Lance Carlyon was not, as a rule, given either to loss of spirits or temper, yet both were at vanishing-point as he flung off the garb of his namesake of the lake; swearing as he did so that he would never wear the blessed thing again. It cramped him all over; body and soul. And then--for he knew his Tennyson well, as one of his name could hardly fail to do--his memory raced swiftly over the love-loyal knight's career; until suddenly he laughed at a phrase which had always tickled him. "So groaned Sir Lancelot--not knowing he should die a holy man."
If he had?--what would have been the result? Would he simply have refrained from remorseful pain, or from the honour rooted in dishonour which caused it?
With a mighty stretch of his sound young muscles at the relief, Lance caught up his Indian clubs, and went elaborately, conscientiously, through his daily series of exercises before putting on his dust-coloured shooting-suit, and swathing himself with the necessary plentitude of belts, cartridge-boxes, and gaiters. The latter--being, after Indian fashion, simply a couple of bandages neatly twined--were, as a matter of fact, much tighter than his discarded greaves; but the clip of them about his calves was familiarly reminiscent of many a day spent out in the jungle alone, or at most with some companion of Am-ma's type. A man whose only claim to be called one in these later days was his undoubted dominion over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the beasts of the field. How jolly it had been! And how the deuce could a fellow like Vincent Dering--
Lance, sorting cartridges systematically with an eye to a possible snipe, whistled a tune which Vincent was always asked to sing at the Smiths', "Sweet is true love--and sweet is Death."
Well, he preferred the Death. So, catching up his gun, he made his way to the crypt-like flight of steps which, half way down the straight river-edged wall of the Fort--between its northern bastion where the stream turned hillwards at a sharp angle, and the southern one beside the bathing-steps--led to a tiny landing-stage. Here the canoe, which he had hired for such excursions from Ramanund (whose last experience of boating had rather sickened him of its pleasures), lay moored.
Keeping the paddle ready for steering, he let the stream, which here clung swift and smooth to the wall, take him with it; partly because he had no wish to be seen by any revellers in the palace. But the sight of the latter made him slip the paddle-blade into the sliding water, and send the canoe swerving out for a better view.
It was wondrously beautiful, seen from the river, with every line and curve of light reflected almost as clear as the reality. The sight held his attention, so that he was abreast of the bathing-steps ere he remembered his desire for secrecy, and, in his haste, the canoe--answering to his swift stroke--almost spun round, bringing him, in an instant, within an ace of collision with the hard brick. As it was, he heard a faint grating sound.
"By Jove! that was a near shave," he muttered to himself.
Out of the darkness of the courtyard, for the unilluminated block of the palace rose between it and the white radiance, came a voice:--
"Is't thou? Hast brought the tool--we must get the job done ere dawn and--"
The rest was inaudible as the river slid him on. What were they up to? he wondered idly; taking advantage, doubtless, of the absolute desertion of the courtyard, the entry to which had been blocked for the night, the main entrance to the palace having been prepared for the reception of the guests. Were they meddling with the padlock Dering had put on the tampion which stopped the muzzle of the old gun? Time to see to that in the morning.
He was now steering his way just on the edge of the shadow cast by the wall on the water, and in front of him jutted out a balcony smaller than the rest, and nearer the river. Those upper ones, he knew, were part of the chapel; but this--
He looked at it narrowly, wondering if he had ever noticed it before, then let the paddle sink idly across the boat, and sat staring at what he saw. Dering, of course! But the woman! Who on earth was she? A native? Hardly; and yet he did not remember seeing anyone at the ball whose dress was in the least like this; even in the dark it glittered.
"Do you call that love?" came a voice echoing softly over the water. "I don't. When I love, I mean to give, not to take; and the more I give, the more I'll have to give; because, you see, love will come back--it must."
By all that was incomprehensible, Laila Bonaventura! And, if there was any certainty in these shadows, Dering's arm--
Phew! Lance knew his Shakespeare also; had, in fact, a curiously ingenuous and human acquaintance with even the exact words of the great master. So as he drifted on, leaving those two in the balcony, a line drifted with him:--
"She whom I love nowDoth grace for grace and love for love allow.The other did not so."
"She whom I love now
Doth grace for grace and love for love allow.The other did not so."
He felt a righteous relief at the idea, for he was eminently virtuous. Poor old Vincent! This was better than the other--he paused doubtfully--Well! different people had different tastes. He, for instance, had never admired Mrs. Smith. And then Dering, good chap as he was, had, everybody knew, a touch of the tar-brush himself. Only a touch, still it made a difference; for one had to consider the children. For instance, whenhemarried--Why a vision of a child's head he had once seen, far away in the north, covered with soft, waving curls of sun-bright red-gold hair, chestnut--yes, chestnut hair, the very colour of that beast of a pony who boshed him at polo--should have come to him at that moment he did not know; but he fled from it, bashful as any girl over her first fancy, and, bending forward, sent the canoe racing the foam-bubbles on the swifter current with all the strength of his young arms.
