When Roshan Khân had joined those two great stabilities, Faith and Love, into one passionate desire for Vincent Dering's damnation, he had meant to follow the English etiquette on such occasions, and keep his aspiration to himself.
But it had been impossible for him instantly to rejoin the society in which he found himself; that is, a society which shared that fundamental crime--which more even than any definite jealousy had roused his anger against Captain Dering--of being alien to his creed, his customs, his code of conduct towards women. So he had wandered off into the garden again, shadowed by old Akbar's incredulity, curiosity, and sympathy; until, partly from sheer impatience, but mostly from sheer inherited habit of employing such as Akbar Khân in anything approaching an intrigue, he had made a clean breast of the situation.
Even the latter, however, had, as it were, shied at the extreme novelty of the idea when it was first mooted; but, by degrees, its vast possibilities of advantage to faithful old retainers overpowered his abject terror at the bare idea of Father Narâyan suspecting such a thing. The old master, he told himself, was old, indeed! God only knew if he would last a year or a day; therefore it would be well to ensure the favour of the new mistress. And there could be no harm in sounding her as to what course that favour would follow. One could never tell with a woman; and his wicked, experienced old eyes had caught many a hint of Anâri Begum in Laila's childhood. Perhaps she had changed since she went to Calcutta. He could but try.
So when, on the morning after the ball, Laila, in obedience to her pious resolve to do nothing really wrong, had bidden him--with threats of vengeance if he betrayed the fact of their having come at all--remove and return certain trays of clothes and jewels which had been smuggled by someone into her room, he had fallen at her feet, confessed falsely that he was the offender, and besought her not to impose so unmerited a disgrace on his employer, who had been actuated by the ordinary rules of native etiquette which prescribed some recognition of his cousin, the head of his family.
Naturally enough, this brought the girl's curiosity, long restless, to his aid; and she sat listening to the many things he had to tell her, with that faintly mysterious smile of hers. And as she listened, she watched a pigeon, all jewelled about its bosom in rainbow hues, and with a dainty little pair of silver jingles about its jasper feet, which was coquetting and pirouetting to attract the attention of its neighbours on the wide marble sill of her latticed window. For Laila had a room in the upper storey all painted, carved, and set with little balconies, which was worthy of any king's favourite. And Father Ninian, mindful lingeringly of the fine ladies' boudoirs of his youth in Rome, had filled it, against her return from school, with all the prettiest spoils of the palace. Sèvres vases, rare old cabinets, quaint carved tables which had been brought thither for the dead Nawabs; treasures that were also, inevitably, of the king's-favourite type,--therefore unlike the owner of the room, as she sat in her white muslin frock, heavy-eyed, almost sallow, from the last night's dissipation.
"So she--my grandmother, you say--was a dancing-girl--a real dancing-girl?" Even her surprise and curiosity were listless. Yet the next moment, while Akbar was protesting the superiority of Anâri Begum over all the dancing-girls of his vast experience, she had burst into a sudden laugh, uncovered one of the trays with kicks which sent first one, then the other of her bronze slippers flying, seized on a pair of silver anklets, and there she was centring a Persian rug spread on the marble floor as if she had been born to it. Coquetting, pirouetting, with a challenging clash, a half-impudent jerk of the jingles, for all the world like the pigeon on the window-sill.
Like something else also; so that old Akbar felt a shiver run through him, lest, after all, his first impression should prove right, and this be no more than asimulacrum,--a ghost, a changeling, come to possess the usually indifferent lazy Miss-baba. Yet when, all of a sudden, she raised her white muslin skirt high in both hands and began to sing, at the top of her voice, the wicked little love song which Vincent Dering had sung the first day she met him, old Akbar's dread turned to sheer wonder. This was not a ghost, but a devil; reckless, unrestrained, with a fling of white arms, a kick of white feet, all held to rhythm by the outrageous frivolity of the song, until, with that last staccato note, she threw herself in a chair, breathless, gurgling with laughter and sheer mischief.
"Lo! Akbar," she gasped, "my grandmother never danced like that, did she? I don't believe she was my grandmother! I believe you are telling stories!"
Akbar looked wise, and thrust out his folded hands in cringing protest. "The most noble says true, Anâri Begum never danced thus. But there is the grandfather, Bun-avâtar-sahib bahadur, to be accounted for also."
Laila frowned. The reminder brought back the other side of the story, to which she had listened so often from her guardian's lips, while her pretended indifference masked a real pride. Of her grandfather's gallantry, his good looks, his love of adventure. And of someone else, also, who had always had a secret attraction for the girl. That most beautiful woman in Rome, the companion of princes, the divine singer, the best, the dearest--
Laila's laughter failed her; she rose, and going over to the window looked out absently, startling the pigeon into flight. The sun turned its breast purple, and green, and gold, as it fluttered down to renew its pirouetting on a cupola below, just above the river. And below that again was the roof of the balcony where she had sat with Vincent. The girl's eyes grew soft. She understood now. That best, that dearest, that most beautiful, must have loved her guardian. That was the secret of his remembrance. How could one ever forget that one had sat in a balcony hand in hand? So content, yet saying so little--only feeling. Buthehad said some things. He had said she was beautiful, that she ought always to wear that dress, and she had told him she could not,--that shemustsend it back--that hemustlearn to like her as much in her ordinary clothes--that he would never see her in that dress again. But, after all, why not--if--?
She turned suddenly to the go-between. "There is no need to take them back to-day," she said, sharply; "but thou canst tell the person who sent them--he who claims cousinship--that I will not keep them, that I know nothing of them; that he must send andtakethem away."
