fish lying half-buried in the sand, they would fling themselves air-wards to change places with his head; and that, with the net twirled dexterously above it, would go down like an extinguisher over the suspicious ridge or furrow. Sometimes--most often, of course,--they proved to be nothing else; but sometimes, again, there would be a pause, during which the black legs would remain uppermost, and then, once more, the black head would come air-wards with a wriggling fish, held, if it happened to be a small one, in its white teeth. For Am-ma had not been provided by nature with a pouch, like the pelicans who were fishing hard by; and, being absolutely destitute of clothing and pockets, had to sidle sedately to the bank with each prize before seeking another, since both hands and feet were needed for its capture. Otherwise, his method of fishing was little removed from the birds,--the net being considered as his beak. If anything, it was the more primitive of the two, since the pelicans fished in companies, drawing a serried line round each likely shallow; whereas Am-ma had all the distrust of his fellow which marks man in his earliest development. For, even amongst his kind, Am-ma was held to be barbarian; though, Heaven knows! the six or seven millions of wild tribes and forest races in India which go to make up its two hundred and eighty, are primitive enough. Those six or seven millions, frankly, absolutely savage, who, as the census puts it, are 'not to be specified'; remaining, as they do, untouched by either the civilizations or religions with which they have come in contact. Six or seven millions, whose very superstitions are their own monopoly!
Some there were among these fisher folk of Eshwara who, like Gu-gu, were faintly leavened with latter-day learning, faintly amenable to latter-day standards; but Am-ma's dull brain was satisfied with what it had inherited; which included, amongst other things, sight, hearing, touch, keen almost beyond belief. So he opened his eyes at a sound which, to an ordinary person, would have been as inaudible as the swift coming of sunlight in the sky; and his sight told him immediately what it was in detail. A canoe was coming down the lagoon with two men in it. Now there was only one canoe in Eshwara, and that belonged to Pundit Ramanund. He had been over the black water, and learnt, amongst a number of other strange new things which were of no use, how to paddle a canoe--his own or another's! For what good was a canoe when you did not know the sandbanks? And how could you know the sand-banks unless you swam over them and dived down to them? Then, if you could do that, what was the good of a canoe? An air-bag, or even an earthen pot under the pit of your stomach, on which you could lie, was sufficient for all practical purposes.
Therefore one of the men Am-ma knew must be Ramanund; the other, by his turban, was a Mahomedan. Didheknow the sand-banks? Am-ma shaded his eyes with one hand, and watched to see. Evidently not; the canoe stuck here, there, everywhere, yet still came on slowly. But if the occupants wanted--as everybody seemed to want nowadays--to cross over to the other side--that other side where the red brick headworks of the canal showed like a plinth--to those strange, new white tents where the Lord was expected; then they would find the navigation more intricate.
Am-ma being conservative inevitably, smiled at the certainty, closed his eyes, and went on fishing; till he opened them again at a shout.
"Which way?" he echoed, his voice sounding hollow from its nearness to the water. "By the deep stream, always."
"And which is that, fool?" came Roshan's voice angrily.
"Where there is most water," returned Am-ma calmly. "Cease from paddling, and the canoe will tell you without fail. Such things know of themselves. They are wise."
"But we want to get over to the camp as quickly as we can," said Ramanund, interrupting an impatient retort of Roshan Khân's, with an aside to the effect that they had better not alienate their only hope. The river was lower than he had expected, or he would never have suggested crossing in the boat, as quicker than the bridge; yet there was not time to go back.
Am-ma smiled cunningly. "None will get quicker than he can, my masters; that much is certain." Being pleased with his own wit, he laughed, and kicking up his heels, ducked his head, to come up again a few yards nearer in shallower water, where he could stand and salaam.
"The noble people," he said gravely, "must surely follow the stream if they go in company; but if they will quit comfort, and wade, carrying their boat here and there, I, Am-ma, will show them. But it is annoyance. Without going with the stream there is always annoyance."
