Miss Stuart's Legacy Part 18

With a sudden sharp cry she turned from him to bury her face in the sofa cushions. "Not himself at the time!" Had he ever been himself?

Never, never! How could a dishonoured, drunken gambler, dying by his own act, have been, even for a moment, the faultless father of her girlish dreams! And was that the only mistake she had made; or was the world nothing but a lie? Was there no truth in it at all, not even in her own feelings?

"I am so sorry to have been obliged to give you pain," said her husband, laying his hand on her shoulder. "But it is always best to have the truth."

His words seemed a hideous mockery of her thoughts, and she shrank impatiently from his touch.

"You must not be angry with me; it is not my fault," he urged.

"Oh, I am not angry with you," she cried, with a petulant ring in her voice as she raised herself hastily, and looked him full in the face.

"Only,--if you don't mind--I would so much rather be left alone. I want to think it all out by myself,--quite by myself."

The hunted look in her eyes escaped his want of sympathy, and he gave a sigh of relief at her reasonableness. "That is a wise little woman,"

he replied, bending down to kiss her more than once. "I'll go down the _khud_ after those pheasants and won't be back till tea. So you will have the whole day to yourself. But remember, there is no hurry. The only good point about a weekly post is that it gives plenty of time to consider an answer."

That, to him, was the great point at issue; for her the foundations of the deep had suddenly been let loose, and she had forgotten the question of the legacy. Almost mechanically she gave him back his farewell kiss, and sat still as a stone till he had left the room.

Then, impelled by an uncontrollable impulse, she dashed across to the door and locked it swiftly, pausing, with her hand still on the key, bewildered, frightened at her own act. What had she done? What did it mean? Why had her one thought been to get away from John, to prevent his having part or lot in her sorrow? Slowly she unlocked the door again, with a half impulse to run after him and call him back. But instead of this she crept in a dazed sort of way to her own room and lay down on the bed to think. Of what? Of everything under the sun, it seemed to her confusion; yet always, when she became conscious of any clear thought, it had to do, not with her father or Philip Marsden, but with her own future. Was it possible that she had made other mistakes? Was it possible that she was not in love with John? Why else had she that wild desire to get rid of him? The very suggestion of such a possibility angered her beyond measure. Her life, as she had proudly claimed, was not a novel; nothing wrong or undignified, nothing extravagant or unseemly should come into it; and it was surely all this not to be in love with one's lawful husband! It was bad enough even to have had such a suspicion after a bare fortnight of wedded life; it was absurd, ridiculous, impossible. So as the day pa.s.sed on, all other considerations were gradually submerged in the overwhelming necessity of proving to herself that she and John were a most devoted couple. As tea-time approached she put on a certain tea-gown which her lord and master was pleased to commend, and generally prepared to receive the Great Mogul as husbands should be received. Not because she had come to any conclusion in regard to that locking of the door, but because, whatever else was uncertain, there could be no doubt how a husband _should_ be treated. For, as some one has said, while a man tolerates the marriage-bond for the sake of a particular woman, the latter tolerates a particular man for the sake of the bond.

So Belle poured out the tea and admired the pheasants, to John Raby's great contentment; though in his innermost heart he felt a little manly contempt for the feminine want of backbone which rendered such pliability possible. Only once did she show signs of the unstilled tempest of thought which lay beneath her calm manner. It was when, later on in the evening during their nightly game of _ecarte_, he complimented her on some _coup_, remarking that her skill seemed inherited. Then she started as if the cards she was handling had stung her, and her face flushed crimson with mingled pain and resentment; yet in her homeless life she had necessarily learned betimes the give and take required in most human intercourse. The fact was that already (though she knew it not) her husband was on his trial, and she could no longer treat his lightest word or look with the reasonable allowances she would have accorded to a stranger. A man is seldom foolish enough to expect perfection in a wife; a woman from her babyhood is taught to find it in her husband, and brought up to believe that the deadliest sin a good woman can commit is to see a spot in her sun. She may be a faithful wife, a kindly companion, a veritable helpmate; but if the partner of her joys and sorrows is not, for her, the incarnation of all manly virtues, or at least the man she would have chosen out of all the world, her marriage must be deemed a failure. Love, that mysterious young juggler, is not there to change duty into something which we are told is better than duty, and so the simple, single-hearted performance of a simple, perfectly natural contract becomes degradation.

