On the Face of the Waters Part 8

said the doctor, breaking the silence. "Nothing is easier knocked out of a man, if he is worth calling one--a bugle call, a tight corner---- G.o.d Almighty!--they're over that child! Drive on like the devil, man, and let me see what I can do."

There is never much to do when all has been done in an instant. There had been a sudden causeless leaving of the mother's side, a toddling child among the shadows, a quick oath, a mad rear as the mare, checked by hands like a vise for strength, snapped the shafts as if they had been straws. No delay, no recklessness; but one of these iron-shod hoofs as it flung out had caught the child full on the temple, and there was no need to ask what that curved blue mark meant, which had gone crashing into the skull.

Alice Gissing had leaped from the dog-cart and stood looking at the pitiful sight with wide eyes.

"We couldn't do anything," she said in an odd hard voice, as the others joined her. "There was nothing we could do. Tell the woman, Herbert, that we couldn't help it."

But the Major, making the still plunging mare a momentary excuse for not facing the ghastly truth, had, after one short, sharp exclamation--almost of fear, turned to help the groom. So there was no sound for a minute save the plunging of hoofs on the hard ground, the groom's cheerful voice lavishing endearments on his restless charge, and a low animal-like whimper from the mother, who, after one wild shriek, had sunk down in the dust beside the dead child, looking at the purple bruise dully, and clasping her living baby tighter to her breast. For it, thank the G.o.ds! was the boy. That one with the mark on its forehead only the girl.

Then the doctor, who had been busy with deft but helpless hands, rose from his knees, saying a word or two in Hindustani which provoked a whining reply from the woman.

"She admits it was no one's fault," he said. "So Erlton, if you will take our dog-cart----"

But the Major had faced the position by this time. "I can't go. She is a camp follower, I expect, and I shall have to find out--for compensation and all that. If you would take Mrs. Gissing----" His voice, steady till then, broke perceptibly over the name; its owner looked up sharply, and going over to him laid her hand on his arm.

"It wasn't your fault," she said, still in that odd hard voice. "You had the mare in hand; she didn't stir an inch. It is a dreadful thing to happen, but"--she threw her head back a little, her wide eyes narrowed as a frown puckered her smooth forehead--"it isn't as if we could have prevented it. The thing had to be."

She might have been the incarnation of Fate itself as she glanced down at the dead child in the dust, at the living one reaching from its mother's arms to touch its sister curiously, at the slow tears of the mother herself as she acquiesced in the eternal fitness of things; for a girl more or less was not much in the mud hovel, where she and her man lived hardly, and the Huzoors would doubtless give rupees in exchange, for they were just. She wept louder, however, when with conventional wailing the women from the cl.u.s.tering huts joined her, while the men, frankly curious, listened to the groom's spirited description of the incident.

"You had better go, Allie; you do no good here," said the Major almost roughly. He was anxious to get through with it all; he was absorbed in it.

So the man who had said he was going to tell his wife to cut Mrs.

Gissing had to help her into the dog-cart.

"It was horrible, wasn't it?" she said suddenly when, in silence, they had left the little tragedy far behind them. "We were going an awful pace, but you saw he had the mare in hand. He is awfully strong, you know." She paused, and a reflectively complacent smile stole to her face. "I suppose you will think it horrid," she went on; "but it doesn't feel to me like killing a human being, you know. I'm sorry, of course, but I should have been much sorrier if it had been a white baby. Wouldn't you?"

She set aside his evasion remorselessly. "I know all that! People say, of course, that it is wicked not to feel the same toward people whether they're black or white. But we don't. And they don't either.

They feel just the same about us because we are white. Don't you think they do?"

"The antagonism of race----" he began sententiously, but she cut him short again. This time with an irrelevant remark.

"I wonder what your wife would say if she saw me driving in your dog-cart?"

He stared at her helplessly. The one problem was as unanswerable as the other.

"You had better drive round the back way to the Fair," she said considerately. "Somebody there will take me off your hands. Otherwise you will have to drive me to the Club; for I'm not going home. It would be dreadful after that horrid business. Besides, the Fair will cheer me up. One doesn't understand it, you know, and the people crowd along like figures on a magic lantern slide. I mean that you never know what's coming next, and that is always so jolly, isn't it?"

It might be, but the man with the wife felt relieved when, five minutes afterward, she transferred herself to young Mainwaring's buggy. The boy, however, felt as if an angel had fluttered down from the skies to the worn, broken-springed cushion beside him; an angel to be guarded from humanity--even her own.

"How the beggars stare," he said after they had walked the horse for a s.p.a.ce through the surging crowds. "Let us get away from the grinning apes." He would have liked to take her to paradise and put flaming swords at the gate.

"They don't grin," she replied curtly, "they stare like Bank-holiday people stare at the wild beasts in the Zoo. But let us get away from the watered road, the policemen, and all that. That's no fun. See, go down that turning into the middle of it; you can get out that way to the river road afterward if you like."