"It is better than going back or sticking still, anyhow!" remarked Roshan Khân to his companion; adding in Hindustani--"Then come quick--there is room for thee and thy net, and we will pay thee."
Am-ma shook his head. "There is weight enough for difficulties without me, my masters; and here or there is one to a fisher." So saying, he closed his net with one dexterous twist, slipped his arms through it so that it hung behind his back, and struck across the shallows.
"Yonder is our aim," he said briefly, pointing to a blue thread of smoke rising from the water's edge a good way down stream. "They burn a dead man there to-day; it is ever a good guide to the living."
"'Twill be the Brahmin lad theHuzoorskilled by mistake with theirDee-puk-râg. Didst hear the tale?" asked Ramanund. Why, he would have been puzzled to tell, since he had no definite desire to foster ill-feeling or fear; but it had been the talk of the town till those small hours which end gossip, even in India, and the talk had confirmed the theory, which so many of his kind hold firmly, if vaguely, that the mass of the people feel the English rule to be unjust.
But Am-ma was not of the people. He was of the six million and odd barbarians. He turned, showing his broad white teeth in a grin. "Ay! 'Twas well done. Now, as in old days, folk will know who is true leader." There was no doubt, no fear in his mind. Had not his tribe always, of old, chosen as its chief and God the man who could hold a torch in each hand at arms' length, one lighted, the other unlit, and bid the flame pass from one to the other seven times? And as for a man's life, was it not always expedient that one should die for the people upon occasions?
Ramanund frowned; perhaps because Am-ma concluded by ordering the crew out of the boat, and the water was cold. It could scarcely have been anything else which brought annoyance, since he, like most of his kind, prided himself on being truly a British subject.
So, paddling and pushing, wading, and even carrying, they crossed from shallow to shallow, from sand-bank to sand-bank, led by Am-ma, swimming and diving like a duck, or walking on ahead unconcernedly, his eyes fixed in keen-sighted approval on that group close to the water's edge, towards which he steered.
Yet it was a gruesome group, in truth, which circled round that solitary and still more gruesome figure in the centre. A figure squatting like the rest (since, when wood is dear, funeral piles must be restricted) in full view, yet mercifully obscured for the most part by the heavy column of smoke which rose straight to a level with the leaping flames, then, tilting sideways before the intermittent breeze of early dawn, drifted westward, to hide those white tents upon the horizon.
"Above or below, fool!" called Ramanund, sharply, as they neared the shore. "I am noDôm, like thou, to choose my way among dead men's bones."
The allusion to the semi-aboriginal tribe who earn their livelihood by streaking the dead, brought a frown this time to Am-ma's face.
"I am noDôm, either," he retorted, "and were I one, thou wouldst be glad of my guidance to the fire some day, Pundit-jee!" Roshan Khân listened with the wholehearted contempt of his race and creed. "Be quick, either way," he said, scornfully. "We have bare time, as it is."
Yet he, also, swerved from that gruesome group, which, as the two--dressed as Europeans, save for their turbans--stepped ashore and hurried off in the direction of the camp, stood up in a linked semi-circle to salaam, then squatted again with a clank of leg irons.
Am-ma, his task over, had paused in the deeper water, and was once more sidling sedately. The sun had risen with the inconceivable swiftness with which it rises from a dead-level, treeless plain, and shone reddish-yellow, like a fire, on his wet skin. The shadow of that dense column of smoke sidled sedately on the water also, shifting with the shifting spirals of the reality.
"Had he spilt blood?" asked Am-ma, suddenly, as that something, half-hidden in the smoke, seemed to dissolve, sending a great fountain of sparks, bright even in the sunlight, up into the air.
One in the semicircle clucked denial.
"Ajogi--they say of Gorakh-nâth's monastery--had him for disciple. And there wasdhatoorain the sweetmeats, for sure. Whether he was strangler, God knows! Perhaps. Yet such travellers deserved poison; who but a fool trusts a strange hand?"
