Caste Part 11

"But if the Sahib wishes to overtake them my burden upon the horse will be an evil, and he will be sorry that Bootea had not shame sufficient to refuse his help."

She felt the strong arm press her body closer, and heard him laugh. But still he did not answer, did not say why he was interested in the two hors.e.m.e.n. If it were vital, and she believed it was, for him to know that they lay dead at the Bagree camp, it was wrong for her to not tell him this, he who was a preserver. But to tell him would send him to his death. She knew, as all the people of that land knew, that the sahibs went where their Raja told them was their mission, and laughed at death; and the face of this one spoke of strength, and the eyes of placid fearlessness; so she said nothing.

The sandal soles that pinched her soft flesh she felt were a reproach--they had something to do with the thing that was between the Sahib and the dead soldiers. There were tears in her eyes and she shivered.

Barlow, feeling this, said: "You're cold, Gulab, the night-wind that comes up from the black muck of the cotton fields and across the river is raw. Hang on for a minute," he added, as he slipped his arm from about her shoulders and fumbled at the back of his saddle. A couple of buckles were unclasped, and he swung loose a warm military cloak and wrapped it about her, as he did so his cheek brushing hers.

Then she was like a bird lying against his chest, closed in from everything but just this Sahib who was like a G.o.d.

A faint perfume lingered in Barlow's nostrils from the contact; it was the perfume of attar, of the true oil of rose, such as only princes use because of its costliness, and he wondered a little.

She saw his eyes looking down into hers, and asked, "What is it, Sahib--what disturbs you? If it is a question, ask me."

His white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. "Just nothing that a man should bother over--that he should ask a woman about."

But almost involuntarily he brushed his face across her black hair and said, "Just that, Gulab--that it's like burying one's nose in a rose."

"The attar, Sahib? I love it because it's gentle."

"Ah, that's why you wore the rose that I came by at the _nautch_?"

"Yes, Sahib. Though I am Bootea, because of a pa.s.sion for the rose I am called Gulab."

"Lovely--the Rose! that's just what you are, Gulab. But the attar is so costly! Are you a princess in disguise?"

"No, Sahib, but one brought me many bottles of it, the slim, long bottles like a finger; and a drop of it lasts for a moon."

"Ah, I see," and Barlow smiled; "you have for lover a raja, the one who brought the attar."

The figure in the cloak shivered again, but the girl said nothing. And Barlow, rather to hear her voice, for it was sweet like flute music, chaffed: "What is he like, the one that you love? A swaggering tall black-whiskered Rajput, no doubt, with a purple vest embroidered in gold, clanking with _tulwar_, and a voice like a Brahmini bull--full of demand."

The slim arms about his waist tightened a little--that was all.

"Confess, Gulab, it will pa.s.s the time; a love story is sweet, and Brahm, who creates all things, creates flowers beautiful and sweet to stir love," and he shook the small body rea.s.suringly.

"Sahib, when a girl dances before the great ones to please, it is permitted that she may play at being a princess to win the favour of a raja, and sing the love song to the music of the _sitar_ (guitar), but it is a matter of shame to speak it alone to the Presence."

"Tell me, Gulab," and his strong fingers swept the smooth black hair.

The girl unclasped her arms from about Barlow's waist and led his finger to a harsh iron bracelet upon her arm.

At the touch of the cold metal, iron emblem of a child marriage, a shackle never to be removed, he knew that she was a widow, accounted by Brahminical caste an offence to the G.o.ds, an outcast, because if the husband still lived she would be in a _zenanna_ of gloomy walls, and not one who danced as she had at Nana Sahib's.

"And the man to whom you were bound by your parents died?" he asked.

"I am a widow, Sahib, as the iron bracelet testifies with cold bitterness; it is the badge of one who is outcast, of one who has not become _sati_, has not sat on the wood to find death in its devouring flame."

Barlow knew all the false logic, the metaphysical Machiavellians, the Brahmins, advanced to thin out the undesirable females,--women considered at all times in that land of overpopulation of less value than men,--by the simple expedient of self-destruction. He knew the Brahmins' thesis culled from their Word of G.o.d, the Vedas or the Puranas, calculated to make the widow a voluntary, willing suicide. They would tell Bootea that owing to having been evil in former incarnations her sins had been visited upon her husband, had caused his death; that in a former life she had been a snake, or a rat.

The dead husband's mother, had Bootea come of an age to live with him, though yet but a child of twelve years, would, on the slightest provocation, beat her--even brand her with a hot iron; he had known of it having been done. She would be given but one meal a day--rice and chillies. Even if she had not yet left her father's house he would look upon her as a shameful thing, an undesirable member of the family, one not to be rid of again in the way of marriage; for if a Hindu married her it would break his caste--he would be a veritable pariah. No servant would serve him; no man would sell him anything; if he kept a shop no one would buy of him; no one would sit and speak with him--he would be ostracised.

