CONTENTS
[The Most Nailing Bad Shot in Creation.]
[Little Henry and his Bearer.]
[Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh.]
[IN THE GUARDIANSHIP OF GOD]
"Dittu Sansi, aged twenty-one, theft, six months," read out the overseer of the gaol, who was introducing a batch of new arrivals to the doctor in charge of a large gaol in the Upper Provinces of India. It was early morning. Outside the high mud walls, which looked like putty and felt like rock, the dew was frosting the grass in the garden where a few favoured criminals were doing the work of oxen for the well-wheel, and turning the runnels of fresh water to the patches of spinach and onion. But here, inside the gaol square, everything had the parched, arid look of sun-baked mud. Not a speck was to be seen anywhere; the very prisoners themselves, standing in a long line awaiting inspection, with their dust-coloured blankets folded upon the ground in front of them, looked like darker clay images waiting to be put on their pedestals. There was a touch of colour, however, close to the arched gateway. First, a red-turbaned warder or two, guarding the wicket; then half-a-dozen constables in yellow trousers, and a deputy-inspector of police smart in silver laces and fringes; finally the gaol darogah, or overseer, a stoutish, good-looking Mahomedan with a tendency to burst out, wherever it was possible, into gay muslin, and decorate the edges of his regulation white raiment with fine stitchings. These, with a nondescript group fresh from the lock-up, were gathered about the plain deal table set in full sunlight where the Doctor sate, ticking off each arrival on the roster. He matched the gaol, being dressed from head to foot in dust-coloured drill, with a wide pith hat which might have been carved out of the putty walls.
"All right, Darogah," he said with a yawn. "Number five hundred and seven. Go on,--what's the matter?"
Shurruf Deen, the Overseer, was looking intently at the paper in his hand, and the rich brown of his complacent face seemed to have faded a little. "Nothing, Huzoor," he replied glibly enough, though a quick observer might have seen the muscles of his brown throat labouring over the syllables. "The list is badly written, in the broken character. Thou shouldst speak to the clerk in thine office, Inspector-jee; this name is almost illegible."
"'Tis Shureef, clear enough, Darogah-jee," dissented the Inspector, huffily; "and I should have thought it fits thine own name too close for--"
"Shureef," read out Shurruf, the Overseer, brusquely, "Shureef, Khoja, thirty-five, lurking house trespass by night, habitual offender, ten years."
The Doctor looked up sharply. Ten years meant business; one can teach a lot in ten years--carpet-weaving, wood-carving, pottery-making--and the Doctor's hobby was his gaol. What he saw was a man, looking many years older than his age, haggard and grey, yet despite this with a lightness and suppleness in every limb. Though this figure was lean where the Overseer was fat, wrinkled where the Overseer showed smooth, there was a similarity in the rich colour of their skins, in the regularity of their features, which made the Englishman turn to look at the Darogah with the mental remark that the race-characteristics of India were very instructive; for Shurruf was a Khoja also. "All right," said the Doctor. "Number five hundred and eight."
"Five hundred and eight," repeated the habitual offender, calmly. "I will not forget. Salaam, Huzoor! Salaam, Darogah-jee!"
"Do you know the man?" asked the Doctor quickly of his subordinate; he was sharp as a needle, and there had been a note in the salutation which he did not understand.
"He was in for two years when I was sub-overseer at Loodhiana, Huzoor," replied Shurruf, imperturbably. "He gave much trouble there; he will not here, since the Doctor-sahib knows how to manage such as he."
Once more there was an undertone, but the Doctor's attention was riveted by the adroit flattery, and he rose to begin his inspection with a smile. It was true; he did know how to manage a gaol, and there could not possibly be any cause for complaint when he was there to apportion each ounce of food scientifically, to rout every germ, every microbe, and treat even contumacy as a disease. The five hundred and odd prisoners were, as it were, the Doctor's chessmen. He marshalled them this way and that, checkmating their vile souls and bodies while they were in his care. If they passed out of it into their own, he took no heed. They might make what they liked of themselves. But if they died, and, as the phrase runs, chose the Guardianship of God, he buried them temporarily in the gaol graveyard with all possible sanitary precautions, against the time when relations or friends might appear to claim the corpse. There was no official regulation as to the limit of time within which such claim could be preferred; but as a dead body remains in the special Guardianship of God for a year, it was an understood thing that man should take over the task before the Almighty gave up the job; it was more satisfactory, especially if the corpse was a Hindu and had to be burned. As for the Doctor, he would have preferred to burn the lot, Hindu and Mahomedan alike; failing that, he--took precautions.
As he walked down the line rapidly his sharp eye noted every detail, and Shurruf Deen had many a swift, probing question to answer. He answered them, however, as swiftly, for he was the best gaoler conceivable; so good that even the Doctor allowed that he was almost capable of managing the gaol himself. A man of unimpeachable character, he had yet a curious insight into the minds of the criminals he guarded, and a singular tact in managing them, so that his record of continual rise in the world seemed likely to lengthen itself by an appointment to the most important gaolership in the Province. Shurruf Deen was working all he knew to secure this, and therefore, as he followed the Doctor, his keen, bold eyes were everywhere forestalling the possibility of blame. They fell, among other things, on Shureef's thin, somewhat bowed figure, as it was marched off to be shaved, washed, manacled, and dressed to pattern. Then they turned almost mechanically to the paper he still held. Shureef Deen, Khoja--ten years' hard--three months' solitary. He gave a faint sigh of relief. Solitary confinement, even when broken up by philanthropy into blocks of a week, gave time. It meant many ameliorations to a prisoner's lot which would be unsafe amid the ruck. Besides no man, he told himself, would be fool enough to risk losing these favours simply to spite another man.
He repeated this thought aloud that same evening, after lights were out, and the silence of solitary cells lay all over the gaol, save in one of the latter, where Shurruf sate whispering to Shureef. In the utter darkness the curious similarity of the place to a wild beast's cage, with its inner grating-barred cubicle and its outer high-walled yard let open to the sky, was lost, and the two men might have been anywhere. Shurruf, however, sate on the millstones, as being more suited to his figure, while Shureef crouched on the ground beside the little heap of corn he was bound to give back ounce for ounce in flour and bran. And as he crouched, leaning listlessly against the wall, his supple hand moved among the wheat raising it idly, and as idly letting it slip back through his thin fingers.
"Fate!" he echoed to something the other said; "nay, 'twas not Fate, brother, which sent me to thy gaol. I was hard pressed; I am growing old for the life; it kills men soon. The police would have had me in the big dacoity case at Delhi despite all; so I bungled one farther north, to come--where thou wast--brother."
"And thou didst right," assented Shurruf, eagerly; "I can make things easy for thee."
The wheat slipped with a soft patter, like rain, through Shureef's fingers. "'Twas not that either which brought me to thy gaol. Listen. I am far through this life, but another begins. I am not going to plead guilty there. It is not guilty there, not guilty on the first count, not guilty as a lad of fifteen for theft--" He paused, then a faint curiosity came to his listlessness and he looked at the half-seen figure beside him--"and such a theft! I--I have not done so mean a one--since--"
Shurruf moved uneasily. "Mayhap not; boys do things men do not. And I have always--yea! thou knowest it--upheld thee better than some think. What then? Thy life is past amendment now, save for tobacco and such like; and these I will give, if thou art wise, for the ten years--"
"I shall not live three months of the ten years, brother," interrupted Shureef, calmly; and at the words a pang of regret that the solitary confinement could not be inflicted straight on end shot through Shurruf's breast, killing the faint remorse the remark had awakened; it would have simplified matters so much to have Shureef safe from the possibility of tale-bearing for those three months. "And, as I said, I want none of these things," went on Shureef; "I only want the truth. Promise to tell it, and I say naught; wilt promise, brother?"
"No!" whispered Shurruf, fiercely. "What good would it do now?"
"It would make some mourn for me; it would make more than cursing follow me; it would be evidence for me, a boy, at the Great Court."
The sleek face beside the anxious one took a strange expression, half joy, half fear. "That is fools' talk. Doth not the Lord know, is He not just?"
"Yes, He knows," persisted Shureef; "but others must know, else they will not claim my body, else my grave will not be cooled with tears. It would not harm thee much, Shurruf. Mayhap 'twould be wiser for thee not to seek advancement, since one, who might hear if the truth were told, seeks it also; but if thou stayest in this fat post--"
"Peace, fool!" interrupted Shurruf, passionately. "I will not. Thou hast no proof, so do thy worst. Thou canst claim me brother if thou wilt, naught else--" Shureef bent forward and whispered a name in his ear, making him start back. "It is not true," he went on rapidly; "he died long since. Think not I do not understand, that I cannot follow thy evil thoughts. Have I not watched thee these twenty years? Have I not seen thee sink, and sink, and sink? Can I not guess thy guile--"
"Because it should have been thine own, Shurruf," interrupted his brother in a new tone. "But let that be. It matters not. I asked this thing of thee that thou mightest do it freely; if not, I take it--for I can take it now. I give thee a fortnight to consider; till then I have no more to say, and thy words will be wasted."
He rose, feeling his way by the wall to the inner cell, and Shurruf, after pausing a moment uncertainly, stole from the outer one, locking the door behind him. There were stronger arguments than words at his command, and he had a fortnight wherein to use them. And use them he did, unsparingly. The week of solitary confinement which followed, and the week of work in the general ward, were alternately hell and comparative heaven; a hell of scant food, work beyond limit, and punishments; a heaven of tobacco, opium, even a nip of country liquor now and then; and, as a foretaste of favours to come, there was a day of work in the gaol-gardens among the cool runnels of water and the spinach-patches. For the Doctor, having small faith in things beyond his ken, was dividing the dead who were in the Guardianship of God, from the living who were in his own; in other words, he was enclosing a new graveyard beyond the garden, and as this involved work in the absolute open air, with greater chance of escape, the good-conduct men from the walled garden were drafted outwards, and their place supplied from within. But neither fifteen lashes, nor the privilege of smoking surreptitiously behind a thicket of jasmine and roses, tempted Shureef from the settled resolve which gave his face a curiously spiritual look. The Doctor called it something else, and in the private list he kept of those in his care, put the name of an incurable disease opposite Shureef's, with this after it: ? three months--and he did not try to teach him carpet-weaving or pottery-making.
The Overseer, however, felt that three months was all too long for him, when, another week of solitary confinement coming round, he slipped over in the dead of night to Shureef's cell, and found him once more fingering the corn idly; but as it was a moonlight night now, he could see the grains of wheat, shining like gold, slip through the lean fingers.
"It is not much I ask, brother," persisted Shureef, almost gently; "only that the home folk may claim my body when I die. That is why I came to thy gaol; for they will not, if the truth be not told, and only thou canst tell it without flaw. True, I can harm thee, but I have no wish for that. See! I give thee yet another week for thought. That is three from three months; but I give no more."
Shurruf Deen went back to his quarters over the big entrance-gate, where the warders waited on him as if he were a prince, and pondered over the dilemma in a white heat of indignation. It was so selfish of Shureef; when God knew, what were a few tears more or less when a man had deliberately cast away his right to wailing a dozen times over? What Shureef had said about the first count was true, but what of the others? What right had he to claim any compensation for that first injustice? What right had he even to claim commiseration for the result of a life he had chosen? Yet the Doctor gave it him; he even ordered him back to the garden after a day or two, with the remark to the native assistant-surgeon that it was a case of the candle of life having been burned at both ends. "He might live a year," he said critically, "but I give him three months; and, of course, he might drop down dead any day."
He might; if he only would before the week was out, thought Shurruf, longingly. It would save so much trouble, for though the whole truth could easily be shirked, it would scarcely be possible to deny the relationship, or hush up his own share in the youthful escapade. For there had been sufficient for him to be dismissed by the magistrate with a reprimand for keeping bad company; and this, added to the scandal of a notorious criminal claiming kin to him, would militate against promotion. If Shureef would only drop down dead!
He did. The very day before the week was up he was shot in an organized attempt at escape on the part of five or six prisoners, who saw their opportunity in the temporary freedom of garden-work. A very determined attempt it was, involving violence, in which Shurruf gained fresh laurels by his promptness in ordering the sentry to fire. One man was wounded in the arm, and broke his leg in falling back from the wall he was scaling. Shureef was picked up quite dead behind the thicket of jasmine and rose. As two or three shots had been fired in that direction, it was possible it might have been an accident, and that he was not really one of the plotters; on the other hand both opium and tobacco were found upon him, proof positive that he had friends in the gaol. And though the warder, who had connived at the attempt at escape, and now pleaded guilty in the hope of lessening punishment, swore that Shureef was not in the plot, he had nothing to reply when Shurruf asked him for the name of any other gaol official who tampered with his duty.
"Poor devil!" said the Doctor, musingly, as he finished the necessary examination. "He was a fool to try--if he did; the run would have finished him to a certainty. Even the excitement of being in the fun might have killed him without anything else, for it was worse than I thought; his heart was mere tissue-paper."
