Chris had followed his wife into the supper-room with the vague hope of feeling that he had a place somewhere, that he belonged to something, even to her. He had found her surrounded by strangers, and evidently forgetful of his very existence.
So a resentment had come to lessen his self-pity; resentment at many things. What right, for instance, had that proud old semi-savage to say that such as he were no friends to India? It was a lie. Such as he were its best friends. Yet, as he made the assertion, he knew it needed proof. What had such as he done to show their friendship? Very little. Even he himself----
A sudden determination to act came upon him; a resolve not to let another day pass without showing that he, at least, knew which way true friendship lay.
So, partly in disgust at the trivialities around him, partly from a restless desire to think the matter out once for all, he told his wife curtly that he was leaving the dogcart at her disposal, and passed out through the garden into the almost deserted roads beyond.
The very thought of Shark Lane, however, was repellent in his present frame of mind; avoiding that direction, therefore, he wandered on aimlessly, conscious only at first that--after the glare and the noise--the darkness, the stillness, was restful to eyes, to heart, to brain. He did not think at all. For the time he was absolutely at fault, utterly depolarised.
So he felt startled, roused to a definite sensation of mingled pleasure and pain, when, forced to pull up by a shadowy void before him, he found it was the river; that, despite the confusion in his mind, his body had led him to the old way of salvation, to the old purification.
The night was too dark for him to see what lay before him; but his memory held its every detail. These were the bathing-steps, and below him lay the oldest building in Nushapore, the temple of Viseshwar. Here, to the insignificant block of rough-hewn stone tapered to a spire which rose square and bare from the very water, his mother had brought him as a child. Here, with childish delight in the action, childish disregard of its meaning, he had hung his jasmin garlands round the smooth upright black cone, which was all the shrine held for worship; yet which, even so, had been to his child's ignorance a god; as such in a way familiar, comprehensible, commonplace.
But now it was neither; now to his wider knowledge it had gained so much in mystery, in awe, by being symbol of the great incomprehensible problem of life and death, that, as he stood in that wedding-garment of culture--a suit of dress-clothes--looking down through the darkness to where he knew thatlingammust rise, smoother, more worn by worship than ever, a shiver ran through him at the thought that there, among the withered chaplets at its feet, humanity had knelt for ages and found no answer to the riddle of life.
He sat down mechanically on the uppermost of the steps, and gave himself up, as it were, to the night, conscious of a vague content that it should be so dark.
To begin with, it hid many things best left unseen--himself most of all! For that meant forgetfulness of much. His dress-clothes, for instance, and things to be classed with them! Then it hid the railway bridge--strange sight in such environment--which spanned the river a few yards below the little spit of rock, ending the steps, on which the more modern temple sacred to Kâli, Shiva's consort, had been built. But something more modern still found foothold on that same spit of rock, though farther out, hidden below the levels of the river. This was the first pier of the railway bridge, from which the two drawbridges--one towards the town, the other towards the river--were worked; thus securing the passage against attack from either side. The pier itself rose sheer from the water, a solid block of masonry, and was prolonged into a tower, gated at each end.
Chris, picturing it in his mind's eye, thought how quaint a neighbour it was even to Kâli's temple, though her cult could not claim the mystery, the significance, of the other. Hers was the cult of ignorance, of terror; and his----
He was a Smarrta Brahmin by birth, and as he sate there in the darkness, thinking of that upright stone--severe, rigid in its mysticism--and then of the many-armed, bloodstained idol in the temple beyond, a proud exultation in his own priesthood to the older cult surged up in him.
He had almost forgotten his birthright, forgotten that he had been called by God to a place of honour--to the place of teacher; that his was the right to explain the mystery to the people, to show them the way of salvation.
But he remembered it now, and all insensibly a balm came to his pain from the knowledge of what lay about him, unseen, yet familiar. He sate, listening to the lap of the river on the foot-worn steps, picturing to himself its fringe of dead flower-petals from the dead day's worship: and even the stir in the vague shadow of thepipaltrees, telling of the sacred monkeys who with the dawn would descend to claim their share of offerings with the gods, seemed to still his own restlessness.
And as he listened, feeling, more than thinking, the asceticism of many a holy ancestor who had left the world behind to follow his ideal of good, rose up in suggestion that he should do so also.
Why not? Why not claim his inherited right of sainthood in order to preach his doctrine? Was not that, after all, the only thing worth doing in this life? Was not this the only reality? Was not all else 'Maya' or deception?
Such glimpses of the real beyond the unreal come to most of us at times, making us feel the spin of the round world we have deemed so steady beneath our feet, making us feel the fixity of the stars above us, the mysterious denial of sunset, the illimitable promise of dawn.
And when they come, peace comes with them.
It came to Krishn Davenund, making him forget the red Hammersmith omnibus and all things pertaining thereto, as he sat feeling the familiar touch of the darkness, until in the east, beyond the river, the grey glimmer of coming light in the sky showed him the curved shadow of the world's horizon, and after a time the grey glimmer of the curved river came to show him the straight shadow of the temple.
Then, in the vague light, he stood up, with a vague light in his mind also. As he did so, something fell from his arm. It was his wife's shawl, which he had been carrying unconsciously all the time. As he picked it up, the coincidence of its faint pinkish colour banished the regret which came to him at having forgotten to give it her ere leaving. For this wasyogicolour, so called because it is worn by all ascetics.
His English wife had admired the delicate salmon-pink, and he had therefore had her white Rampore shawl dyed that tint. Strange indeed! A thousand times strange, that this should be close to his hand now!
The cue thus given was followed, and with a passion which stifled his sense of bathos, he was the next instant throwing off his dress-clothes. So, with the thin, fine shawl about his nakedness, he passed down the steps towards the river, towards the sacrament of his race and caste.
The chill touch of the water sent his hot blood to heart and brain. He could scarcely keep his voice to the orthodox whisper, as he began the secret ritual which he had not repeated for years--
'Om! Earth! Air! Heaven! Om!Let us worship the supreme splendour of the Sun.May his light lighten our darkness.'
'Om! Earth! Air! Heaven! Om!Let us worship the supreme splendour of the Sun.May his light lighten our darkness.'
The words blent with the silvery tinkle of the water falling back from his upraised hands, and at the familiar sound a stir came from the branches of thepipaltrees behind him; and from the shadowy water below them a couple of shelldrakes sailed out, with their echoing cry, to the lighter level before him.
The sound of that first libation to the gods had awakened the temple world.
As yet, however, he and nature had worship to themselves.
Therefore, waist deep in the water, he stood free to dream once more that he was twice born, regenerate, raised high above the herd.
