Roshan Khân flung his cigarette away, and walked up and down his quarters in the Fort like an Englishman; he felt rather like one, also, in his vague distaste for something which refused to fit in with his previous experiences.
"So she will see my grandmother," he said, at last. "That is a step, certainly, but--" he turned quickly to Akbar Khân, "it seems impossible!"
The quondam chief-eunuch giggled like a girl. "Nothing is impossible with women, oh, Protector of the Poor!" he said; then, with a jaunty air of self-satisfaction, went on, "and this dust-like one has experience. She will see the female relation to-night after approved custom, and, since this is after the habits of thesahib-logue, she would perhaps see the--the Nawab-sahibtomorrow."
Roshan wheeled again in his walk at both the title and the suggestion, half indignantly, yet with a reluctant eagerness. "See--see me! Did she say aught of it?"
"A woman's wishes for a lover go not near her tongue,Huzoor; they keep to her heart," replied Akbar, still with his jaunty craft; "but if this visit of the female relation be auspicious, as God send it, then there would be no hindrance to the asking; and even if she said nay--"
Something in his hearer's face warned the old sinner he had to do with some novel code of conduct, and he paused, while Roshan continued his pacing.
He was disturbed beyond bounds. The foolish dream of a foolish old woman had come to be so far a reality, that the jealousy which had blazed up instinctively at the sight of Laila in that dress--so like a woman of his race--alone with a strange man, had come to be deliberate. More than once he had felt inclined to tell Pidar Narâyan what he had seen, even to write an anonymous letter of warning. He would have done so had he seen any subsequent hint of intimacy between these two. But he saw none; on the contrary, they seemed to avoid each other in public; and though this might be a blind, on the other hand Roshan had seen too much of some English women's ways not to know how trivial an offence against the proprieties it was to sit out dances in a balcony! Undoubtedly, however, this girl, who had taken his presents on the sly, who would receive his ambassadress on the sly, was not one whom it was necessary to treat with great ceremony. She was what the English language called a flirt; his own a stronger term. Not that it mattered, since no wife of his would have a chance of amusing herself.
So, after a while, he paused to say--with a scowl for the toothless grinning survival of a past society--"I would I knew if it were wise to trust thee? Why shouldst thou take the trouble thou dost? What is the affair to thee?"
Akbar's face was a study in sheer dignity. "'Tis but my duty, Cherisher of the Poor!" he said, almost pathetically. "For what other service were such as I am created?"
The hateful tragedy of this confession of degradation passed Roshan by; he saw nothing in it but an appeal to facts which gave him confidence.
"Yea!" he said, "I was forgetting. Such arrangings are meat and drink to thy sort. So take thy price. It shall be trebled if she bids me see her to-morrow, but--" here he laughed, half at himself,--"thou must needs work miracles for such favour to come so soon!"
Akbar, as he capered off, the rupees jingling in his pocket, to more legitimate and less lucrative pursuits, winked and leered to himself over his own surpassing wickedness and wisdom. Miracles! Ay; but it was nature worked them, not he. Given youth, proximity, a touch of surprise, a flavour of the forbidden, and the result, in his evil experience, was sure. In the meantime his part was to keep the ball from falling until the players took to playing the game for themselves; then the fun was over for the true go-between. He had to take a back seat and watch--he! he! he!--the miracle! A pretty miracle, indeed! The idea tickled him so that he could not keep it to himself, and as he passed through the bazaar, doing his daily marketing, he used his new avocation of miracle-monger as a reason for good bargains. The shop-keepers, however, shook their heads. Miracles paid the priests, and might suit such as he, but for their part they considered that there were too many miracles in Eshwara. What was the good of the pilgrims coming at all if all their money went to the temples, and they had not a pice left for a relic, or even a toy to take home to the toddlers whose feet were not yet strong enough for pilgrimage? Whereupon they would look discontentedly round the baskets of Brummagen brass gods, the Belgian-made rosaries, the patent Swedish self-lighting joss sticks, the machine-cut oblation cups, with which almost every other shop sought to attract custom. Baskets where a pious pilgrim could purchase a whole pantheon, and secure a modicum of divine favour--all duly trade-marked by Christians--for a few farthings.
"'Tis not our fault, brother," suggested a decrepit old Brahmin, with a wrinkled forehead all seamed with white markings, who--squatted in the gutter--was extolling the virtue of the sacredsâlig râmas, made unblushingly out of the ball stoppers of soda-water bottles, which lay exposed for sale on a handkerchief in front of him; a Manchester-made handkerchief, printed in the best style with the loves of Krishna. "We get no more than in the old days; nay, less. For, see you, the third-class ticket takes so much. And that is theHuzoors'fee. They send it all over the black water to make a mountain of silver in the streets of their big city, London. Oh, pious ones! Buy! Buy a sacred sin-expeller!"