That was the mission house, ending the long curve of the city. The mission house, wheresheslept--the boat raced harder here--whereshelived in the thick of it--God bless her! Here the boat slackened, partly because the spit was reached, and in the darkness, made visible by that soft white radiance behind him, he must not miss Am-ma's hut. Am-ma, who had dominion over wild duck, among other things in that munificent gift of the Creator to His own image. Am-ma, who must come out and show those who had fallen from their high estate through civilization how to lure the birds to their death.
"Sweet is true Love though given in vain,And sweet is Death which puts an end to pain."
"Sweet is true Love though given in vain,And sweet is Death which puts an end to pain."
The refrain came back in this connection, and Lance's voice, as he sang it, if not musical, held a hint of something beyond the mere maudlin expression-stop of the ordinary song-singer.
He need not, he told himself, have feared to overlook Am-ma's wigwam; for there, not far from the point of the spit it stood, all lit up; circled round closely with a row of little lights like those at the palace. Were the primitive folk down here aping their masters and having a ball of their own? Smiling at the thought, he ran the canoe on shore and walked up to the reed hut. Then he saw that the circle of lights was broken by a dark patch. It was Am-ma himself, squatting on his heels. To one side of him, firmly fixed in the sand, was a freshly-killed crocodile's head, its jaws ingeniously distended by a thin cane to which a string was attached. By pulling this the dead mouth seemed to open and shut, as the pliant rattan bent under the strain and sprang back again. In his other hand he held a bloody spear. Despite these fearful preparations, however, the first glimpse of an approaching figure set him visibly trembling with fright; until, on its coming nearer the lights, he sprang to his feet with a sudden blubbering shout of relief.
"I thought--this fool, this atom of dust, thought--theHuzoorwas the devil!" he explained, capering and chuckling to make much of the joke, now that the fear of its being a reality was over.
"The devil!" echoed Lance. "What the dickens should the devil come here for?"
Am-ma looked half-grave, half-important. Did not theHuzoorknow, he explained, that when life was coming into the world, all the demons in it wanted to get hold of the new-born thing? Hence the lights, hence the crocodile's head and the spear; also his own valiance. Hence, also, the impossibility of his accompanying the Presence after duck. If he, the father of the thing to be born, was not there to fight the demons, what hope could there be for the son?--and here this quaint, broad, ugly face grew wistful--for it must be a son, surely, this time. No! he had no children; the demons had taken them all, every one; though he had left nothing undone, though he had sought out one medicine-man after another. What did it matter? he asked pathetically, if the charm were of one faith or another, if it brought a child. He had tried all. His own and everybody else's. But they all died, the children, girls and boys; died when they were born. The demon somehow slipped through the lights; the charm was not strong enough; that was all. So this time, when he had seen that theHuzoorshad theDee-puk-râg, the sign of kings, that they were, indeed, light-bringers, as his people had been of old, he had sent for the Miss-sahiba, and she had come. She was there in the hut, even now, fighting the demons.
Lance gave a quick catch of his breath, and stood silent. Right over the miserable reed hut, clear against the violet of the moonless sky, rose those palaces of stars lit up for pleasure. It almost seemed to him that the slight breeze, which was beginning to whisper of the dawn, held in it the faint rhythm of a distant waltz.
And here, at his feet, was this hut, lit up for pain. He heard that also, in a faint moan, which sent a shiver through him; the shiver of one who finds himself bare of accustomed covering, out in the open, far from any shelter from the cold sky.
"Of course you can't come, Am-ma," he said, moving off. "Well! I hope the Miss-sahibawill--will keep the devil away. I--I--expect she will!"
As he floated a little further down stream, vaguely obeying the instructions which Am-ma, regretful for all his anxiety, had shouted after him, he told himself that if anybody could, she would. If a fellow married her, for instance--
He drew the canoe on to the sand-bank, Am-ma had spoken of, somewhat sooner than his directions warranted, in order to stifle thought by action. And it needed every sense on the alert to tell in the darkness if one was keeping a fairly straight path. That scarcely audible "lip, lip" on the right meant that the water was close by, running an inch or two below a sheer yet crumbling edge of earth. That yielding softness on the left meant the ridge of dry sand. His way was between the two. Every now and again a watchful quack, a distant flutter, told him that the ducks were not far off. And in the east the faintest lightening of the purple warned him he was none too soon, since the dawn in India comes quickly.
But this must be the place; a sort of bunker right at the end of the bank. Here, cuddling down almost luxuriously into loose dry sand, still warm from yesterday's sun, he waited for that hint of light in the far east to grow strong enough for him to see.
It is always an experience to sit and wait for daylight, ignorant, helpless till it comes, of what lies close at hand. Lance Carlyon, crouching in that still warm sand, felt a sudden forlornness, a sense of having parted with something.