Yet free also to return to the new ways if he chose, since there was none to see, as yet----
But ere he had finished the ritual, an old man, still half asleep, came yawning down the steps, carrying a tray of little platters filled with coloured powders. Having reached the water's very edge, he set these in a row, and kept an eye on Chris; for he was thepujâriof the temple, with the right, for a small fee, to re-mark the bathers with their proper caste marks.
'What race, my son?' he asked drowsily, as Chris came up out of the river.
The question sent a vast pride through the young man. With bare limbs scarce hidden by the dripping shawl, he stood hesitating for a brief second, and then squatted down beside the familiar earthen platters.
'Brahmin.Shiv-bakht,'[11]he said.
The old mansalaamedere reaching for the sacred white gypsum, which is brought from the snows of Amar-nath; and once more that pride of race swept through the soul whose body awaited its sign of election.
But the swift cold touch on his forehead which followed woke Chris to realities, to the question 'Do I mean it?' And the whispering kiss of other bare feet upon the steps warned him that, if he wished time for deliberation, he must remove his tell-tale garments of civilisation before the light made them manifest. If these were hidden away, he himself, in hisyogicoloured shawl, could easily pass muster; especially if he retreated to the least-frequented part of the steps, where they ended in a ruined wall, split by thepipaltree-roots.
Here, then, he found some convenient crevices for his clothes, and after spreading his shawl to dry in orthodox fashion, sat down beside it in the recognised attitude of meditation, his arms crossed on his knees, his chin resting on them. He was not likely to be recognised, even by broad daylight; for the companions of his later years were not of those who worship.
He would have leisure therefore to think, to decide. But once more he reckoned without himself, without the swift response of his senses to the once familiar sights and sounds. The causeless laughter of women filling their water-pots, the tinkle of their anklets, the cries of the flower-sellers, the ceaseless splash of water falling on water, the very leapings and chatterings of the monkeys, putting off time in play till the bathings should end in offerings--all these made connected thought impossible, while eyes and ears were open.
In despair at last, he flung the half-dried shawl over his head, stuffed his fingers into his ears, and, leaning back against a tree-trunk, tried to forget where he was; tried not to feel those white bars on his forehead which seemed to burn into his brain. But, in the effort to answer that question, 'Shall I go or stay?'--the effort to remember and yet to forget, he fell into dreamland; finally into sleep. And as he slept, Fate took the answer into her own hands, and turned his tragedy into comedy; for a small and curious monkey who had watched the secretion of those dress-clothes from afar, took advantage of his slumbers to creep down stealthily to a crevice, and make off with its contents--namely, a pair of trousers!
The monkey, however, being small, was soon dispossessed of his prize; a bigger one claimed it, and sent the first owner to whimper and gibber indignation from the topmost branches, and then grin fiendishly as a yet bigger one despoiledhisdespoiler. And so, unerringly, the garment of culture passed to the stronger, till the biggest old male of the lot, after inspecting every seam and trying to crack every button, conceived that itmustbe some kind of adornment, and, after hanging the legs, stolewise, in front, the seat, cloakwise, behind, crossed its arms over its stomach, feeling satisfied it had solved that problem.
Meanwhile, Chris had awakened to the impossibility of remaining where he was; for even his brief return to the normal in sleep had been sufficient to convince him of the hopelessness of attempting to return to that older standpoint. So, the day having advanced with the giant strides of an Indian dawn, he rose to retrieve his clothes, and sneak off with them to some quiet spot.
As he did so, however, the sight of some one standing just above him made him squat down again and cover himself once more with the shawl. For it was his new foreman of works, John Ellison, who from the top of the steps was looking down affably, nodding to the oldpujâri(who had by this time a circle of customers awaiting hall-mark), and humming the baptismal hymn which begins, 'In token that thou shalt not fear,' between the salutations of 'Ram-ram' (pronounced with a shorta) which he showered on the bathers as they passed and repassed.
''Tis Jân-Ali-shân,' said one in answer to a question from a stranger. 'He feeds the monkeys.'
'And when Sri Hunumân's monkeys are fed by him, the feasting of Sri Yama's[12]crocodiles is not far off,' put in a listener, emphasising his allusion to the God of Death by a placid look towards a tinsel-bound corpse swung to a bamboo, which two men were carrying slantways across the steps to the burning place below the railway bridge.
More than one amongst the bathers, overhearing the remark, nodded assent, and looked with a vague fear at the loafer who had seated himself a few steps down, and taken off his battered billy-cock; for being Sunday he was off duty and uniform.
'Ram-ram,' he said, with a general wave of the hand. So it's the old game still. Sunlight soap, monkey brand, and A1 copper-bottomed at Lloyd's doing a fire insurance! Lordy Lord! I might 'ave bin 'ere last Sunday, instead o' last year. An' 'ows Mr. 'Oneyman?'
The last word, intended for Hunumân, evidently conveyed a meaning to the whole remark, for many faces grinned, and the oldpujârisalaamed with all the difficult gravity of a child who knows some time-worn jest is nigh.
'Sri Hunumân hath been well, since theHuzoorfed him on quinine pills hid in Shiv-jee'sraisins last year. Ho! ho! ho! that was a spectacle!'
A priest with a trident on his forehead chuckled too. 'Yea! he is strong. He stole the sugar yesterday from Mai Kâli's very lap. Lo! even the monkeys know that offerings should be left at Shiv-jee's feet!'
He spoke at a group of villagers who, in tow of a rival priest, were taking their offerings to the further temple.
John Ellison laughed.
'"'Ow 'appy could I be with either,"'
he chanted. 'Wot! Ain't Shiver and Kâli settled that "biz" yet? W'y don't they get a divorce for bigamy both sides? Not as I care a d--n,'--he went on in his vile lingo in which all was English save the nouns and verbs, the latter having but one tense--the imperative. 'Siree 'Oneyman's my fancy. He as 'its 'im 'its me, Jân-Ali-shân. An' let me tell you that ain't no 'arnsiki bat.[13]It'szulman'fickeran'burra hurra affut!'
These astounding equivalents for tyranny, trouble, and great misfortune, he used with intent; for he liked to trade on his reputation as a bird of ill-omen. 'Meanwhile,' he continued, chucking apiceto thepujâriwith that extreme affability which made even the most alarmed exclude him, personally, from any share in the coming evil, 'seeing as I was branded A1 as a babby I won't trouble you agin, sonny; but there's your fee all the same. So now for Siree 'Oneyman!'
He drew out a paper of sugar drops as he spoke, and, scattering some on the steps, began to sing
'Click, click!Like a monkey on a stick.'
'Click, click!Like a monkey on a stick.'
The effect was magical. Every leaf of thepipalsrustled as the monkeys, recognising his call, swung themselves downward from branch to branch.
