'I was never so happy or so sorry in all my life before, and I thank Heaven that I'm enough of an Irishman still to say so without being afraid of being laughed at.'
He stood at one end of the table looking his best, as a gentleman always does in his evening dress--a curious fact, since there is no more cruel test for the least lack of good breeding. But this man stood it triumphantly, and not one of those other men seated that night round the long table but carries to his grave a remembrance of Dan Fitzgerald's look when he was bidding good-bye to his friends. The eager vitality of the man, always his strongest characteristic, seemed to have reached its climax.
'I'm not going to say anything of her,' he went on, the rich, round voice softening. 'There isn't any need, since you all know her. Besides, though you have all come here to-night--why, I can't for the life of me tell--to wish us good luck in the future, it isn't so much of the future I'm thinking as of the past. It has been so happy, thanks to you all. And it's over. That is the worst of it. I suppose it isn't quite what a man is expected to say on these occasions; but the ladies--God bless them!--would, I'm sure, agree, if they could only be made to understand that marriage is the end of a man's youth. It doesn't alter the case at all that it may be the end of the woman's also, or that we get something that may be as good in exchange. What has that to do with the past?--the merry, careless past, which I've enjoyed so much, and to which I'm now saying good-bye. Well, Heaven help those who say good-bye to it without a solid reason, or have a sneaking intention of not really saying good-bye to it at all? for their lines are in evil places. And that sounds like a sermon, and you never heard Dan Fitzgerald preach before, and you never will again. It isn't only that I'm off with the morning to the other end of the world--to a new world, if it comes to that, worth this old one and the past and all of you put together, if you'll excuse my saying so--it is because even if I were stopping here I should be out of the old life as surely as if I were dead and buried. To begin with, I shall have to think of every penny I spend, so that I may have enough to pay for paradise! The world is full of paradoxes for me to-night; and I'm the greatest of them all myself; for I don't want to say good-bye, and yet I wouldn't miss having to say it for the world. Then it seems to me to-night as if I'd solved the puzzle; and there's Doveton--the old bachelor--grinning as if he knew I was a fool, and that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. I don't think so--I don't think I ever shall think so; I hope not, anyhow. And so, good-bye to you--goodbye! And may none of us, married or single, live to know the pain of a "heart grown cold, a head grown grey--in vain!"'
Down the disordered table with its litter of glasses and flowers, its atmosphere heavy with the odours of dinner and drink, a hush lay for a second; not more. Then some one laughed, and with a roar of applause the general tone--varying from concert pitch to normal diapason according to the taste of the owner--struck into the old chorus; the refrain which, touching as it does the lowest and the highest ideals of humanity, has provoked more mixed sentiment and emotion than any other in the language:
'For he's a jolly good fel-low. For he's a jolly good fe-el-low.'
Love, admiration, assent. But to what? That lies in the creed of the singer.
And Dan, as the chorus went swaying and surging about in the discords and harmonies, was left alone, silent--as it were on a pinnacle.
Lewis Gordon, feeling responsible for his man, and noting his growing excitement, inveigled him out after a time for a quiet cigar on the verandah, and then suggested he should go to bed; whereat Dan laughed softly. Did not his best man see that the idea was palpably absurd when life itself was a dream--a dream that only came once to a fellow? When you hadn't a wish ungratified, save of course that some others he wot of might have as good luck as he.
'If you mean me,' replied Lewis stolidly, 'I'm all right. I'm going to marry Rose Tweedie whenever she can spare five minutes from your wedding to arrange mine.'
'You don't say so! By the powers, what a good matchmaker I am! And so it's settled. I say, Gordon, do you think there is any chance of her being up still?' put in Dan all in one breath.
'Couldn't say; she had a lot of favours to make and remake when I last saw her, certainly,' replied Lewis, with an inward smile at the remembrance; 'but you can't go and call on her now; it's half-past ten at least.'
'Can't I? There is nothing I couldn't do to-night, it seems to me. Andyouare yawning. Oh, go to bed, old man! or you will spoil the show to-morrow.'
