In The Permanent Way Part 33

That was but a month. I was only a _loc.u.m tenens_ during leave. Only a month, and the poor old beggar had waited fourteen years to praise G.o.d on the little drum! The pathos and bathos of it hit _me_ hard; but a stare of infinite surprise had replaced the circ.u.mambient smile. The _fakeer_ himself seemed flabbergasted. I think he felt lost without his pet.i.tion, for I saw him fumbling in his pocket as the janissaries hustled him out of court, as janissaries love to do, east or west.

That night, as I was wondering if I had smoked enough and yawned enough to make sleep possible in a hundred degrees of heat, and a hundred million mosquitoes, I was suddenly reminded of the proverb "Charity begins at home." It had, with a vengeance. I had thought my _sarishtidar's_ language a trifle too picturesque; now I recognised its supreme accuracy. The _fakeer_ was "a d.a.m.nably noiseful man." It is useless trying to add one iota to this description, especially to those unacquainted with the torture of an Indian drum. By dawn I was in the saddle, glad to escape from my own house and the ceaseless "_Rumpa-tum-tum_," which was driving me crazy.

When I returned, the old man was awaiting me in the verandah, his face full of a great content; and the desire to murder him, which rose up in me with the thought of the twenty-nine nights yet to come, faded before it. Perfect happiness is not the lot of many, but apparently it was his. He salaamed down to the ground. "_Huzoor_," he said, "the great joy in me created a disturbance last night. It will not occur again. The Protector of the Poor shall sleep in peace, even though his slave praises G.o.d for him all night long. The Almighty does not require a loud drum."

I said I was glad to hear it, and my self-complacency grew until I laid my head on the pillow somewhat earlier than usual. Then I became aware of a faint throbbing in the air, like that which follows a deep organ note--a throbbing which found its way into the drum of my ear and remained there--so faint that it kept me on the rack to know if it had stopped or was still going on. "_Rumpa-tum-tum-tum, rumpa-tum-tum-tum, rumpa_----" Even now the impulse to make the hateful rhythm interminable seizes on me. I have to lay aside my pen and take a new one before going on.

I draw a veil over the mental struggle which followed. It would have been quite easy to rescind my permission, but the thought of one month versus fourteen years roused my pride. As representative of the "_almighty wictoria, reg. britannicorum_," etc., I had admitted this man to the privileges of praising G.o.d on the little drum, and there was an end of it. But the effort left my nerves shattered with the strain put on them. It was the middle of the hot weather--that awful fortnight before the rains break--I was young--absolutely alone. Every morning as I rode, a perfect wreck, past the _fakeer's_ hovel by the gate, he used to ask me if I had slept well, and I lied to him. What was the use of suffering if no one was the happier for it?

At last, one evening--it was the twenty-first, I remember, for I ticked them off on a calendar like any schoolboy--I sat out among the oleanders, knowing that sleep was mine. The rains had broken, a cool wind stirred the dripping trees, the fever of unrest was over. Clouds of winged white ants besieged the lamp: what wonder, when the rafters of the old bungalow were riddled almost beyond the limits of safety by their galleries? But what did I care? I was going to sleep. And so I did, like a child, until close on the dawn. And then--by heavens, it was too bad! In the verandah surely, not faint, but loudly imperative: "RUMPA-TUM-TUM-TUM!"

I was out of bed in an instant full of fury. The fiend incarnate must be walking round the house. I was after him in the moonlight. Not a sign; the white oleanders were shining in the dark foliage; a firefly or two--nothing more.

"_Rumpa-tum-tum-tum!_" Fainter this time round the corner.

Not there!

"_Rumpa-tum-tum-tum!_" A mere whisper now, but loud enough to be traced. So on the track, I was round the house to the verandah whence I had started.

No sign--no sound!

Gracious! what was that? A crash, a thud, a roar and rattle of earth!

The house! the roof!

When by the growing light of dawn we inspected the damage, we found the biggest rafter of all lying right across the pillow where my head had been two minutes before. The first sunbeams were on the still sparkling trees when, full of curiosity, I strolled over to the _fakeer's_ hut. It also was a heap of ruins, and when we dug the old man out from among the ant-riddled rafters the doctor said he had been dead for many hours.

This story may seem strange to some; others will agree with my _sarishtidar_, who, after spending the morning over a Johnson's dictionary and a revenue report, informed me that "such catastrophes are but too common in this unhappy land after heavy rain following on long-continued drought."