The bathers paused, full of smiles for this common interest shown by one of the aliens who are so often far beyond their simplicity.
Even Chris could not help a smile, despite the anxiety he was in, as he watched the monkeys close in on the sugar drops, quarrelling, pouching, reaching round with all four paws: with the exception of one monkey, a very large male, which, coming lamentably last, only used three; the fourth, meanwhile, clutching convulsively at its stomach.
'W'y, 'Oneyman?' came John Ellison's mellow voice, full of sympathy, 'w'ot 's up, sonny? Got the cramps?--ate somethin' yer don't like?'--he paused, stared--'W'y! w'otever----' he paused again, and out of the fulness of his bewilderment wandered off helplessly into--
'She wore a wreath of roses.'
But poor Chris, far off as he was, had grasped the truth and turned hot and cold, long before Jân-Ali-shân said in an awed whisper--
'Wherever in the nationdid'ole 'Oneyman raise them dress bags?' He turned to the bystanders appealingly as he spoke, but their faces, as they gathered round in a circle, echoed his own surprise.
'Well, I am dashed!' he said softly; 'this beats cockfightin'.'
It did, for Sri Hunumân having by this time grasped the fact that dignity was incompatible with dinner, had thrown the former aside, and having rolled the trousers hastily into a ball, had sat down on it, as on a cushion, while he reached round for sugar drops with both paws. Whereupon the original thief, thinking he saw an opportunity, made a snatch at the braces, which still streamed over the steps. To no purpose, however, since 'Oneyman only clapped both paws behind, and, the cushion stillin situ, hopped to another place.
A roar of amusement echoed out over the steps, and half-a-dozen youngsters, fired with ambition, tried the same game; also without success. Sri Honeyman eluded every clutch, even the despairing one which Chris, muffled to the eyes in his ascetic's shawl, laid on those streaming braces. They came off in his hands to the crowd's huge delight.
"Ari, brother, thou hast the tail anyhow!" said some in congratulation, but poor Chris cursed inwardly. What were braces without the trousers to wear with them?
John Ellison, meanwhile, half choked with laughter, and drunk with mirth, was rolling about, kicking legs and arms, and shouting, "Go it, 'Oneyman! Go it, sonny!" until from some of the disappointed came the murmur that Jân-Ali-shân had better try and get the trousers himself, though all Mai Kâli's priests with sticks and staves had not been equal to making the old monkey give up the sugar! On this he rose breathlessly and looked round.
"You bet," he said, "it's Rule Britannier, that's w'ot it is." Whereupon he took another paper bag of sugar drops from his pocket and walked up to the culprit.
"Shab-bash!'Oneyman," he said, with his usual affability, "you done that uncommon well. If ever you're in want of the shiny, they'd give you a fiver for that interlood at a music 'all. But time's up, sonny. Your turn's over. So just you change bags like a good boy or "--The rest of the sentence was a melodious whistling of
"Britons never, never will be slaves,"
a dexterous emptying of the bribe, and an equally dexterous clutch at the trousers, accompanied by a forcible kick behind. The three combined were instantly successful, and there was Jân-Ali-shân carefully dusting his new possession. Then he held them up, and said suavely--
"Fair exchange ain't no robbery; but if any gent owns these pants, let 'im utter"--which remark he translated in hideous Hindustani into "Koi admi upna breeches hai, bolo!"
For one short second Chris felt inclined to brave the situation. Then, as usual, he hesitated; so the moment of salvation passed. John Ellison rolled up his prize, put them under his arm, and with a general "Ram-ram" to the bystanders, and an affectionate wave of the hand to old 'Oneyman, walked off cheerily whistling,
"This is no my plaid, my plaid, my plaid."
Chris looked after him helplessly, then went back to his tree hopelessly. He could not return home, by broad daylight, in any possible permutation or combination of a swallow-tailed coat and a devotee'sdhoti. The only thing to be done was to wait for kindly concealing night.
Being Sunday, he would not be missed till noon, for his wife was a late riser. Even then she would not be alarmed; indeed, he had often stayed out all day without her taking the trouble to ask where he had been. That thought decided him to stay where and as he was. Besides, despite the shameful absurdity of the cause, the result was in a way, pleasant. It was something to besentback without responsibility to the old life even for a few hours, and a spirit of adventure woke in him as he remembered the things possible to one of his caste. Any one, for instance, would feed a Brahmin; and so, after secreting the remainder of his clothes beyond the reach of monkeys under a heap of the ruined wall, until he found an opportunity of removing them altogether, he set off boldly to beg breakfast in the city. The sun, now high in the heavens, smote on his bare limbs--so long unaccustomed to the warm stimulating caress--with all the intoxication of a new physical pleasure. But there was another touch, still more stimulating, which came to him first in a narrow side street close to the city gate; a street all sun and shade in bars, with women's chatter, women's laughter echoing from within the courtyard doors. Doors all closed save this, the first, which had opened at his cry for alms, to let a woman's hand slip through. That reverent touch on his palm, so soft, so kind; that glimpse of a full petticoat, a jewel-covered throat, made his brain reel with recollection, his heart leap with the possibilities it suggested. How many years was it since he had seen a Brahmin woman worshipping her husband? That had been his mother, and he might have had such a wife as she had been to his father, if he had chosen; almost, if he chose.
The suggestion repelled yet attracted him, and, after a time, half in curiosity, half in affection, he turned his steps to the well-remembered alley where his mother still lived. He had been to see her, of course, when he first returned to India, but inevitably as an alien; and after his refusal to do penance, he had not gone at all. She had, in fact, refused to receive him. So his heart beat as he stood muffled in his devotee's drapery before the door, through which he had so often passed to worship clinging to her skirts, and gave his beggar's cry--
'Alakh!for Shiv's sake.'
There was no need to repeat it; for this was a pious house. The low door opened wide, and a young girl held out an alms with the mechanical precision of practice.
'For Shiv's sake,' she echoed monotonously, 'and for the sake of a son who has wandered from the true fold.'
Her voice held no trace of feeling, but Chris fell back with a stifled cry. For he knew what the words meant; knew that he was the wanderer.
So, for a second, the girl stood surprised, hesitating. She was extraordinarily beautiful. A slender slip of a girl about fourteen, with a long round throat poising the delicate oval of her face, and black lashes sweeping to meet the bar of her brows above her soft velvety eyes. There was a likeness still to the little orphan cousin who had come to make one more mouth to feed in the patriarchal household when he was a big boy just keen for college: the girl-child over whom his mother had smiled mysteriously, and talked of the years to come when the head of the house would have had his fill of education for his boy, and permit marriage. Yes, this was she, his cousin, little Naraini.