A big man at the end of the semicircle, who had a sinister face despite his good conduct badge, looked round hastily to where, a little distance off, the two jail-warders in charge were dividing a smoke on the sly with swift mysterious bubblings; then lowered his voice.
"Ay! none but fools; andhe--" (a nod towards that thing in the centre which was now dying down to red embers pointed his meaning) "is the first; not the last. I, Gopi,gosain,[6]say so. Let fools wait and see. Wise men will not."
There was a clank of leg irons as if some stirred uneasily. "Thou canst talk," murmured a voice. "When thy 'tucket' (ticket of leave)--God knows how got!--is so nigh."
Gopi smiled comfortably. "Ay! To-morrow, and the next day, and the next. Then, once more, purification in the Pool of Immortality. Once more, sanctification at the 'Cradle of the Gods.'" He cast his eyes upwards unctuously, like an Eastern Chadband, so rehearsing the part of piety he meant to play once more on his release.
Am-ma nodded his bodiless head cheerfully. "There will be no Pool of Immortality for the pilgrims this year. So Gorakh-nâth says. The canal will drain the spring. But then, he is angry at being turned out of his gun. The people will not give so much--that is it!"
Thegosain'sface lowered at the news. "Turned out? Who hath done it?"
Am-ma's eyes were closed, for his feet had found likely ground; he paused a second, tensely alert--
"He who comes," he said, suddenly; "the Master."
As he spoke, the quick thud, followed by a lingering reverberation of the first saluting gun, told that the Viceroy of India was entering his camp.
"The Lord hath come!" said the circle of prisoners, in awed tones.
All save Gopi, thegosain. He sneered. "The Lord-sahib. Ay! he may be that--but the Master--no!"
Am-ma gave a contented little chuckle.
"He killedthat, anyhow," he said nodding again, "and he hath theDee-puk-râg. Is not that enough for poor folk?" Then his feet, feeling something far out of sight in the still deep waters, came air-wards, and his head went down.
When it came up again, the gang of prisoners were being filed back to gaol, leaving the still glowing embers of what had been a man to send a clear blue smoke into the clear blue sky.
"They have theDee-puk-râg--that is enough," murmured the fisher to himself as he slid with the stream.
The Viceroy's camp was no longer a city of dreams.
Its silence had gone, lost in that indefinable sense of sound which seems to come from the heart-beats, even, of unseen humanity; and the whiteness, the purity of it, was stained and smirched by the scarlet-as-sin coatees of the innumerable orderlies, who bustled about from tent to tent, with huge files of references, or lingered at the tent doors extorting shoe-money from the native visitors, who came in shoals to plead for patronage from one or another of the bigwigs belonging to the Hosts of the Lord-sahib. Groups of these petitioners, awaiting their turn for an interview, were to be seen at most tents; but they stood in crowds round one, in which the Commissioner of the Division was making the final arrangements for the comingdurbar; in consultation with the Under Secretary to Supreme Government. It was a difficult task, involving as it did the classification of the aristocracy, plutocracy, and democracy of India, in one generally satisfactory Court-guide.
"It cann't be done in this wurrld," remarked the Commissioner, in one of those suave, plastic, Cork brogues which might be made of Cork butter from the softness and lack of friction they bring to the English language. "An' what's more the Archangel Gabriel couldn't do it in heaven, though he'd have a better chance; for the Cherubim wouldn't be wanting seats at all! We are bound to displease somebody, so let's cast lots before the Lord; it's Scriptural, annyhow."
The Under Secretary looked a trifle shocked, being unacquainted with the Commissioner's methods.
"But we must,"--he began.
The other's keen face looked up from the lists for a second. "Of course we must--we govern India practically, by cane-bottomed chairs. Ye remember old Gunning. No!--before your time, I expect! Well! he kept two hundred miles of North-West frontier as quiet as the grave, for five years, by the simple expedient of awarding thirteen seats in his divisionaldurbarto each of his districts, and only taking twelve chairs with him into camp. Themâliks, you see, never could tell which would be chosen odd man out, an' the fear of it kept 'em like sucking doves."