Akbar, with an inward determination to do nothing so palpably foolish, salaamed down to the ground. The Presence, he said, in doing this showed her dignity; it was undoubtedly the right course to pursue. But, in the mean time, would the Begum-sahiba--she must excuse a tongue which could not always bear with the paltry present, which remembered the facts of the past, the possibilities of the future--not temper her noble severity with the usual courtly favour? Her cousin's grandmother, a most virtuous princess, sister to the late Nawab, was still alive. Her memory of Bun-avatâr-sahibwas still so green that doubtless she would be able to tell the Begum-sahibamany things of which a mere mean slave could not be cognizant. And this most virtuous, most interesting one, had long been anxious to return a visit which the Begum-sahibahad graciously paid her, in company with amissen-miss--
"What! That funny old fat woman!" interrupted Laila, with a laugh. "That dirty old thing? I remember, shedidclaim to be a relation of the Nawab's. And when I asked her why she wore such dirty clothes she was angry, and said she had beautiful ones all tied up in bundles! I don't believe she had, though--"
"The dress the Begum-sahibawore last night is one of them," interrupted Akbar, quietly; "it belonged to Anâri Begum,Huzoor, and there are plenty more like it. And all are really theHuzoor's; no one else's." Laila looked down on the trays with a new interest. "Did it really belong to--toher?" she asked; "and the jewels also?"
"The jewels also. There are plenty of them. And if Anâri Begum was really the Begum-sahiba'sgrandmother, then the jewels are hers by right."
"She can come if she wishes," interrupted Laila, impatiently. "I see thy craft, Akbar, but I care not for that. Yet it will be fun to receive her as--as a Begum. And no harm either, since themissenladies receive her, I know, and her like--when they will come! It will be at night, of course, to ensure her privacy, so Pidar Narâyan need know nothing. Only"--she paused, a change swept over her face, leaving it dimpled, cunning, full of mischief and cajolery. "I do naught for naught! If I please thee, thou must please me! If thou art their messenger, thou must be mine also; or I tell Pidar Narâyan!"
Akbar-khân'swicked old eyes positively leered approval; he waggled his head and chuckled. Wherefore not? Was there a better, more careful messenger in the world than he, or one more capable of deft arrangings?
"I want none," she put in with a quick distaste, a shrinking from his manner. "'Tis but to take a note to Dering-sahib; he must know somewhat before he comes with the othersahib loguethis afternoon. There is no arrangement needed, no fuss."
How could there be, she asked herself, as, after the old sinner had gone off, charmed at this renewal of a once familiar occupation, she sat on the window-sill looking down on the roof of the balcony where she had been so content. For what could be simpler than to make it quite clear that you were real, that you did not pretend, that you were not even afraid? That, briefly, you were not like Mrs. Smith, who took so much--one could not help seeing that!--and gave so little--one could not help seeing that, also! For what was a "Thanks! many, Captain Dering," in return for all the trouble he lavished on her?
So it came to pass that when Vincent Dering went to the palace that afternoon, some words were haunting heart and brain, as Juliet's words must have haunted Romeo's. No more; no less. But they slid into and filled up the blanks between some words of his own which he had spoken carelessly, not five minutes before he had first seen Laila, and which came back to his memory unbidden. "It isn't altogether despicable to let yourself loose in Paradise without anarrière penséeof flaming swords, especially if you can give pleasure to someone else thereby! One could play Romeo and Juliet in this garden nicely."
Well, he had played it for an hour or two, swept off his feet by chance. Whether he would continue to play it was unsettled till her note came. That ended his vague reluctance, and he went over to the palace, eager as any lover could be for the interview she suggested in "the old place when it grows dusk, and the people will mostly have gone."
For those of the camp who were bound to follow the Viceroy's whim of riding by the old road--the pilgrims' road--while the big camp went round by the longer, easier route, had promised to look in on the palace on their way past it, for a cup of tea, a good-by. Since already, the functions over, the dream-city had begun to melt away; the Hosts of the Lord-sahibwere passing on.
"Glory be!" said the Commissioner with heart-felt gratitude, "we've done our worst and leave you to take the consequences. That's sound policy. Anyhow, we are ahead of everybody on the road to heaven, and the pilgrims will have to swallow the dust of our feet! I wonder how they'll like it." He was in wild spirits, like a schoolboy escaped from school; yet as he paused to shake hands with Dr. Dillon, he said aside, "Any more cases?"
"Two," said the doctor, laconically, "both dead. It is a bad type."
His hearer's face was unmovable as he turned to Mrs. Smith, who stood close by. "Good-by, my dear lady," he said cheerfully, "remember me house is yours if you, or the child, want it. Doctor, couldn't you conscientiously recommend change of air to the hills? Couldn't ye swear the close proximity to an open canal and a gaol is unwholesome? If ye could, you'd oblige a grass-widower, whose wife is at Baden-Baden--or is it Marienbad?--living prodigally, while he has to fill himself with husks which no self-respecting swine would eat. Faith, me dear madam, I'd bless you if you'd come and kill the cook. It's a woman's work; not a man's."
Dr. Dillon, with a quick look, backed him up instantly. "Certainly. I told Mrs. Smith a long time ago that she and Gladys had had enough of Eshwara. Indeed, as her doctor, she would be doing me a personal favour if--"
Muriel Smith swept round on him sharply. She was looking her very best, in her very best gown; white, mystic, wonderful, with a faint gleam of silver embroidery about waist and hem. And she had been obtrusively, unnecessarily friendly with Vincent Dering all the afternoon; even now she was standing with him attached to her apron-strings.