But, almost on the heels of this, came a sense of having found something; of strange, quick, new, yet familiar companionship. It seemed to him as he watched that faint grey lightening in the far east, that he did so, not as Lance Carlyon, but as an atom in the great, round, spinning world whose curved edge grew darker against the coming light.
He laid his gun beside him, and, kneeling in the soft, still warm sand, rested his arms on the edge of the bunker, ears and eyes alert as any wild creature's. He could hear the soft rustle of feathers in the dark, the soft swish of the water as something stirred in it, the soft sob with which an inch or two of that tiny, unseen sand-cliff gave way to the stream, the softer gurgle, as of laughter, with which the water took its toll of earth.
So, thinking not at all, simply as a sand grain in the sand around him, the mystery, the certainty of dawn held him, as it held all things.
The curved line of the world darkened, the shadow of it deepened, as the grey of the sky grew tender as the eye of a mother watching her child asleep. But only for a space. Then the grey hardened, and a trumpet call from a whistling teal told that the great fight of dawn had come.
So, for another space, the Dark and the Light faced each other, waiting for that second trumpet call.
It came, borne on a faint rustle of wind which crept over the edge of the world from the footsteps of the coming day. The shiver of it swept through the shadows; they broke into battalions to face the foe. So into companies, till, as the red spear-points of the sun showed over the horizon, they rallied darkly, desperately, behind each hint of rising ground, in each hint of sheltering hollow. Rallied in vain, for below the spear-points a glittering curve, as of a golden helmet, came resistless.
Then Lance Carlyon stood up, hastily, gun in hand. But he was too late. The mystery of Dawn had held him helpless, as it had held the birds; and now they, too, were freemen of the conquering day.
He fired a couple of shots after them, more as a salute to the victor than in any hope of slaughter; so, with a laugh, turned homeward.
The canoe shot against the stream gaily, but, as he neared the spit, a sudden desire to go home by land assailed him. Am-ma could take the boat back; there might be a chance of a snipe, in that low-lying bit below the mission house, and--
He blushed, even in solitude, at his own moral turpitude. Why not tell the truth; to himself, at least?
He found Am-ma, worn out by his night's anxiety, with his head between his knees, fast asleep; leaving the crocodile, at the agony point of an unending yawn, in sole charge of the little circle of flickering lights. Some of them had gone out, the rest looked trumpery in the growing blaze of day. But what matter? Since, half an hour before, Erda Shepherd had come out of the wigwam with a living child, wrapped quite daintily in an orthodox square of new flannel.
"It is a son, Am-ma, and I think it is very like you," she had said, with a laugh at the wrinkled, wizened old face peering out at its new world.
But Am-ma had grovelled on the ground with tears and cries of blubbering joy. He had been right. TheHuzoorswere kings. They knew theDee-puk-râg. They were the light-bringers, the life-bringers.
He had never asked after his wife, but when Erda had gone inside again, he sat, and in his anxiety to keep the devil from those inside, had twitched away at his string so fiercely that the crocodile's head lost its ferocity in what appeared to be a fit of laughter, until sleep, from sheer relief, overtaking the puller, the laugh had ended in that steady yawn.
Am-ma was on his feet, alert in a second, however, at Lance's touch, like a wild beast.
"'Tis all right,Huzoor" he grinned broadly. "'Tis a son." Then once again the exuberance of his delight made him grovel in the sand at the feet of the Master.
"And the Miss-sahiba?Hath she gone?" asked Lance, blushing once more, now that his own self-deception became impossible.
"Nay, she remains inside," asserted Am-ma. But a look which he gave in the hut proved him wrong. She must have gone out the other way while he slept, he confessed, sheepishly; but there was nothing wrong. The devil had not won a way in; both mother and son were dozing peacefully.
Lance, his hope of walking back with Erda gone, felt inclined to take to the canoe again. Then a savage desire to kill something, at least, suggested the possibility of a snipe in the little swampy bit below the city wall, not far from the mission house; so bidding Am-ma take the canoe up at his leisure, he walked off, feeling, for him, in a very bad temper.
He forgot his quarrel with fate, however, in a second, when, the bit of swamp reached, something buzzed up to fall slantwise like a stone; something which, on picking it up, he found to be the rare Sabine snipe, painted, absolutely beautiful, in its delicate harmony of colour. And the luck did not come singly, for from behind a clump of tiger-grass came Erda Shepherd, a trifle alarmed at the possibility of being shot if she did not show herself.
Lance walked up to her, swiftly, the dead bird in his hand. "You must be awfully tired, being up all night," he began--
He had a way of rushing things, Erda thought, which was disconcerting when one was anxious to keep on the surface. "And you too, Mr. Carlyon," she interrupted; "did you enjoy the ball?" She felt pleased at this able evasion.
