Imân Khân sate in the early dawn, putting such polish as never before was put on a pair of rather large size Oxford shoes. So far all had gone well. His own vast experience, aided by the stranger's complete ignorance of Indian ways, had sufficed for much; and Alexander Alexander Sahib (all the twelve Imâns be praised for such a name!) was now comfortably asleep in the bastion opposite the widow's quarters, under the impression that the hastily produced whisky and soda, with a "sand beef" (sandwich) in case hunger had come on the road, the simple but clean bedding, and briefly, all the luxuries of a night's sleep after a somewhat severe shaking, were due to the commercial instincts of a good old chap in charge of the usual rest-house: that being exactly what Imân had desired as a beginning.
The sequel required thought, and, as he polished, his brain was full of plans for the immediate future. One thing was certain, however, quite certain. The husband God had sent in a car must not be allowed to ride away on it before seeing more of the Miss-Sahiba. Arrangements must be made, as they always had to be made in the best families. Generally it began with a tennis party--but this, of course, was out of the question--and perhaps the accident on the road might be taken as an equivalent for that introduction. Then there were dances, and "fools-food" (picnics). The one might be considered as taken also, the others were out of season in the heats of May. There remained drives and dinners. Both possible, but both required time; therefore time must be had. Thechota-sahibmust not ride away after breakfast, as he had settled on doing, should he and the monster be found fit for the road.
Now thechota-sahibseemed none the worse for his fall, as Imân, in his capacity of valet, had had opportunities of judging. The inference, therefore, was obvious. It must be the monster who was incapable.
Imân gave a finishing glisten to the shoes and placed them decorously side by side, ready to be taken in when the appointed hour came for shaving water. Then he went over and looked at the motor bicycle, which was accommodated in the verandah. It did not pant or smell now as if it were alive, but for all that it looked horribly healthy and strong. It was evidently not a thing to be broken inadvertently by a casual push. Then a thought struck him, and he ambled off to the old blacksmith, who still lived in the serai arcade and boasted of his past trade of mending springs, shoeing horses, and selling to travellers his own manufactures in the way of wonderful soft iron pocket-knives with endless blades and corkscrews warranted to draw themselves instead of the corks!
"Ari Bhai," said Imân mildly to this worthy, "thou art a prince of workmen, truly; but come and see something beyond thy art in iron. Bâpri bâp! I warrant thou couldst not even guess at its inner parts."
Could he not? Tezoo, the smith, thought otherwise, and being clever as well as voluble, hit with fair correctness on pivots, cog-wheels, and such-like inevitables of all machinery, the result of the interview being that Imân, armed with his kitchen chopper and a bundle of skewers, had a subsequenttête-à-têtewith the monster, in which the latter came off second best; so that when its owner, fortified by a most magnificent breakfast (served in the verandah by reason of the central room of that bastion having an absolutely unsafe roof), went to overhaul his metal steed, he was fairly surprised.
"It is a verra remarkable occurrence," he said softly to himself as his deft hands busied themselves with nuts and screws (for he was a Scotch engineer on his way to take up an appointment as superintendent in a canal workshop), "most remarkable. And would be a fine example to the old ministers thesis that accident is not chance. There's just a method in it that is absolutely uncanny."
In short, even with the smithy on the premises, of which the good old chap in charge spoke consolingly, it was clear he could not start before evening, if then. Not that it mattered so much, since he had plenty of time in which to join his billet.
Thus, as he smoked his pipe, the question came at last for which the old matchmaker had been longing.
"And who would the young lady be who smashed me up last night?"
In his reply Imân dragged inWarm E-stink Sahib Bahadurand a vast amount of extraneous matter out of his own past experiences. Regarding the present, however, he was distinctly selective without being actually untruthful. The lateE-stink Sahib'swidow and children, for instance, being also at rest in the serai, were equally under his charge. And this being so, since there was but one public room in which dinner could possibly be served as it should be served--here Imân made a digression regarding the rights of the sahib-logue at large andE-stink Sahib'sfamily in particular--it was possible that the Huzoor might meet his fellow-lodgers and the Miss-Sahibaagain.
In fact, he--Imân--would find it more convenient if the meal were eaten together and at the same time, and the mem--her absence being one of the eliminated truths--would, he knew, fall in with any suggestion of his; which statement again was absolutely true.
Alec Alexander, lost in the intricacies of a piston-rod, acquiesced mechanically, though in truth the likelihood of seeing such a remarkably pretty face again was not without its usual unconscious charm to a young man.