Once more the Overseer's rich brown skin seemed to fade, though he was glib enough with his tongue. "He is to be buried tonight?" he asked easily.
"The sooner the better. His friends aren't likely to want him back; but all the same put him in the new yard." The Doctor's hand, as he drew up the sheet, finally lingered a bit. "If--if he wanted to get outside, he may as well, poor devil!"
So in the cool of the evening Shureef, wrapped in a white cloth, was taken from a solitary cell and given into the Guardianship of God in the sun-baked patch of earth where he was the first to lie. It was a desolate patch, bare of everything save a white efflorescence of salt, showing, as the warder remarked cynically, that it was only fit for corpses. Not even for them, dissented the diggers, who, with leg-irons clanking discordantly, lingered over their task while Shureef, a still, white roll of cloth, waited their pleasure. The soil, they said, was much harder than in the old place, and if folk were to be dug up as well as buried--not that any would want the expense of moving Shureef, whose name was a byword--here the Overseer's portly figure showed in the adjoining garden, and they hurried on with their work.
Shurruf did not come over to the grave, however, perhaps because he was in a demi-toilet of loose muslin, without his turban, and in charge of his little son, a pretty child of four, whom the obsequious gardener had presented with a bunch of jasmine and roses, and who, after a time becoming bored by his father's interest in the spinach and onions, drifted on by himself to find something more attractive, until he came to stand wide-eyed and curious in the mourners' place at the head of the grave. And there he stood silent, watching the proceedings and keeping a tight clutch on his flowers, until a hand from behind, dragging him back passionately, sent a shower of earth over the edge on to Shureef's body which had just been laid in its last resting-place, and sent also a bunch of roses and jasmines to lie close to Shureef's heart, for the child dropped them in his fright.
"Weep not, my prince!" cried the warder. "Thou shalt have them again. Here, some one, go down and hand them up."
But Shurruf, the Overseer, who, with his little son clutched up in his arms, stood now in the mourners' place, his face almost grey, turned on the man with a curse. "Let the flowers lie," he said; "there are plenty more in the garden." So, without another word, he left them to fill up the grave; and they, having done it, left Shureef with the flowers on his breast to the Guardianship of God.
And there he stayed month after month, until the year drew close to its end. And Shurruf Deen stayed in the gaol, for, after all, the man whose place he had hoped to get was allowed another year's extension of service. Perhaps it was the deferred hope which told on the Overseer's nerves; but certain it is that the passing months brought a strange look of anxiety to his face. Perhaps it was that, though he had set aside much, he could not quite set aside the thought of that bunch of roses and jasmine which his little son's hand had thrown upon Shureef's breast. Something there was in his mind without a doubt, which made him, but a few weeks before the Guardianship of God must end, and before the momentous question of promotion must be decided, steal out more than once at night to Shureef's solitary grave, as he had stolen to his solitary cell. But the memory of the still, white roll of cloth with the flowers upon it, touched him more closely than the memory of the listless figure letting the wheat-grains slip through its idle fingers. Why it should have done so it were hard to say. Fear had something to do with it--sheer superstition that when the Guardianship of God was over, the uncared-for body might fall into the keeping of the devil and torment him. Love had its part too; love, and a vague remorse born more of the chance which had made his little son chief mourner, than of a sense of personal guilt. Plainly it did not do to try and escape the tie of kindred altogether.
So, by degrees, the thought grew that it would indeed be safer for Shureef to pass into other guardianship before God's ended. He had asked for nothing, save that his grave might be cooled by tears; if this could be compassed, surely he ought to be satisfied, ought to forget everything else and leave his kindred in peace. And it might be compassed with care. Shureef's mother--not his own, for they had only been half-brothers--was alive, alive and blind, and poor too, since his father, stung by his son's disgrace, had sent her back to her own people. Poor, blind, and a mother! Here was material ready to his hand. It would not cost half a month's pay, even with the expenses of moving the body; and then--yes, then, when they were no longer needed, those flowers, even if they were dust, as they must be, could be taken away and forgotten.
It was the anniversary of Shureef's burial, and in the cool of the evening the clanking leg-irons were once more at work upon his grave; for, much to the Doctor's disgust, an old woman had put in an appearance at the last moment with unimpeachable credentials of relationship and sufficient cash to convey the remains to her village. There was, as Shurruf, the Overseer, said regretfully, no valid excuse for refusal, and the Doctor-sahib might rely upon his doing all things decently and in order, and on strict sanitary principles. Whereupon the Doctor had smiled grimly, and said that in cases of resurrection there was safety in extremes.
Nevertheless, it was the love of horrors, no doubt, which made the gathering round the opening grave so large. The old woman sate in the mourners' place, her tears flowing already. The others, however, talked over probabilities, and told tales of former disinterments with cheerful realism, while Shurruf Deen bustled backwards and forwards among his elaborate arrangements.
They dug down to one side of the original grave after approved fashion, so that there should be as little disturbance as possible, and when traces of what was sought showed in a fold of still, white shroud, extra cloths were sent down, in which, covering as they exposed, the workmen gradually swathed all that was mortal of the dead dacoit.
"He hath not lost much weight," said those at the ropes as they hauled.
So there the task was done, decently and in order. But Shurruf wanted something which he knew must still lie within the brand-new shroud, and, ere they lifted the gruesome bundle to the coffin awaiting it, he stooped,--then stood up suddenly, grey to the very lips, and crushing something in his hand, something, so it seemed to those around, pink and white and green. But his face riveted them. "In the Guardianship of God," he muttered, "in the Guardianship of God."
"What is it?" said one to another, as he stood dazed and speechless. Then they, too, stooped, looked, touched, until, as he had lain when they found him behind the rose and jasmine thicket, Shureef lay before them looking more as if he was asleep than dead.
"Wah!" said a voice in the crowd; "he cannot have been so bad as folk thought him, if the Lord has taken all that care of him."
Shurruf gave a sort of sob, stepped back, lost his footing on the edge of the open grave and fell heavily. When they picked him up he was dead.
The Doctor, summoned hastily, shook his head. Death must have been instantaneous, he said; the neck was broken. After which he went over and looked at Shureef curiously; then stooped down and picked up some of the earth on which the body lay, earth which had come from the bottom of the grave. "Look," he said, pointing out minute white crystals in it to the native assistant; "that's bi-borate of soda. I knew there was some of it here when I chose this patch. It's a useful antiseptic; but he has been in a regular mine of it--a curious case of embalming, isn't it?"
It certainly was; and it was still more curious that a bunch of fresh roses and jasmine should have been found on Shurruf Deen the Overseer's breast, as he lay in Shureef's grave; but, as the Doctor said, the obsequious gardener had most likely given them to him as he passed through the spinach and onion patches. And perhaps it was so.
[A BAD-CHARACTER SUIT]
A flood of blistering, yellow sunshine was pouring down on to the prostrate body of Private George Afford as he lay on his back, drunk, in an odd little corner between two cook-room walls in the barrack square; and a stream of tepid water from a skin bag was falling on his head as Peroo the bhisti stood over him, directing the crystal curve now on his forehead, now scientifically on his ears. The only result, however, was that Private George Afford tried unavailingly to scratch them, then swore unintelligibly.
Peroo twisted the nozzle of the mussuck to dryness, and knelt down beside the slack strength in the dust. So kneeling, his glistening curved brown body got mixed up with the glistening curved brown water-bag he carried, until at first sight he seemed a monstrous spider preying on a victim, for his arms and legs were skinny.
"Sahib!" he said, touching his master on the sleeve. It was a very white sleeve, and the buttons and belts and buckles all glistened white or gold in the searching sunlight, for Peroo saw to them, as he saw to most things about Private Afford's body and soul; why God knows, except that George Afford had once--for his own amusement--whacked a man who, for his, was whacking Peroo. He happened to be one of the best bruisers in the regiment, and George Afford, who was in a sober bout, wanted to beat him; which he did.
There was no one in sight; nothing in fact save the walls, and an offensively cheerful castor-oil bush which grew, greener than any bay-tree, in one angle, sending splay fingers of shadow close to Private Afford's head as if it wished to aid in the cooling process. But despite the solitude, Peroo's touch on the white sleeve was decorous, his voice deference itself.
"Sahib!" he repeated. "If the Huzoor does not get up soon, the Captain will find the master on the ground when he passes to rations. And that is unnecessary."
He might as well have spoken to the dead. George Afford's face, relieved of the douche treatment, settled down to placid, contented sleep. It was not a bad face; and indeed, considering the habits of the man, it was singularly fine and clear cut; but then in youth it had evidently been a superlatively handsome one also.
Peroo waited a minute or two, then undid the nozzle of his skin bag once more, and drenched the slack body and the dust around it.
"What a tyranny is here!" he muttered to himself, the wrinkles on his forehead giving him the perplexed look of a baby monkey; "yet the master will die of sunstroke if he be not removed. Hai, Hai! What it is to eat forbidden fruit and find it a turnip."
With which remark he limped off methodically to the quarter guard and gave notice that Private George Afford was lying dead drunk between cook-rooms Nos. 7 and 8; after which he limped on as methodically about his regular duty of filling the regimental waterpots. What else was there to be done? The special master whom he had elected to serve between whiles would not want his services for a month or two at least, since that period would be spent in clink. For Private George Afford was a habitual offender.
Such a very habitual offender, indeed, that Evan Griffiths, the second major, had not a word to say when the Adjutant and the Colonel conferred over this last offence, though he had stood Afford's friend many a time; to the extent even of getting him re-enlisted in India--a most unusual favour--when, after an interval of discharge, he turned up at his ex-captain's bungalow begging to be taken on; averring, even, that he had served his way out to India before the mast in that hope, since enlistment at the Depôt might take him to the other battalion. The story, so the Adjutant had said, was palpably false; but the silent little Major had got the Colonel to consent; so Private George Afford--an ideal soldier to look at--had given the master tailor no end of trouble about the fit of his uniform, for he was a bit of a dandy when he was sober. But now even Major Griffiths felt the limit of forbearance was past; nor could a court-martial be expected to take into consideration the trivial fact which lay at the bottom of the observant little Major's mercy, namely, that though when he was sober George Afford was a dandy, when he was drunk--or rather in the stage which precedes actual drunkenness--he was a gentleman. Vulgarity of speech slipped from him then; and even when he was passing into the condition in which there is no speech he would excuse his own lapses from strict decorum with almost pathetic apologies. "It is no excuse, I know, sir," he would say with a charming, regretful dignity, "but I have had a very chequered career--a very chequered career indeed."
That was true; and one of the black squares of the chessboard of life was his now, for the court-martial which sentenced Private George Afford to but a short punishment added the rider that he was to be thereinafter dismissed from Her Majesty's Service.
"He is quite incorrigible," said the Colonel, "and as we are pretty certain of going up to punish those scoundrels on the frontier as soon as the weather cools, we had better get rid of him. The regiment mustn't have a speck anywhere, and his sort spoils the youngsters."
The Major nodded.
So Private George Afford got his dismissal, also the bad-character suit of mufti which is the Queen's last gift even to such as he.
* * * * *
It was full six weeks after he had stood beside that prostrate figure between cook-rooms Nos. 7 and 8 that Peroo was once more engaged in the same task, though not in the same place.
And this time the thin stream of water falling on George Afford's face found it grimed and dirty, and left it showing all too clearly the traces of a fortnight's debauch. For Peroo, being of a philosophic mind, had told himself, as he had limped away from the quarter guard after his report, that now, while his self-constituted master would have no need of his services, was the time for him to take that leave home which he had deferred so long. Therefore, two or three days after this event, he had turned up at the Quartermaster's office with the curious Indian institution, "the changeling," and preferred his request for a holiday. It was granted, of course; there is no reason why leave should not be granted when a double, willing even to answer to the same name, stands ready to step into the original's shoes, without payment; that remaining a bargain between the doubles.
"Here," said Peroo, "is my brother. He is even as myself. His character is mine. We are all water-carriers, and he has done the work for two days. I will also leave him my skin bag, so that the Presence may be sure it is clean. He is a Peroo also."
He might have been the Peroo so far as the Quartermaster's requirements went. So the original went home and the copy took his place; but not for the two months. The order for active service of which the Colonel had spoken came sooner than was expected, and Peroo, hearing of it, started back at once for the regiment. A "changeling" could pass muster in peace, but war required the reality; besides, the master would, no doubt, be released. He was surely too good fighting material to be left behind, Peroo told himself; yet there his hero was, lying in the dust of a bye-alley in the bazaar in a ragged bad-character suit, while the barrack squares were alive with men, not half so good to look at, talking, as the mules were laden, of the deeds they were to do!
The wrinkles on Peroo's forehead grew more like those of a monkey in arms than ever. This was indeed a tyranny! but at least the Presence could be moved out of the burning sun this time without, of necessity, getting him into more trouble. So a few friends were called, and together they carried George Afford into the windowless slip of a room which Peroo locked at four o'clock in the morning and unlocked at ten at night, but which, nevertheless, served him as a home. There was nothing in it save a string bed and a drinking vessel; for Peroo, after his kind, ate his food in the bazaar; but that for the present was all the Englishman required either. So there Peroo left him in the darkness and the cool, safe for the day.
