The Flower of Forgiveness

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

III.

"Dhurm Singh?"

"Huzoor."

After five and twenty years the same appeal--the same reply. But on that May night and July day neither the man nor the woman had any doubt as to what was to come next; the universe held no possibility save "the mem sahib" or "Sonny baba But the latter, now it came to his turn, hesitated; even while he was conscious that to a well-balanced mind capable of weighing advantage and disadvantage fairly, there ought to be no difficulty in telling any one that you had no further need for his services. The recollection of certain thin-lipped, dignified, self-respecting conversations overheard at home sprang to memory obtrusively. "Then, Mary Ann, it had better be this day month." "Yes, ma'am, this day month, if you please; and if you please, ma'am, Wednesdays and Saturdays from eleven till one, if convenient, for a character."

But things were different somehow in this heathen country, which was so backward in education, so ignorant of liberty, equality, and--ahem!

"Dhurm Singh," began Sonny once more rather hurriedly.

"Huzoor."

"I--I am going to make a complete change of plan, Dhurm Singh. I--I am going to begin work on a new principle. I--I am going to start in another part of the country where I shall not require--er--many things I have hitherto required." He paused, well satisfied at his plunge in medias res.

Dhurm Singh, standing attention at the door, smiled approvingly. "It is a good word, Huzoor. So said the Gurus also. When do we start?"

Half an hour afterwards Sonny baba in rather a shamefaced manner, told the doctor that, after all, he had come to the conclusion it would be better not to dismiss Dhurm Singh. To begin with, the village children delighted in his tales, and then--it was a triviality, no doubt, perhaps in a measure a giving in to prejudice--the elders certainly set store by position; for instance, they were always more ready to listen to him if the old swash-buckler had had an opportunity of giving the family history, embellishments and all. In addition, Dhurm Singh had promised to amend his ways generally; to spend his days in compounding pills and potions instead of hectoring about. Finally, he had agreed to an allowance of opium, swearing dhurm nâl to take no more than was served out by the master.

"Of course," said Sonny baba at this juncture, with a considerate superiority which raised every atom of the doctor's original sin, "I shall be careful, I shall not dock it too much at once; but in the course of a year or two I hope to break him entirely of this most pernicious habit."

"Which has never done him or his surroundings the least harm," growled Taylor savagely. "Upon my soul, I begin to wish I were five and twenty again, if only that I might be as cock-sure of being right about everything as you are. As it is, even the bacillus--" He wrinkled his eyes over the microscope once more, and did not finish his sentence.

After this Dhurm Singh might have been seen any day of the week in the dispensary verandah grinding away vigorously with pestle and mortar at unsavoury medicaments, rolling pills under his flexible brown fingers, or polishing up surgical instruments with all the fervour bestowed of yore on the old sword.

"Lo! if the Baba-sahib cares not for being a big Hâkm (magistrate, ruler), sure the next best thing is to be a big Hâkeem (doctor)," he would say, smiling simply at his own wit. "And doth not the Guru say, 'Fight with no weapon but the sword of the Spirit'? Besides, when I feel like fighting I can put an edge to the knives or pound harder with the pestle. God knows they may both do more damage than a sabre. Then the rolling of pills is ever the first step towards dream-getting. Thus in all ways, I, Dhurm Singh, Sikh, ex-duffadar, pinson-wallah, and Akâli, am consoled. But there! God is good to the Sikh. Know you that He never made an ugly one yet?"

This was a favourite boast of the old man's, backed always, should doubts be expressed, by a modest appeal to his own looks, joined to an assertion--which, by the way, was perfectly true--that he was the meanest looking of ten brothers.

So, in due season, the doctor once more watched the odd couple pass out together into the wilderness; and this time, noticing the change in Sonny baba and remembering the raw lad who had been his cabin companion, he, so to speak, put his whole pile on Dhurm Singh--unless the boy killed him with philanthropy.