"I don't think nervous headaches are dangerous," she said, eying Dr. Dillon coolly. "But thanks all the same. I should love to kill somebody; even a cook. Perhaps I may, by and by, whenallthe nice people leave. I'm so sorryyou'regoing, but we are still to be quite gay, aren't we, Captain Dering? And that reminds me we have to settle when that riding party is to come off. Good-by--good-by!" She waved her hand to the departing Commissioner, and carried Vincent Dering off, with a defiant look at the doctor.
He, knowing her, smiled indulgently; but Father Ninian, who had come down to see his guest off, looked after her with a wistful pain in his kind old face.
"That is a mistake," he said briefly; then the wistfulness grew into a puzzled look, and he added, half to himself, "It need not be, surely; there is something wrong. I can't understand--"
Dr. Dillon, catching the end of the remark, gave a cynical laugh and turned on his heel. "No one does," he said as he went off. He would not discuss her even with dear old Pidar Narâyan. For the rest, though he was keen to get back to his jail, he would wait till she tired of her game, and then drive her home himself to her idiot of a husband, who was too busy over his blessed search-light to see things that were going on under his very eyes.
Captain Dering, however, was already impatient. It was growing dusk; the shadows were claiming the garden bit by bit, and as the glint left the varnished leaves of the orange trees, the white flowers stood out like little stars against the gloom and sent a bewildering perfume into the darkening air. He could see no hint of Laila anywhere; Laila in that detestable white muslin garment which made him long vainly to get rid of the surroundings which suited her so ill, drive all that civilized crew from the garden, and claim it as his own--and hers! She must have gone to the balcony already. She must be waiting for him. And yet a soft-heartedness for this other woman with whom he had been friends, whom for a few days he had imagined he loved (it had come tothisnow) forbade him from leaving her cavalierly. So it was long past dusk, and the short Indian twilight was hovering on the edge of night, ere he made his escape; and, full of anxiety lest Laila should have lost patience or hope, hurried down to the wide archway, and so, by the turn riverwards, to the right, into the balcony. Most girls, he told himself, would by this time have taken offence; but she was there.
As he entered, her figure showed dimly against the light beyond.
"I'm afraid I am awfully late," he began, then paused; for, as she turned, there was a faint clash of silver, a faint gleam of it too. His heart gave a great throb of glad recognition. It was Laila! Laila indeed! the Laila of that dream last night. And she had riskedthisto please him!
"Are you?" she said. "I thoughtIwas late; forthistook time; but I wanted to be the same--always the same to you, always--always!"
She stretched her hands to him, but he set them aside, took her in his arms, and kissed her passionately.
"Yes! Laila! always Laila--my Laila!"
She gave him back his kisses joyfully. "I knew you would come," she said. "Love comes to love, you know."
He called her Juliet then, and many another lover's name. She took them all, and gave them back again without reserve, until, as they stood there, someone passing outward from the arched passage to the garden, paused to listen at the half-heard sound of voices. For Father Ninian--who had come down to his own rooms for a pair of foils wherewith to give Lance Carlyon a lesson in the "Addio del Marito," until Captain Dering should choose to come out of the recesses of the garden and allow of their going back to the Fort together--knew of none likely to use, or even to be aware of, the balcony. So he turned thither curiously, then stood arrested, so that the clash of the foils on the stone, as he purposely lowered their points, came as a warning to those two that they were observed. Laila, with a catlike noiselessness, withdrew in a second. She, a yard or two away, in deepest shadow, stood leaning in a careless, easy attitude over the balustrade. Her only possibility of escape lay, she felt instinctively, in showing no desire to do so. Vincent, for his part, turned to face the old priest, prepared to brazen it out; for his blood was running like wild-fire in his veins. Yet scarcely so fast as the heart's blood had once leapt, and was even now leaping, in the old man who came forward, facing him also. Came forward slowly, shortsightedly, a foil in each hand. If he had held out one, bade him take the button off and fight for his life, Vincent Dering would scarcely have been surprised, would almost have been pleased. It would have raised him in his own self-esteem. For he knew perfectly well he had no right to be there; that, as yet, he was not sure of his own footing.
But Pidar Narâyan did not. He paused, as he generally did, a few paces away, a slender, straight shadow in black, girt about with that pale sash, on which, and on his pale face, such light as there was fell softly. For there was no anger in the latter; only an almost passionate regret and pity. Even so, his words startled the young man, who stood prepared for defiance.
"Oh! Captain Dering!" he said courteously, "it is you, is it? You have found a pleasant place, indeed! But scarcely a very safe one for your companion--" he turned to that faint gleam of white and silver in the arched shadow.--"The air grows chill, madam, so close to the river," he continued, his voice taking a tone almost of command, "and you are lightly clad. Will you not be wise, and leave us?"
Vincent's surprise had passed by this time into a rush of vexation, almost indignation, for he had grasped the old man's mistake. For an instant he felt bound to undeceive him, then the impossibility of doing so held him silent, feeling a coward indeed; so, desperately, he could only join his voice to Father Ninian's. It seemed the only way out of theimpasse.
"Perhaps you had better go--"
Laila did not need more. Already, under cover of the shadow, she had dexterously slipped off her silver jingles, lest they should betray what really seemed to her her worst, nay! her only offence;--the taking and wearing of Roshan Khân's present. And now, wrapping her veil about her like a cloak, gathering her trailing skirts to orthodox length with an appalling presence of mind, she was off with just the little uneasy laugh which might well befit the situation.
