Mrs. Boynton was physically incapable of being constant to anything disagreeable, even to her own thoughts. The love of ease which came uppermost in her made it impossible; so, as she sat waiting for George Keene on the following evening, she had forgotten the vague remorses and regrets which had assailed her the night before. All she chose to remember was the fact that both George and Dan would be away from Hodinuggurif anything happened. What more could any one ask from one in her position? She made a pretty picture in the pretty room. A wood fire blazed on the hearth, a scent of English flowers filled the air. Everything, from the books on the table to the graceful figure in white satin and pearls on the wicker chair, told a tale of delicacy and refinement, of what it is the fashion nowadays to call culture. On the mantelpiece, among a Noah's Ark of china beasts, and supported by a placid brass Buddha, George Keene's sketch of the dust-storm, thekikar-tree, and the rat-hole, struck a dissonant note in the general harmony; but Gwen's ears were too much attuned to content for her to notice it. Briefly, she was full of solid relief; not only because escape from a tight corner seemed assured, but that such relief had come in the nick of time. For Lewis Gordon had been over to tea, saying things which made it imperative that something definite should be settled about Dan's promotion and prospects. Saying, for instance, that he was growing sick of doing orderly duty at the Tweedies, house, and wanted one of his own. That she needed a firm hand to prevent her wasting her pension onpari mutuels, and beneath these jesting complaints she had seen real discontent and a determination for change in the future. And was he not right? Her whole mind gave its assent to his wisdom. What an unspeakable relief it would be to find herself back in a straight path; not only for her own sake, but for the sake of others--of those two especially whom she had implicated all unwittingly. But for them she would have defied the plotters; but for them she would never have stooped to flatter Dalel Beg, and take shawls and ornaments at nominal prices from Manohar Lâl; to do any of those things, in short, with which their covert hints had forced her to rivet the chain which bound her to deceit. At least so she told herself, but then she was a proficient in the art of playing the thimble trick on her own mind, and, as often as not, was really incapable of saying where the motive power of her own actions lay. So, as she sat in the wicker chair waiting for George Keene, she felt quite virtuous over the sacrifice of her own honourable instincts on the shrine of friendship. Even ifanything did happen, all real blame would lie with Colonel Tweedie for allowing both George and Dan to be absent; but what was blame to the head of a Department? It slipped from him like water from a duck's back. And then, in regard to the water itself? Even Lewis allowed that the poor people might just as well have it as not----'
'Keene sahibsalaam deta,' said the servant, interrupting her soliloquy of smooth things. She rose with outstretched hand and kindly smile.
'Punctual as ever. We shall be in time for number two----' then she paused abruptly in careless surprise. George, who had been told off as escort during the three-miledandyride to the Town Hall, was still in his light morning suit. Smart enough in his new shirts and ties, and with a carnation in his buttonhole, but still scarcely in the costume for a bachelors' ball. 'What is the matter? Aren't you coming?' she asked quickly as he stood silent yet disturbed, for the sight of her always had the nature of an electric shock upon him.
'To see you so far, of course. To the ball? I'm afraid not. You see I have to start to-night.'
'Start? Where?
'For Hodinuggur; where else?' He spoke lightly, but his face contradicted his tone. When is it a light matter to leave Paradise?
'Nonsense!' broke in Gwen sharply, startled out of all save negation. 'You must not go.'
'Must, I'm afraid,' he echoed, and his voice was a trifle unsteady. 'You see,' he went on more confidently, 'I ought never to have taken that offer of extra leave. I knew it at the time, but I thought Dan would stop, and the temptation---- However, I'm off now.'
'Now?' she echoed in her turn, still lost in her surprise.
'To-night I mean. Of course I have no chance of a tonga, so I must go by dhooli. It is a bore, but it can't be helped.'
The phrase seemed to bolster up his manliness, and he smiled at her. Such a pleasant-faced boy! so clean, so wholesome, so full of promise for the future. A pang shot through Gwen's heart at the sight of him and roused quick opposition to unlucky chance.
'But why? It isn't as if you were keeping him--I mean Mr. Fitzgerald. We settled all that; he goes back to Rajpore all the same.'
'So Gordon told me this afternoon. That is why I must return--the place can't be left alone, of course.' As he stood leaning against the mantelpiece his eye caught his own sketch, and he took it up half mechanically. 'To think I shall be back in that hole the day after to-morrow,' he said with a short laugh. He felt very sore, yet determined to face his pain in dignified fashion. 'Meanwhile,' he added, 'you must not be late. Is that your cloak?'