"Who--I--Oh! dear me, no," he replied, absently; then he smiled. "I say, wasn't Am-ma pleased. He slobbered and blubbered with joy all over my boots, and yet--" he paused reflectively, "I don't think a little Am-ma could be a very pleasing object."
For the life of her she could not help a smile. "It was not," she confessed frankly; "in fact I think it was the ugliest baby I ever saw. Poor little thing," she added in quick self-reproach. "Anyhow it seemed beautiful to them--it is the first--the first that has lived, I mean." She pulled up short, wondering what possessed her to be so confidential with this strange young man.
"So Am-ma told me," said Lance. "He called you the Life-bringer. It is a nice name."
She fought against the tenderness in his tone. "And you are the Death-bringer," she retorted lightly, pointing to the painted beauty in his hand. "So you and I are at opposite poles, Mr. Carlyon."
He stood looking at her for a moment with a smile. "I don't know, Miss Shepherd. 'Death and Birth are the pivots of the Wheel of Life.' I remember reading that, in Sanskrit, when I went up for my higher; for I've passed it, you know. I'm really not bad at languages when I try."
It was the first time she had ever heard him claim credit for anything, and the fact touched her more than she cared to own. Touched her so closely that she sought instantly for cover.
"I wish I were," she said, moving on, though, as she had known he would, he moved on also. "I'm afraid I shall find it a great trouble having to learn a new one."
"A new one," he echoed quickly, in response to something in her voice. "Are you going to leave Eshwara--soon?"
She paused for a moment ere replying. "Sooner than I expected, Mr. Carlyon; most likely in a day or two. I don't know whether you have heard," she continued, looking him in the face, "but I am engaged to be married to my cousin--Dr. Campbell's son--David Campbell. He is a missionary--as I am--and--" she hesitated. "He is at home,--or was. We did not expect him back for two months, but he has had a good offer of a splendid place where there is any amount of work to be done. The letter telling us this came yesterday--by the same mail as--as he did. He is travelling up country now; and then--"
"And then?" said Lance, quietly. With his gun over his shoulder, he looked what he was, a soldier; and since she began to speak, he had, insensibly, pulled himself together and fallen into a disciplined ordered tread.
"My aunt wants the wedding to be from the mission station in the low hills where they go every summer," went on the girl. She was trying not to look at her companion, not out of pity, but from dread of her own admiration. "So as David"--she felt better after the semi-appropriation of the Christian name--"is in a hurry to start, she thought of going there as soon as the camp leaves--in a day or two. So--so--we shall not see very much more of each other, Mr. Carlyon; shall we?"
He gave her his first look of reproach, being unable, in his absolutely honest humility, to conceive of the vague regret which forced her to the useless appeal.
"I--I hope you will be very happy," he said, quite simply. "Take care, please; that bit is boggier than you think." For the second time in their short acquaintance she felt his hand, not as a friend's, but as a helper, a protector. This time the blood left her face pale.
"I hope so, Mr. Carlyon," she replied, and her hands clasped themselves tightly as if to hold some resolve. "It is what I have always hoped for, thought of." Then suddenly she smiled at him almost appealingly. "I am a bit of a soldier too, you know--I love the fighting."
"You are in the thick of it here, anyhow," he interrupted, pausing.
They had climbed by a flight of steps through the city wall into the small courtyard on which the mission house, which had once been an outpost of the Fort, opened on its inner side. The outer, with its wide overhanging verandah, forming part of the actual city wall. But the remainder of the courtyard was set round by a perfect congeries of small temples, each rearing its upright stone spire--the stone of Baal worship--about the central tank which occupied the middle of the square. It was quite a small tank, and absolutely dry; so that you could see the four or five worn stone steps which led down to the patch of earth, not six feet square, at the bottom. A dozen or more children, boys and girls of the streets, were playing a sort of hop-scotch on these steps, and as Lance looked, one of them slipped and fell into that patch of earth. In a second the others had quitted their game, and fallen pell-mell, too, struggling, kicking, shouting, screaming with laughter.
"Is it a game?" he asked, looking at his companion, amused.
"Yes!" she said, suddenly, her face stern as he had seen it that first time he met her. "It is the game of Life and Death! That is the 'Pool of Immortality,' Mr. Carlyon! The pilgrims come here to bathe--there must be a secret siphon somewhere, for the water only comes when it is wanted. Three years ago the barriers put up to prevent accidents gave way--it was no one's fault. The crowd got in--a man slipped--and--and when the police managed to clear the crush--the--the tank was full up with dead bodies! The childrenplayat it now!"
But they had spied more amusement, and in another second were hanging round Erda's skirts.
"Sing to us, Miss-sahiba,--sing to us before you go in."
She looked apologetically at Lance. "I generally do," she began.
He raised his cap, almost obediently, with a brief "Certainly," and passed on; but as he left the court on his way to the Fort, the first note of her voice made him turn, for a second, to look.