She left her companion bewildered, yet still facing the old man recklessly. Since he could not explain, he did not mean to be hectored. Yet, once again, the old voice took him unawares.
"Memory plays strange tricks with us at times," it said slowly, but with a suggestion of the fateful, hopeless rhythm of a Greek chorus in it. "She has taken me back, this evening, nearly sixty long years. The river before us is the yellow flood of the Tiber, the woman who has just left us is the woman I loved--sixty long years ago--I had kissed her, as you have kissed her. I had told her I loved her, as you have just told her--and then, like an echo from the river below where a boat was moored, came to our ears, the same words, 'I love you.'--They were spoken, Captain Dering, by a boy, barely in his teens, to a waiting-maid. The boy was her son. She had been married, as they marry them in Italy, almost before her girlhood, and I, the boy's tutor, was nearer her age than his father--a better man, too, Captain Dering! But those words--'I love you'--parted us once, and for all. They mirrored the truth for us--the truth of the love which hides in balconies--in pleasure boats--" he took a step forward, and his whole presence changed. He raised his hand, priest to its finger tips. "Let it mirror the truth to you also, my son--leave this poor lady to her duty, as I--"
Vincent Dering broke in on him haughtily, his pride in arms, impatience at the falseness of his position making him discourteous.
"You don't understand; you are absolutely mistaken--I refuse to explain, but I really must ask you not to interfere."
The old man's whole bearing changed again. He drew himself up, and, foils in hand, bowed, as fencers do at the salute.
"Were I the lady's husband, sir, I wouldmakeyou answer. As a priest of God, I must warn you that I will speak, if--"
Vincent Dering interrupted him again. "I can't prevent that--but you will wrong us--her at any rate--the best, the kindest woman--"
He paused, for Father Ninian had come close, laid a hand on his, and the touch seemed to bring silence.
"It is sixty long years, Captain Dering," he said, and his eyes seemed to pierce through the darkness, "since I have laid my hand on my fellow-men save in the hope of healing. It was a fancy of mine after--after we kissed, and parted. But I touch you as a second self, a fellow-sinner; for she too was the best--the kindest--" His old voice failed.
Despite his anger at the whole miserable mistake, Vincent was touched; but despite his emotion, his annoyance strengthened.
"Possibly," he broke in, "but I must really refuse to discuss the matter further. Shall we end this, sir,--unless--" he gave a reckless laugh and pointed to the foils--"you would like to fight it out?"
Once more Father Ninian bowed, as fencers bow in the salute, the priest, the wise counsellor, lost in an older entity than these; in the high-born Scotch student, who, for a while, had forgotten his vocation to ruffle with the best blood in Italy. "I have not the privilege of being the lady's protector," he answered hotly. "If I were,"--He paused, then said courteously, "Shall we come upstairs? I came down for these foils in order to teach Mr. Carlyon the thrust we spoke of once. 'L'Addio del Marito,' they called it in my youth--I doubt if the name has changed now. He will be wondering what has become of me, and--and it!"
As Vincent followed him, he felt a thrill at the savageness of the old man's tone, and told himself that here was the Church Militant indeed.
He might have said so with still more reason ten minutes after, when Father Ninian was left alone. For the hour proved too late for lessons, and Lance Carlyon--who had been out of sorts ever since his walk at dawn with Erda Shepherd--was obliged to give in to dinner, grumbling the while, that Vincent was the worst chum he ever came across. Never to be found when he was wanted, then turning up when dear old Pidar Narâyan looked as if he could have licked creation.
Possibly Lance might have repeated this assertion, also, with greater fervour, could he have been witness to Father Ninian's actions, when, his last guest gone, he went to put the foils back in the armoury next the chapel.
For he would have seen him, with head bowed over the crossed foils he held, repeating a "mea culpa" as he passed the altar; but ere the second foil matched its fellow on the armoury wall, he would have seen as pretty a bit of sword-play as could well be seen. Many a dexterous turn of wrist, many a quick imaginary parry, many a sharpriposte, following each other accurately, as if memory held each attack, each defence of an unseen foe; until finally, swift as a flash, would come a falter back, as if from a blow, then a thrust forward.
There was a little silver bell--such as men put to a falcon's hood--no bigger than a sixpence, shaped like a man's heart, upon the tassel of a resting lance beneath the solitary foil. And the tassel swayed gently in the cool river breeze.
Yet at each thrust the heart-shaped bell chimed a feeble protest under the button of the foil, making the Church Militant smile cheerfully.
The darkness which holds the dawn was, as a rule, silent as the grave in the sand-stretches beyond the river, where the wide cut of the canal, the huge mud-heap of the gaol, with its scattered workshops and houses, showed as mere spots and lines on the illimitable plain. But on the night after the band had played "God save the Queen," while the first drops of sacred water trickled over the chink of the sluice into the dry bed of the canal below, its silence was broken by unfamiliar sounds.
First of all, by the now ceaseless splash of the thin, glassy curve of water on its way to find out this new road to the sea. It had a sort of dreamy whisper in it, as if it were telling its first impressions, its hopes, its fears, to the river it was leaving behind.
And on this background of ceaseless sound came two others intermittently.
The first--a muffled hammering from the darkness which hid the Viceroy's camp--told of departure, letting the night know that another white-winged tent was flitting, and that the dawn must be prepared to find its place empty, the dream-city in ruins, the Hosts of the Lord-sahibgone.
The second told of arrival. It was a strange cry, soft, almost musical:--
"Hârâ--Hârî--Hârâ--Hârî!"
Then every now and again in a sort of chant: "Râm--Râm--Sita--Râm!"