'There is naught amiss, my lord,' she said suddenly, drawing back in her turn with an offended air. 'I too am Brahmin, my hand is pure.'
So, indignantly, she dropped her alms of parched wheat into the gutter, and slammed the door.
Chris, down on his knees, his blood on fire, picked every grain up, and then, his head in a greater whirl than ever, made his way back to the river steps, to his hidden clothes, to the last hold he had on Western life and thought.
The steps were almost deserted in the noontide; therefore, wearied out with his vigil of the night and the excitement of the day, he lay down deliberately to sleep, feeling even this--this possibility of going to bed without one--to be a relief after all the paraphernalia of pillows, mattresses, blankets, and sheets.
When he woke, the sun had begun to sink, and the stream of worship was setting templewards again. But the crowd was a different one; more temporal, less spiritual. More eager for gossip, less concerned with salvation; and Chris, who had gained confidence in his disguise by this time, left the shadow of the trees in order to listen to the talk. Even to such as he, it was an opportunity of gauging the mind of the multitude, which did not often present itself; and, being refreshed by his long sleep, he saw clearly that he, personally, might find this a useful experience.
The wildness of the rumours current, however, the absurdity of the beliefs he heard put forward, were beyond his patience, and more than once he drew down an unwelcome interest in himself by his flat denials.
His disguise, however--if it could be called a disguise seeing that he was, indeed, what he professed to be--held out, and so, by degrees, he grew bolder; telling himself that the day would not be lost if he could begin to practise what he had preached in Shark Lane, and raise his voice for the truth's sake.
It was not, however, till the first twinkling lights of the evening service showed in the temples, and the red and green signals on the railway bridge answered the challenge, that he found himself in the position he had advocated; that is one in opposition to many.
He did not shrink from the situation when it came; he had too much grit for that.
"It is a lie," he reasserted, and turning to the larger crowd beyond the listening few, raised his voice.
"Listen, friends, and I will tell you why it is not true that this golden paper fell from Heaven into Kâli's temple. Why, her priests lie when they say it did. Listen, for I am Brahmin. I know the gods and their ways, and I know theHuzoorsand their ways also."
"Who is the lad? he speaks well," passed in murmurs among the crowd which closed in to see and hear better. Chris pulled himself together as he stood, his figure showing clear against the light that lingered on the river.
"Who am I?" he echoed. "Listen, and I will tell you; I am twice born, regenerate--a Brahmin of the Brahmins."
There was sudden stir in the crowd, a murmur, 'Let her pass--she knows.' And then in that clear space where he stood, a woman stood also; a Hindoo widow, with bare arm uplifted from her white shroud.
'Lie not, Krishn Davenund!' she said. 'Thou art outcast, accursed! I, thy mother, say it.' The face, clear cut, pale with continued fasting, showed no pain, no regret, only stern reproof. 'Thou art not twice-born now. Oh! son of my desolation,' she went on, her voice shrilling as she spoke, 'thou art twice-dead. Go back to thy new ways, to thy new wife!'
A sudden stretch of her hand towards the scarlet-clad young girl, shrinking by her side, told its tale of something more bitter than bigotry; of a mother's jealousy.
Chris, who had fallen back from that unexpected betrayal, gave a hasty glance round, and what he saw in the faces of the crowd made him realise his position.
'Hush, mother!' he began; but it was too late.
Her story was well known among the priests. They were in arms at once, and, ere a minute passed, Chris found himself at bay, ankle deep in the water into which he had been driven, his back against the sacred temple of Viseshwar: so adding to his crime by its defilement.
'Listen!' he called.
But the crowd were already past that, and the cries 'He is a spy!' 'He hath defiled us!' 'Whom hath he not touched?' 'He hath been here all day!' 'He is sent to make us Christians!' rose on all sides.
Chris, his back to the temple, set his teeth. Beyond the crowd, that was kept at a yard's distance yet by something in his face, he could see two women, scarlet and white robed, sobbing in each other's arms, and the sight made him savage for their pain.
'How can I defile you?' he cried; 'I am Brahmin. Yonder is my mother. My father all know. Who dares to take my birthright from me?'
'Who? thyself!' came viciously from the foremost row of priests. 'Where is thy sacred thread, apostate?'
Chris flinched for the first time. It was true. In a fit of anger when his own received him not, he had removed the badge of the twice-born with his own hands. So he had nothing to which he could appeal. Nothing old or new!
'Listen!' he began again helplessly, and the crowd feeling the helplessness surged closer.
'Kill him!' said one voice, dominating the others by the very simplicity of its advice. 'He is nothing. He is not of us, nor of theHuzoors. Who wants him?'
Another instant and the advice might have been followed had not some one claimed poor Chris--had not a voice from behind said softly--
'Well! I'm dashed if it ain't the guv'nor! Now then! you niggers!'
The next instant, with a plentiful if quite good-natured use of heels and elbows, Chris Davenant's foreman of works was through the crowd into the water, and so, facing round on those threatening faces, was backing towards Chris, and making furious feints with his fists the while.
'Ram-ram, gents,' he said affably. 'Now, w'ot you've got to do is to tell me w'ot all this is about. W'ot are you doin' to my guv'nor? Don't you speak, sir!' he added in a hasty whisper. 'I don't really want to know nothing. You and me's got to get out o' this galley, thet's all. An' if we don't,' he continued philosophically, 'you'll 'ave to explain up top, and I kin listen then. Them kind o' words ain't no use down 'ere. Lem'me speak mine!'
With that he ceased sparring, walked two paces forwards in the water, put his hands in his trousers-pockets, and began on his lingo coolly--
'Dekko(look here), you want thisâdmi(man)abhi(now), but you ain't goin' to get 'im.Tumhâra nahin(not yours). He's mine,mera âdmi(my man),sumjha? (do you understand?) If you wantlurro(fight), come on. You shall 'ave a bellyful, an' there'll be a plenty on you tophânsi(hang). But w'ot I say is, don't bepârgul soors(foolish pigs). I don't do your bally 'ole temples any 'arm. It's "durm shaster ram-ram[14]an'hurry gunga," so far's I care. But this man's my guv'nor. You don't touch 'im.Kubhi nahin(never). I'm anek âdmi, burra usseel(virtuous man, very gentle) w'en I'm took the right way; contrariwise I'mzulman'fickeran'burra burra affut. Now you ask ole 'Oneyman if I ain't. 'E knows both sides o' Jân-Ali-shân, and 'e'll give 'is opinion, like the genl'eman 'e is.'
He paused, for an idea, a chance had suggested itself. Then at the top of his voice, with a devil-may-care lilt in it, he began--
'Click, click?Like a monkey on a stick.'
'Click, click?Like a monkey on a stick.'
