It is not always on rocks and rapids that the cockle shell of human happiness meets with the direst shipwreck. Often in the quietest backwaters, where no current is, where not a ripple disturbs the still surface, disaster so absolute, so overwhelming comes, that the very tragedy of it sinks out of sight also, unrecognised, unrecorded.
Such a backwater was a little square of roof four pair back, in a tall tenement house in Lucknow, where one blazing hot day in June a buxom woman, with a yellow-skinned baby hitched to her hip outside the voluminous veil of dirty crushed calico, which for the present was mostly in folds about her feet, was haranguing three other women who sat working as for dear life in the hard unyielding shadow of the high walls, which were deemed necessary even here to shut out the possibility of prying eyes.
"What you need, honourable ladies," finished Mussumet Jewuni decisively, "is a 'bannister.'"
"A 'bannister!'" echoed the eldest of the three listeners. "And what new-fangled thing is that?"
She did not slacken a second in her deft twirling of her distaff, neither did the others, despite their questioning eyes, relax their swift business. Indeed, as they sat in the shadows, the three might have served as a model for the Fates, since Khulâsa Khânum span ceaselessly. Aftâba Khânum wound yarn on a circling bamboo frame, and Lateefa Khânum snipped with a very large pair of scissors at the shirt she was making; for, being many years younger than the others, her eyes were still fit for fine back-stitching. Beautiful hazel eyes they were, too: large, soft, full of sunshine and shadow.
Jewuni dismissed one mouthful of betel nut and began on another ere she replied.
"A 'bannister' is a pleader, who, having been across the black water to London, knows new tricks wherewith to confound the old ones. 'Tis the only chance for justice, ladies. I know of such an one, and could bring him here to receive instruction, and mayhap there would be no need for the honourable ladies to answer in Court."
Khulâsa Khânum's hands froze in horror; she glanced anxiously towards Lateefa. "Talk not like that before the child, woman!" she interrupted, almost fiercely. "No strange man, as thou knowest, comes to this virtuous house, and no woman goes out of it."
Both statements were absolutely true; these women, distant relations, yet bound to each other by the tie of a common poverty, a common wrong, had not set foot beyond that square of roof for years and no men--save those whose interest it was to keep them poor--had ever climbed the steep stair hole which showed like a cavernous shadow in the high back wall.
Yet Jewuni Begum laughed. She was a very different stamp of woman. Her oil-beplastered hair narrowing her forehead beyond even Nature's intention, and the soap curls at her silver and gold tasselled ears were of a fashion which left little doubt as to her moral character; but, being a bottomless receptacle for the gossip of the whole town, owing to her husband's position as a paid tout at the Law Courts, the neighbourhood in general, and even that virtuous roof in particular, had left inquiry and condemnation alone for the present.
"Lo! Khânum!" she giggled, "that is true enough, God knows; yet what avails it for reputation? None. 'Tis a rare joke, and I meant not to tell it thee; still, 'tis too good to be lost. In the Mirza's reply to the last petition sent from this house for direct payment of the pension due to honourable ladies, it is written--my man saw it, and there was laughter among the writers, I will go bail--that the petitioners, being giddy young things, given to wanton ways, it is necessary for the honour of a princely family that they be held under restraint; such money as is due being expended lavishly, aye! and more, in securing the luxury due to gentlewomen of your estate."
Here she herself went off into such chuckles that the yellow baby had to be shifted higher on her shaking side.
The three women ceased working, and looked at each other helplessly, while underneath their curiously fair skins a flush showed distinctly.
"Did they say that--of us?" asked Aftâba Khânum at last, in a faltering voice. Perhaps it was her occupation of winding hanks without tangle which made her always so keen to have all things clear.
"And of me?" echoed Khulâsa faintly. Her old face had grown very grey, her hands, though they had ceased working, were no longer frozen; they trembled visibly.
Only Lateefa sat silent, a swift yet sullen anger on her still young face.
Jewuni giggled again. "There was no distinction of decency, Khânum. But 'tis too bad, and that is why I spoke of a 'bannister' to confound such old tricks with new ones. However, 'tis no business of mine, only," she paused in her conversation, and, going beside Lateefa, she lowered her voice, "there is no need for stitching shirts till shroud-time comes. There be other ways, as I have told thee before, of earning money, aye! enough even to pay a 'bannister's' fee, and get the truth made known. So, if thou preferest to be as a hooded falcon, seeing nothing of the sport in life, sit and stitch. If not, come to me and claim freedom--in all things."
When she and the yellow baby had gone, silence fell on the desecrated little square of virtuous roof.
Truly it was hard! After a life-time of patient propriety, long years of self-denial involving silence and seclusion even from scant justice, to have all these virtues reft from them in order that wantonness and giddiness and youth might serve as an excuse for withholding their rights! That these rights should be traversed was to their experience no new thing, though to Western ears it may seem inconceivable that even under British rule it is the easiest thing in the world to treat secluded women as these three had been treated. Briefly, for the male head of the family, as guardian, to leave them to starve, while he made merry over their poor pittances of pensions granted to them by Government in consideration of their race, or its good services. No wonder, then, that Khulâsa sat helpless, resorting for comfort to the little rosary she always carried, that Aftâba's tears ran silently down her withered cheeks, or that Lateefa's sullen anger gave a dangerous look to her still handsome face. So dangerous that fear pierced Aftâba's soft self-pity at last, making her ask anxiously:
"What was it she said to thee privately, Lateefa? Naught worse, surely?"
The darkening of the handsome face was not all anger now. Lateefa rose with a bitter laugh.
"Nay! she but spoke of 'fees' for justice, as if we had aught to pay. Yet something must be done."