It was the pilgrims' cry, their call on the Creator, the Destroyer, their appeal to the godhead in man and woman; for the forerunners of the great host to come were already nearing Eshwara on their road to the "Cradle of the Gods."
But there was a fourth sound, inaudible--by reason of that ceaseless noise of water through the chink of the sluice--except to those close by it, like George Dillon, as he stood on the hand-bridge above the closed gates looking down idly into the darkness which prevented him from seeing the cause of the sound. He had been up all night. On his return,--later than he had intended, owing to his determination not to be defied by any woman,--he had found that in his absence cholera had been hard at its work. So he had buckled to his, expecting one of those awful nights which live, even in a doctor's memory, as a horror, as a warning to those best fitted to stem the stream of death, that they are but straws on its surface.
But he had been mistaken. True, for an hour or so, cases had come in quicker than they could be attended to; then, suddenly, they ceased to come in at all. That had been eight hours ago. Too short a respite for certainty, but Dr. Dillon, being no novice in such work, had his hopes; the more so because the disease, from the very outset, had become steadily less and less virulent. Even so, seven dead bodies lay awaiting the first glint of dawn; therefore, as ill-luck would have it, there would be seven columns of smoke on the river's edge for all to see!
It was inevitable, however, nor could he do more to prevent others coming. So he had been on his way back to his own house for a few hours' rest when the dreamy splash of the water made him pause to lean over the hand-rail and listen to it, as he finished his cigar in the open.
Then it was that he heard a faint tap, tapping, as of a ghostly hand on a door. What was it? It was quite distinct, though almost as low as the "lip, lipping" of the water, made restless by that glassy curve against the gates.
A curiosity to know seized on him. There was already a glimmer of dawn in the east; he might as well wait and see.
It was not long before a streak of something faintly white made him call himself a fool. The cause was a log of wood. He might have thought of that. Even that faint setting of a stream towards a new way must have drifted it here. The thought made him frown, for this fulfilment of the river-people's prophecy was annoying; the more so from its absolute unlikelihood. Years might pass without such a chance coming again; yet it had come the very first day! It was too bad. The stars in their courses were fighting against him. In a pet he threw the remains of his cigar from him, and was striding off, when a faint glimmer, as of a candle, made him turn sharply and look down whence it came.
The lighted end of his cigar had fallen on something dry, inflammable, which had blazed up. But it was only for a second; the next found darkness, save for that still, faint, glimmer of white. But the brief gleam had told him it was not a log which had drifted astray--
It was a corpse.
Thattap, tappinghe had heard had been from the dead feet seeking vainly to pass through the chink of the sluice, swerving with the side current, coming back, again and again. He stood, grasping the rail, staring down at the dim outline almost incredulously, and feeling, despite himself, a trifle shivery.
Then the remembrance that this was a thing which must be seen by none, which somehow, and as quickly as possible, must be set on its right road again, made him hurry back to where he knew some coils of rope, which had been used for bunting at the ceremony, were lying. Seizing one--still gaily decorated--he tied a brick to one end, and hurried back to the bridge. By dropping this weighted rope over the dim white streak he was able to edge it gradually to one side, until it lay moored against the wall of the basin. Kneeling down for a closer look, he could see, in the fast-growing light, that it was the corpse of a woman. He could even guess the death she died, and if proof was needed, it could be found in the hands folded at full stretch down the body; the thumbs, pointing upward, linked by an iron ring. To this iron ring had been looped a little tuft of the tri-coloured hank of cotton which plays so large a part in marriage ceremonial. Dr. Dillon stood up and swore under his breath.
The fates were, indeed, inexorable in their spite. Of all things unlucky for the changing stream to claim, a corpse seeking union with Mother Ganges was the worst; and of all corpses, this--the cursed one, which had held two lives and could send one back to haunt men--was the worst.
He must get rid of it somehow, if he could.
Fastening the rope, so strangely out of keeping, all hung as it was with gay colours, to the iron ring which showed about the ankles, he proceeded to tow the body back along the basin, past the first gates, and so to the river itself. Thus far was simple. But how was he to get it afloat on a current strong enough to sweep it beyond danger of its returning to tap at the gates once more?
The dawn was hastening with great leaps of light that shot in broad bars from the darkest spot in all the dark horizon; the spot which would soon be the brightest, ablaze with the sun himself. Already the broad shield of the river was changing its heraldry--the sable was turning to steel, sign that the world would side with the light.
What was to be done?
He looked over the wide waste of sand and water, with a perplexity which vanished suddenly in a smile, as he caught sight of a round shadow like a man's head dipping and dancing on the surface. He walked on to the last dry spot of land and shouted--
"Ai! fisherman! Ai! Gu-gu! Am-ma! anybody! Come and earn a goldmohur!"
It was Am-ma. Luckily, perhaps, since the idea of even towing a dead body such as this might have been too much for semi-civilized Gu-gu. Am-ma, however, had not ever borrowed his neighbours' superstitions. In fact, ever since he, the Miss-sahibaand theDee-puk-râghad bested the devil between them, he had felt himself to be invulnerable. So, he assured Dr. Dillon affably, were theHuzoors; therefore he obeyed them. Consequently, less than five minutes after the call, with a vague wonder as to what sixteen rupees would feel like, all at once, in a man's palm, he was heading hard to the nearest stream capable of carrying the thing he had in tow back to the path of purification. This happened to be towards Eshwara, and beyond a sandy point set with tamarisks which jutted out above the canal head. There was, of course, a certain stream against him, and to save himself exertion and finish the job--as he had agreed to do--before dawn, he swam for the most part under water, only coming up, after his habit, for air.