But after that? The problem went with Peroo as he limped about filling the cook-room waterpots, for on the morrow he must be filling them on the first camping-ground, fifteen miles away from that slip of a room where the master lay. What would become of him then?
The sandy stretches in which the barracks stood were full of mules, camels, carts, and men of all arms belonging to the small picked force which was to march with the one solid regiment at dawn on their mission of punishment.
"Pâni (water)," shouted a perspiring artilleryman, grappling with a peculiarly obstinate mule, as Peroo went past with his skin bag. "Pâni, and bring a real jildi (quickness) along with it. W'ot! you ain't the drinkin'-water, ain't yer? W'ot's that to me? I ain't one o' yer bloomin' Brahmins; but I'll take it outside instead o' in, because of them black-silly's o' the doctor's. So turn on the hose, Johnnie; I'll show you how."
"'E knows all about it, you bet," put in one of the regiment cheerfully. "Wy, 'e's bin hydraulic engineer and waterworks combined to that pore chap as got the sack the other day--George Afford--"
"Sure it was a thriflin' mistake wid the prepositions his godfathers made when they named him; for it was on and not off-erd he was six days out of sivin," remarked a tall Irishman.
"You hold your jaw, Pat," interrupted another voice. "'E was a better chap nor most, w'en 'e wasn't on the lap; and, Lordy! 'e could fight when he 'ad the chanst--couldn't 'e, Waterworks? Just turn that hose o' yours my way a bit, will yer?"
"Huzoor," assented Peroo, deferentially; he understood enough to make the thought pass through his brain that it was a pity the master had not the chance. Perhaps the curve of water conveyed this to that other brain beneath the close, fair curls, whence the drops flew sparkling in the sunlight. At any rate, their owner went on in a softer tone--
"Yes, 'e fit--like fits. Looked, too, as if 'e was born ter die on the field o' glory, and not in a bad-character suit; but, as the parson says: 'Beauty is vain. I will repay, saith the Lord.'"
The confused morality of this passed Peroo by; and yet something not altogether dissimilar lay behind his wrinkled forehead when, work over, he returned to the slip of a room and found Afford vaguely roused by his entrance.
"I--I am aware it is no possible excuse, sir," came his voice, curiously refined, curiously pathetic, "but I really have had a very chequered life, I have indeed."
"Huzoor," acquiesced Peroo, briefly; but even that was sufficient to bring the hearer closer to realities. He sat up on the string bed, looked about him stupidly, then sank back again.
"Get away! you d----d black devil," he muttered, with a sort of listless anger. "Can't you let me die in peace, you fool? Can't you let me die in the gutter, die in a bad-character suit? It's all I'm fit for--all I'm fit for." Voice, anger, listlessness, all tailed away to silence. He turned away with a sort of sob, and straightway fell asleep, for he was still far from sober.
Peroo lit a cresset lamp and stood looking at him. Beauty was certainly vain here, and if the Lord was going to repay, it was time He began. Time some one began, at any rate, if the man who had fought for him, Peroo, was not to carry out his desire of dying in the gutter--dying in a bad-character suit! The latter misfortune could, however, be avoided. Things were going cheap in the bazaar that evening, as was only natural when it was to be deserted for six months at least, so it ought not to be hard to get the master an exchange for something more suitable to his beauty, if not to his death.
Five minutes afterwards George Afford, too much accustomed to such ministrations to be disturbed by the process of undressing, was still asleep, his chin resting peacefully on Peroo's best white cotton shawl, and the bad-character suit was on its way to the pawnshop round the corner. It was nigh on an hour, however, before Peroo, having concluded his bargain, came back with it, and by the light of the cresset set to work appraising his success or failure. A success certainly. The uniform was old, no doubt, but it was a corporal's; and what is more, it had three good-conduct stripes on the arm. That ought to give dignity, even to a death in the gutter.
Peroo brought out some pipeclay and pumice-stone from a crevice, and set to work cheerfully on the buttons and belts, thinking as he worked that he had indeed made a good bargain. With a judicious smear of cinnabar here and there, the tunic would be almost as good as the master's old one--plus the good-conduct stripes, of course, which he could never have gained in the regiment.
But out of it? If, for instance, the Lord were really to repay Private George Afford for that good deed in defending a poor lame man?--a good deed which no bad one could alter for the worse! Peroo on this point would have been a match for a whole college of Jesuits in casuistry, as he laid on the pipeclay with lavish hand, and burnished the buttons till they shone like gold.
It was grey dawn when George Afford woke, feeling a deferential touch on his shoulder.
"Huzoor!" came a familiar voice, "the first bugle has gone. The Huzoor will find his uniform--a corporal's, with three good-conduct stripes--is ready. The absence of a rifle is to be regretted; but that shall be amended if the Huzoor will lend a gracious ear to the plan of his slave. In the meantime a gifting of the Huzoor's feet for the putting on of stockings might be ordered."
George Afford thrust out a foot mechanically, and sate on the edge of the string bed staring stupidly at the three good-conduct stripes on the tunic, which was neatly folded beside him.
"It is quite simple," went on the deferential voice. "The Huzoor is going to march with the colours, but he will be twelve hours behind them; that is all. He will get the fighting, and by-and-by, when the killing comes and men are wanted, the Colonel-sahib may give a place; but, in any case, there will always be the fighting. For the rest, I, the Huzoor's slave, will manage; and as there will, of necessity, be no canteen, there can be no tyranny. Besides, since there is not a cowrie in the master's jacket, what else is he to do?"
The last argument was unanswerable. George Afford thrust out his other foot to be shod for this new path, and stared harder than ever at the good-conduct stripes.
That night, despite the fatigues of a first day in camp, Peroo trudged back along the hard white road to meet some one whom he expected; for this was the first step, and he had, perforce, been obliged to leave his charge to his own devices for twelve hours amid the distractions of the bazaar. Still, without a cowrie in his pocket--Peroo had carefully extracted the few annas he had found in one--a man was more or less helpless, even for evil.
Despite this fact, there was a lilt in the lagging step which, just as Peroo had begun to give up hope of playing Providence, came slowly down the road. It belonged to George Afford, in the gentlemanly stage of drink. He had had a chequered life, he said almost tearfully, but there were some things a man of honour could not do. He could not break his promise to an inferior--a superior was another matter. In that case he paid for it honestly. But he had promised Peroo--his inferior--to come. So here he was; and that was an end of it.
It seemed more than once during the next few hours as if the end had, indeed, come. But somehow Peroo's deferential hand and voice extricated those tired uncertain feet, the weary sodden brain, from ditches and despair; still it was a very sorry figure which Peroo's own hasty footsteps left behind, safely quartered for the day in a shady bit of jungle, while he ran on to overtake the rear-guard if he could. The start, however, had been too much for his lameness, and he was a full hour late at his work; which, of course, necessitated his putting in an excuse. He chose drunkenness, as being nearest the truth, was fined a day's wages, and paid it cheerfully, thinking with more certainty of the sleeping figure he had left in the jungles.
The afternoon sun was slanting through the trees before it stirred, and George Afford woke from the sleep of fatigue superadded to his usual sedative. He felt strangely refreshed, and lay on his back staring at the little squirrels yawning after their midday snooze in the branches above him. And then he laughed suddenly, sate up and looked about him half confusedly. Not a trace of humanity was to be seen; nothing but the squirrels, a few green pigeons, and down in the mirror-like pool behind the trees--a pool edged by the percolating moisture from the water with faint spikes of sprouting grass--a couple of egrets were fishing lazily. Beyond lay a bare sandy plain, backed by faint blue hills--the hills where fighting was to be had. Close at hand were those three good-conduct stripes.
That night Peroo had not nearly so far to go back along the broad white road; yet the step which came echoing down it, if steadier, lagged more. Nor was Peroo's task much easier, for George Afford--in the abject depression which comes to the tippler from total abstinence--sate down in the dust more than once, and swore he would not go another step without a dram. Still, about an hour after dawn, he was once more dozing in a shady retreat with a pot of water and some dough cakes beside him, while Peroo, in luck, was getting a lift to the third camping-ground.
But even at the second, where the sleeping figure remained, the country was wilder, almost touching the "skirts of the hills," and so, when George Afford roused himself--as the animals rouse themselves to meet the coming cool of evening--a ravine deer was standing within easy shot, looking at him with head thrown back and wide, startled nostrils, scenting the unknown.
The sight stirred something in the man which had slept the sleep of the dead for years; that keen delight of the natural man, not so much in the kill as in the chase; not so much in the mere chase itself as in its efforts--its freedom. He rose, stretching his long arms in what was half a yawn, half a vague inclination to shake himself free of some unseen burden.
But that night he swore at Peroo for leading him a fool's dance; he threatened to go back. He was not so helpless as all that. He was not a slave; he would have his tot of rum like any other soldier as--
"Huzoor," interrupted Peroo, deferentially, "this slave is aware that many things necessary to the Huzoor's outfit as a soldier remain to be produced. But with patience all may be attained. Here, by God's grace, is the rifle. One of us--Smith-sahib of G Company, Huzoor--found freedom to-day. He was reconnoitring with Griffiths, Major-sahib, when one of these hell-doomed Sheeahs--whom Heaven destroy--shot him from behind a rock--"
Private George Afford seemed to find his feet suddenly. "Smith of G Company?" he echoed in a different voice.
"Huzoor!--the sahib whom the Huzoor thrashed for thrashing this slave--"
"Poor chap!" went on George Afford, as if he had not heard. "So they've nicked him--but we'll pay 'em out--we--" His fingers closed mechanically on the rifle Peroo was holding out to him.
* * * * *
It was a fortnight after this, and the camp lay clustered closely in the mouth of a narrow defile down which rushed a torrent swollen from the snows above; a defile which meant decisive victory or defeat to the little force which had to push their way through it to the heights above. Yet, though death, maybe, lay close to each man, the whole camp was in an uproar because Major Griffiths' second pair of putties had gone astray. The other officers had been content with one set of these woollen bandages which in hill-marching serve as gaiters, and help so much to lessen fatigue; but the Major, being methodical, had provided against emergencies. And now, when, with that possibility of death before him, his soul craved an extreme order in all things, his clean pair had disappeared. Now the Major, though silent, always managed to say what he meant. So it ran through the camp that they had been stolen, and men compared notes over the fact in the mess-tent and in the canteen.
In the former, the Adjutant with a frown admitted that of late there had been a series of inexplicable petty thefts in camp, which had begun with the disappearance of Private Smith's rifle. That might perhaps be explained in an enemy's country, but what the deuce anybody could want with a pair of bone shirt-studs--
"And a shirt," put in a mournful voice.
"Item a cake of scented soap," said another.
"And a comb," began a third.
The Colonel, who had till then preserved a discreet silence, here broke in with great heat to the Adjutant.
"Upon my soul, sir, it's a disgrace to the staff, and I must insist on a stringent inquiry the instant we've licked these hill-men. I--I didn't mean to say anything about it--but I haven't been able to find my tooth-brush for a week."
Whereupon there was a general exodus into the crisp, cold air outside, where the darkness would hide inconvenient smiles, for the Colonel was one of those men who have a different towel for their face and hands.
The stars were shining in the cleft between the tall, shadowy cliffs which rose up on either side, vague masses of shadow on which--seen like stars upon a darker sky--the watchfires of the enemy sparkled here and there. The enemy powerful, vigilant; and yet beside the camp-fires close at hand the men had forgotten the danger of the morrow in the trivial loss of the moment, and were discussing the Major's putties.
"It's w'ot I say all along," reiterated the romancer of G Company. "It begun ever since Joey Smith was took from us at Number Two camp. It's 'is ghost--that's w'ot it is. 'Is ghost layin' in a trew-so. Jest you look 'ere! They bury 'im, didn't they? as 'e was--decent like in coat and pants--no more. Well! since then 'e's took 'is rifle off us, an' a greatcoat off D Company, and a knapsack off A."
"Don't be lavin' out thim blankets he tuk from the store, man," interrupted the tall Irishman. "Sure it's a testhimony to the pore bhoy's character annyhow that he shud be wantin' thim where he is."
"It is not laughing at all at such things I would be, whatever," put in another voice seriously, "for it is knowing of such things we are in the Highlands--"
"Hold your second sight, Mac," broke in a third; "we don't want none o' your shivers tonight. You're as bad as they blamed niggers, and they swear they seen Joey more nor once in a red coat dodging about our rear."
"Well! they won't see 'im no more, then," remarked a fourth philosophically, "for 'e change 'is tailor. Leastways, 'e got a service khakee off Sergeant Jones the night afore last; the Sergeant took his Bible oath to 'ave it off Joey Smith's ghost, w'en 'e got time to tackle 'im, if 'e 'ave ter go to 'ell for it."