Belle, confused yet resentful, lay awake long after her husband slept the sleep of the selfish. Her slow tears wetted her own pillow quietly, decorously, lest they might disturb the Great Mogul's slumbers. Yet she could scarcely have told why the tears came at all, for a curious numbness was at her heart. Even the thought of her dead father had already lost its power to give keen pain, and she was in a vague way shocked at the ease with which her new knowledge fitted into the old. The fact being, that now she dared to look it full in the face without reservation, the loving compa.s.sion, the almost divine pity which had been with her ever since the day when poor d.i.c.k had first opened her eyes to the feet of clay, seemed no stranger, but a familiar friend. Then Philip Marsden! Dwell as she might on her own ingrat.i.tude, his kindness seemed too good a gift to weep over; and again she stretched out her hands into the darkness, as she had done on the night when her anger had risen hot against the man she misjudged; but this time it was to call to him with a very pa.s.sion of repentance, "_Friend, I will take this gift also. In this at least you shall have your way_."

"By George, Belle!" said John Raby next morning, when she told him that she had made up her mind to take the legacy without demur, "you are simply a pearl of women for sense. I prophesy we shall be as happy as the day is long, always."

And Belle said she hoped so too. But when he fell to talking joyously of the coming comforts of sweet reasonableness and thirty thousand pounds, in the life that was just beginning for them, her thoughts were busy with schemes for spending some at least of the legacy in building a shrine of good deeds to the memory of her friend,--surely the best friend a woman ever had. She was bound by her nature to idealise some one, and the dead man was an easier subject than the living one.

CHAPTER XV.

Murghub Ahmad, with nothing on but a waistcloth, his high narrow forehead bedewed with the sweat which ran down his hollow cheeks like teardrops, was fanning the flame of his own virtue with windy words in the dark outhouse which he designated the editor's room. Four square yards of court beyond const.i.tuted the printing office of the _Jehad_, a bi-weekly paper of extreme views on every topic under the sun. For the proprietors of _The Light of Islam_ having a wholesome regard to the expense of libels, had dispensed with the young man's eloquence as being too fervid for safety. So, Heaven knows by what pinching and paring, by what starvation-point of self-denial, the boy had saved and sc.r.a.ped enough to buy a wretched, rotten handpress, and two used up lithographic stones. With these implements, and a heart and brain full of the fierce fire of his conquering race, he set to work with the utmost simplicity to regenerate mankind in general, and the Government of India in particular, by disseminating the smudged results of his labours on the poor old press among his fellow-subjects; for the most part, it is to be feared, free, gratis, and for nothing. Poor old press! No wonder it creaked and groaned under Murghub Ahmad's thin straining arms; for it had grown old in the service of Government, and on the side of law and order. Generation after generation of prisoners in the district jail had found a certain grim satisfaction and amus.e.m.e.nt in producing by its help endless thousands of the forms necessary for the due capture and punishments of criminals yet to come. Reams and reams of paper had they turned out as writs of arrest, warrants for committal, charge-sheets, orders for jail discipline, or, joyful thought, memos of discharge. And now order and discipline were unknown quant.i.ties in its life. Perhaps the change was too much for its const.i.tution; certain it is that it became daily more and more unsatisfactory in regard to the complicated Arabic words with which its present owner loved to besprinkle his text. Then the damp, overworked stones refused to dry, even under the boy's hot feverish hands; and he lost half his precious time in chasing the shifting sunlight round and round the narrow courtyard in order to set the ink.