"We have done too much already," came Khulâsa's shaking voice. "If we had trusted in the Lord instead of sending petitions there would have been no need for them to tell the lie. If we had waited----"
"Lo! we had waited," put in Aftâba, "and petitions are no new thing. Our fathers made them. They are not like 'bannisters' and strange men. These----"
There was no need for her to explain what these were to that virtuous roof, for at the moment a tentative cough from the stair-hole accompanied by the rhythmic squelching of water in a skin-bag announced the daily visitation of old Shamira, thebhisti, who had filled their earthen pots for them for years and years; and in an instant veils were hastily drawn close, faces turned to the wall.
"Bismillah!" came the orthodox greeting, for old Shamira knew all about the honourable ladies, and in a way loved them, though he had never once seen them in all the long years.
"Bismillah! irruhman, niruheem!" returned the virtuous ones decorously. Only Lateefa, standing in the corner, felt that there was but half a truth in the words. God might be clement in the next world, but he was far from merciful in this. Yet it was not the fault of the world itself; that was fair enough. There was a displaced brick in the corner where she stood, and, profiting by the temporary blindness of her veiled companions, she did what she had done several times on the sly, during the past few weeks--she took advantage of the brick-hole and tip-toe to gain a glimpse of that outside world. It was the veriest glimpse indeed, of purpling shadowy roofs huddled against a flare of sunset sky, but the dust haze through which she saw it seemed a golden halo of transfiguration, and in a second she had made her choice. She would pay a retaining fee for bare justice to her own womanhood. Jewuni was right! Times had changed. Why should she waste her life clinging to old ways when new freedom was within reach.
Yet there was a startled, half-frightened look both in the sunshine and shadow of her hazel eyes, as she waited, face towards the wall, till the cool sound of pouring water have ceased, she was free to resume her limited life. Limited, indeed! How strange those limitations seemed in the light of her new decision!
But those brief minutes of arrest, due to old Shamira's entry into the feminine cosmogony, had, curiously enough, brought decision to the other two women, for, in truth, Jewuni's story, Jewuni's giggle at the joke, had been the last straw to their patience, the final goad rousing them to action of which, each in her own way, they had been dreaming for long.
They, too, felt that the time was past for temporising, for trimming their sails to suit each other's opinions.
So Khulâsa Khânum's pallid, high-featured face was more like that of one new-dead than ever, when Shamira gone, she returned to work. And, in truth, she had in those few seconds died for ever to this world and its works.
Delicate from her babyhood, saintly from pure suffering, joy had had small part even in her desire, and her resistance to pain had been always half-hearted. For what was even the justice of man worth in comparison with the justice of God? Naturally enough, then, Jewuni's tale of the sorry jest had been more a horror to her than to either of the others, making her turn to the hidden meaning of her thwarted life for comfort. Her retaining fee for justice should be paid where there was no fear of a miscarriage. And in the meantime, while the tyranny of life lasted, she must work--work to the end.
For on her work, practically, those others lived. In all the town no hands could spin a finer thread than old Khulâsa Khânum's. The very spinning jennies of Bombay could not compete with her ceaseless industry; and there still remained noble folk who clung to the spider's-web muslin of the old times. So her hands twirled faster, more deftly. The rest was with God.
Aftâba Khânum, on the contrary, had decided for the world; not, as Lateefa had done, for the world as it was in these latter days, but for the world as it ought to be, as it used to be. She had a very different strain in her from those other two; from Khulâsa in her spirituality Lateefa in her emotionality. Aftâba, even when things were at their worst, smiled, consoling herself and the roof generally with some unexpected and perhaps extravagant scrap of amusement. A mouthful of pillau concocted out of nothing to season a dry bread dinner, a ridiculous toy made out of rubbish, whereat all laughed. Courtier-born, she loved even the old etiquettes by instinct, while her keen wit could find a clue of an intrigue as deftly as her fingers could disentangle Khulâsa's cobwebs. And, of all three, she kept in closer touch with a world with which she had not quarrelled, despite its injustice towards her. There was, indeed, a certain Uncle Chirâgh who still came to see her, and her only, once or twice a year. A blue-beard dodderer, with a twinkling eye, and a still mellow voice, who sometimes brought quails with him, and spices, so that Aftâba might regale him with one of her best curries; for she was a great cook.
So the spur of Jewuni's retailed insult came as a challenge to Aftâba's sense of propriety. The world might be diseased by novelty, but the foundations were sure. She had been a fool all these years to acquiesce in impersonal petitions with purposeless stamps to them, instead of some graceful tribute, after the older, approved method. True, she had once broached the subject to Jewuni. She had even gone so far as to bring out a certain faded brocaded bag, which was her greatest treasure, and produce therefrom a medal or two, a dozen or more worn letters. Quaint, old-world informations to the reader, that the bearer, Futteh, or Iman, or Hassan, was such and such a worthy person--a gold-spangled record of thanks for service in the Mutiny--the intimation of one Rissildar Tez Khan's death in action; which latter had indeed been the cause of Aftâba's loneliness. Even (curious survival of friendly days gone, never to return) a few English words, in sprawling, irresponsible, boyish handwriting, to say that the self-same Tez Khan knew the whereabouts of every living creature fit to shoot in the whole countryside!
But Jewuni had scorned the suggestion of sending these to the bigwig with, say, a basket of Aftâba's famous pumpkin preserve, since, alas, oranges stuffed with rupees were out of the question. Indeed, she had said succinctly:
"Keep them till the Day of Judgment. The Lord may look at them, the law will not. For, see, they are not even stamped, and without stamps is no justice possible."