Major Griffiths meantime was having a similar say as he stood, eye-glass in eye, at the door of the mess-tent. "Whoever the thief is," he admitted, with the justice common to him, "he appears to have the instincts of a gentleman; but, by Gad, sir, if I find him he shall know what it is to take a field officer's gaiters."
Whereupon he gave a dissatisfied look at his own legs, a more contented one at the glimmering stars of the enemy's watchfires, and then turned in to get a few hours' rest before the dawn.
But some one a few miles farther down the valley looked both at his legs and at the stars with equal satisfaction. Some one, tall, square, straight, smoking a pipe--some one else's pipe, no doubt--beside the hole in the ground where, on the preceding night, the camp flagstaff had stood. That fortnight had done more for George Afford than give his outward man a trousseau; it had clothed him with a certain righteousness, despite the inward conviction that Peroo must be a magnificent liar in protesting that the Huzoor's outfit had either been gifted to him or bought honestly.
In fact, as he stood looking down at his legs complacently, he murmured to himself, "I believe they're the Major's, poor chap; look like him somehow." Then he glanced at the Sergeant's coatee he wore and walked up and down thoughtfully--up and down beside the hole in the ground where the flagstaff had stood.
So to him from the dim shadows came a limping figure.
"Well?" he called sharply.
"The orders are for dawn, Huzoor, and here are some more cartridges."
George Afford laughed; an odd, low little laugh of sheer satisfaction.
* * * * *
It was past dawn by an hour or two, but the heights were still unwon.
"Send some one--any one!" gasped the Colonel, breathlessly, as he pressed on with a forlorn hope of veterans to take a knoll of rocks whence a galling fire had been decimating every attack. "Griffiths! for God's sake, go or get some one ahead of those youngsters on the right or they'll break--and then--"
Break! What more likely? A weak company, full of recruits, a company with its officers shot down, and before them a task for veterans--for that indifference to whizzing bullets which only custom brings. Major Griffiths, as he ran forward, saw all this, saw also the ominous waver. God! would he be in time to check it--to get ahead? that was what was wanted, some one ahead--no more than that--some one ahead!
There was some one. A tall figure ahead of the wavering boys.
"Come on! come on, my lads! follow me!" rang out a confident voice, and the Major, as he ran, half-blinded by the mists of his own haste, felt it was as a voice from heaven.
"Come on! come on!--give it 'em straight. Hip, hip, hurray!"
An answering cheer broke from the boys behind, and with a rush the weakest company in the regiment followed some one to victory.
* * * * *
"I don't understand what the dickens it means," said the Colonel almost fretfully that same evening, when, safe over the pass, the little force was bivouacking in a willow-set valley on the other side of the hills. Before it lay what it had come to gain, behind it danger past. "Some one in my regiment," he went on, "does a deuced plucky thing--between ourselves, saves the position: I want naturally to find out who it was, and am met by a cock and bull story about some one's ghost. What the devil does it mean, Major?"
The Major shook his head. "I couldn't swear to the figure, sir, though it reminded me a bit--but that's impossible. However, as I have by your orders to ride back to the top, sir, and see what can be done to hold it, I'll dip over a bit to where the rush was made, and see if there is any clue."
He had not to go so far. For in one of those tiny hollows in the level plateau of pass, whence the snow melts early, leaving a carpet of blue forget-me-nots and alpine primroses behind it, he, Sergeant Jones, and the small party going to make security still more secure, came upon Peroo, the water-carrier, trying to perform a tearful travesty of the burial service over the body of George Afford.
It was dressed in Sergeant Jones' tunic and Major Griffiths' putties, but the Sergeant knelt down beside it, and smoothed the stripes upon the cuff with a half-mechanical, half-caressing touch, and the Major interrupted Peroo's protestations with an odd tremor in his voice.
"What the devil does it matter," he said sharply, "what he took besides the pass? Stand aside, man; this is my work, not yours. Sergeant! form up your men for the salute--ball cartridge."
The Major's recollection of the service for the burial of the dead was not accurate, but it was comprehensive. So he committed the mortal remains of his brother soldier to the dust, confessing confusedly that there is a natural body and a spiritual body--a man that is of the earth earthy, and one that is the Lord from heaven. So following on a petition to be saved from temptation and delivered from evil, the salute startled the echoes, and they left George Afford in the keeping of the pass, and the pass in his keeping. And as the Major rode campwards, he wondered vaguely if some one before the great white throne wore a bad-character suit, or whether wisdom understood the plea, "I've had a very chequered life, I have indeed."
But Peroo had no such thoughts; needed no such excuse. It was sufficient for him that the Huzoor had once been the protector of the poor.
[FIRE AND ICE]
It was in a little lath-and-plaster house down by the river that it all happened. The veriest confection of a house, looking for all the world as if it were a Neapolitan ice. Strawberry and vanilla in alternate stripes, with shuttered windows of coffee, and a furled wafer of an awning over the filagree chocolate balcony. And it rested, so to speak, against a platter of green plantain-leaves, bright as any emerald. No doubt the trees belonging to the leaves grew somewhere to the back or the side of it, but from the wide street in front you could see nothing but the green leaves surrounding the ice-cream.
For the rest it was a three-storeyed house outwardly; inwardly a two-storeyed one; or to be strictly accurate, it consisted of a storey and a half, since the further half of the ground floor and the whole of the middle storey belonged to a different house, having a different entrance in a different street, which lay in a different quarter. A very respectable quarter indeed, whereas the less said about the morals of the wide street down by the river the better. They were so bad that the modesty of the middle storey did not permit of a single window whence they could be seen. And this gave the house a queer, half-hearted look, for the top storey, and that half of the lowest one which belonged to it, were full of windows and doors opening on to the broad path leading to destruction. There were five, with fretted wooden architraves filling up the whole of the ground floor, so that you could see straight into the long, shallow hall whence there was no exit save by a narrow slit in the middle, showing a dim, steep staircase. It was always empty, this hall, though it was carpeted with striped carpets, and painted elaborately in flowery arabesques of a dull, pale, pink and flaming crimson; an odd mixture reminding you vaguely of bloodstains on a rose-leaf. And there was a red lamp over the centre door, which sent a rosy redness into the growing dusk; for it was lit early.
So was the pale--the palest of green lights--on the top storey which you could see swinging from the roof when the coffee-ice shutters were thrown back as the evening breeze came down the river. It was pale, yet bright like the first star at sunsetting.
And sometimes, but not often, if you watched in the early dusk you might see the owner of the ice-cream house flit across the open window. She was like a sugar-drop herself, rose or saffron decked with silver leaf, a slender scrap of a creature who tinkled as she walked and gave out a perfume of heavy scented flowers. But this was seldom; more often you only heard the tinkle, either of silver or laughter, since Burfâni--for that was her name--was of those who barter the one for the other. It was in truth her hereditary trade, though neither her father nor her mother had practised it; their rôle in life having been that of pater and mater-familias. A very necessary one if the race is to survive, and so in this generation, also, her brother had undertaken the duty of marrying his first cousin. The young couple being now, in the privacy and propriety of the second storey, engaged in bringing up a fine family of girls to succeed to the top storey when Burfâni's age should drive her to a lower place in life. In the meantime, however, she allowed them so much a month; enough to enable idle Zulfkar to fight quail in the bazaars and keep his wife Lâzîzan in the very strictest seclusion--as befitted one filched from the profession of bartering smiles in order to fulfil the first duty of a woman--the rearing of babes.
Thus, in more ways than one, the house was conglomerate. On the side overlooking the broad path there was the stained rose-leaf hall, empty, swept, and garnished, and the dark stair leading up and up to the wandering star of a lamp twinkling out into the sunset amid the sound of laughter and money. On the side giving upon narrow respectability a hall full of household gear and dirt where the little girls played, and a dark stair leading to a darker room where Lâzîzan sat day after day bewailing her sad fate; for, of course, life would have been much gayer over the way, since she was a beautiful woman. Far more beautiful in a lavish, somewhat loud fashion, than the lady belonging to the ice-cream house with her delicate, small face; but that was the very reason why she had been chosen out from many to carry on the race as it ought to be carried on. Burfâni, of course, was clever, and that counted for much, but it never did in their profession to rely on brains above looks. Nevertheless Lâzîzan, when in a bad temper, was in the habit of telling herself that if she had been taught to sing and dance, as the little lady had been taught, she could have made the ice-cream house a more paying concern than it was--to judge by the pittance they received from it! And this angry complaint grew with her years until as she sat suckling her fourth child, she felt sometimes as if she could strangle it, even though it was a boy, and though as a rule she was an affectionate mother. In truth the sheer animal instinct natural to so finely developed a creature lasted out the two or three years during which her children were hers alone; after that, when they began crawling downstairs and playing in the hall where she might never go, she became jealous and then forgot all about them.
Nevertheless, the boy being only some nine months old when he was suddenly carried off by one of those mysterious diseases common to Indian children, she wept profusely, and told Burfâni--who, as in duty bound, came round decently swathed in a burka to offer condolence on hearing of the sad event--that some childless one had doubtless cast a shadow on him for his beauty's sake, seeing that--thank Heaven!--all her children were beautiful. There was always a militant flavour underlying the politeness of these two, and even the presence of the quaint little overdressed dead baby awaiting its bier on the bed did not prevent attack and defence.
"They favour thee, sister," replied Burfâni, suavely. "In mind also, to judge from what I see. Therefore I shall await God's will in the future ere I choose one to educate."
Lâzîzan tittered sarcastically, despite her half-dried tears.
"'Tis my choice first, nevertheless. The best of this bunch in looks--ay, in brains too, perchance--marries my brother's son, according to custom. Sure my mother chose thus, and I must do the same, sister."
She spoke evenly, though for the moment the longing to strangle something had transferred itself to the saffron-coloured sugar-drop all spangled with silver which had emerged from its chrysalis of a burka. What business had the poor thin creature with such garments when her beauty was hidden by mere rags?
Burfâni laughed in her turn; an easy, indifferent laugh, and stretched out her slim henna-dyed palm with the usual friendly offering of cardamoms.
"Take one, sister," she said soothingly, "they are good for spleen and excessive grief. Hai! Hai! thou wilt be forlorn, indeed, now thy occupation is gone."
Lâzîzan, with her mouth full of spices, tittered again more artificially than ever. "I can do other things, perchance, beside suckle babes. Maybe I weary of it, and am glad of a change."
The saffron-coloured sugar-drop, seated on a low stool in front of the white-sheeted bed with its solemn little gaily-dressed burden, looked at its companion distastefully through its long lashes, and the slender, henna-dyed hand, catching some loops of the jasmine chaplets it wore, held them like a bouquet close to the crimson-tinted lips.
"It is a virtuous task, my sister," quoth Burfâni, gravely sniffing away at the heavy perfume, as if she needed something to make her environment less objectionable. "Besides, it is ever a mistake to forsake the profession of one's birth--"
"And wherefore should I?" interrupted Lâzîzan, seizing her opportunity recklessly. "Hast thou forsaken it, and are we not sisters?"
Again a cold, critical look of dislike came from the long, narrow eyes with their drowsy lids.
"Such words are idle, sister. Forget them. Thou wouldst not find it easier--"
"How canst tell?" interrupted Lâzîzan once more. "As well say that thou couldst put up with my life."
The saffron and silver daintiness shifted its look towards the bed, and the henna-dyed hand straightened a wrinkle in the sheet softly.
"God knows!" she said with a sudden smile. "Anyhow, sister, 'tis not wise to change one's profession as one grows old."
As one grows old! This parting shot rankled long after the decent burka had slipped like a shadow through the swept and garnished hall, and so up the dark stairs to the wandering starlight shining feebly out into the sunset; long after the preacher and the bier, and the family friends had carried the gaily-dressed baby to its grave, leaving the mother to the select and secluded tears of her neighbours; long after the little girls, wearied out with excitement, had fallen asleep cuddled together peacefully, innocent of that choice in the future; long after Zulfkar, full of liquor, tears, and curses, due to a surplusage in the funeral expenses allowed by Burfâni, to parental grief, and to bad luck at cards, came home, desirous of sympathy. He got none, for Lâzîzan, despite her seclusion, had never lost the empire which he felt she deserved as the handsomest woman he knew. 'Twas his own fault, she said curtly; he could marry another wife, have more liquor, and gamble as much as he liked if he chose. It was but a question of money, and if he were content to put up with beggarly alms from his sister, that ended the matter.
Whereupon, being in the maudlin stage of drink, he wept still more.
It must have been fully three months after the baby's funeral procession had gone down the respectable street, and so by a side alley found its way into the broad path leading alike to destruction and the graveyard, that Burfâni went round to her sister-in-law's again. This time she was in pink and silver, like a rose-water ice, and her words were cold as her looks.
"Say what thou wilt, Lâzîzan, the youth lingers. Have I not windows to my house? Have I not eyes? And such things shall not be bringing disgrace to respectable families."