Something there was infinitely pathetic about it all; especially on the days when, with the look of a St. Sebastian in his young face, the lad could stay his hard labour for a while, and rest himself by folding the flimsy sheets within the orthodox green wrapper where a remarkably crooked crescent was depicted as surrounded by the beams of the rising sun. False astronomy, but excellent sentiment! Then there was the addressing for the post. Most of the packets bore the inscription _bearing_; but one, chosen with care, and cunningly corrected with a deft pen, never failed to carry the requisite stamp above the quaint address: _To my respectable and respected father, Khan Mahommed Lateef Khan, in the house of the Khan of Khurtpore, Sudr Bazaar, Faizapore_. Which is much as though one should address a Prince of the Blood to Tottenham Court Road.

Then, with the precious parcels in his arms, and one copy in his bosom, he would joyfully lock the door above which "Press of the Jehad Newspaper" was emblazoned in English, and make his way to some cheap cook-house, where, in honour of the occasion, he would purchase a farthing's worth of fried stuff to eat with his dry dough cakes.

Thereafter he would repair to the steps of a mosque, or to one of the shady wells which still linger in the heart of cities in India, in order to discuss his own views and writings with a group of young men of his own age. For in that large town, with its strange undercurrents of new thoughts and aims underlying the steady stream of humanity towards the old beliefs, Murghub Ahmad was not without his audience, nor even his following. He had the sometimes fatal gift, greater than mere eloquence, of leading the minds of his hearers blindfold by some strange charm of voice and personality; and when, as often happened, discussion took the form of harangue, the slow-gathering, stolid crowd used to wake up into muttered approbation as the familiar watchwords of their faith were presented to them in new and bewildering forms.

It was the eve of Mohurrim, the great feast and fast of orthodox and unorthodox Mahomedans; an occasion which claimed more zeal than usual from the young reformer. On the morrow the paper shrines of the dead Hussan and Hussain, which were now being prepared in many a quiet courtyard, would be borne through the streets in triumph, followed by excited crowds of the faithful. And, as sometimes happens, it was Dussarah-tide also, and the Hindus held high festival as well as the Mahomedans. A simple thing enough to Western minds, accustomed to the idea of wide thoroughfares and religious toleration; a very different affair in the tortuous byeways of a native town, and among the ancient antagonisms. It was critical at the best of times, and this year doubly, trebly so, for with the newly-granted franchise of munic.i.p.al government, the richer Hindus out-numbered the Mahomedans in the committee which had power to direct the route open to each procession.

So the cry of favouritism went forth, and as the gaudy paper streamers were being gummed to the frail bamboo frames, many a dark face grew darker with determination to carry the sacred symbol where he chose; yea, even into the midst of the cursed idol-worshipping crew, despite all the munic.i.p.al committees and fat, bribing usurers in the world.

The _Jehad_ was full of sublime wrath and valiant appeals for justice to high Heaven, because a certain connecting alley between two of the big bazaars had been closed to the Mahomedans and given to the Hindus.

True, another, and equally convenient, connection, had been allowed the former; but for many years past the procession of _tazzias_ had struggled through that particular alley, and the innovation was resented as an insult. East and west, mankind is made the same way. It was astonishing how many imperious demands on the resources of Providence this trivial change aroused in Murghub Ahmad. He called for justice, mercy, and religious freedom, for the stars as witness, for the days of Akbar. On the other hand, a rival print with an unp.r.o.nounceable t.i.tle, clamoured for Bikramajeet, the hero-king of old, for Hindu independence and the sword. Either faction, it may be observed, asked for those things in others of which they had least themselves, after the way of factions all over the world.