Even then old Aftâba had felt, with dim obstinacy, that it was not law or justice she sought: it was favour! Favour such as the great had to give in a well-ordered world!
And so she, in her turn, came back to the limitations of her life with a decision. Uncle Chirâgh had told her but a week or two before--as luck would have it!--that the whole town was to be in an uproar the very next day over the unveiling of a statue of Malika Victoria. The anniversary of a great day in the heroic annals of the Defence of the Residency--for which, by the way, that gold-spangled gratitude had been given--had been chosen as fitting for the ceremonial. The grounds were to be lit up, fireworks let off, and special messages sent to and from the Queen herself, while the statue would be covered with offerings. Could anything be more opportune for the decorous presentation of a retaining fee?
So next day, while Lateefa Khânum stitched, repenting not at all yet, still with a flutter of her heart, and Khulâsa Khânum, with an odd flutter at her heart also, which kept the colour even from her lips, worked and prayed, Aftâba used the privacy of a tiny kitchen for the preparation of other things than a scanty dinner of herbs. It meant the loss of her only silver bangle, sold on the sly through the market woman who came every morning. It was quite the most valuable thing in the house; yet there was but a farthing or two left by the time the pumpkin preserve, covered with silver leaf, lay in a tinselled rush basket with the precious brocaded bag on the top, and the market woman, bribed to return for it in the afternoon, had received a generous douceur which would surely ensure its due delivery.
All this took time, and was tiring, to boot; so it was nigh sunset when, after a sleep which had taken her almost unawares in the little cook room, Aftâba came out again to the limited life on the roof. As she did so, the familiar tentative cough of Shamira thebhistion his rounds, accompanied by the squelching of his water-skin, made her step back into the screening wall.
"Bismillah!" she said, wondering not to hear the familiar greeting. But old Shamira was staring helplessly at something he had never seen before. It was old Khulâsa Khânum.
"She must be dead," he said, simply, to Aftâba's horrified disbelief. "See! She sits with face unveiled."
And she was dead. Her retaining fee had brought justice swiftly. And Lateefa?
Aftâba, when she realised the emptiness of the roof save for herself and the dead woman, wondered if it was the sight of one who belonged to it slipping downstairs from its virtue that, by its terrible confirmation of wantonness, had sent Khulâsa to seek to a higher tribunal.
As for herself!
That night, when the waiters had gone, promising to return at dawn, and she was left really alone for the first time, she sat wondering what fate her preserved pumpkins would bring. And then she did something she had never done in all her life before. She, too, used the hole left by the displaced brick to gain a glimpse of the world which was doing honour to dead heroes, and to the Queen for whom they died. As she did so the first rockets rose from the unseen Residency to commemorate its brave defenders, and set their stars of glory in high heaven.
Up and up, valiantly, higher and higher, full of the best intentions, they went, typical, so far, of the hands that sent them on their mission. And then?
Then old Aftâba stepped down from her vain vantage, and creeping back to where Khulâsa lay waiting the dawn, put her head down beside hers and wept.
For the stars had fallen, but the dead woman's retaining fee had reached the Mercy Seat.
He sate biting his nails viciously. It was not a habit of his, but, at the moment, the tangle of his nineteen years of life had been too much for him, and he sate before it, helpless yet resentful.
He was trying to write a letter to his mother, his widowed mother far away over the black water in England, to tell her that he had been placed under arrest for cowardice--since that was what it came to in the end!--and yet not to hurt her, not to blame her, whom every bit of his being blamed. Why had she brought him up a nincompoop? Why had she been so afraid of him?--poor little mother whose nerves had been shattered once and for all by her hero husband's death ere her child was born. Yet that father had been brave to recklessness....
The boy's head went down on his arm. Something like a sob quivered through the hot air. For it was hot, though the sun was but an hour old, in the little grass-thatched bungalow which boasted of but one room, two verandahs, and two corresponding slips of dark enclosed space; one a bathroom, the other full of saddles, corn, empty boxes--briefly, the factotum's go-down. The whole house being nothing but a square mushroom set down causelessly in a dusty plain and guarded by two whitewashed gate-pillars, one of which bore the legend, on a black board, "Ensign Hector Clive, 1st Pioneers."
A good name, Hector Clive, and yet the boy's head was down on his arm. Why had he been such a cursed fool?
A brain-fever bird was hard at work in a far-offsirustree. He could see it in his mind's eye--green, with its red head held high among the powder-puff flowers, as it gave its incessant cry with the regularity of a coppersmith's hammer--for, though he had been but one year in the country, he knew all its birds, and beasts, and flowers; aye! and had a good smattering of its lingo also--it was that, partly, which had made him--what was it--afraid--or--or cautious?
His brain was in such a whirl he could not tell which. And he had no one to whom he could talk; not a friend in the whole regiment, for he was shy. That was why he was living alone in this cursed shanty where the centipedes and snakes, too, sometimes (but he was not afraid of them, or of any animal, thank heaven), fell from the cloth ceiling, and the sparrows (poor devils, after all they were only making their nests) dropped straws over one's letters. That one had made a blot--like a tear-mark--or was it, indeed...?
He cursed again under his breath, and a rigid obstinacy came to his face.
Like his name, it was a good enough face, though curiously young even for his young age. The great height of his forehead, it is true, took away from its breadth, and the short-sighted blink of the eyes set so close upon the high narrow nose prevented their piercing clearness from being seen. On the lower part of his face, hair had scarcely begun to show itself. All was callow, immature; yet the square chin showed stiff and strong enough.
There should, at least, be no suspicion of tear marks, so he took a fresh sheet: and then the thought struck him. He would write two letters. One to the dear little Mother who had devoted herself to him--him only--ever since he was born; the other to the woman who had spoiled him and his life, whose timidity had accentuated his birth-legacy of fear. It would do him good to have it out with himself and with Fate--not with Her--no! never with Her!