She was seated on the top step of the tank, the children grouped inquisitively round her, and she held her head high-almost defiantly.
"The Son of God goes forth to war,Who follows in His train?"
"The Son of God goes forth to war,Who follows in His train?"
The words were distinctly audible, following him as he passed on, the gun on his shoulder, the dead bird in his hand, and something between blessing and cursing in his heart. But above and through all, he seemed to hear a never-ceasing voice that said, "The pivots of Life are Birth and Death. Death and Birth."
"Half a minute, Dillon!" said the Commissioner abruptly, as the doctor, ushered in by a scarlet-sin-stain of an orderly, entered the tent where the former was working. "I must attend to these gentlemen first."
These gentlemen were Dya Ram, Ramanund, and a third very different sort of person, obtrusively Hindoo in face, figure, attire.
The Commissioner's manner, as he returned to the business in hand, changed from careless familiarity to an elaborate courtesy.
"I quite understand,pundit-sahib," he said in English to Ramanund, "that you are, as you say, actuated by no personal motive. A man of your attainments and culture can scarcely feel a keen interest injogiGorakh-nâth's--that is the name, I think--domicile in a gun barrel!"
The sarcasm was lost on the hearer, who smiled, satisfied. "Quite so, sir," he replied. "It is merely, as my friend Dya Ram postulates, a question as to the legality--"
The Commissioner interrupted him suavely. "In that case it is a matter for the courts, surely."
"Unless your Honour should, as magistrate, act under Section 418 providing for emergencies," began Dya Ram; whereat the official sat back in his chair resignedly.
"Of course," he answered, his brogue running riot, as it always did, when he was contemptuous, "I have that power. But do ye really think, sir, that this present matter is of such paramount importance to the stability of the British Empire, that I should be justified in running counter to the ordinary course of law and justice?" Here the futility of his own sarcasm seemed to come home to him. He paused to consult a file, and when he looked up again, he spoke in Hindustani--evidently for the benefit of the third party. "There is no record whatever," he said briefly, "of any previous claim to the gun. It has been worshipped, of course; but that is a different matter. The military power has no intention of interfering with this habit. I may add that a counter petition, praying me not to allow appeal on the ground that thisjogiis a man of ill fame, and a public nuisance, has been filed by themohunt(guardian of shrines) at the Pool of Immortality."
The obtrusively Hindoo figure which had remained standing, though his companions were seated, here folded his hands as if in prayer, leant forward, and began garrulously:--
"Huzoorit is malice--malice of hereditary nature. They hope to gain money--"
"Exactly,Mohunt-jee; your money! if the pilgrims haven't the attraction of a live man in a gun close to your shrine your trade will suffer," interrupted the Commissioner, with brutal truth. "I am afraid I can do nothing. Of course," he continued, reverting to English, "if you bring a suit to claim prescriptive right, you may," here his patience gave way finally, "but God bless my soul, gentlemen! Surely men like you have something better to do than bolster up your countrymen in a preposterous business like this!"
"Pardon me, sir," protested Dya Ram, litigiously, "but if it is prescriptive right, vested in citizens, then--"
"Then, sir!" interrupted the stern, high voice, "the British Empire will have no choice but to allowjogiGorakh-nâth to be a son-of-a-gun till the day of his death! So good-morning to you; unless--" here the suavity returned in full force--"there is any other subject you wish to bring forward."
There was not, apparently; and as the trio were ushered out, the Commissioner sat still further back in his chair, tilting it with his feet against the table, and ran his fingers through his hair in an exasperated fashion.
"'Pon my soul, it's inconceivable," he said; then, reaching forward, took up a newspaper that was lying on the table, and began to read.
"If we are asked what we, the educated natives of India, claim, we reply boldly, all things that Englishmen of equal culture possess by right of birth. We refuse flatly to be lumped in with the crass ignorance of our fellow-countrymen who have, alas! not yet risen to a pitch of desiring that liberty of which John Stuart Mill speaks in such glowing terms in his valuable pamphlet."
"Hark to that, now!" he commented, flinging the paper back. "That's Mr. Dya Ram's last, and it goes on, as per usual, to abuse. They asked me to put a name to it, and I've just been telling the confidential department that, barring a horrible misuse of synonym, there's no sedition, no harm in it whatever! And there isn't, Dillon. The son-of-a-gun business is ten times as dangerous. Dering's within his rights, but I wish to blazes he'd left the brute alone; or he might have put a blank cartridge in and fired a salute by mistake when Gorakh-nâth was inside! But ye can't keep the military in subjection. The department's aimin' at a fight, and small blame to it! I'm spoiling for one myself this instant moment; so come along, doctor, an' let me hear what your criminals have to say. There's a pretty sheaf of complaints for ye, ye hard-hearted murderin' slave driver!"
He took up a bulky file of papers as he spoke, and passed them to an orderly in exchange for his hat, which the man held ready.
