On the Face of the Waters Part 15

"The future?" echoed a graybeard who had been drinking cinnamon tea calmly. "G.o.d knows there will be wars enough in it. Didst hear, _Meean_ sahib? I have it on authority--that Jarn Larnce is to give Peshawur to Dost Mohammed and take Rajpootana instead. Take it as Oude was taken and Sambalpore, and Jhansi, and all the others."

"Even so," a.s.sented a quiet looking man in spectacles. "When the last _Lat_-sahib went, he got much praise for having taken five kingdoms and given them to the Queen. The new one was told he must give more.

This begins it."

"Let us see what we Rajpoots say first," cried the corporal fiercely.

"'Tis we have fought the _Sirkar's_ battles, and we are not sheep to be driven against our own."

Gul-anari leered admiringly at her new lover. "Nay! the Rajpoots are men! and 'twas his regiment, my masters, who refused to fight over the sea, saying it was not in the bond. Ay! and gained their point."

"That drop has gone over the sea itself," sneered a third soldier.

"The bond is altered now. Go we must, or be dismissed. The Thakoor-_jee_ would not be so bold now, I warrant."

The Rajpoot twirled his mustache to his very eyes and c.o.c.ked his turban awry.

"Ay, would I! and more, if they dare touch our privilege."

Gul-anari leered again, rousing the Pathan sergeant to mutter curses, and--as if to change the subject--cross over to the man in the corner, lay insolent hands on his shoulder, and shout a question in his ear.

The man turned, met the arrogant eyes bent on him calmly, and with both hands salaamed profusely but slowly with a sort of measured rhythm. Apparently he had not caught the words and was deprecating impatience. His hands were fine hands, slender, well-shaped, and he wore a metal ring on the seal-finger. It caught the light as he salaamed.

"Louder, man, louder!" gibed the corporal. But the sergeant did not repeat the question; he stood looking at the upturned face awaiting an answer.

"Maybe he is Belooch, his speech not mine," he said suddenly, yet with a strange lack of curiosity in his tone. There was a faint quiver, as if some strain were over in the face below, and the silence was broken by a rapid sentence.

"Yea! Belooch!" he went on in a still more satisfied tone, "I know it by the tw.a.n.g. So there is small use in bursting my lungs."

Here Prince Abool-Bukr, who had been dozing tipsily, his head against his fiddle, woke, and caught the last words. "Ay, burst! burst like the royal kettle-drums of mine ancestors. Yet will I do my poor best to amuse the company and--and instruct them in virtue." Whereupon, with much maudlin emotion, he thrummed and thrilled through a lament on the fallen fortunes of the Moghuls written by that King of Poets his Grandpapa. Being diffuse and didactic, it was met with acclamations, and Abool, being beyond the stage of discrimination, was going on to give an encore of a very different nature, when a wild clashing of cymbals and hooting of conches in the bazaar below sent everyone to the balcony. Everyone save Abool, who, deprived of his audience, dozed off against his fiddle again, and the man from the corner who, as he took advantage of the diversion to escape, looked down at the handsome drunken face as he pa.s.sed it and muttered, "Poor devil! He rode honest enough always." Then the Rajpoot's arrogant voice rising from the crush on the balcony, he paused a second in order to listen--that being his trade.

"'Tis the holy Hindu widow to whom G.o.d sent fire on her way to the festival. A saint indeed! I know her brother, one Soma, a Yadubansi Rajpoot in the 11th, new-come to Meerut."