'And you?'
'I'm off too, but not to bed! No, you needn't be afraid. I'll turn up again in time.'
The glamour of the soft Indian night was on Lewis also; even on those who one by one drifted from the laughter within to stand for five minutes, arrested by the peace without, before going on their way. And if this were so to men in the slack-water of life, what must it have been to Dan on the flood-tide of his threescore years and ten? To Dan with his vivid imagination, his soft heart, his excitable, impulsive nature. As he rode along noiselessly at a foot's pace through the sandy dust which looked hard as marble in the glare of the moon, he and his shadow were the only moving things in that world of light. No darkness anywhere! Not even in the distant arcades of trees. Only a soft grey mist of moonlight blending all things into the semblance of a mirage seen from afar. A fire-fly or two showed against the flowering shrubs in intermittent glimpses of light. Here, and then gone, as it were, upon the soft quiver of the insistent cicalas in the air.
Was not life worth living, indeed if only for such a night as this!
'On such a night did young Lorenzo!'
But Dan Fitzgerald had passed beyond that flood-mark on the shore. Passion counted for much in the elation of mind and body which was the apotheosis of both; but love counted for more. The memory of a thousand griefs and pains with pity hidden in their hearts came to fill the mystic cup of life which the Unseen, Unknown Hand held out to him from Heaven--the Sangreal of Humanity--the sacraments of Birth and Death. The child dying of the potter's thumb-mark in the dust--that other in loving arms with the ice chilling even death's cold touch--George with the bullet piercing the friendship in his heart--Rose with her pure wisdom fearless and unashamed--these and many another remembrance seemed to blend sorrow and joy into peace, even as the moon-mist blent the world around him into vague beauty.
And there was Rose herself! He could see her, as with the easy friendliness of India he paced his pony through the open gates of the garden, and so passed the house. She was still at work among the white flowers beside the door which was set wide upon the warm balmy night.
'Is that you, Mr. Fitzgerald?' she called, pausing at the faint sound of his coming to look out into the flood of moonlight clear as noonday.
'It is I, Miss Tweedie.'
He had slipped from his pony and stood beside it welcoming her with outstretched hands as she came forth, eager with some message for the morrow which he might deliver.
'Lewis has told me, and I'm so glad,' he said, breaking in on her words. 'It is the best wedding present I've had yet, and I came along on the chance of seeing you. I've something to give you. I meant it for to-morrow, as a parting gift--just a remembrance of your kindness to us both. But I'd rather give it to you with our best wishes.
He unfastened something from his own wrist and put it, soft and warm, into her hand. It was a native amulet cunningly twisted of silk thread and pearls, with a triangle of some blue stone strung in the centre.
''Tis only a glorified ram-rukhri,' he went on half-jestingly, 'the bracelet sisters give their brothers to bring them good luck. Only it is the other way round with you.'
Rose looked at the blue of the triangle doubtfully, then at his kindly face.
'Yes! it's a bit of the Ayôdhya pot--the only bit that wasn't in pieces. And it has my name on the back, and--and George's.'
'And George's?' echoed Rose softly.
'Ay! He would have liked it, I know--for you were kind to him--kind to us both, always'--Mâdr-mihrbân, as the old potter called you. And we two, George and I, are one part of the story; I was thinking of it as I came along just now----'
She put out her hand with a sudden gesture. 'Don't think of it, Mr. Fitzgerald! Forget all about it. Go away and forget.'
He gave a happy laugh. 'Why should I? I don't want to forget anything to-night--except my sins. The rest is all good. Let me put that on for you--so--goodnight! We'll say good-bye to-morrow.'