This charm, however, became conscious half an hour afterwards, when hard at work in the smithy, his coat off, his sleeves rolled up, showing milk-white arms above his tanned wrists, he looked up from the bit of glowing iron on the anvil and saw a large pair of blue eyes and a large string of blue beads about an almost childish throat.
It struck him that both were as blue as the sky inarching the wide inarched square of the old serai. It struck him also that the eyes, anyhow, had more in common with the sky than with the house made with hands in which he stood, even though dead kings had built it. Yes! the whole figure did not belong somehow to its environment; to the litter of wasted forage, the ashes of dead fires, to the desertion and neglect of a place which, having served its purpose of a night's lodging, has been left behind on the road. It seemed worth more than that.
"I gave you a nice toss, didn't I?" said Elflida Norma, breaking in on his quasi-sentimental thought with a certain complacency. "If you had got out of my way it would have been more better."
"You mean if you hadn't got in mine," he replied, grimly. "But don't let us quarrel about that now. The mischief's done so far as I am concerned."
The blue eyes narrowed in eager interest.
"Have you broken things inside, too?" she asked, sympathy absent, pure curiosity present in her tone.
"No! I didn't," he said, shortly. "I'm not of the kind that breaks easily."
She considered him calmly from head to foot. "No-o-o," she admitted, sparingly. "I suppose not--but your arms look veree brittle, like china--I suppose that is from being so--being so chicken-white."
"Perhaps," he said, still more shortly, and was relieved when Imân (having from the cook-room, where he was feverishly feathering fowls in preparation for the night's feast, detected Elflida's flagrant breach of etiquette in having anything whatever to do with a coatless sahib) hurried across to beguile his charge back to the paths of propriety by reporting that Lily-baba(to whom the girl was devoted) evinced a determination to eat melons with her brothers, which he, Imân, was far too busy to frustrate.
"You need not make such pother about big dinner to-night," she said, viciously, when, with the absolutely accommodating Lily in her arms, she stood watching the far less interesting process of pounding forcemeat on a curry stone; "for I heard him tell the smith that he would go this evening if--well, if somebody kept his temper in boiling oil. Such a queer idea--as if anybody could!"
Old Imân's hands fell for an instant from themunâdu(Maintenon) cutlets he was preparing, for he understood the frail foundation on which his chance of manufacturing a husband stood. Jullunder-sahib must be making a spring, and if the oil in which it had to be boiled---- But no! As cook, he knew something of the properties of hot fat, and felt convinced that the spring would never be fried in time.
So all that long hot day he toiled and slaved in company with an anatomy of a man whom he had unearthed from the city. A man who had also in his youth served the white blood, but had never risen beyond the scullery. A man who called him "Great Artificer," and fanned him and the charcoal fire indiscriminately according to their needs.
And all that long hot day on the other side of the arcaded square work went on also, so that the clang of metal on anvil or cook-room fire rose in antagonism on the dusty sunshine which slept between them. Dinner or no dinner? Spring or no spring? And the circling dark shadows of the kites above in the blue sky were almost the only other signs of life, for Elflida Norma had found sleep the easiest way of keeping Lily-babafrom the melons, and the boys slept as they slept always.
But as the sun set Imân knew that fate had decided in favour of the dinner, for Jullunder-sahib came over from the smithy with empty hands, and found hot water in his room, and the change of white raiment he carried in his knapsack laid out decorously on the bed.
He took the hint and dressed for dinner, even to the buttonhole of jasmine which he found beside his hair-brush.
Elflida Norma, under similar supervision, dressed also. In fact, everything was dressed, including the flat tin lids of the saucepans which Imân had impressed into doing duty as side-dishes. Surrounded by castellated walls of rice paste, supporting cannon balls of alternate spinach and cochinealed potatoes, they really looked very fine. So did Imân himself, starched to inconceivable stiffness of deportment. So even did the anatomy, who, promoted for once to the dining-room, grinned at the young man and the girl, at the Great Artificer and all his works, with his usual indiscrimination.
And, in truth, each and all deserved grins. Yet Elflida Norma looked at Alec Alexander, he at her, and both at the dinner table set out marvellously with great trails of the common pumpkin vine looped with the cheap silver tinsel every Indian bazaar provides, and felt a sudden shyness of themselves, of each other, and the unwonted snowiness and glitter.
"Cler or wite?" said Imân, his old hands in difficulties with two soup plates. There was a dead silence.