The clashings and brayings were luckily loud enough to hide an irrepressible exclamation from the man behind. The next instant he was halfway down the dark stairs, tearing off cap, turban, beard, and pausing at the darkest corner to roll his baggy northern drawers out of sight, and turn his woolen green shawl inside out, thus disclosing a cotton lining of ascetic ochre tint. It was the work of a second, for Jim Douglas had been an apt pupil. So, with a smear of ashes from one pocket, a dab of turmeric and vermilion from another--put on as he finished the stairs--he emerged into the street disguised as a mendicant; the refuge of fools, as Tiddu had called it. The easiest, however, to a.s.sume at an instant's notice; and in this case the best for the procession Jim Douglas meant to join. Careless and hurried though his get-up was, he set the very thought of detection from him as he edged his way among the streaming crowd. For in that, so he told himself, lay the Mysterious Gift. To be, even in your inmost thoughts, the personality you a.s.sumed was the secret. Somehow or another it impressed those around you, and even if a challenge came there was no danger if the challenger could be isolated--brought close, as it were, to your own certainty. To this, so it seemed to him--the many-faced one vehemently protesting--came all Tiddu's mysterious instructions, which nevertheless he followed religiously. For, be they what they might, they had never failed him during the six months, save once, when, watching a horse-race, he had lost or rather recovered himself in the keen interest it awakened. Then his neighbors had edged from him and stared, and he had been forced into slipping away and changing his personality; for it was one of Tiddu's maxims that you should always carry that with you which made such change possible. To be many-faced, he said, made all faces more secure by taking from any the right of permanence. Jim Douglas therefore joined the procession and forced his way to the very front of it, where the red-splashed figure of Durga Devi was being carried shoulders high. It was garlanded with flowers and censed by swinging censers, and behind it with widespread arms to show her sacred scars walked Tara. She was naked to the waist, and the scanty ochre-tinted cloth folded about her middle was raised so as to show the scars upon her lower limbs. The sunlight gleaming on the magnificent bronze curves showed a seam or two upon her breast also. No more. As Abool-Bukr had prophesied, her face, full of wild spiritual exaltation, was unmarred and, with the shaven head, stood out bold and clear as a cameo.

_Jai! Jai! Durga mai ke jai_ (Victory to Mother Durga).

The cry came incessantly from her lips, and was echoed not only by the procession, but by the spectators. So from many a fierce throat besides the corporal's, who from Gul-anari's balcony shouted it frantically, that appeal to the Great Death Mother--implacable, athirst for blood--came to light the sordid life of the bazaar with a savage fire for something unknown--horribly unknown, that lay beyond life. Even the Mohammedans, though they spat in the gutter at the idol, felt their hearts stir; felt that if miracles were indeed abroad their G.o.d, the only true One, would not shorten His Hand either.

_Jai! Jai! Durga mai ke jai_.

The cry met with a sudden increase of volume as, the procession pa.s.sing into the wider s.p.a.ce before the big mosque, it was joined by a band of widows, who in rapturous adoration flung themselves before Tara's feet so that she might walk over them if need be, yet somehow touch them.

"Pigs of idolators!" muttered one of a group standing on the mosque steps; a group of men unmistakable in their flowing robes and beards.

"Peace, _Kazi_-sahib!" came a mellow voice. "Let G.o.d judge when the work is done. 'The clay is base, and the potter mean, yet the pot helps man to wash and be clean.'"

The speaker, a tall, gaunt man, rose a full head above the others, and Jim Douglas' keen eyes, taking in everything as they pa.s.sed, recognized him instantly. It was the Moulvie of Fyzabad. It was partly to hear what he had to say when he was preaching, partly to find out how the people viewed the question of the heirship, which had brought Jim Douglas to Delhi, so he was not surprised.

And now the procession, reaching the Dareeba, that narrowest of lanes hedged by high houses, received a momentary check. For down it, preceded by grooms with waving yak tails, came the Resident's buggy.

He was taking a lady to see the picturesque sights of the city. This was one, with a vengeance, as the red-splashed figure of the Death-G.o.ddess jammed itself in the gutter to let the aliens pa.s.s, so getting mixed up with a Mohammedan sign-board. And the crowd following it,--an ignorant crowd agape for wonders,--stood for a minute, hemmed in, as it were, between the buggy in front and the mosque behind, with that group of Moulvies on its steps.

"Fire worship for a hundred years, A century of Christ and tears, Then the True G.o.d shall come again And every infidel be slain,"

quoted he of Fyzabad under his breath, and the others nodded. They knew the prophecy of Shah N'amut-Oolah well. It was being bandied from mouth to mouth in those days; for the Mohammedan crowd was also agape for wonders.

