In the Guardianship of God Part 3

"Come on! come on, my lads! follow me!" rang out a confident voice, and the Major, as he ran, half-blinded by the mists of his own haste, felt it was as a voice from heaven.

"Come on! come on!--give it 'em straight. Hip, hip, hurray!"

An answering cheer broke from the boys behind, and with a rush the weakest company in the regiment followed some one to victory.

"I don't understand what the d.i.c.kens it means," said the Colonel almost fretfully that same evening, when, safe over the pa.s.s, the little force was bivouacking in a willow-set valley on the other side of the hills. Before it lay what it had come to gain, behind it danger past. "Some one in my regiment," he went on, "does a deuced plucky thing--between ourselves, saves the position: I want naturally to find out who it was, and am met by a c.o.c.k and bull story about some one's ghost. What the devil does it mean, Major?"

The Major shook his head. "I couldn't swear to the figure, sir, though it reminded me a bit--but that's impossible. However, as I have by your orders to ride back to the top, sir, and see what can be done to hold it, I'll dip over a bit to where the rush was made, and see if there is any clue."

He had not to go so far. For in one of those tiny hollows in the level plateau of pa.s.s, whence the snow melts early, leaving a carpet of blue forget-me-nots and alpine primroses behind it, he, Sergeant Jones, and the small party going to make security still more secure, came upon Peroo, the water-carrier, trying to perform a tearful travesty of the burial service over the body of George Afford.

It was dressed in Sergeant Jones' tunic and Major Griffiths'

_putties_, but the Sergeant knelt down beside it, and smoothed the stripes upon the cuff with a half-mechanical, half-caressing touch, and the Major interrupted Peroo's protestations with an odd tremor in his voice.

"What the devil does it matter," he said sharply, "what he took besides the pa.s.s? Stand aside, man; this is my work, not yours.

Sergeant! form up your men for the salute--ball cartridge."

The Major's recollection of the service for the burial of the dead was not accurate, but it was comprehensive. So he committed the mortal remains of his brother soldier to the dust, confessing confusedly that there is a natural body and a spiritual body--a man that is of the earth earthy, and one that is the Lord from heaven. So following on a pet.i.tion to be saved from temptation and delivered from evil, the salute startled the echoes, and they left George Afford in the keeping of the pa.s.s, and the pa.s.s in his keeping. And as the Major rode campwards, he wondered vaguely if some one before the great white throne wore a bad-character suit, or whether wisdom understood the plea, "I've had a very chequered life, I have indeed."

But Peroo had no such thoughts; needed no such excuse. It was sufficient for him that the _Huzoor_ had once been the protector of the poor.

FIRE AND ICE

It was in a little lath-and-plaster house down by the river that it all happened. The veriest confection of a house, looking for all the world as if it were a Neapolitan ice. Strawberry and vanilla in alternate stripes, with shuttered windows of coffee, and a furled wafer of an awning over the filagree chocolate balcony. And it rested, so to speak, against a platter of green plantain-leaves, bright as any emerald. No doubt the trees belonging to the leaves grew somewhere to the back or the side of it, but from the wide street in front you could see nothing but the green leaves surrounding the ice-cream.

For the rest it was a three-storeyed house outwardly; inwardly a two-storeyed one; or to be strictly accurate, it consisted of a storey and a half, since the further half of the ground floor and the whole of the middle storey belonged to a different house, having a different entrance in a different street, which lay in a different quarter. A very respectable quarter indeed, whereas the less said about the morals of the wide street down by the river the better. They were so bad that the modesty of the middle storey did not permit of a single window whence they could be seen. And this gave the house a queer, half-hearted look, for the top storey, and that half of the lowest one which belonged to it, were full of windows and doors opening on to the broad path leading to destruction. There were five, with fretted wooden architraves filling up the whole of the ground floor, so that you could see straight into the long, shallow hall whence there was no exit save by a narrow slit in the middle, showing a dim, steep staircase. It was always empty, this hall, though it was carpeted with striped carpets, and painted elaborately in flowery arabesques of a dull, pale, pink and flaming crimson; an odd mixture reminding you vaguely of bloodstains on a rose-leaf. And there was a red lamp over the centre door, which sent a rosy redness into the growing dusk; for it was lit early.

So was the pale--the palest of green lights--on the top storey which you could see swinging from the roof when the coffee-ice shutters were thrown back as the evening breeze came down the river. It was pale, yet bright like the first star at sunsetting.