The futility of being tactful, even for your most familiar friends, was being borne in upon Gwen Boynton with the remembrance of her own certainty that Dan Fitzgerald's return to Rajpore must be necessary to the lad's acceptance of the leave. And here he was declaring it to be the stumbling-block! The thought sapped the very foundation of her general security, and made the results which this change in his plans might produce in hers strike her confusedly. She set aside the wrap he held out, with quite a tremulous hand.
'You are very foolish. Nobody wants you to go. Even Dan----'
'Perhaps,' he interrupted, feeling set up, as it were, by her evident regret. 'But, if anything were to go wrong, you know, I should never forgive myself.'
The words were to a certain extent quite meaningless to him; he did not even seriously contemplate the possibility they suggested and yet they roused her fears, her regrets.
'But if anything were to go wrong,' she answered, forgetting caution in her eagerness, 'it would be better you should be away. Surely you must see that it would be better for you both to be away--if--ifanything should happen.'
He smiled indulgently. 'But nothing can happen if I am there. And it means such a lot to Dan. I think I told you that he is engaged to a girl----'
'Yes! yes! I know; I know. But, as I said, if I were the girl----' She broke off hurriedly, then began again. 'George, what has that to do with the question? Nothing will happen, of course, and then you will have lost your pleasure for nothing. Don't go! It is foolish. It is unkind--when we all want you to stay--when I want you--I do indeed--you will stay, won't you, George?--just to please me.'
To do her justice, she seldom stooped to use her own personal charm as she did then, wilfully; but the case was urgent--the boy must not go. George stared at her incredulously for a moment. 'Don't,' he said in a low voice; 'please don't.'
'But it is true, George,' she went on, laying her hand on his arm. 'I do want you to stay; I do indeed.'
His hand met hers suddenly, almost unconsciously, to fall away from it again in a gesture of quick renunciation.
'No! no!' he began in the same low tones, 'it isn't true--how can it be true?' Then his whole nature seemed to cast reserve aside, and his voice rose passionately. 'Why should you care? I have never thought you could--never--I swear to you never! How could I? Do you not see it is only what you are to me, not what I am to you? What does that matter? But for the other--for what you have been, and are, and will be all my life?--Ah! that is different--Yet you know that! well enough--you must know--for I can't tell it--not even to you.'
And there, English boy as he was, she saw him on his knee stooping to kiss the hem of her garment. It was cut in the latest fashion, full round the edge, and bordered by pearls of great size. They might have been of great price also--the Hodinuggur pearls, for instance--and George been none the wiser. He saw nothing but a blaze of light through the open gates of heaven showing him a woman, transfigured, glorified? And she? There was nothing before her eyes save a boy at her feet--a very ordinary boy, whose every-day admiration she had accepted carelessly; yet it was she who, covering her face with her hands, shrank back as if blinded.
'Don t,' she cried in sharp accents of pain. 'You don't know--I--I don't like it.'
He was on his feet again in an instant, blushing, confused. 'I--I beg your pardon,' he stammered. 'I don't know what induced me to--to behave like--like a fool.'
In sober truth he did not, being all unused to self-analysis, and far too young to understand his own instinctive recoil from the cheap cajolery which had caused his outburst. But she was older; she understood. He would not let her stoop, and yet--ah, God! how low she had stooped already! So the emotion she had wantonly provoked in him caught her and swept her from her feet.
'Oh, George!' she cried, coming a step nearer and thrusting her hands into his as if to hold him fast and make him listen. 'It was a mistake! I meant no harm--no harm to any one--least of all to you.'
'No harm!' he echoed blankly. 'What harm have you done?'
She looked at him, realising her own imprudence, yet for all that not sufficiently mistress of herself for caution. A worse woman than she might have kept silence; but she could not. The shame, the dread of betraying the lad who trusted her so utterly forced her on.
'Don't ask, George!' she pleaded. 'I can't tell you--indeed there is nothing to tell. Only you must not go down to Hodinuggur now. Believe me, it is better you should not. I can give you no reason, but it is so. Don't go, George, for my sake.
'For your sake,' he echoed, still more blankly. 'Why? I don't understand--Mrs. Boynton, I----' He paused; his hand went up in a fierce gesture, and came down in still fiercer clasp on the mantelpiece. His eyes left her face, shifting their startled, incredulous gaze to his own grim jest leaning against the brass Buddha. 'Unless--unless----'
There was a dead silence.