CHAPTER III.

ON THE RIDGE.

"A melly Klistmus to zoo, Miffis Erlton! An' oh! they's suts a lot of boo'ful, boo'ful sings in a velanda."

Sonny's liquid lisp said true. On this Christmas morning the veranda of Major Erlton's house on the Ridge of Delhi was full of beauties to childish eyes. For, he being on special duty regarding a scheme for cavalry remounts and having Delhi for his winter headquarters, there were plenty of contractors, agents, troopers, dealers, what not, to be remembered by one who might probably have a voice in much future patronage. So there were trays on trays of oranges and apples, pistachios, almonds, raisins, round boxes of Cabul grapes, all decked with flowers. And on most of them, as the surest bid for recognition, lay a trumpery toy of some sort for the Major sahib's little unknown son, whose existence could, nevertheless, not be ignored by these gift-bringers, to whom children are the greatest gift of all.

And so, as they waited, with a certain child-like complacency in their own offerings, for the recipients' tardy appearance, they had smiled on little Sonny Seymour as he pa.s.sed them on his way to give greeting to his dearest Mrs. Erlton. For the Seymours had had the expected change to Delhi, and Sonny's mother was now complaining of the climate, and the servants, and the babies, in one of the houses within the Cashmere gate of the city; a fact which took from her the grievance regarding dog-carts, since it lay within a walk of her husband's office.

So some of the smiles had not simply been given to a child, but to a child whose father was a sahib known to the smiler; and one broad grin had come because Sonny had paused to say, with the quaint precision with which all English children speak Hindustani.

"_Ai! Bij Rao! tu kyon aie?_" (Oh, Bij Rao, why are you here?) The orderly's face, which Mrs. Seymour had said gave her the shivers, had beamed over the recognition; he had risen and saluted, explaining gravely to the _chota_ sahib that he came from Meerut, because the Major sahib was now his sahib for the time. Sonny had nodded gravely as if he understood the position perfectly, and pa.s.sed on to the drawing room, where Kate Erlton was sticking a few sprigs of holly and mistletoe round the portrait of another fair-haired boy; these same sprigs being themselves a Christmas offering from the Pa.r.s.ee merchant, who had a branch establishment at a hill station. He sent for them from the snows every year for his customers as a delicate attention.

And this year something still more reminiscent of home had come with them: a real spruce fir for the Christmas tree which Kate Erlton was organizing for the school children. The tree in itself was new to India, and she had suggested a still greater innovation; namely, that all children of parents employed in Government offices or workshops should be invited, not only those with pretensions to white faces. For Kate, being herself far happier and more contented than she had been nine months before, when she begged that last chance from Jim Douglas, had begun to look out from her own life into the world around her with greater interest. In a way, it seemed to her that the chance had come.

Not tragically, as Jim Douglas had hinted, but easily, naturally, in this special duty which had removed her husband both from Alice Gissing and his own past reputation.

It had sent him to Simla, where people are accepted for what they are; and here his good looks, his good-natured, devil-may-care desire for amus.e.m.e.nt had made him a favorite in society, and his undoubted knowledge of cavalry requirements stood him in good stead with the authorities. So he had come down for the winter to Delhi on a new track altogether. To begin with, his work interested him and made him lead a more wholesome life. It took him away from home pretty often, so lessening friction; for it was pleasant to return to a well-ordered house after roughing it in out-stations. Then it took him into the wilds where there was no betting or card-playing. He shot deer and duck instead, and talked of caps and charges, instead of colors and tricks. To his vast improvement; for though the slaying instinct may not be admirable in itself, and though the hunter may rightly have been branded from the beginning with the mark of Cain, still the shooter or fisher generally lives straighter than his fellows, and murder is not the most heinous of crimes. Not even in regard to the safety and welfare of the community.

