In The Permanent Way Part 28

"I won't leave her a _h_ounce for a whistle, sir," said Craddock laconically.

So the carriage with the rosy light streaming through the windows shot forth into the darkness in front, and the sparks from the engine drifted into the darkness behind, and the roar and the rush drowned all other sounds. Perhaps Craddock whistled in the cab to make up for not being able to whistle on his engine. Perhaps the boy sang songs again in the carriage because he could not speak to the girl. Anyhow, they were both silent when the fly-wheel quivered into rest once more beside level crossing Number 57.

"Stop a bit," said a rather unsteady voice as a girl's figure paused against the rosy light of the open door. "It's too long a step. I'll lift you down."

Craddock, looking over the side, turned away and gave a sympathising little cough as if to cover some slighter sound. Perhaps he knew what would have happened if he had been in the boy's place.

The next instant, some one sprang into the cab and turned the steam hard on, some one with a half-pained, half-glad look on his face.

"Now then, Craddock, right we are!"

And Craddock, as he bent to look at the indicator, answered, "Right it is, sir; fair and square. Full pressure and no mischief come of it."

"I hope not," said the boy softly; "but it is a bit hard to know--to know what is fair and square--with--with some people."

Perhaps he was right; for Dhunni stood gazing after the red and green lights with a dazed look on her face. The danger signal had come into her life--the train had stopped, and then--and?

AMOR VINCIT OMNIA

This story began and ended in a public library. An odd, forlorn little offshoot of progress, dibbled out beyond the walls of a far-away Indian city, which drowsed through the sunny to-day as it had drowsed through many a century of sunny yesterdays. True it is that in a certain mimetic and superficial manner Pooranabad had changed with the changing years. It had evolved a munic.i.p.al committee, and this in its turn had given birth to various simulacra of civilisation; but in effect the former was but the old council of elders in modern guise, and the latter but Jonah's gourd, springing up in a day or a night at the bidding of some minor prophet from over the seas. They came and went, these minor prophets, each with his theory, his hobby; and even when Pooranabad knew them no more, it could remember its rulers by the libraries and band-stands, the public gardens, the schools, and the museums they had left behind them.

The library itself stood in the midst of a newly laid-out public garden, which but two summers before had been a most evil-smelling tank--at least, for nine months of the year; the remaining three found it a shining lake flushed with fresh rain and carpeted with pink lotus blossom. But culture of all sorts had stepped in with drainpipes, bricks, mortar, flowers, and books, and the result was a maze of winding walks, stubbly gra.s.s, and stunted bushes gathered round a square stuccoed building of one room encircled by an arched verandah.

To east and south the deceptive walls and flat mud roofs of the native city looked like towers against the sky. To west and north stood avenues of _shshum_ trees, with here and there a peep of the white bungalows wherein the minor prophets dwelt and grew gourds.

Within, under the one roof hung with two punkahs, stood two tables, the one littered with English magazines and ill.u.s.trated papers, the other bare, save for a few leaflets of the native press, with high-sounding names and full of still more lofty sentiments. The two bookcases, one at each end of the room, showed the same well-intentioned, but unsuccessful, impartiality; for the eastern one was nearly empty, while the western overflowed, chiefly with novels; a dozen shelves of them to one of miscellaneous literature, made up for the most part of works on the Central Asian question and missionary reports. The novels, however, had a solid appearance, since most of them had been re-bound by the district-office bookbinder in the legal calf and boards which he used also for the circulars and acts by which India is governed.

Before this bookcase stood the only occupant of the room, a tall weedy boy of about fifteen. A boy with remarkably thin legs, somewhat of a stoop in his narrow shoulders, and a supple brown finger travelling slowly along the ill-spelt t.i.tles of the book; ill spelt, because the Government bookbinder could hardly be expected to grapple successfully with the t.i.tle of a modern novel. The hesitations of this brown finger might have served as an index to the owner's taste, and showed a distinct leaning towards sentiment. It lingered over several suggestive t.i.tles, until it finally settled on something writ large in three volumes. After which the boy, crossing to a double desk midway between the tables, wrote in the English register in a fine bold hand any clerk might have envied:

_Amor Vincit Omnia_. Govind Sahai, Kyasth.

So, with two volumes under his arm, and one held close to his soft, short-sighted black eyes, Govind Sahai, of the tribe of Kyasths, or scribes, made his way citywards down one of the winding paths. Thus strolling along he was typical of the great mult.i.tude of Indian boys of his age. Boys who read--great heavens! what do they not read, with their pale intelligent faces close to the lettering? And their thoughts?--that is a mystery.

Govind Sahai's face was no exception to the rule; it was young, yet old; high-featured, yet gentle; the ascetic hollows in the temples belied by the long sweeping curves in the mouth, and both these features neutralised by the feminine oval of the cheek. He was the only son of a widow, who, thanks to his existence, led a busy and contented life in her father-in-law's otherwise childless house; for the honours of motherhood in India are great. Yet she was poor beyond belief to Western ears. Across the black water, in a Christian country, such poverty would have meant misery, but in the old simplicity of Pooranabad the little household managed to be happy; above all, in its hopes for the future, when Govind's education should be over, and he be free to follow his hereditary trade as a writer.