The monotonous cry was caused by the appearance of a priest-led band of pilgrims; for, as yet, the great throng was not, when the whole narrow street would be a sea of heads, when even the saffron robes would be lost to sight, and the only thing visible would be the patient, anxious faces seeking redemption. That would come on the morrow,--the great day.
Meanwhile, reverent eyes turned to the bottle-stoppers, and one or two hands wandered to the little hoard set aside for regeneration, which was diminishing so rapidly under the claims of chaplets, lights, caste-markings, sprinkling, and miracles.
"There be too many, I say," reiterated a radical seller of drugs. "If theSirkarputs a tax on my medicine for the body, why not on thine for the soul?"
"Nay,pinsari-jee!" chuckled the privileged wit and gossip of the bazaar, a cobbler who sat--by reason of his low caste--at a decent distance even from the crowd of customers which was awaiting a patch on the coverings of feet already worn and weary with their search after righteousness; "'tis a miracle when folk buy of you; and that comes not too often."
Even the pilgrims laughed; for laughter at a ready gibe comes easily in India. Yet they, too, felt inclined to agree with the drug-seller. One can getblaséeven in miracles.
Therefore, naturally enough, when there was a choice, they chose the newest ones. And the newest of all wasjogiGorakh-nâth's promise of defying tampions, and locks, and chains, and, as in other years, blessing the crowd of worshippers from his self-inflicted penitentiary, inside the "Teacher of Religion."
And what was more, he had kept his promise. That very dawn, as a kind of walk over the course, he had performed the miracle before a select band of pilgrims, mostlyjogiesof his own sect who were now engaged in telling the tale to all and sundry in the city. What had occurred was briefly this. He had received his followers squatted on the stone steps in front of the gun, and had treated them to a dissertation on the mysteries of Yoga. Other less eminent practitioners in the art of miracles, he said, might have found it necessary to withhold the sight of the sacred person from devoted eyes. He, however, meant to show them his absolute independence of the body. He would leave it lying there, dead, while his soul went inside the gun, and blessed the pious ones. Accordingly his jaw had dropped; he had become rigid, callous apparently to the prickings of pins with which his assistants strove to make him wince, and, just as one of them withdrew a dagger, covered, of course, with gore from his very heart, a muffled voice of blessing had come from the very bowels of the gun.
If that was not a miracle, what was?
Anyhow, it caught on, so that as the day grew, the growing tide of pilgrims passed by the side-shows run in connection with the Pool of Immortality by its priests, and drifted off to the opposition show, leaving theimpresariosbehind them in a state of rage and despair. Rage, for if this sort of thing continued on the morrow they would lose their year's harvest, since the Host of God-seekers were ever the natural prey of priests; despair, because exposure of what experience told themmustbe a fraud, would only result in counter exposure. There must be honour among thieves to make the profession a lucrative one.
So they met in conclave, each with his miserable earnings in his hand, to point the dire urgency of action, and agreed on the wisdom of finding a cat's-paw to filch their chestnuts from the fire.
Thus it happened that Vincent Dering came over to Lance Carlyon's quarters half an hour before the time they had settled to start for the mission house, and asked him to look sharp, and send round to Roshan Khân to come along also, as he had private information--here, with a laugh, he threw a letter on the table--that miracles were being illegally performed in cantonments, and he expected some fun. Lance laughed also as he read the following:--
"To the Major General commanding. This is to give notice to all concerned that illegible miracles is now being performed by bare men in belly of great gun, contrary to astringent orders issued by my lord god. Therefore your petitioners pray for correct diagnosis of same, and removal from Cantonment boundaries with exhibitions not to miracle any more."
"By Jove!" he said, "our petitioner is a medical man--hospital dresser, I expect. Not to miracle any more!--h'm." His tone changed, his honest blue eyes clouded, for, ever since Erda Shepherd had told him what her future life was to be, the young fellow had been painfully aware that Eshwara had wrought a miracle on him; that he was no longer content to take life as he found it; that already he had begun to look forward and think of what life would be by and by. "I expect that would be a difficulty in Eshwara," he went on; "it's an awful place for upsetting the proper odds. Seems to me impossible to--to make a safe book on anything."
Vincent Dering shrugged his shoulders. He had been in the highest spirits for the last few days. "A safe book! The dullest thing in creation. That's why I like Eshwara. As I remember telling you, one can't count upon anything in the topsy-turvy place--not even one's self. They talk of the mystery of the East! By George! one is in grips with it here; so come along, Lance! and remove miracles from Cantonment boundaries at any rate!"