So out on the deserted roads with the same happy unrest in his heart. He would go down and see the old familiar places in the garden opposite once more--even the pond where the ducks and geese had quacked and gabbled him into silence! Then through the hanging tassels of the grey tamarisk trees, round the gleaming white road to the blue-tiled minarets of the old watch-tower standing causelessly upon the level plain where four ways met, and so back station-wards to the stunted dome of the church. The throbbing of tom-toms proclaimed the nearness of the bazaar, but the building itself stood unassailably silent and deserted on its high white plinth, save for some one lying on a string bed set in a shadow by the door. Dan slipped from his pony again, and hitched the reins to a broken iron clamp in the stone-work of the steps. The door, he knew, would be open to let in the cool night-air, so he would look in--'go round the course' as a horsey friend of his had said when discovered doing the same thing before his marriage. The remembrance made him smile as he stepped into the dark building and paused, arrested by the strangeness of what he saw. For the dome was full of fire-flies brought hither in the flowers; full of a causeless glimpsing of pale green fire showing every instant the white heart of some blossom. And the air was burdened with scent; distinct, through all, a faint, deadly smell of bitter almonds. That must be from the lotus Gwen had mentioned, and there they were, in the upper shaft of moonlight through the upper window, standing like sentinels over the lectern.
'Om mâni padma hom.'
What did it really mean, that invocation used by so many millions? What was the mystic jewel in the lotus? Something fair but far, no doubt, such as all religions promise. And then with a rush came the thought that Gwen would stand beside them on the morrow, fair and near!
The echo of his pony's galloping feet made that throbbing in the bazaar pause an instant as if to listen. Pause and go on when he had passed. The darkened houses of his friends rose up beside him and were left behind; the Club with its still twinkling arches, the garden where Chândni sat gossiping and waiting her chance to kill his faith wantonly. All these he passed. Awake or sleeping he must be near Gwen for an instant--must bid her goodnight before the day came.
The chiming, echoing gong from the secretarial office rang twelve, clear; then the others began. Here and there from the various centres of law and order, many-voiced from the massive pile of the distant city. He was too late then, yet not too late; for there was a light still in the little front room, despoiled of its prettiness now and littered with boxes. She was awake, busy like Rose over the morrow.
'Gwen!' he called to her softly, for the chick was down, the door half closed.
'My dear Dan!' Her voice, as she opened it and came hurriedly into the verandah, was full of amused horror and half-vexed kindness. 'Do go away, there's a dear! I never heard of such a thing, never! And the hotel is crammed full of people!'
'It's only to wish you many happy returns of the day, dear!' he whispered fondly. 'When I've done that I'll go content. Who wouldn't be content with you, Gwen? And yet I wouldn't spare an inch of it all--I couldn't. Gwen! do you remember the day your bearer was cleaning the lamps out here, and we were sitting on the sofa?--odd, isn't it, how one remembers these things all in a jumble, the one with the other--and I said to you--the very words come back to me, dear, every one of them--"You might be bankrupt of everything, Gwen, of everything save yourself, and I'll give you credit for it all the same." Do you remember, dear? Well, I've come to take the promise back. You've spoilt me, Gwen, I can't do it.'
'I--I don't understand,' she said faintly. 'I wish you would go, Dan. We can talk of it to-morrow--afterwards.'
'To-morrow! Why's it's to-day already, our wedding-day! And if I can't keep the promise, am I not bound to take it back while I can? Not that I'm afraid--that is why I've come, to tell you, selfish brute that I am--that is why I want it all--every scrap of your beauty, your goodness. I'll take nothing else, dear, now; for I know it's yours, and what is yours is mine by right!'
She had grown very pale, and a sort of terror came into her eyes.
'Ah Dan! what is the use of talking? I give you all I can. My best--I can't do more--it isn't kind----' she broke off almost impatiently, and yet she did not move from his clasp.
'Not kind, when I know what the best means? And yet, Gwen, it just comes upon me now that I couldn't stand it--if--if it were not so--not after this midsummer night's dream--of madness, if you will! Yes, dear, I'm going--I am indeed. But, Gwen--it's an idle fancy--and yet if there was anything it would be better to tell me now. You're not angry at the thought--it's only a thought. See, give me one kiss--just one, to be an answer for always.'