So this was what he wrote, and left lying on the table when an orderly came to summon him to the Colonel:
"Dear Mother,--It has come at last! I always knew it must come if you would make a soldier of me, just because my father was one! Why didn't you think? Why didn't you know? Poor Mother! I'm sorry to write all this. How could you dream I have felt more or less of a coward all my life, whenhewas so brave!"And then you made me worse--you know you did. I wasn't allowed to risk things like the other boys did; because I was your only one. Ah! I don't blame you, but it was rough on me. I should have made an excellent parson, I expect. And yet I'll be damned--this isn't really for your eyes, mother darling--if I can see what good I should have done if I had ordered that Sepoy under arrest? The men wouldn't have obeyed orders. I saw murder in their eyes. I've seen it for a long time, and I haven't dared to say so--haven't dared to warn those who should be warned for fear of being thought a coward--Isn't that cowardice in itself? Oh, Mother, Mother! Well, it was very simple. A Sepoy was cheeky over these greased cartridges; actually threatened to shoot me if I ordered him under arrest, and--I--you see I know a lot of their lingo, and I understand--I was afraid to do what I ought to have done--chanced it. Of course it doesn't read as bare as that in the Adjutant's report--but I am under arrest. Not that it matters. It must have come sooner or later--for I'm a coward--that is what I am--a coward...."
"Dear Mother,--It has come at last! I always knew it must come if you would make a soldier of me, just because my father was one! Why didn't you think? Why didn't you know? Poor Mother! I'm sorry to write all this. How could you dream I have felt more or less of a coward all my life, whenhewas so brave!
"And then you made me worse--you know you did. I wasn't allowed to risk things like the other boys did; because I was your only one. Ah! I don't blame you, but it was rough on me. I should have made an excellent parson, I expect. And yet I'll be damned--this isn't really for your eyes, mother darling--if I can see what good I should have done if I had ordered that Sepoy under arrest? The men wouldn't have obeyed orders. I saw murder in their eyes. I've seen it for a long time, and I haven't dared to say so--haven't dared to warn those who should be warned for fear of being thought a coward--Isn't that cowardice in itself? Oh, Mother, Mother! Well, it was very simple. A Sepoy was cheeky over these greased cartridges; actually threatened to shoot me if I ordered him under arrest, and--I--you see I know a lot of their lingo, and I understand--I was afraid to do what I ought to have done--chanced it. Of course it doesn't read as bare as that in the Adjutant's report--but I am under arrest. Not that it matters. It must have come sooner or later--for I'm a coward--that is what I am--a coward...."
The words, still wet, stared up into the baggy cloth ceiling, and the sparrows dropped straws over them while Ensign Hector Clive was being interviewed by his Colonel. He sate stolid, acquiescing in every word of blame; and yet he was obstinate.
"I don't see, sir, what good it would have done," he began drearily, when the Colonel stopped him with a high hand.
"Now, I won't have a word of that sort, Mr. Clive," he said severely. "There is enough of that silly talk amongst civilians, and I won't have it amongst the officers of my regiment. It is as good a regiment as any in India, and I'll stake----"
Here, feeling some lack of dignity in what he was about to say, he stood up, and the lad standing up also, overtopped his senior by many inches. Something suggestive in his still lanky length seemed to strike the Colonel. "I'll tell you what it is, Clive, you live too much alone. You're altogether too--too--why! I don't believe you even had a cup of tea before you started. There! I was sure of it. Absolute suicide! How can you expect, in this climate--and with a Colonel's wigging before you--Really too foolish--my wife shall give you one now--she's in the verandah with the boy--and--and, of course, I can't promise--but you--you shall have your chance--if--if possible."
The--lad--for he was but that--murmured something unintelligible. Perhaps to his dejected mind, another chance seemed to be but another opportunity of disgracing himself.
"How very shy he is," thought the tall slim woman who gave a cup of tea into his reluctant hand and sent Sonnie round to him with the toast and butter. "I must get you to give my small son a lesson, Mr. Clive," she said, smiling, trying to make conversation. "He was telling me all sorts of dreadful things he has heard--so he says--from Budlu, his bearer, and that he was frightened. And I told him a soldier's son never could be frightened at anything. Isn't that true?"
Ensign Hector Clive turned deadly pale. The child standing, with the plate of toast and butter, looked up at him confidently, as children look always where they feel there is sympathy.
"But you are flightened, aren't you?" he asked.
There was an instant's silence; then the answer came, desperately true: "Yes! I am--but then I'm a coward--that's what I am--a coward!"
You might have heard a pin drop in the pause. Then something in the wise, gentle face of the Colonel's wife broke down the barriers.
"Ah! you don't know----" he began; and so with a rush it all came out.
The Colonel's wife sate quite still; she was accustomed to confidences, and even when they did not come voluntarily she had the art of beguiling them. The art also of comforting the confider; and so when the lad's face had gone into his hands with his last words, as he sate--his elbows on his knees--the picture of dejection, she just rose gently, and came over with soft step to where he was. And she laid a soft hand on either of his lank long-fingered ones and pulled them apart. So, standing, smiled down upon him brilliantly--confidently.
"I don't believe it!" she said, "I don't believe a word of it! You'll be brave--oh! so brave, when your chance comes. Now, my dear, dear boy----" she looked at him as if he had been her son--"go away and forget all this nonsense. And see! Come back at dinner time and tell me before dinner that you've obeyed orders and haven't even thought about it."