Lâzîzan tittered as usual: "Lo! what a coil, because an idle stranger lingers at the back instead of the front, 'Tis for thy sake doubtless, sister, though thou art unkind. I wonder at it, seeing he is not ill-favoured."
"So thou hast seen him! So be it. See him no more, or I tell Zulfkar."
"Tell him what? That thou hast cast eyes on a handsome stranger, and because he comes not to thy call wouldst fasten the quarrel upon me? Zulfkar is no fool, sister, he will not listen!"
"If he listen not, he can leave my house--for 'tis mine. And mark my words, Lâzîzan Bibi, no scandal comes nigh it."
Cæsar's wife could not have spoken with greater unction, and in good sooth she meant her words, since in no class is seclusion bound to be more virtuous than in that to which Burfâni belonged.
So, as the motes in the sunbeam of life danced along the broad path in front of the ice-cream house, and drifted up its dark stair, the painted and perfumed little lady under the pale green lamp kept an eye upon the virtue of her family. Thus ere long it came to be Zulfkar's turn to listen to his sister's warning, and as he listened he sucked fiercely, confusedly, at the inlaid hookah which stood for the use of approved visitors; for in good sooth there had been more money to spend of late, and Lâzîzan was discreet enough save to those watchful, experienced eyes. The sound of his hubblings and bubblings therefore was his only answer, and they filled the wide, low, white-plastered upper storey, frescoed round each coffee-shuttered window with flowery devices, until Burfâni lost patience, and began coldly:
"Hast been taking lessons of a camel, brother?" she asked, rustling the tinsel-decked fan she held; and then suddenly she seemed to grasp something, and the contemptuous indifference of her bearing changed to passionate anger. Her silver-set feet clashed as they touched the floor, and she rose first to a sitting posture, finally to stand before the culprit, the very personification of righteous wrath.
"So! thou hast taken gold! This is why thou canst ruffle with the best at Gulâbun's--base-born parvenu who takes to the life out of wickedness--as she hath done, bringing disgrace to the screened house where thy mother dwelt in decency. But thou dwellest there no longer--thou eatest no bread of mine--I will choose my pupil from another brood."
"Nay, sister, 'tis not proved," stammered Zulfkar.
"Not proved!" she went on still more passionately. "Nay, 'tis not proved to thy neighbours, maybe, but to me? Mine eyes have seen--I know the trick--and out thou goest. I will have no such doings in my house, and so I warned her months ago. But there! what need for railing? Live on her gold an thou wiliest, it shall not chink beside mine."
She sank back upon the silk coverlet again, and with a bitter laugh began to rustle the tinsel fan once more. And Zulfkar, after unavailing protests, slunk down the dark stairs, and so along the street to a certain house over the liquor-seller's shop, about which a noisy crowd gathered all day long.
And that night screams and blows came from the second storey, and unavailing curses on the mischief-maker. But if the latter heard them, she gave no sign to the approved visitors drinking sherbets in the cool upper storey with the windows set wide to the stars.
It was Zulfkar beating his wife, of course, because she was so handsome primarily; secondly, because she had been foolish enough to be found out; thirdly, because even in liquor he was sharp enough to recognise that Burfâni would keep her word.
And she did. The supplies stopped from that day. Within a week the second storey lay empty, while Lâzîzan wept tears of pain and spite in a miserable little lodging in the very heart of the city. It is difficult even to hint at the impotent rage the woman felt towards her sister-in-law. Even Zulfkar's blows were forgotten in the one mad longing to revenge herself upon the pink-and-saffron daintiness which would not spare one crumb from a full table. For so to Lâzîzan's coarse, passionate nature the matter presented itself, bringing with it a fierce delight at the perfections of her own lover. He had deserted her for the time, it is true, but that was the way of lovers when husbands were angry; by-and-by he would come back, and there would be peace, since Zulfkar must have gold.
So ran her calculations; but she reckoned without a certain fierce intolerance which the latter shared with his sister; also somewhat prematurely on an immediate emptying of his pockets. But luck was not all against him; the cards favoured him. And so, when a few days after the flitting from the second storey, she, being sick to death of dulness, thought the time had come for self-assertion, she found herself mistaken. Zulfkar, still full of Dutch courage, fell upon her again, and beat her most unmercifully, finishing up with an intimidatory slash at her nose. It was not much, not half so serious as the beating, but the very thought of possible disfigurement drove her mad, and the madness drove her to a corner where she could plan revenge while Zulfkar slept heavily--for he was more than half drunk. And this, too, was the fault of the saffron-and-rose devil in the upper storey, who had her amusement and spied upon other women's ways. And this meant days more ere she, Lâzîzan, would be presentable, even if she did not carry the mark to her grave, and all because that she-devil was jealous--jealous of her lover!
Oh for revenge! And why not? The door was unlatched, since Zulfkar had forgotten it in his anger; the streets were deserted. Even the broad path down by the river would be asleep, the green light gone from above, only the red lamp swinging over the outer door, sending a glow.... Fire! The thought leapt to her brain like a flame itself. Why not? Zulfkar had purposely kept--all unbeknown to the she-devil--a second key to that empty second floor, and he was in a drunken sleep. If she stole it--if she took the bottle of paraffin--if she set fire to the wooden partition separating the stairs--if she broke the red lamp and pretended that was it--
She did not stop to think. She had begun the task almost before she had thought out the details, and was fumbling in Zulfkar's pockets as he lay. And there were two bottles of paraffin in the corner; that was because he had brought one home, and the market-woman another by mistake. So much the better, so much the bigger blaze. Then out into the street, not forgetting a box of safety matches--strange companions to such a task. She knew her way well, having wandered free enough as a child before the lot was drawn, the die cast which sent her to suckle babes. Yet, being a woman beset by a thousand superstitious fears, it needed all her courage ere she found herself face to face with the thin wooden partition surrounding the steep stair leading upwards. How many times had she not listened to feet ascending those unseen stairs, and heard the tinkle of laughter as the unseen door above opened?
Well, it would blaze finely, and cut off at once all means of escape. A devilish plan indeed, and the leaping flames, ere she left them to their task, showed the face of a fiend incarnate.
And so to wait for the few minutes before the whole world must know that the saffron and the rose daintiness was doomed. No more laughter--no more lovers--that would be for her, Lâzîzan, not for the other with her cold sneers.
A licking tongue of flame showed for an instant and made her pray Heaven none might see it too soon. Then a crackle, a puff of smoke, next a cry of fire, but, thank Heaven, only from the broad path. And what good were the running feet, what good the shouts of the crowd in which her shrouded figure passed unnoticed, unless the upper storey had wings? For the stairs must be gone--hopelessly gone--by this time.
More than the stairs, for with one sudden blaze the lath-and-plaster house seemed to melt like ice itself before the sheet of flame which the soft night wind bent riverwards.
And still the top storey slept, or was it suffocated? No! there was some one at the window--some one gesticulating wildly. A man--not a woman.
"Throw yourself down!" cried an authoritative foreign voice, "'tis your only chance."
Surely, since the ice melted visibly during the sudden hush which fell upon the jostling crowd.
"Throw yourself down!" came the order again; "we'll catch you if we can. Stand back, good people."
"Quick! it's your last chance," came the inexorable voice once more. Then there was a leap, a scream--a crash, as in his despair the man overleapt the mark and fell among the parting crowd. Fell right at Lâzîzan's feet face uppermost.
And it was the face of the handsome stranger--of her lover.
Her shriek echoed his as she flung herself beside him. And at the sound something white and ghostlike slipped back from the window with a tinkle of laughter.
"Burfâni! Burfâni!" shouted the crowd. "Drop gently--we'll save you! Burfâni! Burfâni!"
But there was no answer; and the next moment with a roar and a crash Vice fell upon Virtue, and both together upon the swept and garnished hall and the hall where the little girls had played.
The ice-cream house had become a blazing pile of fire.
[THE SHÂHBÂSH WALLAH]
Shâhbâsh, Bhaiyan, Shâhbâsh!
The words, signifying "Bravo, boys, bravo!" came in a despondent drawl from the coolie leaning against the ladder--one of those crazy bamboo ladders with its rungs tied on with grass twine at varying slants and distances, whereon the Indian house-decorator loves to spend long days in company with a pot of colour-wash and a grass brush made from the leavings of the twine.
There were two such ladders in the bare, oblong, lofty room, set round with open doors and windows, and on each was balanced a man, a pot, and a brush--all doing nothing. So was the coolie below.
He was a small, slight man, with a dejected expression. Stark naked, save for two yards or so of coarse muslin wisped about his short hair and a similar length knotted about his middle. What colour either had been originally could not be guessed, since both were completely covered with splashes of colour-wash--blue, green, yellow, and pink. So was his thin body, which, as he stood immovable at the bottom of the ladder, looked as if it was carved out of some rare scagiola.
For they were doing up the hospital in Fort Lawrence, and Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, of the 10th Sikh Pioneers--then engaged in making military roads over the Beloochistan frontier--had an eye for colour. Not so, however, Surgeon-Major Pringle, who that very morning had marched in with the detachment of young English recruits which had been sent to take possession of the newly enlarged fort. It was a queer mud building, looking as if it were a part of the mud promontory which blocked a sharp turn in the sun-dried, heat-baked mud valley, through which the dry bed of a watercourse twisted like the dry skin of a snake. Everything dry, everything mud, baked to hardness by the fierce sun. It was an ugly country in one way, picturesque in another, with its yawning fissures cracking the mud hills into miniature peaks and passes, its almost leafless flowering shrubs, aromatic, honeyful, and its clouds of painted butterflies. A country in which colour was lost in sheer excess of sunshine.
That, however, was not the reason why Surgeon-Captain O'Brien had painted his wards to match Joseph's coat. As he explained to Surgeon-Major Pringle, who, as senior officer, took over charge, it was wiser, in his opinion--especially with youngsters about--to call wards by the colour of their walls rather than by the diseases to be treated in them; since if a patient "wance found out what was really wrong with his insoide, he was sure to get it insthanter."
The Surgeon-Major, fresh from England and professional precisions--fresh also to India and its appeals to the imagination--had felt it impossible to combat such statements seriously. Besides, there was no use in doing so. The walls were past remedy for that year, and even the post-mortem house--that last refuge of all diseases--was being washed bright pink; a colour which, according to Terence O'Brien, was "a nice, cheerful tint, that could not give annyone, not even a corpse, the blues."
In the course of which piece of work the small man at the foot of the ladder was becoming more and more like a statue in rosso antico, as he repeated: "Shâhbâsh, bhaiyan, shâhbâsh!" at regular intervals.
His voice had no resonance, and not an atom of enthusiasm about it; but, like a breeze among rain-soaked trees, it always provoked a pitter-patter of falling drops--a patter of pink splashes like huge tears--upon the concrete floor and the scagiola figure. For the words set the brushes above moving slowly for a while; then the spasm of energy passed, all was still again, until a fresh "Bravo, boys, bravo!" was followed by a fresh shower of pink tears.
"Lazy brutes!" came a boy's voice from the group of young recruits who were enjoying a well-earned rest after having marched in fifteen miles, carrying their kits as if they had been born with them, and settling down into quarters as if they were veterans. For they were smart boys, belonging to a smart regiment, whose recruiting ground lay far from slums and scums; one whose officers were smart also, and kept up the tone of their men by teaching them a superior tolerance for the rest of the world. "Jest look at that feller--like an alley taw. He ain't done a blessed 'and's turn since I began to watch 'im." They were seated on some shady mud steps right over against the hospital compound, and the post-mortem house being separate from the wards, and having all its many windows and doors set wide, the inside of it was as plainly visible as the out.
"Rum lot," assented another voice with the same ring of wholesome self-complacency in it. "I arst one of the Sickees, as seems a decent chap for a nigger and knows a little decent lingo, wot the spotted pig was at with his everlastin' shabbashes, an' 'e says it's to put courage to the Johnnies up top. Not that I don't say I shouldn't cotton myself much to them ladders, that's more like caterpillars than a decent pair o' 'ouse-steps. A poor lot--that's wot they are, as doesn't know the differ in holt between a nail and a bit o' twine."
"Well, mates," said a third voice, "all I can say is that if they ain't got no more courage than shâhbâsh can put to them, it's no wonder we licks the blooming lot of them--as we does constant."
There was a faint laugh first, and then the group sucked at their pipes decisively as they watched the doings in the post-mortem. Though they would have scouted the suggestion, the shâhbâsh wallah had justified his calling; for patriotism brings courage with it.
He did not trouble his head about justification, however. Some one, in his experience, always did the shouting, and it suited him better than more active occupation, for he was lame; stiff, too, in his back. Surgeon-Major Pringle, coming in later to find the post-mortem very much as it had been hours before, looked at him distastefully, and began a remark about what two English workmen could have done, which Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien interrupted with his charming smile: "Sure, sir, the sun rises a considerable trifle airlier East than West, an' that's enough energy for wan hemisphere. Besides, ye can't get on in India without a shâhbâsh wallah. Or elsewhere, for that matter. Ye always require 'the something not ourselves which makes for righteousness'--"
"Makes for fiddlesticks!" muttered the senior under his breath, adding aloud, "Who the dickens is the shâhbâsh wallah when he is at home, and what's his work?" He asked the question almost reluctantly, for his junior's extremely varied information had, since the morning, imparted a vague uncertainty to a round world which had hitherto, in Dr. Pringle's estimation of it, been absolutely sure--cocksure!