What right, she asked herself fiercely, had she to hesitate? What possible right, standing as she did on the threshold of a new life,where no one could possibly know?And so she was back on the low levels among the ordinary considerations of convenience and safety as she kissed him. But the touch of her lips sent his blood surging through his heart and brain; and without another word, another look, he turned and left her--content, absolutely content. Love, pity, friendship, passion, had all combined to raise him to the uttermost limit of vitality. He might come near it perhaps in the future; he was not likely ever to reach it again--not even without Chândni waiting to tell him the truth on his return to the odd little house at the other end of the station.
He neither knew nor cared where he was going; but his pony, tired of these incomprehensible wanderings, set its galloping hoofs on the shortest road home--that is to say, through the densely-wooded grounds of the Residency. Along a grassy ride or two, across a short cut they sped. Dan forgetting even his joy in the keen effort of steering a runaway through the trees; a runaway unheld, free to go as fast, nay, faster than it chose, yet obedient to that grip to right or left. It was a mad ride, a mad rider--yet a masterful one, wrestling imperiously with that other will, when the gloom grew as the trees thickened, and darkness and danger came together in the hot night, prisoned by the dense foliage above. Dan, looking down at the pony's heaving flanks as it paused, wearied by its short, sharp, unavailing struggle against his strong hands, felt flushed and hot. Not wearied,--he could not be that on such a night,--but glowing, palpitating, excited; drunk almost as if with wine. But yonder stood a remedy in that long, low-thatched roof, supported on brick pillars, and hung round with heavy bamboo screens. Dan laughed as he slid to the ground, thinking of the twelve feet of clear cool water running fresh and fresh into the big swimming-bath at the one end, and out at the other to irrigate the green levels of the garden. Fresh and fresh all through the scorching summer weather, when life held no greater pleasure than to feel that cool water close in round the hot limbs. Frequented then, morning and evening, though deserted and empty through the colder months. Only the day before Dan's smooth dark head had come up from its depths rejoicing, and now the thought of it was luxury itself when the blood was beating in his temples, and racing at fever heat through his veins. More than once coming home at night, after careless, reckless enjoyment, he had stopped here, as he did now, to try the water-cure--as he had tried it in the canal at Hodinuggur.
'I need it to-night if ever I did,' he said half aloud. ''Tis the wine of life has got into my head.'
It was dark--almost too dark inside; that was because the fools had put down all the screens, when, on the contrary, they should be opened by night to let in the fresh air. He told himself that he would speak to the Secretary of the caretaker's neglect; yet how would that be since he would never see him again?
Yes! it was the last time! and how many times had he not gone down red-hot from the spring-board as he would do now, to come up out of the dark water a new man, with all the evil tempers and the prickly heat quenched out of him?--sure, as a regenerating element, fire wasn't in it with water! A leap in the dark indeed! But that was what life was, and he was not afraid of it.
The little bars of moonlight shining through the chinks between the bamboos came so far on the smooth white floor, then the soft depth of darkness where the cool water should be, and above it Dan poised for a second.
'I come! Mother of all!'
The oft, old-repeated cry rang joyously up into the roof, followed by a strange, dull thud, and silence--dead silence.
The bath had been emptied that morning for the cold weather, and Dan Fitzgerald was lying face downward on the hard cement with a broken neck.
Dead! Dead, without a word, a sigh, or a regret! And Chândni, growing tired of patience, went home to the bazaar, grumbling at her ill-luck, telling herself she might still write, if it were worth while.
But Dan was beyond her spite, beyond other things which, even without that spite, might have killed the best part of him.
Yet even in romance the sixth commandment outweighs all the others. The novelist may maim and degrade, may bear false witness against his own creations and filch from them the very characteristics which he has given them, in order to make degradation happy, but he must not kill; death in the verdict of the world being the only real tragedy.
So at any rate seemed the opinion of most people when in the early morning the gardeners coming to their work found Dan's pony drowsing, half asleep, still tethered to a hibiscus bush, whose great blossoms--in topsy-turvy fashion--showed rosy-red in death and snowy-white in life.
