On the Face of the Waters Part 24

Pleasant and peaceful indeed! that clank of a sentry, here and there, only giving a greater sense of security. Not that it was needed, for here, beyond cantonments, the houses of the clerks and civilians lay as peaceful, as secure. In the veranda of one of them, close to the road, a bearer was walking up and down crooning a patient lullaby to the restless fair-haired child in his arms.

No! truly there could be no fear. It was all talk! He set spurs to his horse and went on through the silent night at a hand-gallop, for he had another beast awaiting him halfway, and he wished to be in Delhi by dawn. There was a row of tall trees bordering the road on either side, making it dark, and through their swiftly pa.s.sing boles the level country stretched to the paler horizon like a sea. And as he rode, he sat in judgment in his thoughts on those dead levels and the people who lived in them.

Stagnant, featureless! A dead sea! A mere waste of waters without form or void! Not even ready for a spirit to move over them; for if that morning's work left them apathetic, the Moulvie of Fyzabad himself need preach no voice of G.o.d. For _this_, surely--this sense of injustice to others, must be the strongest motive, the surest word to conjure with. That dull dead beat of iron upon the fetters of others,--which he still seemed to hear,--the surest call to battle.

He paused in his thought, wondering if what he fancied he heard was but an echo from memory or real sound! Real; undoubtedly. It was the distant clang of the iron bells upon oxen. That meant that he must be seven or eight miles out, halfway to the next stage, so meeting the usual stream of night traffic toward Meerut. He pa.s.sed two or three strings of large, looming, half-seen wains without drawing bridle, then pulled up almost involuntarily to a trot at the curiously even tread of a drove of iron-shod oxen, and a low chanted song from behind it. Bunjarah folk! The rough voice, the familiar rhythm of the hoofs, reminded him of many a pleasant night-march in their company.

"A good journey, brothers!" he called in the dialect. The answer came unerringly, dark though it was.

"The Lord keep the Huzoor safe!"

It made him smile as he remembered that of course a lone man trotting a horse along a highroad at night was bound to be alien in a country where horses are ambled and travelers go in twos and threes. So the rough, broad faces would be smiling over the surprise of a sahib knowing the Bunjarah talk; unless, indeed, it happened to be---- The possibility of its being the _tanda_ he knew had not occurred to him before. He pulled up and looked round. A breathless shadow was at his stirrup, and he fancied he saw a shadow or two further behind.

"The Huzoor has mistaken the road," came Tiddu's familiar creak.

"Meerut lies to the north."

Breathless as he was, there was the pompous mystery in his voice which always prefaced an attempt to extort money. And Jim Douglas, having no further use for the old scoundrel, did not intend to give him any, so he simulated an utter lack of surprise.

"h.e.l.lo, Tiddu!" he said. "I had an idea it might be you. So you recognized my voice?"

The old man laughed. "The Huzoor is mighty clever. He knows old Tiddu has eyes. They saw the Huzoor's horse--a bay Wazeerie with a white star none too small, and all the luck-marks--waiting at the fifteenth milestone, by Begum-a-bad. But the Huzoor, being so clever, is not going to ride the Wazeerie to-night. He is going to ride the Belooch he is on back to Meerut, though the star on her forehead is too small for safety; my thumb could cover it."

"It's a bit too late to teach me the luck-marks, Tiddu," said Jim Douglas coolly. "You want money, you ruffian; so I suppose you have something to sell. What is it? If it is worth anything, you can trust me to pay, surely."

Tiddu looked round furtively. The other shadow, Jhungi or Bhungi, or both, perhaps--the memory made Jim Douglas smile--had melted away into the darkness. He and Tiddu were alone. The old man, even so, reached up to whisper.

"'Tis the yellow fakir, Huzoor! He has come."

"The yellow fakir!" echoed his hearer; "who the devil is he? And why shouldn't he come, if he likes?"

Tiddu paused, as if in sheer amaze, for a second. "The Huzoor has not heard of the yellow fakir? The dumb fakir who brings the speech that brings more than speech. _Wah!_"

"Speech that is more than speech," echoed Jim Douglas angrily, then paused in his turn; the phrase reminded him, vaguely, of his past thoughts.

Tiddu's hand went out to the Belooch's rein; his voice lost its creak and took a soft sing-song to which the mare seemed to come round of her own accord.

