The Heart of Denise and Other Tales Part 23

"Holy Gunputty!" he gasped. "If I could----"

But it was no time to waste words. Already the snakelike trunk of his enemy was stretched out to fold round him, when with a desperate spurt he reached the door, and dashed in. But Shere Bahadur was not to be denied. He stood for a moment, and then, putting forward his forefoot, staved in the side of the frail shelter and brought down the house.

Sri Ranabir hopped out like a rat, and it was well for him that in the cloud of dust and thatch flying about he was un.o.bserved, for Shere Bahadur, now careless of Bully's a.s.saults and certain of his man, was diligently searching the _debris_. But he found nothing save a bra.s.s vessel, which he savagely flung at the dog. Then he carefully stamped on the hut, and reduced everything to chaos. In the meantime Sri Ranabir, unconscious that the pursuit had ceased, ran on as if he was wound up like a clock, ran until his foot slipped, and the Maharaj Adhiraj rolled into the soft bed of a nullah, and lay there with his eyes closed, utterly beaten, and careless whether the death he had striven so hard to avoid came or not. Then there was a buzzing in his ears and everything became a blank.

"Blessed be the prophet! He liveth." And the Vizier helped his fallen master to rise, aided by the Heir Apparent, in whose heart, however, there were thoughts far different from those which found expression on the lips of the Nawab Juggun Jung, prime minister of Kalesar. The sympathetic, if somewhat excited, court crowded round their king, and a little in the distance was the whole population of Kalesar, armed with every conceivable weapon, and keeping up their courage by beating on tom-toms, blowing horns, and shouting until the confusion of sound was indescribable.

"Come back to the palace, my lord. They will drive the evil one out of him." And the Vizier waved his hand in the direction of the crowd, and pointed to where in the distance Shere Bahadur was making slowly and steadily for the hills. But the Maharaj Adhiraj would do no such thing. "Ryful lao!" he roared in his vernacular; "Gimme my gun!" he shrieked in English. There was no refusing; a double-barrelled gun was thrust in his hands, he scrambled on the back of the first horse he saw, and, followed by his cheering subjects and the whole court, dashed after the elephant.

"Mirror of the Universe, destroy him not," advised the Vizier who rode at the prince's bridle-hand. "The beast is worth eight thousand rupees, and cannot be replaced. The treasury is almost empty, and we will want him when the Lat Saheb comes." The Maharaj was prudent if he was brave, and the empty treasury was a strong argument. Besides, they were getting rather close to Shere Bahadur and outpacing the faithful people. But he gave in slowly. "What is to be done?" he asked, taking a pull at the reins.

"The people will drive him back," replied the Vizier, "and we will chain him up securely. He is but _must_, and in a month or so all will pa.s.s away."

Shere Bahadur had now reached an open plain, where he stopped, and turning round, faced his pursuers.

"Go on, brave men!" shouted the Vizier. "A thousand rupees to him who links the first chain on that Shaitan. Drive him back! Drive him back!"

There is the courage of numbers, and this the people of India possess.

They gradually formed a semi-circle round Shere Bahadur, cutting off his retreat to the hills, and attempted by shouts and the beating of tom-toms to drive him forwards. But they kept at a safe distance, and the elephant remained unmoved.

"p.r.i.c.k him forwards," roared the Vizier. "Are none of ye men?

Behold! the Light of the Universe watches your deeds! A _must_ elephant--_pah!_ What is it but an animal?"

"By your lordship's favour," answered a voice, "he is not _must_, only angry--there is no stream from his eye. Nevertheless, I will drive him to the lines, for I am but dust of the earth, and a thousand rupees will make me a king." Then a red-turbaned man stepped out of the throng. It was the low-caste cooly who had been put to attend to the elephant on Aladin's death. He was armed with a short spear, and he crept up to the beast on his hands and knees, and then, rising, dug the weapon into the elephant's haunch. Shere Bahadur rapped his trunk on the ground, gave a short quick trumpet, and, swinging round, made for the man. He did this in a slow, deliberate manner, and actually allowed him to gain the crowd. Then he flung up his head with a screech and dashed forward.

_Crack_! _crack!_ went both barrels of Sri Ranabir's gun, and two bullets whistled harmlessly through the air. The panic-striken mob turned and fled, bearing the struggling prince in the press. The elephant was, however, too quick, and, to his horror, Sri Ranabir saw that he had charged home. Then Sri Ranabir also saw something that he never forgot. Not a soul did the elephant harm, but with a dogged persistence followed the red turban. Some bolder than the rest struck at him with their tulwars, some tried to stab him with their spears, and one or two matchlocks were fired at him, but to no purpose.