Thus many a quarterstaff was being diligently whittled that evening, and down in the butchers' quarter even deadlier weapons were being talked of openly by its inhabitants, the most truculent of all the mixed races and trades with which rulers have to deal. John Raby, doing his judicial work in the big court-house outside the town, felt, with that sharp, half-cunning perception of concealed things which he possessed so pre-eminently, that there was mischief brewing, and drove round by the executive official's house in order to tell him so. The latter a.s.sured him that the newly-elected munic.i.p.al committee were fully alive to the necessity for precautions; whereat the young man shrugged his shoulders and said he was glad to hear it. He mentioned it casually to Belle with a sneer, which he did not allow himself in public, at the cra.s.s stupidity of needlessly setting race against race by premature haste to confer the blessings of vestrydom on India. And Belle agreed, since, even with the limited experience of the past year, she had learnt a sort of reverence for the old ways, which seem so irredeemably bad to the unsympathetic philanthropy of the West.

For a whole year had pa.s.sed since the fateful letter announcing the legacy had come to disturb the foundations of her world. It had had surprisingly little effect on her, chiefly because she was determined that her life must run in one ordered groove. There must be no mistake or fiasco, nothing but what she considered decent, orderly, virtuous.

Uninteresting, no doubt; but it is nevertheless true that a very large number of women are born into the world with an unhesitating preference for behaving nicely; women who can no more help being longsuffering, cheerful, and self-forgetful, than they can help being the children of their parents. Her husband's clear sight had early seen the expediency of concealing from her the radical difference between her view of life and his own. He even felt pleased she should think as she did; it was so much safer, and more ladylike. In his way he grew to be very fond of her, and there was scarcely any friction between them, since, moved by a certain grat.i.tude for the change her money had wrought in his prospects, he gave her free play in everything that did not interfere with his settled plans. Half the said money was already invested in Shunker Das's indigo concern, and John Raby was only awaiting its a.s.sured success to throw up his appointment and go openly into trade; but of this Belle knew nothing.

She had money enough and to spare for all her wishes, and that was sufficient for her; indeed, on the whole, she was happy in the larger interests of her new life. The tragic, poverty-stricken, yet contented lives of the poor around her had a strange fascination for the girl, and the desire to see and understand all that went to make up the pitiful sum-total of their pleasures, led her often, on her solitary morning rides (for John was an incurable sluggard) through the alleys and bazaars of the great city. In the latter, the people knowing in a dim way that she was the judge _sahib's_ wife, would _salaam_ artificially, but in the back streets both women and children smile on her, much to her unreasoning content.

So the morning after her husband's sarcasm over the mistakes of his seniors, she determined, in the confidence of ignorance, to see something of the processions; and with this intention found herself, about seven o'clock, in the outskirts of the town. Here the deserted appearance of the streets beguiled her into pushing on and on, until close to the big mosque a blare of conches, and the throbbing of ceaseless drums mingled with cries, warned her of an advancing procession. Wishing to watch it un.o.bserved, she turned her horse into a side alley and waited.

As in all countries, a rabble of boys, sprung Heaven knows whence, formed the advance guard. Behind them came an older, yet more mischievous crowd of men flourishing quarterstaves and shouting "Hussan! Hussain!" Next emerged into the square, a swaying, top-heavy _tazzia_, looking every instant as though it must shake to pieces, and behind it more quarterstaves and more _tazzias_, more shouts, and more dark faces streaming on and on to overflow into the square, until the procession formed a part only of the great crowd. So absorbed was she in watching the swooping out of each successive _tazzia_, like some gay-plumaged bird from the intricate windings of the way beyond, that she failed to notice the current settling towards her until the vanguard of urchins was almost at her horse's hoofs. Then she recognised the disconcerting fact that she had taken refuge in the very path of the procession. Turning to escape by retreat, she saw the further end of the alley blocked by a similar crowd; only that here the shouts of "_Dhurm! Dhurm! Durga dei! Gunga_ (the faith, the faith!

the G.o.ddess Durga! Ganges!)" told of Hindu fanaticism.

She was, in fact, in the very alley which both sides claimed as their own. Bewildered, yet not alarmed, for her ignorance of religious ecstasy made her presuppose deference, she turned her horse once more, and rode towards the advancing _tazzias_ at a foot's-pace. The look of the crowd as she neared it was startling, but the cry of "_Jehad!