"Yea! Speech that is more than speech, though he is dumb. Whence he comes none know, not even I, the Many-Faced. But I can see him when he comes, Huzoor! The others, not unless he wills to be seen. I saw him to-night. He pa.s.sed me on a white horse not half an hour agone, going Meerutward. Did not the Huzoor see him? That is because he has learned from old Tiddu to make others see, but not to see himself. But the old man will teach him this also if he is in Meerut by dawn. If he is there by dawn he will see the yellow fakir who brings the speech that brings more than speech."

The sing-song ceased; the Belooch was stepping briskly back toward Meerut.

"You infernal old humbug!" began Jim Douglas.

"The Huzoor does not believe, of course," remarked Tiddu, in the most matter-of-fact creak. "But Meerut is only eight miles off. His other horse can wait; and if he does not see the yellow fakir there is no need to open the purse-strings."

The Englishman looked at his half-seen companion admiringly. He was the most consummate scoundrel! His blending of mystery and purely commercial commonplace was perfect--almost irresistible. There was no reason why he should go on; the groom, halfway, had his usual orders to stay till his master came. For the rest, it would be pleasant to renew the old pleasant memory--pleasant even to renew his acquaintance with Tiddu's guile, which struck him afresh each time he came across it.

He slipped from his horse without a word, and was about to pull the reins over her head so as to lead her, when Tiddu stopped short.

"Jhungi will take her to the rest-house, Huzoor, or Bhungi. It will be safer so. I have a clean cotton quilt in the bundle, and the Huzoor can have my shoes and rub his legs in the dust. That will do till dawn."

He gave a jackal's cry, which was echoed from the darkness.

"Leave her so, Huzoor! She is safe," said Tiddu; and Jim Douglas, as he obeyed, heard the mare whinny softly, as if to a foal, as a shadow came out of the bushes. Junghi or Bhungi, no doubt.

Five minutes after, with a certain unaccountable pleasure, he found himself walking beside a laden bullock, one arm resting on its broad back, his feet keeping step with the remittent clang of its bell. A strange dreamy companionship, as he knew of old. And once more the stars seemed, after a time, to twinkle in unison with the bell, he seemed to forget thought, to forget everything save the peaceful stillness around, and his own unresting peace.

So, he and the laden beast went on as one living, breathing mortal, till the little shiver of wind came, which comes with the first paling of the sky. It was one of those yellow dawns, serene, cloudless, save for a puff or two of thin gray vapor low down on the horizon, looking as if it were smoke from an unseen censer swinging before the chariot of the Sun which heads the procession of the hours. He was so absorbed in watching the yellow light grow to those clouds no bigger than a man's hand; so lost in the strange companionship with the laden beast bound to the wheel of Life and Death as he was, yet asking no question of the future, that Tiddu's hand and voice startled him.

"Huzoor!" he said. "The yellow fakir!"

They were close on the city of Meerut. The road, dipping down to cross a depression, left a bank of yellow dust on either side. And on the eastern one, outlined against the yellow sunrise, sat a motionless figure. It was naked, and painted from head to foot a bright yellow color. The closed eyes were daubed over so as to hide them utterly, and on the forehead, as it is in the image of Siva, was painted perpendicularly a gigantic eye, wide, set, stony. Before it in the dust lay the beggar's bowl for alms.

"The roads part here, Huzoor," said Tiddu. "This to the city; that to the cantonments."

As he spoke, a handsome young fellow came swaggering down the latter, on his way evidently to riotous living in the bazaar. Suddenly he paused, his hand went up to his eyes as if the rising sun were in them. Then he stepped across the road and dropped a coin into the beggar's bowl. Tiddu nodded his head gravely.

"That man is wanted, Huzoor. That is why he saw. Mayhap he is to give the word."

"The word?" echoed Jim Douglas. "You said he was dumb?"

"I meant the trooper, Huzoor. The fakir wanted him. To give the word, mayhap. Someone must always give it."

Jim Douglas felt an odd thrill. He had never thought of that before.

Someone, of course, must always give the word, the speech which brought more than speech. What would it be? Something soul-stirring, no doubt; for Humanity had a theory that an angel must trouble the waters and so give it a righteous cause for stepping in to heal the evil.