It was terribly sad, they said; an unredeemed tragedy, cruel, needless; altogether a manifestation needing much true Christian faith; one of the accidents of real life, so exasperating because so causeless, so inartistic because so unnecessary. These and many other comments the mourners made as, when the funeral was over, they returned home; and so, it being Sunday morning, went to church, where they sang 'Jerusalem the Golden' piously.
Only Rose lingered, her kind, soft hands laying the half-dead lotus like sentinels on the grave; for Gwen's pure white cross of gardenia had, at her request, been buried on the coffin.
'I can't somehow be so sorry,' she said to Lewis, between her sobs. 'He was so happy that last night. I seem to see his face still.'
But the man caught his breath in hard. There was a verse which would ring in his ears, his heart; for he had helped to lift poor Dan, and it had come to memory then--
'Broken in pieces like a potter's vessel.'
Yet, after all, what did it matter? but Rose must never know. In such things he would stand between her and needless pain.
And Gwen? She, as the phrase goes, bore up wonderfully. Not that she did not love the dead man dearly, but because she did love him. For odd as it may seem--topsy-turvywise, perhaps, like the hibiscus flowers--she had the same consolation as Rose Tweedie.
'I did not tell him,' she said to herself as she lay in her darkened room. 'He was happy to the last. I did my best--I did my best.'
So she cried softly; and so, once more, she escaped from her own remorse, and was comforted.
Both for the reader's and writer's sake it is never fair to end a story as you would end a play in a situation, for the former tries--vainly it may be--to present life even in its trivialities, the latter only in its more dramatic moments. So, though there is little more to tell, save what might easily be filled in by the reader's own imagination, it would give a false impression of the real value of poor Dan Fitzgerald's tragic death, were the curtain to come down upon the rest of thedramatis personæin the first bewilderment and sorrow which such unexpected and causeless accidents must always arouse. As a matter of fact, there is no grief which passes sooner from the daily life than that caused by death, especially when a real and unselfish love has existed between the dead and the living. The mind, after the first physical sense of loss has spent itself, refuses to believe in the extinction of a feeling which, in its own experience, has survived death, and so is comforted not by forgetfulness but remembrance. Besides, it is false art to end any history embracing the life of more than one person with the balance in favour of pain. For were this so in reality, pain would cease to be pain and become pleasure, because it would then be the normal condition of life; since it is clearly to be demonstrated physiologically and psychologically that it is in the disintegration of reminiscent habit that the phenomena of pain arise. Indeed, in the mind, pain is incredible, impossible, unless we have first formed the habit of pleasure; since it consists essentially in privation.
Therefore the novelist who wishes to give a true picture of life will always leave his puppets content. Nor does this limit the field unduly, since it is clearly as much the duty and privilege of the writer to present new sources of content to his readers, as it is for him to present them with scenes, or situations, or characters of which they have no previous knowledge. Because Jones thinks the soul of bliss is incarnate in roast-beef and plum-pudding, is that any reason why the more ethereal Brown should be denied his cup of nectar? or that the philosophic Robinson, seeing that birth and death are alike inscrutable phenomena, should refuse empirically to believe that the one is joyful and the other sorrowful?
But the public seems to think differently; 'Oh don't kill him, or her, or them,' it says cheerfully, 'let them enter into life halt, and maimed, and blind. What does anything matter so long as they have the average number of breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners allotted to humanity, and can thus go down to their graves in the fulness of time with the pleasing consciousness that their funeralcortègeis followed by a Noah's ark, consisting of the ghosts of the animals they have devoured?' For the world sides with Esau, who bartered away his birthright for a mess of pottage. And good pottage is, no doubt, warming, comforting, consoling. Yet some people who have it not are happy; for instance, the two hundred and odd millions of India--but then to them Birth and Death are alike the pivot on which the wheel of life spins.
So thought the potter of Hodinuggur. So had thought his fathers who lay buried in the dust beside him, and though the old man had no son to step on to the treadles when his feet slipped from them, the wheel span steadily, and the women of the village, as they rung the temper of the water-jars before they bought them, nodded their heads saying--'Fuzl is a good potter. Look you, it comes with a man's birth. When he goes, we shall have to send for another. Meroo thinks he can make them, because the Sirkar taught him when he was three years in jail for cattle-thieving. But it takes more than three years to make a potter.'