And sometimes, but not often, if you watched in the early dusk you might see the owner of the ice-cream house flit across the open window. She was like a sugar-drop herself, rose or saffron decked with silver leaf, a slender sc.r.a.p of a creature who tinkled as she walked and gave out a perfume of heavy scented flowers. But this was seldom; more often you only heard the tinkle, either of silver or laughter, since Burfani--for that was her name--was of those who barter the one for the other. It was in truth her hereditary trade, though neither her father nor her mother had practised it; their role in life having been that of pater and mater-familias. A very necessary one if the race is to survive, and so in this generation, also, her brother had undertaken the duty of marrying his first cousin. The young couple being now, in the privacy and propriety of the second storey, engaged in bringing up a fine family of girls to succeed to the top storey when Burfani's age should drive her to a lower place in life. In the meantime, however, she allowed them so much a month; enough to enable idle Zulfkar to fight quail in the bazaars and keep his wife Lazizan in the very strictest seclusion--as befitted one filched from the profession of bartering smiles in order to fulfil the first duty of a woman--the rearing of babes.

Thus, in more ways than one, the house was conglomerate. On the side overlooking the broad path there was the stained rose-leaf hall, empty, swept, and garnished, and the dark stair leading up and up to the wandering star of a lamp twinkling out into the sunset amid the sound of laughter and money. On the side giving upon narrow respectability a hall full of household gear and dirt where the little girls played, and a dark stair leading to a darker room where Lazizan sat day after day bewailing her sad fate; for, of course, life would have been much gayer over the way, since she was a beautiful woman.

Far more beautiful in a lavish, somewhat loud fashion, than the lady belonging to the ice-cream house with her delicate, small face; but that was the very reason why she had been chosen out from many to carry on the race as it ought to be carried on. Burfani, of course, was clever, and that counted for much, but it never did in their profession to rely on brains above looks. Nevertheless Lazizan, when in a bad temper, was in the habit of telling herself that if she had been taught to sing and dance, as the little lady had been taught, she could have made the ice-cream house a more paying concern than it was--to judge by the pittance they received from it! And this angry complaint grew with her years until as she sat suckling her fourth child, she felt sometimes as if she could strangle it, even though it was a boy, and though as a rule she was an affectionate mother. In truth the sheer animal instinct natural to so finely developed a creature lasted out the two or three years during which her children were hers alone; after that, when they began crawling downstairs and playing in the hall where she might never go, she became jealous and then forgot all about them.

Nevertheless, the boy being only some nine months old when he was suddenly carried off by one of those mysterious diseases common to Indian children, she wept profusely, and told Burfani--who, as in duty bound, came round decently swathed in a _burka_ to offer condolence on hearing of the sad event--that some childless one had doubtless cast a shadow on him for his beauty's sake, seeing that--thank Heaven!--all her children were beautiful. There was always a militant flavour underlying the politeness of these two, and even the presence of the quaint little overdressed dead baby awaiting its bier on the bed did not prevent attack and defence.

"They favour thee, sister," replied Burfani, suavely. "In mind also, to judge from what I see. Therefore I shall await G.o.d's will in the future ere I choose one to educate."

Lazizan t.i.ttered sarcastically, despite her half-dried tears.

"'Tis my choice first, nevertheless. The best of this bunch in looks--ay, in brains too, perchance--marries my brother's son, according to custom. Sure my mother chose thus, and I must do the same, sister."

She spoke evenly, though for the moment the longing to strangle something had transferred itself to the saffron-coloured sugar-drop all spangled with silver which had emerged from its chrysalis of a _burka_. What business had the poor thin creature with such garments when _her_ beauty was hidden by mere rags?

Burfani laughed in her turn; an easy, indifferent laugh, and stretched out her slim henna-dyed palm with the usual friendly offering of cardamoms.

"Take one, sister," she said soothingly, "they are good for spleen and excessive grief. _Hai! Hai!_ thou wilt be forlorn, indeed, now thy occupation is gone."

Lazizan, with her mouth full of spices, t.i.ttered again more artificially than ever. "I can do other things, perchance, beside suckle babes. Maybe I weary of it, and am glad of a change."

The saffron-coloured sugar-drop, seated on a low stool in front of the white-sheeted bed with its solemn little gaily-dressed burden, looked at its companion distastefully through its long lashes, and the slender, henna-dyed hand, catching some loops of the jasmine chaplets it wore, held them like a bouquet close to the crimson-tinted lips.