They found the union-jack of paths obliterated by an orderly crowd; for every hour, almost every minute, of the day had brought fresh units to that weary-footed, eager-eyed host of pilgrims. Here and there amongst them was to be seen the high-twined, badge-set turban of a policeman, ready, truncheon in hand, to assert the rights of law, but not many; since the rush of bathers had not yet come, and there was small danger to be feared from anything save that keen desire to be cleansed, which showed on almost every face. As the two Englishmen entered, however, followed by Roshan Khân, on whose features that fierce intolerance of his race for idolaters was written clearly, a murmur of tense anticipation ran through the packed courtyard. The miracle turn was evidently on.
It was.JogiGorakh-nâth lay as if dead on the raised stone platform in front of the gun, and two assistants were prodding him with pins.
"I've seen that in London," said Vincent, forcing his way rapidly through the yielding crowd, "so I can hardly object to it here; but if there is hanky-panky with my gun--"
At that instant, a bloody dagger, fresh apparently from thejogi'sheart, was held up, and a curious hush fell on the courtyard. It was broken by a muffled voice, unmistakably from within the gun, and that was lost in a great roar of applause.
"A miracle! a miracle of the gods!"
Captain Dering, who with the others had now reached the centre, waited for the roar to subside a little, and then his voice rose and seemed to crush it.
"Risaldar-sahibYou have the key of the padlock. Take out the tampion, and see who is inside."
As he spoke, his eyes were on the assistants, and something in their defiant assurance warned him that he was on the wrong tack, and made him cover possible discomfiture with the words,--"If there is no one, then someone here has the art of throwing his voice where he will."
As if in assent, the muffled blessing came, louder, this time, from the now un-tampioned gun, so that Roshan's face showed somewhat scared, as, with a salute, he announced as the result of his inspection, "There is no one, sir, I can see clear down the metal, but--but the voice is there."
A sound of such fierce approval ran through the crowd who were within hearing, that Captain Dering saw instantly that it would not be wise to court another failure.
"Close up the gun again," he said loudly. "So long as my orders are not disobeyed, and people keep their bodies out of my gun, their voices are welcome to it! Come along, Carlyon," he added, in English, "it's ventriloquism, of course, and I'd dearly like to catch the beast who does it, but we had better leave it alone for the present."
Lance, who, in sudden remembrance of the sound he had heard as he drifted past the bathing-steps in his canoe on the night of the dance, had been vainly overhauling the padlock and chain for signs of their having been tampered with, nodded his head, and let the chain swing back on its staple. The sudden jerk threw a new light on the matter. For the staple came out, disclosing the fact that it had been neatly filed through at the shank, and then replaced by means of a drilled hole and a pin.
The proof of tampering was clear, but nothing else.
"I have it," said Lance suddenly coming up with a red but triumphant face from a prolonged inspection down the huge muzzle, "they've shoved in a false end, and there's someone behind. Roshan! go back and fetch me my long gaff, and Roshan--my cleaning rod."
"And tell the guard to come out at once," added Captain Dering, heedful of the rising note of movement amongst the crowd, sign that it was growing restless.
"Stay! I've got a ripping idea!" cried Lance again, his face all abeam with delight--delight so catching that the crowd stilled as he turned to it. "Look here," he said confidentially, in Hindustani, "there's a boy in this gun. It must be a boy, and rather a small one, for there isn't room for anything big. Now isn't there a boy anywhere about the same size who'd like to come and draw him? He will be heads this way, and you will be able to get a good grip of his hair, and he will get a grip of your's, and--and it will be--be jolly!" The untranslatable word needed no translation. That something in the perfection of careless youth which touches the hearts of all mankind, put Lance and his audience in touch instantly.
A group of tall, grave-eyed Sikhs laughed uproariously, and nudged a lad beside them. "Go on, brotherling," they said, "thou art the best wrestler of the school. Go! show theHuzoorhow thou canst hold thine own."
It needed no more. "Yea! try thy luck, brotherling," said a dozen voices, "and if thou canst not we will find a champion!"
That settled it. Five minutes afterwards Lance Carlyon found himself arranging the conditions of the draw, surrounded by half a dozen lads, each backed by eager supporters. By this time Roshan had returned, and with the aid of the gaff and one of the smallest of the guard, Lance's guess had been proved to be true. A neatly fitting disc of metal, cup-shaped to increase the resemblance to the end of the barrel had been withdrawn, leaving a head visible.