Still Fuzl Elâhi showed no signs of going; on the contrary, he seemed to have a firmer hold on life than ever, as if Time had stood still for him. Rose Gordon remarked on the fact to her husband as they sat side by side one day on the old log. They had been married nearly a year, and he had brought her out for change of air on one of his inspection tours--for he had given up the Secretaryship on his marriage in favour of greater quiet and more freedom.
'It is so strange, Lewis,' she said, 'you and I coming back, so changed. And so many things have changed! even the palace scarcely looks itself with that dreadful sort of Swiss chalet Dalel has built for Beatrice Norma tacked on to the ruins of the old tower. And George and Dan are dead, and the water is running in the cut yonder as if there had never been any tragedy about preventing it from running. Yet the village, with the potter sitting in the topmost house, is just the same.'
Lewis Gordon smiled. 'You never read Megasthenes' account of his travel through India in the year B.C. 300 or you wouldn't be surprised. It might have been written today; for these people do not change except under pressure from without, and then they disintegrate suddenly. But the old man seems to me more sane than he was--more at rest. No doubt Azîzan's death----'
The familiar name caught the potter's ear and he looked up from his work.
'Yea! she sleeps still, Huzoor. The breaking of the pot did not disturb her at all. She was weary, see you, after sixteen years of waking. So now when my fathers say, "Where is Azîzan?" I can answer, "Hush! she sleeps! she will waken when she is refreshed." Lo! it is well the pot broke. It was accursed; bringing ill to all.'
'There you see, Lewis!' began Rose eagerly----
'It did not bring it to me, dear,' he replied, interrupting her, 'and a man can but judge from his own experiences. And then, as I have often told you, we really know nothing for certain----'
'Except,' put in Rose obstinately, 'that poor George----'
'Don't you think we ought to be moving?' he asked quietly. 'Remember you promised Mrs. Dalel to have tea in the chalet and inspect the son and heir, and you are tired enough as it is.'
'But you said you wanted to go and see some slope or another, and I'm not in the least tired,' she insisted when they had left the yard and reached the road. 'Lewis! you never used to fuss this way. I wish you wouldn't.'
'It is only another method of showing my real views on the mental and physical calibre of women. You must have read, my dear, of the wonderful recuperative power which the lower animals have of reproducing another tail when----ahem--by the way, this is not a safe spot! I remember saying something of the same sort on purpose to annoy when we were here before----'
He paused, and looked down the narrow alley of the village to where the palace was beginning to share the unreal beauty which the dust-cloud from the feet of the homing cattle gave to the whole scene, by hiding the dull plain in a golden mist that gave distance and height to the low sand-hillocks behind which the sun was setting cloudlessly. A glorious sight, the dignity and calm majesty of which lingers long in the memory of those who have seen it in India, day after day, month after month; lingers to claim a higher place in the imagination than the more varied and complex sunsets of the West with their stormy contrasts and passionate beauty.
'Leave me here,' she said suddenly. 'I should like it. I'll sit on that pile of old potsherds, and wait till you come back. It will rest me.'
It was peaceful enough of a certainty, and silent too. Only every now and again the tinkle of a low-toned bell from some leader of the herds below chiming in on the musical moan of the potter's wheel heard over the low wall.
'It was a woman seeking something.'
The rhythm came back to her, stirring the old sense of curious unrest. Stirring it in others of her sex also, if one might judge by the eyes which, seeing the stranger alone, began to peer from the neighbouring hovels. Eyes followed by figures; deep-bosomed mothers most of them, with a slim girl or two doing nursemaid to other folks' babies.
Nearer and nearer they came, attracted by the great feminine quality, until in answer to Rose's nod of welcome and encouragement they squatted near, yet far, gathered in as it were upon themselves, apart even from that other woman; even from her, with the cares of coming motherhood writ clear upon her, and causing her to look at those other mothers with kindly, friendly eyes.
