The Hosts of the Lord Part 5

And ahead, sidling, dipping, diving to the current was a deodar log with the broad arrow of government on it, now visible, now out of sight.

It was a question of steering; steering without eyes, steering by instinct, steering by sheer experience of logs and their ways, of the meeting currents of the two rivers and their ways.

And over against them, to the right across the broad lagoon, were low brick buildings, and a horde of fifteen hundred ruffians with fascines and earth-baskets finishing a dam that was to alter the currents, and protect the ca.n.a.l! They looked like swarming ants in the sunshine.

The wales were neck and neck now, side by side, straight as a die on the log. Then suddenly, the right-hand one swerved outward. Only a yard or two; a yard or two nearer to the ants in the sunshine.

A second after the log swerved also--swerved to the right. The next, two black heads rose silently; but one of them was two yards to the left of that dancing, dipping prize!

Gu-gu, breathless as he was, gave an inarticulate cry of rage, and shook his fist at the swarming ants. Already their work was altering the currents he had known for so long. That it was possible to allow for this, as Am-ma had done, did not comfort him. He swam back sulkily, his wrath increased by the knowledge one glance had given him, that the log on which his rival was paddling to sh.o.r.e triumphantly bore its broad arrow so lightly, and so near its end, that a little dexterous manipulation would have left the runaway unmarked, and so given its captor the right, not merely of ransom, but of sale!

Truly, it was an ill world for the poor!

But Lance Carlyon laughed, as he lounged over his early tea and watched the river through his field-gla.s.s, in a balcony of the fort, dressed in a gorgeous ring-streaked sleeping suit which he could only wear when on outpost duty, as the regiment had tabooed it. In truth it made him not unlike Tom Sawyer's "Royal Nonsuch."

"The little 'un's got it! I say! Dering, I believe I shall like Eshwara. It's--it's--new--don't you know." His eyes rested, as he spoke, on the low, bastioned building, all hemmed in by temple spires, at the very point of the city's triangle, which Erda Shepherd had told him was the mission house. Truly, he thought, she was in the thick of it!

"New!" echoed Vincent Dering captiously, "I should have called it old.

I thought that sort of thing had died with the paG.o.da tree."

"What sort of thing?"

Vincent nodded towards the palace with an odd, cynical laugh. "That; it's ghostly. Doesn't belong to the nineteenth century!"

Lance turned curiously. "I said that to--to Pidar Narayan--I can't call him anything else, somehow--when he was showing me over yesterday.

And--you know that inscrutable smile of his--he just pointed up to the telegraph wires--they go right across the garden you know--and said, 'There is half the news of half the world over our heads, anyhow.' It knocked me over, I tell you, to think of it; and by Jove! Dering, next week when the Lord-_sahib_ comes--"

Vincent Dering laughed boisterously. "There'll be the millennium, of course. Come along, Lance! It's time we were off to prepare his way.

Dashwood wants it done A1. They are going to lay on electric light, and all that. By the way, Mrs. Smith told me to tell you she expected you to breakfast."

Ten minutes afterwards they were riding over the boat bridge to superintend the laying out of the Vice-regal camp against the coming of the Lord-_sahib_ and his hosts.