"Indeed!" remarked the Under Secretary, fidgeting with his lists resignedly, for he was under the impression that time was being lost. "I'm afraid that sort of thing wouldn't answer nowadays." The elder man looked at him gravely; just one short glance, as he dipped his pen in the ink and went on writing, revising, referring.
"Not a bit of it! They'd send down to Whiteway Laidlaw's and get Austrian bent-wood chairs by value payable parcel post! The Teuton, sir, is ruinin' British prestige by cheapenin' the seats of the mighty. There! that's done--block A's beautiful entirely. Now for block B. Who's your favourite, and why are you backing him?"
Once more the junior appeared a trifle shocked. "With reference to Roshan Khân," he began. "His Excellency desired me to ask whether it might not be possible to give him a step for being, as it were, in his own division. He belongs to Eshwara, I believe."
"The very reason why he cann't get an inch more than his due. But you can tell H. E. that I've settled it. I've asked Dering to put him on duty, an' when he is in uniform there's no mistaking his place. And then we'll ask him in to the reception afterwards with thesahib logue. Who's your next--Dya Ram! what, the little pleader?--Why the blazes should he come todurbar?--attorneys don't go to St. James."
"Mr. Cox, the member of parliament--perhaps you may remember him--"
"A little red-haired fellow, was he? who wrote a book about India on the back of his two-monthly return ticket?"
"Mr. Cox is a man of great influence with his party, and he supports Dya Ram's--"
"Pestilential little fool," interrupted the Commissioner impartially, impersonally. "It wouldn't be bad, though--stop his scurrilous tongue for a bit. Favour does, you know. But I cann't see my way to it. Old Hodinuggur would be refusing his 'attaandpân[7]again. He did it once, ye know, when some low-caste fellow was within sight of him. Said he didn't eat with sweepers; and if Crawford--he was Commissioner at the time--"
"Yes!" said the Under Secretary, still more resignedly. He had not yet grasped the fact that his coadjutor talked while he worked--
"Hadn't been six foot four and broad in proportion," went on his tormentor imperturbably, "so that the--let us call them the subsequent negotiations--diplomatic negotiations--it sounds well!--didn't reach the eye of His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, the Thakoor--one of our best men let me tell you--would have got into trouble--more'd have been the pity."
"Yes," assented the man of Secretariats, "but about Dya Ram--"
"Dya Ram, is it now? Could we put him in under the head 'benevolence' think you? Did he ever vaccinate a baby, or breed a horse, or give anything to a female hospital? No! Then the devil fly off with him for complicating the problem of British rule in India. Why should he want to come todurbarat all? When people change their dress they should change their desires, but the only effect our civilization has upon some men I know, is to make them want to keep their hat and their boots on at the same time! Well, that's done! I've found a place for him where Hodinuggur can't see the tail end of him unless he squints. Now--who's your next?"
While this sort of thing was going on inside the tent, Dya Ram and the Thakoor of Hodinuggur were in full view of each other, outside it. The former, having scorned the sinful scarlet coatees even to the point of refusing to have his patent leather shoes dusted, was walking up and down in English fashion. The latter, in a wonderful parcel-gilt coach, was awaiting the effect of his ten-rupee tip with perfect patience and serenity; while his retinue, which consisted of a dozen ragged retainers carrying lances festooned with tinsel and yaks' tails, stared contemptuously at the two sentries pacing up and down below the flagstaff; who--to tell truth--seemed so monotonously part of the general show as to suggest that they also were under the charge of the two yellow-legged policemen who stood on either side of the rose-bed.
It was high noon, and the various departmental gongs had begun to give their version of the meridian, with that unbiased disregard for that of their neighbours which makes the time of day an absolute uncertainty in a big camp. But it was calling time evidently; for two superb red-coats, blazoned with gold, appeared in company with two big books and a silver inkstand, and disappeared with them into thedurbartent. And shortly afterwards anaide-de-campsloped over to it, yawning.