The rains, after an unusually heavy fall, had ceased early, the result being an epidemic of autumnal fever. Now the cholera may kill its thousands, but year by year, with every now and again a sort of jubilee over its own strength, malaria kills its tens of thousands quietly, unostentatiously; so quietly, that it is only when the officer in charge of a district finds himself during his cold weather camp deciding the rival claims to hereditary offices day after day in village after village, that even he realises how widely the archangel Azrael has spread his wings over the people. The doctor, however, judging simply by the weather, sent Sonny into the jungles well supplied with that carmine-tinted quinine which carries the fact of its being Government property in its colour: a useless attempt to prevent the sale of charity in a land where the regulation five grain powder is as much a part of the currency as a two anna bit. Well supplied, yet at the same time with cautions not to be over generous except in genuine cases. Let him stick to the country medicines as prophylactics. Opium and aconite were to be had for the buying; and if he did wander into the low jungles close to the hills, and if he could be tolerant and learn not to despise old wisdom, let him prescribe the former in preference to the latter--though perhaps that was too much to expect from a five-and-twenty-year old who was cock-sure he knew best.

"I know nothing of myself," replied Sonny in all seriousness. "The Eternal Right decides. There lies the difference between you and me--pardon me if I say between the Christian and the Unbeliever. You trust to your finite mind, I to Something which is and was, which cannot err."

And Dhurm Singh, gleefully employed in turning a cash transport mule with its fixings into a perambulating dispensary, was keeping up his character of devotee by repeating verses from the Adhee Grunt'h[^[14]] in sing-song; his round, mellow voice echoing out through the sunshine--

"Remember, oh man, the primal truth--the Truth ere the world began.

The Truth which is and the Truth which must remain.

How can this Truth be told, save by doing the will of the Lord?"

"Listen!" said Taylor, and Sonny baba moved uneasily in his chair.

When these same preparations were complete, the old man's delight was huge; and he drove the mule forth to the wilderness before him with much futile waving of the stick which had replaced the sword. Even over that abnegation he was cheerful.

"Lo! I am turned a dhundi-wallah[^[15]] in mine old age, as becomes the pious-minded. Ari! thou misbegotten offspring of a mixed race doomed to childless extinction, wilt stray from the beaten path! Wouldst steal the corn of others, when thy master is a missen sahib, and thy tender a devotee? May the uttermost--"

Then to Sonny's pained reproof he would reply, cheerfully as ever, that he had understood the refraining of his tongue from abuse was to be towards those born of Adam; and this was not even a God-created thing, but a nondescript invented by the sahib-logue.

Cheerful always; even when, as time went on, his daily pills of opium were mixed with quinine. He sat and compounded them himself dhurm nâl, keeping no grain of the beloved dream-giver from the sacrilegious mixture, and telling the full tale of the "fiat pillulæ" into the master's locked medicine chest, whence they were doled out daily.

For the first month or more, everything went smoothly. Never before had Sonny baba had such attentive listeners to the great truths he expounded as a preliminary to his other work; never before had he felt that he was really on the right tack, really had his opportunity of a fair hearing. The letters he wrote home to his aunt who, fond woman, had faithfully followed, as woman can do, every step in the career of her darling with unswerving confidence, filled that excellent creature with sheer, unalloyed delight. She told all her circle of friends that her nephew had fulfilled her dearest wishes in going in for the medical mission, which was undoubtedly the only way of getting at the poor, dear natives.

And Sonny, in less emotional fashion, felt this to be so true that he worked as he had never worked before. A sort of feverish desire to utilise every opportunity, to lose no occasion for preaching the great Gospel of Peace came over him, and he spared himself not at all, after the manner of his kind.

So that sometimes returning tired out in evening from some long tramp, it was a relief to find the old swash-buckler ready with kid pullao or "rose chikken,"[^[16]] and to see the tea-kettle swinging over a fire of twigs. Sometimes after they entered the tract of forest-land near the foot of the hills, the indefatigable old poacher would produce a stew of black partridge; and once Sonny, coming home to the tiny tent late at night, found his henchman keeping an eye on roast pork, and at the same time utilising the flame-light in giving a suspicious clean to the biggest surgical knife--a queer picture seen by the fire, leaping and dancing up into the shadows of a mango grove.

But one evening Sonny came home with no appetite for dinner, and half an hour afterwards he was blue and shivering in the cold fit of ague.

"If the Huzoor would take some of my pills," said Dhurm Singh wistfully; "look at me! nothing touches me, and, lo! am I not three times as near the grave as the Baba-sahib?"

There is no need to describe the scorn which this suggestion met. As for the pills, where would the old sinner be but for the quinine contained therein? This was nothing but a chill, an isolated attack. He would take an extra dose of the specific and be done with it.

But the third day, suddenly, in the very middle of an eloquent appeal he felt goose skin going in thrills down his back, and five minutes after the only sound he could make was the chattering of his teeth.