Jehad!_ Death to the infidel!" seemed too incredible for fear; and ere the latter came with the conviction that not even for a judge _sahib's mem_ would the stream slacken, a young man, his gaunt face encircled by a high green turban, rushed to the front and seized her horse by the bridle.

"No words! Dismount yourself from steed and follow your preserver. We war not with women." The effect of these stilted words uttered in tones of intense excitement was somehow ludicrous. "Smile not! Be nimble, I entreat. Unhorse yourself, and follow, follow me."

The vision of a hideous leering face leading the quarterstaves decided her on complying. The next instant she felt herself thrust into a dark entry, and ere the door closed, heard a scream of terrified rage from her horse, as some one cut it over the flank with his staff. The outrage made her temper leap up fiercely, and she felt inclined to confront the offender; but before she could reach the door it was shut and hasped in her face.

Then the desire to escape from darkness and see--see something, no matter what--possessed her, and she groped round for some means of exit. Ah! a flight of steep steps, black as pitch, narrow, broken; she climbed up, and up, till a grating in the wall shed a glimmer of light on the winding stair; up further, till she emerged on a balcony overlooking the street, whence she could see far into the alley on one side and into the square on the other. Beneath her feet lay a small empty s.p.a.ce edged by the opposing factions hurrying into collision.

"Give way! Give way, idolaters! Hussan! Hussain! _Futeh Mahommed_ (Victory of Mahomed)," yelled the _tazzia_-bearers.

"_Jai, Jai, Durga Devi, de-jai!_ Give way, killers of kine," shouted the Hindus.

For an instant or two Belle's horse, hemmed in by the advancing crowds, kept the peace by clearing a s.p.a.ce between them with head and heels; then, choosing the least alarming procession, it charged the Hindus, breaking their ranks as, maddened by terror it plunged and bit. Only for a moment, however, for the packed ma.s.s of humanity closing in round it, held it harmless as in a vice.

"The charger of Pertap!"[4] cried a huge rice-husker with ready wit, as he leapt to the saddle, and coming rather to grief over the crutches, raised a roar of derision from the other side. He scowled dangerously. "Come on, brothers!" he cried, digging his heels viciously into the trembling, snorting beast. "Down with the cursed slayers of kine. This is Durga-ji's road,--_Dhurm! Dhurm!_"

"Hussan,--Hussain!"

Then the dull thud of heavy blows seemed to dominate the war of words, and business began in earnest as a Mahomedan, caught behind the ear, fell in his tracks. It was not much of a fight as yet, for in that narrow street the vast majority of the crowd could do nothing but press forward and thus jam activity into still smaller s.p.a.ce, until the useless sticks were thrown aside, and the combatants went at each other tooth and nail, but unarmed. So they might have fought out the wild-beast instinct of fighting, but for the fact that the Hindus, with commendable foresight, had headed their procession by athletes, the Mahomedans by enthusiast. So, inch by inch, surging and swaying, yelling, cursing, yet doing comparatively little harm, the combatants drifted towards the square until the wider outlet allowed a larger number of the Mahomedans to come into play, and thus reverse the order of affairs. Once more the _tazzias_, surrounded by their supporters, carried the lane, and swept back the red-splashed figure of Durga amidst yells of religious fury. So the battle raged more in words than blows. Belle, indeed, had begun to feel her bounding pulses steady with the recognition that, beyond a few black eyes and broken heads, no harm had been done, when a trivial incident changed the complexion of affairs in an instant.

The foremost _tazzia_, which had borne the brunt of conflict and come up smiling after many a repulse, lost balance, toppled over, and went to pieces, most likely from the inherent weakness of its architecture.

The result was startling. A sudden wave of pa.s.sion swept along the Mahomedan line, and as a young man sprang to the pilaster of the mosque steps and harangued the crowd, every face settled into a deadly desire for revenge.