"Yes! it's pretty good," assented the doctor, placidly, as, keeping step, the two passed out of the tent, so down the palm avenue towards the gaol, which the Commissioner was going to inspect. "It comes of their being idle. Wait till I get them digging again. I'll work the mischief out of them. When are we going on; and where?"
His companion shook his head. "Can't get an answer out of the Public Works. Is there anything you would like done, meanwhile?"
Dr. Dillon laughed sardonically. "Pretty considerable, rather! Only it would take months to get sanction. But, if you pass it, Smith says he could put a wire on from the Fort easily in a day. It would save sending by road if there was trouble, and the great thing is to hit back as quick as you can. The mutiny taught us that."
"Ay," said the Commissioner, musingly, "that's the straight tip; and that's why steam and electricity rule India. One can be ready without letting people know. If that had been the case in the mutiny--" he shrugged his shoulders, then went on--"these things come so easily; a touch starts them; but you mustn't show that you know it. Still, if you thought there would be any difficulty--I mean if you mightn't be able to hold your own till they came from the Fort--we might make some excuse for quartering a troop closer."
Dr. Dillon shook his head. "It isn't worth it. I believe myself they'll settle down when that big brute, Gopi, I told you about, gets his ticket to-morrow. If I didn't want to get rid of him I'd put him in cells for six weeks. And there's a warder, too,--or perhaps more. But there's no fear. I could hold the whole 'biz' myself, till the brutes managed to get off their leg irons, and as I keep every toolextra mural, I don't believe there's a bit of iron within the walls--except the shackles themselves. So I should have an hour or two, anyhow--"
"Now, here you are," he continued, with pardonable pride, as they passed under the mud archway which led into the gaol; a long archway with a massive door at either end, tunnelling a square block of flat-roofed building. "You'll find everything spick and span, I can tell you, for I've been making the beggars polish their own leg irons, so as to keep 'em a bit busy."
It was, indeed, spick and span, as only an Indian gaol can be, where everything, including the prisoners' beds, is freshly mud-plastered every week. Spick and span in a mere monotony of mud and lack of colour. The prisoners, fifteen hundred of them or more, stood in four long, straight rows, naked save for their waistcloths and the eared caps on their shaven heads; their blankets, folded to a small square under their feet, giving them a strangely wooden appearance, as if they stood on stands, like the figures in Noah's ark.
A couple of policemen fell out and drew their truncheons to walk close behind the Commissioner; but Dr. Dillon waved his pair back.
"Never show you expect anything," he said laconically, "and as I've always refused a guard, I can't take one now."
Nor was there any apparent need for one. Some faces scowled at him, but most were occupied with the Commissioner, who, when a prisoner raised his hand, paused to take the written petition which, nine times out of ten, was ready for presentation.
"There must be a good many warders in it," remarked the Commissioner, dryly. And the doctor nodded.
"Now there's only the hospital," said the latter, when the solitary cells had been inspected, the cook room interviewed, and the dinner to come tasted. "It won't take you long. There was only one case in this morning."
But as they entered the long open ward, like a cloister, mud-plastered as all else, but with iron beds looking strangely at variance with their surroundings, two of these were occupied, and at one, a hospital dresser was standing, looking somewhat scared.
Dr. Dillon gave a hasty exclamation as he stepped up to the bed and looked at the sick man.
"When did he come in?" he asked briefly.
"Ten minutes ago,Huzoor; thebaboohath given him--"
"Never mind what he hath given him," interrupted the doctor, holding up his hand in warning, "go on with it, and tell thebaboo-sahibto come to me for orders--at once. Now then, sir, that's all--and a bit too much too--" he added in a lower voice, as they passed out together, "for it's a case of cholera."
The Commissioner looked grave. "That will complicate matters, won't it?"
"Can't say. You never can tell. They may take it as a dispensation, or there may never be another case. That fellow's done for, anyhow--he'll be dead in an hour."
"That's quick, isn't it?" asked his companion, calmly.
"Rather. I've seen a man go out in ten minutes, though. The worst of it is," he added, with a frown, "if there really is some conspiracy at the bottom of the discontent, it is as likely as not the devils who are working it, may take advantage of this--I don't mean of this death--thatgoes without saying. But when cholera is about, poison is hard to detect, and even if I stamp out thedisease, which I mean to do, they may simulate it." He bit at his thumbnail viciously as he strode on, thinking and muttering. "By God!" he murmured, "if I could catch 'em at it! However," he added aloud, "it's no good fussing. If the thing comes, it comes, and I've kept you here too long as it is, sir. Do you know it's close on half-past ten?"
"Be jabers!" exclaimed the Commissioner, "only twenty minutes to bathe, shave, breakfast, and put on me gold lace continuations. Well, ta, ta! I'll see you at the show, of course."