Now it so happened, also, that Gu-gu had thought fit to set nets for wild-fowl, and was even now dozing, while he waited for the result, in the same tamarisk jungle. But the sound of something swishing through the water against the stream roused him in a second, and even without the glimpse, which the coming dawn gave him, of a long streak parting the river with a curved ripple like the prow of a boat, his experience told him what it was sure to be. Briefly, someone of the river people,--Am-ma for choice, since who but Am-ma had the luck of such things--had happened on the chance of stealing a log from the piles about the canal workshops. He was now, after time-honoured precedent, towing it to the stream where, having set it adrift, he would recapture it, and, of course, claim his reward for so doing!
But two could play that game. When secrecy made it necessary for a thief to swim for the most part under water, it was easy to swim under water too, across the track of the robber, cut his prize adrift, and put your weight on the rope instead.
Then you could either choose revenge, and let an enemy tow you home--which was a side-splitting trick,--or you might wait till your adversary came up breathless, and dash after the prize yourself. Even if you could not secure the whole, half profits were generally possible.
Therefore, slipping noiselessly into the stream like an alligator, he was off across the track in a second; swimming, of course, under water. He came, up once for air, and smiled to see how far he had come; so, fearing lest the holder of the unseen tow-rope might chance to come up at the same time, his black head went under once more.
When it came up again, it was within a few yards of the long white streak. He gave one look at it, let loose a yell of abject terror, and almost turning a somersault in his haste to escape, his head went down again, his feet went skywards, and though his lungs nearly burst in the effort, he came up no more till he felt certain he must have put a screen of tamarisk between him and the horror. He had; but his teeth chattered, his eyes were half out of his head when he scrambled, hands and knees, on to the bank, and lying face down on the dry sand, moaned and shuddered. What else could a man do who had seen a cursed corpse breasting the stream on its way back to Eshwara? To whose house? That, however, was quite a secondary consideration to a man who was already as good as dead; since what man had ever survived the sight of achurail?
The certainty of his own fate, after a while, made him absolutely, recklessly, calm. He gathered up his nets, wrung the necks of the few birds he had caught pitilessly, and went with them, as usual, to the bazaars. Not only for profit, however. Other men should taste of his fear. Other men should know that they too might have to die!
Am-ma, meanwhile, having seen nothing when he came up wondering what the sound was which had filtered to his ears through the water, had gone on his way unwitting, found the stream, cut the corpse adrift himself, and gone back to his fishing.
It was not until he also went into the bazaar with his basket, that he found it ringing with the direful portent; yet for all that going its way buying and selling, squabbling over the uttermost part of a farthing; since portents are ever with an Indian bazaar. At first, when called upon to verify Gu-gu's story, Am-ma, remembering his promise of secrecy, gave it stout denial; but when the real truth of what had occurred dawned on his slow brain, the opportunity for piling agony on to his rival was too strong for him, and he burst into details, all of which made Gu-gu's chance of escape still more remote. The corpse had shot after him with a speed only equal to the fire-boats in which theHuzoorscame across the black water; it had sat up, and beckoned, and called "Gu-gu! Gu-gu!"
"But if thou hast seen all this, thou, too, must die!" remarked the syrup-seller round whose shop the talk was loudest.
Am-ma laughed vaingloriously. "Not I! The devils are afraid of me. See you, I have taken theHuzoorsfor my God; I am on the strong side."
"Hark to him!" jeered another of his own tribe who was also selling fish. "He cannot balance his basket on his head, he holds it so high since the wood-sahibup the river hath bidden him guide their big raft,--as if he was a whit better than the rest of us!"
Am-ma smiled peacefully. "That is true, brother. I go for the raft this very day. But I leave a son in my house, if the luck goes against me. That is theHuzoors'doing. They have theDee-puk-râg. They are the Light-bringers, the Birth-bringers!"
A tall man, in curiously crumpled clothing, who had just joined the group, gave a hollow laugh. "Birth-bringers!" he echoed. "Ay! and Death-bringers, too. They took seven in the gaol last night. I have it from a sure hand." That might well be, seeing that he was none other than thegosainGopi, who, scarcely an hour agone, had been given his ticket-of-leave and the clothes in which he had been convicted two years before. They had since then been rolled up, and ticketed with his name and number; hence the creases.
"The doctor cuts a hole in their heads," he went on calmly, "takes out their brains, and puts the bit back. Then 'tis cholera. That is why they burn them in their clothing and theircaps, so that none may see. But theysay, 'tis for the safety of the living; as if that did not lie with the Gods!"
"Hark to him!" said approving voices. "Yea! hark to him, the pious one!"
The long bazaar lay flooded with sunshine and life. The quails were calling from their hooded cages, the sacred monkeys were chattering about the sweetmeat-sellers' shops, men and women were going about eager on their own affairs, and a group of schoolboys on their way to a mission school came along, their books under their arms,--a quaint collection, for the most part. A copy of the Gospels, Sa'adi's Gulistan, and the Hitopadesa, certainly; a treatise, in English, on the latest theories of mind and matter, equally so; selections from general literature, probably; with Burke's speeches and Addison'sSpectator, possibly.
One or two of these boys paused in their school talk to listen, as a voice said fearfully:--
"'Twill be for 'momai' they want them. Folks say they are running short of power."
Gopi shook his head. "That may be; but these are to grease the slots of the canal sluice; without it, water will not run. One brain--his, that they killed with the light--opened it but one inch; as all can see if they choose. And these seven will not go far. What matter? There be plenty more where they came from."