"He means soup," faltered Elflida Norma desperately, wishing herself with the boys who were being regaled with curry and rice in her room, and thereinafter became dumb until the next course, when a sense of duty made her supplement Imân's "fish-bar'l" with the explanation that it was not really fish, which was not procurable, but another form of fowl.
So, in fact, were the side dishes which followed, and in which Imân had so far surpassed his usual self that Elflida was perforce as helpless as her companion for all save eating them solidly in due order. The old man, however, was too much absorbed in the due handling of "bredsarse" with the fowl, which was at last allowed to appear under the title of "roschikken," too much discomforted by the subsidence of his favourite "sikken," a cheesesoufflée, to notice silence, or the lack of it, until, just as--the worst strain over--he was perfunctorily apologising for the impossibility of "Hice-puddeen," a fateful cry came from the next room and Elflida started to her feet.
"It's Lily," she began; but Imân frowned her into her seat again, and turned to the anatomy superbly. "Go!" he said with dignity, "and bid the ayah see to Lily-baba."
The result, however, was unsatisfactory, and a certain obstinacy grew to Elflida's small face, which finally blossomed into open rebellion and a burst of confidence.
"You see," she said, those blue eyes of hers almost blinking as she narrowed them with earnestness, "she smells guavas, and they are more her hobby than melons even."
The young man smiled.
"Who's Lily?" he asked; "your sister, I suppose."
"My half-sister," she replied, solemnly. "But she will cry on, you see, if she is not let to come to my place."
"Then let her come--why not?"
"It is an evil custom," began Imân, as the order was given. He knew no graver blame than that even for a whole Decalogue in ruins; but Elflida Norma stamped her foot as she had stamped it in the polka, so he had to give in and thus avoid worse exposures.
And, after all, the introduction of the dimpled brown child in a little white night-shift, who leant shyly against Elflida's blue beads, seemed to help the conversation. So much so that after coffee and cigarettes had been served in the verandah, old Imân felt as if success must crown his efforts--if only there were time! But how could there be time when the possible husband had arranged, since the motor bicycle refused to be mended with the appliances at his disposal, to have it conveyed by country cart overnight to the nearest railway station, five miles off, whither he must tramp it, he supposed? next morning, to catch the mail train.
It was when, pleasantly, yet still carelessly, Alec Alexander was saying good-bye to the blue eyes and the blue beads, with the brown baby cuddled up comfortably in the girl's slender arms, that Imân, with a sinking heart, played his last card by saying that there was no need for the Huzoor to tramp. The Miss-Sahibaand Lily-babainvariably took a carriage airing before breakfast, and could quite easily drop the Huzoor at the railway station.
"Yes! I could drop you quite easily at that place. It would be more better than the walk," assented Elflida Norma, with a Sphinx-like smile. Her heart was beating faster than usual. She was beginning to be amused with the tinsel glitter and the general pretence. It was like playing a game. Still she slept soundly; and so did the young engineer, and Lily-baba, and the boys gorged with as-a-rule-prohibited native dainties. Even the smith slept, and the anatomy had already reverted to reality, his transient dignity vanishing into thin air. So that in that wide ruined serai, built by dead kings, all were at rest save the Great Artificer, Imân, who sate among the ruins of his dinner, satisfied, yet still conscious of failure. Something was lacking, which once more only God could create--only a miraculous car could bring.
In truth, if any vehicle might from outward appearance claim miraculous powers, it was the extraordinary sort of four-wheeled dogcart which, in the cool morning air, appeared as Imân's last card. He had, indeed, not wandered from the truth in telling Alec Alexander that carriages were not to be hired in that sahib-forsaken spot, and it had been only with extreme difficulty that he had raised these four wheels of varying colours and a body painted with festoons of grapes, all tied together with ropes.
Still, it held the party. Imân, with Lily-babain his arms, on the box by the driver, Elflida and the young engineer disposed on the back seat. The horse, it is true, showed signs of never having been in harness before, but this was not so evident to those behind, and Imân held tight and set his teeth, knowing that success has sometimes to be bought dearly.
Still, it was with no small measure of relief when they were close on their destination, and the beast settled down to the two hundred yards of collar work leading up to the small station level with the high embankment of the permanent way, that he turned round to peep at progress on the back seat.
Had anything happened? His heart sank at the cool, collected air with which the possible husband took his ticket; but it rose again, when, after saying good-bye to Lily-babaand tipping the coachman, the young man went off to the platform with Elflida, as if it were a matter of course she should see him off. In truth, that is exactly what he did feel concerning this distinctly pretty and rather jolly little girl with a bad temper.