Through the crowd he steered straight for his prey, and the crowd itself gave back before him in a sea of frightened faces. At last the man himself seemed to realize Shere Bahadur's object, and it dawned like an inspiration on the rest. They made a road for the elephant, and he separated his quarry from the crowd. At last! He ran him down on a ploughed field and stood over the wretch. The man lay partly on his side, looking up at his enemy, and he put up his hand weakly and rested it against the foreleg of the elephant, who stood motionless above him. So still was he that a wild thought of escape must have gone through the wretch's mind, and with the resource born of imminent peril he gathered himself together inch by inch, and made a rush for freedom. With an easy sweep of his trunk Shere Bahadur brought him back into his former position, and then--the devil came out, and a groan went up from the crowd, for Shere Bahadur had dropped on his knees, and a moment after rose and kicked something, a mangled, shapeless something, backwards and forwards between his feet.

"Let him be," said the Vizier, laying a restraining hand on Sri Ranabir. "What has he killed but refuse? The Shaitan will go out of him now."

When he had done the deed Shere Bahadur moved a few yards further and began to cast clods of earth over himself. Then it was seen that a small figure, with a driving-hook in its little brown hand, was making directly for the elephant.

"Come back, you little fool!" shouted Sri Ranabir. But the boy made no answer, and running lightly forward, stood before Shere Bahadur. He placed the tinsel-covered cap he wore at the beast's feet, and held up his hands in supplication. The crowd stood breathless; they could hear nothing, but the child was evidently speaking. They saw Shere Bahadur glare viciously at the boy as his trunk drooped forward in a straight line. The lad again spoke, and the elephant snorted doubtfully. Then there was no mistaking the shrill treble "Lift!" Shere Bahadur held out his trunk in an unwilling manner. The boy seized hold of it as high as he could reach, placed his bare feet on the curl, and murmured something. A moment after he was seated on the elephant's neck, and lifting the driving-iron, waved it in the air.

"Hai!" he screamed as he drove it on to the right spot, the sore part over the left ear. "Hai! Base-born thief, back to your lines!"

And the huge bulk of Shere Bahadur turned slowly round and shambled off to the peepul tree like a lamb.

"By the trunk of Gunputty! I will make that lad a havildar, and the thousand rupees shall be his," swore the Maharaj.

"Pillar of the earth!" advised the Vizier, "let this unworthy one speak. It is Futteh Din, the dead Aladin's son. Give him five rupees, and _let him be mahout_."

When I last saw Shere Bahadur he was pa.s.sing solemnly under the old archway of the "Gate of the Hundred Winds" at Kalesar. The Maharaj Adhiraj was seated in the howdah, with his excellency the Nawab Juggun Jung by his side. On the driving-seat was Futteh Din, gorgeous in cloth of gold, and they were on their way to the funeral-pyre of the Heir Apparent, who had died suddenly from a surfeit of cream.

As they pa.s.sed under the archway a sweetmeat-seller rose and bowed to the prince, and Shere Bahadur, stretching out his trunk, helped himself to a pound or so of Turkish Delight.

"Such," said the sweetmeat-seller to himself ruefully, as he gazed after the retreating procession, "such are the ways of kings."

REGINE'S APE

It is a May morning in the north of India--such a morning as comes when the hot wind has been blowing for three weeks, and has shrivelled everything before it, like tea-leaves under the fan of a drying engine. The Grand Trunk Road, a long line of grey dotted in with dust-covered _kikur_ trees, stretches for three hundred miles to the frontier, and to the right and left of it, beginning at the village of the Well of Lehna Singh, which lies but a quoit-cast from the roadside, spreads a plain, dry, arid, and parched--agape with thirst--the seams running along its brown surface like open lips panting for rain, the cool rain which will not come yet, although, at times, the distant rumble of thunder is heard, and dark clouds pile up in the horizon, only to melt away into nothing. The tall _sirpat_ gra.s.s has been cut, and its pruned stalks, stiff as the bristles on a hair-brush, extend in regular patches of yellow, spiky scrub, with bands of mottled brown and grey earth between them. Here and again it would seem there are scattered pools, for the eyes, running over the landscape, shrink back from a sudden flash, as of water reflecting the fierce light of the sun. It is not so, however, for, except what the groaning Persian wheels drag up from the deep wells, there is never a drop of water for man, for beast, or for field. Those gleaming stretches from which the pained eyes turn are nothing more than the bare earth, covered with a saline efflorescence, soft and silver white, as if it were dry and powdered foam. It is yet early, and the light is not so dazzling as to prevent the eye resting on the patchwork of the plain, studded here and there with clumps of trees, that mark a well and the hamlet that has grown up around it. To found a village here it is only necessary to dig a well, and behold! mud huts spring up like fungi, and a hamlet has come into being. Right across the plain is a dark line of _kikur_ and _seesum_ trees. That is where the dry bed of the Deg torrents lies. Only let it rain, and the Deg will come down, an angry yellow flood, alive with catfish, and bubble its way to the wide but not less yellow bosom of the Ravi.