'If there is anything to tell,' he said at last, 'tell it me for God's sake; it would be better--than this. Why am I to stay?--for your sake.'
Tell! How could she tell the horrible truth; and yet if he knew all he might be able to help. Then the need of support, the craving for sympathy, which at all times make it hard for a woman in trouble to keep her own counsel, fought against the evasion suggested by caution.
'Oh, George! I meant no harm--I did not, indeed.' The weak appeal for mercy, which presages so many a miserable confession, struck cold to the lad's heart. He walked over to the table and flung himself into a chair, hiding his face in his clasped hands.
'You had better tell me everything,' he said in a muffled voice. 'Then I shall know what to do--don't be afraid--it--it won't make any difference.'
Once more his words roused her self-scorn and made her forget herself for a time. 'But it must make a difference, I want it to make a difference,' she cried hotly, crossing to the table in her turn, and seating herself opposite him. 'Yes! I will tell you. It is the only thing to be done now.'
She was never a woman given to sobs and tears, and even through the shame of it all, there was a relief in telling the tale.
'Yes! yes!' he said once, interrupting that ever recurring plea of her own innocence of evil intent, 'of course you meant no harm. So you took the jewels and sold them to Manohar Lâl for six thousand rupees.'
The fact, recounted in his hard, hurt voice, seemed to strike her in its true light for the first time, and she looked up wildly from the resting-place her head had found upon her bare crossed arms.
'Did 11, she asked, pushing the curls from her forehead. 'Yes, I suppose I did. It seems incredible now. Oh, George, what shall I do? what shall I do?'
It did seem incredible, and yet his fears as to what she might yet have to tell him, proved his credence of what he had already heard.
'You had better go on,' he answered dully. 'I can't say what is to be done till I have heard all.'
The sound of his own voice shocked him. Was it possible that he was sitting calmly listening to such a story from her lips and asking her to go on? The curse of the commonplace seemed to settle upon him, depriving him even of his right to passionate emotion.
'Is that all?' he asked wearily, when she had told him of everything save the emptydandywaiting outside the dressmaker's shop. His question came more from the desire to help her along should there be more to tell than from curiosity or fear. Since, from the very beginning, he had been vexedly conscious of his own relief in remembering that she had returned his watch and chain before she had even reached home.
The query, however, roused in her a sudden fierce resentment against her own humiliation. Every syllable of that story, now that it was told, seemed an outrage on that love of smooth things which was her chief characteristic, and a sort of vague wonder at her own confidence made her answer swiftly.
'That is all I know. Is it not enough?' After all, it was true; what more was there to tell save the barest possibilities?
Her reply left George face to face with action, yet he sat on silent, unable even to speak. At last he rose, and crossing to where she leant face downwards over the table, stood beside her with quivering lips. 'I am sorry,' he began, then stopped before the fatuity of his own words.
'Do you think I am not sorry too?' she broke in recklessly, raising herself to look him full in the eyes. 'I wish I were dead--if that would help; but it won't. Something must be done; and done at once. George! Why should you go down? To stay is so simple, and it will hurt no one--believe me, it is best--best for us all.'
She was back to the position she had taken up before her appeal to his passion had recoiled upon herself, but he could not follow her so far, and he gave a bitter laugh.
'For you and for me, no doubt. But for Dan? Remember what the possible loss of promotion means to him. Besides, I have promised. No! I must go down, that much is certain.'
'And after?'
For the life of him he could not tell. He seemed unable to think of any course of action save the palpably proper one of going straight to the Chief and telling him of the plot laid against the sluice-gate. His instinct for this remaining clear and well defined amid all the confusion. As he stood silent, almost sullen, she laid her hand quickly on his arm. 'You will not be rash, George--for my sake you will not----'
'Whatever I do will be for your sake,' he said unsteadily.
'And you must not be angry with me. Indeed and indeed, I meant no harm at first, and afterwards I was so frightened; so afraid for you all. Oh, don't be angry with me, George.'
He set her hand aside with a hopeless gesture, and turned away to hide the tears in his eyes. She did not understand, and a great dumbness was upon him. He could say nothing. After all, what was there to say? She had done this thing, meaning no harm, and he must save her, and himself, and Dan from the consequences, somehow. He took out his watch mechanically and looked at the time. Barely ten o'clock! So it was possible to destroy heaven and earth in half an hour!
'It is time you were going,' he said, in quite a commonplace tone. 'I can see you so far. You had better go. Gordon--and the others--might wonder.'