"It is beautifully tousled, and you'll get a good grip," said Lance, regretfully, as he helped the Sikh champion into the gun, "but it is bigger than I thought for, and you'll have your work cut out for you."
Then ensued the quaintest scene imaginable. The whole crowd, but five minutes before ready, almost, to fight for the truth of their miracle, were swaying breathless, excited, in sheer childish delight over the tussle to expose it.
"Lo! he comes--I see his toes--bravo, Gurdit! Nay, the other hath strength left! Sho! sonling, let not go for thy life! That is well done--Bravo! Bravo!"
So backwards and forwards, like a terrier and a badger, the draw wavered, Lance, watch in hand, calling time.
"Half a minute more! Go it, Gurdit!" he shouted. The encouragement had its effect. Gurdit's toes, his ankles, his calves showed beyond the gun; only his knees remained, giving him grip still.
"Wait for his knees. Wait till he loses grip!" shouted Lance--"twenty seconds more--fifteen, ten--f--there you are! that's it, fair!!"
Fair it was; the knees, pressing outwards steadily, every bronze muscle of them showing the strength of the drag, lost grip, and with a great yell of delight, half-a-dozen bearded Sikhs had hold of Gurdit's feet with such a vigorous pull, that Lance had to shove his knee forward, in a hurry, to prevent the boy from falling on his face; since both his hands were locked desperately in the tangled hair of a disciple so big that he came out of the gun with a cloop like a cork!
"It was the most sporting draw I've seen for years," said Lance enthusiastically, when, after much laughter and congratulation, the crowd parted with smiles to let the Englishmen pass, "and I'm glad you let the beggar off, Dering. It wasn't his fault, and he must have been beastly uncomfortable. Now, if you could have quodded thejogi--"
"I hope to do that by and by," replied Vincent significantly, "but it was just as well the crowd should laugh to-day. These religious gatherings are always a bit risky--and, as you know, Dillon is having trouble over at the gaol. 'Pon my soul, I don't know which is worst to manage--fifteen hundred scoundrels, or a hundred and fifty thousand saints."
"A hundred and fifty!" echoed Lance, "will there be as many as that?"
"Quite. So it is as well they should laugh; for even with the extra contingent of police we should find it a bit hard to manage them if they didn't."
True; but unfortunately the laughter of the many involves the discomfiture of the few; and in this case, these were the most unscrupulous men in Eshwara.
"If I were a man--I would fight."
The words were spoken by Erda Shepherd as the two young men entered the drawing-room of the mission house.
"Let me fight for you!" said Captain Dering, in his most ornate style, as, in the pause following on the interruption of their arrival, he went forward to shake hands. "My sword is always at the service of the ladies."
Then a certain feeling, as of electricity in the air, a certain look on the faces round him--for most of the mission workers had already arrived--warned him that this was no jesting matter, and he continued in better taste, "I trust there is nothing wrong?"
"Wrong!" echoed Erda, who in a mechanical, absolutely indifferent manner was shaking hands with Lance; "Yes! grievously wrong!"--her voice was almost strident in its decision--"hideously wrong!"
Here Dr. James Campbell, who had been laying down the law to a group of other black coats, came up and put the telegram he was holding into Captain Dering's hand.
"Perhaps you can explain this," he said severely, "we generally have to thank the military authorities for such interference."
"Not in this case, so far as I am concerned," replied Vincent, after a glance at the first sentence. Then he read on, everyone else in the room silent, expectant.
It was from the Commissioner, saying, that from private information given him, he regretted that, in the interests of peace, he must, as magistrate, forbid any street preaching or public profession of faith during the next two days. Feeling was running high in many ways, and it was necessary to be extremely cautious.
"I can assure you, sir," said Vincent, handing back the telegram, "I am not the informant. At the same time"--here he faced about to the room generally--"I think the Commissioner is right. Our government is neutral--"
"Neutral!" interrupted the Reverend David Campbell, whose blonde face was flushed with excitement. "If it were neutral we would not complain. But does this prohibition extend to the priests of other religions? No! a thousand times, no! It is only another instance of the fact, that we, who have the strongest claim on a Christian government--"
"Possibly," put in Captain Dering, "but I am only a soldier. I do not ask questions. I obey."
"And we are soldiers too," said Dr. Campbell, weightily, "and our orders are to be instant in season and out of season."
A little murmur of approval ran through the company. There was a militant look on every face, a militant ring in every voice, as they discussed what ought to be done. The women workers, with Erda at their head, went solid for defiance,--only Mrs. Campbell making the reservation "if James approved." So did some of the men, notably David Campbell, who passed from one group to another, his pale blue eyes a-glisten with enthusiasm.