The answer followed in a second. With rustlings and boundings the monkeys came to the rescue of the familiar voice; for the crowd behind, weary of being unable to see what was passing in front, turned instinctively to the new interest, and so, losing cohesion, the multitude lost unity of purpose also for the moment.
'Now's your time, sir,' shouted John Ellison; 'keep close to me!' Then with a wild yell of
'Clear the decks, comrades,'
he rushed head down at the fat stomach of the chief priest, bowled him over, and treating the rest as he would have treated a crush at football, found himself, with Chris at his heels, on the top of the steps almost before the crowd had realised what was happening.
'Pull up, sir,' he said, pausing breathlessly; 'never run a hinch more nor you can 'elp with niggers. An' they'll be all right now we're off them steps. I know 'em! As peaceable a lot as ever lived, if you don't touch their wimmin or their gods.'
And with that he turned to the peaceable lot with his usual urbanity.
'Ram-ram, gents. I done you no 'arm, and you done me no 'arm. That's as it should be. So good afternoon.Salaam alackoom!--Now then, sir, you come along to my diggin's an' get your pants.'
But as they hurried off to the Strangers' Home, he shook his head gravely.
'If it hadn't bin for my bein' in a surplus chore seven year, and so knowin'
"Lord a' mercy"
to the Ten Commandments, and my dooty to my neighbour, you'd never a wore breeches agin, sir, for I wouldn't never ave come back to them steps with a prick in my conshinse, sir, for fear as there was more in them dress pants than meets the eye, as the sayin' is; though why the nation, savin' your presence, sir, you come to took 'em off, beats me!'
Chris told him. Told him the whole story, as he might not, perhaps, have told a better man, and John Ellison listened decorously, respectfully. It was not till Chris, attired in the fateful garments, with his subordinate's white uniform coat superadded and the devotee's shawl twined as a turban (since it had not been deemed feasible to recover the rest of the dress-suit that night), was ready to return to civilisation, that John Ellison ventured on a parting remark.
'It's the onsartainty, sir, that does the mischief. Beer's beer, an' whisky's whisky. It's when you come to mixin' 'em that you dun'no where you are. It taste beastly to begin with, and then it don't make a chap, so to speak, punctooal drunk. So it throws 'im out o' reckonin', and makes 'im onsartin--an' that don't work in
"Hinjia's coral strand."'
There were many people in many parts of Nushapore that Sunday evening who were echoing Jân-Ali-shân's estimate of the danger and discomforts of uncertainty.
For, far and near, from Government House, where Grace Arbuthnot sate at the head of a glittering dinner-table round which half the empire-making bureaucracy of the province was gathered, to the veriest hovel on the outcast outskirts of the city, where two women--the lowest of the low--were grinding at the mill for their daily bread such sweepings of the corn-dealers' shops as they had been able to gather during the day, the feeling that none knew what the coming dawn might bring to hovel and house, home and country, and people, lay heavily, almost suffocatingly.
It is a feeling which comes to India, none can tell how, or why. It is in the air like plague and pestilence. There is no remedy for it, and the fact that we aliens have learnt to recognise its existence is often the only difference between the vague unrest which dies away, as it came, irrationally, and that which brought us the mutiny, and which may, conceivably, bring us one again.
There is only one thing certain about this feeling. Whatever passion, or injustice, or ignorance, causes the first quickened heart-beat, it is not long before, however obscurely, the great problem of sex becomes involved in the quarrel between East and West. For there lies the crux of toleration, of loyalty.
So, with plague and its inevitable interference with domestic life looming before them, the hard-worked officials who for six days of the week had borne the heaviest burden men can bear--absolute executive responsibility, when the executive authority is limited--knew perfectly well, as they deliberately tried to forget that burden round the dinner-table at Government House, that very little would suffice to upset that unstable equilibrium of law and order, which--taken in conjunction with the peaceful, law-abiding temperament of the people--is so remarkable in India.
And there was so much that might conceivably upset it. To begin with, the tape machine under lock and key in the private secretary's office next the dining-room! At any moment, in the middle of a jest, or apâté de foie gras, its electric bell might begin to ring, and the verdict of British ignorance, embodied in a message from a Secretary of State, print itself out in obliteration of the verdict of practical experience. For telegrams had been coming fast and frequent of late; would inevitably come faster and more frequent every year, every month, every day, as the lessening length of time between India and England made the pulsebeats of either audible to the other.
Then, every one round the table knew that those days, those hours were, also inevitably, bringing nearer and nearer that quarrel as to whether cleanliness comes next to godliness, or godliness to cleanliness, which has yet to be settled between East and West. Between a race which prides itself on asserting the former in its proverb, yet in its practice insists on sanitation and leaves salvation to take its chance; and a race which, while asserting that salvation is impossible without physical purity, practically ignores cleanliness. A quarrel which is surely the quaintest dissociation of theory and practice which the world can show! All the quainter in that the Western proverb is a quotation from the sacred wisdom of the East.
The question therefore, 'When will the plague come?' with its corollary, 'If it comes, what shall we do?' underlay the laughter of two-thirds of the guests. For they were men. The remaining third, being women, were as yet unconcerned; the danger had not yet come within their horizon of personal good or evil. All except Grace Arbuthnot; and that it had come into hers was due simply to an enlargement of that personal horizon; not from any general sense of duty.
Yet, in a way, the men also limited their wonder to their own line of work. The city magistrate with reference to the back slums of Nushapore, peopled by the idlest, most dissolute, most depraved population in India. The Inspector-General of Hospitals thought of his native doctors, his dispensaries. The police-officer of his bad-character list, his licences to carry arms. The General-in-command of the station, again, thought of his garrison, of the four hundred sick in hospital out of eighteen hundred men, who might be wanted ere long. His were not pleasant thoughts, and they were urgent. Only that morning he had driven down from cantonments to catch the Lieutenant-Governor before he went to church and discuss the doctor's fiat that nothing short of a complete change, a complete severance from the bazaars which, crowding round the barracks, placed the troops, as it were, in the midst of a native town, was likely to do any good. So they had discussed the question during service hours, while others were saying 'Good Lord, deliver us' from a variety of evils; with the result that Sir George had promised to go down to cantonments the very next day, and see for himself what the state of affairs was.
Yet, despite the fact that all the repressed anxiety present centred round the one word 'plague,' the first hint of the subject mooted gravely, brought instant protest from a high-pitched Irish brogue.