She stood and waved her hand at him as he rode away in the blare of sunlight. Her voice echoing through the hot dry air reached him faintly as he turned out of her garden into the dust of the world beyond. "Till dinner-time--remember!"
* * * * *
Remember! The memory of those words came back to her idly as she sate clasping her baby to her breast, while Sonnie, wearied out with fear, slept in her lap, and her one disengaged hand busied itself in fanning a half-delirious man who lay on a string bed set in the close darkness. Dinner time! Yes, it must be about dinner time, for through a chink in the door you could see the sun flaring to his death in the west.
What had happened? She shuddered as she thought of it. What had come first, of all the horrors of that long hot May day? She could not piece it together. All that she knew was that someone had taken pity on the women and the children. And that they were all huddled together in that one room waiting till darkness should give a chance of escape; for the hut was built against an old ruin through which some underground passage gave upon ground not quite so sentry-warded as the barrack square in front. She could hear the familiar words of command, the clank of arms as they changed guard, and she shuddered again. Aye! the women and children might be safe, even if the almost hopeless stratagem failed; but what of the man--her husband--the only one, so far as she knew, of all the officers of the regiment who had escaped the massacre on the parade ground? How had he been saved? She scarcely knew. She remembered his running back like a hare--yes! he, the bravest of men--all bleeding and fainting, to gasp some words of almost hopeless directions for her safety. And then old Imân Khân--yes! it had been he--faithful old servant! Why had she not remembered before? For there he was, his bald head bereft of its concealing turban, keeping watch and ward at the door.
What a ruffian he looked, so--poor, faithful Imân Khân!
Hush! a voice from outside, a reply from the bald-headed watcher within. More questions, more replies, both growing in urgency in appeal. Then a pause and retreating footsteps.
"What is it, Imân Khân?" she questioned dully, as the old man stole over to her and laid his forehead in the dust.
"What this slave has feared, has waited for all the hours," he whispered, whimperingly. "They know--Huzoor----" he pointed to the bed. "Or, at least, they have suspicion that a man is here. And they must search--they will search--or kill. I have sent them to await the Huzoor's decision."
She stood up, still clasping her babe, the boy slipping, half-asleep, to the ground, and looked round at those other women--those other children who had lost their all. And hers lay here....
"They must come," she said in a muffled voice. Then she bent over her husband. "Will!" she whispered, bringing him back from confused, half-restful dreams, "the Sepoys say they must search--or--or kill--them all. We will hide you--if we can."
If we can! Was it possible, she wondered, feeling dead, dead at heart, as the door opened wide, letting in the sunlight and showing a group of tense womanhood, a bed whereon, huddled up asleep or awake, lay the children deftly disposed to hide all betraying contours.
"Huzoor! salaam!" said the tallsubahdâr, drawing himself up to attention, and the search party of four followed suit.
How long that minute seemed. How interminable the sunlight. Ah! would no one shut out the light, and why did Sonnie move his hand?...
"Huzoor! Salaam!"
Oh! God in heaven! were they going? Was the door closing? Was the blessed darkness coming?...
It was utter darkness, as, her strength giving way, she fell on her knees beside the bed, burying her face upon her children, her husband.
"Will! Will!" she whispered.
A faint sigh came from the watching women. So Fate had been kind to her--her only....
One who had seen her husband shot down before her very eyes rose slowly, and taking her baby from the bed, moved away, rocking it in her arms almost fiercely. So, in the grim intensity of those first seconds, the sound of further parley at the door escaped them.
Then, in the ensuing pause, old Imân Khân's bald head was in the dust once more, his voice, scarce audible, seemed to fill the room.
"Huzoor! They have seen. He must go forth or they will kill--all."
The words, half-heard, seemed to rouse the wounded man to his manhood. He raised himself in bed, he staggered to his feet; so stood, swaying unsteady, yet still a man. "All right--I'll go--Let me out, quick--quick----"
But someone stood between him and the door. It was Ensign Hector Clive. His face was pale as death, his hands twitched nervously, but in the semi-darkness his eyes blazed, his chin looked square and set.
"No, sir," he said quietly, "this is my chance. Look here! I ran and hid in the passage-way when the others--died like men--I couldn't help it--perhaps if they had had the chance I had--but that's nothing!--nothing! I heard--I understand their lingo. They don't know you're here, sir--only a man--let me be a man--for once. It is my chance----"
His eyes sought the Colonel's wife in bitter appeal.
Swift as thought she answered it. Her hand was on her husband's shoulder to hold him back, for she saw in a flash what others might not see--a martyrdom of life, soul warring with frail flesh, for this boy.
"Let him go, Will," she whispered hoarsely. "As he says, it is his chance."
There was a faint stir amongst the listeners. The Colonel shook himself free from his wife's detaining hand. The code of conventional honour was his, in all its maddening lack of comprehension.
"Stand back, please--and you, Mr. Clive, obey orders--I--I----" He reeled and would have fallen, but for the bed against which he sank. His wife was on her knees beside him.
"Let him go, Will. It is his chance, give it him, for God's sake!"
There was no answer. Unconsciousness had come to bring the silence which gives consent, and she stood up again, stepped to the lad and laid her lips on his forehead.
"Thank you, dear--in the name of all these--thanks for a brave deed."
The blood surged up to his face. A boyish look of sheer triumph transfigured it as he paused for an instant to throw off his coat and tighten his waistband.
"I shall have my chance, too," he cried exultantly, "for I was always a good runner at school!"
Aye! a good runner, indeed! With the wild whoop of a schoolboy at play, he was across the barrack square, untouched. Once over that low wall in front and he would be in cover. He rose to the leap lightly, and for an instant he showed in all the pathetic beauty of immature strength, all the promise of what might lie hidden in the future, against the red flare of the sunlit sky, against the glorious farewell which is true herald of the rising of another day. Then he threw his arms skywards and fell, shot through the heart.