"Kill! Kill! Kill the idolaters--_Jehad! Jehad!_"--the cry of religious warfare rang in an instant from lip to lip. And now from behind came a fresh burst of enthusiasm, as a body of men naked to the waist pushed their way towards the front with ominous glint of sunlight on steel as they fought fiercely for place.

"Room! Room for the butchers! Kill! Kill! Let them bleed! let them bleed!"

The shout overbore the high ringing voice of the preacher, but Belle, watching with held breath, saw him wave his hand towards the lane.

Slowly, unwillingly at first, the crowd gave way; then more rapidly until a roar of a.s.sent rose up. "The butchers, the butchers! Kill!

Kill!"

Belle gasped and held tight to the railing, seeing nothing more but the tide of strife beneath her very feet. Red knives, gleaming no longer, straining hands, and every now and again a gurgle and a human head disappearing to be trodden under foot. Heaven knows how weapons come in such scenes as these,--from the houses,--pa.s.sed to the front by willing hands--s.n.a.t.c.hed from unwilling foes who fall. In a second it was knife against knife, murder against murder. "_Durga! Durga devi!_ Destroy! Destroy!" "Hussan! Hussain! Kill! Kill!" Then suddenly, a rattle of musketry at the far end of the square, where, cut off from the actual conflict by an impenetrable crowd, a strange scene had been going on un.o.bserved. Two or three mounted Englishmen unarmed, but sitting cool and square on their horse sat the head of a company of Mahomedan and Hindu sepoys who stood cheek by jowl, calm, apparently indifferent, their carbines still smoking from the recent discharge. About them was a curious stillness, broken only by the sound of more disciplined feet coming along at the double. A glint of red coats appears behind, and then a police-officer, the sunlight gleaming on his silver buckles, gallops along the edge of the rapidly clearing s.p.a.ce, laying about him with the flat of his sword, while yellow-trousered constables, emerging Heaven knows from what safe shelter, dive in among the people, whacking vigorously with the traditional truncheon of the West. A rapid order to the sepoys, an instant of marking time as the company forms, then quick march through an unresisting crowd. As they near the combatants a few brickbats are thrown: there is one free fight over the preacher: and then the great ma.s.s of mankind falls once more into atoms, each animated by the instinct of self-preservation. Five minutes more, and the processions have gone on their appointed ways with the loss of some chosen spirits, while the ghastly results are being hurried away by fatigue-parties recruited from the bystanders.

"Only one round of blank cartridge," remarked John Raby, as the Deputy Commissioner rode forward ruefully to inspect the damage. "Ten minutes more, and it wouldn't have been so easy, for the fighting would have reached the square, and once a man begins--Great G.o.d! what's that?"

He was out of the saddle staring at a horse that was trying to stagger from the gutter to its feet. Perhaps in all his life he had never felt such genuine pa.s.sion as then; certainly Belle herself was never so near to loving her husband as when she saw the awful fear come into his face at the sight of the riderless steed. She had been waiting for him to come nearer before calling for a.s.sistance, and now the thought of her past danger and its meaning almost choked her voice. "I'm not hurt! Oh, John! I'm not hurt," she cried, stretching her hands towards him.

He looked up to see her on the balcony, and his relief, as it often does, brought a momentary resentment. "Belle! What the devil--I mean, why are you here?"

Now that it was all over, she felt disagreeably inclined to cry; but something in his voice roused her pride and urged her to make light of what had happened, and so avoid being still more conspicuous. "I'll come down and explain," she replied with an effort.

"Wait! I'll be with you in a moment. Which is the door?" As he paused to kiss her before helping her down the dark stair, Belle pa.s.sed the happiest moment of her married life. Physically and morally she felt crushed by the scenes she had witnessed, and his calm, half-callous strength seemed a refuge indeed.

"Not across the square," whispered the police-officer as he was about to take her the shortest route. "That poor brute must be shot."