Dr. Dillon looked puzzled for an instant; the puzzledom of a man whose thoughts are recalled from afar. "The show? Oh, yes! I was forgetting. Rather, sir. Why! it is as much my canal as Smith's, for we've done every inch of it together; besides, I have got to drive his wife down."
"Where the deuce is Dering?" asked the Commissioner, quite ingenuously; but George Dillon flushed up. It was visible even under his leather-like tan.
"I really can't say, sir; otherwise engaged, I presume."
His elder turned to him, surprised, yet with instant apology. "I'm sorry; I shouldn't have said it; but I really meant nothing."
Dr. Dillon gave a dry, sardonic laugh. "Oh! it is all right, sir. I quite believe you didn't. Nobody does mean anything in that sort of connection. It's left for the doctors to face facts as they are really; and then you call us brutal." He turned back, as he spoke, to the hospital.
Half an hour afterwards, however, having in the interim provided for every contingency he could foresee, including the bare possibility of his carrying infection, he appeared in Mrs. Smith's drawing-room, looking--for him--quite smart and spruce; since, as he had said, this end to three years' work was an event in his life also.
He found her, dressed in her daintiest, in a rocking-chair; and as he entered, his quick trained ear took in the petulance of the recurring push of one daintily shod foot. The room was darkened, and full of the scent of flowers. It was a familiar room to him, yet he never entered it without a glad recognition of the extreme feminine refinement shown in its every detail; for its mistress was one of those women whose fragility comes less from physical delicacy than from sensitiveness of mind.
She was leaning back in her chair listlessly; yet the white ringed hands which clasped the fair curls on her forehead showed an almost passionate strain of muscle.
"I believe you'll have to go without me," she said, as he approached, "I've such a racking headache. I don't believe I can face it--I'm sure I can't."
He passed on to her side, and laid his hand on one of hers for an instant, while his quick eye took in the details around him. A note had slipped from her lap to the floor. It lay face up, and the words "Dear Mrs. Smith, so sorry--" showed in Vincent Dering's writing. So, not content with the message of excuse sent her by the offender through him, she must have written! That was a dangerous development of the situation. He stood looking down at her indulgently, as he might on a fractious child who did not understand. And she did not--poor soul!
"You're nervous," he said. "Let me give you half a whiskey-and-soda before we start. It'll make you all right."
"Nervous!" she echoed irritably, her foot setting her chair a-swing to match her tone. "I'm never nervous--you know that is not one of my failings--is it?"
"No," he replied, "but you are a bundle of nerves for all that. You wouldn't be the woman you are if you weren't. And you are nervous at this moment. Nervous, despondent, out of heart. Come! make an effort!"
She gave a petulant little giggle of impatience. "You speak as if I were a Mrs. Dombey; but I'm not that sort. Besides, it killed her. I am not coming. It doesn't really matter, you know; nobody will miss me--it will be all right."
George Dillon, watching her, felt sorry, for once, at the correctness of his own diagnosis. He knew her so well that it seemed imperative to give her a hint of the reality. The danger of a finaléclaircissementwith Captain Dering seemed imminent, and the shock of it might lead to anything, if the knowledge of her own weakness came to her in the presence of the man she had cheated herself into calling a friend.
"Your husband would. It is a great day for him," he said, laying his dexterous surgeon's hand full on the raw. As he expected, the answer came passionately, and gave him an opening.
"He! O, he is quite happy as it is! He wouldn't miss me a bit. Why should he? I am not complaining, mind you--but why should he? He has interests enough without me."
Dr. Dillon deliberately sought for the nearest chair, drew it close, and sat down beside his patient in professional fashion, his eyes on her face, his hands on his knees.
"My dear lady," he said, "don't talk--excuse me--rubbish. Try and remember what women are always forgetting--that theyarewomen, and that, while Eve swallowed her portion of the fatal apple, his stuck--thank God for it!--in Adam's throat."
She ceased her rocking, to sit and stare at him with a growing resentment, which belied the words that came at last, almost sullenly.
"I don't understand what you mean in the very least. What has Eve's apple to do with--my headache?"
"A very great deal," he answered coolly, "and with more than your headache, which, by the way, is only a symptom, not a cause. The real evil is--is something different. If you do not understand--though I think you do a little--" she shook her head--"I can only repeat my advice about the whiskey-and-soda; for I cannot explain to you crudely what I mean."
She interrupted him angrily. "You have no right to hint at things you dare not say."
Her very indignation betrayed her, and he smiled kindly. "Perhaps not," he said. Then he paused, hesitated, finally leant nearer, with a look of resolve in his queer, intelligent face. "But I will tell you what I can do. I can sacrifice my self-respect and tell you a bit of my personal history which I never meant you to know, but which may help to cure--your headache." His voice, usually so dry, had a softness in it, though he went on without the faintest emotion. "Mrs. Smith, I have done myself the honour for nearly three years, of considering you as near perfection as a woman can he. Allow me to finish, please! I have done more. I have been, as the phrase runs, in love with my ideal of perfection; but I think you will admit that I have never allowed my feelings to give you, myself, or anyone else a--shall we say, a nervous headache? Now, after that, don't you think we had better start?"