'Oh, plague take it altogether! for it is becoming a bore of the fullest dimensions! But I hearrd a fine story about it an' old Martineau yesterday. There has been a suspected case in one of his districts. An old Mohammedan woman, travelling alone in a country gig, died; and the deputy-collector--a Hindoo hungering for promotion--thought he 'ud curry favour with the powers by bein' prompt. So he burrnt the cart an' the clothes an' the corpse. They didn't mind the corpse--bein' a woman--though it's perdition, me dear Mrs. Carruthers, for a Mohammedan to be burrnt; but the clothes were another story, and the relatives kicked up a bit of a fuss. So Martineau had to hold an inquiry. "Did you burrn the corpse?" he roared--ye know his sucking-dove of a voice. "Sir," says the deputy half blue-funk, half-elation at his own action, "I did; the rules provide----" "I didn't ask for the rules, sir," roars Martineau; "did you burrn the clothes?" "Huzoor!" bleats thebaboo, forgetting his English, "it is laid down." "I didn't ask what's laid down," comes the roar; "did you burrn the cart?" "Ghereeb-na-wâz" blubbers the deputy, "I thought----" "Confound you, sir! I didn't ask what you thought; did you burrn the driver?" "No! no!" shrieked the wretched creature, fallin' on his knees. "It is a lie! It is malice! It is an invention of my enemies. I didn't." "Then, sir," thunders Martineau, "you're a d--d fool, sir, not to have stopped his mouth."'
There was a light-hearted laugh round the table which, for the time being, focussed all the qualities which go to make empire; not the least of which is the faculty for such laughter. Laughter which comes to the West, sometimes, to be celebrated in song and story, like that of the ball before Waterloo, or of the Frenchnoblessein theconciergerie, but which is ever present in India, giving to its Anglo-Indian society an almost wistful frivolity, studious in its gay refusal to take anythingaux grands sérieuxtill the stern necessity of doing so stares it in the face.
And, with the laugh, the grave, white-coated, dark-faced servants passed round the table also, ignoring the mirth, ignoring all things save French dishes and iced champagne.
'Lucky it was a woman, wasn't it!' said a voice. 'If it had been a man, there would have been real trouble.'
'How rude! Isn't it at least as bad for a woman to be burnt,' challenged a very pretty one, 'as a man?'
'For the woman, no doubt,' replied the brogue drily; 'but in this case the men don't care. Ye see, the Mohammedan paradise is already peopled withhourislike yourself, me dear Mrs. Carruthers; so the presence of the sex isn't important enough to fuss about.'
'Of course not!' retorted the little lady gaily, 'because you men know we can always make a Paradise for ourselves.'
'Make; an' mar, me dear madam!'
'Oh! I give you Eve! The woman who is fool enough to think she can keep her husband in one if she gives him a cold lunch of apples, deserves to lose everything.'
'Except her looks! The world can't spare the pretty women!'
So far the lightness of both voices had been charming; but a new one coming from the other side of the table had the heavy acidity in it of wine that should sparkle and does not; for the owner being Mrs. Carruthers's recognised rival, sinned against the first principles ofbadinageby importing spite into it.
'Surely that's been said before. Every one knows cooks are the devil; mine is, anyhow!'
'The devil!' echoed little Mrs. Carruthers, eyeing her adversary--whose bad dinners were a byword--with a charming surprise; 'I wonder atyoursaying so. Why, the devil tempts you, and you do eat; and--andsomecooks disgust you, and you don't!'
Her antagonist s protest that the quotation applied to Eve, was lost in the laugh, during which Jack Raymond--who had found it impossible to evade Sir George Arbuthnot's conscientious gratitude for Jerry's rescue as embodied in an invitation to dinner-said to his neighbour--
'You think, Miss Drummond, that we Anglo-Indians talk a lot of rubbish.'
He, himself, had given her small opportunity of judging, for he had been very silent all through the meal; in fact, a trifle sulky. Why, he could not decide, and it had annoyed him that he should be conscious at once of resentment and relief at the etiquette of precedence which sent the secretary to the club so far from the beautiful face at the head of the table. And Lesley, for her part, after the manner of modern girls, had accepted his silence calmly, not troubling herself to amuse one who did not trouble to amuse her; so she had eaten her dinner peacefully, without any reference to her neighbour.
He, however, had been unable to attain this philosophic standard. This indifference of the independent girl of the world, who, conscious of an assured position even as an unmarried woman, treats man as an unnecessary, if, on the whole a not unpleasant adjunct to a life that is complete without him, was quite new to Jack Raymond, who had not been home for fourteen years. He admired it frankly; felt that it suited her, suited the refined curve of the long throat, the faint droop at the corners of the mouth, the smooth coils of hair. The chill dignity of it all, he realised--for he was a quick judge in such matters--did not mean anything personal. It was nothewith whom, as he phrased it, she desired to have no truck, but with the whole creation of such as he; or such, rather, as she chose to consider him. For it was evident that, despite her almost magisterial calm, she still used the woman's privilege of making her own heroes and villains. In reality, she could know nothing about him! Should he tell her something? The question had occurred to him, and had found answer in his remark.
She answered the challenge with a half-bored smile.
'I suppose you like it; but it does seem odd to an outsider in what is virtually a picked society. And then there is so much to talk about seriously in India.'
'We prefer to think about serious things,' he replied coolly. 'I'll bet you--shall we say your namesake's odds--twenty to one?--that the men round this table do better work for not wasting time in--intalkee-talkee.'
'I don't bet,' she said, too disdainful for wider notice of his words.
'So I am aware,' he answered quietly, 'and that reminds me! The five thousand rupees I won off Bonnie Lesley still awaits your instructions.'
'Mine!' she echoed in surprise. 'Why?'
'As to what charity is to profit by my sin. There is one for the regeneration of European reprobates--more commonly called the loafers' fund, Miss Drummond, which, under the circumstances, might suit.'
She looked icebergs. 'Thanks, Mr. Raymond; but your eloquence succeeded so absolutely in convincing me I was in no way responsible, that I must decline to interfere. Please do as you choose with your ill-gotten gains.'
He smiled. 'Then the money, being in thousand-rupee notes, shall stay where it is--in my pocket-book. It gives a gambler confidence to know he has some spare cash about him! Besides,' he added hastily, a sudden shrinking in her eyes warning him that he had really pained her, 'it might come in for a good deed.'
'Possibly, not probably,' she began, then explained herself hastily: 'I mean, of course, it is not likely such an occasion will arise----'
'Don't, Miss Drummond,' he interrupted gravely. 'Keep your bad opinion of me undiluted; you can't go wrong there. But don't condemn the lot of us for talking rubbish; there is generally a reason for it.'
'There is generally a reason for most things, I believe,' she said coldly.
Her tone nettled him, and as usual when his temper rose, he went straight to the point.
