The Potter's Thumb Part 29

'I scarcely agree with you, Gordon. In my opinion there is--er--a savour--of--of insubordination; or, not to speak so strongly--a--a want of respect, in this sudden departure. Of course, the zeal and the--the desire to do his duty--are pleasing, very pleasing in so young a man.

At the same time, a little more confidence in--er--the judgment of----'

'Mr. Gordon wasn't thinking of that, father,' interrupted the girl, with her grey eyes showing some scorn for both her companions; 'he meant to imply that George--Mr. Keene--was better away from Simla.'

'Your perspicacity does you credit, Miss Tweedie; I did mean it. He has been going rather fast, and will be none the worse of saving up some more rupees at Hodinuggur.'

'If he had the money to spend, I don't see why he shouldn't spend it in having a good time,' she retorted quickly. 'He won't ask you to pay the bills, will he?'

'Hope not, I'm sure; but the bearer brought quite a little pile of them to me this morning by mistake.'

Rose bit her lip. 'Perhaps you will be kind enough to tell your man to put them back into Mr. Keene's room. I'll forward them when I write.

Are you coming with me to the Grahams, this afternoon, father?'

But Colonel Tweedie was not to be diverted from the Head-of-the-Department frown he had been preparing.

'I am sorry to hear it. To say the least, it is bad taste to--to----'

'Leave I.O.U's instead of P.P.C.'s,' remarked Lewis flippantly. 'But really, sir, I don't see how he could help it, after all. He had to go in such a hurry.'

'I deny the necessity,' continued the Colonel pompously. 'I fail to see any just cause for setting his opinion against that of--of his elders and superiors.'

'Unless he had private reasons of his own,' suggested his daughter.

'My dear Rose, a public servant can have no private reasons.'

There was an epigrammatic flavour about the remark which, to the Colonel's ears, completely covered its absolute want of sense. He felt vaguely that he had said something clever, and that it might be as well to let it close the subject, which he did by answering the previous question as to whether he would go to the Grahams'. Certainly, if it did not rain; but the barometer was falling fast, and a telegram had come to the office that morning to say the monsoon had broken with unusual violence at Abu. It might be expected north at any moment. On which the two men fell to talking about dams and escapes, inundations, cuts, and such like things, while Rose sat silent, indignant with Lewis, yet disturbed at the confirmation his hints gave of her own fears. George had been reckless, there could be no doubt of that. Had not one of her partners last night told her that he had left George playing poker at the Club but half an hour before? George who had declared he had not time to put in an appearance at the ball!

When breakfast was over she went into the lad's empty room for the bills, and took the opportunity of giving a housewifely glance round to see if nothing had been left behind or taken away in the hurry. The former, certainly, for there was the bottom drawer quite full;--old shirts and ties, a rather battered pot-hat, and beneath the whole a picture.

She stood looking at it blankly. What a very odd coincidence! The girl of her dream! The girl with the quaint dress and the Ayodhya pot clasped to her breast. Why had George brought it up to Simla and never showed it to any one? Why, when the pot was stolen, had he said nothing about the girl? though, on the other hand, she herself had kept silence about her dream. She puzzled over it for some time; at last, finding certainty on but one point--namely, that for some reason or another George had wished to keep the picture secret--she took it away to her own room. For she was of those who regard unspoken wishes on the part of a friend to be quite as binding as any they may express.

Just about the same time Gwen Boynton, still in her bed, was looking at something else George had left behind him, but this had only been an envelope carefully addressed to her. It contained two pieces of paper signed by Manohar Lal. One was a receipt for a diamond necklace, on which Rs. 6000 had been lent. The other, of later date, giving a quittance in full for the same sum plus interest.

How simple! Why had she never thought of such a plan before? But where could she have raised the money necessary to buy freedom? Besides--she buried her face among the pillows in vain desire to shut out the conviction which rushed in on her, as she recognised that if the plotters had gained what they wanted from the empty _dandy_ outside the dressmaker's house, they would naturally be quite ready to deal with George and take money for a security they were already pledged to give.

Which, in fact, they would have given, since the canons regulating bribery in India are strict in regard to value returned for value received. Every penny, therefore, of the money George must have paid for these papers, was so much clear unexpected gain to Manohar Lal _if the plotters had already attained their object_.

Still she was safe, and even if anything happened n.o.body could blame George. Now she had had time to consider the whole bearings of the matter she told herself such blame was impossible; while as for Dan----! If he would only leave Government service and make money, she was ready to marry him to-morrow! She had woven a conscience-proof garment for herself out of the old hair-splitting arguments long before George's dhooli had reached the level plain. When it did, the clouds had banked themselves against the higher hills, shutting out the boy's farewell glance. As he climbed into the country gig in which forty miles of dusty road had to be covered, the barometer was falling fast, and the driver remarked cheerfully, that when the rain came, the cholera would increase. It had been bad at the third stage that day, and one of the coolies belonging to the Government bullock train had died on the road about five miles farther on. The sahib might perhaps still see the body lying there.

CHAPTER XVIII

The last twelve hours before the advancing rains break over your particular portion of the fiery furnace!--who can describe them? Who, having once endured them, can need description as an aid to memory? The world one incarnate expectation, blistering, parched, like the tongue of Dives. The heavenly drop of water for which you long, squandered on the hot air, moist with a vanguard of vapour, so that the breath you draw is even as the breath you exhale. If indeed you breathe at all; if indeed by sensation of touch or temperature you can differentiate yourself from the sodden heat of all things, or get rid of the conviction that, like the devils in a still hotter place, you are an integral part of the business!

And Hodinuggur on this sodden July day had small hope of future improvement to lighten the burden of the present, for it stood on the edge of the rainless tract, in the debatable land of meteorological reporters. Not more than a shower or two from that south-westerly column of cloud was due to bring up its scanty average of rainfall, which came, for the most part, from electrical dust-storms and such like turbulent, undisciplined outbreaks. So the heat lay over it hopelessly, and even the peasant patiently awaiting the return of the smith to mend his ploughshare, did so more from habit than from any expectation of needing the tool in any immediate future. After all, waiting was his chief occupation in life. Waiting for something to grow, or for something to be reaped; waiting for some one to be born or for some one to die. So, the smith being absent over some work for the palace, why should he not be waited for even though the sun was setting red behind the heat-haze? For one thing, it would be cooler to tramp home with the ploughshare over your shoulder. A tall, grave, bearded man was the peasant, sitting with his back against the wall, his hands hanging listlessly between his knees. The painted girl on the balcony above looked down and told him the news, calling him father, respectfully. No question of her trade here, with this dweller in the fields; only a pious 'G.o.d keep us all,' ere she became voluble over Shumshere the zither-player's seizure by cholera that morning as he lay fighting quails in the street. Doubtless he was dying, now the sun was setting; any moment the wail might arise from that seventh arch down the colonnade where he lodged. Whereat the long beard below wagged slowly over the fact that the Great Sickness had visited the hamlet also, bidding a crony or two wait no longer for anything; not even for ploughshares or rain. And then to solace themselves both courtesan and peasant quenched their thirst on huge chunks of water-melon, bought for a cowrie from the heap of green and red fruit which had just been shot off a donkey's back into the dust at one corner of the Mori gate; the donkey meanwhile browsing unrebuked at the edges of the pile.

'Ari! father! There it is. Did I not say so?' remarked the painted one, pausing, as a low moan rising to a banshee skirl broke the sodden stillness of the air.

'Ram! Ram!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the peasant piously. 'It is a bad year for sure, rain or no rain.'

So, having finished his water-melon, he broke a morsel of opium from the lump he carried in a fold of his turban, rolled it under his tongue and dozed off, still propped up against the wall. And the sunset faded leaving the world hotter than ever, though in the crypt beneath the staircase of the Mori gate the air was cooler than outside, despite the fire which flickered fitfully over the blackened arches. It flickered also on the silver bracelets circling Chandni's round brown arm as she lay curved across a string bed, her jingling feet swaying softly in tune with the tinsel fan she waved above the bold outlines of throat and bosom. And the fan, in its turn, kept time with the flicker of the fire, and the wheezing breath of a smith's bellows rousing the charcoal embers into dancing flame, or letting them die down to a dull red glow.

'Thou art long, oh lohar-ji!' she said, looking backwards at the bare bronze figure crouching before a low anvil. 'All these hours to make a key--when thou hast a mould before thine eyes, too!'

'True, oh mother! but the key is not as our father's keys, and the hand lacks cunning in new patterns. Lo! I had made one for the treasure-chest of kings in half the time. But there! 'tis done. See how it fits its bed like the seed of a pomegranate! G.o.d send it may do its work fairly and well!'

'G.o.d send it may, for thy sake, smith-ji,' she replied carelessly.

'Here, take the rupees, and have a care no key is forged to unlock thy tongue regarding this matter. The Diwan is old, but there are others behind him, and behind him again, and Chandni behind them all.'

The reckless triumph of her words rang through the low arches, as she brought her feet to the ground with a clash.

Five minutes afterwards she was looking down on a slender key lying in Zubr-ul-Zaman's nerveless hands.

'I have won the prize,' she said; 'the pearls are mine.'

The hands quivered, and the keen old eyes seemed to seek her out from head to foot, revelling in her beauty and her boldness. Then the light died out of them, the head sank again. 'The game is played,' he muttered. 'The game is played.'

'Yea! it is played indeed.'

The woman's contemptuous laugh echoed out into the dark night, through which George Keene, on a hired camel, was making his way across the desert. Not by the usual road, since that meant delay and Dan's questioning eyes at Rajpore, but by a side route, branching from the railway, farther to the south. A hot night, an intolerable smell of camel, dust in the eyes and nose and mouth, dust and ashes in the heart; in the endless darkness of all things even the twinkling lights of the palace seemed home-like and welcome to poor George, for though the consciousness of doing your duty soothes the mind, it is powerless before bodily discomfort; and George was wretchedly uncomfortable. To begin with, a high-paced camel driven at full speed is not an easy method of conveyance, nor does the necessity for having its unwashed attendant b.u.mping in the after-saddle add to its charm, even though that saddle be to leeward of you--for which Heaven be thanked! And then the lad had had nothing to eat since a hastily-swallowed breakfast at a rest-house, save some smoked milk and a tough dough-cake brought him at the village where he changed camels. So, as he b.u.mped through the silent night on the bubbling, breathing, silent-footed beast, with that silent breathing brute behind him, more than half George's slender hold on the joys of life lay in the prospect of supper, even though it must be one of the factotum's Barmecidal feasts. Such things defy the mind, especially when that mind is lodged in a young and healthy body. Thus while he could set his teeth over the remembrance of that half hour during which his world came to pieces in the hand, he could not prevent himself coming to pieces on the camel.

It was a dark night indeed; so dark that the red-brick bungalow showed only by the white arches of its verandah; rising like a ghostly colonnade out of the shadow. The servants, houses too, were dark as the night itself, and silent as the grave. George, stepping stiffly into ankle-deep of yielding sand, called once, twice; then, giving in with irritation to his experience of native slumber, walked over in the direction of the cook-room. It was too sandy for snakes; besides, booted as he was, they could hardly reach him. Necessary thoughts these now that he was back in purgatory, with death for aught he knew coiled in the path and they came back to him naturally as part of the uncomfortable environment of life. He gave another call without the screen of tall gra.s.s sacred to the modesty of the compounder of egg _sa.r.s.e_, and then impatiently set aside a mat at its entry.

'They might as well be dead,' he muttered angrily, going up to a string bed in the centre of the little yard, whereon he could just distinguish a figure long enough to be a man.

'Get up, you lazy brute!' cried George, shaking it by the shoulder.

There was no answer, and he drew back hastily, shouting for some one, any one. A twinkling light showed from the stables, a drowsy exclamation rose from within the hut. So, out of the surrounding dark, came timorous steps, a hand bearing a cresset, a doubtful face or two peering at the intruder and yielding to surprised salaams; then suddenly breaking into garrulous clamour--'Ohi! ohi! 'Tis the Huzoor returned. And the Huzoor's faithful servant hath been summoned by the Lord. Lo! if the Huzoor had but come three hours ago there would still have been a kitmutghar (_lit_. worker) in his honour's house. But it was the Great Sickness, Huzoor, which waits not; all daylong ill in the Huzoor's cook-room, with great patience, and--Ohi! ohi! the sahib must be hungry, and lo! where is he who gave the Huzoor meats fit for his rank? Oh, my sister! Oh, bereaved one! Oh, widow! put thy grief from thee and prepare food for the master; in duty sorrow finds solace.'

'Is--is he dead?' asked George, standing dazed, looking incredulously at the sheeted figure, dimly visible by the flickering rushlight. He had seen the man sleep thus dozens of times. At the question another sheeted figure, which had crept from the hut into the circle of light, broke into a gurgling cry: 'Ohi, _mere adme mur-gya--mere dil mur-gya--mur-gya_,'[5] and one or two later arrivals, in like disguise, crouched beside the voice, joining in the strange low whimper of the conventional wail. George fell back a step or two, repelled to his heart's core, shocked out of speech.

'Weep not, oh widow!' snivelled the water-carrier, who, being the only Mohammedan male present, felt impelled to the duty of consoler. 'Didst not give him beef-tea? Ay! and barley-water likewise? even as the Huzoor when he was stricken. And did not the master arise to health thereby? Wherefore, is it not the will of G.o.d, plainly, that thy man should find freedom? Therefore place thy heart on comfort---- He will be buried at sunrise, Huzoor, so that the sahib will have no more annoyance; and by the fortune of the Most High, there is even now to be had without delay a servant who can cook--the one that is dead is as nothing to him--faithful to salt, having many certificates, mine own wife's cousin, a----'

George, who by this time was half-way back to the dark house, cursed him and his wife's relations utterly; then bade him bring a light somehow. Meanwhile, scarcely conscious of what he was doing, the lad groped his way into the room where he had first seen her, and, stumbling against a chair, sat down mechanically, resting his head upon the back, over his crossed arms. Would the light never come? and when it came, what would it reveal? more dead men waiting to be roused? Oh, horrible--most horrible that remembrance of the limp---- No! no! he would not think of it. He would think of that other face asleep on the red cushions of the easy chair--but that was dead too--the face of a dead ideal. Ah! the light at last, thank G.o.d! and he could be sensible.

Whatever it showed George, he showed it a mask terrible in its needless pain, ghastly in the hunted, shrinking look in the young eyes which used to be so bold. Even the water-carrier, dense as he was, saw it and understood vaguely.

'This is a bad word that the Huzoor should return thus. It is not fitting his honour. If he had only waited till Fitzgerald sahib comes back----'

'Comes back,' echoed George dully. 'Why should he come back?' Yet he knew quite well in his own mind that Dan also had judged it wrong to leave the fort unguarded as it were, and his mind wandered to the love he bore this man, while the water-carrier went on volubly about the sahib having gone in a hurry that morning and being very angry about something he had lost; something that the sahib's base-born personal attendant had said must have been stolen--as if----

George, looking at all things with uncomprehending eyes, suddenly lost patience, cursed the speaker, quite quietly this time, and bade him go about his business.

'Your honour's kitmutghar's widow can cook food if the Huzoor----'

George did it a third time solemnly. When he was left alone, he glanced round quickly, as if uncertain of what the room might contain. The easy-chair with its red cushions; a bare bed--brought in, doubtless, for the sake of the larger room and cooler air--a dirty tablecloth on the table, littered with the crumbs and plates of Dan's last meal and left in slovenly native fashion to await deferred cleansing. A half-empty whisky-bottle and a water-surahi; that, at any rate, was something, and his hand went out to them instinctively. Even in his general confusion, however, the precepts of modern hygiene remaining clear, he deferred a drink till they brought him some tepid soda-water.

Such precaution was necessary with cholera in the compound. Whatever else it may do, civilisation certainly intensifies the dread of death.