"It is a virtuous task, my sister," quoth Burfani, gravely sniffing away at the heavy perfume, as if she needed something to make her environment less objectionable. "Besides, it is ever a mistake to forsake the profession of one's birth--"

"And wherefore should I?" interrupted Lazizan, seizing her opportunity recklessly. "Hast thou forsaken it, and are we not sisters?"

Again a cold, critical look of dislike came from the long, narrow eyes with their drowsy lids.

"Such words are idle, sister. Forget them. Thou wouldst not find it easier--"

"How canst tell?" interrupted Lazizan once more. "As well say that thou couldst put up with my life."

The saffron and silver daintiness shifted its look towards the bed, and the henna-dyed hand straightened a wrinkle in the sheet softly.

"G.o.d knows!" she said with a sudden smile. "Anyhow, sister, 'tis not wise to change one's profession as one grows old."

As one grows old! This parting shot rankled long after the decent _burka_ had slipped like a shadow through the swept and garnished hall, and so up the dark stairs to the wandering starlight shining feebly out into the sunset; long after the preacher and the bier, and the family friends had carried the gaily-dressed baby to its grave, leaving the mother to the select and secluded tears of her neighbours; long after the little girls, wearied out with excitement, had fallen asleep cuddled together peacefully, innocent of that choice in the future; long after Zulfkar, full of liquor, tears, and curses, due to a surplusage in the funeral expenses allowed by Burfani, to parental grief, and to bad luck at cards, came home, desirous of sympathy. He got none, for Lazizan, despite her seclusion, had never lost the empire which he felt she deserved as the handsomest woman he knew.

'Twas his own fault, she said curtly; he could marry another wife, have more liquor, and gamble as much as he liked if he chose. It was but a question of money, and if he were content to put up with beggarly alms from his sister, that ended the matter.

Whereupon, being in the maudlin stage of drink, he wept still more.

It must have been fully three months after the baby's funeral procession had gone down the respectable street, and so by a side alley found its way into the broad path leading alike to destruction and the graveyard, that Burfani went round to her sister-in-law's again. This time she was in pink and silver, like a rose-water ice, and her words were cold as her looks.

"Say what thou wilt, Lazizan, the youth lingers. Have I not windows to my house? Have I not eyes? And such things shall not be bringing disgrace to respectable families."

Lazizan t.i.ttered as usual: "Lo! what a coil, because an idle stranger lingers at the back instead of the front, 'Tis for thy sake doubtless, sister, though thou art unkind. I wonder at it, seeing he is not ill-favoured."

"So thou _hast_ seen him! So be it. See him no more, or I tell Zulfkar."

"Tell him what? That thou hast cast eyes on a handsome stranger, and because he comes not to thy call wouldst fasten the quarrel upon me?

Zulfkar is no fool, sister, he will not listen!"

"If he listen not, he can leave my house--for 'tis mine. And mark my words, Lazizan Bibi, no scandal comes nigh it."

Caesar's wife could not have spoken with greater unction, and in good sooth she meant her words, since in no cla.s.s is seclusion bound to be more virtuous than in that to which Burfani belonged.

So, as the motes in the sunbeam of life danced along the broad path in front of the ice-cream house, and drifted up its dark stair, the painted and perfumed little lady under the pale green lamp kept an eye upon the virtue of her family. Thus ere long it came to be Zulfkar's turn to listen to his sister's warning, and as he listened he sucked fiercely, confusedly, at the inlaid hookah which stood for the use of approved visitors; for in good sooth there had been more money to spend of late, and Lazizan was discreet enough save to those watchful, experienced eyes. The sound of his hubblings and bubblings therefore was his only answer, and they filled the wide, low, white-plastered upper storey, frescoed round each coffee-shuttered window with flowery devices, until Burfani lost patience, and began coldly:

"Hast been taking lessons of a camel, brother?" she asked, rustling the tinsel-decked fan she held; and then suddenly she seemed to grasp something, and the contemptuous indifference of her bearing changed to pa.s.sionate anger. Her silver-set feet clashed as they touched the floor, and she rose first to a sitting posture, finally to stand before the culprit, the very personification of righteous wrath.

"So! thou hast taken gold! This is why thou canst ruffle with the best at Gulabun's--base-born parvenu who takes to the life out of wickedness--as _she_ hath done, bringing disgrace to the screened house where thy mother dwelt in decency. But thou dwellest there no longer--thou eatest no bread of mine--I will choose my pupil from another brood."