AT HER BECK AND CALL

"What is your name?" I asked.

"Phooli-jan, _Huzoor_," she answered, with a brilliant, dazzling smile.

I sat looking at her, wondering if a more appropriate name could have been found for that figure among the anemones and celandines, the primulas, pansies, and pinks--the thousand-and-one blossoms which, glowing against their groundwork of forget-me-not, formed a jewel-mosaic right to the foot of the snows above us. _Flowerful life!_ Truly that was hers. She had a great bunch of scarlet rhododendron stuck behind her ear, matching the cloth cap perched jauntily on her head, and as she sat herding her buffaloes on the upland she had threaded chaplet on chaplet of ox-eyed daisies, and hung them about her wherever they could be hung. The result was distinctly flowerful; her face also was distinctly pretty, distinctly clean for a Kashmiri girl's. But coquette, flirt, minx, was written in every line of it, and accounted for a most unusual neatness and brightness.

She caught my eye and smiled again, broadly, innocently.

"The _Huzoor_ would like to paint my picture, wouldn't he?" she went on, in a tone of certainty. "The Sahib who came last year gave me five rupees. I will take six this year. Food is dear, and those base-born contractors of the Maharajah seize everything--one walnut in ten, one chicken in ten."

But I was not going to be beguiled into the old complaints I could hear any and every day from the hags of the village. Up here on the _murg_, within a stone's-throw of the first patch of snow picketing the outskirts of the great glacier of Gwashbrari, I liked, if possible, to forget how vile man could be in the little shingle huts cl.u.s.tering below by the river. I will not describe the place. To begin with it defies description, and next, could I even hint at its surpa.s.sing beauty, the globetrotter would come and defile it. It is sufficient to say that a _murg_ is an upland meadow or alp, and that this one, with its forget-me-nots and sparkling glaciers, was like a turquoise set in diamonds. I had seated myself on a projecting spur, whence I could sketch a frowning defile northwards, down which the emerald-green river was dashing madly among huge rocks crowned by pine-trees.

"I will give five rupees also; that is plenty," I remarked suavely, and Phooli-jan smiled again.

"It must do, for I like being painted. Only a few Sahibs come, very few; but whenever they see me they want to paint me and the flowers, and it makes the other girls in the village angry. Then Goloo and Chuchchu----" Here she went off into a perfect cascade of smiles, and began to pull the eyelashes off the daisies deliberately. There seems a peculiar temptation in girlhood for cruelty towards flowers all over the world, and Phooli-jan was pre-eminently girlish. She looked eighteen, but I doubt if she was really more than sixteen. Even so, it was odd to find her unappropriated, so I inquired if Goloo or Chuchchu was the happy man.

"My mother is a widow," she replied without the least hesitation. "It depends which will pay the most, for we are poor. There are others, too, so there is no hurry. They are at my beck and call."

She crooked her forefinger and nodded her head as if beckoning to some one. For sheer lighthearted, innocent enjoyment of her own attraction I never saw the equal of that face. I should have made my fortune if I could have painted it there in the blazing sunlight, framed in flowers; but it was too much for me. Therefore, I asked her to move to the right, further along the promontory, so that I could put her in the foreground of the picture I had already begun.

"There, by that first clump of iris," I said, pointing to a patch of green sword-leaves, where the white and lilac blossoms were beginning to show.

She gave a perceptible shudder.

"What? Sit on a grave! Not I. Does not the _Huzoor_ know that those are graves? It is true. All our people are buried here. We plant the iris over them always. If you ask why, I know not. It is the flower of death."

A sudden determination to paint her, the Flowerful Life against the Flowerful Death, completely obliterated the knowledge of my own incompetence; but I urged and bribed in vain. Phooli-jan would not stir. She would not even let me pick a handful of the flowers for her to hold. It was unlucky; besides, one never knew what one might find in the thickets of leaves--bones and horrid things. Had I never heard that dead people got tired of their graves and tried to get out? Even if they only wanted something in their graves they would stretch forth a hand to get it. That was one reason why people covered them up with flowers--just to make them more contented.

