The Potter's Thumb Part 8

It was not until a saffron-coloured glint in the east startled him into the thought that he was a confounded a.s.s, that George, out of sheer lightheartedness, ran all the way back to the palace, stumbled up the steep stairs, and threw himself into the high lacquered bed to fall asleep before the saffron had faded into daylight. Perhaps it was as well, since even the Hodinuggur sun, which had been at work since the beginning of all things, might have stared to see a masher in dress clothes knocking into a Moghul palace with the milk. It stared instead at a more familiar sight; at a girl, face down on a bare string bed in the women's quarters, sobbing as if her heart would break.

CHAPTER VI

Naturally enough George overslept himself. Naturally also he woke to feel himself hustled and bustled, for he was due to meet the incoming camp at the borders of his district at a certain hour; a feeling he proceeded to vent on the factotum for being late with the early tea which that worthy had had carried over from the bungalow in an odd little procession, tailing off to some of the large-eyed village lads and la.s.ses learning betimes the customs of their rulers. In addition, George had promised Mrs. Boynton an answer about the Ayodhya pot, and now, even by hurrying, which he loathed, he could scarcely find time to seek Azizan in the old place. Still he did hurry, and leaving the camel which he was to ride gurgling in the courtyard, wasted five minutes in tramping up and down the flags in front of the mosque; finally, in vexation, returning by the short cut through the bazaar. In these early hours it had a deserted, yet still dissipated air, the few loungers looking as if they had been up all night. Only the quails challenged cheerfully from their shrouded cages. In the arched causeway, however, he came on Dalel Beg, most offensively European in costume and manner; for he too was bound on reception-duty.

'Aha! Keene, old chappie,' he began with a leer, 'you sleep well after burra-khana (big dinner) with the mem. By Jove, you keep it up late.'

George could scarcely refrain from kicking him then and there. But the thought that these people had possibly put their own construction on his absence from the palace made him feel hot and cold with rage and regret. To avoid the subject--the only course open to him--he hastily held out the Ayodhya pot which he was carrying, and asked the Mirza if he had any idea to whom it belonged.

Now the Mirza's oblique eyes had been on it from the first; but at the question they narrowed to mere slits of compressed cunning.

'Ah, so! very good. I know. Yes, yes! it belong to you, Keene, of course. Bah! it is worth nothing. I hate old trumpery matters. You are very welcome.'

'You mistake, sahib,' retorted George haughtily, 'this does not, did not belong to your grandfather; it belongs to an old woman who lives near the palace. She promised to sell it to me, and now I'm rather in a hurry to complete the bargain. Mem Boynton sahiba wants it, and they leave to-morrow or next day.'

Dalel Beg, who had been turning the pot over and over in his hand, laughed.

'So you say it is another----'

'Certainly it is another,' interrupted George, annoyed beyond measure by his manner; 'it belongs, as I said, to an old woman. She has a daughter called Azizan----' he paused, doubtful of putting Dalel on any woman's track.

'Azizan!'--the Mirza signed his attendants to fall back with unwonted decision before he went on,--'Azizan! tell me, Keene, a young girl?

with eyes of light like potter's?'

Evidently he knew something of, and was interested in, the girl, and George, now that it was too late, regretted having mentioned her name.

'Can't wait any longer now, I'm afraid,' he replied, glad of the excuse; 'just send one of your fellows up to my quarters with the pot, will you? Thanks, I've no time to lose.'

Left thus cavalierly, Dalel Beg scowled after the young Englishman; then with a compendious oath turned back to the side door whence he had emerged, and, stumbling in his anger up the dark stairs, appeared again in Chandni's presence. He almost flung the pot beside her as she lay curled up on her bed, and then, driven to words by her arrogant silence began a volley of furious questions.

What mischief had the woman been up to? How came it that the English cub had seen Azizan? Azizan, who after all was his half-sister, one of the race, though they did keep her out of his sight. And that oaf, that infidel---- His wrath was real, for beneath the veneer of modern thought the fierce jealousy of the Moghul lay strong as ever.

Chandni gave a jeering laugh, 'Thou art too handsome for the maidens, O Dalel; too wicked also even for the race. Thou needest one like me to keep thee straight. Lo! there is nothing to know, nothing to tell.

Hadst asked last night, the answer might have been other. I set a snare and it failed; for thou wert right--the boy is no boy, but a milksop.

May fate send him death and us a black man in his place, else I stop not here!'

Her jingling feet struck the ground with a clash and she yawned again.

In truth she was tired of Hodinuggur, and longed for the Chowk at Delhi. Dalel, with a sneer adulterating his frown, looked at her vengefully, 'Wah! thou art a poor creature, putting the blame on others, after woman's way. Thy wiles are useless, forsooth, because the boy is a milksop. Then a strange mem comes and he sits drinking wine--my wine, look you, for his servant required it of me--until the dawn; then comes home tipsy after losing himself among the tent-pegs.'

This was Dalel's version of the incident. It interested his hearer into provoking details by denial.

'It is a lie,' she said calmly.

'Daughter of the bazaars, 'tis true! did I not wait till nigh three with champagne and devil-bone, yet he came not? Did not his servant tell me but now I had stinted them in wine? Did not the tent pitchers say he wandered as a madman among the pegs? Was he not at me, even now, to get this pot for this mem, this woman?' So far his anger had swept him past its first cause; now he remembered and harked back to it. 'How came he by the pot, I say? how hath he seen a woman of our race?'

'Ask the Diwan,' she replied coolly; 'for me that measure is over, I will dance to another tune.' And as she spoke, though her feet scarcely shifted, a new rhythm came to these jingling bells. ''Tis odd,' she murmured in a singing tone, as she lifted the pot and held it out at arm's-length, 'we come back to this old thing at every turn, and now his mem wants it. Leave it with me a s.p.a.ce, O Mirza Dalel Beg. I will set it yonder in the niche where I take the seed of dreams; it may bring wisdom to them.'

Dalel gave a contemptuous grunt.

'Thou art no better than an old spay-wife with thy dreams and omens and fine talk. Sure the Hindu pig, from whom I took thee, hath infected thee with his idolatrous notions----'

'See, I go not back to them and him,' she interrupted quickly, 'leave it, I say, if thou art wise. If the sahib seek it of thee, say one of thy women knows the owner and makes arrangement. Tis true, and thou lovest the truth, O Dalel.'

As usual, her recklessness cowed him, and when he had gone and she sat rolling the opium pellets in her palms, the Ayodhya pot lay in the niche. Something had declared in its favour, and wisdom lay in humouring the mysterious will which nine times out of ten insisted on playing the game of life in its own fashion. Then she lay back half asleep, half awake, her hands clasped behind her smooth head, her eyes fixed on the shifting pattern beneath the glaze. The sun climbing up sent a bar of shine through a c.h.i.n.k in the balcony roof. It slanted into the recesses, undulated over her curved body and reaching the niche made the Ayodhya pot glow like a sapphire. But by this time Chandni was dreaming, so she did not hear the merry laughter of a cavalcade pa.s.sing through the Mori gate on its way to the canvas city in the camping ground. A cavalcade of aliens, with Rose Tweedie on a camel, her English side-saddle, perched on the top of a native pad, giving her such height that she was forced to stoop.

'Another inch, Miss Tweedie,' cried George gaily, 'and you would have had to dismount; you will have to cultivate humility before trying Paradise!'

'Sure Miss Rose is an angel already,' put in Dan Fitzgerald.

But Lewis Gordon rode gloomily behind; partly because he himself was in a shockingly bad temper, partly because the camel he rode was a misanthropist. And these two causes arose the one from the other, since it was not his usual mount. That, when Rose Tweedie had taken advantage of Mrs. Boynton's absence to desert the dhoolies which were the only alternative conveyance across this peculiarly sandy march, had been impounded for the young lady on account of its easy paces. He remembered those paces ruefully, as, with low-pitched indignation he wondered why she could not have stuck to the more ladylike dhooli. Yet she looked well on the beast and rode it better than most men would have done on a first trial; than he would, at any rate. But these were aggravations, not palliations, of her offence; still, when, on dismounting, she came straight up to him, her natty top-boots in full evidence, the huge sola hat, borrowed from her father, making her slim upright figure show straighter and slenderer than ever, he was forced to confess that if she did do these horrible things she did them with infinite _verve_ and good taste.

'I'm so sorry, Mr. Gordon!' she exclaimed eagerly, 'indeed I didn't know of the exchange father made till we had started, or I'd have stuck to the dhooli--indeed I would. What an awful brute it was! I saw it giving you a dreadful time. Do let me send you over some Elliman?'

'I'm not such a duffer as all that, Miss Tweedie,' he began.

'I didn't mean that, you know I didn't; but if you won't have the Elliman, take a hot bath, it's the next best thing I know for stiffness. You can tell your bearer to take the water from our bath-fire. And thanks so much, I enjoyed the ride immensely. Mr.

Fitzgerald raced me at the finish, and I beat by a good head.'

'A particularly good head, I should say,' he replied, out of sheer love of teasing, for he knew how intensely she disliked his artificial manner with women. The fact annoyed him in his turn. It was another of her unwarrantable a.s.sumptions of superiority; nevertheless he followed her advice about the bath.

Indeed Hodinuggur for the rest of the day claimed suppleness of joint, in the mind at least. We all know the modern mansion where, entering a Pompeian hall you pa.s.s up a Jacobean staircase, along Early English corridors, and j.a.panese landings to Queen Ann drawing-rooms; mansions of culture, where present common-sense is relegated to the servants'

attics. Hodinuggur was as disturbing to a thoughtful person unused to gymnastics; perhaps more so because a certain glibness of tongue in slurring over chasms and ignoring abysses, became necessary when, as fell to Lewis Gordon's lot, most of the day pa.s.sed in interviews.

Solemn interviews of State, then personal interviews with an ulterior object, finally begging interviews _pur et simple_. The other members of the camp, however, had an easy time of it, their attendance not being required. Dan Fitzgerald pa.s.sed most of his day in vain hopes of a _tete-a-tete_ with Mrs. Boynton, for he was on tenter-hooks to explain the feeling with which, on returning late to the camp, he had found it in commotion over her loss; but Gwen, who always dreaded Dan when he had reasonable cause for emotion, avoided him dexterously, chiefly by encouraging George, who was nothing loth to spend his day in camp. At first the lad felt no little vexed to find himself shy and constrained among so large a party; but this feeling wore off quickly, and when he came, ready dressed for tennis, into the drawing-room tent at tea-time it seemed quite natural to be once more amid easy-chairs and knick-knacks, to see the pianette at which Rose sang her Scotch songs with such spirit littered with music, and to find her busy at a table set with all manner of delightful things to eat. He was boy enough to try so many of them, that Dan had to apologise for his subordinate's greed before they trooped out laughing to the very different world which lay beyond the treble plies of the tent--that mystical veil of white, and blue, and red, which, during the camping months, hangs between India and its rulers, giving rise to so much misunderstanding on both sides. It is the fashion nowadays to accentuate the faults of the latter, but much of the bad name given by superficial observers to Anglo-Indian society, is the result of that curious lightheartedness which springs from the necessity for relaxation, consequent on the gloveless hold India exacts on the realities and responsibilities of life. The saying, 'Let us eat and drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die,' is hurled unfairly at pleasure-seekers all the world over, simply because merriment has become a.s.sociated with a low type of amus.e.m.e.nt. If we change the verbs, the blame vanishes; since to live happily is the end and aim of all morality. For happily means worthily to those who have any moral sense.

Then in India the pursuit of pleasure must needs be personal, for there are no licensed purveyors of amus.e.m.e.nt. You cannot go to a box-office, buy seats, spend the day seriously, dine at a restaurant, and take a hansom to the play. As a rule you have to begin by building the theatre. So it is in all things, and surely after a hard day's work in bringing sweetness and light (and law) within reach of the heathen, even a judge with a bald head may unbend to youthful pastimes, without breaking the Ten Commandments!

But Colonel Tweedie was not bald, and he played tennis vigorously in what Rose called the duffers' game, with Mrs. Boynton, the under-secretary, and Lewis Gordon who pleaded shortsightedness as an excuse for not joining the Seniors against the Juniors, where Rose and George challenged all comers. Yet he owned it was pretty enough to see the former sending back Dan's vicious cuts with a setting of her teeth ending in a smile either at success or failure. Pleasant to see the alertness, confidence, confidentialness between the boy and girl; to hear his quick 'Look out,' evoke the breathless 'I've--got it,' as the ball whizzed to some unguarded spot. It was a fierce struggle and the wide-eyed villagers who had trooped out to see the strange doings on their ancestral threshing-floor, gathered instinctively round the harder game.

'Ari, sister!' murmured a deep-bosomed mother of many to her gossip, as they squatted on one of the heaps of chaff which had been swept aside from the hard beaten floor. 'That one in the short skirt is a _budmarsh_.[1] Her man will need his hands.' Yet an unrestrained chuckle ran round the female portion of the audience as Dan, over-running himself in a hopeless attempt after the impossible, scattered a group of turbaned pantaloons, who, retreating with shaking heads to re-form further off, muttered in wondering rebuke, 'Hai! Hai!

does not shame come to her.' But a third section, ranged in rows, gave an exotic 'hooray!'--a ridiculous, feeble little cheer, started by a young man in a black alpaca coat, and accompanied by still feebler clapping. This was the village school and its master, claiming its right to be a judge of 'crickets.'

'You have the better half of creation on your side, Miss Tweedie,'

remarked Lewis, when, the games being over, the men were resuming their coats. 'What is more, the rising generation of the worser half also.

The boys were unanimous for the "Miss"; we miserable men being left to the support of past ages. India is doomed. Another decade will see woman's rights rampant.'

She turned on him readily, as she always did. 'The boys applauded because the rising generation, thank heaven, is being taught to love fair play--even towards women.'

'At it again!' interrupted Mrs. Boynton plaintively, 'really I must get you two bound over to keep the peace.'

'Then I shall have to hire another camel for my luggage,' said Lewis gravely, 'for Miss Tweedie knocks me and my arguments to bits.'

Gwen turned aside impatiently, saying in a lower voice, 'How foolish you are, Lewis! One would have thought you would have tired of it by this time.'

'On the contrary,' he replied in his ordinary tone: 'the bloom is perennial. I wither beneath the ice of Miss Tweedie's snubs, and revive beneath the sun of her smiles like--like a bachelor's b.u.t.ton.'