He rose in quite a matter-of-fact way, took up his hat, and waited for her answer.
He had to wait some time, while the petulance of her renewed rocking ceased gradually in a determined rhythm, and he felt his courage going down to his boots. It was heroic treatment, but she was a healthy subject, and her anger would pass. Anything was better than letting her perfection suffer.
The even creak of the rocker ended at last, and she rose, as he had risen, calmly, and faced him.
"I quite understand now what you meant, Dr. Dillon," she said freezingly, "and why you did not care to explain. I shall, of course, never be able to forgive you for daring to dream such a thing possible, but--"
"But," he interrupted, without a quiver, "you will take that half whiskey-and-soda. Here!qui-hi! Whiskey sharâb belâtee pani la'o juldi; mem-sahiba jata hai. (Bring whiskey-and-soda; thememis going.)"
Perhaps the command of that assertion helped her to a decision. At any rate she did not countermand it, but spent the rather awkward pause which inevitably ensued in a perfect field-day of her hat-pins among her curls and veil. Whereat George Dillon, despite a certain bruised feeling, smiled, telling himself she was a true woman.
Nevertheless when, as she was stepping into the dogcart, his friendly help came necessarily to the fore again, she reverted to her dignified resentment. "I ought," she said stiffly, "to have thanked you for--for your good opinion of me, and your evident desire to be kind. I do so now. But I fear it will be quite impossible for me to forget or forgive the delusion."
"That is quite a minor matter," he put in, gleefully. "Now, cheer up, Bacilla, you brute, or we shall be late," Bacilla being his term of abuse for a pony which required a little stick.
They were only just in time, no more. Five minutes after they had joined the company gathered on the red-brick masonry of the canal head, under a canopy of waving garlands and gay bunting, with that inevitable British flag as the centre of all, the small man with the big star on his breast took a step forward, raised a handle, and, as the first drops of water trickled through a sluice, declared, in a violent Scotch accent, "that the Victoria-Kaiser-i-Hind" canal was open. So, keeping time as it were, slowly, majestically, to those (also inevitable) strains of "God save the Queen," the outer floodgates swung back, allowing the river to have permanent possession during good behaviour, of the walled basin between them and the inner ones. Thus, slowly, with a gurgling of water seeking its level, the surface rose till the half-open sluices in the second gates were reached, and a thin curve tipped over to fall with a splash, and send a tiny scout of a stream to find out what this new straight road might mean. Only a tiny scout, since the earthworks beyond had to be accustomed by degrees to their new tenant.
Still the new way was open, and the current of the river hesitated in the old one.
"Bravo, Smith!" cried George Dillon, coming round, when the cheering and general congratulations were over, to slap his colleague on the back, metaphorically and actually. "We've done that; and now perhaps, old man, you'll have time for other things."
"Yes," assented the tall, gaunt man, dreamily; "now I shall have time to settle that point about the searchlight."
"The what?"
"Search-light. There's been a correspondence in theEngineerabout it; and as I've all the electric plant here, lying useless, now the show's over,--until it's wanted for something else, of course,--I am going to see if I can't overcome their difficulty in concentrating all the power on a sufficiently narrow area. I believe I know how to do it."
George Dillon looked at him with fierce, humorous exasperation. "Believe!" he echoed. "I know you can! You are the most intolerably circumscribed, self-concentrated, narrow-minded machine of a man I ever came across. Heaven help you!"
As he drove Mrs. Smith home again, it was his turn to sit mumchance until, womanlike, she relented faintly, and, exaggerating her own powers, trusted she had not been,etc., though of course,etc.--
"Not in the least, thank you," he replied. "I was only meditating if I should tell you that I think Eugene has softening of the brain."
"Softening of the brain!" she echoed, horrified. "Oh, doctor, do you think it's that?"
"Well, it isn't softening of the heart, anyhow," he said grimly. "But I'm not joking. If someone doesn't get a hold on some portion of that man--I don't care what it is--heart, brain, stomach, anything--and prevent him from killing himself with work, India will lose her best engineer. What he wants is someone to--to give him a nervous headache!"
"We will leave that subject alone, please," she said loftily; but when her husband joined them in the verandah, she went over ostentatiously to him and pinned a carnation in his buttonhole, hoping he would like it better than the rose she gave him the day before, which--this was in a louder tone for the doctor's benefit--he had forgotten to put in!
"Did I, my dear?" replied her spouse. "Oh, yes! I remember you put it in my minim glass because I was working in my shirt-sleeves. Then I wanted the glass. So it got withered and the head snapped off."
Dr. Dillon laughed--his usual dry laugh. "That is one of the many tragedies which come from the delusion all women have that flowers can't be out of place."