And Elflida? Her world seemed to have had a fresh start in growth, it held greater possibilities than before, that was all.
So everything had been in vain, even Imân's sense of duty towards the white blood he had served so long.
"Good-bye!" He could not hear the words, but he saw the young hands meet to unclasp again, as with a whistle the mail train rushed out from behind a dense mango clump, and the Westinghouse brakes brought a sudden grinding rattle to the quiet morning air.
"All was over!" thought Imân sadly, as still sitting on the box with Lily-baba, he watched. Surely it had not been his fault. He had done all--only the cheesesouffléehad failed, and that happened sometimes even in the house of Lât-Sahibs. Yet it was over.
It was, indeed. Almost including the miraculous car, as deprived of its driver, who was spending part of his tip in the sweet stall, the horse, frightened at the train, reared, bounded forward, and then, finding its progress barred in front by a railing, swerved on its track, and came past the station again, heading for that downward incline with the steep banks falling away on either side.
Elflida grasped the position first, and with a cry of "Lily! Lily!" was at the horse's head as it passed. The possible husband was not far behind--just far enough to make the off rein as convenient to his pursuing feet as the near one, to which she clung, half dragged, helpless, half in wild determination to keep pace with the terrified beast.
"Let go!" he shouted. "He'll get you down, and then--let go, I say!"
She did not answer. In truth, she had no breath for words. And, besides, her mind was not clear enough to grasp his order, though it grasped something else--namely, that relief from her dead weight on one side must bring a swerve to the other. And that must not be till the embankment was passed, or the man holding to the off rein must go under.
"Let go!" he shouted, again and again, as he, in his turn, grasped her purpose; but he might as well have shouted to the dead.
* * * * *
"I believe--I hope--she has fainted," said Alec Alexander, with a catch in his voice not all due to breathlessness, as, the runaway safe held by other captors, he stooped over the girl who lay in the dust, her hands still clenched over a broken rein. Then he lifted her tenderly and carried her back to the station whence the mail train, careless of such trivialities as miraculous cart, had departed.
And if on his way he kissed the closed blue eyes and the blue beads round the childish throat, who shall blame him?
* * * * *
Anyhow, the hot dry nights of May were not over before old Imân's voice rose once more in declamation over the unforgettable story of the white blood.
But this time sleep did not come to the black-and-tan tribe gathered in the light of the floating oil wick. For the boys were watching something they had never seen before--the icing of a wedding cake.
And so the long-deferred personal climax came at last.
"The trouble being over, the masters were masters again, and I took Sonny-bababack to his people. And wherefore not? Seeing I had eaten of their salt all my life and they of mine. Yea! even unto wedding cakes. Look, my sons! That is done, and I, Imân, the faithful one by name and nature made it."
* * * * *
There was but one flaw in the old man's content on the great day; for he had managed to get a ham cheap for the "suffer," and Mrs. Hastings, only too glad of greater freedom in the future, had consented to his turning his attention to the education of the young couple and Lily-baba, who was to live with them. That flaw was a slight irregularity in what he was pleased to call a "too-liver-ot" on the said cake. Not that it really mattered. The true lover's knot itself was there, though the hands which fashioned it were not so young and steady as they had been when they caught up Sonny-babaand carried him to the safe shadows.
Yet, old as they were, those hands had forgotten no duty.E-stink Sahib'swidow, absorbed with a friend in the recipe of a mango pickle she meant to make on the morrow--a pickle full of forbidden turmeric and mustard oil--had to be reminded of herrôleas bride's mother over and over again, but it was Imân who hung a horseshoe for luck on the miraculous car--drawn this time by an old stager--Imân, who was ready with rice, Imân, who finally ran after the departing lovers to fling the old white shoe, in which Elflida had danced the hee-haw polka, into their laps as they sate on the back seat, and then, overbalancing himself in the final effort, to tumble into the dust, where he remained blissfully uncertain as to praise or blame, murmuring blandly, "What a custom is here!"
"The wisdom of Sri Ganêsh--the wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh."[1]
Through and through my fever-drugged brain the words came, compelling, insistent; forcing me away from reality, forcing me back into the past. Yet I knew perfectly where I was; I remembered distinctly that having felt unusually tired after rather a hot day's march I had pitched the littletente d'abri--which was my home during a sketching tour in Wales--rather closer to the main road than I generally did, and had thereinafter promptly succumbed to an unmistakable go of fever and ague, a half-forgotten legacy left behind by many years of Indian life.