"What is he? Oh! he's a variety of names. He's objective reality, moral sanction, antecedent experience, unconditioned good. Ye can take yer choice of the lot, sir; and if ye can't win the thrick with metaphysics--I can't, and that's the thruth--play thrumps. Sentiment!--sympathy! Ye can't go wrong there. Ye can't leave them out of life's equation, East or West. Just some one--a fool, maybe--to say ye're a fine fellow, an' no misthake, at the very moment whin ye know ye're not. Biogenesis, sir, is the Law of Life. As Schopenhauer says, the secret that two is wan, is the--"
His senior gave an exasperated sigh, and preferred changing the subject. So at the appointed time, no sooner, no later, the last patter of pink tears fell from the brushes upon the floor of the post-mortem and upon the still figure, which might have been a corpse save for its drowsy applause--"Bravo, boys, bravo!" Then the caterpillar ladders, with the decorators and the pots of colour-wash and the brushes still attached to them, crawled away, and the shâhbâsh wallah followed in their wake, his skin bearing mute evidence to the amount of work he had provoked.
His turban and waistcloth testified to it for days--in lessening variety of tint as the layers of pink, green, blue, and yellow splashes wore off--for at least a fortnight, during which time Surgeon-Major Pringle, busy in making all things conform to his ideal, constantly came across the shâhbâsh wallah bestowing praise where, in the doctor's opinion, none was deserved. What right, for instance, had the water-carriers filling their pots, the sweepers removing the refuse, to senseless commendation for the performance of their daily round, their common task?
Especially when it was so ill performed; even in the matter of punkah-pulling, a subject on which the native might be credited with some knowledge. Surgeon-Major Pringle seethed with repressed resentment for days over the intermittent pulse of the office punkah, and finally, in a white heat of discomfort and indignation, burst out into the verandah, harangued the coolie at length, and in the fulness of Western energy went so far as to show him how to keep up a regular, even swing. His masterly grasp of a till then untouched occupation not only satisfied himself but also the shâhbâsh wallah, who, as usual, was lounging about in the verandah doing nothing. So, of course, his "Shâhbâsh, jee, shâhbâsh," preceded Surgeon-Major Pringle's hasty return to the office and prepared Terence O'Brien for the dictum that the offender must be sent about his business; for if he was a camp-follower he must have some business, some regular work.
"Worrk, is it?" echoed Terence with his charming smile of pure sympathy. "Be jabers! yes. Worrk--plenty, but not regular, as a rule. The man's a torch-bearer. If it happens to be a dark night, and annybody wants a dhooli, he carries the torch for it."
Dr. Pringle's resentful surprise made him stutter: "Do you mean to say that--that--that--that--the public money--the ratepayers' money--is wasted in entertaining a whole man for so trivial a task?"
"Trivial, is it? When he's a pillar of fire by night an' a cloud of witnesses by day? And then he isn't a whole man, sir, at all at all. Wan of his legs is shorter than the other. I had to break it twice, sir, to get it as straight as it is. Thin, I've grave doubts about his spinal column; and as I trepanned him myself, I know his head isn't sound. It was two ton of earth fell on him, sir, last rains, when he was givin' a drink to wan of the Sikhs that got hurt blasting. It's nasty, shifty stuff, sir, is the mud in these low hills--nasty silted alluvial stuff, with a bias in it. So, poor divvle! seeing he wasn't fit for much but the hospital, I put him to the staff of it. And he kapes things going. Indeed, I wouldn't take it upon myself to say that he doesn't do the native patients as much good as half the drugs I exhibit to the unfortunate craythurs, since for sheer mystherious dispensations of Providence commend me to the British pharmacopœia."
Once again Surgeon-Major Pringle felt that professional dignity could best be served by silent contempt, and orders that the offender was, at least, not to loaf about the verandahs.
But the fates were against the fiat. In the moonless half of May, driest of all months, a Hindu returning from Hurdwar fell sick, and half-an-hour after the report, Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, going out of the ward with his senior, paused in his cheerful whistling of "Belave me, if all those endearing young charms," to say under his breath, "Cholera, mild type." Now cholera, no matter of what type, has an ugly face when seen for the first time, especially when the face which looks into it, wondering if it means life or death, has youth in its eyes. So in the dark nights the dhooli came into requisition, and with it the torch-bearer, until the green and the blue and yellow wards overflowed into the verandahs, and even the pink post-mortem claimed its final share of boys. Not a large one, however, since, as Terence O'Brien said, "It was wan of those epidemics when ye couldn't rightly say a man had cholera till he died of it."
It was bad enough, however, to make the Surgeon-Major, who had never seen one before, set to work when it passed, suddenly as it had come, to cipher out averages, and tabulate treatments, with a view to what is called future guidance. And so, as he confided to his assistant with great complacency, it became clear as daylight that the largest percentage of recoveries, their rapidity, and as a natural corollary the incidence of mildness in the attack itself, seemed in connection with the position of the cots. Those close to the doors, or actually on the verandahs, were the most fortunate, and so he was inclined to believe in the value of currents of fresh air.
"Fresh air, is it?" echoed Terence, with an encouraging smile. "Maybe; maybe not. God knows, it may be anything in the wide wurrld, since there's but wan thing you can bet your bottom dollar on in cholera, sir, and that is that ye can't tell anything about it for certain, and that your experience of wan epidemic won't be that of the next."
"Neither does your experience, Mr. O'Brien," retorted his senior, sarcastically, "militate against mine being more fortunate. I mean to leave no stone unturned to arrive at reliable data on points which appear to me to have been overlooked. For instance, I shall begin by asking those cases of recovery if they remember anything which seemed at the time to bring them relief, to stimulate in them that vitality which it is so essential to preserve."
In pursuance of which plan he went out then and there to the verandah, where a dozen or more lank boys were lounging about listlessly, just beginning to feel that life might soon mean more than a grey duffle dressing-gown and a long chair.
"No, sir," said the first, firmly. "I disremember anythin' that done me good. I jest lay with a sickenin' pain in my inside, an' a don't-care-if-I-do feelin' outside." He paused, and another boy took up the tale sympathetically.
"So it was. A reg'lar, don't-care except w'en that little 'eathen--'im that's always saying shâhbâsh, sir, come along; an' that seem to me most times. 'E made me feel a blamed sight--beggin' pardon, sir--worse. For I kep' thinkin' of where I see 'im first, like a alley taw in the dead 'ouse; and the dead 'ouse isn't a cheerful sorter think w'en you ain't sure but wot you're going there. It made me--" he paused in his turn.
"Made you what?" asked Terence O'Brien, who had followed to listen.
"Give me the 'orrors, sir, till I'd 'ave swopped all I knew to kick 'im quiet; but not bein' able, I jest lay and kep' it for 'im against I could, till it seemed like as I must; an' so I will."
"In cases of extreme nervous depression, sir," began the junior, mischievously, "a counter irritant--"
"Pshaw!" interrupted Dr. Pringle, angrily, and walked back with great dignity to the office.
But the conversation thus started lingered among the grey dressing-gowns, the result of comparing notes being a general verdict that "Alley taw" deserved that kicking. He did not actually get it, however; the boys were too big, and he too small for that. But he sank into still greater disrepute, becoming, in truth, that most unenviable of all things not made nor created, but begotten of idle wit--a garrison butt. Not that he seemed to care much. He grew more furtive in his lounging, but nothing seemed to disturb the divine calm of his commendation for the world which he had created for himself with his "Bravo, boys, bravo!" Behold, all things in it were very good! That, at least, was Terence O'Brien's fanciful way of looking at the position. As he went about his work whistling "Belave me, if all those endearing young charms"--a tune which, he said, cheered the boys--he would often pause to smile at the shâhbâsh wallah. After a time, however, the smile would change to a quick narrowing of the eyes, as if something in the bearing of the man was puzzling. Finally, one day, coming upon the man sidling along a bit of brick wall, which had been built to strengthen a crack in the mud one overhanging the dry watercourse, he pulled up, asked a few rapid questions, and then lifted the man's eyelids and peered into the soft brown eyes, as if he wanted to see through them to a crack he knew of in the back of the man's skull.
"And you are sure you see as well as ever?" he asked again.
"Quite as well, Huzoor," came the answer, with a faint tremor in it. "I can see to carry the torch on the darkest of nights if it is wanted, Huzoor!"
"Hm!" said Dr. O'Brien, doubtfully, promising himself to test the truth of this statement. But the fates again decreed otherwise. The next day's mail brought orders for him to go and act elsewhere for a senior on two months' leave.
Dr. Pringle was not sorry. How could you collaborate properly with a man who calmly admitted that at a pinch he had used a bullet-mould to extract a tooth?
The monsoon had long since broken in the plains ere the young doctor returned; but in the arid tract in which Fort Lawrence lay rain came seldom at any time. And that was a year of abnormal drought. The fissures in the mud seemed to widen with the heat, and the fringe of green oleanders which followed every turn of the dry watercourse, mutely witnessing to unseen moisture below, wilted and drooped. In the new-built fort itself a crack or two showed in the level platform jutting out across the low valley on which the building stood, and in more than one place portions of the low mud-cliffs crumbled and broke away. The whole earth, indeed, seemed agape with thirst.
But water in plenty came at last. On the very day, in fact, when Terence O'Brien returned to the fort, which he reached on foot, having had to leave his dhooli behind, owing to a small slip on the road; nevertheless, as he crossed over from the mess to his quarters close to the hospital that evening, he told himself that he had the devil's own luck to be there at all. For the rain was then hitting the hard ground with a distinct thud, and spurting up from it in spray, showing white against the black mirk of the night. And the rush of the stream filling up the dry bed of the watercourse, and playing marbles with the boulders, was like a lion's roar.
It did not keep him awake, however, for he was dead tired. So he slept the sleep of the just. For how long he did not know. It was darker than ever when he woke suddenly--why he knew not, and with the same blind instinct was out into the open, quick as he could grope his way.
Not an instant too soon, either. A deafening crash told him that, though he could not see his own hand. The rain had ceased, but the rush of the river dulled hearing to all lesser sounds. As he stood dazed, he staggered, slipped, almost fell. Was that an earthquake, or was the solid ground parting somewhere close at hand? And if his house was down, how about the hospital and the sick folk?
He turned at the thought and ran till, in the dark and the silence of that overwhelming roar, he came full tilt upon some one else running in the dark also. It was the Surgeon-Major.
"The hospital's down. Have you a light--anything--a match?" panted Dr. Pringle. "We must have a light to see--"
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!" (Oh, the torch! Oh, the torch-bearer!) shouted Terence at the top of his voice as he ran on till stopped by something blocking the way. Ruins! And that was the sound of voices.
"What's up?" he cried.
"Don' know, sir," came from unseen hearers. "Part o' the 'orspital's down, but we can't see. It's a slide o' some sort, for there's a crack right across nigh under our feet. If we could get a light!"
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!" The doctor's voice rang out again towards the camp-followers' lines, but the roar was deafening. And in the night, when all men are asleep, the news of disaster travels slowly. Yet without a light it was impossible even to realise what had happened, still less to help the sick who might lie crushed.
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!--thank God! there's a light at last."
There was, in the far distance across the quadrangle. But it was not a torch; it was only an officer in a gorgeous sleeping-suit running with a bedroom candle. Still it was a light!
"Come on, man!" shouted Terence O'Brien, as it slackened speed, paused, stopped dead. His was the only voice that seemed to carry through the roar.
But the gay sleeping-suit stood still, waving its candle.
"It's the crack, sir," called some one in Terence O'Brien's ear. "It goes right across, I expect--we'd best find out first."
It did. A yawning fissure, twenty feet wide, had cut the hospital compound in two, and isolated one angle of the fort--that nearest the river--from the rest. Twenty feet wide, at least, judged by the glimmer of light! And how deep? Had the river cut it? Was it only a matter of time when the mud island on which they stood should be swept away? And what were the means of escape? There was more light now; more bedroom candles and sleeping-suits; a lamp or two, and others behind, as the boys--last to wake--came running, to pause like the first-comers, at the unpassable gulf; for the more it could be seen, the more difficult seemed the task of crossing it at once. By-and-by, perhaps, with ladders and ropes it would be possible--but now? Terence O'Brien, feeling the "now" imperative, skirted the crumbling edge almost too near for safety in his eagerness to find some foothold for a daring man; but there was none. True, the brick wall, built to strengthen the cracked mud one, still bridged the extreme end of the fissure, looking as if the mud had deliberately shrunk from its intrusion. It hung there half seen, on God knows what slender foundation--perhaps on none. But it could give no help. To trust it would be madness; a touch might send it down into the river below. No! Since none could cross the gap there must be more light on the farther side; torches, a bonfire, anything to pierce the dark and let men see how to help themselves and other men!