Beyond the dry bed of the torrent, and towards the east, are a number of sand dunes covered with the soda plant, and looking like anthills in the distance. In the east itself the sun looms through a red haze, and against this ruddy, semi-opaque mist, a dust-devil rises in a spiral column, and opening out at the top, like an expanding smoke wreath, spreads sullenly against the sky line. On a morning such as this, two men are beating for a boar in a large patch of _sirpat_ gra.s.s. One man is at each end of the gra.s.s field, and between them are twenty or thirty _Sansis_, a criminal tribe, who make excellent beaters whatever their other faults may be. With the man to the right of the field we have little concern. It is with the man to the left that this story deals. As he sits his fretting Arab, and the sunlight falls on his features, it would need but a glance to tell he was a soldier. The careful observer might, however, discover in that glance that there was something wrong about the good-looking face. The eyes were too close together, the bow of the mouth both weak and cruel, although the chin below it was firm enough. If the grey helmet he wore were removed, it would have been seen that the head was small and somewhat conical in shape, the head of a Carib rather than that of an European. As he slowly advanced his horse along the edge of the field, keeping in line with the beaters, it was evident that he was in a high state of excitement, and the shaft of his spear was shivering in his hand.

_Whirr_! _whirr!_ A couple of black partridge rise from the gra.s.s and sail away till they look like c.o.c.kchafers in the distance. Then there is a scramble, a hare dashes out, and scurries madly across the plain, his long ears laid flat on his back, and his big eyes almost starting out of his head with fright. The beaters yell at this, and the Arab plunges forward; but the rider, who is growing pale with excitement, holds him in, and he dances along sideways in a white sweat--both horse and man all nerves. Two mangy jackals slink out of the gra.s.s, give a sly look around, and then lope along in the direction taken by the hare. It will be bad for puss if they come across him. As yet not a sign of the boar, and the Arab is almost pulling Sangster's arms off. He looks across at his friend, and sees him well to the right, on his solemn-looking black, and he catches sight of a pale blue curl of smoke from Wilkinson's pipe.

"By George!" he muttered, "only think of smoking now! Steady----" He might as well have tried to stop an engine. There is a chorus of yells, shrieks, and howls from the beaters, a sudden waving of crackling gra.s.s, the plunge of a heavy body, and in a hand-turn an old boar breaks cover, and, with one savage look about him, heads at a tremendous pace for the Deg. The Arab has seen it, and lets himself out like a buck, and then all is forgotten except the fierce excitement of the chase. Sangster can hear the drumming of the black's hoofs behind him, and fast as he goes Wilkinson draws alongside, his teeth still clenched over the stem of his pipe. The boar is well to the front, a brown spot bobbing up and down, racing for his life, as he means to fight for it when the time comes. He is not afraid, his little red eyes are aflame with wrath, and as he goes he grinds his tusks till the yellow foam flies off them on to his brindled sides. He is not in the least afraid, and he fully intends, at the proper time, to adjust matters with one or both his pursuers. It is his way to run first and fight afterwards--that is, providing the enemy can run him to a standstill. If not--well, the fight must be deferred to another day, and in the meantime it is capital going, except over that ravine-scarred portion of the plain called the "Gridiron," where, at any rate, the advantage will lie with him.

Side by side the two men race. Wilkinson knows perfectly well that when the time comes he can draw away from the Arab, which, with all its speed and pluck, is no match for a fifteen-hand Waler. He is calculating on gaining "first spear" with a sudden rush; but has missed out of this calculation the consequences of an accident. In the middle of the "Gridiron," the Waler makes a false step between two gra.s.s-crowned hummocks, and Sangster is left alone, with the boar, whilst Wilkinson, with a sore heart, crawls out of a water-cut, and, after many an ineffectual effort, succeeds in catching his horse and following the chase, now almost out of sight.