Erda's followed him with such approval, that Lance crossed over pugnaciously to where she stood, with a pretty flush on her cheeks, listening.
"It is a pity you haven't got Jean Ziska's drum, Miss Shepherd," he said. "By Jove! how you would bang it! Then, right or wrong, there would be a high old row, and that would just suit me!"
"There can scarcely, Sir Lancelot,"--she paused on the title with a strain after contempt which did not somehow come off,--"be a question as to right or wrong in this case."
He gave a kindly, almost indulgent laugh. "There never can be, really, of course. One is bound to be right, the other wrong. The mischief is to know t'other from which! Now I expect the sixty thousand nobles, and the grand-master who were left dead on the field, and the two thousand poor devils who got drowned in the river besides, and all the others--you know about 'em, of course, and you must admit he was a bloodthirsty chap at any rate!--had got a musical instrument of some sort, too. You can't fight without a band, Miss Shepherd, specially drums and fifes. But Jean Ziska was blind; so he could only hear his own music."
"And I hear it, too," she said superbly, with all the more defiance, because his words touched her innate sense of justice, as they did so often.
As she spoke, the not unusual sound--considering that one side of the mission house gave on the city--of a nativetom-tomdrifted in through the open window, causing Lancelot's eyes to brim over with smiles.
"That isn't it, anyhow, is it, Miss Shepherd?" he said. "I saw that drum-banger as I came past just now--the funniest old dried stick of a Brahmin you ever set eyes on. And you know those 'round the mulberry bush,' fairy-ring, endless circles of men and women hand in hand we used to cut out of newspaper when we were kids? Well, he was using gilt paper, and trying to make a miracle out of the 'biz'! One god, he said, in many; the outline being the same, and the eye of faith sufficient to fill in the details of divinity! The people were buying them by dozens for the half of nothing. I asked 'em why, and they said as toys for their children. So I expect it will be the endless circle of boys and girls again--don't you? For, you know," he went on in the confidential voice which, dimly, she recognized was for her alone, "I've never been able to find out the least difference in kids. I talk to the little beggars when I'm out shooting, you know, and--well! the boys are just as much boys as I used to be--"
Used to be! Yet once again, for the hundredth time at least since they had first met, barely a month ago, his youth, his boyish, whole-hearted, healthy zest in life made her eyes soft; made her feel, with all the true womanhood in her that, if she ever had a son, she prayed he might be like this. And something else she recognized--not for the first time, either; namely, that boyish, almost thoughtless as he was, puzzling himself not at all with the problems of life, you could never dip below the surface without finding him, as it were, there before you; finding him clear-eyed, ready to treat the shady side of things as he treated the light side; that is, with an absolutely limpid honesty.
So, as she stood silent, checked in her desire to check, Father Ninian, who had just entered with Laila, came up to greet her, and having done so, turned to Lance with kind eyes and voice.
"Captain Dering has just told me that we have to call you Sir Lancelot Carlyon. I am sorry for the cause, since your uncle was a man who made the world better by being in it;--as--as you will. It is a fine old name, Sir Lancelot! It carries with it a fine inheritance of honour; therefore I can wish no better wish for the world, as well as for yourself, than that you may hand it on to your son. So, peace be with you!" His clasped hands unfolded themselves for a space as he passed on, leaving those two once more standing together with that sense of being singled out for friendship which had come to them in the beginning.
And this was to be the end of it? Even to her it seemed impossible. To him it made the impossibility certain.
"Miss Shepherd," he said suddenly, "I have something I must say to you this afternoon. Come into the verandah, after you have done pouring out the tea, and let me say it."
There was so much of command in his voice that she might have resented it, had not Father Ninian's voice risen at that moment; firmly, yet with its usual faint hesitancy, in words which made everyone in the room pause to listen.
"I, and I only, am responsible, Dr. Campbell. I gave the Commissioner the information on which he has acted," here he raised his hand against interruption. "I have been fifty years at Eshwara; fifty times have I seen the pilgrims pass to the 'Cradle of the Gods' listening peacefully to your preaching. But this year there is something new." He paused to put on his spectacles, yet the keenness they brought to his face was dimmed by wistfulness. "I cannot quite tell what it is. There is something beyond the things I know, though these are many--small, it is true, but cumulative. Still, this is certain; the pulse of the people beats irregularly to-day, and that means danger to the body corporate. It may pass; yet the faintest stimulus may upset the whole balance of the organism. So, my friends, as our cause is eternal, as we have time--"
"Time!" interrupted David Campbell, passionately, "but nowisthe appointed time. Think, sir, how many of these poor deluded souls, striving after salvation, may die upon the road to their false gods--none can know how many better than you, who--"
The old priest looked at the young one with a whole lifetime of sad wisdom in his face. "Yes!" he said, softly, "for I am very old. I have seen half a world die upon its road to the 'Cradle of the Gods.' Die--though we have not the courage to say so,--with their faces set to the eternal goal of humanity; to the finding of something we have lost. And something keeps us all back. What is it? Have we the secret more than they, who say, as we do, that it is sin?"