'Generally,' he admitted; 'but I don't think you allow for these. That lady opposite, for instance, is talking nonsense, all she knows, in order to forget that she sang the hymn for those at sea to-day. Thepadrehad it because his wife and daughter are on their way out, and a bad cyclone was telegraphed yesterday off Socotra. Her only son is in the same boat. Then the man next her,' he went on, for Lesley was listening with faintly startled, faintly distasteful curiosity, 'is trying to forget that the doctors tell him it is a toss up whether he can pull through the next hot weather without leave. He can't afford to take any, with four boys at school and one at the university. Luckily, if he doesn't pull through, his wife--she has been bossing the show at home these five years because the rupees wouldn't run two establishments--will be better off than if he did. Pensions of a hundred, and a hundred and fifty, mount up, you see, when there's ten of a family. Then the pretty woman flirting with the general is trying to forget there is such a thing as a child in the world. She left four at home because they telegraphed that her husband wasn't safe alone. He was in an out-station, and took a double-barrelled gun to shoot locusts. So he said, but his bearer wetted the cartridges, and sent a camelsowarto headquarters for the doctor! He has still to use a hair restorer you'll observe--that's the man over there. Look how he's watching his wife! He has to take her back to the wilderness to-morrow, and I shouldn't wonder if he wasn't thinking himself a fool not to have made sure, for her sake, that his powder was dry! Brain fever plays tricks with a man's reasoning powers, Miss Drummond.'
Lesley's lip curled slightly with the indifferent distaste so many girls have nowadays, for the least sentimentality, the faintest claim on emotion.
'Is italltragedy?' she began critically.
'All!' he interrupted her cheerfully. 'Even Mrs. Carruthers has one. They fumigated her last Paris frock at the quarantine station, and took the colour out of it! But that's enough. I don't want to have to find a reason for the nonsense that is inme. Are you going to the Artillery sports to-morrow?'
She gave no answer, but she sat looking at him with an appreciative smile. 'You do it very well, though----' she said, then paused. 'I wonder why you gave up the civil service? Lady Arbuthnot told me you did, but she didn't say why. I expect you lost your temper, didn't you?'
It was exactly what he had done, but the only person who had ever told him so before had been Grace Arbuthnot. And she had made it a personal matter; her eyes had given and claimed so much when she told him; while the ones opposite him, now, were absolutely self-absorbed.
'Possibly,' he admitted curtly, nettled by her cool curiosity. 'You can judge for yourself. There was a row in the native city of which I had charge. I fired on the mob. Government thought it was unnecessary, and stopped my promotion. I resigned.
'And the row?' she asked quickly.
'That stopped also, of course. Excuse me, but Lady Arbuthnot has made the move.'
Lesley stood up, tall, slender, almost conventual in her clinging white dress, in the reserved yet absolutely self-reliant look on her face. But she paused, ere leaving him, to say judicially--
'Then that proves that you were right to fire; and if you were in the right, as you were, when----?'
'Are you not coming, Lesley? You can finish your discussion afterwards,' came Lady Arbuthnot's voice in a half-playful, half-impatient appeal, as she stopped beside them to include the girl in the contingent she was marshalling towards the door. The servants had gone. From one end to the other of the big room there was no hint or sign of the east. It might have been a London dinner-party. Grace herself, in her pale green draperies and flashing diamonds, might have been the London hostess whose only care was to get rid of her guests gracefully and so find freedom to be one herself, elsewhere.
'It is my fault,' put in Jack Raymond quickly. 'It is so seldom any one tells me I do right, that I must be excused for delaying a young lady who is kind enough to perjure herself to say so.'
'I didn't perjure myself,' said Lesley, with a frown. 'I don't as a rule. I really think you were right.'
He knew, absolutely, that her praise was--as her blame had been--quite impersonal, that he was forgotten in her sense of abstract justice and injustice, but he appropriated the commendation with a bow, because he felt that to do so was a challenge to both the women before him; to Grace, of the older type, with her cult of sentiment deliberately overlaying her intellect, and Lesley, of the newer type, with her dislike to sentimentality as deliberately overlaying her heart. He felt, with a certain irritation, that there ought to be some middle standpoint, as he said--
'Thank you, Miss Drummond!'
Lady Arbuthnot recognised the personal challenge instantly.
'What was the virtue, Lesley?' she asked proudly.
'Only firing on a mob,' he answered for the girl. 'It is lucky, Lady Arbuthnot, that I have no chance of doing so again, or the consequences of Miss Drummond's approval might be more disastrous than that of other people's blame.'
The sense of something uncomprehended, coming to Lesley uncomfortably, as it always comes, made her forbear to squash the maker of the bow, and say hastily in half-unconscious effort after the purely commonplace--
'Then I hope there won't be a chance; but one can never tell, can one?'
She blushed at her own inane words when she heard them, but Grace Arbuthnot as she moved on, gave a little hard laugh. 'Never, my dear! So long as there are men and women in the world, it will be as Stephen Hargraves said, "all a muddle."'
She broke off abruptly to look round; for, through the closed doors of the secretary's room came the imperative ring of an electric bell, making more than one keen face follow her example. But at the open door where the private secretary was holding up theportièreon one side, while Nevill Lloyd as A.D.C. held up the other, the former shrugged his shoulders.
'Bother that bell!' he said to little Mrs. Carruthers who was passing. 'There's my evening gone! They might spare us Sunday--especially whenyouare dining here. I've a great mind to keep them ringing till you've gone.'
'Don't,' she laughed. 'Supposing it were a mutiny!' She made the suggestion out of pure wickedness, because her rival, who owned to never sleeping a wink if the bazaar near her house was noisy and let off fireworks, was within hearing.
'Surely you don't think'--began the timorous lady.
'Certainly not,' consoled the secretary. 'And if it was, Mrs. Carruthers, that's no reason for breaking the Sabbath.'
'They don't,' retorted the gay little lady. 'Sunday is over with them ages ago. They are six hours before----'
'Behind, you mean! The West is absolutely, hopelessly behind.'
Mrs. Carruthers nodded airily. 'How do you know? you never can be certain, can you? which is before and which is behind in a circle! It all depends on whereyouare.'
With which piece of wisdom, the last Paris frock but one trailed off into the drawing-room, and deposited itself comfortably and becomingly by the side of a dowdy black one, for the sake of contrast and monopoly, by-and-by, when the men should return to their allegiance.
They lingered over their wine, however, that evening. So long that Grace Arbuthnot grew pale over the strain of waiting to know what that electric bell had meant. She was given to worrying herself quite needlessly. Lesley under similar conditions would have taken the situation in more manly fashion, but then she was far more assured of her position, curiously enough, than Grace Arbuthnot was of hers. For the simple reason that the latter had won it, in her generation, by her personal and exceptional capability, while Lesley took hers by right of the ordinary woman's new claim to be heard as well as seen.