Yes, I could remember distinctly the bramble-and-nut-hidden quarry hole, with its little inner sward of sweet sheep-bitten grass where I had pitched the tent. I knew that if I were to call, someone of the rumbling cart wheels, which came at intervals along the road, might stop and seek for the caller; but I lay still. I was hard-happed round and round with the curious content which comes as the chills and the aches are passing into the fire flood of fever that thrills the finger-tips and sets the brain fizzling like champagne.
"The wisdom of Sri Ganêsh--the wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh."
Why on earth should that haunt me here in Wales? on a piece, no doubt, of Nat Gwynne's property.
Nat Gwynne! Then I knew. It was because I had seen him in the distance that day, driving a pair of grey ponies, tandem, with a pretty young girl beside his coarse, heavy, good looks; heavier than they had been, though, heaven knows! refinement had never stood much in his way. And they were to be married to-morrow! Married to Gwynne of Garthgwynne! Couldn't anyone tell her what she was doing? Couldn't anyone save her, as the wisdom of Sri Ganêsh had saved that other one?...
And then in a second I was gone. I was under the brassy blue sky of India, and from the twisted tufts of marsh-grasses by the elephant's feet came a native beater's lament--"As God sees me it is invisible--what a tyranny is here."
"Bid Ganêsh seek," said Nat Gwynne's voice, imperatively from the howdah from which we were both shooting. He was in a Lancer regiment cantooned in the native State where for many years I had been consulting engineer.
Themahout, seated on the big brute's neck, turned calmly. "It is against the orders that Sri Ganêsh, King of Elephants and Lord of Wisdom, should touch carrion even of the Huzoor's."
I looked at my old friend Mahadeo with astonishment. He and I had been out on Ganêsh, the Rajah's finest elephant, scores of times, and again and again the cunning old rogue's inquisitive trunk had nosed out and up a partridge or snipe which the coolies had failed to find.
"He hath a scent like a bed of roses," old Mahadeo would say proudly, "and as for wisdom! Doth he not hold the Huzoor even as his ownmahout?"
Which delicate piece of flattery was true, for old Ganêsh, pad elephant to the bankrupt young scoundrel of a Rajah, had taken a fancy to me, as elephants do take fancies.
So, seeing at a glance that something lay beneath the surface of the bitter hatred in the dark face, and the wild, wicked rage of the white one, I said, quickly. "Seek! my brother!"
Ganêsh swayed forward, his trunk curling like a snake, his wicked little eyes alert, a faintfrou-frouof a blowing sound seeming to quiver the grasses; and there, grasped softly in the prehensile end was a dead jack snipe! As he put it deferentially and politely into my outstretched hand I seemed to catch a contemptuous flicker in his eye, as who would say, "What an amount of fuss about such a very little piece of pork," as the Jew said when a thunderstorm found him eating sausage.
But that it wasnota little piece of pork between those two, still glaring at each other, was evident.
Mahadeo's usually gentle face had taken on a stony stare that held in it something of limitless power; while Nat Gwynne's anger was almost obscured by sheer disgust at having to keep his hands off another man's servant.
"By God!" he cried. "It's lucky for you, you pig, that I'm not your master--but--but I'll try to be--I'll buy this big brute when they sell the bankrupt State up next month, and I'll buy you, curse you, and I'll ..."
"Do hold your tongue, Gwynne," I said to him in a low voice, for his temper was notorious, and once he lost control over himself he would often behave like a madman. As, indeed, he had every right to be, since the record of the Gwynnes of Garthgwynne was a black one.
Mahadeo, however, supplied the return to calm.
"The Huzoor ismast," he said to me, rapidly in low contemptuous Hindustani, turning the while to sit, immovable as ever, a mere head and trunk of a man, all else being hidden by the elephant's great shields of ears. "He is as the beasts that perish. And Ganêsh, too, nears his time of power--" he pointed to the great head he bestrode where, oozing apparently from a slight hollow in the skin a few drops of ichor showed, half hardened into amber, "so let those who would harm him--orhis friendsbeware!"
But there was nothing of which to be beware thereinafter, for all became peace. How hot the sun was! And the guns, too! Almost too hot to hold. But how cool it was in the camp down in a mango-grove beside a tank with great cane brakes stretching away into the stars under the moonlight! And how peaceful! How one slept, and slept, and slept, drowsed to dreamlessness by the great peace of the immovable shadows, the greater peace of the light behind them....