Both Dya Ram and the Thakoor knew that this meant preparation for those, who, having theentréeto the Government House, had the right to put down their names in those big books; but the fact itself affected their two types very differently. The old Rajput's visit of ceremony was of another sort. He, obeying definite orders, would come at a specified time, and get his specified salute with his compeers. But Dya Ram was like the wild tribes in one way; he was unspecified! He was neither fish nor fowl, flesh nor good red herring.
So, as he watched a young Englishman drive up in a bamboo cart, dash into the tent, and dash out again as if the place belonged to him, he felt aggrieved. He even went so far as to formulate his grievance in mental words, and then these appeared to him so apposite to a leading article, that he took out a note-book, and, after some corrections, stored away, for future use, the assertion, that 'the time will come when the colour of the hand which holds the pen will be no bar to its writing its name in the Book of----?' He did not feel sure of the qualitative noun, and after trying Fate, Fame, Life, and Lord, left a blank instead.
Meanwhile carriages and dogcarts all of sorts had begun to drive up, their occupants disappearing into the tent for a second or two, then coming out with the smile of the elect on their faces. Father Ninian was one of the first, resplendent in a newsoutaneand sash, with Akbar Khân in his orderly's get-up, oscillating between a palsy of delighted servility, and a catalepsy of dignity; the one for his superiors, the other for his equals.
And, after a while, in one of those mysteriously nondescript four-wheeled vehicles that defy classification, but may be said to come under the head "phitton" (phaeton) of which mission people seem to have a monopoly, came good Mrs. Campbell and her niece, Erda Shepherd; the former full of indignant, yet meek alarm, because Dr. James, having come across an old friend further down the avenue, had bidden her go on and write his name as well as her own.
"I ken weel how it will be," she asserted to her niece, "for I havena brought my specs, an' a body cannot but be nervous with a young man in a scarlet coat glowering at them! I shall put the doctor into the wrong book; for, you see, I canna write the two names ane after the ither like a marriage lines; for there is one big bookie for the women, and one for the men-folk, like a Puseyite chapel! Ay! an' for the matter o' that, like a divorce court--and I sou'd never hear the last o't if I evened the doctor to myself!"
"Let me do all three, Auntie," said Erda, with a laugh, as she got out of the carriage. "Really, there's no need for you to come,--I'll be back in a minute."
The blaze of sunshine blinded her for the darkness of the tent, and she could scarcely tell whose hand it was which stretched itself frankly, eagerly, for hers as she entered. Yet, even through her glove she knew the touch, before Lance Carlyon's voice said joyfully,--
"Come to write your name? I've just written mine. Funny our hitting off the same time, isn't it?"
The tone of his voice, joined to that startling recognition of his touch--which she could not conceal from herself--made her shrink, as if from actual intrusion. "I have to write my uncle's and aunt's first," she said coldly. "There was no use in usallcoming in."
She walked on as she spoke to where the two books lay on a sort of lectern, while theaide-de-camp, seeing the visitor was a lady, came forward politely to assist.
"Not that book, Mansfield," remarked Lance, coolly. "Miss Shepherd wants--Miss Shepherd, will you allow me to introduce Captain Mansfield--to write her uncle's name first."
She looked back at him almost angrily, full of resentment at his persistence; but, even in the semi-blindness which was still hers, his face showed too kind for that; and as, at that moment, another lady came in with a flutter of laces and ribbons to appropriate Captain Mansfield's ready services, Erda had to allow Lance to find her a pen.
"That's right! Now for the other book," he said. Theaide-de-camphad by this time gone to see the laces and ribbons back to their carriage, so the two were alone.
"Your aunt's first, you know." There was a suspicion of friendly chaff in his tone, this time, but it was gone in a minute as he went on quickly--"Erdmuth!--is that your name? Why!--it means earth-mood--or--or world's desire, doesn't it?"