And then Grace Arbuthnot was at another disadvantage. Her sentiment was a heavier weight to carry than Lesley's lack of it; and Jack Raymond's words had set her nerves jarring. So, at last, on the mother's excuse of going to see if Jerry were comfortably asleep, she left the drawing-room, and on her way upstairs, paused to listen at the dining-room door. As she stood there in her diamonds, her sea-green garments, trying to catch anything definite in the muffled voices within, she felt a sudden vast impatience at her sex; felt, as Lesley would not have felt, that it was a disadvantage. For the old revolt of womanhood used to be against nature; now it is against the custom which shackles nature.
As she passed on up the wide stairs, the strange silence and solitude of an Indian house in which all service comes from outside, lay about her; but in Jerry's room the open window let in a sound. The most restless sound in the world, the rhythmic yet hurried beat of the little hour-glass drum used by the natives in their amusements. Rhythmic yet hurried, like the quickened throb of a heart. It came faintly, indefinitely, from the distance and darkness of the city; but Grace had been too long in India not to be able to picture for herself the environment whence it rose. She could see the murk of smoke and shadow, the light of flicker and flare on the circling faces round the shrilling voice or posturing figure of a woman. Was it a wedding? Or was it--the other thing? It might be either; for that intermittent noise of fireworks, which echoed at intervals like the report of guns, belonged to both.
This time it was a fear of her own self that came to Grace Arbuthnot as she listened--a fear of her own sex--a fear of the hundreds of thousands of hearts beating away in the darkness around her; beating perhaps in rhythm to that restless sound.
And so little might bring the restlessness to a heart! Her own gave quick assent as she looked down on the sleeping childish face, seen dimly by the rushlight set on the floor beside the muffled, sleeping figure of the child's bearer.
For the sight brought back, in a second, that other sleeping face she had seen a few days before. Not that the two were outwardly alike; the likeness lay within. She took a step nearer, and then stood looking curiously, almost fearfully, at the child she had borne. She was one of the ninety and nine out of every hundred good women who pass through wifehood and motherhood thinking it their duty to ignore its problems--the problems which only good women can solve--and so it gave her a certain shock to realise that she had passed on that old love of hers to this child of another man. Yet, when one came to think of it, what else was heredity--if there was such a thing in the mind--but the passing on of one's admirations, one's ideals? The passing on from generation to generation of one's own affinity for good or evil; the slow evolution of the spirit of a race.
The spirit of a race! She stooped suddenly and kissed the little sleeping face. And the kiss had in it the thought of another sleeping face, and an almost fierce pride of possession. But the child's face frowned, and a little white nightgowned arm curved itself to shield the cheek from further caresses.
'Don't bov'ver, mum; I'm all 'wight,' came a sleepy protest.
Grace stood straight again, feeling baffled, helpless; for that dislike to any display of affection had never been to her liking. It had been, in fact, partly responsible for her refusal to fulfil her engagement when Jack Raymond had lost his temper and threatened to throw up his career. She had dared him to do it, and, being high-spirited, he had done it. And then, with bitter regret, infinite pain, and a vast amount of conventional virtue, she had withdrawn her promise to marry him because----?
For the first time in twelve years of steady conviction that she had done right, the suggestion that the only justification for such refusal must lie in the inability of one or the other to perform their part of the contract, and that that, again, must depend on what the contract of marriage is essentially, came to disturb her. But she turned from it impatiently, telling herself she was a fool, at three-and-thirty, to puzzle over past problems, when the present was full of them, and far more interesting ones.
Yet, as she went downstairs again, that insistent throbbing from the dark distant heart of the city seemed to go with her, rousing a perfect passion of reckless unrest in her own.
Was anything certain except present pleasure or pain? Was it worth while, even, tobecertain? Was it not better to let that heart-throb quicken or slacken as it chose?
She felt her face pale, her eyes bright, as she re-entered the drawing-room, to see instantly, first of all, that Jack Raymond was talking to Lesley.
It required quite an effort for her to remember her real anxiety, and with a certain sense of duty seek out her husband, who was standing with the commissioner in a quiet corner.
'It was nothing serious, I hope, George,' she said.
He turned to her, perplexed but kindly.
'Serious, my dear? Oh! you mean the telegram. No! nothing really important, though they seem to think it so over there. They want me to promulgate some sort of official denial of there being any secret programme in the event of a plague outbreak. It is weak, of course--in a way, a mistake; but I don't think it will do actual harm--do you, Kenyon?'
The commissioner shrugged his shoulders. He was not in the secret; but had his suspicions. 'No, sir,' he replied; 'not unless therewasone, and the fact were to leak out. It is difficult to prevent this with native clerks, especially when the idea of it is present, as it certainly is----'
'But the reality isn't,' put in Sir George decisively, 'in spite of what that scurrilous fellow says to-day in theVoice of India.'
Grace caught in her breath sharply.
'What does it say?' she asked.
'Only that such a paper does exist, and that it can be produced--which is, of course, absurd----' His glance at his wife for the comprehension she alone could give made him pause. 'My dear,' he went on concernedly, 'how pale you are! There is really nothing to be anxious about--is there, Kenyon? For myself, I'm glad of the definite lead over. For one thing, it makes it feasible for us to do what the doctors have been urging on the General for some time back--send both regiments out to a health camp at Morâdki. They seem to have gone to bits altogether. Sullivan told me to-day he had forty-eight cases of enteric alone, and that he had never known the men so reckless and hard to manage--breaking out of hospital every night.'
'I wonder why?' began Lady Arbuthnot, when the commissioner interrupted her.
'Why, it's simplicity itself! Don't you know the story? Well, this is it. The first battalion of the --th Regiment here was under home orders from Burmah, and the men, of course, saved up every penny they could. At the last moment, however, the second battalion could only produce three hundred boys who could by any possibility pass muster as twenty-one, the age-limit for India. So the authorities wired out to draft every possible man from the first for an extra year's foreign service with the second battalion--virtually a strange regiment. The men drew out every halfpenny of their savings the day the order came, and have been spending it ever since--and teaching the three hundred boys to spend theirs too. It's the record of a big blunder.'
'Just so,' assented Sir George; 'but these mistakes will occur. It was unfortunate, however, that they sent the second battalion here; for the first was nearly decimated by cholera at Nushapore about three years ago. Sullivan says he thinks it is largely that. They hate the place, are in a bit of a funk about it; and when that is the case they will do anything for the sake of a distraction.'
Grace, listening, seemed to hear once more that restless throbbing in the air. She saw the murk of smoke and shadow, the light of flicker and flare, the shrilling voice, the posturing figure.
And the encircling faces?
She clasped her mother's hands tight, and thought of her own boy--of the spirit of the race.