His voice had fallen into a strangely musical rhythm, so that Dr. Campbell's, following it, seemed harsh indeed.
"Weknow we have. We have the certainty--we are missionaries of that certainty--"
"And I--to my shame be it said," interrupted Father Ninian, with a curious return to worldly courtesy as he removed his spectacles, "have never tried to make a convert; therefore I can scarcely hope to persuade you; but if, gentlemen, I might be allowed to talk the matter over with you--"
"A most sensible suggestion," assented Dr. Campbell, looking round on his younger, less experienced colleagues; "I should be loth to act hastily, and give occasion to the scoffer. Mamma, will you send our tea into the dining room?"
The pure practicality of the last words seemed to relieve the general tension, and Vincent Dering--who had been looking horribly bored--seeing the piano open, sat down to it, as the dissentients moved off into their cave of Adullam, and began to play, "La Donna é mobile;" saying, with a laugh:--
"Cherchez la femme!Depend upon it, Mrs. Campbell, there is a woman at the bottom of it. I know from personal experience that she is always fatal to my peace and pulse on any road."
Erda Shepherd, holding her head very high, crossed over to pour out the tea; whereupon Vincent, being mischievously inclined, suddenly changed the tune to "Where'er you walk," which he played daintily, purely, altogether charmingly, so causing Muriel Smith, who had lately joined the party, to relax her faint frown at his remark.
"Miss Shepherd objects," he went on provokingly. "She doesn't believe in men fighting for women. She scorned the offer of my sword in favour--excuse me for having overheard--of some drum or another. What was it, Miss Shepherd? I really only heard Lance say you would like to bang it."
Erda flushed all over her face. "I was only alluding to Jean Ziska's drum, which was sounded to call the Hosts of the Lord to arms."
Mrs. Campbell gave a fine, hearty shudder. "My dear," she said, "why can ye not leave that gruesome tale alone? For it's just an awful tale, Mrs. Smith. As if he could not be content with doing his duty in this life, but must leave his skin behind for the next generation."
"We have biblical warranty for that sort of thing, Mrs. Campbell," said the sharp-voiced lady who owned the small black coat. "Elijah left his mantle."
"Hoots!" interrupted Mrs. Campbell, scornfully. "We all have to leave our body-wear, but a skin's different altogether. It sou'd just have gone to the grave with him, honest man, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. I've often heard Dr. James say there was nothing in the world for tying the hands o' the leevin' like dead men's dispositions. They're just a mortification indeed to a' concerned."
There was always something about the good lady's comfortable common-sense which made further discussion difficult, and the talk wandered into less rugged paths until, the time for leisure from Erda's duties as tea-maker being close at hand, Lance went out deliberately into the verandah which overhung the river, or rather the spit of sand-bank which jutted out from this, the turning-point of the city's triangle. On the right, the wall, set with its temple spires, trended away to meet the bridge, on the left to join the line of the palace, the bathing-steps, the Fort. In front of him, as he stood leaning over the balustrade at the western end of the verandah, lay dull streaks of sand, bright gleams of water, and beyond them--dim, mysterious--was the great level plain of India, on whose scarce distinguishable edge the sun was setting behind a bank of deep purple cloud. It was a long, low, almost level bank, outlined sharply against the sea of golden-green light above it. There was scarcely a hint of sunset fire save in a trailing chain of little fleecy golden flocks, which stretched away from the purple of the clouds into the deepening purple of clear sky overhead.
Lance, waiting, watched that clear, almost level, outline, until, as clouds do when gazed at fixedly, it took shape for him as the body of a dead warrior half-covered by a pall. The straight sweep yonder was the shield, still held upon the arm, the peak of shadow below it was the mailed feet. There was the curve of the throat; the head thrown back; the feathery plumes of the helmet. The whole world seemed his bier; the stars, just trembling into sight, the watch-lights round it.
"Do you see?" he asked, as Erda joined him. "From the great deep to the great deep he goes."
She recognized the quotation; and though she had come out full of determination to deny the glamour of their mutual comprehension, it claimed her in a second.