CHAPTER IV

UNDER-CURRENTS

Mumtaza Mahal, Roshan Khan's grandmother, lived in a queer little backwater of a house which had eddied itself away from the main stream of the town, and jammed itself against a wall of the palace as if seeking dignity thereby. For all that it belonged irredeemably to the city, and to its evil-smelling lanes. The word house, however, is misleading to western ears, since this was simply a well-like courtyard, with a great wooden bed set in the centre under a miserable attempt at a tree which was used as a clothes-peg, a rack for saucepans, and a variety of other domestic purposes. It fulfilled them to the perfect satisfaction of its proprietress, a roundabout old lady, plump as a b.u.t.ton-quail, who, when she was not asleep inside the arcaded slip of a room on one side, pa.s.sed her time on the bed in the scanty shade, keeping company with a sausage-roll of a pillow and a quilt, both covered in faded, greasy silk. As a rule she did nothing save eat _pan_; though sometimes, as a favour to Erda Shepherd, who came to read to her once a week, she would give a few more st.i.tches to a knitted comforter which never seemed to get any longer. It had been begun, indeed, under the auspices of another "Miss," who had returned to England only to die, as so many do, from exposure, and overwork, and homesickness. For the rest, Mumtaza was an arrogant, yet good-natured old soul, who, despite those tears on her wedding-day, had kept dissolute Walidad under her thumb, and his son also. Therefore, it was one of her pet grievances--and she had many--that Roshan, her grandson, should have defied her authority and entered the army. The great standing grievance, however, was that the "_pinson_" she received from Government because her husband had been deported with the Nawab to Calcutta, was not so large as one received by a neighbour and gossip whose husband had been hanged in the mutiny! The two old ladies came to loggerheads over their respective claims once a month, regularly, when pay-day came round; Mumtaza a.s.serting shrilly that to die in a strange country was more painful than hanging, Ashraf-un-nissa contending roundly that if Walidad had had as much respectful affection for his widow as her husband had had for his, he could easily have caused himself to be hanged; since he had certainly deserved it.

Whereat there would be war, until some one in the alley, or round the corner did something outrageous,--threw slops over some one, or had twins, or imported a new mother-in-law! Then, friendly discussion becoming a necessity of life, the big wooden bed would once more hold two old ladies, two roly-poly bolsters, two quilts--also two tongues!

But these confined themselves, for a time, to lesser grievances; such as the general decadence of the age, manifested by the reluctance of young people to obey the old.

There was, however, no sign of displeasure in the reception prepared for Roshan, when one afternoon, immediately after his arrival at Eshwara, he appeared to prostrate himself at the feet of age; at least so he had said in his letter of intimation. Mumtaza Mahal knew her duty towards men-folk better than to show temper at once; knew also the suffocating effect of ceremonials. So the tarnished treasures of past state had been dug out of the mounds of litter heaped up in all four corners of the arcaded room, and set about the courtyard. An old elephant-housing covered the wooden bed, and to it Roshan was conducted: his grandmother, despite her best green satin trousers, squatting below, on a mat.

The young soldier felt and looked thoroughly uncomfortable. Out of sheer funk of the old lady's remarks if he had appeared in his usual _mufti_ of English tweed and a close-fitting turban, he had reverted to the airy muslins and embroidered smoking-caps of his forbears. He felt chilly, barely decent in them; and, indeed, the whole environment was absolutely repugnant to him. His grandmother's tramways could scarcely be otherwise to one who had gone ahead by express train like Roshan Khan. Thoroughly well-educated, he knew himself to be considered one of the smartest native officers in the army. A first-cla.s.s polo player, a fair cricketer, able to handle cue and racket, and without equal at the foils, he had for years met Englishmen on equal terms in sporting matters. What wonder, then, that he sat looking inexpressibly bored beside the _hookah_ which was the pride of his grandmamma's heart, in that it had belonged to many dead and gone Nawabs? He was simply longing for the solace of a smoke, yet he did not dare to use the silver cigarette case with his initials, "R.K." on it, which Lance Carlyon had given him at Christmas in return for the fencing lessons.

Fortunately, however, boredom and yawns are correct during visits of ceremony, so Mumtaza Mahal crossed her little fat hands over her little fat green-trousered legs, and told herself the lad was improved in both manners and looks; was distinctly more like her brother, the late and sainted Nawab. The fact emphasized her regret that, after a brilliant career in a mission school, a career which must have led to a minor clerkship, her grandson should have taken the unheard-of course of entering the army! If he could even have gone as the Nawab's grand-nephew, with a dozen troopers or so as following, it might have been bearable; but, as Walidad's extraction barred all claim to n.o.ble descent, enlistment meant something very different. The old lady, accustomed to obedience all round, when the dreadful defiance had occurred, ten years before, had called the stars to witness that it was all--that everything was--Pidar Narayan's fault! And then she had fallen a-whimpering, knowing right well that but for the latter's intercession, she herself would have had no "_pinson_"; since Government bars those who can be proved to be personally implicated in evil doings. And now, as she sat looking at her grandson, the same conflicting estimates made her irritable. Why had Pidar Narayan ever put his finger in the Eshwara pie? Yet, without him, where would they all have been? Still, he need not have taught the lad to fence, and so turned him into a mean, common soldier.