But what a strange knack the old man had of stirring the imagination with ridiculous mystery! He felt vexed with himself for his own thrill, his own thoughts. "He is a very ordinary _yogi_, I should say," he remarked, looking toward the yellow sunrise, but the figure was gone. He turned to Tiddu again, with real annoyance. "Well!

Whoever he is, he cannot want me. And I certainly saw him."

"I willed the Huzoor to see!" replied Tiddu with calm effrontery.

Jim Douglas laughed. The man was certainly a consummate liar; there was never any possibility of catching him out.

CHAPTER VII.

THE WORD WENT FORTH.

The Procession of the Hours had a weary march of it between the yellow sunrise and the yellow sunset of the 10th of May, 1857; for the heavens were as bra.s.s, the air one flame of white heat. The mud huts of the sepoy lines at Meerut looked and felt like bricks baking in a kiln; yet the torpor which the remorseless glare of noon brings even to native humanity was exchanged for a strange restlessness. The doors stood open for the most part, and men wandered in and out aimlessly, like swarming bees before the queen appears. In the bazaar, in the city too, crowds drifted hither and thither, thirstily, as if it were not the fast month of Rumzan, when the Mohammedans are denied the solace of even a drop of water till sundown. Drifted hither and thither, pausing to gather closer at a hint of novelty, melting away again, restless as ever.

Mayhap it was but the inevitable reaction after the stun and stupefaction of Sat.u.r.day, the sudden awakening to the result--namely, that eighty-five of the best, smartest soldiers in Meerut had been set to toil for ten years in shackles because they refused to be defiled, to become apostate. On the other hand, the old Baharupa may have been right about the yellow fakir: the silent, motionless figure might have set folk listening and waiting for the word. It was to be seen by all now sitting outside the city; at least Jim Douglas saw it several times. Saw, also, that the beggar's bowl was fuller and fuller; but the impossibility of a.s.serting that all the pa.s.sers-by saw it, as he did, haunted him, once the idea presented itself to his mind. It was always so with Tiddu's mysteries; they were no more susceptible to disproof than they were to proof. You could waste time, of course, in this case by waiting and watching, but in the natural course of events half the pa.s.sers-by would go on as if they saw nothing, and only one in a hundred or so would give an alms. So what would be the good?

No one else, however, among the masters troubled himself to find a cause for the restlessness; no one even knew of it. To begin with, it was a Sunday, so that even the bond of a common labor was slackened between the dark faces and the light. Then a mile or more of waste deserted land and dry watercourse lay on either side of the broad white road which split the cantonment into halves. So that the North knew nothing of what was going on in the South, and while men were swarming like bees in the sun on one side, on the other they were shut up in barracks and bungalows gasping with the heat, longing for the sun to set, and thanking their stars when the chaplain's memo came round to say that the evening service had been postponed for half an hour to allow the seething, glowing air to cool a little.

It was not the heat, however, which prevented Major Erlton from taking his usual _siesta_. It was thought. He had come over from Delhi on inspection duty a few days before and had intended returning that evening; but the morning's post had brought him a letter which upset all his plans. Alice Gissing's husband had come out a fortnight earlier than they had expected, and was already on his way up-country.

The crisis had come, the decision must be made. It was not any hesitation, however, which sent the heavy handsome face to rest in the big strong hands as he rested his elbows on a sheet of blank paper. He had made up his mind on the very day when Alice Gissing had first told him why she could not go back to her husband. The letter forwarding his papers for resignation was already sealed on the table beside him; and the surprise was rather a gain than otherwise. Alice could join him at Meerut now, and they could slip away together to Cashmere or any out of the way place where there was shooting. That would save a lot of fuss; and the fear of fuss was the only one which troubled the Major, personally. He hated to know that even his friends would wonder--for the matter of that those who knew him best would wonder most--why he was chucking everything for a woman he had been mixed up with for years. Yet he had found no difficulty in writing that official request; none in telling little Allie to join him as soon as she could. It was this third letter which could not be written. He took up the pen more than once, only to lay it down again. He began, "My dear Kate," once, only to tear the sheet to pieces. How could he call her his when he was going to tell her that she was his no longer; that the best thing she could do was to divorce him and marry some other chap to be a father to the boy.