The gossipers looked at each other. "Yea! that is so. It opens but an inch, and there are many prisoners," they said, with that curious faculty for giving heart-whole assent to the truthful foundations of a lie which makes the latter go so far in India.
The boys went on. There was nothing about the dynamic and hydraulic power of a man's brain in their treatises; but, after all, the statement was scarcely so strange to ignorance as many another held in the books under their arms.
"The times are bad," remarked someone, chiefly to give a fresh fillip to the flagging horrors. "They say the 'Pool of Immortality,' will be dry to-morrow."
A trail of saffron-robed pilgrims who were passing, under the charge of a priest, looked at their guide doubtfully. If this was to be so, what was the use of having given him a rupee each to be admitted thereto at the most auspicious moment?
"Lo! 'tis easy to father that falsehood!" cried the priest in charge, venomously eyeing a similar figure to his own, which was also followed patiently, trustfully, by a band of men and women and children, all in their saffron robes. "When folks have had their own miracle stopped, they would fain stop other folks' also. Have no fear, my children! The sacred water will rise as ever, and send your souls blameless to the 'Cradle of the Gods.'"
It would have been easy enough for his rival to throw doubts on the genuineness of the pool miracle, had it been sound policy to do so; but before those patient, trustful faces, desirous only to save their souls alive at any cost, it was unwise to sap at the foundations of faith. So the reply contented itself with assertions that there was no fear either, for them. Tampion or no tampion,jogiGorakh-nâth had promised to be inside the gun as ever. And that would be a newer, a better, miracle, than any other in Eshwara!
Here a fresh voice put in its word; for the syrup-seller's shop, being at one corner of the central square orchowkof four bazaars, no one who had any errand of any sort in Eshwara could fail to pass it sooner or later. Therefore, Dya Ram and some other pleaders, on their way thus early in the morning to the tahsil court, were bound to overhear the priest's boast.
"But most undesirable, nevertheless," expostulated Dya Ram, quickly. "We have duly appealed against the order to the higher court, and our legal course is to await the result."
The priest looked at him, sullenly scornful; for such as he are no favourites with the hereditary Levites of India.
"Thejogihath appealed to the Gods," he retorted, "and they will give judgment without the help of such as thou, pleader-jee!"
"Hark to the pious one!" murmured the crowd again, admiringly responsive, as ever, to a hint of religious sentiment.
"But it will confuse issues--it is irregular--and I who drew up the petition objectin toto," began Dya Ram in angry protest, when a friend interrupted him consolingly in English.
"True. As it has been said, it is impossible to serve God and Mammon; yet seeing that miracles are, as Herbert Spencer proves,ipsi facto--"
The ludicrous inadequacy of logic to the mental caliber of those around him, struck one of the little party of progress keenly, and he broke in, as he passed on, "What is the use of combatting such ignorance? It is for us--who represent the intellect of India--to pioneer the way--"
The rest was lost as the little party went on discussing their own position.
"Mayhap 'twas to Ramanund's house thechurailwas coming; there was such a corpse went from it a week or two since; and they return from far," said an old man, looking after the last speaker.
Gopi, thegosain, laughed. "This one, I'll wager, was sent back because of the canal. Mark my words, Mai Gunga will return them all now. 'Tis theHuzoors'doing."
A curious shiver ran through the crowd of men. To have your women against you, to feel in your heart that they cannot help being revengeful, that their blood is on your head, is ever the greatest of dreads. And so many lives held the possibility of this revenge.
Am-ma, philosophically seated on the outskirts of the group, trying to sell his fish, laughed vaingloriously again.
"Only for fools! The miss-sahibaand the lights, and I, can defy devils."
Here he stood up, and, with frightful grimaces of joy and uncouth salaams, greeted the appearance of Erda Shepherd, who, in the mission-lady's uniform of blouse and skirt, white pith hat, green veil, and bag of books, came out of a neighbouring alley.
It was not a becoming dress, Lance Carlyon told himself, as, on his way back from escort duty to some lingering bigwig of the camp, he, at the same moment, came cantering up the bazaar towards the Fort.
She could not say the same of his. It was the first time she had seen him in uniform, and the sight of the scarlet and gold, the buttons, the fal-lals generally, took her breath away. There are, in fact, few women whom they do not impress.
Yet, curiously enough, her impulse was to pass on without speaking; his, to do what he did, namely, pull up, dismount, and shake hands. And still more curiously, the reason for both these impulses was the same; the presence beside Erda of a tall, rather weedy-looking man, with a long, black coat and a long, red beard.
"Let me introduce my cousin, the Reverend David Campbell," said Erda, with great dignity, somewhat marred by a fine blush.
"I thought it must be," rejoined Lance, coolly. He might have said he was certain of it; that a fellow could scarcely feel a desire to murder another fellow at an instant's notice, unless that fellow was your rival.
Yet, still more curiously again, this notion of rivalry had come to Lance in an instant also. Before he caught sight of Erda and herfiancéhe would have sworn that though he had been a bit cut up at hearing the nicest girl he had ever met was already engaged, he had never had the remotest idea of fighting against the fact. But the first glance at the two walking together had changed all this. Here by God's grace was the one maid for him. And another man had--
Not a bad looking chap, certainly. Better dressed, too, than most missionaries. That was because he was fresh out from England. Any fool, though, could be that with an English tailor. Yes, not a bad sort; but not the sort forher.
"You've been out on your rounds, I suppose," he said, pointing to Erda's books.