"Yes!" she answered quickly, and pointing to the trailing drift of cloudlets, added, "bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
He turned to look at her then, forgetting fancy in a sudden certainty.
"I thought I had something to tell you," he said, "but I think you know it already, don't you?"
"Yes!" she answered, held captive still by that inevitable understanding. "I think I do."
He paused a moment; then going back to the now fading likeness of that dead "King of the Dead," continued: "Then that ends it so--so far as I am concerned. But it remains as an excuse for my asking a question. Miss Shepherd, why are you going to marry your cousin?"
She had known this was coming. "For a great many reasons," she began boldly; then paused, wishing for the first time that these reasons had been fewer, feeling that the possession of butonewould have made speech easier. "To begin with, it has been the dream of my life."
He turned on her with an amaze which was almost ludicrous. "What! to marry him?"
She frowned angrily. "No! To work--to help--to give my sympathy--to stand hand in hand with someone who, as he does, gives himself, as I do, to the great work. To someone whose life will be mine--whom I can respect and admire and--and love--in the best sense of the word--" Her voice, gaining confidence from its own statements, rose almost passionately.
Lance looked at her with his clear eyes, and nodded. "Yes! I quite understand. But what has that to do with marrying him? How will the--the great Work be furthered by your having to look after the house and all that? And it isn't as if you couldn't give the help and sympathy without marrying a fellow. Even the love--at least I think so. Now, I want to marry you, because--"
"Yes,--" she said severely, as he paused--she felt glad to change places with him in the witness box--
"Because, to begin with, it doesn't seem possible for me to live my life--I mean my everyday life, trying to rub along, you know, without doing any harm; keeping things going as--as my people have always kept them, unless you help me. And then--" he paused again--"from the first moment I saw you, you reminded me--" he paused so long this time that a faint wonder as to what he was going to say next made her heart beat, as she watched him leaning over the balcony, looking dreamily at that fading likeness of a dead 'King of the Dead.'
"I don't suppose anyone had a happier, jollier childhood than I had," he said suddenly, "though I was an orphan. I lived at Tregarthen, you know." He turned to her as he spoke, and smiled. "You should have seen my grandfather and grandmother, Miss Shepherd. They were like the double Christmas number of an illustrated paper! She used to boast that she never saw a naughty child; and she never did, for the dear old lady always walked out of the room promptly when we tried it on. I remember it used to take the starch out awfully, having no audience. But it was the same in everything. It beat even a boy to be really bad in that house, somehow. Yes! we had jolly times! You would have liked it--you would like it now"--he turned swiftly and held out both hands--"Come to it!--Come, and be Lady Carlyon as she was! People may say all that means nothing, but it means everything to a woman to be able to count on an inheritance like that for her--" he broke off as some of the others came out into the balcony, and bending closer to her, went on in a low voice, "I've said nothing of my love--you know all that--and I think--Yes--" his voice took a note of certainty--"I think you--you like me well enough--don't you?"
There was something so truth-compelling in his face, his voice, that she felt thankful for the tepid wordlike--
"I like you very much, Sir Lancelot," she said, trying not to let her voice betray the absolute tenderness she felt, "but, as you told me just now, that is no reason why I should marry you."
"It is at least as good as yours for marryinghim," he broke in quickly. "At least it has to do with you--with me--with our happiness--with mine at any rate! Do you remember when you first told me your name--The World's Desire I called it--the woman with the red-gold hair, the red-gold hem to her garment, the red-gold apple in her hand--you are that to me--Erda! give me my heart's desire--"
His voice--low, quick, passionate--thrilled through her. She saw herself as she had seen herself then.
"Yes! it has to do with you, with me!" she echoed desperately, "but only we two."
"No!--" he interrupted--"with more than that, surely!"
In the pause which followed, one vision faded in another, and her own wish, that if she ever had a son he might be as this man, came to make her remember Father Ninian's words, "I can wish no better wish for the world!"
But Father Ninian could not have said so to her.Shecould do better for the world in the other life, the other work. The very self-sacrifice of it attracted her, vague though the sense of that was, as yet.
"Sir Lancelot," she said at last, "I am very sensible of the honour--"
"Don't--for heaven's sake," he interrupted. "That is--excuse me--bunkum."
She felt glad of the faint resentment which came to her aid. "I am, all the same," she continued; "but it is impossible. Perhaps if I did not look forward as I do; perhaps if I only sought happiness; but--" she clasped her hands tightly and the militant look came back to her face--"I am sworn to another work--the noblest work of all--to bring light to those that sit in darkness."
Lance gave an odd little laugh, full of bitterness. "You leave me out in the black night, anyhow," he said.