It was the first time he had ever hinted at the supposition that some definite tie existed between her and her cousin; this, and his cynical acceptance of the fact that in the tragedy of life action must be swayed by the desire of the spectators as much as by the emotions of the actors themselves, brought home to Gwen her crime against the boy's youth, and for the first time she broke into a sob.
'Oh, George! why did I do it? why did I do it?'
Why, indeed? A pitiable thing, surely, to stand silent without an answer. Pitiable also for the woman, forced by considerations into self-control. Into bathing her face, possibly powdering it, certainly re-arranging the pretty artful curls, and so setting off through the dark night to the Town Hall, as if nothing had happened. For what loss of liberty is comparable to that entailed on the possessor of a fringe which will come out of curl, even with the damp of tears?
The first clouds of the coming monsoon were drawn over the heads of the hills like an executioner's cap, and George, riding the hired pony behind thedandy, felt as if he were following the funeral of a faith condemned to death. A dreary little procession this, despite its goal, as it wound its way between the dark chasm of the valleys on the one side and the dark shadow of the hills on the other. And then, like some enchanted palace set between earth and sky, that pile upon the ridge sending long beams of light and fitful snatches of dance-music across the ravines came into view; so familiar, yet so strange. So were the twinkling lamps, the crowd ofrickshawsanddandiesblocking up the angles and arches, the red carpet in the porch, the red streak of baize climbing up the white stairs.
He kept that pearl-edged hem of her garment from the dust till she reached them.
'Have you settled what you are going to do?' she asked in a low voice, as he held out his hand to say good-bye. He shook his head.
'I'll settle it somehow, you needn't be afraid.'
'I am not afraid. But, if the worst comes to the worst, I will not let others suffer for my fault. So be careful--for my sake.'
'Whatever I do will be for your sake--you know that.'
He stood watching her go up the stairs; up and up, until the last trail of that hem disappeared amid the coloured lamps and flowers. That was the end of it all!--of all save Hodinuggur and the desire to kill somebody. First of all, however, there must be safety for her; and that might be secured by money. During that three miles' ride his thoughts had been busy over possibilities, and one of them made him turn the hired pony's nose towards Manohar Lâl's shop instead of homewards. There was no power in India like the power of rupees, he thought; and they--with the Club still open and half a dozen young fellows as reckless as oneself ready to back the chance of one living to pay just debts--were not difficult to borrow for a month or two. Especially when there was something--not much--but still a few hundred pounds or so to come when the dear old governor---- George choked down a sob in a curse at the hired pony for stumbling over the ill-paved alley.
The dawn had broken when the patient beast pulled up for the last time by the verandah of Colonel Tweedie's house. A drowsy servant dozed against the long coffin-like dhooli, the bearers crouched outside, nodding in a circle round a solitary hookah.
'The Huzoor having lost chance of the mail, may perhaps delay till eve,' suggested the half-roused torch-bearer, mechanically corking up his useless bottle of oil at the sight of the growing glow in the east.
George, his face flushed yet haggard, stood for an instant looking over the pine woods to where, had the light been stronger, he might have seen the angle of a little house among the trees. After all, why should he not stop now, if only to see her gratitude? Twelve hours, delay was not much, especially when she was safe. Why need that be his last sight of her going up the stairs with the pearls----pearls!--
An hour afterwards, when the sun tipped over the lower hills to make the morning glories, festooned from rock to rock, open their eyes, they opened them upon the coffin-like dhooli going rapidly down hill to the accompaniment of shuffles and grunts, and recurring protestations that the sahib was 'do mun puccka.'[4]If the heaviness of heart could have been measured, George might have weighed a ton.
Even at the best of times the descent from the cool hills to the hot plains is never easy, and in this case paradise lay behind, purgatory in front.
'I am so sorry Mr. Keene has gone,' said Rose Tweedie at breakfast. 'I shall miss him dreadfully.' Lewis Gordon's eyebrows went up superciliously.
'No doubt; but he was right to go, in more ways than one.'
Colonel Tweedie, busy over a virtuous plate of porridge and milk which in some mysterious way he regarded as a sign of youth, gave his preliminary cough.
'I scarcely agree with you, Gordon. In my opinion there is--er--a savour--of--of insubordination; or, not to speak so strongly--a--a want of respect, in this sudden departure. Of course, the zeal and the--the desire to do his duty--are pleasing, very pleasing in so young a man. At the same time, a little more confidence in--er--the judgment of----'
'Mr. Gordon wasn't thinking of that, father,' interrupted the girl, with her grey eyes showing some scorn for both her companions; 'he meant to imply that George--Mr. Keene--was better away from Simla.'