He had had his chance!
Prem Lal, census enumerator, raised to that fleeting dignity by reason of his being a "middle fail" student (as those who have at least gone up for the Middle School examination style themselves in India), paused in his ineffectual attempt to write with a fine steel nib on the fluttering blue paper held--without any backing--in his left hand, and, all unconsciously, gave the offending pen that sidelong, blot-scattering flick which the native reed requires when it will not drive properly.
Then he coughed a deprecating cough, and covered the previous act--natural enough in one whose ancestors, being of the clerkly caste, had spent long centuries in acquiring and transmitting it--by displaying his Western culture in another way.
"Now for the next 'adult' or 'adulteress' in this house," he said pompously in polyglot.
The grammatical correctness of his genders passed unchallenged by his half-curious, half-awe-stricken audience. The blue paper, ruled, scheduled, classified, contained an unknown world to that patriarchal party assembled in the sleepy sunshine which streamed down on the roof set--far above the city, far above Western civilisation--under the sleepy sunshiny sky; so it might well hold stranger things to its environment than untrustworthy feminines.
"There is the grandfather's father, Chiragh Shah, Huzoor," replied a man of about thirty who, standing midway between the real householder and his grandsons, had assumed the responsibility of spokesmanship in virtue of his possibly combining old wisdom and new culture. He used the honorific title "Huzoor" not to Prem Lal--whom he gauged scornfully to be a mere schoolboy, and a Hindoo idolator to boot--but to the blue paper which represented the alien rulers, who were numbering the people for reasons best known to themselves.
A stir came from the door chink behind which the females of the family were decorously hiding their indignant anxiety.
"Yea! let the old man go forth," shrilled a voice to which none in that household ever said nay. "He is past his time--let them take his brains if they will, and leave virtuous women alone. Who are we, to be registered as common evil walkers?"
Even Prem Lal grew humble instantly.
"Nay! mother," he said apologetically, in unconscious oblivion of his own previous classification. "The Sirkar suggests no impropriety. We seek but to know such trivials as age--sex--if idiot, cripple, spinster, adult or adult----"
"Let Chiragh Shah go forth to him," interrupted the hidden oracle with opportune decision. "Lo! his midday opium is still in his brain. Let it bring peace to him and the eater thereof."
The chink widened obediently, disclosing a fluttering and scattering of dim draperies. So, roused evidently from a doze in the inner darkness, a very old man shuffled out into the sunshine, then stopped, blinking at it as if, verily, he found himself in some new and unfamiliar world.
"The Sirkar hath sent for thee, grandad," bawled the appointed spokesman in his ear. "They need----"
But the words were enough. The blank, dazed look passed into a sudden alacrity which took years from the old body as it sat it a-trembling with eagerness.
"The Sirkar," he echoed. "It is long since I, Chiragh Shah--long since----" He relapsed as suddenly into dreams. His voice failed as if following the suit of memory, but he supplied the lack of both by a smile which spoke volumes.
For it was the smile of a sycophant as unblushingly false as the teeth which it displayed--teeth which were square, dicelike blocks of ivory, unvarying in size, strung together en a bold gold wire, and hung--Heaven knows how--to his toothless gums.
"Sit down,meeân-jee," said the census enumerator, politely, for the heart-whole artificiality of the smile admitted of no breach of manners. "We seek but honourable names and ages."
So they brought the old man a quaint red lacquered stool, which had once carried a certain dignity in its spindled back rail by reason of its having come into the family with some far dead and gone bride--Chiragh Shah's own, mayhap!--and there he sate, still with that look of urbane smiling alacrity rejuvenating his wrinkled face.
There was a hint, beneath the semi-transparency of his frayed white muslin robe, cut in a bygone fashion, of very worn, very old brocade fitting closely to the very thin, very old body, and the embroidered cap set back from his high, narrow forehead showed a glint here and there of frayed old worn gold thread.
"His name is Chiragh Shah," yawned the spokesman, adding in a bawl, "How old art thou, dâdâ--the Sirkar is asking?"
There was a little pause, and wintry though the sun was, its shine seemed to filter straight through all things, denying a visible shadow even to the blue paper.
"How old?" came the urbane voice, speaking with a long-lapsed precision of polish. "That is as God wills and my lord chooses."
Prem Lal glanced doubtfully at the schedules. They did not provide for such politeness, so he appealed mutely to the spokesman, who replied by roundabout assertion:
"He was of knowledgeable years when the city fell--wast thou not, dâdâ?" The explanatory shout brought keen intelligence to the hearer.
"Aye! it was from the palace bastion I watched the English. Half the city watched them that 14th of September...." Here once more voice and memory lapsed awhile. But Prem Lal's history was at least equal to the more recent event of that memorable date, so his pen grew glib in ciphering. "Taking knowledgeable age as ten," he commenced rapidly, "with deduction of years 1857 from present epoch 1881----"
His face darkened. "He has the appearance of more age than thirty-five," he began dubiously, when the suave old voice picked up the lost thread of recollection.
"Lake sahib came to our court two days after, and the King, being blind, saw not that the English face was no more merciful than the French face which had been driven away, so there were rejoicings."
"He means the day which began the hundred years of tyranny," suggested the spokesman; and Prem Lal's pen had already substituted 1805 for 1857, when the voice of her who had to be obeyed came sternly from the chink. "Put him down as a hundred, boy!" it said scornfully. "Meat is tough when the sacrifice is past its prime, anyhow, so what does it matter?"