She felt herself flush. "I did not know that you were such a German scholar," she replied, sarcastically. "Yes! my name is Erdmuth Dorothea. I was called so after--after some one you most likely know nothing about, Countess Zinzendorf. She was famous enough, though,--" she paused, feeling savagely desirous of snubbing him--"But I daresay you never even happened to hear of Jean Ziska, Mr. Carlyon?"
He smiled suddenly, broadly. "Jean Ziska!" he echoed. "Rather! We had a pony called Ziska at home--a Hungarian--used to eat thistles like a donkey!"
He stopped to laugh, and she was about to turn and rend him, when he continued, half apologetically, "Of course I have--only the name, you see, brought back such jolly old times. Ziska was the beggar who had his skin made into a drum when he was dead. I don't expect it's true, but it's a fine tale; the drum ecclesiastic with a vengeance, and no mistake!"
"Oh! but it is," interrupted the girl, forgetting her annoyance in her eagerness. "My grandfather--we are really Moravians, you see, and our name should be Schaeffer,--saw it when he was a child. He used to tell me that people said if it was beaten, everybody must--"
But Lance's attention had wandered. He was looking at her signature with a curious, almost wistful smile. "Erdmuth!" he repeated thoughtfully; then turned to her. "I say! you really ought to come to the ball with that name--do!"
He was simply, she told herself, the most distractingly irrelevant, yet at the same time the most appallingly direct, person she had ever come across. "Really, Mr. Carlyon," she began, with such heat that theaide-de-camp, returning, stared; until Lance coolly asked him if he didn't think Miss Shepherd very unkind not to come to the Bachelor's Ball? Whereupon he, having by this time had enough of laces and ribbons, and begun to recognize a distinct charm in the glistening coils of hair, half-hidden by a wide hat, promptly asked her for the pleasure of a dance.
Erda looked from one to the other aghast, and to her own intense surprise fell back upon the woman's all-embracing excuse, "I--I really haven't a dress." It seemed the simplest and easiest.
"Oh! anything does for a fancy ball," persisted Lance, argumentatively, as he followed her out. "A tailor in the bazaar would run you up a Greek dress in no time, and it would do awfully well. All white, don't you know--" his voice slackened and grew soft, as if he saw what he described, and the sight made him glad--"all straight folds with a little edge of red-gold like--" he paused, then went on boldly--"like the sunshine on your hair. And red-gold bracelets high up on your arms--and a red-gold apple in your hand--the World's Desire--" He stopped abruptly, with a quick catch in his breath, startled at his own words.
And she, too, held her breath before the vision; for she saw it also. Saw herself, as he had described her, and the glamour of it, the desire of it, assailed her, body and soul.
Yet she made a desperate, a passionately resentful effort to ignore them. "I didn't know you were so well up inchiffons, Mr. Carlyon," she said, with a forced laugh. "Did you ever think of setting up a milliner's shop? One is badly needed in Eshwara."
But the glamour of it had come to Lance Carlyon like a revelation, and the blood was leaping in his veins. "I will, if you--" he began.
She scarcely recognized his voice in one way. In another she knew it must be his; for all the vitality and strength, the single-mindedness and simplicity which she had seen in him so often, were crowded into it; brought into it by fancy, concentrated by a mere suggestion--of herself.
The magic of this seemed to encompass her; she sought shelter from it recklessly.
"I?" she interrupted. "I don't go in for that sort of thing, Mr. Carlyon. You seem to forget my work--work which I value above--milliners! Try Mrs. Smith--there she is coming in her victoria; she is one of the best-dressed women I ever saw."
She could not certainly have looked better than she did as, seeing Lance Carlyon, she called to him as her carriage drove up.
"Do you know where Captain Dering is? He promised--"
Here Lance, with guilty haste, interrupted her. He was just about to drive over and give her a message. Dering had had a touch of fever; he had been over at the palace arranging about the Chinese lanterns for the decorations till late the evening before, and--
"He might have sent a little sooner," put in Mrs. Smith. "I have been waiting; he said he would drive me in his dogcart." There was no vexation, only an almost pathetic surprise in her voice; and Lance looked guiltier still.