'Your perspicacity does you credit, Miss Tweedie; I did mean it. He has been going rather fast, and will be none the worse of saving up some more rupees at Hodinuggur.'
'If he had the money to spend, I don't see why he shouldn't spend it in having a good time,' she retorted quickly. 'He won't ask you to pay the bills, will he?'
'Hope not, I'm sure; but the bearer brought quite a little pile of them to me this morning by mistake.'
Rose bit her lip. 'Perhaps you will be kind enough to tell your man to put them back into Mr. Keene's room. I'll forward them when I write. Are you coming with me to the Grahams, this afternoon, father?'
But Colonel Tweedie was not to be diverted from the Head-of-the-Department frown he had been preparing.
'I am sorry to hear it. To say the least, it is bad taste to--to----'
'Leave I.O.U's instead of P.P.C.'s,' remarked Lewis flippantly. 'But really, sir, I don't see how he could help it, after all. He had to go in such a hurry.'
'I deny the necessity,' continued the Colonel pompously. 'I fail to see any just cause for setting his opinion against that of--of his elders and superiors.'
'Unless he had private reasons of his own,' suggested his daughter.
'My dear Rose, a public servant can have no private reasons.'
There was an epigrammatic flavour about the remark which, to the Colonel's ears, completely covered its absolute want of sense. He felt vaguely that he had said something clever, and that it might be as well to let it close the subject, which he did by answering the previous question as to whether he would go to the Grahams'. Certainly, if it did not rain; but the barometer was falling fast, and a telegram had come to the office that morning to say the monsoon had broken with unusual violence at Abu. It might be expected north at any moment. On which the two men fell to talking about dams and escapes, inundations, cuts, and such like things, while Rose sat silent, indignant with Lewis, yet disturbed at the confirmation his hints gave of her own fears. George had been reckless, there could be no doubt of that. Had not one of her partners last night told her that he had left George playing poker at the Club but half an hour before? George who had declared he had not time to put in an appearance at the ball!
When breakfast was over she went into the lad's empty room for the bills, and took the opportunity of giving a housewifely glance round to see if nothing had been left behind or taken away in the hurry. The former, certainly, for there was the bottom drawer quite full;--old shirts and ties, a rather battered pot-hat, and beneath the whole a picture.
She stood looking at it blankly. What a very odd coincidence! The girl of her dream! The girl with the quaint dress and the Ayôdhya pot clasped to her breast. Why had George brought it up to Simla and never showed it to any one? Why, when the pot was stolen, had he said nothing about the girl? though, on the other hand, she herself had kept silence about her dream. She puzzled over it for some time; at last, finding certainty on but one point--namely, that for some reason or another George had wished to keep the picture secret--she took it away to her own room. For she was of those who regard unspoken wishes on the part of a friend to be quite as binding as any they may express.
Just about the same time Gwen Boynton, still in her bed, was looking at something else George had left behind him, but this had only been an envelope carefully addressed to her. It contained two pieces of paper signed by Manohar Lâl. One was a receipt for a diamond necklace, on which Rs. 6000 had been lent. The other, of later date, giving a quittance in full for the same sum plus interest.
How simple! Why had she never thought of such a plan before? But where could she have raised the money necessary to buy freedom? Besides--she buried her face among the pillows in vain desire to shut out the conviction which rushed in on her, as she recognised that if the plotters had gained what they wanted from the emptydandyoutside the dressmaker's house, they would naturally be quite ready to deal with George and take money for a security they were already pledged to give. Which, in fact, they would have given, since the canons regulating bribery in India are strict in regard to value returned for value received. Every penny, therefore, of the money George must have paid for these papers, was so much clear unexpected gain to Manohar Lâlif the plotters had already attained their object.
Still she was safe, and even if anything happened nobody could blame George. Now she had had time to consider the whole bearings of the matter she told herself such blame was impossible; while as for Dan----! If he would only leave Government service and make money, she was ready to marry him to-morrow! She had woven a conscience-proof garment for herself out of the old hair-splitting arguments long before George's dhooli had reached the level plain. When it did, the clouds had banked themselves against the higher hills, shutting out the boy's farewell glance. As he climbed into the country gig in which forty miles of dusty road had to be covered, the barometer was falling fast, and the driver remarked cheerfully, that when the rain came, the cholera would increase. It had been bad at the third stage that day, and one of the coolies belonging to the Government bullock train had died on the road about five miles farther on. The sahib might perhaps still see the body lying there.