So Kate had begun to have those pangs of remorse which come to women of her sort at the first symptom of regeneration in a sinner. Pangs of pitiful consideration for the big, handsome fellow who could behave so nicely when he chose, vague questionings as to whether the past had not been partly her fault; whether if this were the chance, she ought not to forget and forgive--many things.

He looked very handsome as he lounged in, dressed spick and span in full uniform for church parade. And she, poised on a chair, her dainty ankles showing, looked spick and span also in a pretty new dress. He noticed the fact instantly.

"A merry Christmas, Kate! Here! give me your hand and I'll help you down."

How many years was it since he had spoken like that, with a glint in his eyes, and she had had that faint flush in her cheek at his touch?

The consciousness of this stirring among the dry bones of something they had both deemed dead, made her set to shaking some leaves from her dress, while he, with an irrelevantly boisterous laugh, stooped to swing Sonny to his shoulder. "You here, jackanapes!" he cried. "A merry Christmas! Come and get a sweetie--you come too, Kate, the beggars will like to see the _mem_. By Jove! what a jolly morning!"

A foretaste of the winter rains had fallen during the night, leaving a crisp new-washed feeling in the air, a heavy rime-like dew on the earth; the sky of a pale blue, yet colorful, vaulted the wide expanse cloudlessly. And from the veranda of the Erltons' house the expanse was wide indeed; for it stood on the summit of the Ridge at its extreme northern end--the end, therefore, furthest from the city, which, nearly three miles away, blocked the widening wedge of densely wooded lowland lying between the rocky range and the river. The Ridge itself was not unlike some huge spiny saurian, basking in the sunlight; its tail in the river, its wider, flatter head, crowned by Hindoo Rao's house, resting on the groves and gardens of the Subz-mundi or Green Market, a suburb to the west of the town. It is a quaint, fanciful spot, this Delhi Ridge, even without the history of heroism crystallized into its very dust. A red dust which might almost have been stained by blood. A dust which matches that history, since it is formed of isolated atoms of rock, glittering, perfect in themselves, like the isolated deeds which went to make up the finest record of pluck and perseverance the world is ever likely to see.

Perseverance and pluck which sent more Englishmen to die cheerfully in that red dust than in the defenses and reliefs of Lucknow, Cawnpore, and the subsequent campaigns all combined. Let the verdict on the wisdom of those months of stolid endurance be what it may, that fact remains.

And the quaintness of the Ridge lies in its individuality. Not eighty feet above the river, its gradients so slight that a driver scarce slackens speed at its steepest, there is never a mistake possible as to where it begins or ends. Here is the river bed, founded on sand; there, cleaving the green with rough red shoulder, is the ridge of rock.

From the veranda, then, its stony spine split by a road like a parting, it trended southwest, so giving room between it and the river for the rose-lit, lilac-shaded ma.s.s of the town, with the big white bubble of the Jumma mosque in its midst; the delicate domes fringing the palace gateways showing like strings of pearls on the blue sky.

And beyond them, a dazzle of gold among the green of the Garden of Grapes, marked that last sanctuary of a dead dynasty upon the city's eastern wall.

The cantonments lay to the back of the house on the western slope of the Ridge and on the plain beyond. This also was a widening wedge of green wooded land cut off from the rest of the plain by a tree-set overflow ca.n.a.l. The Ridge, therefore, formed the backbone of a triangle protected by water on two sides. On the third was the city and its suburbs. But--to carry out the image of the lizard--a natural outwork lay like a huge paw on either side of the head; on the river side the spur of Ludlow Castle, on the ca.n.a.l side the General's mound.

A brisk breeze was fluttering the flag on the tower cresting the ridge, a few hundred yards from the house, and as Major Erlton stepped into the veranda, a puff of white smoke curled cityward, and the roll of the time-gun reverberated among the rocks.

"By Jingo! I must hurry up if I'm to have breakfast before church," he exclaimed, as the circle of gift-bringers, who had been waiting nearly half an hour, rose simultaneously with salaams and good wishes. The sudden action made a white c.o.c.katoo perched in the corner raise its flame-colored crest and begin to prance.