"I'm awfully sorry--it's all my fault--I was late to begin with, and then--" He glanced at Erda involuntarily,--compromisingly, it seemed to her.
"I am afraid I kept Mr. Carlyon," she said, haughtily; "most unwillingly, I assure you. Thanks so much, but I can get in quite well by myself."
As she drove off, however, her head was in a whirl; and as, when pausing to pick up Dr. Campbell, the whole panorama of the camp, the hills behind it, the distant temples of Eshwara, the busy place-seekers in the foreground, the scarlet-sin-stains of thechuprassies'coats against the dazzling whiteness of the tents, lay before her, one of those rare, incomprehensible moods came upon her when the soul retreats into its spiritual body, so that the sight grows clear, the touch keen, and you can feel the round world spin beneath your feet, see the shadow of earth stretching far among the stars.
The World's Desire! What was it?
Brought up to believe that the heart of man--that mainspring of the spinning world--was vile, she had never asked herself why this was so. She had read the story of Adam and Eve with unquestioning faith, yet never sought to know what had changed the good to evil.
But now, as her eyes rested on those far-distant peaks with that faint mist about their feet hiding the "Cradle of the Gods," and followed, as far as the eye could follow in the nearer hills, the climbing track worn by the weariness of that eternal search after righteousness, she asked herself what it was which kept mankind so long upon the road; asked herself, for the first time, what that first sin had been which had lost Paradise.
No lack of desire after salvation, surely. Generation on generation of Eastern pilgrims had worn that path out of the sheer rock, had agonized after good, and remained evil. A little shudder of memory ran through her at the thought--how evil! And now the West, with its white tents, its white face, its white creed, had come to show a newer, a better way.
Had it? But what had it done for itself? She had worked for two years in London ere coming out to India; and another shudder of memory swept over her of what she had seen there.
The World's Desire! Lance Carlyon had called her that--a woman with a red-gold apple in her hand.
The sound of angry dispute brought her back to realities. They were passing out of the camp under the triumphal arch, and one of its sentries was barring the entrance of an ash-smeared figure which was brandishing a stamped petition paper, as if it had been a card of admission, and yelling excitedly for "Justice! justice!"
"It is that pernicious fellow, Gorakh-nâth," remarked Dr. Campbell, sententiously. "He wishes, no doubt, to appeal against Captain Dering's order, of which I, for one, am heartily glad. A Christian government is bound to refuse sanction to the practice of a faith which, it is impossible not to see, is degrading in the extreme to those who hold it."
Erda's eyes were still clear; clear with what those who do not see, call dreams.
"Yet it seeks what we do--peace--forgiveness--the cradle of the goodness, the innocence it left behind--somehow."
Dr. James Campbell turned to her in dignified, amazed displeasure. "May I ask what has caused--"
"That's easy tellin'," interrupted Mrs. Campbell, comfortably. "It's yon hat with feathers, when she is accustomed to a pith one. An' she standin' in the sun talkin' to Mr. Carlyon! It's just got to the lassie's head. I was the same myself when I was young, Erda; but Dr. James thought it a duty--
"And so I do now, my dear," put in her husband. "It is a distinct duty on the part of mission workers to take every precaution, and if her head is Erda's weak point, I shall warn David--"
Mrs. Campbell nodded hers and smiled, and almost winked. "Oh! Davie will take care of her, never fear; he is not a ninny!"
Erda flushed scarlet all over her face and neck. It seemed to her as if she had forgotten her cousin, the Reverend David Campbell, altogether. And yet she was engaged to be married to him as soon as he returned from a well-earned holiday in England.
A swift remorse left her pale again. Davie, who was so much in earnest, who looked to her as--as--
That vision of a woman with a red-gold edging to her white robe and a red-gold apple in her hand came to send the blood to her face once more.