"If the Huzoor," began Dhurm Singh, but was checked by the frown on the master's face; for the lad had grit and fire in him.

Neither of these, however, avail much against a tertian ague, and it was not long before Sonny baba in the half-querulous, half-hysterical stage before the hot fit merges into perspiration, confided with tears to the old swash-buckler that it was no use. He was an accursed being. From the very beginning had it not been so? And then he retailed garrulously many and many an incident of the past three years, forgotten by his retainer, in which something had occurred to mar the smooth working of good luck. Something as often as not, it struck the listener, to be referred to his own share in the business. To the speaker it was otherwise. He was not fit for the work; he was of no account, and now when at long last the time had come, when he felt that his hand was on the plough--

"It is time the Baba-sahib took his quinine," remarked Dhurm Singh sagely, unsympathetically. "If the Huzoor will give the keys of the chest, this dust-like one will bring the medicine--dhurm nâl." The last words came softly, half to himself, and an important, self-satisfied smile broadened the open face as he made his choice among the bottles. "Lo! there it is," he continued, laying two pills in the burning hand before passing his one arm under the burning body, "but the Huzoor must have faith. Without it medicine is but a bad taste in the mouth. He who believes shall be saved."

Perhaps Sonny baba took his advice yet once again, perhaps the quinine got a fair hold of the enemy at last. Certain it is that from the time Dhurm Singh commenced to bring the pills dhurm nâl, the ague began to abate. At the end of a week Sonny baba was eating "rose chicken" once more with appetite. That evening, as the sun was setting red over the thick brakes of sugar-cane, the old man sat pounding diligently with pestle and mortar while he intoned away at the Adhee Grunt'h--

"God asks no man of his birth,

He asks him what he has done,
Since all are the seed of God,
Lo! what is the world but clay,
Tho' the pots are of many moulds."

And Sonny baba lying out in the shade blissfully conscious that he was getting better, nay, that he was better, raised himself on one arm and looked over with moist eyes to the old man.

"What are you doing, Dhurm Singh?"

"This slave makes pills. The Huzoor hath eaten so many, and those of the dust-like one have given out also. Lo! I fill the bottles against the return of the Baba-sahib to his medicine chest."

"But, I say! are you sure you have made them right?"

"The Huzoor may rest satisfied. Five grains of the blessed medicine for the master, and the other as before. It is dhurm nâl, Huzoor."

"So you call it a blessed medicine now, Dhurm Singh?"

"Wherefore not, since the master is better?"

"Well! the addition of that small quantity of ipecacuanha which I began--let me see--that day when I was so bad, certainly had a marvellous effect. I shall write and tell Taylor about it; he was inclined to sneer at the idea just because he didn't suggest it. Doctors are awfully jealous of each other. That's the worst of them."

These remarks were made mostly for his own benefit, as he lay comfortably watching the stars come out one by one as the daylight died.

It was that same night that Dhurm Singh had his first go of ague. It shook him as a sharp attack of malarious fever does shake a native past his prime, and Sonny baba amid his regrets, could not avoid a certain elation.

"So much for opium," he said, and yet in his heart of hearts a fear gained ground that perhaps he might have been over rapid in diminishing the dose. Now that the old man was actually ill, it seemed unkind to deny him comfort; so an addition was made to the number of pills, thus increasing the amount both of opium and quinine.

It was more than a month later that a small procession of two men carrying a string bed on their heads, and one man driving a pack mule, turned into the dispensary compound.

"It is the old man," said Sonny baba to the doctor, "and I'm afraid--" he paused before the break in his own voice. "It was that terai land. I was as bad as could be, and thought I should have to give up; but, under Providence, quinine and ipec. pulled me round to do the best work I have ever done in my life. But he--he would stick to the opium, and then I'm afraid that at first I hardly noticed--you see he went round as usual, bragging he was better. So I didn't think--the work was so absorbing, and I myself felt so fit. Otherwise, I might have gone to a healthier part, though, of course, the impression would not have been so good. Still--it came upon me quite by surprise three days ago--and--and I've brought him in by forced marches. You--" The voice failed again. Indeed, there was no need for more, the doctor being already on his knees by the bed, making his examination. Suddenly he looked up.

"Why the devil did you stop his opium, you young fool? Here, Boota Mull, the syringe and a disc of morphia--sharp. But, after all, what does anything matter so long as you save your own soul alive!"