The next question presented no difficulty. No one in that house could be aught but a descendant of the Prophet, so the answer "Syyed" sprang to every lip with chill, almost scornful, pride.
"Profession or trade," continued Prem Lal, mechanically; "gold-thread embroiderer, I suppose, like the rest of you."
It was a natural supposition, seeing that the high-bred, in-bred household had for years past--since, in fact, courts were abolished in Delhi--taken to this, the trade of so many ousted officials.
"Huzoor! no!" replied the spokesman with a yawn, for the proceedings were becoming uninteresting to him. "He is before that. He does nothing--he never did anything."
"Gentleman at large," hesitated on Prem Lal's pen; there an ephemeral conscientiousness born of his ephemeral dignity made him appeal to the old man himself.
Chiragh Shah smiled courteously. His hands trembled themselves tip to tip.
"My profession," he echoed. "Surely I am Chaplaoo--of inheritance and choice," he added alertly.
"Chaplaoo!" That was clear enough to Prem Lal in the vernacular, but how was it to be translated for the blue paper which must be written in English as an exposition of learning that might lead to further employment?
Being prepared for such emergencies by a pocket dictionary, he looked the word up--a proceeding which revived interest in the audience, notably behind the chink, whence the magisterial voice was heard remarking that it was no wonder the Sirkar wanted brains if it was so crassly ignorant as not to know what chaplaoo meant!
This flurried Prem Lal into premature decision. "Chaplaoo," he quoted under his breath, "a fawner--ha! I see! One who keepers the fawn--forester--huntsman--Am I not right?" he translated with a preparative flick of the steel pen.
The even ivory smile was clouded by an expression too blank for resentment.
"The Sirkar mistakes. This slave kept no animals."
Prem Lal dived hurriedly into further equivalents. "Parasite--backbiter--one who bites backs! Ah! I see--bug--etc."
"This slave, as he has said, kept no kind of animals whatever," repeated Chiragh Shah, with a suave, unconscious dignity which appeased even the rising storm of virtuous indignation behind the chink. "He was--if the Sirkar prefers the title--Chapar-qunatya, by inheritance and choice."
The rolling Arabic word had a soothing sound, and a hush fell with the sunshine even on Prem Lal's search after a common factor between East and West.
"Toad eater! eater of toads----" he began with doubt in the suggestion; "lick spittle--one who licks the spittle?"
"Eater of toads, licker of spittle," shrilled the voice of the chink. "Dost come here defiling an honourable house--and I who purvey its food--with such vile calumny--I----"
"Peace, mother," soothed a softer voice; "such things do no harm save to the speaker. What you spit at the sky falls on your own face!"
"Aye!" assented a ruder voice, "and is he not a Kyasth (clerk)--lie he must or his belly will burst."
The word "lie" gave the agitated enumerator a fresh clue, and the pages of the dictionary fluttered as if in a full gale.
"Lie--liar--slanderer----"
There was no connection in his tone; but the suggestion being at least plausible to his audience, the question was referred loudly to old Chiragh Shah, who was beginning to nod with combined sunshine and opium drams.
"Lie?" he asked, with a return of that swift alacrity. "Surely, I lied always. Yea! from the beginning to the end."
He used the high-sounding Arabic word for liar, and so sent Prem Lal a--fluttering once more. Ere he had lit on the correct gutteral, old Chiragh Shah's set smile had changed into a real one. The slack muscles of his neck stiffened; he flung out his right hand airily.
"Hush!" said the two smallest boys on the roof in sudden interest; "dâdâ is going to talk."
He was.
"Lies!" he began, and there was tone in the old voice, "and wherefore not if it is a real lie and not a bungle? But I never was a bungler. I know my profession too well--even at the last--yea, at the very end they had to come to me for artifice--for subterfuge. It was the last lie--to count as a real lie."
He paused, one of the boys had crept round to him and now laid a compelling hand of entreaty on the old man.
"Tell us of it, dâdâ."
The spokesman looked at the enumerator as if for orders.
"It may elucidate the meanings," muttered the Middle-fail to himself.
So in the stillness of that sunshiny roof, set so far above the workaday world, they sate listening.
"Yea! it was the last lie that was worth the telling. Yet I was past my prime like the court itself. For none, save those who saw, knew the heart-burnings, the bitterness of those last years. King but in name, the very court officials drifting away to other allegiance. And Lake sahib had been so full of promise on that first September day, when the Frenchman was driven away because, forsooth! he had made the blind Shah Alum a prisoner in his own palace----" There was a pause in the thin old cadences, and a flitting shadow fell on the sun-saturate listeners from a wheeling kite overhead.
"And what was Bahadur Shah but a prisoner, too? What matter--the Huzoors gave him bread after their fashion and he was unfaithful to the salt of it. That was not well--one must be loyal even to a lie! So after the mad midsummer dream of recovered kingship in the palace--such a mad dream--we who dreamed it knew at the time that we were dreaming--came that second September day when the English returned to Delhi. We did not watch them, then; we were hiding in the tombs--Humayon's tomb without the wall.
"It was the night after Hudsonsahib bahadurhad wiled away the King by fair promises--aya! the Huzoor knew the trick of those well--but the Princes were still hiding--and many a better man, too.
"My son for one. He was wounded to the death. Ah! I knew it--though the brave lad--he was the son of mine old age--steadied his breath and smiled when I spoke to him. But there was little leisure for words with treachery to right and treachery to left, and none to trust fairly. For the world had changed even then, and there were but one or two of my kind left, and I was out of favour. Too old for the new court--too old for new pleasures. And the young Prince--lo! how he used to laugh at my worn flatteries--had many pleasures--so many of them that he took some of them from other folks' lives; thus he had foes. Aye! but friends, too, for he came nearer to kingliness than his brothers. And my son loved him.
