Voices in the Night Part 23

But then he could make the latter for less than they could at the regimental factory, where they had to use filters, and satisfy the inspecting doctor that everything was according to rule and regulation; just as they had to satisfy him at the regimental dairies that the few drops of milk given to the soldier in barracks were as pure as care could make them.

The purity, of course, raised the price of milk to the authorities; but they did not grudge the expense to themselves in such a good cause.

Besides, if the soldiers wanted more milk--and some of the boys fresh out from home were still young enough to prefer a tumbler of it to one of bad spirit and tepid soda--there was always plenty of the cheaper quality to be bought at the sweetmeat shops.

And of these, as well as of fruit shops and sherbet shops, there were many in the bazaar where Miss Leezie and her kind lodged in the upper stories; so that either above or below, the dwellers in the barracks round the corner could find enough to satisfy the appet.i.te.

Therefore the smell of carbolic was conscientiously mingled with that of decaying melon rinds, sour milk, drains, and musk; and the outcome of the atmosphere was left to Providence.

The immediate result was not savoury; especially in the low stuffy room, as yet shut out from the light and air of the balcony by wadded _portieres_, in which a woman, lounging in one corner, was idly allowing her fingers to flirt on the parchment of a drum--one of those small, quaint drums shaped like Time's hour-gla.s.s, which produce what Grace Arbuthnot had told herself was the most restless sound on G.o.d's earth.

It had the same pa.s.sion of unrest, here in this squalid room, though it was scarcely loud enough to stir the air heavy with that horrible compound of smells.

The woman was Miss Leezie herself, as yet negligent in purely native _deshabille_; for the afternoon was still young, and she knew that custom would be late owing to the Artillery Sports. Indeed, she was going to them herself, by and by, with some of her apprentices, in a hired carriage. But she was not taking Sobrai; for Sobrai was wilful, oddly attractive withal, and therefore dangerous to the discipline of cantonments. With an evil tongue also, so that Miss Leezie looked over in lazy anger to the opposite corner of the room, whence a shrill a.s.sertion that the speaker would not be put upon had just risen.

'Then thou hadst best go back to the city and Dilaram, fool!' said the mistress of the house sharply; 'for if thou stayest here, it must be to walk sober, as we all do, to the time of the fifes and drums. My house hath a good name, and I will not have it given an ill one for all the apprentices in Nushapore. So if thou wilt not obey, go! There be plenty of that sort, unlicensed, beyond the boundaries. But we are different; we are approved!'

She leant back with palpable pride against a wall which found its only purification from the rub of red coats, and that civilised flavouring of carbolic in the smell of drains and garbage.

Sobrai scowled sulkily. She had set her heart on going to the sports in a conglomerate attire of white flounced muslin, tight silk trousers, nose-ring and kid gloves; preferably on the roof of the hired green box on wheels within which Miss Leezie would sit in dignified state.

'I did not come hither to rot within four walls? I could have done that in the city,' she shrilled, louder still.

'Hold thy peace, idiot!' interrupted Miss Leezie, 'if thou dost dare to raise a commotion now, when at any moment the Lat-_sahib_ himself may come driving past, 'twill be the worse for thee!'

'Wah! thou canst do nothing,' answered Sobrai; feeling cowed, despite the a.s.sertion, by Miss Leezie's tone.

'Nothing!' echoed the latter, with a hideous laugh. 'Nay, sister, such as thou art at the mercy of a whisper. I have but to make it, and out thou goest, neck and crop, to the sound of the fifes and drums. Nay, more'; she rose slowly, and with the hour-gla.s.s of bent wood and parchment in her hand crossed to stand in front of the sullen figure, and go on drumming softly in imitation of a march. Then after a glance at the other drowsy figures in the room, she leant down to the girl's ear to repeat savagely--'Ay! and more. I can put thee in, as well as turn thee out. Put thee in the four walls of a real prison. Remember the stolen pearls, Sobrai!'

The girl laughed defiantly, cunningly. 'Lo! hast thou thought of _that_ at last? but I am no fool, Leezie. I counted the cost ere I gave them in payment to thee. See you, _thy_ blame for receiving them is as _mine_ for taking them. That is the _sahib's_ law. And then, who is to say they are stolen? Not Jehan. He would not own his loss, if the owning meant that the city should know one of his women, Sobrai Begum, princess, was in Miss Leezie's house. That would be dishonour, for all it hath such a good name!'

She essayed a giggle, but it failed before the coa.r.s.e sensuous face, where the _blanc de perle_ of full dress still lingered in almost awful contrast to the veil of Eastern modesty.

'Listen, fool!' replied the past mistress in the rules and regulations within which vice is safer than virtue. 'Listen, and quit striving.

Thou art mine. Not only as those others,' she flirted her hand from the drum to the dozing girls, 'whom fear of the fife and drum keeps in my power. I would not have taken thee without other leading strings, knowing thee as I do--wilful, ay! and clever too, girl--with patience, sure to do well'--she threw this sop in carelessly.--'But I found the reins to my hand. Or ever I took thy pearls, I knew there were more than Jehan's amissing; for the police come ever to us first.'

'More than Jehan's?' echoed Sobrai stupidly. 'What then?'

'This,' whispered Miss Leezie fiercely. 'Those four paltry pearls shall not be Jehan's leavings on the carpet, but earnest for the whole string of the same set; mark you, the same set,' she laughed maliciously, 'which thou didst steal from the Lady-_sahib_. It is all in the power of the police, and they are my friends. So if thou dost so much as raise thy voice, I will raise mine.'

'From the Lady-_sahib_,' faltered Sobrai, aghast.