The only life possible for the girl would be that of a prost.i.tute. She might be married by the temple priests to the G.o.d Khandoka, as thousands of widows had been, and thus become a nun of the temple, a prost.i.tute to the celibate priests. Knowing all this, and that Bootea was what she was, her face and eyes holding all that sweetness and cleanness, that she lived in the guardianship of Ajeet Singh, very much a man, Barlow admired her the more in that she had escaped moral destruction. Her face was the face of one of high caste; she was not like the ordinary _nautch_ girl of the fourth caste. Everything about Bootea suggested breeding, quality.

The iron bracelet, indicated why she had socially pa.s.sed down the scale--there was no doubt about it.

"I understand, Gulab," he said; "the Sahibs all understand, and know that widowhood is not a reproach."

"But the Sahib questioned of love; and how can one such know of love?

The heart starves and does not grow for it feeds upon love--what we of Hind call the sweet pain in the heart."

"But have none been kind, Gulab--pleased by your flower face, has no one warmed your heart?"

The slim arms that gripped Barlow in a new tightening trembled, the face that fled from the betraying moonlight was buried against his tunic, and the warm body quivered from sobs.

Barlow turned her face up, and the moonlight showed vagrant pearls that lay against the olive cheeks, now tinted like the petals of a rose. Then from a service point of view, and as a matter of caste, Barlow went _ghazi_. He drooped his head and let his lips linger against the girl's eyes, and uttered a superb common-place: "Don't cry, little girl," he said; "I am seven kinds of a brute to bother you!"

And Bootea thought it would have been better if he had driven a knife into her heart, and sobbed with increased bitterness. Once her fingers wandered up searchingly and touched his throat.

Barlow casting about for the wherefore of his madness, discovered the moonlight, and heard the soft night-air whispering through the harp chords of trees that threw a tracery of black lines across the white road; and from a grove of mango trees came the gentle scent of their blossoms; and he remembered that statistics had it that there was but one memsahib to so many square miles in that land of expatriation; and he knew that he was young and full of the joy of life; that a British soldier was not like a man of Hind who looked upon women as cattle.

There did not obtrude into his mental retrospect as an accusation against this unwarrantable tenderness the vision of the Resident's daughter--almost his fiancee. Indeed Elizabeth was the ant.i.thesis in physical appeal of the gentle Gulab; the drawing-room perhaps; repartee of Damascus steel fineness; tutored polish, cla.s.s, cold integrity--these things a.s.sociated admirably with the unsensuous Elizabeth. Thoughts of her, remembrances, had no place in glamorous perfumed moonlight.

So he set his teeth and admonished the grey Turcoman, called him the decrepit son of a donkey, being without speed; and to punish him stroked his neck gently: even this forced diversion bringing him closer to the torturing sweetness of the girl.

But now he was aware of a throbbing on the night wind, and a faint shrill note that lay deep in the shadows beyond. It was a curious rumbling noise, as though ghosts of the hills on the right were playing bowls with rounded rocks. And the shrilling skirl grew louder as if men marched behind bagpipes.

The Gulab heard it, too, and her body stiffened, her head thrust from the enveloping cloak, and her eyes showed like darkened sapphires.

"Carts carrying cotton perhaps," he said. But presently he knew that small cotton carts but rattled, the volume of rumbling was as if an army moved.

From up the road floated the staccato note of a staff beating its surface, and the clanking tinkle of an iron ring against the wooden staff.

"A mail-carrier," Barlow said.

And then to the monotonous pat-pat-pat of trotting feet the mail-carrier emerged from the grey wall of night.

"Here, you, what comes?" the Captain queried, checking the grey.

The postie stopped in terror at the English voice.

"Salaam, Bahadur Sahib; it is war."

"Thou art a tree owl," and Barlow laughed. "A war does not spring up like a drift of driven dust. Is it some raja's elephants and carts with his harem going to a _durbar_?"

"Sahib, it is, as I have said, war. The big bra.s.s cannon that is called 'The Humbler of Cities,' goes forth to speak its order, and with it are sepoys to feed it the food of destruction. Beyond that I know not, Sahib, for I am a man of peace, being but a runner of the post."

Then he salaamed and sifted into the night gloom like a thrown handful of white sand, echoing back the clamp-clamp-clamp of his staff's iron ring, which was a signal to all cobras to move from the path of him who ran, slip their chilled folds from the warm dust of the road.

And on in front what had been sounds of mystery was now a turmoil of noises. The hissing screech, the wails, were the expostulations of tortured axles; the rumbling boom was unexplainable; but the jungle of the hillside was possessed of screaming devils. Black-faced, white-whiskered monkeys roused by the din, screamed cries of hate and alarm as they scurried in volplaning leaps from tree to tree. And peac.o.c.ks, awakened when they should have slept, called with their harsh voices from lofty perches.