"So when the danger came, and I knew by chance of the plot to kill the Prince as he slept, and gain the reward set on him by the English, I had no choice. Yet I dare trust no one in the skulking crowd which crept about the shadows of the old tomb. In those days it was every one for himself, and the Prince had scant following at best. And he lay drunk with wine and women, out of bravado partly to the skulkers--in one of the half-secret upper rooms. But I knew which, and I remember it so well. The grey spear point of the distant Kut showed through its open arch.
"And below, in a far nook of the crypt, where there was a secret swinging panel in the red sandstone wall, known only to the old, my son lay dying.
"He steadied his breath as I stooped over him, and whispered that he would soon be fighting for his Prince again.
"'Soon, my son,' I answered, waiting as he smiled. For I knew the silence was at hand--silence from all things save the breathing that would only steady into death.
"We, my servant and I, lifted him easily. He was but a lad, though he would have grown to greater stature than the Prince. His head lay so contentedly on my shoulder as I went backward up the stair, telling those who stood aside to let us pass, that he was better and craved the fresher air of the roof. 'Better? Aye! he is better, or soon will be, old fool,' said one with a laugh. Then clattered noisily after his companions, so noisily that the echo of the winding staircase sent their scornful mirth back to me. 'He will be dead--like someone he followed--by morning.'
"Before morning, if I did not fail, thought I, silently, as, searching the shadows, we sought the Prince's hidden room. There was a youth ever with the Prince--a baby-faced, frightened, womanly thing--yet faithful as far as in him lay. Him, I caught by the throat, 'They would kill thee, too,' I said; 'better take the chance of life. If fate be kind, ere dawn discovers the deceit,hewill be fit to fly.'
"So after my servant and I, wailing at our lack of wisdom, had carried the Prince down, face covered as one to whom worse sickness had come suddenly, I crept to the upper room again. It was growing late, but the grey spear-head of the Kut still showed beyond the open arch as I covered the lad's face, lest, for all his gay dress, the murderers might see too much.
"'Dream thou art fighting for the Prince, sonling!' I said, knowing he was past even the steadying of his breath for an answer; but the smile had lingered on his face.
"Then I covered my face also, and, bidding the baby-faced one escape to the crypt as soon as it was possible, sate as a servant might have sate, at the turning of the ways from the stair head.
"Would those who were to come be familiar or strange? I wondered. The latter, most likely, since Chiragh Shah, the Chaplaoo, had long since passed from court life, almost from remembrance.
"They were strange; as they challenged me, I drew the cloth from my face without fear.
"'The Prince's room!' they cried, dagger-point at my breast. But that could not be. There must be no suspicion, only certainty, only soothed certainty. 'I have been waiting to show it to my lords,' I answered. 'Lo! he sleeps sound--yea! he sleeps sound, his face toward the Kut.'
"So, with smooth words, I led them in the dark----"
The memory of the darkness seemed to fall as darkness itself on the old brain, and Chiragh Shah sate silent in the sunshine for a few seconds. When he spoke again, it was as if years had passed. "It was the last lie that was worth the telling," he said, almost triumphantly.
"And a good lie, too," came the shrill voice from behind the door chink. "See you, boy!--call the old man by his right name in your paper, or may God's curse light on you for ever!"
Thus adjured, Prem Lal, who, throughout the whole tale, had been fluttering his dictionary from one synonym to another, suggested sycophant; that was, he explained, one who flatters and lies for personal profit.
"Profit!" echoed the voice. "Small profit dâdâ gained. Was not the Prince killed with his brothers next day by Hudson Sahib; so there was no one left even to reward the old man?"
"Save God," suggested Prem Lal, piously trying to escape somehow from the dilemma.
"And there is gain, and gain," admitted the spokesman, combining new and old, east and west.
"Hush!" said one of the two small boys again; "dâdâ is going to talk--he may know----"
So once more the old voice rose in unconscious apology for the difficulty of condensing what etomologists call his life history into a census paper.
"Yea, it was good, and hard--yet not so hard as the first.Thatnever left me, despite the long years."
It seemed, indeed, as if it had not, for something of childlike complaint came into the old voice. "It was my first day at court. Mother had cut my father's khim-khab robe--crimson with gold flowering--to fit me, despite her tears. Her eyes were heavy with them when she kissed me; but I had no fear for all I was so young. I knew the women's bread depended on my tongue--though it was my heritage also to be Chaplaoo.
"And the King was pleased. Mother had tied my turban so tall and he laughed at that. It was out in the garden, he under the gilt canopy, the nobles round and beyond the flowers, and birds fluttering among the roses.
"And I was standing beside the king, and he was laughing--for I knew my part.
"Then the fluttering came closer, closer, and lo! a bird settled on my wrist. It was Gul-afrog--I had left it with my sister, but it had followed me--for we loved each other. So, on my wrist it sate joyful, and salaamed, as I had taught it, drooping its pretty wings.
"Then the King cried, 'How, now, whose pretty bird is this?' and someone laid a warning hand upon my shoulder. But I knew before what I must say if I was to stand in father's place. I knew! I knew!
"'It is yours, my king.'
"So I said, kneeling at his feet! 'It is yours, it is yours,' and Gul-afrog had been with me since it fell out of the bulbul nest in the rose tree. Then they brought a golden cage ..." The old man sate staring out into the sunshine in silence, and only the littlest of the two boys wept softly.
"We will call him 'Flatterer for Gain.'" said Prem Lal, in desperate decision, and perhaps the description came as near to old Chiragh Shah's profession as was possible in a census schedule.