The bribe was sufficient; it was not far across to peace and quiet, so the turn was made. Nor was the staring worse in the irregular lane of booths and stalls down which they drove. The unchecked crowd was strangely silent despite the numberless children carried shoulder high to see the show, and though the air was full of throbbings of tomtoms, tw.a.n.ging of _sutaras_, intermittent poppings and fizzings of squibs.

But it was also strangely insistent; going on its way regardless of the shouting groom.

"Take care," said Mrs. Gissing lightly, "don't run over another child.

By the way, I forgot to tell you--the Fair was so funny--but Erlton ran over a black baby. It wasn't his fault a bit, and the mother, luckily, didn't seem to mind; because it was a girl, I expect. Aren't they an odd people? One really never knows what will make them cry or laugh."

Something was apparently amusing them at that moment, however, for a burst of boisterous merriment pealed from a dense crowd near a booth pitched in an open s.p.a.ce.

"What's that?" she cried sharply. "Let's go and see."

She was out of the dog-cart as she spoke despite his protest that it was impossible--that she must not venture.

"Do you imagine they'll murder me?" she asked with an _insouciant_, incredulous laugh. "What nonsense! Here, good people, let me pa.s.s, please!"

She was by this time in the thick of the crowd, which gave way instinctively, and he could do nothing but follow; his boyish face stern with the mere thought her idle words had conjured up. Do her any injury? Her dainty dress should not even be touched if he could help it.

But the sightseers, most of them peasants beguiled from their fields for this Festival of Spring, had never seen an English lady at such close quarters before, if, indeed, they had ever seen one at all. So, though they gave way they closed in again, silent but insistent in their curiosity; while, as the center of attraction came nearer, the crowd in front became denser, more absorbed in the bursts of merriment. There was a ring of license in them which made young Mainwaring plead hurriedly:

"Mrs. Gissing!--don't--please don't."

"But I want to see what they're laughing at," she replied. And then in perfect mimicry of the groom's familiar cry, her high clear voice echoed over the heads in front of her: "_Hut! Hut! Ari bhaiyan! Hut!_"

They turned to see her gay face full of smiles, joyous, confident, sympathetic, and the next minute the cry was echoed with approving grins from a dozen responsive throats.

"Stand back, brothers! Stand back!"

There were quick hustlings to right and left, quick nods and smiles, even broad laughs full of good fellowship; so that she found herself at the innermost circle with clear view of the central s.p.a.ce, of the cause of the laughter. It made her give a faint gasp and stand transfixed. Two white-masked figures, clasped waist to waist, were waltzing about tipsily. One had a curled flaxen wig, a muslin dress distended by an all too visible crinoline, giving full play to a pair of prancing brown legs. The other wore an old staff uniform, c.o.c.ked hat and feather complete. The flaxen curls rested on the tarnished epaulet, the unembracing arms flourished brandy bottles.

It was a vile travesty; and the Englishwoman turned instinctively to the Englishman as if doubtful what to do, how to take it. But the pa.s.sion of his boyish face seemed to make things clear--to give her the clew, and she gripped his hand hard.

"Don't be a fool!" she whispered fiercely. "Laugh. It's the only thing to do." Her own voice rang out shrill above the uncertain stir in the crowd, taken aback in its merriment.

But something else rose above it also. A single word:

"Bravo!"

She turned like lightning to the sound, her cheeks for the first time aflame, but she could see no one in the circle of dark faces whom she could credit with the exclamation. Yet she felt sure she had heard it.

"Bravo!" Had it been said in jest or earnest, in mockery or---- Young Mainwaring interrupted the problem by suggesting that as the maskers had run away into a booth, where he could not follow and give them the licking they deserved because of her presence, it might be as well for her to escape further insult by returning to the buggy. His tone was as full of reproach as that of a lad in love could be, but Mrs.

Gissing was callous. She declared she was glad to have seen it.

Englishmen did drink and Englishwomen waltzed. Why, then, shouldn't the natives poke fun at both habits if they chose? They themselves could laugh at other things. And laugh she did, recklessly, at everything and everybody for the remainder of the drive. But underneath her gayety she was harping on that "Bravo!" And suddenly as they drove by the river she broke in on the boy's prattle to say excitedly: "I have it! It must have been the one in the Afghan cap who said 'Bravo!' He was fairer than the rest. Perhaps he was an Englishman disguised. Well! I should know him again if I saw him."

"Him? who--what? Who said bravo?" asked the lad. He had been too angry to notice the exclamation at the time.

She looked at him quizzically. "Not you--you abused me. But someone did--or didn't"--here her little slack hands resting in her lap clasped each other tightly. "I rather wish I knew. I'd rather like to make him say it again. Bravo! Bravo!"

And then, as if at her own mimicry, she returned to her childish unreasoning laugh.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GIFT OF MANY FACES.