Sonny baba looking very white, drew himself up into dignity. "We can discuss that question by and by, Dr. Taylor. In the mean time, let me warn you, that the man has already had ten grains of opium in the last twenty-four hours."

The doctor's quick hands were at the closed eyelids. "Ten grains--bosh! But, as you say, those questions can be settled by and by--when he is dead, if you like."

Sonny baba's face had grown whiter still. "I tell you he has had the opium--I gave it to him myself--I was afraid--" he paused abruptly, and the doctor looking up shot a rapid glance of negation towards him.

"There's a mistake, or else-- It doesn't matter now, at any rate. The thing is done."

But Sonny baba did not hear the latter words; he was beside the mule, fumbling hastily in the travelling dispensary, of which the old man had been so proud, for the medicine chest. His hands trembled as he brought it back; and Dr. Taylor, his face unseen, yet with its keenness shown in every movement of the capable hands busy over the morphia, heard an odd sound--something between a gasp and a cry--behind him. Then some one came and knelt down at the other side of the bed.

"Dhurm Singh!"

But there was no answer.

"Dhurm Singh, you can tell them it was dhurm nâl, and that I killed you."

* * * * *

"Killed him--fudge! Though, upon my soul, it would serve you right if you had. So the old sinner changed the pills, and it wasn't the ipec. after all. Most reprehensible practice, and, upon my soul, it would serve him right if he did die. Now--don't be a fool, man! I tell you he shan't die--I won't let him die. Besides, he can't die--it's impossible--absolutely impossible."

Despite his despair and dejection, the young man gave a wan smile at the other's vehemence.

"And why?"

"Because of you, naturally. You don't suppose that you're fit to be trusted alone with a medicine chest, do you? Boota Mull, if you don't hurry up with that turpentine and the brandy mixture I'll report you. So it wasn't the ipec. after all! I'm glad of that."

In after years the young fellow used to deny strenuously that it had been the opium either. Plainly and palpably he had been cured of his fever "by faith." And as for Dhurm Singh? What the doctor said was true; he could not be spared as yet. How could he be spared when even now from the verandah came a woman's voice, soft, confident--

"Dhurm Singh, Sonny baba."

"Huzoor! dhurm nâl."

And any one looking out might have seen a very old man, gorgeous in scarlet raiment, decked with golden lace and golden curls, as a child's head nestled up against a solitary arm, and a child's fingers played with the solitary medal, or tugged unavailingly at the hilt of the old sword.

"The Huzoor is too young," would come the broad, arrogant voice, "but he will learn--he will learn. Even a Sikh is made, not born. He must wait till the years bring the Sacred Steel. Let the Huzoor rest awhile peacefully, and old Dhurm will sing to him."

Then there would be a surreptitious swallowing of a pill before the drowsy chant began.

"He is of the Khâlsa[^[17]]

Who combats in the van,
Who gives in charity,
Who loves the Poor.

He is of the Khâlsa
Whose mind is set on God,
Who never fears though often overcome,
Knowing all men created of one God.

He is of the Khâlsa
Who lives in arms,
Who combats with the wrong,
Who keeps--the--faith--"

So there would be a silence broken only by the even breathing of the old man and the child.

For Sonny baba and his wife, watching the scene from within, only looked into each other's eyes and said nothing.

[THE BHUT-BABY.]

"According to established precedent it is reported, under section so and so, that one Buddha Singh of Kidderjana having died, his rightful heirs inherit." The court-reader's voice hurried the liquid Urdu syllables into long, sleepy cadences like the drone of a humble-bee entangled in the swaying punkah overhead. Backwards and forwards, rising and falling, the rhythm seemed to become part of me, until the colourless reports were a monotonous lullaby, and each wave of sound and motion bore me farther from earth, nearer to the land of dreams. Ah! if the right people always inherited, and my old uncle received ticket-of-leave from the gout, I might afford furlough, and stand once more on that big boulder at the foot of the One-stone pool waiting for a new ring of light to show on the dark eddy by the far side--a ring with a swirl and a gleam of silver scales in the centre, a tightening line under the finger, till the reel went whirr-rr-rr-rr! It was a lovely dream while it lasted.