His father had found his ancestral level, oddly enough, in compiling sanitary statistics in an English office, until the cholera added one to the mortality returns by carrying him off as a victim; after which all the interest of life to the inhabitants of the little courtyard and slip of roof which Govind called home centred in the clever boy, who could only follow his father's trade if he succeeded in gaining the necessary pa.s.s; for education has undermined heredity. So Govind worked hard for the scholarship which would enable him to go to college. Day after day he absorbed an amount of information which was perfectly prodigious. Month after month found him further and further adrift on the sea of knowledge. Even in play-time he gorged himself on new ideas, as might be seen by the library register. It was not only _Amor Vincit Omnia_ which showed on its pages, but many another similar work:

_Lost for Love_, Govind Sahai, Kyasth.

_Love the Master_, " "

_My Sweetheart_, " "

_One Life, One Love_, " "

And so on down one column and up another, for the boy read fast.

On this particular hot, dusty May morning he became so interested in his last book that he sat down on the parapet of the city's central sewer, and twining one thin leg round the other plunged headlong into a sentimental scene between two lovers, heedless of his unsavoury environments. The interweaving of intellectual emotion and material sensation pictured on the page seemed to this boy, just verging upon manhood, to be an inspiration, lifting the whole subject into a new world of pure pa.s.sion. It appealed, as a matter of fact, though he knew it not, both to his inherited instincts and his acquired ideas, thus satisfying both.

"_My darling" said Victor, raising her sweet face to his, and pressing a kiss on those pure, pale lips, "love such as ours is eternal. Earth has no power_"--et caetera, et caetera, et caetera. The tears positively came into his eyes; he seemed to feel the touch of those lips on his, making him shiver.

_The little soft tendrils of her hair stirred with his breath as Una, shrinking to his side, whispered, "I am not afraid when I am with you, my king. I feel so strong! so strong to maintain the Right! Strong to maintain our Love before all the world! For Love is of Heaven, is it not, dear heart?" "Our Love is," murmured Victor, once more raising her pure, pale_---- Et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.

Yes, it was very beautiful, very exalting; also very disturbing to this inheritor of a nature built on simpler, more direct lines. That ancestral past of his seemed brutally bald beside this highly decorated castle of chivalry.

"Aha! Good evening, pupil Govind," broke in the accurate voice of Narayan Chand, head master of the district school. "You have, I am glad to see, availed yourself of advantages of public library. With what mental pabulum have you provided yourself this summer's eve?"

As he spoke, he seated himself likewise on the parapet of the sewer, and read over the boy's shoulder, _Amor Vincit Omnia_. Then his spectacled glance travelled down the page, returning for comfort to the t.i.tle; that, at least, smacked of learning. "Ah, aha! I see. Light literature. Good for colloquial, and of paramount use in _vivas_. So far, well. For superiority of diction, nevertheless, and valuability to grammar studies, give me _Tatler_, _Spectator_, and such cla.s.sics."

Govind closed his book in most unusual irritation. "Even in English literature, master-_ji_, new things may be better than old."

"Of that there is no possible doubt," quoted master-_ji_, with cheerful gravity. He was a most diligent reader of the English papers, and used to sit at the library table for hours of an evening devouring the critiques on Gilbert's or Tennyson's last with undiscriminating absorption in the formation and style of the sentence. His quotations were in consequence more various than select. "Of that there can be no possible probable manner of doubt, as a modern poet puts it tersely,"

he repeated, tilting his embroidered smoking-cap farther from his forehead and drawing the black alpaca tails of his coat round his legs; "yet still, for all that, it is held, that--to speak colloquially--for taking the cake of scholarship the cla.s.sics----"

Govind Sahai put his feet to the ground and the first volume under his arm.

"Master-_ji_, when one labours long days at cube roots, then cla.s.sics in the evening become excessive. Life is not all learning; life is love also."

He was quoting from the book he had been reading.

"Sits the wind in that quarter," began Narayan sagely; then he looked at the boy reflectively and changed manner and language. "That brings to memory, my son," he said in Hindustani. "When comes thy wedding procession? I must speak to the virtuous widow that it come in vacation time, so as not to interfere with study."

A sullen indifference was on Govind's face.

"You need not fear, master-_ji_; I mean to have the scholarship. The wedding will make no difference."

Narayan Chand smiled a superior smile.

"Nay, my son; it must--it should--_for a time_. So is the vacation convenient. Thou canst return to school when the festal season is over. Come, I will speak to thy relations even now."

The widow was sifting wheat. A pleasant-faced little dump of a woman, with dimples on her bare brown arms.

"Mother," said Govind calmly, "is grandfather in? The master-_ji_'

hath come about my wedding."

"What have men to say to such things?" she answered, with a shrill laugh; "go tell master--_ji_, heart of mine eyes, that it is settled for the first week of vacation. Her people were here but now. _Hurri hai!_ but I shall laugh and cry to see thee! There shall be nothing wanting at all! Flowers and sweets and merriment. Thy granny and I have toiled and spun for it. And the bride sweeter than honey. Fie!

Govind, be not shy with thy mother! Think of the bride she gives thee, and tell her thou art happy."

She flung her arms round her tall son, kissing him and plying him with questions till he smirked sillily.

"Happy enough, mother," he admitted, then felt _Amor Vincit Omnia_ under his arm, and sighed. "I would much rather not be married; at least, I think not. Oh, mother, I would she had fair hair and blue eyes!"

"_Lakshmi!_ hear him! Wouldst marry a fright, Govind? Wait the auspicious moment; wait till I lift the veil. Oh, the beauty! fresh from the court of Indra, wheat-coloured and languishing with jewels and love."