The last twelve hours before the advancing rains break over your particular portion of the fiery furnace!--who can describe them? Who, having once endured them, can need description as an aid to memory? The world one incarnate expectation, blistering, parched, like the tongue of Dives. The heavenly drop of water for which you long, squandered on the hot air, moist with a vanguard of vapour, so that the breath you draw is even as the breath you exhale. If indeed you breathe at all; if indeed by sensation of touch or temperature you can differentiate yourself from the sodden heat of all things, or get rid of the conviction that, like the devils in a still hotter place, you are an integral part of the business!
And Hodinuggur on this sodden July day had small hope of future improvement to lighten the burden of the present, for it stood on the edge of the rainless tract, in the debatable land of meteorological reporters. Not more than a shower or two from that south-westerly column of cloud was due to bring up its scanty average of rainfall, which came, for the most part, from electrical dust-storms and such like turbulent, undisciplined outbreaks. So the heat lay over it hopelessly, and even the peasant patiently awaiting the return of the smith to mend his ploughshare, did so more from habit than from any expectation of needing the tool in any immediate future. After all, waiting was his chief occupation in life. Waiting for something to grow, or for something to be reaped; waiting for some one to be born or for some one to die. So, the smith being absent over some work for the palace, why should he not be waited for even though the sun was setting red behind the heat-haze? For one thing, it would be cooler to tramp home with the ploughshare over your shoulder. A tall, grave, bearded man was the peasant, sitting with his back against the wall, his hands hanging listlessly between his knees. The painted girl on the balcony above looked down and told him the news, calling him father, respectfully. No question of her trade here, with this dweller in the fields; only a pious 'God keep us all,' ere she became voluble over Shumshere the zither-player's seizure by cholera that morning as he lay fighting quails in the street. Doubtless he was dying, now the sun was setting; any moment the wail might arise from that seventh arch down the colonnade where he lodged. Whereat the long beard below wagged slowly over the fact that the Great Sickness had visited the hamlet also, bidding a crony or two wait no longer for anything; not even for ploughshares or rain. And then to solace themselves both courtesan and peasant quenched their thirst on huge chunks of water-melon, bought for a cowrie from the heap of green and red fruit which had just been shot off a donkey's back into the dust at one corner of the Mori gate; the donkey meanwhile browsing unrebuked at the edges of the pile.
'Ari! father! There it is. Did I not say so?' remarked the painted one, pausing, as a low moan rising to a banshee skirl broke the sodden stillness of the air.
'Râm! Râm!' ejaculated the peasant piously. 'It is a bad year for sure, rain or no rain.'
So, having finished his water-melon, he broke a morsel of opium from the lump he carried in a fold of his turban, rolled it under his tongue and dozed off, still propped up against the wall. And the sunset faded leaving the world hotter than ever, though in the crypt beneath the staircase of the Mori gate the air was cooler than outside, despite the fire which flickered fitfully over the blackened arches. It flickered also on the silver bracelets circling Chândni's round brown arm as she lay curved across a string bed, her jingling feet swaying softly in tune with the tinsel fan she waved above the bold outlines of throat and bosom. And the fan, in its turn, kept time with the flicker of the fire, and the wheezing breath of a smith's bellows rousing the charcoal embers into dancing flame, or letting them die down to a dull red glow.
'Thou art long, oh lohar-ji!' she said, looking backwards at the bare bronze figure crouching before a low anvil. 'All these hours to make a key--when thou hast a mould before thine eyes, too!'
'True, oh mother! but the key is not as our father's keys, and the hand lacks cunning in new patterns. Lo! I had made one for the treasure-chest of kings in half the time. But there! 'tis done. See how it fits its bed like the seed of a pomegranate! God send it may do its work fairly and well!'
'God send it may, for thy sake, smith-ji,' she replied carelessly. 'Here, take the rupees, and have a care no key is forged to unlock thy tongue regarding this matter. The Diwân is old, but there are others behind him, and behind him again, and Chândni behind them all.'
The reckless triumph of her words rang through the low arches, as she brought her feet to the ground with a clash.
Five minutes afterwards she was looking down on a slender key lying in Zubr-ul-Zamân's nerveless hands.
'I have won the prize,' she said; 'the pearls are mine.'
The hands quivered, and the keen old eyes seemed to seek her out from head to foot, revelling in her beauty and her boldness. Then the light died out of them, the head sank again. 'The game is played,' he muttered. 'The game is played.'