"Yes," answered the Reverend David, with eager assent, and the benevolent smile which includes the smiler's own virtue in smiling; "and I have been privileged for the first time to see somewhat of the noble work Englishwomen are doing for their Indian sisters. It is no easy task, Mr. Carlyon, for delicate--"
"I like it," put in Erda, with a faint frown at the missionary-report style of her cousin's enthusiasm. "So there is no use wasting your pity on me, David."
"Pity!" he echoed, in appropriating approval. "I did not even pity you when they called you evil names." Being of the new school of Free church ministers, he put all possible ill into ev-il like any ritualistic curate.
"Do they call you names?" asked Lance, sharply.
Erda gave a vexed look at her cousin. For the first time in her life the militant joy at persecution of the true proselytizer failed her.
"Sometimes, not often," she said, quite apologetically. "They happened to do so to-day, and David heard it; there are so many strangers about, you see, who don't know me."
"And what did you do?" Lance's eyes were on the Reverend David this time.
"Do?" repeated the latter, in faint surprise. "Nothing, of course. We missionaries hear such things joyfully--for--for the Work's sake." There was dignity in his tone and manner.
"By Jove!" said Lance, softly, under his breath, "if I'd been there, there would have been a row. Besides," he added, quite argumentatively, "if I believed in my work as you do I'd be hanged if I let anybody 'krab'[9]it--or me--for it's the same thing. Not at least, without trying to make 'em answer for it all I know."
The Reverend David Campbell shook his head. "That is not our view. Erda, the meeting is at nine, and it is already the half-hour. To-morrow, you see, Mr. Carlyon, is our field-day, and we have to arrange our forces."
Once more the flavour of the missionary report made Erda shrink, but Lance nodded.
"A field-day for most of us. I expect to be in the saddle all day. Good-by, Miss Shepherd."
But something in the girl rose up in revolt at parting with him thus. When he had been out of sight, she had faced the probability of never seeing him any more with equanimity. Now she felt that she must tell him she was leaving Eshwara the very next day, or the day after; that she must make this arealgood-by.
"I have to see another old woman in an alley close by first, David," she said. "You had better go on and let me follow."
Yet when he had gone, after another joyously militant pæan over the work, she stood silent. It seemed somehow too sunshiny for words. Then she looked up at Lance, and her heart sank. For something in his face told her, in an instant, that she had been too long in letting him know of her engagement to her cousin. The fact, by rousing her indignation,--since it was impossible to go about proclaiming that you were not available for idle people to fall in love with,--helped her to be hard.
"You need not have been so fierce just now," she said, with an unreal little laugh. "People won't have many more chances of calling me names in Eshwara. I told you, didn't I, that I was going; but it will be sooner than I expected--to-morrow, or next day."
"Then I shan't see you again?" He grasped the meaning to him in an instant, and the wondering pain in his voice awoke an echo in her heart.
"I suppose so; for Mr. Campbell's appointment will be at the other end of India; unless, indeed--" she could not withstand his look--"my Aunt has asked a few friends in to tea this afternoon to say good-by. If you, or Captain Dering, cared--"
"Of course I'll come," he interrupted quietly. "Now which way are you going, for I am going too?"
She looked at him helplessly. "But you can't," she began.
"Oh, yes, I can! I'll finish the smoke you interrupted, while you polish off the old lady. They're not going to have a chance of--of abusing theworkagain."
He had a most ingenious way of appealing to her sense of humour, and though it was partly at her cousin's expense, she laughed as they set off together--a most incongruous couple. He had little time for his smoke, however, for he had barely left off watching the point where she had disappeared, for any hint of felonious calling of names, when she reappeared in company with Father Ninian, the latter looking almost pope-like, yet also curiously native, in the white washingsoutaneand skull-cap which he invariably wore in his visitations. His face was rather stern, and he had his spectacles on.
"Ah! Mr. Carlyon," he said, surprised in his turn, "I am glad. Will you take Miss Shepherd home? I want to go over to Dr. Dillon at once: and I have advised her not to visit in this quarter to-day. There are many lodging houses for the pilgrims, and--"
"Did they call names?" asked Lance, belligerent at once.
The old man looked at him sharply, almost angrily. "No one ever called me names, sir; still less a lady who was with me. But excuse me--I am pressed for time."
"Now, that's a man!" said Lance, enthusiastically, as he looked after the hurrying white figure. The comparison was too obvious.
"Father Ninian is not a missionary," she said coldly. "It is easy for him--" she paused, turned to her companion, and held out her hand. "Good-by, and thanks; but I really can go home by myself, Mr. Carlyon."
"Good-by," he echoed; then, holding her hand still, a sudden resolve seemed to come to him. "But--I should like to tell you something first, please."--
She felt her heart beating everywhere but in its proper place.
--"Not that it matters, but I'd like you to know it. I had some news by the mail this morning--bad news."
She felt her blood everywhere but in its normal course, now, in sheer shame at her own imaginations. "I'm sorry," she murmured.
"So am I," he went on thoughtfully; "though it isn't bad in a way for me. Do you remember my telling you about my cousin? a weedy chap, six-four. Well, they sent him round the world for his health, and he died two months ago, it seems, in Australia. And the shock was too much for my uncle; he was an old man, and this was his only son. So--so I am Sir Lancelot now. It doesn't make any odds, of course, but I thought I should like you to know, first."
She looked up at him as he stood beside her, so tall, so strong, so young, so kind; and though she only said, "Thanks, Sir Lancelot, it won't make any difference to--to our friendship, I'm sure," she knew in her heart of hearts that it did. Though how, she had not yet had time to discover.