Now, whether this was true, whether his skill with the foils had turned Roshan's thoughts towards a fighting life, or whether it was simply the result of natural apt.i.tudes that way, the choice of professions had been wise. His Colonel,--of the old school though he was,--had admitted, when pressed, that the young Mahomedan, _given practice_, might be able to lead the regiment as well as a fresh-joined English subaltern. The newer school, again, playing the _Krieg spiel_ against him at Simla, and finding itself in grips with a genuine gift for tactics, had shaken its head and confessed the hardship of such a talent being barred from finding its proper level. Still it was impossible to legislate for exceptions without upsetting the every-day army apple-cart.

Roshan himself, being sensible--above all, being of a nation which accepts limitations as a law of G.o.d--was, as a rule, satisfied with his future _risaldar_ majorship, and, if he was lucky, _Aide-de-Camp to the Queen_, and a few other t.i.tles tacked on to it. Like all natives of India he lived largely on the approbation of his immediate superiors, and this he had without stint; besides, his whole line of thought had become too military for any subversion of rule and discipline to seem desirable.

Yet the curb made itself felt sometimes; never more keenly than at his grandmother's scornful look, when, in reply to her catechising, he named his income.

"Only that! _Bah!_ Tis the pay of a coolie!"

"'Tis the pay of my rank, anyhow," he replied sulkily, "and I cannot expect promotion yet; the rules--"

She waggled her be-veiled, be-jewelled head cunningly. "Rules! What have rules to do with favour, either for men or women? Lo! thy grand-uncle, the Nawab, gave twice that to a coachman who had one eye black and the other blue because he fancied him! So, if thou art in favour, as thou sayest, ask for more. The _Huzoors_ will give it, sooner than lose thee."

Roshan did not attempt explanation; he simply evaded the point by a.s.serting that the pay was sufficient for his wants. In a way it was an unfortunate remark, since it precipitated the lecture lurking in the old lady's mind.

"And for the wife's that is to come?" she asked, not without dignity,--the dignity of age reminding youth that its turn for duty has come. "And for the son's that has yet to be born? Why are these old arms still empty of thy children, Roshan?"

He had his answer ready; one that had hitherto baulked even the matrimonial desires of his mother, who, having gone to live with her own people, was backed up by sisters and sisters-in-law.

"Because the Most High decreed freedom for wife and son."

It was true. The wife found for him as a boy had died in child-birth.

But Mumtaza had made up her mind to refuse this excuse any longer.

Matters were getting desperate. Here was Roshan past thirty, and never a child's voice to soothe the pa.s.sion which seems to come back, vicariously, to Indian women in their old age. She had been brooding over an appeal ever since she had heard that, after ten years' absence, the lad was once more to be within reach of her tongue. So she edged closer to him, an almost pathetic authority in her face.

"That is but the skin of the orange, Roshan; I take not that as a gift!

There be more wives than one, if the one die, even for the _Huzoors_ whom thou apest. Nay! Light of the house! frown not," she continued, in sudden alarm at his look. "I did but mean that thou wert different from thy fathers. How canst help it? Think not the old woman cannot understand. Was I not young once? Was I not wedded with tears to thy grandfather--on whom be peace! So I know the heart hath fancies, and thine--listen while I whisper it--is--is for a wife like a _mem!_ Wherefore not? Thou hast seen and talked with them--they have seemed better to thee than a cow of a black girl! What then? Have not _mems_ married our people ere now? And with thee,"--she looked round quickly, to be certain of privacy, then leant closer still,--"with thee it would be easy--for there is thy cousin."