In the meantime the boar has all but reached the Deg, and safety lies there. Could he only gain one of the hundred ravines that cobweb the plain, a quarter mile or so from the dry bed of the torrent, he would yet live to run, and maybe fight, on another day. He strains every nerve to effect this object, and Sangster, seeing this, calls on his horse, and the Arab, answering gallantly, brings him almost up to the boar with a rush. Sangster can see the foam on the boar's jowl, necked with bright spots of red; blood-marks from the hunted animal's lips, wounded by the sharp tushes as he ground them together in his wrath; already has he reached out his arm to deliver the spear, when, quick as lightning, the boar jinks to the right, and, dashing down a deep and narrow ravine, is lost to view. Sangster saw the bristles on his back as the beast vanished, and the speed of his horse bore him almost to the edge of the steep bank of the Deg before he could stop and turn him. When Sangster came back to the point where he had lost the boar he realized that it was useless to make any attempt to find the animal. In a hasty look round he had given when Wilkinson came to grief he had seen that the accident to his friend was not serious, and he now resolved to cross the Deg by an old bridge known as "Shah Doula's Pool," and make his way back to the beaters along the "soft"

that bordered the metalling of the Grand Trunk Road. It would be shady there, and he was parched with thirst, and very much out of temper.

Failure in anything made this nervous man extraordinarily irritable, and he was in a mood to pick a quarrel on the slightest provocation.

Sangster reached the bridge in this frame of mind, and as he crossed it came upon a curious scene. Under the shade of a peepul, whose heart-shaped leaves sheltered him from the sun, sat a devotee staring fixedly into s.p.a.ce with his l.u.s.treless eyes. Beyond a cloth around his waist he had no clothing, his body was smeared with ashes, and on his ash-covered forehead was drawn a trident in red ochre. His hair, which was of great length, and had been bleached by exposure from black to a russet brown, fell over his thin shoulders in a long matted mane.

Sitting there, he was, up to this point, like any one of the hundred wandering mendicants a man might meet in a week's march in India; but here the resemblance ceased, for this man was of those who, in the fulfilment of a vow, was prepared to inflict upon himself and to endure any torture. He sat cross-legged, and what at first Sangster thought was the dry and blasted bough of a stunted _kikur_ tree behind the man he saw, at a second glance, was nothing less than the devotee's arm, which he had held out at a right angle to his body, until it had stiffened immovably in that position, and had shrunk until it seemed that the cracked skin alone covered the bone. How long the arm had been held to reach this condition no one can say. But it was long enough for the nails to have grown through the palm of the clenched hand, over which they curled and drooped like tendrils. The ascetic's gourd lay before him, into which some pious pa.s.ser-by had dropped a handful of parched rice, and behind him gambolled a grey monkey, an entellus or _lungoor_, who gibbered and mowed at Sangster as he rode up, but made no attempt to retreat--evidently he was tame, and used to people.

Although Sangster had nearly seven years of service, he knew nothing about the East; his knowledge of its peoples and their characters expressed itself in two words, brief and strong. He knew nothing and cared less for the complex laws, the mystic philosophy, the immemorial civilization of the great empire which he, in his small way, was helping to hold for England. He fortunately represented only a small cla.s.s of the servants of the Queen, that cla.s.s who hold the native to be a brute, a little, if at all, better than the grey ape who leered over the devotee's shoulder at the Arab and his rider. Sangster, however, knew something of the language, and some devil prompted him to rein in, and imperiously ask the sitting figure if the boar had gone that way. He might as well have asked the ape, for that figure, seated there in the dust, with its rigid arm stretched out, and dull look staring into vacancy, would have been oblivious if a hundred boars had pa.s.sed before it, and was so lost in abstraction that it was even unconscious of the presence of the fiery champing horse and equally impatient man, who were right in front of its unwinking eyes.

Of course there was no answer, and Sangster angrily repeated the question, lowering the point of his spear as he did so, and slightly p.r.i.c.king the man below him. What came into the little brain of the ape it is hard to say; but it was an instinct that told him his master was in danger, and with a dog-like fidelity he resolved to defend him.

Springing forward the beast grasped the shaft of the lance, and, with chattering teeth, pushed it violently on one side. All the little temper Sangster had left went to shreds; with an oath he drew back his arm, the spear-head flashed, and the next moment pa.s.sed clean through the shrieking animal, and was out again, no longer bright but dripping red. With a pitiful moan the poor brute almost flung itself into the devotee's lap, and died there, its arms clasped around the lean waist of its master. All this happened so suddenly, so quickly, that Sangster had barely time to think of what he had done; but, as he raised his red spear, a horror came on him, so human was the cry of the dying ape, so like a child did it lie in its death-agony. He would have turned away and ridden off, but a power he could not control kept him there, and for a s.p.a.ce there was a silence, broken only by the drip from the spear-head, and the soft whistle of a _huryal_ or green pigeon from the shade of the leaves overhead.

The ascetic gently put aside the dead ape, and rose, a grey phantom, to his feet. So large was his head, so small his body, and so long the withered bird-like legs that supported him, that he appeared to be some uncanny creature of another world. He was overcome with a terrible excitement, his breast heaved, his lips moved with a hissing sound, and he unconsciously tried to shake his rigid right arm at the destroyer. Then his voice came, shrill and fierce, with a note of unending pain in it, and he dropped out slowly, and with a deadly hate in each word: "_Cursed be the hand that wrought this deed! Cursed be thou above thy fellows! May Durga dog thee through life, and let thy life itself end in blood! Now go_!"

Without a word Sangster turned to the left, and galloped along the banks of the Deg. At any other time he could have found it in his heart to laugh at the curse of the mad ascetic, for so he thought the man to be; but the limp body of the dead ape was before him, and its pitiful cry was ringing in his ears. As he rode on he caught a glimpse of his dull spear-point. It was only the blood of an animal after all; but he flung the lance away with a jerk of his arm, and it fell softly into the broad-leaved _dakh_ shrubs and lay there, long and yellow in the sunlight. He pressed on madly; the white line of the Grand Trunk Road was now close, and he could make out a gigantic figure on a gigantic horse. It was Wilkinson; but how huge he looked! Sangster's head seemed bursting, and there was a drumming in his ears. Somehow he managed to keep his seat, and at last heard Wilkinson's cool voice.

"Got the pig, old man? Good G.o.d!----" For Sangster, with a flushed red face, slid from his saddle, and lay senseless in the white burning dust.

In a moment Wilkinson had sprung to earth and was bending over his friend.

"Sunstroke, by Jove! Must get him back at once."

One does not recover from sunstroke in a little, and in most cases it leaves a permanent mark behind it. Sangster was no exception to the rule. For weeks he lay between life and death. There were times when he tottered on the brink of that dark precipice, down which we must all go sooner or later; but he rallied at last. Finally he was well enough to travel, and the sick man came home. He had never mentioned to a soul what he had done at Shah Doula's Pool. If he had spoken of it during his illness, it was doubtless set down to the ravings of delirium. When at length he recovered his senses, he could only recall what had happened to him in a vague manner. But he was no longer his own cheery, somewhat noisy self. He was listless, moody, and apathetic. Over his mind there seemed to brood a shadow that would take to itself neither form nor substance, and against which he could not battle. The doctors said the long sea-voyage home would set him right in this respect. They were wrong, and day after day the man lay stretched on his cane deck-chair, or paced up and down in sullen silence, exchanging no word with his fellow-pa.s.sengers. At last they reached Plymouth, and although it was seven years since he had left England, he never even glanced out of the windows as the train bore him to his Berkshire home. He arrived at last and was made much over.

Kind hands tended him, and loving hearts were there to antic.i.p.ate his slightest whim. It was impossible to resist this, and in a little time the clouds seemed to roll away from his mind, and he was once more gay and bright. One warm sunny day, as he was lying in a hammock under the shade of a sycamore, hardly conscious that he was awake, and yet knowing he was not asleep, his mind seemed to slip back of its own accord into the past. In an instant the soft turf, the mellow green trees, the restful English landscape faded away. A wind that was as hot as a furnace blast beat upon him. All around was a dreary waste, and above, the sky was a cloudless, burning blue. He was once again holding in his fiery Arab, and listening to the curse hissing out from the lips of the devotee. He almost heard the blood dropping from his spear on to the grey dust below his horse's hoofs, and from the heart-shaped _peepul_ leaves--it was no longer a sycamore he was beneath--the whistle of the green pigeon came to him soft and low. A strange terror seized him. He sprang out of the hammock. He had not been asleep. It was broad daylight, and yet he could have sworn that for the moment time had rolled backwards, and that he was eight thousand miles away from the square, red brick parsonage, in the firwoods of Berkshire. And then he began to understand.