'Ari bahin!' said one with a nudge to her neighbour. 'Tis for sure she who played bat and ball last year like a boy. Wah! that is over; she knows her work now.'
'I trow not,' replied another shrilly. 'She hath been sitting with the potter's eyes upon her this half hour past. She is bad, caring but for her pleasure.'
'Mayhap she knows not,' said an older voice, 'and they have no mothers, these ones, nor mothers-in-law. Yea! 'tis true. My man went to dig for the sahibs the year there was no corn in the land, and he hath told me. They marry of themselves and there is none to see to them that they fall not into ignorant mischief. It is fool's work.'
'No mothers-in-law?' tittered a bold-faced lump. 'Ai teri! that is no fool's work.'
But the elder woman had risen, to stand a few steps nearer Rose, looking down at her with dignified wonder.
'May the Lord send a son,' she began, going to the very root of the matter without preamble.
'I will take what He chooses to send me, mother,' replied Rose, smiling.
'Tsi-si-si!' The matron's pliant forefinger waggedsideways, in that most impressive gesture of denial never seen out of India.
'Mention not such things, my daughter,' went on the grave voice, 'lest He take thee at the word. Then what wouldst say? And see! Go no more to the potter's yard. It is not safe. Wouldst have the son come to thee with his mark on the breast? I trow not.'
They had come forward one by one to cluster round the speaker, their dark assenting eyes on Rose.
''Tis not to be helped, though,' put in another. 'Do I not know? I, Jewun, whose son died of it this year; yet I remember the old ways and my mother's counsel. Lo! it is Fate; naught else. And 'tis better to crack and be done with it. Then folk know. Not like my new milk-jar this day. Sound to sight and touch, yet six good quarts of milk spilled on the ground, as it crumbled like sand ere a body could get a hand to it. The old man shall give me another in its place. It is not fair.'
'Nay! Mai Jewun,' put in a third, 'a pot comes to pieces ever; if not one, then another way, when it is tired of going to the well for water. Thou hast naught to complain about. Ai sisters! hither returns the sahib! He will be angry that we have spoken to his mem.'
'He will not be angry,' protested Rose; but the thought was beyond them. They were off swiftly, yet sedately, only the elder woman pausing to waggle her finger again, and say, 'Go not to the potter's. It is not well. I, Junto, mother of seven, say so.'
There were tears in Rose's eyes when Lewis came up and in consequence he did look angrily at the retreating figures. She was pale and tired, he said, and must send an excuse to Mrs. Dalel. He would not have her knocking herself up with other folks' infants. So they went back quietly to the two white tents standing beyond the Mori gate, where the pigeons, as of old, circled iridescent round the dark niches. As of old, too, the clash of silver anklets came from the shadows, since Chândni was back again in her old haunts; but with a recognised position, for her Highness Beatrice Elflida Norma was a shrewd little person, and knew that she would need help to hold her own amid the intrigues of that surely-coming long minority which lay in the future. It is a recurring fraction that long minority, in the problem of our dealings with petty principalities and powers; for civilisation does not conduce to longevity with the native nobleman, and Dalel, with the income from the stud farm, was diligently burning his feeble little constitution at both ends. On the sly, however, for virtue, to all outward appearance, reigned at Hodinuggur. Only that morning Rose had inspected a female school with rows of nice little girls with very clean primers and brand-new slates. A brand-new visitors' book, too, in which Rose had, with some misgivings, inscribed her name at the end of a trite little remark on the blessings of education; for she was only just beginning to make up her bundle of opinions, and was not quite sure of them.
But that night, as he was carefully guiding her steps through the maze of ropes and pegs to the door of the sleeping-tent, she paused suddenly to say to her husband--
'Lewis! I'm glad we came here. I thought it would be so painful seeing George's deserted grave and reviving the old memories; but it has only seemed to make it all more natural, to make everything, somehow, more simple.'