True enough, in one way, for the quick dusk had closed in around them; but as he spoke, a great white shaft of light like a moon-ray shot, almost as if in denial--widening on its way, from the shadowy stretches beyond the river; shot waveringly, as if uncertain, until, focussing itself full on the verandah, it turned the dusk to day.
"The search-light!" cried Mrs. Smith, clapping her daintily gloved little hands. "Eugene will be so pleased. He couldn't positively swallow a mouthful at lunch because, when he thought all was right, something went wrong. That's why he didn't come, Miss Shepherd," she added, for the light had effectually joined the scattered groups into one. "I positively couldn't tear him away, but I made him promise to turn the thing on here if he succeeded. And he has. Isn't it splendid?"
Mrs. Campbell looked doubtful. "It's just too much like the last day, comin' unawares, and makin' a' things manifest, for my taste. An' I wonder what Dr. James will say to it?"
"I wonder what the natives will say to it?" said Vincent Dering, looking across at Lance.
"Say!" echoed the tart lady. "I know what they should say--that, of course, we know a great deal more than they do."
"And, besides," added a new and gushing voice, "it is so beautifully, suggestively true. We have the light, we can light them."
"Oh! but thatissuch a bother," came Laila Bonaventura's full-throated tones. "I hate having to see things I don't care to see. I much prefer to have my own candle, don't you?"
She had been finding it dull work waiting for her guardian's return from the dining room, even though Vincent had, now and again, found opportunity for a word or look. He took advantage of one now to say, "It will be pleasanter by and by, won't it? We must settle the time before you leave."
"What time?" asked Muriel Smith, who happened to overhear his undertone. She had been vaguely curious at their apparent avoidance of each other, their occasional lapses into familiarity, ever since she had challenged them at the Viceroy's party.
"Time!" echoed Vincent, coolly. "Of that new song, of course. Come in, Miss Bonaventura, let us decide about it."
The girl swept up her long lashes solemnly. "I should think a twelve beat would be best, really. It is safer when there are so many accidental notes."
His face, as he led the way to the piano, was a study. If she had lived her life in a vaudeville at theFolies Bergèresshe could scarcely have been more at home in intrigue, yet her absolute sincerity and unconsciousness of wrongdoing was as palpable. On the whole, he felt vexed; the more so because the vaudeville dialogue proved unnecessary, since a sudden concentration of the party to hear the verdict of the Adullamites, who at that moment came out of the dining room, would have given them ample time for more dignified conversation.
Erda was in the front rank of the eager little crowd, her hopes, her enthusiasms, heightened by the deliberate choice she had just made, when Dr. Campbell, as the recognized head, began to speak. They had come unanimously to the conclusion, he said, that absolute revolt at this late hour would be unwise. Whether Father Ninian Bruce was justified, by the circumstances, in his adverse report was another matter. Personally he denied it; nor did he propose that they should sit down quietly under the interference. They were only forbidden to preach in Eshwara. Therefore they had come, again unanimously, to the resolution of leaving Eshwara for the time in a body. It would be a solemn protest; and they could thus render both to Cæsar and to God, since they could preach at other pilgrim stations on the road. It would be a noble protest which was certain of proving blessed.
The words roused no little enthusiasm, mingled with undoubted relief in most cases; but Erda, standing beside her cousin, said in an undertone, "Did you assent to that, David?"
"I suggested it," he answered, in a louder voice, not without some self-satisfaction. "It appeared to me to meet the exigencies of the case admirably, and it will be very useful, let me tell you, at home. It will emphasize the difficulties and dangers we have to contend against. It will show our meek reasonableness, and then--" he looked round with a jubilant smile--"it seems to me such a beautiful idea that the only result of this attempt to gag us will be that the thousands of poor benighted souls will have a chance of hearing the Truth in many places instead of one."
But Erda's voice broke in on the hum of applause almost harshly, filling the room with its defiance. "I think it cowardly; I would fight--if I were a man."
"You would beat Jean Ziska's drum!" laughed Vincent Dering, rising from the music stool where he had been holding Laila's hand under cover of the new song,--an occupation which always made him feel as if all the wine of life had gone to his head. "You refused my sword just now, Miss Shepherd, so I place my drumstick at your disposal."
So, with a reckless gaiety, he seized on a painted tambourine which good Mrs. Campbell had hung as an ornament on the wall,--it was bedaubed with two white lilies and a butterfly rampant,--and catching up a teaspoon from the table, he began to sing in his pretty, light-comedy voice, "Oh! dem golden slippers!" while the tambourine, under his skilful drumming, throbbed to the words:--