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee-ân!" The cry went out with all the force of his lungs. Surely the camp-followers must be awake by now.
One was, at any rate; for, surrounded by a halo from the faggot of blazing pitch-pine it carried, a figure showed upon the path worn, close to the mud walls of the native quarters, by the foot-tracks of those whose duty took them to the hospital. It was the shâhbâsh wallah, coming slowly, almost indifferently, in answer to the call; coming as if to his ordinary duty towards the growing fringe of ineffectual candles and eager men bordering the impossible. That was better! Given half-a-dozen more such haloes--and there were plenty if they would only come--and eager men on the other side would see how to help themselves and their comrades!
But no other halo appeared behind the one which followed the foot-track of others so closely; and so once again the call was given--
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee-ân! Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!"
"Hâzr, Huzoor!" (Present, sir).
The nearness of the voice made Terence O'Brien look up, for it was the first voice he had heard clearly from the other side against that roar of the river. But as he looked another voice beside him said hurriedly--
"My God! he's coming across!"
He was. Surrounded by the halo of his own light, and keeping religiously to the beaten path, the shâhbâsh wallah, leaving the mud wall of the quarters, had struck the outer brick one as it stood, supported for a few yards by a spit of earth upon which the foot-track showed as the light passed. A spit narrowing to nothing--no! not to nothing, but to a mere ledge of earth and mortar clinging like a swallow's nest to the brick--wider here, narrower there, yet still able to give faint foothold upon the traces of those feet which had passed and repassed so often to their trivial round, their common task. Foothold! Ay! But what of the brain guiding the feet? What of the courage guiding the brain?
And even then, what of the foundation?
A sort of murmur rose above the roar. "He can't do it--impossible--tell him. Call to him, O'Brien. Tell him not to try."
The doctor stood for one second watching the figure centring its circle of light against the background of wall; then, even though there was no need for it, his voice fell to a whisper. "Hush!" he said. "Don't hustle him. By the Lord who made me, he doesn't know; he's feeling his way every inch by the wall! He's blind, and by God! if anybody can do it, he will."
He did. Step by step, slowly, confidently, in the footsteps of others.
And the great cry of "Bravo, brother, bravo!" which went up from both sides of the gap as he and his torch stepped on to firm ground, brought him as much surprise as a voice from heaven might have done.
* * * * *
"Pressure on the brain!" said Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, about three weeks after this, when he and Dr. Pringle had had a consultation over the shâhbâsh wallah. He was not only blind now, but there was a drag in the good leg as he limped about, over which both doctors shook their heads. "And there's nothing to be done that I can see. The bhoys will miss him!"
That was true. Alley Taw had come into favour since the night when, as Terence phrased it, "he had done a brave deed without doing it," and by failing to see the evil, had enabled other men to do good. For the torch had not disclosed irretrievable disaster, and by timely rescue not a life had been lost.
Surgeon-Major Pringle frowned. He was beginning to understand his India a little, but the idea of the shâhbâsh wallah being a useful member of society was still as a red rag to a bull. And so, out of sheer contrariety, he began to talk doctor's talk as to the possibility of this or that.
"It's life or death, annyhow," said the junior, shaking his head, "but I don't see it. I wouldn't thry it myself--not now at any rate."
Perhaps not then. But after a month or two more he said, "It's your suggestion; I don't belave it can be done; but you may as well thry."
For the shâhbâsh wallah, half paralysed, had even given up his cry. So, part of the hospital being still under repair, they took him to the pink post-mortem house and set all the doors and windows wide for more light. He was quite unconscious by that time, so Terence O'Brien only had the chloroform handy, and kept his finger on the pulse. Half-a-dozen or more of the boys were on the mud steps over against the hospital compound waiting to hear the shâhbâsh wallah's fate. But you might have heard a pin drop in the post-mortem, save for the occasional quick request for this or that as the Surgeon-Major, with the Surgeon-Captain's eyes watching him, set his whole soul and heart and brain on doing something that had never been done before.
So the minutes passed. Was it to be failure or success? The Surgeon-Major's fingers were deft--none defter.
The minutes passed to hours. That which had to be done had to be done with one touch light as a feather, steady as a rock, perfect in its performance, or not at all.
And still the minutes passed. Terence O'Brien's face was losing some of its eagerness in sympathy, Dr. Pringle's gaining it in anxiety; for clear, insistent, not-to-be-silenced doubt was making itself heard. Only the shâhbâsh wallah cared not at all as he lay like a corpse.
It had come to the last chance. The last; and Dr. Pringle, with a pulse of wild resentment at his own weakness, realised that his nerve was going, his hand shaking. Still, it had to be done. The splinter of bone raised--the whole process he had thought out as the last chance gone through. He steadied himself and began. Failure or success? Failure--failure--failure! The word beat in on his heart and brain, bringing unsteadiness to both.
"Dresser, the chloroform," said Terence O'Brien, sharply; for there was a quiver in the man's eyelids.
But ere the deadening drug did its work, the shâhbâsh wallah's brain, set free to work along familiar lines by the raising of that splintered bone, had sent its old message to his lips--
"Shâhbâsh, bhaiyan, shâhbâsh!"
In telling the story Dr. Pringle says no more; generally because he cannot.
But after a time, if you are a brother craftsman, he will give you all details of the biggest and most successful operation he ever did.
And though he is slow to allow the corollary, he never denies that the shâhbâsh wallah's verdict put courage into him.
[THE MOST NAILING BAD SHOT IN CREATION]
This again is one of poor Craddock's stories which he told me when we were stretching a steel-edged ribbon of rail across shifting sandhills; that ribbon uniting West to East on which, a few years later, he met his death in trying to rid the permanent-way of something which Fate had decreed should be permanently in the way.
It happened in mutiny time; shortly after his appearance down the King's Well, which is told elsewhere. He was serving as a volunteer in one of the breastworks which, as the long hot-weather months dragged by, began to seam and sear the face of the red rocks on the Ridge at Delhi; creeping nearer and nearer to the red face of the city wall.
And with him, as the catch phrase runs, "lay" Joe Banks, the Yorkshireman; tall, stolid, silent. Good-looking also, with a thick close crop of curly brown hair and hard, honest blue eyes. He was not stupid by any means; only phenomenally silent, except when the talk turned on women, and then, as Craddock put it tersely, he "damned free"; perhaps because, as the latter worthy used to add with a suspicion of sympathy in his drink-blurred face, he had "cared a sight deal too much for one woman to 'ave much likin' left for the lot."
To one side of the breastwork lay a dry ravine where every day the vipers used to sun themselves on the hot red rocks. Just across it, within range, rose a small Mahomedan shrine amid sparse brushwood, which thickened a bit till it was barred by the ruined wall of a garden where the slow oxen circled round the well, sending runnels of slippery-looking water to the scented shade of citrons, roses, and mangoes, heedless of the great cannon-balls which sometimes came trundling, like playthings, down the wide walks. Not often, though, for the stress of strife lay at the other angle of the breastwork which faced the city wall.
Still, those who came to smoke a hard-earned pipe in what was the safest spot in the outpost, soon found that the pious-looking shrine, the peaceful garden, were not always so innocent as they looked. In the dusk of dark or dawn they were tenanted by what, after a time, the men agreed to call the "most nailin' bad shot in creation." "The direction wasn't, so to speak, so bad, sir," Craddock used to explain to me. "'E'd about 'ave 'it the sea-serpent for length; it was the elevation which, as Bull's-eyes said, savin' your presence, sir, was d----ficient. The top o' the Monument was about in it, sir, an' that was why the only feller as really use langwidge was Joe Banks; for 'e was a 'ead and shoulders higher than the lot o' us." So when, in the dark, a flash used to glimmer for a second among the brushwood like a firefly, the men learnt to sing out, "That's for you, Joey," "Duck, my darlin', duck," and other witticisms of that kind, until the big Yorkshireman's face darkened beyond jesting-point: for he had the devil's own temper when roused. It was this, joined to his extreme good looks and a somewhat hazy recollection of the Bible and the classics among the volunteers, which earned him the nickname of Apollyon. So to soothe him, some of the wilder spirits would organise a charge over the ravine, scattering, perhaps, a few drowsy adders which had forgotten to go to bed; but nothing else. The blind old fakeer in the shrine was always fast asleep, the bullocks in the garden circling slowly, driven by a drowsy lad curled up behind them.
So the days passed; and, despite practice, the Most Nailin' Bad Shot shot badly as ever. The odds, however, as the men pointed out gravely to Apollyon, kept on improving; so that sooner or later there must be a "casualty" in the garrison of Number One outpost. Joey, too, would get careless; he wouldn't smart enough, etc., etc. And, sure enough, one evening just as the moonlight was mixing with the daylight, and Joey Banks had risen to his full height in a huff because Craddock for once had sided against him in the perennial argument as to whether it was worth while fighting for women who didn't know what they would be at, and hadn't the pluck of a mouse, one of these firefly flashes was followed by a sudden clapping of the giant's hands to the very crown of his head.
"We looked, sir," Craddock used to say gravely, with that reminiscent biblical knowledge of his which had doubtless supplied Apollyon, "for 'im to fall dead; as 'e deserve rich; for 'e'd been damnin' uncommon free, sir. But 'e only use it worse. And then, savin' your presence, sir, we see that 'e'd 'ad, so ter speak, a narrer-gauge line laid down thro' 'is jungle--right through 'is curls, sir. Lordy! 'ow we laughed. It was a lady, we told 'im, as wanted some locks an' no mistake. It sorter made 'im mad, for 'e just stooped and gathered the lot--bein' fair, you could see it shinin' in the dust--together.
"'She shall 'ave 'em, never fear,' 'e says, quiet like. 'Yes! the person who fired that shot shall 'ave more o' my 'air than he reckons for.'"
Just at that moment, however, one of those sudden alarms which for three months kept the men and officers before Delhi on the alert by day and night broke up the company, and so Joe Banks' loss passed out of most minds. Except his own, of course. It lingered there, aided by that narrow gauge over his brain on which the cool night wind blew pleasantly.
So when the alarm passed, instead of coming back to rest, he crept out surreptitiously by the back of the breastwork, for such sorties were strictly out of order, and so by a slant downwards across the ravine. It was a brilliant moonlight night, and he caught the sparkle of many a deadly pair of eyes among the rocks. But he was in no mood to step aside from any danger, and once beyond fear of recall he strode along straight as if the whole place belonged to him; it might have, for all the opposition he met. The fakeer was asleep as usual, the oxen circling round the well, and in the scented shade of the roses and citrons he could find nothing save some drowsy birds who fluttered and twittered helplessly as his tall head forced a way through the thickets.
Feeling ill-used, he set his face back towards the breastwork, until the extraordinary peace of the moonlit scene, which, as Craddock asserted, used in the interval of onslaught to make the beleaguered city look like the New Jerusalem, brought him to a standstill; first to look, then to take out his pipe; finally to sit on a rock and think vaguely of the Yorkshire wolds and of some one, no doubt, who had not had the courage of her convictions, for after a bit he murmured, "She were a raight down coward, that's where it is, aw'm thinkin'."
He had not much time for reflection, however, for at that moment there was a flash, a crack, and something whizzed past his left ear. The Most Nailin' Bad Shot was better at close quarters. His blood was up in a second, and without pausing to pick up his musket, which he had laid aside, he was off to the spot whence the flash had come. And there! whoop forward! gone away! was his quarry for sure, running like a hare for some hiding-place, no doubt, among the rocks. It might have been reached, for romance tells of many secret passages between palaces inside the city and gardens without, but for a true lover's knot of viper which refused to budge from the path; which made the flying figure give a screech, and the flying feet, in their effort to overleap it, miss footing and fall.
The next instant Joe Banks was on it as it lay, and conscious even in his hurry that what he gripped was something young and soft--a boy, no doubt--devil's spawn.
"Aw'm goān ter choak ye on t' hair," he said grimly. "Open yer domed mouth, d'ye hear?"
It was almost as if the prostrate figure understood; but the next instant a set of gleaming white teeth had closed like a squirrel's round Joe Banks' first finger. He let off an echoing yell to the previous screech, and an oddly satisfied smile came to the fierce little face he could scarcely see for his big hand. It was an oval face, smooth as a girl's.
"That's nowt to Joey Banks, lad, he can kill anoother waay," he growled savagely, as he shifted a knee to press his prisoner down, loosened his left hand, his right being detained, and deliberately drew out one of the many knives stuck in his enemy's waistband. "Aw'll lay t' hair abun tha' heaart, tha' wrigglin' worm, and driv it hoām--that aw wull."
In pursuance of which plan, he undid an embroidered satin waistcoat, and began to push aside an inner muslin vest. A whiff of musk and roses mingled with the moonlight.
"Stinks and bites like a foumart," he muttered. "Soa lie thee still, will tha? an' tak' that to thissen ma--gor amoighty!"
Joe Banks was on his feet; so was his enemy. Both dazed, uncertain. Flight seemed to come uppermost to the latter's thought, when the big man suddenly laughed a low chuckle of sheer amusement.
"An' t' coom like a wild cat at Joey Banks--that caps owt!"
The next instant he was grappling with a whirlwind of knives and nails, anything.
"Woa! woa! ma lass! Hands off, tha little vixen, till a' git a look at tha!" he said soothingly, as he prisoned two small hands in one huge fist, and with the other held his adversary almost tenderly at arm's length. What he saw, as he afterwards described it to Craddock, was just a "moit o' pistols an' pouches."
"Well! well! Aw'm,--aw'm jiggered!" he exclaimed at last; adding argumentatively, "Whatten iver mad tha' go fur t' do it, tha foolish lass?"
Something in his broad, not unkindly rebuke seemed to take the starch out of the Most Nailin' Bad Shot. It seemed to cower in on itself and become smaller; though, as Joe Banks told himself perplexedly, it had been small enough to begin with.
"Well, aw am jiggered," he repeated more softly. "Whatten iver mad tha' do it, ma lass?"
The answer was feminine and disconcerting; a sudden storm of tears. So they stood, the quaintest couple in the world. She bristling with cold steel of sorts; he bareheaded in the moonlight, with nothing but his hands for weapons.
"Dunnot," he said soothingly, not without a certain trepidation. "Aw'm noān goān t' hurt thee, ma gell. We'm not thaat soort t' womenkind; an' tha's a main pratty gell." Here he laughed softly; a laugh that was lost in a third--
"Wall, aw'm jiggered."
He appeared to be so, for he ceased thrusting her from him--she being, indeed, too much engaged with tears to make it dangerous--and passed his hand over his forehead as if to clear his brain.
"Aw'm noān goān t' hurt tha, ma lass," he repeated suddenly, as if for his own information. "Aw'm nobbut goān t' shame tha' fur tha' badness."
And with that he lifted her right up like a baby, sate down on a neighbouring rock, and set her on his knee.
"Thou'rt as light as a feather," he said almost admiringly. "An' t' coom at Jooey Banks like a wild cat; for sure it caps owt; but thou'rt a bad gell, an' mun be shamed. So set tha still an' be doon wi' it."
Once more he might have claimed comprehension, for the Most Nailin' Bad Shot sate still; with the half-wicked, half-frightened look of a curious squirrel, as one by one he transferred knives and pistols to his own person. It was rather a lengthy business by reason of his right hand--the one that had been bitten--being still occupied in prisoning hers. Not that she struggled; on the contrary, she sate curiously still, checking even her sobs.
"Now for t' hair," he went on methodically, pulling off the large green turban wound around the small head. He sate half perturbed and breathless after this was done, and the half-wicked, half-frightened dark eyes watching him, seemed to admit a faint smile.
"Whew-w-w," he said under his breath, "it's long, for sartin sure." It was, and a faint scent of orange-blossom assailed him as he loosed the plaits. His hand trembled among them a little, and lingered.
"Aw mun be as good's ma word," he muttered, "as Joey Banks' word. See tha here--sit tha still, there's a good lass, an' let me hurry up; wilt thee?" There was almost an appeal in his voice, and both hands shook a little as the long black tresses twined themselves about the big fingers like snakes.
"Aw'm noān goān t' hurt," he reiterated blandly; when, perhaps fortunately, the whole bewildering face before him relapsed into a mischievous smile, and one small finger pointed derisively to the crown of his head. He flushed up scarlet.
"Thee'm nobbut a wicked, bad gell," he said fiercely, "an' Joey Banks'll shame tha--a bold hussy." So he set her on her feet, and attacked her last bit of masculinity. This was a long, green waistband wound about her middle, and which had carried a score or so of pistols, yataghans, and Heaven knows what murderous weapons. Of this portion of the toilette Craddock said it was hard to get Joey Banks to speak at all, and when he did, his voice dropped to a whisper, and he looked positively scared. She was so main slender, he said, that he thought he would never have done unwinding, though after a bit she helped cheerfully by twiddling like a teetotum. At last, however, she stood there, slim, girlish, her long hair shimmering, her dark eyes shining, half with tears, half with smiles.
"'An' then, Joey?' I arst 'im, sir, when 'e sate mumchance," Craddock interpolated.
"Aw out wi' 'Fower angels rouand ma bed,' man, an' a' up wi' her in ma arms, an' a' kissed her fair an' oft, man, fair an' oft, just t' shame her, an' a' runned awaay. That's what a' did--aw runned awaay."
Half-way across the ravine, however, he paused to pick up his musket and look back. The Most Nailin' Bad Shot in creation was standing where he had left her, her face hidden in her hands. For an instant something tore at his heart, bidding him go back; then he set his teeth with an oath, and ran on. Five minutes afterwards he had slipped into a favourite cranny of rock beside Craddock and was puffing away at his pipe as if nothing had happened, absolutely silent, till, according to the latter's report, he "give a silly sort of laugh," and in the moonlight his eyes could be seen shining like stars as he turned and said softly--
"Well, lad--a' ha' dune it this toime."
"Done what, Apollyon?" asked Craddock.
"A' dunnot roightly kna', but a' ha' dune it, for sartin sure," replied Joe Banks, succinctly; and then he told the story.
"One of them gazes[[1]] as they call 'em," interrupted Craddock, when the big man told of his discovery in a sort of hushed voice. "They makes 'em male an' female--the latter most wicious. Bad lots out o' the bazaar, needin' a passport to the skies--or the devil."
Joey Banks' big fist came down like a sledgehammer on Craddock's knee.
"Hush, mon!" he said peremptorily. "She woan't none that sort. When a' kissed her--" he stopped short, and blushed furiously.
"Apollyon!" remarked Craddock, after a pause, with great severity. "It ain't wholesome to keep sech things comfortable in yer own buzzum. It's better to 'ave up an' done with it an' begin agin. When you kiss her--w'ot then?"
But Joe Banks' shining eyes were looking out into the soft darkness, soft and dark for all their shininess. "A' meant to 'a' keppen coont--but a' didn't somehow." His voice was quite dreamy, and Craddock rose in wrath.
"It's my belief, same as I was in the catechising, Joey Banks, that you bin an' fallen in love with a female gaze; but mark my word--there ain't no gratitoode to speak of in gazes, and she'll nick you yet, sure as my name's Nathaniel James. She'll nick you yet, I du assure you."
But Craddock was wrong. Whatever else she did, the Most Nailin' Bad Shot shot no more. Not that it mattered much to Joey Banks whether she did or not, since but a few days after there was a "casoolty" in Number One outpost, Volunteer Joseph Banks, sometime canal overseer, was reported missing after a sortie; but as he had been last seen mortally wounded close to the city wall, his comrades mourned Apollyon from the first as dead. So as Craddock said feelingly, "there weren't even a lock o' 'is 'air for 'is old mother, an' she was a widder."
Not that there was much time for mourning in the outpost, since the long months of the siege were drawing to a close. Then came the final assault, the ten days of struggle within the city, until even the Palace was ours, and the army which had taken it prepared to move on elsewhere. It was the evening before the start, and Craddock, who, as a volunteer, had more liberty to go and come as he chose, went down to the now deserted outpost to smoke a last pipe, and think over the past with the pleasing melancholy which goes so admirably with tobacco.
"Poor Joey Banks!" he thought, as memory came round to that episode, "'im an' 'is female gaze. I shan't never forget 'em."
I will tell the rest in Craddock's own words; they suit it.
"I look up, sir, an' you might 'ave knock me over with a ninepin, for there was Joey, lookin' as spry as spry. 'Joey,' says I, takin' it as one does, sir, for all them sayin's of ninepins and feathers and such like, quite calm, 'so you're not dead?'
"'Na! lad,' he says back, as calm like. 'Aw'm goān t' be married, an' a've coom t' get t' best man.'
"It took me all of a 'eap, sir, sorter Malachi an' the minor prophets, sir, as things does sometimes. 'Joey, my boy,' I says, 'you ain't never goin' to marry a female gaze?' says I.
"But 'e was, sir. Ter cut a long story short, she'd found 'im an' nursed him. An' we all knows wot that means, white or black, sir. 'E'd a 'eap to tell--though Lord knows where 'e got it, for 'e didn't know no 'Industani to speak of, sir--about 'ow she lived in quite a fine 'ouse an' 'ow her father an' brothers 'ad bin killed, so as she kinder 'adn't no choice but gazing. But I wasn't to be took with chaff, so I says to 'im quite solemn like, 'Afore I'm best man, I've got to know, Joey--is she square?' 'E just looked at me, sir, as if I were slush.
"'She'd gotten ma hair in t' buzzum,' he said, an' said no moor.
"So I gave my word to be best man, sir, an' 'e sighed like as a weight was took off him. 'Then coom awa' wi' me t' passon,' says 'e, 'fur I'm goān t' be marrid afoor aw goes with t' army to-morer.'
"'Then you've 'ad the banns cried,' says I, for my father bein' bell-ringer same as give me my name in 'oly baptism, sir, I was up to them dodges. 'E give me a real Apollyon frown, sir.
"'Na, lad; aw've noān had nought cried, but aw'm goān t' wed her fair afoor a' fight, so save t' breath an' coom t' passon.'
"Well, sir, parson wasn't a bad chap, as I knowed, 'aving seen 'im doing dooty stiddily like the rest o' us, but 'e'd got 'is black coat on agin, an' 'e were by nature, the canonised red bricky sort; so 'e wouldn't none o' it, though I stood solemn for Joe like as if I bin godfather, tellin' 'im 'ow Joe would 'ave bin a deader but for 'er, an' 'ow she was willin' to become a Christian in 'oly baptism wen she 'ad a chanst, an' 'ow Joe wouldn't never 'ave bin in a 'urry without bridesmaids but for bein' that eager to fight 'is country's foes agin--for of course, sir, 'e 'adn't 'ad a look in at anythin' but beef-tea an' barley water till we took the city.
"'Why doesn't he wait decently till he comes back?' says parson. 'The sacrament of marriage is not a responsibility to be entered into unawares, my good--'
"Joe rose up--Lord bless you!--two 'eads taller nor parson. 'Coom awa'! best man,' 'e says. 'It's waaste toime heere, an' aw'll need tha at t' mosque; passon theer ar'n't so scrumfumptious, an' she towt ma t' Kulma this marnin' foor fear'--that's their creed, sir, same as the Gazes, male an' female, yell when they're a stickin' of you.
"Well parson 'e brought up sharp at this an' said, 'Stay a bit.' Then 'e look at Joe, an' Joe look at 'im.
"'Tha see she's gotten t' be ma wife, man,' said Joe apologetic like, an' parson 'e push 'is red bricky prayer-book away fretful.
"'But I don't know anything,' he said. 'I don't even know if she is a spinster or a widow. Will you swear she hasn't a husband living?'
"Well, sir, Joe looked at parson, and then 'e looked at me, an' then 'e scratch 'is 'ead--the curls 'ad grown tight as ever, sir--an' then sudden 'e smile--one o' them smiles like the sun on a daisy, sir.
"' Aw dunnot rightly knaw,' says 'e, 'aw nivver arst her,' an' parson 'e look at me an' at 'im and at the solemnisation o' 'oly matrimony as 'f 'e didn't know which was which.
"Well, the end o' it was that the three o' us went down to one o' them light an' shady open-air houses with a tree growin' out o' a wall, and a lot o' pigeons. Parson 'e stood in one o' the arches raise up a step or two, an' they stood in the space below, right in the sun, an' I stood 'twixt an' between, for you see, sir, I was clerk as well as best man.
"'Will you take this woman to be thy wedded wife?' arst parson.
"'Such is my desire,' says I, in order; but Joe Banks wouldn't none o' that.
"'Fur better fur worse,' 'e says, 'fur richer fur poorer, domed if a' doan't.'
"So 'e was wedded to the Most Nailin' Bad Shot in creation."
"And was she pretty?" I asked of Craddock.
He shook his head. "I niver set eyes on her, sir, though I was best man. She was wrap up in a white veil, an' 'e kep' her so--said she liked it--they does, sir, when they've got a good 'usband."
"So they lived happy ever after?"
"Not for long, sir--" here Craddock slipped his hands into his pockets as the first step towards slouching off. "That sort o' thing don't somehow last long, sir," here his eyes caught the gold of the setting sun, as they had a trick of doing when they grew soft. "Seems to me--savin' your presence, sir--as if there was too much o' the Noo Jerewsalem about that sort o' thing fur this world; that's 'ow it is. She died, sir, a few years after, when 'e was back in the Canals, in a God-forsaken spot, where there wasn't no one to--to be best man like. An' so they found 'im lying beside 'er with a bullet in 'is brain. So I was a minor prophet after all, an' Joey Banks got nicked at last by the Most Nailin' Bad Shot in creation."