The idea of stooping to cull a flower and shaking hands with a corpse was distinctly unpleasant, even in the sunlight; so I gave up the point and began to sketch the girl as she sat. Rather a difficult task, for she chattered incessantly. Did I see that thin blue thread of smoke in the dark pall of pine-trees covering the bottom of the valley? That was Goloo's fire. He was drying orris root for the Maharajah. There, on the opposite _murg_, where the buffaloes showed dark among the flowers, was Chuchchu's hut. Undoubtedly, Chuchchu was the richer, but Goloo could climb like an ibex. It was he whom the _Huzoor_ was going to take as a guide to the peak. He could dance, too. The _Huzoor_ should see him dance the circle dance round the fire--no one turned so slowly as Goloo. He would not frighten a young lamb, except when he was angry--well, jealous, if the _Huzoor_ thought that a better word.

By the time she had done chattering there was not a petal left on the ox-eyed daisies, and I was divided between pity and envy towards Goloo and Chuchchu.

That evening, as usual, I set my painting to dry on the easel at the door of the tent. As I lounged by the camp fire, smoking my pipe, a big young man, coming in with a jar of buffalo milk on his shoulder and a big bunch of red rhododendron behind his ear, stopped and grinned at my caricature of Phooli-jan. Five minutes after, down by the servants' encampment, I heard a free fight going on, and strolled over to see what was the matter. After the manner of Kashmiri quarrels, it had ended almost as it began; for the race love peace.

That it had so ended was not, however, I saw at a glance, the fault of the smaller of the antagonists, who was being forcibly held back by my _shikari_.

"Chuchchu, that man there, wanted to charge Goloo, this man here, the same price for milk as he does your honour," explained the _shikari_ elaborately. "That was extortionate, even though Goloo, being the _Huzoor's_ guide for to-morrow, may be said to be your honour's servant for the time. I have settled the matter justly. The _Huzoor_ need not give thought to it."

I looked at the two recipients of Phooli-jan's favour with interest--for that the bunches of red rhododendron they both wore were her gift I did not doubt. They were both fine young men, but Goloo was distinctly the better-looking of the two, if a trifle sinister.

Despite the recommendation of my _shikari_ to cast thought aside, the incident lingered in my memory, and I mentioned it to Phooli-jan when, on returning to finish my sketch, I found her waiting for me among the flowers. Her smile was more brilliant than ever.

"They will not hurt each other," she said. "Chuchchu knows that Goloo is more active, and Goloo knows that Chuchchu is stronger. It is like the dogs in our village."

"I was not thinking of them," I replied; "I was thinking of you.

Supposing they were to quarrel with you?"

She laughed. "They will not quarrel. In summer time there are plenty of flowers for everybody."

I thought of those red rhododendrons, and could not repress a smile at her barefaced wisdom of the serpent.

"And in the winter time?"

"Then I will marry one of them, or some one. I have only to choose.

That is all. They are at my beck and call."

Three years pa.s.sed before recurring leave enabled me to pay another visit to the _murg_. The rhododendrons were once more on the uplands, and as I turned the last corner of the pine-set path which threaded its way through the defile I saw the meadow before me, with its mosaic of flowers bright as ever. The memory of Phooli-jan came back to me as she had sat in the sunshine nodding and beckoning.

"Phooli-jan?" echoed the old patriarch who came out to welcome me as I crossed the plank bridge to the village, "Phooli-jan, the herd-girl?

_Huzoor_, she is dead; she died from picking flowers. A vain thing. It was at the turn beyond the _murg_, _Huzoor_, half-way between Chuchchu's hut and Goloo's drying stage. There is a big rhododendron tree hanging over the cliff, and she must have fallen down. It is three years gone."

Three years; then it must have happened almost immediately after I left the valley. The idea upset me; I knew not why. The _murg_ without that Flowerful Life nodding and beckoning felt empty, and I found myself wondering if indeed the girl had fallen down, or if she had played with flowers too recklessly and one of her lovers, perhaps both---- It was an idea which dimmed the sunshine and I was glad that I had arranged not to remain for the night, but to push on to another meadow, some six miles farther up the river. To do so, however, I required a fresh relay of coolies, and while my _shikari_ was arranging for this in the village I made my way by a cross-cut to the promontory, with its patches of iris.

Deaths are rare in these small communities, and there were but two or three new graves--all but one too recent to be poor Phooli-jan's.

That, then, must be hers, with its still clearly denned oblong of iris, already a ma.s.s of pale purple and white.