Ye powers above! What was that? Even now, remembering it, all was as it had seemed then. Shadow on light, light on shadow ... a curse, a cry ... something young and slim fleeing, half in light, half in shadow! Then a sudden trumpet, a rattle as of chained front feet, one little sob....
How steadily the moonlight shone through the branches on that small upturned face which was all Ganêsh's feet had spared.
"Who? What?" I gasped, uncomprehending, staring stupidly at Mahadeo on his knees beside the dead girl, at Gwynne, still dressed, the buttons on his mess jacket glittering like diamonds, his face all working with horror and dismay. But there was no room for anything but the old man's voice, quiet, restrained:
"She was my granddaughter, Huzoor. But a light thing. She must have gone too near the King of Elephants, being as this slave said, near to his time of power. What then?It is the wisdom, of our Lord Ganêsh! The wisdom of Sri Ganêsh!"
The sound of his voice died away softly, and the wind carried it further, and further, and further....
Such an odd wind! Soft, warm, with a faint perfume in it, blowing on my hands, my face. And behind it a familiar sighing sound with the echo of a chuckle in it....
Was it possible? I started up, my brain in a whirl. Did I, or did I not see in the moonbeam which stole through a chink in the tent flap, something sinuous, that curved and bent caressingly? And beyond it, where the flap divided, was or was that not a rough image of the Elephant Headed God of Wisdom painted in hot ochres on an elephant's fore front? I was out of the blankets in a second, flinging back the tent flaps with a delirious laugh. Aye! It was true! Earth and air alike seemed blocked by a huge mass of flesh that quivered all over with delight. Come! this was something like a fever dream! To have an Indian Rajah's pad elephant to ride on--to go whither you would for a fresh breeze--to cool your brain.
"Baito, Ganêsh!Baito!" I cried, giving the familiar order; but the next instant my vaingloriousness ended in a shiver, almost of fear, as the brute obeyed, sinking noiselessly and laying its trunk, curled round to protect itself against injury, ready for me to mount.
Scarcely knowing what I did I caught familiarly at the big drooping ears, I felt the trunk beneath my feet tilted gingerly to aid me, and there I was, my head reeling madly, in the old familiar place!
But around me? Around me half Wales, bathed in broad moonlight, lay peaceful; with, in the distance, a faint shimmer telling of the sea--the far sea that still seemed to sound in my ears as if, indeed, I lay upon its very shore listening to the break and burden of the waves which came from far away--so very far away.
I think the effort must have made me relapse into unconsciousness, for the next thing I remember is finding myself propped up by pillows in the howdah, and hearing a familiar voice break in upon the ceaseless fall of the waves which filled my ears.
And from the voice I gathered vaguely that it was not a dream at all. This was indeed Ganêsh, who had been sold because of his great height to an English showman, and this was no other than old Mahadeo, who would not leave his charge, and had come over the black water, also, where there was nothing good to be had save rum; rum that kept the cold out on these chill September nights when Ganêsh had to do his marches from town to town, since the sight of an elephant might frighten the traffic by day. There was evidently some of that rum still in the old man's voice as he chid Ganêsh glibly for having been restive and thrown his unsteadymahouton the road. But then had not the animal always loved the Huzoor, even as his master? And must he not have nosed him out as he passed, the Lord of Elephants having, as ever, a scent as of rose gardens? Which was as well, since now the Huzoor would be able to get a doctor-sahiband medicine....
I tried to understand, but it was hard to get at anything with fever raging in one's brain, while the rhythmic roll of the elephant's pace as we lilted away over half Wales seemed to blend with the fall of those waves from very far away. Once I remember asking how many couple of snipe we had killed. After that Mahadeo furtively brought out a bottle and gave me something fiery which seemed to do me good, though he muttered to himself that he could but do his best--his was not the wisdom of Sri Ganêsh.
"You--you shouldn't say that to me, you--you old fool," I murmured, weakly. "You should say it as you said to--to--to Gwynne-sahib--Gwynne-sahib, who is going to be married to-morrow--don't you know? Such a pretty girl--such a very pretty girl--such a poor, pretty girl...."
I don't know quite what I said; I am glad, indeed, not to be able to remember, but I have a vague recollection of becoming a trifle maudlin, and finally of pointing out, amid a cloud-like shadow of trees that lay on the far horizon, the position--or thereabouts--of Garthgwynne, whither the young bride was to be led the next evening.