'Yea! it is played indeed.'
The woman's contemptuous laugh echoed out into the dark night, through which George Keene, on a hired camel, was making his way across the desert. Not by the usual road, since that meant delay and Dan's questioning eyes at Rajpore, but by a side route, branching from the railway, farther to the south. A hot night, an intolerable smell of camel, dust in the eyes and nose and mouth, dust and ashes in the heart; in the endless darkness of all things even the twinkling lights of the palace seemed home-like and welcome to poor George, for though the consciousness of doing your duty soothes the mind, it is powerless before bodily discomfort; and George was wretchedly uncomfortable. To begin with, a high-paced camel driven at full speed is not an easy method of conveyance, nor does the necessity for having its unwashed attendant bumping in the after-saddle add to its charm, even though that saddle be to leeward of you--for which Heaven be thanked! And then the lad had had nothing to eat since a hastily-swallowed breakfast at a rest-house, save some smoked milk and a tough dough-cake brought him at the village where he changed camels. So, as he bumped through the silent night on the bubbling, breathing, silent-footed beast, with that silent breathing brute behind him, more than half George's slender hold on the joys of life lay in the prospect of supper, even though it must be one of the factotum's Barmecidal feasts. Such things defy the mind, especially when that mind is lodged in a young and healthy body. Thus while he could set his teeth over the remembrance of that half hour during which his world came to pieces in the hand, he could not prevent himself coming to pieces on the camel.
It was a dark night indeed; so dark that the red-brick bungalow showed only by the white arches of its verandah; rising like a ghostly colonnade out of the shadow. The servants, houses too, were dark as the night itself, and silent as the grave. George, stepping stiffly into ankle-deep of yielding sand, called once, twice; then, giving in with irritation to his experience of native slumber, walked over in the direction of the cook-room. It was too sandy for snakes; besides, booted as he was, they could hardly reach him. Necessary thoughts these now that he was back in purgatory, with death for aught he knew coiled in the path and they came back to him naturally as part of the uncomfortable environment of life. He gave another call without the screen of tall grass sacred to the modesty of the compounder of eggsarse, and then impatiently set aside a mat at its entry.
'They might as well be dead,' he muttered angrily, going up to a string bed in the centre of the little yard, whereon he could just distinguish a figure long enough to be a man.
'Get up, you lazy brute!' cried George, shaking it by the shoulder. There was no answer, and he drew back hastily, shouting for some one, any one. A twinkling light showed from the stables, a drowsy exclamation rose from within the hut. So, out of the surrounding dark, came timorous steps, a hand bearing a cresset, a doubtful face or two peering at the intruder and yielding to surprised salaams; then suddenly breaking into garrulous clamour--'Ohi! ohi! 'Tis the Huzoor returned. And the Huzoor's faithful servant hath been summoned by the Lord. Lo! if the Huzoor had but come three hours ago there would still have been a kitmutghar (lit. worker) in his honour's house. But it was the Great Sickness, Huzoor, which waits not; all daylong ill in the Huzoor's cook-room, with great patience, and--Ohi! ohi! the sahib must be hungry, and lo! where is he who gave the Huzoor meats fit for his rank? Oh, my sister! Oh, bereaved one! Oh, widow! put thy grief from thee and prepare food for the master; in duty sorrow finds solace.'
'Is--is he dead?' asked George, standing dazed, looking incredulously at the sheeted figure, dimly visible by the flickering rushlight. He had seen the man sleep thus dozens of times. At the question another sheeted figure, which had crept from the hut into the circle of light, broke into a gurgling cry: 'Ohi,mere adme mur-gya--mere dil mur-gya--mur-gya,'[5]and one or two later arrivals, in like disguise, crouched beside the voice, joining in the strange low whimper of the conventional wail. George fell back a step or two, repelled to his heart's core, shocked out of speech.
'Weep not, oh widow!' snivelled the water-carrier, who, being the only Mohammedan male present, felt impelled to the duty of consoler. 'Didst not give him beef-tea? Ay! and barley-water likewise? even as the Huzoor when he was stricken. And did not the master arise to health thereby? Wherefore, is it not the will of God, plainly, that thy man should find freedom? Therefore place thy heart on comfort---- He will be buried at sunrise, Huzoor, so that the sahib will have no more annoyance; and by the fortune of the Most High, there is even now to be had without delay a servant who can cook--the one that is dead is as nothing to him--faithful to salt, having many certificates, mine own wife's cousin, a----'
George, who by this time was half-way back to the dark house, cursed him and his wife's relations utterly; then bade him bring a light somehow. Meanwhile, scarcely conscious of what he was doing, the lad groped his way into the room where he had first seen her, and, stumbling against a chair, sat down mechanically, resting his head upon the back, over his crossed arms. Would the light never come? and when it came, what would it reveal? more dead men waiting to be roused? Oh, horrible--most horrible that remembrance of the limp---- No! no! he would not think of it. He would think of that other face asleep on the red cushions of the easy chair--but that was dead too--the face of a dead ideal. Ah! the light at last, thank God! and he could be sensible.
Whatever it showed George, he showed it a mask terrible in its needless pain, ghastly in the hunted, shrinking look in the young eyes which used to be so bold. Even the water-carrier, dense as he was, saw it and understood vaguely.
'This is a bad word that the Huzoor should return thus. It is not fitting his honour. If he had only waited till Fitzgerald sahib comes back----'
'Comes back,' echoed George dully. 'Why should he come back?' Yet he knew quite well in his own mind that Dan also had judged it wrong to leave the fort unguarded as it were, and his mind wandered to the love he bore this man, while the water-carrier went on volubly about the sahib having gone in a hurry that morning and being very angry about something he had lost; something that the sahib's base-born personal attendant had said must have been stolen--as if----
George, looking at all things with uncomprehending eyes, suddenly lost patience, cursed the speaker, quite quietly this time, and bade him go about his business.
'Your honour's kitmutghar's widow can cook food if the Huzoor----'
George did it a third time solemnly. When he was left alone, he glanced round quickly, as if uncertain of what the room might contain. The easy-chair with its red cushions; a bare bed--brought in, doubtless, for the sake of the larger room and cooler air--a dirty tablecloth on the table, littered with the crumbs and plates of Dan's last meal and left in slovenly native fashion to await deferred cleansing. A half-empty whisky-bottle and a water-surahi; that, at any rate, was something, and his hand went out to them instinctively. Even in his general confusion, however, the precepts of modern hygiene remaining clear, he deferred a drink till they brought him some tepid soda-water. Such precaution was necessary with cholera in the compound. Whatever else it may do, civilisation certainly intensifies the dread of death. The peasant and the courtesan had munched melons in the very shadow, but George's cultured nerves had no such courage. He was no coward, but he had received a shock which was bound to make its mark on the highly sensitised mind and body; bound to weaken them for the time.
Ah! that was better! The room did not seem quite so dreary after the whisky and soda! Then he took another, and after that the outlook itself seemed less dreary, and he told himself that Dan had been right in saying that he, George, did not know the temptation of stimulants. Temptation?--if they brought you up to your bearings with a round turn in this fashion--Why! he felt twice the man he had been five minutes ago. Now he could think; now he could reason; now he could see clearly and decide what ought to be done. To begin with, she was safe. Those papers, joined to little Azîzan's confession of having stolen the Ayôdhya pot, made it quite impossible to prove she had ever known about the jewels. As for himself, that did not matter; though, as a fact, he was quite as safe as Dan. That is to say, the palace devils might raise a scandal, but the breakdown of their case in regard to her would show it was no more than revenge for their failure; for they would fail, of course. So far, nothing had happened. There was no water in the overflow cut; he had made sure of that as he rode along. And now that he was on the spot he could do quite as much, off his own bat, to prevent treachery as any one--the Colonel and all the Department to boot--could have done had he reported the whole affair. To-morrow the guard would be changed, and doubled to provide against any violent attempt; an unlikely event, as such an assault would take time, and he meant to pitch his tent down at the sluice so as to be on the spot at night, and during the day he could watch from the bungalow. Against other and more stealthy treachery he was also provided absolutely--so absolutely that he gave a short laugh as he drew a couple of Chubb's keys and a lock from his wallet. That would puzzle them if they came thinking they had hit on the old fastening. But that also was for to-morrow; there remained only to-night. No! not to-night; since already it was past one o'clock. What wonder that he was tired--did any one in the wide world know or care how tired? He stood up sharply, every vein tingling now; his whole mind aglow despite his weariness. He must have something to eat first, of course--his very determination insisted on that; but not from those plague-stricken purlieus out yonder--cautious civilisation insisted on that. There must be biscuits or something of that sort in the cupboard, and as he crossed over to it the memory of his raid whilesheslept among the red cushions returned to make him laugh again.