"My cousin?" he echoed stupidly.

"Yea! thy cousin, when all is said and done," she repeated, with faint scorn. "Is not the Miss at the palace Anari Begum's granddaughter? Was not Anari Begum thy grandfather's sister? If that is not cousin, what is it?"

He had known these facts before, of course, but they had never presented themselves to him in this connection. Yet they came instantly, accredited by custom. His cousin; if so, his wife, if he chose, almost by right. And yet from custom also, he--too sensible not to have gauged the vast difference between his position as regards Englishmen, and his position as regarded their wives, sisters, mothers--was conscious of distinct revolt. "Thou shouldst not say such things," he exclaimed almost angrily; "the Miss-_sahib_--"

"Miss-_sahib_ indeed!" interrupted Mumtaza with a forced giggle. "Who knows she is that? Not even Pidar Narayan."

"Wherefore?" asked Roshan coldly. "Her mother was Bonaventura-_sahib's_ child and heir. That is certain; else the Government would not have continued the grants given to him by the Nawab."

An expression of infinite cunning crossed the old lady's face; she tucked another budget of _pan_ into her cheek, preparatory to a lengthy explanation.

"Not if it was payment for evidence given, by which Government could find excuse for seizing the rest, and sending innocent people to die in Calcutta? Thou knowest the tale, Roshan? How Pidar Narayan said no word when everyone was searching, after Bun-avatar's death, for Anari Begum, who had disappeared, and how, when the land was being taken, he appeared with a baby, a baptized baby, and swore it was Bun-avatar's lawful heir--that he himself had married them. Mayhap he did. But, look you, Anari was in the palace _zenana_ ere she disappeared. Who is to say she is not thy cousin twice over?... I say not that she is, look you, but who can tell. Yet this is certain, Roshan; she hath Anari Begum's eyes. For I have seen her; but a month ago the Miss who reads brought her, not knowing of these tales; for Pidar Narayan keeps a silent tongue. Her name is Laila,[3] and thine Roshan.[4] Is not that a fate? and she hath thy grand-aunt's eyes; ay! and thy grandfather's land too; for would it not have been Walidad's, if Bun-avatar had not ousted him from the _wazeer_-ship with singing birds?"

Roshan Khan stood up feeling as if he was being suffocated. It was ten years since he had had experience of the fine-drawn meshes of vague, almost useless, conspiracy for which Indian women have such vast capability; it was ten years since, with eyes open to his own advantage, he had cast in his lot loyally with the Government he served. In that time there had not been wanting--there never is in India--others, less scrupulous, ready to trade on his connection with a dispossessed family, and his possible sense of injustice. He had known how to treat them. But this idea bit shrewdly at a feeling which men of his stamp have inevitably--the desire for a wife more suitable to their own culture than they can hope to find among their own people. He gave an uneasy laugh. "These be dreams, indeed, grandmother. To begin with, Pidar Narayan--"

"Pidar Narayan! Pidar Narayan!" echoed the old diplomatist tartly, "Art turned Hindoo, that thou dost count Narayan[5] the Creator of all?"

Then she suddenly clapped her hands together in absolute impatience and anger. "Yet is it true. He _is_ the cause of all! But for him Bun-avatar would have been as an over-fried fritter, a burst bladder, a drum on a hen's back! But for his teaching thee to fence--"

A quick frown came to her hearer's face. "Teaching! Ay! but only enough to make me fit for his skill to play with. I know that now. Well! let him try it again--" Roshan's sudden fierceness died down to sombre discontent--"but that is fool's talk. He is too old. I could not meet him on equal terms." He drew himself up proudly; yet he felt a vague regret at his own acquired sense of fair play. Below it lay a savagery that could rejoice in revenge at any price, and Mumtaza Mahal, watching him, thought him still more like his ancestors, and nodded approvingly.