Now, in all this, as I recount it from a blurred, fever-stricken memory, allowance must be made for illusion. I don't know if it really happened, I can only vouch for my belief that I actually saw and did these things. I think now, therefore, that I fell asleep, always with that recurring fall of distant waves in my ear, until I woke suddenly to a loud hilarious burst of half-drunken laughter.
"Stop him! Hie! Gone away! Hello! Gwynne! Pity the bride! If you don't go to bed there'll be no wedding day! Yoicks! Poor devil! wants to escape the halter. Hie! You there! Best man! You're bound to bring him up sober."
We were in the deep shadow of the famous cedar trees, and one look at the old house beyond the lawn was enough for recognition. Yes! it was Plas Garthgwynne, favoured of picture postcards, favoured of wild, wicked romance and legend. It was all blazing with lights, so, despite the waning of the moon, I could see--clustering at the door and dispersed over the gravel sweep--the mad rush of Gwynne of Garthgwynne's last bachelor party as it tumbled tipsily in chase of a reeling figure that came straight towards us across the lawn to lose itself in the opposite shadows.
And then a hard feminine voice dominated the uproar:
"Leave him alone, you fools! The night air will sober him; and if it doesn't, there's no hurry to carry on the breed."
Something of brutal truth behind the brutal coarseness of the remark fell like a wet blanket over the half-fuddled guests; some of them picked themselves up moodily from the gravel, others found stability from friends, and so they drifted in unsteadily, dominated once more by that hard, feminine, unwomanly voice asserting that if he didn't crawl back to burrow in a quarter-of-an-hour, she'd send the butler to look for him.
And thereinafter came quiet; while one by one the glittering windows of the house sank to darkness.
And yet it was not dark, after all, surely? Or was there a curious halo of light emanating from old Mahadeo's head; a halo which distorted him somehow, which piled his low turban into a high tiara, and made his nose show long, so long--almost as long as the Elephant-Faced God-of-Wisdom ... in the Indian shrines....
Ah! There he was!...
Gwynne of Garthgwynne, standing on a bit of open beyond the shadow--behind him a grey shimmer of mere set thick with water lilies--his legs very wide apart, his watch in his hand--it had some electric appliance about it, and the feeble light streaming upwards showed his face full of hard, soul-revealing lines. What a face!--the face of a devil let loose--set free from the fetters of conventional life.
"Two o'clock," he muttered. "Well! whats'h a--matter. Sh'upposin' am drunk she'll have to put up--Gwynne Garthgwynne, d--mn her--my wife--mother of Gwynne's-Garth ..."
"Forward, Sri Ganêsh!" The order came soft but swift, and we were out of the shadows. What was it out of the shadows, also--out of the Dim Shadows which shroud Life in the Beginning and the End, which caught me irresistibly, making me say sharply as one who has waited long, "Come along, Gwynne! do--there's a good fellow."
For an instant surprise seemed to struggle with satisfaction in his drink-sodden brain. The tall, heavy figure swayed, lurched. I could see its every detail, the very buttons on the mess jacket--worn doubtless out of bravado this last evening of bachelorhood--shone, as they had done that night years ago amid the shadow and shine of the mango-tôpe; for a radiance seemed to have sprung from earth and sky in which nothing could be hidden.
Then suddenly came his old reckless, half-insane burst of laughter. "Come," he echoed, drunkenly, "Why--why--shno't? Whatsh' larks--chursh, fl'rs joll'--lit'--bride--no bridegroom!--joll'--good'--larks'h, eh! Off to Phildelp'ia in the mornin'--see th'other one--joll'--lit' one.Bait, you pig, Ganêsh!Bait!"
It all passed like a flash of lightning. The elephant was down and up again, and the last thing I remember was hearing Gwynne of Garthgwynne's drunken voice say, "Hello! old Mahadeo, eh! Well! go it, ol' man. Givs'h some of--wish-dom--Shri Ganêsh--eh--what?"
When I roused again it was dawn; pale primrose dawn over a cloudless sea.
It was the strange wind that roused me, the soft, warm wind that passed over my face and sought something else--and found it. Soft as a snake the elephant's trunk found the drunken man's neck as he lay asleep, half hanging out of the cushioned howdah, and closed on it. The sight drove the blur from my mind, and in an instant I saw all things clearly.
We were on the very edge of a high cliff. Below us lay the scarce dawn-lit waters of the calm sea. But between me and that tender distant sky, what form was this with triple crown and wise stern human eyes looking out of an animal's face?
Wisdom itself! Wisdom come to judgment.