'Ay, from the Lady--_sahib_. Hark! that will be the Lat himself coming to satisfy himself all is as it should be. Shall I tell him now, when I make my _salaam_ as is due, or wilt thou promise?'

She paused, her hand on the _portiere_, ere going into the balcony, and waited for a sign of surrender from Sobrai.

'But it is not true'--protested the latter.

Miss Leezie laughed. 'As true as aught thou canst bring; since, as thou sayest, Jehan will not own up. Quick! shall I speak?'

Sobrai sate stunned, silent, then dropped her head between her knees.

So the _portiere_ slid sideways, letting in a shaft of sunlight, a stronger whiff of carbolic, and the rumble of a pa.s.sing vehicle. But only for a second; for in the carriage which came rapidly down the swept and garnished bazaar, ablaze with sunlight, there were ladies, and Miss Leezie, therefore, drew back decorously; to continue gazing, however, through a side slit.

'He hath his _mems_ with him,' she explained to the drowsy crew roused by the rumble. 'Two, and one is beautiful as a _houri_. But they wear no fringe. Is that to be "fa.s.sen," think you? 'Tis as well to be in it.'

And, as the carriage pa.s.sed, the slit grew wider and wider as one pair after another of bold black eyes noted the lack of fringe in Grace Arbuthnot and Lesley Drummond, who were accompanying Sir George so far, on their way to be shown over one of the hospitals by the Head Sister; under whom, it so happened, Lesley had served when, after modern fashion, she had 'gone in for a year's nursing.'

'It is certainly most beautifully clean; it ought to be healthy enough,' was her remark now, as she drove past, ignorant not only of the eyes that were turning her into a fashion plate, but of everything in the environment.

'It couldn't well be cleaner,' a.s.sented Grace, with a faint reservation in her voice; but she, too, was unconscious of those watching eyes, those mimicking minds.

'Quite so,' admitted Sir George dubiously. 'Everything is done that can be done, of course; but it is uncommonly hard to make a bazaar healthy.'

He glanced back, as he spoke, at the balcony above the soda-water shop.

The children, little naked happy brown creatures, were playing in the sunshine. The shopkeepers stood up to _salaam_. An _ekka_ load or two of soldiers in uniform, their legs dangling outwards on all sides, their red bodies jammed to shapelessness in the effort to find sitting room on the jimp seat till the whole looked like a huge toy crab on wheels, rattled past towards the Artillery parade-ground, their songs and laughter audible above the rattle.

So, abruptly, the bazaar ended, and the cantonment church showed its spire above some stunted trees.

The sweepers, having finished the gutters by this time, were at work on the church compound clearing away the litter of yesterday's services; and they drew up in line, the _darogha_ with his disinfectants at their head, to _salaam_, brooms in hand, as the carriage drove past.

Then suddenly, beyond the church, separated by it only from the bazaar, was the bareness of the barracks. A dozen or more of them set at different angles, long, low, all to pattern, absolutely indistinguishable from each other save by the big black number painted on the gable-ends. Desolate utterly, lacking for the most part any reason, whatever, why they should stand on that particular spot instead of upon another in the dry, bare, sun-scorched plots of ground intersected by dry, white, dusty roads. But two or three of them--those farthest away--apparently had a somewhat efficient one, for Sir George said, pointing them out--

'Those are the hospitals, over there, close to the cemetery. I'll drop you and go on to my committee. The carriage can return and take you on to the sports. I can walk--I mean if there is time after we've settled things.'

The dubious tone was in his voice once more; perhaps the renewed smell of carbolic, mixed with iodoform, engendered doubt as to the efficacy of anything but heroic treatment.

The smell was strong in the comfortable little room where Grace and Lesley waited for Sister Mary, and it came in, still stronger, with the latter's workmanlike grey dress and scarlet facings.

'Dr. Sullivan is here, and can take you round at once, Lady Arbuthnot,'

she said cheerfully; 'and then, if you will honour us, he will drive you over to our mess for tea before you go on to the sports.'

It was all so cut-and-dried, so commonplace, so, as it were, inevitable, so almost proper, to this kind-faced woman whose work it was; but the first glance into that unnaturally long, unnaturally bare, unnaturally clean room, with its windows set high, so that the twenty-four beds down one side and the twenty-four beds down the other side should be free of draught yet full of air, gave Grace Arbuthnot a sudden almost resistless desire to call aloud, to clap her hands, to do something, anything, to drive the sight from her, to startle it into flight, to rouse herself from the nightmare of it.

'This is the enteric ward,' said Sister Mary in a matter-of-fact tone.

'All the beds are full to-day, and Dr. Sullivan--but he will tell you himself. There he is, coming from the officers' ward.'

'Have you many in there?' asked Lesley.

'Only three, and we are not sure of one. He owns, however, to having drunk a lot of milk when he was thirsty out shooting, and that is always suspicious. We shall know in a day or two.'

'It comes often through the milk, doesn't it?' remarked Grace dreamily; she was absorbed in the face which showed on the bed beside which she was standing. A face on the pillow. No more. All the rest tidy, folded sheet and coverlet. Such a boyish face--sleeping or unconscious.

Peaceful absolutely, but so strangely aloof even from that long low room, with its endless appliances, its evidence of energy, time, money, lavished regardlessly in the effort to save.

Sister Mary smiled gently, tolerantly. 'I think generally. We always sterilise _our_ milk in hospital, you know.

As Grace Arbuthnot shook hands with the doctor, who came up at that moment, she was conscious of a confused quotation trying to formulate itself at the back of her brain, about closing doors when steeds are stolen, and sterilising seeds when they have been sown.