This, then, was what the years were bringing to Rose. She and Lewis were very happy; though sometimes, especially when they were out in camp together, alone, he would enter a feeble protest against her lack of sentiment. When, after work and dinner were over, they sat beside the roaring stove--the mingled lamplight and firelight making the tent cosy beyond belief--and he, laying down the volume of Thackeray from which he was reading aloud, would remark, for the hundredth time, that Rose was like one of his favourite heroines.
'If you say those stupid things, Lewis,' she would reply, 'I will make you read shilling shockers, and then you can't--or I hope you won't.'
'Oh! it is all very well to scoff,' he would continue in injured tones, 'but I am the victim of an unrequited attachment. You are the heroine of my romance always, and you never had a romance at all.'
'Well, dear! that is better than having one with some one else, isn't it?' she would reply placidly, and Lewis's hand would reach out to touch the one which was so busy with needles, and thimbles, and threads--just to touch it for an instant, in a certain shamefast, deprecatory acknowledgment of her wisdom. For he knew quite well that he, like most men, had had several romances in his life, and that the possibility of several more remained in him. Whether the climax of Rose's dream of the future ever came about, and the boys got into scrapes, cannot be told; for the simple reason that Lewis himself is still within the torrid zone of life. But he does his best to prepare for the crisis, and he follows his wife's lead in this; that he finds life more simple and less sad as time goes on and he faces its facts less egotistically.
Gwen Boynton, however, found it quite the reverse. She married Colonel Tweedie two years after Dan's death, having, she said, buried all thoughts of personal happiness in the grave of the only man she had ever loved. This, as usual with Gwen's remarks, was true in itself, and yet left her free to marry for position without remorse; or rather, accurately speaking, to utilise her regrets as a motive for doing what she wanted to do without remorse. So she made Colonel Tweedie an excellent wife, much to his delight and comfort, for as Rose acknowledged, he sorely needed some one to keep him from fussing when she had gone to perform the same kind office to Lewis. Nevertheless, Gwen Boynton, when she came back to society after the shock of Dan's death, had lost some of her charm, and, from being a fascinating woman, had become elegant and interesting, as befitted one with a history. Life, she said, was so mysterious. Humanity a mere shuttlecock in the hand of Fate beaten backwards and forwards by devastating passions! Altogether the world was a sad sojourning in which a vague mysticism was the only anodyne for the sensitive.
She became a half-hearted disciple of Madame Blavatsky's, and reached what may be called the climax of her kindly, absolutely untrustworthy nature, when with tears in her eyes and much gentle mournful resignation to the mysterious inevitable, she would tell the story which she had heard from Rose, of how Dan Fitzgerald and George Keene had been measured for heroes in the potter's yard, and of their sad deaths within the year. Of course it was incredible; and yet----?
Thus, none of the actors in the little drama ever knew the whole truth about it. Gwen had the best chance so far as facts went, but she, being handicapped by her method of vision, failed to see her real part in the tragedy; for she resolutely set aside the possibilities of that hour during which herdandywaited outside the dressmaker's.
Besides, she knew no more than the rest of the other key to the position which lay in Azîzan's love for George. And this was hidden even from him, though every night, winter and summer, an odd little light--like a lost star--twinkled on the summit of the shadowy Mound of Hodinuggur. It was the oil-cresset which the old potter put nightly on the girl's grave to prevent her from having bad dreams. The branded brick bungalow was empty and deserted now that the sluice-gate required no guarding, so there was no one to see its feeble yet persistent light; still it could be seen distinctly from the little enclosure where, on a white marble slab, the legend ran--
'St. George Keene, aged 21,Who died alone at his post.'
'St. George Keene, aged 21,Who died alone at his post.'
And between the two graves the gleaming streak of the big canal lay like a sword splitting the world into East and West.
Printed by T. and A.Constable, Printers to Her Majestyat the Edinburgh University Press
Footnote 1: Literally,evil-walker.
Footnote 2: On sleep--sleeping, sleeping like a child.
Footnote 3: The police.
Footnote 4: Full two maunds.
Footnote 5: My man is dead, my heart is dead--is dead.
Footnote 6: Reign.