There was a moment's pause. I clung to the howdah's side as if turned to stone. I seemed to know what was coming--to realise the verdict which that ultimate wisdom must give. Then in a clarion voice the words came:
"By the order of the Lord Ganêsh, kill."
The softness, the tenderness of the snaky coil, so sensitive that the finest thread in God's world can scarce escape it, changed suddenly to iron. There was no cry, no struggle. Gwynne of Garthgwynne's body swung high in air, then, flung from it with all leviathan's strength, fell, and fell, and fell ...
* * * * *
When the roaring of the distant sea ceased in mine ears about a fortnight afterwards, I found that the nine days' wonder of Gwynne of Garthgwynne's disappearance on his wedding night had died down. He had rushed out rollicking drunk--that all knew. He had not returned. The butler sent out to seek for him had sought other seekers, but all in vain. They were still dragging the mere for him, but the flood gates of the river (of which it was a backwater) had been open that night, and the body might have drifted out to sea. So there had been no wedding, and a distant heir, barely related to the old stock, was ready to take possession so soon as doubt was over. As for me, the early postman, attracted by my moaning, had found me half-in and half-out of my blankets in thetente d'abribehind the bramble screen of the quarry.
Was it then all a dream? Even if it were not ...
Was it not the wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh?
I decided, at last, to say nothing about that dream of a marvellous moonlight ride on an elephant over half Wales. Twinges of conscience assailed me at times, but they were laid to rest for ever about Christmas-tide, when, going through a small town in the Midlands, I was met, in passing a new cottage hospital on its environs, by a glad cry-- "The very man I want! I've got a poor soul here who won't die. He ought really to have been at peace two days ago--but he goes on and on. You see, he's an Indian or something, and we can't speak the lingo--you can, I expect?"
I followed the doctor, with whom I had a slight acquaintance, into the ward, with a foreboding at my heart. I knew it was old Mahadeo, and that, indeed, he wanted me. And it was. He lay tucked up between clean sheets on an English bed with two English hospital nurses fadding about him, speechless, gasping, at the very point and spit of death, yet waiting--waiting ...
I knew what he wanted, and without a word, his dark eyes following me in dim gladness, I threw back the clothes and got a firm grip of the sheet at his head. He should at least die as a Hindu should die. "Now, doctor!" I said, "if you'll take the feet we will let him find freedom outside."
A nurse started forward. "But the case is pneumonia--double pneumonia----"
The doctor hesitated; they always are in the hands of the nurses.
"Look here, Jones," I cried, sharply. "This man doesn't want clinical thermometers, and draw-sheets, and caps. He wants freedom. He wants to die as his religion tells him he must die, on Mother Earth--aye--even if her bosom is white with snow."
And it was, for it was Christmas-tide.
So we lifted him out, the doctor and I, and laid him down on Heaven's white quilt. He just rolled over, face down, into the cool pillow.
"Râm-Râm--Sita-Râm," I whispered, kneeling beside him to give the last dying benediction of his race. Such a quaint one! Only the name of what to it, is superman and superwoman. A last appeal to the higher instincts of humanity.
There was one little sob. I thought I heard the beginning of the old refrain:
"The wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh----" Then he had found freedom.
"You seem to know their ways, sir," said a horsey-looking man who had come in with us and who had evidently something to do with the show. "So, if you could give us a 'elp with this pore fellar's beast, I'd be obliged. Hasn't touched food this ten days--never since the old man took worse, and a elephant, sir, is a dead loss to a show. The master lef' 'im here with me, but I'm blowed if I can do nothing with him."
I found Ganêsh happier than his master, for, no place being large enough for him, he lay in the open; but they had stretched a tarpaulin over him like a rick-cover, as a protection.
A glance told me he was far gone, though he lay crouched, not prone; his trunk--marvellous agent for good or ill--stretched out before him beyond shelter into the snow.
As I came up to him, I fancied I saw a flicker in his eyes, those eyes so small, so full of wisdom. Then I laid in front of him the old man's turban, ragged, worn, which I had begged of the prim nurses. In a second the whole, huge, inert mass of flesh became instinct with life. He rose to his feet with incredible swiftness, and softly encircling the old ragged pugree, raised it gently and placed it in the master's seat. For a moment I doubted what would come next; but the instinct which is held in leviathan's small brain is great. He knew by some mysterious art that the master was dead, that the human mind which had been his guide was gone.
He took one step forward, threw up his trunk, and the echoes of the surrounding houses cracked with the roaring bellow of his trumpet as he swayed sideways and fell dead.
That was all the little smug provincial English town ever knew of the
"Wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh."