In the Guardianship of God

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

A FAMINE TALE

She was only a cow, but she was all things, wife and child, earth and heaven, to old Gopâl, the Brahmin who owned her.

And, apart from his estimation, she had value. Connoisseurs in the village, as they looked over the low mud wall which separated the slip of open courtyard, ten feet by six, where there was just room for a crazy four-legged string bed between Surâbhi's manger and the door, would nod and say she must have been a good cow when young; but when that was only God knew!

Whereupon Gopâl would raise his shaven head with its faint frosting of silver hair from Surâbhi's silver flank, as he squatted holding a brass lotah in one hand, milking with the other, and smile scornfully.

"Old or young, she is the best milker in the village, and the best looking one, and the best bred," he would say. "And wherefore not? Is she not Surâbhi the Great Milk-Mother, whom even the gods worship? Since without her where would the little godlings be?" And then he would pop down the lotah and cease milking for a moment, so that both hands might be free for a reverential salaam to the old cow who, at the cessation, would turn her mild white face--the real Brahmini zebu face with its wide dewy black nostril, wide dewy black eyes, and long lopping ears--to see what had come to old Gopi; and as often as not, would give his round frosted black poll a lick round with her black frosted tongue, by way of encouragement to go on, as if he had been a calf!

But the connoisseurs over the wall would snigger, and touch their foreheads, and say that Gopâl Das was getting quite childish and mixed up things. Though, no doubt, the great Surâbhi must have been just such another cow, since the old man said right. There was not her like in the village. No! not even now that Govinda had brought home the brown cow with five teats, which had taken the prize at the Huzoor's big show. It was younger, of course, but Surâbhi would outlast the old man, and what more could he want? Then who, before these latter days, had ever heard tell of a brown cow? And as for the five teats, they might portend more milk, but were they lawful?

So long-limbed, whole-hearted, dull-headed, the villagers went doubtfully about their business scarcely less confused than old Gopi between facts and fancies, realities and unrealities; tied and bound, as their like are in hamlet and village, by the allegories of a faith whose inner teaching has been forgotten.

But old Gopâl stayed with Surâbhi. His life was bounded by her. How he lived was one of the many mysteries of Indian village life. He did nothing but look after his cow, but he must have inherited some fractional share of the village land from his fathers, or been entitled, by reason of his race, to some ancestral dues, for twice a year at harvest time he would come back to the courtyard, like a squirrel to its nest, with so many handfuls of this grain and so many handfuls of that, so many bundles of wheat straw, millet stalks, or pea stems. And on these, and the milk she gave, he and Surâbhi lived contentedly. He was very old; if he had had wife and children in the past he had quite forgotten them. Yet it was typical of village life that no one forgot old Gopi or his rights. Whatever was due to him from well or unwatered land, even if it were only so many leaves of tobacco or chili pods, came to the courtyard as regularly as the sunshine.

And, regularly as the sunshine, too, the old man, after he had milked Surâbhi in the early dawn, would go with his solitary blanket and a little spud, and spend the whole day till sunset in gathering succulent weeds for the Great Milk-Mother's supper. It was his religion. And under the broad blue sky, edging a plantigrade path over the parched plain, leaving, like a locust, not a green leaf behind him, old Gopi's mind would be full of confused piety and mystical meanings.

This was the highest service of man, this was Faith, and Hope, and Charity all combined; since every one knew that Surâbhi was the World-Mother, and without her--

Here the old Brahmin's memory of words would fail him, and he would fall back on deeds, by digging at the biggest weed within reach.

From year's end to year's end he seldom fingered a coin, and if he did, it was Surâbhi who brought it to him. Her last calf had long since become an ox, and drifted away from the village to fill a gap in the great company of the ploughers and martyrs who give the coffer of the Empire all its gold and die in thousands--long before famine touches humanity--without a penny piece from that coffer being spent to save them from starvation. Yet she still, after the fashion of her race, gave milk and to spare. The latter went, as a rule, to folk poorer still than the old Brahmin, especially to children; but when he sold it, part of the money was always spent on a new charm for Surâbhi's neck. And it might be noted that whenever, by looking over the old mud walls which separated the village courtyards one from the other, he found that Govinda's brown cow had a fresh bell or disposition of cowries round her neck, there was always enough milk over and above Gopi's wants next day to procure a similar adornment for the white one with its heavy dewlap.

The rivalry grew, by degrees, into a definite challenge between their owners, so that when, after a time, Govinda's beast fell off in her milk, Gopi's delight was palpable, and he scouted all reasonable explanations of the fact.

The cow, he said, was underbred. You could see by her hoofs that she had been accustomed to wander about and pick up her own living like low-caste folk; while Surâbhi bore token of her lifelong seclusion in every polished ring of her long-pointed black toes.

But before the question at issue could be decided, that came about which dried up every cow in the village, and made even old Gopi's brass lotah cease to brim.

There was no rain. Even in December and January, though the skies were dappled as the partridge's breast, the clouds carried their moisture elsewhere. Where, did not affect the villagers. It was not here, and that was all they knew. The autumn crop, which means fodder, had been a scant one, the cattle were thrown entirely on the still scantier growth of grass in the waste land; and when that failed, custom did not fail. The herds were driven forth from the thorn enclosures every morning to the wilderness and taken back from it at eve, just as if that wilderness were still a grazing-ground. What else could be done, seeing that when cattle starve it is not a famine? That is a time when help is given by the new master. God knows why, since the old masters never gave any.

Such time of help must come, of course, ere long, if the clouds remained dry; but meanwhile the flocks and herds went out to graze on mud, and if some failed to return in the evening, what else was to be expected?

So the long dry days dragged on. That spring-harvest old Gopâl's share of garnered grain was scarcely worth the bringing home. The squirrel's hoard in the little courtyard was scanty indeed, and very soon he had to stint his own share, and rise an hour earlier to go weed-grubbing, and return an hour later, so that Surâbhi should not low her discontent at short commons. For that would be shame unutterable, even though the brown cow had long since been driven from high-class seclusion to fend for herself with the common herd from dawn to eve.

Thus old Gopâl's lank anatomy was appreciably more lank, more skeleton-like, when one day the headman of the village, as he smoked his pipe in front of the house of faith where strangers were lodged, announced that the famine had really come at last. Over in Chotia Aluwala there were piles of baskets and spades. Some Huzoors were there in white tents, so doubtless ere long, God knows why, they would begin digging earth from one place and putting it in another, so that a distribution of grain could be made in the evening.

That was the headman's idea of relief-works, and his hearers had no other.

Now, Chotia Aluwala was ten miles at least from Surâbhi's stall, but of late Gopi had scarce found a weed within twice that distance.

So the very next day, when, backed by a pile of forlorn-looking earth on one side and a not much smaller pile of baskets with which the earth had, during the day's toil been conveyed to its present resting-place, one hungry face after another came up in file to the distribution of food, old Gopi's frosted head was among the number. But he was bitterly disappointed at his dole of cooked dough-cake. He had expected grain. Though more than enough for his old appetite, what would Surâbhi, with her seven stomachs, say to such concentrated food?

After his long trudge home he passed a miserable night seeking, by every means in his power, to supply the bulk necessary for the satisfying of those clamorous stomachs. He even chopped up the grass twine of his string bed and tempted the old cow to chew it by soaking the fibre in some of her own milk.

Thus, once more, he came off second best, for the milk should have been his share. So he could scarcely manage to stagger along with his basket next day. Not that this mattered, for already the Englishmen, who, in their khaki clothes and huge pith helmets were supervising the work, were saying tentatively, with a glance at the totterers, that it might have been better to start relief a little sooner. And down in one hollow Gopi saw a woman being carried away, while the babe which had been at her breast yelled feebly in an orderly's arms.

The sight did not affect Gopi in the least. He had thought out a plan which filled his confused old soul with a heavenly joy. So when his two dough-cakes were given him that evening he hurried off with them to the contractor in the background, through whom the Huzoors had arranged for this supply, and exchanged them--at a loss, inevitably--for the coarse husks, the bran, the sweepings, the absolute waste which could not be used even in famine bread.

The arrangement suited both parties, the contractor and old Gopi, who day after day trudged home, hungry, with a bulky bundle of fodder for Surâbhi. It was a fair exchange all round; even with the old cow, who turned the fodder into milk. Not much, it is true, since the bundle was not over-large, but enough to keep Gopi's soul and body together.

And the soul grew if the body wasted. How could it be otherwise, when one was permitted to be the babe and suckling, as it were, of the Great Milk-Mother? The Great World-Mother, whose sacred work it was to nourish all things, even the little godlings?

The old Brahmin's eyes grew softer, more trustful, more like the eyes of a child, as the days went by; and as he milked her, Surâbhi's black frothed tongue often licked more than his shaven poll, as if she were concerned at the bones which showed through the skin of her calf.

Gopâl himself, however, took this licking as a mark of Divine favour; and, as for the thinness, were not all the babes and sucklings growing thin?

That was true. The Englishman in head charge of the Chotia Aluwala relief-work canal had that thinness on his conscience. But what could man do in a wilderness, without mothers, without milk?

He had it on his heart too, because he was a father; and because, despite a mother and milk, doctors and dosing galore, it was not two months since he had seen his first-born waste away mysteriously to death, as children will waste.

So his mind was full of it, when, for the sake of seeing a lonely wife and mother, he rode forty miles after nightfall to the little bungalow so empty of a child's voice.

"I've got quite a nursery of 'em now," he said grimly, "but they beat me. I can't get the men in charge to mix that tin-milk stuff right, you know, and the little beggars won't look at a teaspoon."

Perhaps it was his ride that had tired him. Anyhow, he crossed his hands on the table, and laid his head on them wearily.

He roused, however, at her touch on his shoulder.

"Let me come," she said; "I've--I've nothing to do here."

He looked at her for a moment, then turned his eyes away. "Will you?" he said in an odd voice; "that--that will be awfully jolly."

So in a day or two, armed with the dead baby's bottles, feeding-cups, God knows what, and such mother's lore as the dead child had taught her, she was at work in a white tent set in the shade of the only tree at Chotia Aluwala.

"I must have more milk," she said decidedly, and there was a new light in her eyes, a new tone in her voice, when they brought her yet another whimpering black baby. "That is the end of it; by hook or by crook I must have more milk. There must be some, somewhere. Send out and see!"

So, because when a woman is standing between death and children, her orders are the orders of "She-who-must-be-obeyed," they sent. And, of course, one of the first discoveries made by the native underling to whom the inquiry was entrusted, was Surâbhi. In other words, that an old Brahmin, in receipt actually of relief, was the possessor of a remarkably fine cow, if not in full milk, yet capable of supporting an infant or two. It needs the vicious flair of an underpaid chuprassi to find such chances for tyranny and extortion at the first throw off. But this one was found, and when Gopi returned that evening to the little courtyard, an official with a brass lotah was waiting for milk. It would be paid for, of course, by-and-by. Gopi could keep an account, and the Sirkar no doubt would pay, provided the proper official certified it by a countersign.

The old man was too confused, too tired to be ready with protest at a moment's notice. So that night he went supperless to bed. But in the white tent over at Chotia Aluwala, an Englishwoman's pale face had quite a colour in it.

"Fancy!" she said, "two whole quarts of the most beautiful, rich milk! I would reward that man if I were you, hubby. I am to have the same every day. It--it means four lives at least!"

Possibly, for a baby takes less to keep it alive than an old man.

Small tragedies of this sort are common enough in India, but it is difficult to give all their fineness of detail to English eyes.

Old Gopâl was at once cunning as a fox, guileless as a child; and through both the guile and the innocence ran that bewildered belief in Surâbhi as something beyond ordinary cows. He tried to escape the impasse by not milking her dry, so as to leave some for himself; but though Surâbhi resented any other hand finishing the task, it was impossible for an experienced onlooker to be deceived. The result of that, therefore, was abuse and blows. Then he tried keeping back one dough-cake from his daily dole for himself, and only exchanging the other for fodder. That reduced the milk in reality, but it also reduced Surâbhi to lowing; and his sense of sin, in consequence, became so acute that he was forced into going back to the old plan. But these tactics had, by this time, roused the petty official's ire. The mem sahiba had spoken sharply to him because the milk had fallen off in quantity and quality; for he had not scrupled, despite old Gopi's tears and distracted prayers, to take away the Milk-Mother's character by filling up the measure with water.

And so he lost patience. Thus one day he avenged himself and attained his object by first reporting that Gopi, Brahmin, was wrongfully and fraudulently obtaining relief, seeing that he was, amongst other things, possessor of a remarkably fine cow, whose milk he was selling to the Huzoors, and then seizing Surâbhi, on the ground that Gopi, having no means of supporting her, was not fit to take care of so valuable an animal!

These two blows, followed by the sight of Surâbhi being walked off on her dainty toes into the rough outside world, quite upset the frail balance of the old man's mind.

He crouched shivering all night in the empty stall, feeling himself accursed. He was not worthy. Surâbhi had gone.

How long he remained there speechless, famine-stricken, yet not hungry, he did not know. It was early afternoon when the white garment and brass badge of authority showed again at the door in the low wall, and a voice said sullenly--

"Thou must come. Thy cursed cow is a devil for kicking, and the mem is a fiend for temper. My badge is gone if thou come not. My pony will carry two."

The sun was showing red behind the great piles of earth which in that wide level plain rose like a range of hills, when the oddly assorted pair rode into the shade of the Chotia Aluwala tree. There was no need to announce the arrivals. Surâbhi declared who one was, almost ere he stumbled to the ground, stiff, dazed, bewildered. All the more bewildered for that vision of something undreamt of, unseen hitherto in Gopâl Das' ignorant village life--a woman fair as milk herself, smiling at him gladly, calling with quaint, strange accent: "Quick--quick! we wait, we are hungry--are we not, babies?"

There were dark toddlers round the white dress, a dark head on the white bosom, and old Gopi muttered something about the Milk-Mother, the World-Mother, as, with a brass vessel some one thrust into his hand, he squatted down beside Surâbhi.

He scarcely needed to milk her; perhaps that was as well, for he was very tired. But the lotah brimmed, and another had to be called for, while Surâbhi's black frosted tongue licked the black frosted head between her "moos" of satisfaction.

And beyond, in the shadiest part of the shade, there was more satisfaction and to spare.

After a while old Gopi crept stiffly to watch it, squatting in the dust with dry, bright, wistful eyes fixed on the bottles, the babies; above all on the milk-white face full of smiles.

Until suddenly he gave a little cry.

"Me too, Mother of mercy! Great Milk-Mother of the world, me too!" he said, like any child, and so fell forward insensible with outstretched, petitioning hands.

But that was the end of his troubles.

When he came to himself, the Great Milk-Mother was feeding him with a teaspoon. Nor when he recovered his strength would she let him out of the nursery, for by that time the whole story had been told, with the curious calm acquiescence of villagers in such pitiful tales of mistake and wrong. Every one had known the truth, of course, but what then? The Huzoors wanted the milk for the babies, and Gopi was old--

"He is only a baby himself," interrupted a woman's voice indignantly when this explanation was being given; "why, this morning I made him as happy as a king by letting him suck one of the bottles! He said that there was nothing left now to be desired, nothing wanting, except--"

"Except what?" asked the man's voice.

"That he could see no little godlings like--like me."

Then there was silence.

[ON THE OLD SALT ROAD]

After the discussion on a certain story told by the grey man had reached dissolution point from sheer want of coherence, I observed that the Major--though still standing in his usual place by the fire--was looking into the embers instead of warming his coat-tails at them. This fact, and the expression of his face, convinced me that he had forgotten the present in some past experience.

"The Major remembers a story," I remarked aloud. He looked up with a smile.

"I must have a very transparent face," he said, "but it is quite true. I have been wondering if I ought not to tell you something that happened to some one--to me, in fact--a great many years ago. It seems to me that I ought. You see most of you are inclined to scoff at the story we have just heard; unwilling to allow anything but a rational explanation of the mysterious summons. I am not, simply because I happen to have had certain experiences which most of you have not had. The question therefore arises as to whether I am not bound to give my evidence, and so, perhaps, prevent you from forming a hasty judgment?"

He looked inquiringly round the room, but no one spoke. We were so much accustomed to accept the Major's decisions as, above all things, equitable, that we were content to let him arrive at one unbiassed by our views. During the pause which followed, I found myself thinking that weight for weight, inches for inches, brains for brains, I knew no man who had made a better use of life than our Major. Not over clever, certainly not handsome, handicapped heavily by having to start at scratch in worldly matters, he had a distinct personality of his own which influenced every society he entered. You felt somehow that your estimate of that society rose from his presence, and that he brought an element of sound, healthy strength of heart and mind into the mêlée which you would not willingly spare from the struggle for existence. It came to this. Had he not been there the world would have been the worse for his absence; high praise, indeed, for any man.

"Yes!" continued the Major, after a pause, "I'll have to tell my tale like the Ancient Mariner; and if in so doing I bore you with a few uninteresting confidences about myself, I can't help it. You shall have as little of them as possible."

He was so long settling himself in a chair, pulling up his trousers in his careful, economical way, and poking the fire, that our attention had begun to waver, when his opening words startled us into renewed curiosity.

"I don't suppose," he began, "that any of you know I am a widower; but I am. My wife died a year after our marriage; and the child too--a girl. If you search the whole wide world through you won't find a more desolate creature than a boy of two-and-twenty coming back alone in a strange country from the grave of his wife and child. Perhaps, as Rudyard Kipling says, he has no business to have a wife and child. Anyhow he feels a mistake somewhere in the universe when he tries to behave like a man in the little drawing-room she made so pretty. The twopenny-halfpenny fans put up to hide the bare walls--the little dodges to make the sticks of furniture look nice which seemed to you so clever, and over which you have both laughed so often--the unused basket thing done up with lace and frills over which she was so happy that last evening, while you sate by wondering if it could be true, and that your child would lie amongst the dainty furbelows. Well! I suppose it has to be sometimes, but it drove me mad. I was like the boy in another of Kipling's tales, and could think of nothing but death to end it all; just to creep away and die by myself somewhere. I did not want so much to be dead, but to be quite alone--by myself. You see I had lost everything--for ever--and the rest of the stupid world drove me wild with impatience.

"So I went out on leave to the old Salt Road, which ran right across the loneliest part of the district. Perhaps some of you don't know what a Salt Road is? Simply the Customs line which in old days used to be patrolled day and night in order to prevent smuggling. The cactus hedge had been cut down when the protection system was given up, but the road behind it was still passable, and the patrol houses, more or less dilapidated, stood at intervals of ten or twelve miles. I had seen some of them when out on shooting expeditions, and the remembrance of their desolation came back on me now with a new sort of fascination.

"After I settled to go I used to lie awake wondering which of them would be the place. Not the first. That was within hail of other people and help; besides, I could not so soon get rid of the servant whom I had to take with me in order to avoid suspicion. My plan was to send the man on early with orders to do two stages, and have everything ready for me at night in bungalow Number Three; then I should have all the day to myself. Would it be bungalow Number Two, at noon, I wondered? As there were five patrol houses in all, it would most likely be Two or Four; but if I liked any of the others better I could easily find some excuse for getting rid of the servant.

"This may seem unnatural, but I was really quite mad with a sort of rage and spite against everything and everybody; so utterly absorbed in myself that I felt as if I were taking a revenge on life by quitting it. My own pain being the axis of the universe, the world must surely be the loser by its removal. In fact, my mental position at this time might be fairly represented by that of a man quitting a pleasant society because some one has been rude to him. I had no hopes of bettering my condition; I simply wanted to show my resentment.

"I don't believe I ever slept sounder in my life than on the first night after leaving cantonments. Perhaps it was the change; but I remember being disappointed and disgusted with myself when I woke to find broad daylight streaming in through the broken windows of Number One. My servant, according to his orders, had started at dawn, for the weather was still hot enough to make early marching necessary. He had, however, left me a bottle of cold tea and some provisions, which I ate with appetite. And now comes a curious thing. Though I had quite made up my mind to face death, and all the dangers it might bring, I positively hesitated about starting for a ten-mile walk in the sun from fear of heat apoplexy. It was very unreasonable, but it shows the force of habit. After I had decided on remaining where I was till the evening, I walked round the tumble-down mud building, wondering if it would do for the final tableau. It did not please me, so I lay down and slept, feeling that I ought really to have remained awake and brooded over my grief. But an unconquerable drowsiness was upon me, making me sleep like a child. How well I remember the ten-mile walk to the next bungalow! The afternoon shadows lengthened across the half-effaced road as I tramped along in solitary silence. I had nothing with me save my revolver and a small writing-case with which to inscribe my last words of defiance. My thoughts were full of what these should be, for I had now quite made up my mind that bungalow Number Two was to be the place, and that a very short time would rid me of all my foes. I felt distinctly easier than I had done before, and being, as it were, wound up to tragedy pitch, the cheerful appearance of Number Two as I came up to it in the sunset disappointed me. In cutting down the thorn and cactus hedge they had, as usual, left the kikar bushes, and these had grown into trees, forming an avenue, while a few more shaded the house itself. This was also far less dilapidated than Number One; not only were the doors and windows intact, but at a few of them still hung the usual reed blinds or chicks. As I wandered round the house before entering it, I noticed what one might call the graves of a garden. Broken mounds of earth giving a reminiscence of walks and beds, with here and there a globe amaranth doing chief mourner. Evidently bungalow Number Two had been the permanent residence of a patrol. It annoyed me to find myself wondering if he had had a wife and child, so I hastily entered the centre room, determined to put an end to all useless sympathies without delay. To my surprise it contained a few half-broken sticks of furniture; but telling myself that it would make my last task easier I laid my revolver on the table and, taking out my case, sat down to write. Again I felt curiously drowsy; more than once I rested my head on my hands and rubbed my eyes in the endeavour to collect my thoughts.

"A sudden increase of light in the room, visible even through my shading fingers, made me look up. The chick was turned aside, and holding it back with one chubby hand stood a little child about three years old. I think, without exception, the loveliest little girl I ever saw. Great mischievous brown eyes, and fluffy curls of that pale gold which turns black in after years. She raised her hand from the door-jamb, and placed her finger to her lips, brimming over with laughter.

"'Hush!! Ma-ma's a-teep. Dot's 'un away.'

"Such a ripple of a voice, musical with happiness. I was always fond of children, and this one was of the sort any man would notice--perhaps covet. I laid down my pen, forgetful of interruption.

"'Dot has run away, has she? That's very naughty of Dot, isn't it? But as she has run away she had better come in here. You are not afraid of me, are you?'

"She was already in the room; then I noticed for the first time that she was in her nightgown--a straight white thing like they put the angels into, and her small bare feet made no noise on the floor.

"'Dot's not af'aid. Dot's never af'aid. Dot's a b'aave girl. Dada says so.'

"She spoke more to herself than to me, and the words were evidently a formula well known and often repeated.

"'Who is Dada?' I asked, feeling the first curiosity that had had power to touch me for many days.

"Dot had raised herself to the level of the table with her tiny hands, and now stood on tiptoe opposite me. Her fair curls framed her face, as her laughing brown eyes fixed themselves on my revolver.

"'Dada's?' she said coaxingly. 'Dot wants to make a puff-puff-boom!'

"The childish words evoked a quick horror, why, I cannot tell; but a sudden vision of myself as I should be in that lonely room after the dull report rose up and blinded me. Somehow the coaxing babyish phrase filled me with an awful revulsion of feeling. My head sank into my hands; when I raised it the child had gone.

"I went into the verandah uncertain what to do. The room next mine had a chick also, so that I could not see in from the outside, but from within came a low crooning song like a lullaby. Every now and again little bursts of a child's voice. Dot, no doubt, recaptured and soothed to sleep. It was evident that the bungalow was occupied by others beside myself, for in the gathering dusk I thought I saw some white forms flitting about the servants' quarters. I wondered faintly at the latter, for I had a half recollection of noticing that the huts were entirely in ruins. My mind, however, had now reverted to its original purpose with increased strength, and I returned to the room considering what had best be done. The child's words, 'Dot's not af'aid! Dot wants to make a puff-puff-boom,' would not keep out of my head. After all, was it not only another way of phrasing my own desire? I was not afraid. Not afraid of what? Amid these questionings one thing was certain. It could not be bungalow Number Two-- I would not frighten the child Ah, no! I could not frighten Dot for ever with the awful puff-puff-boom I had set myself to make.

"It must therefore be Number Four, so I packed up my writing things and set off to rejoin my servant at Number Three. How childish we are! As I trudged along I caught myself smiling more than once over the recollection of Dot's mischievous face at the door. My servant was patiently awaiting my arrival beside the dinner he had cooked for me. Supposing I had not turned up--according to my original plan--he would have waited calmly all night long, keeping his 'clear soup, chikhun cutlet, custel pudden' hot for a dead man. I must have been less mad, for the humour of the idea struck me at the time, and I laughed. He gravely asked why I had not brought on my pillow and sheets, and I laughed again as I told him I meant to do without them in the future. Everything was clear now. Fate had settled on Number Four, so there was nothing to worry or hustle about. I bade him call me early, determined this time to have all the day to myself. Then I fell asleep to dream the night long of Dot and the revolver. Indeed my thoughts were so full of her, that even when I woke I fancied, more than once, that I heard her voice in the verandah, though I knew it could only be a trick of fancy, for the bungalow was a perfect wreck, and even the room I occupied had but half a roof.

"It must have been about eleven o'clock ere I reached Number Four, which stood off the road a little and was much smaller than any of the other bungalows. Indeed it consisted of but two rooms opening the one into the other. It looked the very picture of desolation, planted square in the open with a single kikar tree struggling for life in one corner of the enclosure. Yet it was the best preserved of all the patrol-houses; perhaps because of its smaller size and greater compactness. Anyhow it needed little to fit it for habitation, and as I found out afterwards it was constantly used by the civil officers when on their tours of inspection. At the time, however, I was surprised to find signs of recent occupation about it in the shape of earthen pots and half-burnt sticks in a mud fireplace. Going into the outer room I found it contained, like Number Two, a few bits of furniture, and feeling weary I sat down by the table without looking into the other room, only a portion of which was visible through the half-closed door.

"Once more I laid my revolver beside me, and took out my writing materials. I had just begun my task when a deadly disgust at the whole business came over me, and I resolved to end everything without further delay. My hand sought the revolver, and fingered it mechanically to see if it were loaded. A sense of strangeness made me look at it, when, to my intense surprise, I found it was not my own weapon. This was an old-fashioned heavy revolver, and one of the chambers had evidently been recently fired. As I laid it down, astonished beyond measure, I saw my own on the table beside it!

"Whose then was the other? Did it belong to some one else in the bungalow? Was I once more to be disturbed? I rose instinctively and pushed open the door leading into the inner room. To my still greater surprise I found it littered with half-open boxes and various things lying about in great confusion. A few common toys were on the floor; on the bare string bed a bundle of bedding; on the table a heap of towels, and a basin of water ominously tinged with red. The fireplace was on the other side of the room beyond the table, and crouched beside it on the floor was a woman closely huddled up in a common grey shawl. She held something under its folds on her knee; something that drew breath in long gasping sighs, with a fatal pause between them.

"'I beg your pardon,' I stammered, intending to retire. Just then the woman looking up, showed me a young face, so wild with grief and terror that I paused irresolute.

"' Will no one come!' she wailed, seeming to look past me with eyes blind with grief. 'O God--dear God! will no one ever come?' Then, as her face fell again over the burden on her lap, she moaned like an animal in mortal agony. But above the moan I could still hear that curious gasping sigh. 'Can I not help?' I asked. She gave no reply, so I went up and stood beside her. Still she seemed unconscious of my presence, for once more came the wail. 'Will nobody come? O my God! will nobody come to help?' 'I have come,' I answered, touching her on the arm. She looked at me then, and a curious thrill made me feel quite dizzy for a moment. Perhaps that was the reason why both face and voice seemed to me changed and altered. Her eyes met mine doubtfully.

"'You did not come before,' she said. 'No one ever came--no one, no one.'

"As I removed my hand she bent once more over her burden with the same piteous moan.

"Evidently she was stupefied by horror and suspense, so I gently raised her shawl to see what was the matter.

"Great heavens! What a sight! After all these years I seem to see it now. Fair silky curls dabbled in blood that welled up from under the handkerchief which the woman held convulsively to the little white breast. One chubby hand thrown out stiff and clenched; great brown eyes glazed and dim; grey lips where each gasping sigh sent a tinge of red.

"'Dot!' I exclaimed, dropping on my knees the better to assure myself of the awful truth.

"The familiar name seemed to rouse the wavering life.

"'Dots not af'aid. Dot--only--wanted to make--a puff-puff-boom.'

"The words seemed to float in the air. I heard them as in a dream; and as in a dream also came an insight into what had happened. Dada's revolver within reach of those tiny hands. O Dot! poor little brave Dot! I felt helpless before the awful tragedy. Once I tried to take the child, but the woman resisted silently, nor could I get her to listen to my entreaties that she should at least move to an easier position. At last, seeing I could do nothing, and acknowledging sorrowfully that nothing I could do was likely to be of any avail, I contented myself with waiting beside her in silence, until the end. And as I waited a coherent story grew out of what I knew, and what I guessed. They had come on early that morning, the father on his way further afield, the mother and child to remain in the little bungalow till his return. Then all in a minute the accident; and then the only servant had been sent forth wildly for help whilst the wretched woman waited alone. Yes! that must have been it. So clear, so simple, so awful in its very simplicity.

"There was not a sound in the house save at intervals the woman's moan. 'Will no one ever come! O God; will no one ever come!' and always distinct above it the child's gasping sigh with a soft rattle in it.

"How long this lasted I cannot say. It was like some hideous nightmare, until suddenly the sighing ceased, and I became conscious of an immeasurable relief. Yet I knew the silence meant death.

"The woman did not move or notice me in any way, so once more I touched her on the arm.

"'There is no need to watch longer,' I said; 'Dot is asleep at last. It is your turn to rest. Give me the child, and believe me there is nothing to be done now.'

"As before, she raised her face to mine, and the same thrill came over me as I recognised an unmistakable change in features and voice; a deadening of expression, a hardening of the tone into a certain fretfulness.

"'But there is a great deal to be done,' she replied rapidly. 'Oh! so much. How can you know? We must dig the grave under the kikar tree and bury her in the sand--for it is sand below, and it creeps and creeps into the grave and will not leave room for Dot. And the night must fall--oh, so dark!--before her father gets home. There will hardly be time to dig the little grave before sunrise; and it must be dug--you know it must--'

"Her words seemed to me wild and distraught. To soothe her I repeated that there was plenty of time.

"She frowned, closed her eyes with one hand, and again replied in a curiously rapid, even tone.

"'No! no! there never has been time. It is always a hurry. Out in the dark digging the grave, and the sand slipping, slipping, slipping till there is no room. I have done it,--oh! so many times.'

"I was puzzled what to do or say. The wisest course seemed to leave her to herself until help arrived. So after one or two ineffectual attempts at consolation I went outside in despair to see if the assistance so sorely needed was not in sight. Surely it could not be delayed much longer. I was surprised to find how late it was: noon had long passed, and cool shadows were stretching themselves athwart the parched ground. One, darker and cooler than the rest, lay eastward of the solitary kikar tree. Here it was that the little grave was to be dug if the mother's wish were fulfilled. Quite mechanically I strolled to the spot, impelled by sad curiosity.

"As I approached, the fragments of a low railing, half standing, half lying, in a small oblong, made me wonder if the enclosure had already been a resting-place. That might account for the mother's wish. Yes! there was a grave; a tiny grave no bigger than little Dot's would be, with a roughly-hewn cross as a headstone.

"I bent to read the inscription:--

HERE LIES
Our Little Darling Dot.
1840.

"Dot! I stood up with heart and brain in a whirl. Dot! 1840. Five-and-twenty years ago, and Dot had died but half-an-hour before. What did it mean? What did it mean?

"A sudden fear of the solitude and silence of the place fell upon me. But for shame I would have turned tail on it then and there. As it was, scorn of my own suspicions made me return to the house. How still it was! how desolate. I remember standing at the outer door listening in vain for some sound within; I remember seeing my revolver and writing-case on the table in the outer room; I remember nerving myself to push open the inner door, but I remember no more.

* * * * *

"They told me in hospital that I must have tripped over the broken flooring between the two rooms, and in falling have cut my head against the lintel.

"Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn't. I only know that something--God knows what--stood between me and my madness, so that when I came to myself it was gone for ever. In its place had grown up a craving to live--to hear, to see, to know, to understand.

"As I got better I used to lie and cry like a woman. Then the other fellows would say it was all weakness, and that I must be a man and bear up. And sometimes I would lie and smile. Then they said I was a trump with more pluck than they had. And as often as not I wasn't thinking of myself or my own troubles at all, but of brave little Dot and her desire for a puff-puff-boom.

"They sent me down the Indus to Bombay, so as to avoid the rattle of the train, for my head was still weak. We stuck on a sandbank at Sukkhur, being made unmanageable by two flats we were towing. They were laden mostly with cargo, but carried a good many third-class passengers. I don't know why I had risen from my sick-bed full of a great curiosity, but I had. Somehow I never seemed to have looked at life before, whereas now everything interested me. So I went down to the flats and talked to the people. There was a cabin on one, carrying a few second-class passengers, and as I was walking along a gangway between some bales I saw an Englishwoman, holding a child on her lap. The crouching attitude struck me as familiar; I stopped and spoke about the weather or something. She looked up, and then I knew where I had seen that attitude, for it was Dot's mother. I don't think I should have recognised her--for she was an old woman with grey hair--but for the remembrance of the changed look which, as you may recollect, she had when I roused her in the bungalow by touching her arm.

"'Is that your child?' I asked courteously, for, poorly dressed as she was, her face was unmistakably refined.

"'No!' she replied; and I recognised the somewhat querulous voice. 'It's my granddaughter, but I am as fond of her as if she were my own--almost.'

"As she spoke she shifted the child's head higher up on her arm, and I saw a mass of fluffy light gold curls.

"'Perhaps she reminds you of your own,' I continued at a venture, anxious only to make her talk.

"A faint curiosity came to her worn face.

"'It's funny you should say so--just as if you had seen our Dot. So like--so wonderfully like. Sometimes it seems as if she had come back again, yet it is five-and-twenty years since I lost her.'

"'That is a long time.'

"'A long, long time to remember, isn't it? And I've had so many and lost so many. But I never forgot Dot--she was so pretty! Ah, well! I daresay it would have been against her, poor lamb. "Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain."'

"She lulled the child on her lap to deeper slumber with a gentle rocking. It seemed to me as if she were soothing regret to sleep also.

"'She had curls like this one?' I remarked, cruelly anxious to keep her to the subject.

"Once more she looked at me with that oddly familiar bewilderment.

"'I can't think where I've seen you before,' she said after a pause. 'I never met you in those old days, did I? Ah, well! I've lived so long and travelled so far that I can't remember it all. Sometimes I seem to forget everything except what I see--and Dot. I never forget her. Only last month I was coming down the river not far from the place where the little dear shot herself--she was playing with her father's revolver, you know--and I seemed to go through it all again. Her father--he left the Salt soon after--was downright vexed with me because I fretted so. He said no good could come of remembering grief so long. But I don't know. I've heard it said that there is only so much sorrow and happiness in the world; then if one person gets a lot there must be less trouble left for others. I've held on to my share anyhow, though maybe, as father says, it isn't any good.'

"Her tired eyes sought the distant sandhills wistfully and her mouth trembled a little.

"Just then the whistle sounded, bidding all stragglers go on board the steamer.

"'Good-by,' said I, holding out my hand. 'To-morrow, if I may, I will come again and tell you what your unforgotten grief did for me.'

"But next morning I found that the flat had been left at its destination during the night. That is all."

There was a long pause.

"And your explanation?" asked a somewhat tremulous voice from a dark corner.

"Gentlemen," said the Major, "I have none to offer. What I know is this. Somehow--God knows how--I saw that mother's unforgotten grief, and it saved me from shirking my share."

[THE DOLL-MAKER]

"Christmas Eve!" echoed Mrs. Langford. "Yes! I suppose it is; but I had forgotten--there isn't much to remind one of it in India--is there?"

As she paused half-way up the verandah steps she glanced back at the creeper-hung porch where the high spider-cart, in which she had come home from the club, waited for its owner to return to the box-seat. He seemed in no hurry to do so, and his glance followed hers as he stood on the step below her. He was a tall man, so his face was on a level with hers, and the two showed young, handsome--hers a trifle pale, his a trifle red.

There was a stretch of garden visible beyond the creepers. It was not flowerful, since Christmas, even in India, comes when the tide of sap, the flow of life, is at its lowest; yet, in the growing dusk, the great scarlet hands of the poinsettias could be seen thrusting themselves out wickedly from the leafy shadows as if to clutch the faint white stars of the oleanders blossoming above them; and there was a bunch of Maréchal Niel roses in the silver belt of the woman's white tennis dress, which told of sweeter, more home-like blossom.

"And it is just as well," she continued, with a bitter little laugh, "that there isn't, for it's a deadly, dreary time--"

"All times are dreary," assented the tall man in a low voice, rapidly, passionately, "when there is no one who cares--"

"There is my husband," she interrupted, this time with a nervous laugh. The answer fitted doubly, for she turned to a figure which at that moment came out of the soft rose-tinted light of the room within, and said in a faintly fretful tone, "You don't mean to say, George, surely, that you've been working till now?"

"Working!" echoed George Langford, absently. "Yes! why not? Ah! is that you, Campbell? Brought the missus home, like a good chap. Sorry I couldn't come, my dear; but there was a beastly report overdue, so now I've only time for a spin on the bicycle before dinner, for I must have some exercise. By the way, Laura, you'd better send off your home letter without mine. I really haven't had time to write to the boys this mail."

He was busy now, in the same absent, preoccupied, yet energetic way, in seeing to the machine, which a red-coated servant held for him; but he looked up quickly at his wife's reply--

"I haven't written either."

"Haven't you? That's a pity," he began, then paused, with a vaguely unquiet look at her and her tall companion, which merged, however, into a good-natured smile. "Well, they won't know it was Christmas mail anyhow. 'Pon my soul I'd forgotten it myself, Campbell, or I'd have made a point.... But there's the devil of a crush of work just now, though I shall clear some of the arrears off to-morrow. That's about the only good of a holiday to me!" He was off as he spoke--a shadow gliding into the shadows, where the red hands of the poinsettias and the white stars of the oleanders showed fainter as the dusk deepened.

But he left a pair of covetous, entreating hands and a white face behind him in the verandah, between the rosy light of comfort from within and the grey gloom of the world without.

"It cannot go on--this sort of thing--for ever," said the man, still in that low, passionate voice. "It will kill--"

"Kill him? Do you think so?" she interrupted, still with that little half-nervous, half-bitter laugh. "I don't; he's awfully strong and awfully clever, you know."

The owner of the dogcart turned to it impatiently.

"You will come to-morrow at eleven, anyhow," he said, bringing the patience back to his voice with an effort, for it seemed to him--as it so often seems to a man--that the woman did not know what she would be at. "It will be a jolly drive; and, as they are sending out a mess-tent, we need not come back till late. Your husband said he was to be busy all day."

He waited, reins in hand, for an answer. It came after a pause; came decidedly.

"Yes; at eleven, please. It will be better anyhow than stopping here. There isn't even tennis on Christmas Day, you know; and the house is--is so deadly quiet." She turned to it slowly as she spoke, passed into the rose light, and stood listening to the sound of the dogcart wheels growing fainter and fainter. When it had gone an intense stillness seemed to settle over the wide, empty house--that stillness and emptiness which must perforce settle round many an Englishwoman in India; the stillness and emptiness of a house where children have been, and are not.

It made her shiver slightly as she stood alone, thinking of the dogcart wheels.

Yet just at the back of the screen of poinsettias and oleanders which hid the servants' quarters from the creeper-hung porch there were children and to spare. Dozens of them, all ages, all sizes, belonging to the posse of followers which hangs to the skirts of bureaucracy in India.

Here, as the lights of the dogcart flashed by, they lit up for an instant a quaint little group gathered round a rushlight set on the ground. It consisted of a very old man, almost naked, with a grey frost of beard on his withered cheeks, and of a semicircle of wide-eyed, solemn-faced, brown babies--toddlers of two and three, with a sprinkling of demure little maidens of four and five.

The centre of the group lay beside the rushlight. It was a rudimentary attempt at a rag doll; so rudimentary indeed that as the passing flash of the lamps disclosed its proportions, or rather the lack of them, a titter rose from the darkness behind, where some older folk were lounging.

The old doll-maker, who was attempting to thread a big packing-needle by the faint flicker, turned towards the sound in mild reproof: "Lo! brothers and sisters," he said, "have patience awhile. Even the Creator takes time to make His puppets, and this of mine will be as dolls are always when it is done. And a doll is a doll ever, nothing more, nothing less."

"Yet thou art sadly behind the world in them, babajee," put in a pale young man, with a pen-box under his arm, who had paused on his way to the cook-room, whither he was going to write up the daily account for the butler; since a man must live even if he has a University degree, and, if Government service be not forthcoming, must earn a penny or two as best he can. "That sort of image did for the dark ages of ignorance, but now the mind must have more reality; glass eyes and such like. The world changes."

The old man's face took an almost cunning expression by reason of its self-complacent wisdom. "But not the puppets which play in it, my son. The Final One makes them in the same mould ever; as I do my dolls, as my fathers made theirs. Ay! and thine too, babajee! As for eyes, they come with the sight that sees them, since all things are illusion. For the rest"--here he shot a glance of fiery disdain at the titterers--"I make not dolls for these scoffers, but for their betters. This is for the little masters on their Big Day. To-morrow I will present it to the sahib and the mem, since the little sahibs themselves are away over the Black Water. For old Premoo knows what is due. This dust-like one, lame of a leg and blind of an eye, has not always been a garden coolie--a mere picker of weeds, a gatherer of dried leaves, saved from starvation by such trivial tasks. In his youth Premoo hath carried young masters in his bosom, and guarded them night and day after the manner of bearers. And hath found amusement for them also; even to the making of dolls as this one. Ay! it is true," he went on, led to garrulous indignation by renewed sounds of mirth from behind; "dolls which gave them delight, for they were not as some folk, black of face, but sahib logue who, by God's grace, grew to be ginerâls and jedges, and commissioners, and--and even Lât-sahibs."

The old voice, though it rose in pitch with each rise in rank, was not strong enough to overbear the titter, and the doll-maker paused in startled doubt to look at his own creation.

"I can see naught amiss," he muttered to himself; "it is as I used to make them, for sure." His anxious critical eye lingered almost wistfully over the bald head, the pincushion body, the sausage limbs of his creature, yet found no flaw in it; since fingers and toes were a mere detail, and as for hair, a tuft of wool would settle that point. What more could folk want, sensible folk, who knew that a doll must be always a doll--nothing more, nothing less?

Suddenly a thought came to make him put doubt to the test, and he turned to the nearest of the solemn-faced, wide-eyed semicircle of babies.

"Thou canst dandle it whilst I thread the needle, Gungi," he said pompously, "but have a care not to injure the child, and let not the others touch it."

The solemnity left one chubby brown face, and one pair of chubby brown hands closed in glad possession round the despised rag doll. Old Premoo heaved a sigh of relief.

"Said I not so, brothers and sisters?" he cried exultingly. "My hand has not lost its art with the years. A doll is a doll ever to a child, as a child is a child ever to the man and the woman. As for glass eyes, they are illusion--they perish!"

"Nevertheless, thou wilt put clothes to it, for sure, brother," remonstrated the fat butler, who had joined the group, "ere giving it to the Presences. 'Tis like a skinned fowl now, and bare decent."

Premoo shook his head mournfully. "Lo! khângee, my rags, as thou seest, scarce run to a big enough body and legs! And the Huzoor's tailor would give no scraps to Premoo the garden coolie; though in the old days, when the little masters lay in these arms, and there was favour to be carried by the dressing of dolls, such as he were ready to make them, male and female, kings and queens, fairies and heroes, mem-sahibs and Lât-sahibs after their kind. But it matters not in the end, khânjee, it matters not! The doll is a doll ever to a child, as a child is a child ever to the man and the woman, though they know not whether it will wear a crown or a shroud."

So as Christmas Eve passed into Christmas night, Premoo stitched away contentedly as he sat under the stars. There was no Christmas message in them for the old man. The master's Big Day meant nothing to him save an occasion for the giving of gifts, notably rag dolls! There was no vision for him in the velvet darkness of the spangled sky of angels proclaiming the glad tidings of birth; and yet in a way his old heart, wise with the dim wisdom which long life brings, held the answer to the great Problem, as in vague self-consolation for the titterings he murmured to himself now and again: "It is so always; naught matters but the children, and the children's children."

And when his task was over, he laid the result for safety on the basket of withered leaves which he had swept up from the path that evening, and wrapping himself in his thin cotton shawl, lay down to sleep in the shelter of the poinsettia and oleander hedge.

So, the Christmas sun peering through the morning mists shone upon a quaint crèche indeed--on the veriest simulacrum of a child lying on a heap of faded red hand-like leaves and white star-like blossoms. Perhaps it smiled at the sight. Humanity did, anyhow, as it passed and repassed from the servants' quarters to its work in the house. For in truth old Premoo's creation looked even more comical in the daylight than it had by the faint flicker of the lamp. There was something about it productive of sheer mirth, yet of mirth that was tender. Even the fat butler, on his way to set breakfast, stopped to giggle foolishly in its face.

"God knows what it is like," he said finally. "I deemed it was a skinned fowl last night, but 'tis not that. It might be anything."

"Ay!" assented the bearer, who had come out, duster in hand. "That is just where it comes. A body cannot say what it might or might not be. Bala Krishna himself, for aught I know." Whereupon he salaamed; and others passing followed suit, in jest at first, afterwards with a suspicion of gravity in their mirth, since, when all was said and done, who knew what anything was really in this illusory world?

So the rag doll held its levée that Christmas morning, and when the time came for its presentation to the Huzoors there were curious eyes watching the old man as he sate with his offering on the lowest step of the silent, empty house, waiting for the master and mistress to come out into the verandah. Premoo had covered the doll's bed of withered flowers with some fresh ones, so it lay in pomp in its basket, amid royal scarlet and white and gold; nevertheless he waited till the very last, until the smallest platter of sugar and oranges and almonds had been ranged at the master's feet, ere he crept up the steps, salaaming humbly, yet with a vague confidence on his old face.

"It is for the child-people," he said, in his cracked old voice. "This dust-like one has nothing else, but a doll is always a doll to them, as a child is a child to the man and the woman."

Then for an instant the rag doll lay, as it were, in state, surrounded by offerings. But not for long. Some one laughed, then another, till even old Premoo joined doubtfully in the general mirth.

"The devil is in it," chuckled the fat butler, apologetically; "but the twelve Imâms themselves would not keep grave over it during the requiem!"

"By Jove, Laura," cried George Langford, "we must really send that home to the kids. It's too absurd!"

"Yes," she assented, a trifle absently, "we must indeed." She stopped to take the quaint travesty from its basket, and as she did so one of the red hands of the poinsettias clung to its sausage legs. She brushed the flower aside with a smile which broadened to a laugh; for in truth the thing was more ludicrously comical than ever seen thus, held in mid-air. George Langford found it so, anyhow, and exploded into a fresh guffaw.

She flushed suddenly, and gathered the unshapen thing in her arms as if to hide it from his laughter.

"Don't, George," she said, "it--it seems unkind. Thank you, Premoo, very much. We will certainly send it home to the little masters; and they, I am sure--" Here her eyes fell upon the doll again, and mirth got the better of her gravity once more.

Half-an-hour afterwards, however, as she stood alone in the drawing-room, ready dressed for her drive, the gravity had returned as she looked down on the quaint monstrosity spread out on the table, where on the evening before the rose-shaded lamp had been. It was ridiculous, certainly, but beneath that there was something else. What was it? What had the old man said: "A doll is always a doll...." He had said that and something more: "As the child is always a child to the man and the woman." It ought to be--but was it? Was not that tie forgotten, lost sight of in others ... sometimes?

Half mechanically she took the rag doll, and sitting down on a rocking-chair laid the caricature on her lap among the dainty frills and laces of her pretty gown. And this was Christmas Day--the children's day--she thought vaguely, dreamily, as she rocked herself backwards and forwards slowly. But the house was empty save for this--this idea, like nothing really in heaven or earth; yet for all that giving the Christmas message, the message of peace and goodwill which the birth of a child into the world should give to the man and the woman:--

"Unto us a child is born."

She smiled faintly--the thing on her lap seemed so far from such a memory--and then, with that sudden half-remorseful pity, she once more gathered the rag doll closer in her arms, as if to shield it from her own laughter.

And as she sate so, her face soft and kind, her husband coming into the room behind her, paused at what he saw. And something that was not laughter surged up in him; for he understood in a flash, understood once and for all, how empty his house had been to her, how empty her arms, how empty her life.

He crossed to her quickly, but she was on her feet almost defiantly at the first sight of him. "Ridiculous monster!" she exclaimed, gaily tossing the doll back on the table. "But it has an uncanny look about it which fascinates one. Gracious! Where are my gloves? I must have left them in my room, and I promised to be ready at eleven!"

When she had gone to look for them, George Langford took up the rag doll in his turn--took it up gingerly, as men take their babies--and stared at it almost fiercely. And he stood there, stern, square, silent, staring at it until his wife came back. Then he walked up to her deliberately and laid his hands on hers.

"I'm going to pack this thing up at once, my dear," he said, "and take it over this morning to little Mrs. Greville. She starts this afternoon, you know, to catch the Messageries steamer. She'll take it home for us; and so the boys could have it by the Christmas mail, which I forgot."

The words were commonplace, but there was a world of meaning in the tone.

"I--I thought you were busy," she said indistinctly, after a pause in which the one thing in the world seemed to her that tightening hold upon her hand. "If you are--I--I could go...."

There was another pause--a longer one.

"I thought you were going out," he said at last, and his voice, though distinct, was not quite steady; "but if you aren't, we might go together. My work can easily stand over, and--and Campbell can drive you out some other day when I can't."

She gave an odd little sound between a laugh and a sob.

"That would be best, perhaps," she said. "I'd like the boys to have this"--she laid her other hand tenderly on the rag doll--"by the Christmas mail I had forgotten."

Old Premoo was sweeping up the withered leaves and flowers from the poinsettia and oleander hedge, when first one and then another high dogcart drove past him. And when the second one had disappeared, he turned to the general audience on the other side of the hedge, and said with great pride and pomp--

"Look you! The scoffers mocked at my doll, but the Huzoors understand. The sahib himself has taken it to send to the little sahibs, and the mem packed it up herself and went with him, instead of going in the Captain sahib's dogcart. That is because a doll is always a doll; as for glass eyes and such like, they perish."

And with that he crushed a handful of withered red poinsettias into the rubbish basket triumphantly.

[THE SKELETON TREE]

The engine was conscientiously climbing to the level plateau which stretches between Bhopal and Bandakui, when I heard this story.

Ten minutes before, apparently for no other purpose save to supply the first-class passengers with their early cup of tea, the mail train had stopped at a desolate little station which consisted of a concrete-arched, oven-like shed, made still more obtrusively unfitted for the wilderness in which it stood by a dejected bottle-gourd striving to climb up it.

Here a wistful-faced old man in spotless white raiment had appeared in the dawn with a tray of tea and toast. There were four cups of tea and only two passengers; myself and a man who had already been asleep on one side of the carriage when I took possession of the other at Bhopal. So we saw each other for the first time as we sate up in our sleeping suits among our blankets and pillows. As the train moved on, in a series of dislocations which sent half my tea into my saucer, we left the wistful old face looking at the two unsold cups of tea regretfully, and I wished I had bought the lot. It seemed such a pathetic group to leave there in the wilderness, backed by a European oven and a climbing gourd.

And it was a wilderness. Miles and miles of it all the same. Piles of red rocks, blackened on the upper surface, scattered, as if they had been shot from a cart, among dry bents and stunted bushes; curious bushes with a plenitude of twig and a paucity of leaf. Here and there was a still more stunted tree with a paucity of both: a rudimentary tree, splay, gouty, with half-a-dozen or so of kidney-shaped lobes in place of foliage, parched, dusty, unwholesome.

Not a level country, but one dented into causeless dells, raised into irrelevant hillocks; both, however, trending almost imperceptibly upwards, so that the eye, deceived by this, imagined greater things on the horizon.

But there was nothing. Only here and there a bigger patch of charred and blackened bents, telling where a spark from a passing train had found a wider field for fire than usual, unchecked by the piles of red rocks. That, then, was the secret of their blackened surface.

It was too still in that hot windless dawn for flame, but as we sped on, we added to the dull trails of smoke creeping slowly among the stones and bushes, each with a faint touch of fire showing like an eye to the snaky curves behind. A sinister-looking landscape, indeed, to unaccustomed eyes like mine. I sate watching those stealthy, fire-tipped fingers in the grass, till at a curve in the line, due to a steeper rise, I saw something. "What on earth's that?" I cried involuntarily.

"What's what?" returned my unknown companion, in such a curious tone of voice that, involuntarily, I turned to him for a moment.

"That--that tree I suppose it is," I began; "but look for yourself."

I turned back to the sight which had startled me, and gave a low gasp. It was gone. On more level ground we were steaming quickly past a very ordinary dent of a dell, where, as usual, one of these stunted rudimentary trees stood on an open patch of dry bents, seamed and seared by fire trails.

I looked at my companion incredulously. "What an extraordinary thing!" I exclaimed. "I could have sworn that I saw--" I paused from sheer astonishment.

"What?" asked the other passenger, curiously.

"What?" I echoed. "That is just the question. It looked like a tree--a skeleton tree. Absolutely white, with curved ribs of branches--and there were tongues of flame." I paused again, looking out on what we were passing. "It must, of course," I continued, "have been some curious effect of light on that stunted tree yonder. Its branches are curved like ribs, and, if you notice, the bark is lighter."

"Exactly," assented my companion. Then he told me a long botanical name, and pointed out that there were many such trees or bushes in the low jungle, all distinctly to be seen against the darker kinds, distinctly but not blindingly like that curious effect of dawn-light I had seen.

I had, however, almost forgotten my vision, as, thus started, we talked over our tea, when he suddenly said, "Going on to Agra, I suppose?"

"No," I replied, "I'm globe-trotting for sport. I'm going to spend all I can of my return-ticket in these jungles after leopard and tiger. I hear it's first-class if you don't mind letting yourself go--getting right away from the beaten track and all that. I mean to get hold of a jungle tribe if I can--money's no object, and--"

I ran on, glad to detail plans for what had been a long-cherished dream of mine, when my companion arrested me by the single word--

"Don't."

It was in consequence of my surprise that he told me the following story:--

"I surveyed this railway ten years ago. The country was very much the same as it is now, except that it was all, naturally, off the beaten track. There were two of us in camp together, Graham and myself. He was a splendid chap; keen as mustard on everything. It did not matter what it was. So that one day, when he and I were working out levels after late breakfast, he jumped up like a shot--just as if he had not been tramping over these cursed rubbish shoots of red rocks for six hours--at the sound of a feeble whimpering near the cook-room tent.

"'That devil of yours is at it again,' he said, 'and I won't have it, that's all!'

"As he went off I followed, for I did not relish Graham's justice when it disabled the cook.

"But this time I owned that the brute deserved punishment, for a more forlorn little tragedy than that which was being enacted among the pots and pans I never saw.

"Mohubbut Khan, chief villain, was seated--naked to the waist, bald as to head, after the manner of native cooks at work, on a low reed stool, brandishing a knife in one hand, while the other held a skrawking leggy white cock.

"Exactly in front of him was a group more suggestive of monkeys than men. It consisted of a very old man, wizened, bandy-legged, bandy-armed, whose white teeth showed in animal perfection as he howled, and a child of the same build, clinging to him convulsively, all legs, and arms, and shrieks.

"Between them and the cook stood Graham. He was a big fellow; fair as you are. In fact you are rather like him. There was a moment's pause, during which the old anatomy's voice rose in plaintive howls of resignation.

"'Lo! sonling, be comforted. Death comes to all, even to white cocks. It is but a few years. And grand-dad will hatch another. It is a sacrifice. Sacrifice to the sahib logue who bring death as they choose!'

"Well, it turned out, of course, to be a case of wanton cruelty. It always is. For hopeless inability to be considerate commend me to a native jack-in-office. There were fifty other fowls in the neighbouring village, but nothing would serve the underling whose duty it was to collect supplies, but that this wretched child's pet should serve for the Huzoor's dinner. The old man's joy when it was released was purely pitiable. He would have reared another for his grandson, he asserted garrulously; ay! even to the hatching of an egg from the very beginning, with toil by day and night. But only the Great God knew if the child's heart would have gone out to the chick as it had to the cock, for the heart was capricious. It was not to be counted upon, since the Great God made some men, yea! even some Huzoors, different from others. He looked from Graham to me as he spoke, and somehow I felt small. So as Graham was evidently master of the situation, I slunk back to my work.

"There were sounds of woe thereinafter from the cook-room tent, and Graham himself supervised the dinner that night, in order, he explained somewhat apologetically, that I might not suffer from his conceptions of duty.

"It was two days after this, and we had shifted camp fifteen miles, when, having occasion to go into Graham's tent after dark, I stumbled over some one sitting among the corner tent-pegs. It was the grandpapa of the white cock, and he explained to me in his lingo--for he was one of the jungle people--that he had come in exchange for that precious bird. One life or another mattered little. Grim-sahib had spared the child's heart's joy, which was now living with him in the maternal mansion. There being, therefore, no necessity for the occupation of hatching eggs, he, Bunder--yea! of a surety, it was the same name as that of the monkey people--had come to do service to the Huzoors instead of the white cock.

"That was absolutely all I could get out of him. So for days and weeks he followed us. He was useful in his way, especially to Graham, who had a passion not only for sport, but for all sorts of odd knowledge."

I remember interrupting here that that was half the pleasure of new surroundings, to which my fellow-traveller replied drily that he had expected I would say so, as I really reminded him very much of Graham.

"This passion of his, however, led him into being a bit reckless, and as the hot weather came on he began to get touched up by fever. Still, he continued working during the off days, and seemed little the worse until one evening when he went to bed with the shivers after a leopard hunt. Then old Bunder crept over to my tent.

"'Grim-sahib must go home across the Black Water at once, Huzoor,' he said quietly, 'or his bones will whiten the jungle. He has seen the Skeleton Tree.'

"That was, in essence, all he had to say, though his explanations were lengthy. It was simply a Skeleton Tree, and it was always seen where fire fingers met; but those who saw it became skeletons in the jungle before long unless they possessed a certain talisman. There were such talismans among the hill tribes, and those who fell sick of fever always wore one if they could compass it. That was not often, since they were rare. He himself had one, but what use was it when life, from old age, had become no more worth than a white cock's? So his grandson wore it; wore it as he fed the joy of his heart peacefully in the ancestral home; thanks to Grim-sahib!

"'But how do you know he saw the Tree?' I asked.

"'It was when we had crawled up nigh the end of a dip, Huzoor,' replied Bunder. 'He looked up and said, "What's that?" And when I asked him what he had seen, he said: "It is gone. It must have been that stunted tree. But it looked like a skeleton, and there were fire fingers round it." So I knew. Send him home, Huzoor, away from its power, or his bones will whiten the jungle.'

"During the following days I really began--though I'm not an imaginative chap--to feel a bit queer about things. Graham couldn't shake off his fever, and more than once when he was delirious in the evenings he would startle me by saying, 'What's that?' But he would laugh the next moment, and add, 'Only a tree, of course; it was the light.'

"There was no doctor within miles; and, besides, it was not really such a bad case as all that. At least it didn't seem so to me or to Graham himself. Only to old Bunder, who became quite a nuisance with his warnings, so that I was glad when, after a confused rigmarole about white cocks and sacrifices, he disappeared one day and was seen no more. Partly, perhaps, because we moved back to a higher camp in the hopes of escaping the malaria.

"But we didn't. Graham grew appreciably worse. He was fairly well by day; it was at night that the fever seemed to grip him. I used to sit up with him till twelve or one o'clock, and then turn in till about dawn, when the servants had orders to call me, and I would go over and see after him again.

"But one day, or rather night, it was still quite dark when my bearer roused me with his persistent drone of 'Saheeb, saheeb!' and I knew in an instant something was wrong. Graham, shortly after I left him, had got out of bed, dressed himself in his shikar clothes, taken his gun, and gone away from the camp. His bearer, a lad whom he had promoted to the place in one of his impulsive generous fits of revolt against things unjustifiable, had failed to take alarm until his master's prolonged absence had made him seek and rouse my man. The latter was full of apologies; but what else, he protested, could be expected of babes and sucklings promoted out of due season? The babe and suckling meanwhile was blubbering incoherently, and asserting that he was not to blame. The sahib had called for Bunder and Bunder had come; and they had gone off together.

"'Bunder?' I exclaimed. 'Impossible! He hasn't been near the camp for days. Did any one else see him?' But no one had. And as there was no time to be lost in inquiries I dismissed the idea as an attempt on the boy's part to relieve himself from responsibility, and organised the whole camp into a search party.

"It was a last-quarter moon, and I shall never forget the eeriness of that long, fruitless search. At first I kept calling 'Graham, Graham!' but after a time I felt this to be useless, and that he must be either unconscious, or delirious, or determined to keep out of our way. So I pushed on and on in silence, through the bushes and bents, expecting the worst. But after all it was the best. We found him at dawn lying under one of those stunted trees fast asleep. So sound asleep that he did not wake when we carried him back to camp on a litter of boughs. So sound that it was not until the afternoon, when he stirred and asked for beef-tea, that I discovered he wore round his neck a plaited cord of dirty red silk with a small bag attached to it.

"'How the deuce did that come there?' he asked drowsily, putting his hand up to feel it. How, indeed? He could never explain; and the bag held nothing but a bit of blank paper folded into four. He took the thing to England with him when he went home on sick leave the next month, and so far as I know is no wiser than he was then as to how it came round his neck."

Here my fellow-traveller paused, as a whistle from the engine told we were pulling up again. "Well," I said, a trifle plaintively, "but why should not I?"

He was already standing on the platform among a miscellaneous pile of belongings, such as Indian travellers delight to carry about with them, ere he replied:--

"Good-by. Glad to have met you--for you remind me awfully of Graham!"

I sometimes wonder if I should have taken his warning seriously or treated it as a traveller's tale. As it was, I had not the chance of testing its truth. For, at my destination, I found a telegram recalling me to England on urgent business. So, beyond that passing glimpse of the Skeleton Tree, I have no experience.