"According to established precedent, the canal-officer reports, under section so-and-so, that certain rebellious persons in Chori-pani have opened the sluices of the cut, and taken water that did not belong to them." The heather-sweet breeze off the One-stone pool ceased to blow, and I was back, with the punkah, in the humanity-laden atmosphere of the court-house, where even the mosquitoes were glutted, and the lizards, hanging head downwards on the wall, looked as if they had congestion of the brain. Stealing water! Poor wretches, who could blame them with their crops withering in the June sun and the sluice-doors within reach? Even a juicy apple on a hot day is irresistible, despite Farmer Smith's big dog watching from below, while you sit on the lower branch, and Jerry sits on the upper, eating all the ripe fruit just to pass the time, and thanking Providence meanwhile for making you Christian children in a cider-country!

"According to established precedent it is reported, under section so-and-so, that the devil was born three days ago in village Hairan-wallah. Orders are requested. Meanwhile the chowkidar [watchman] remains watching the same." Startled into wakefulness, I looked sharply to see if the reader had not been nodding in his turn; but my alertness merely produced a respectful iteration of the paragraph, which showed all too clearly my subordinate's explanation of the sudden display of attention.

The suspicion of sleep is always irritating. "Sarishtadar!" [clerk of the Court] I began in English, "what, the devil?"

"Nossir," interrupted the reader suavely in the same language, "pardon the suggestion, sir, but the devil is somewhat free translation, sir. In Dictionary bhut (the word used, sir,) equals an indefinite devil, thus a devil, a fiend, a imp--pardon the indiscretion, sir! an imp."

A glow of proud humility at his own quick detection of these trivial errors filled up the pause which followed, while the punkah went on swinging, and I sat wondering if I were asleep or awake. Finally the sarishtadar dipped his pen in the ink, fluttered the superfluous moisture on the carpet, and suggested deferentially that the chowkidar was waiting for orders. A sudden curiosity as to what his self-complacent brain, surcharged with Western culture, would do with the situation made me reply curtly, "The usual orders."

I managed to forbear laughing in the grave face raised to mine in deprecating apology. "I am unable, sir," he said after a pause, "to recall, at the present moment, any section, penal or civil, suitable to occasion. Would you kindly jog memory, sir, by suggesting if it is under judicial or administrative heads? Or perhaps," he added, as a bright after-thought, "it is political job." Then, I regret to say, I went off into yells of unseemly mirth, as most Englishmen have to do at times over the portentous solemnity of the Aryan brother.

There was a stir in the verandah, a sudden waking to renewed effort on the part of the punkah coolie, resulting in a general breeziness. Or was it that Terence O'Reilly, our young Irish doctor, as he came into the darkened Court, brought with him a thought of fresh air, a remembrance of Nature in her sunniest, most lovable moods? He invariably suggested such things to me at any rate, and as he paused in astonishment at my indecorous occupation, I thought once more that it was a pleasure simply to look at him. His face sympathised promptly with the unknown joke. "Whwhat the divvle are ye laughing at--me?" he asked in a rich brogue as he seated himself astride a chair, in which equestrian position his dandy costume for polo showed to great advantage.

Nero fiddling over the flames of Rome is sympathy itself compared to the indifference with which we often speak the first lines of a coming tragedy in every-day life. So it was with a jest that I introduced Terence O'Reilly to the existence of the bhut-baby, and in so doing became instantly aware that he surpassed me in other things besides good looks. He could scarcely be said to become grave, for to lose brightness would have been to lose the essence of the man, but his expression grew to a still more vivid reflex of his mind. "'Twill be one of those poor little craytures that come into this worrld God knows why," he said with an infinite tenderness of voice. "Ten to wan 'tis better it should die, fifty to wan I can do nothing to help it, but I'll ride over and see annyhow."

The sarishtadar laid aside his pen somewhat mournfully, the practical being out of his line; while I, smitten by admiration into immediate regret at my own indifference, murmured something about having thought of going over next morning.

"There's no time loike the present, my dear fellow," he replied buoyantly. "The pony's at the door, and sure I'm got up for riding annyhow;" and as he spoke he stretched out his long legs, and surveyed their immaculate boots and breeches critically.

"And what will your team do without their best forward?" I asked, feeling a certain captiousness at his prompt decision.

"Get along with your blarney! Sure it's practising, and you can take my place at that anny day; indeed 'twas to fetch you I ventured into the dock, for whin I caught a glimpse of your face at the jail this morning I said to meself, 'Terence, me bhoy, that's a case of polo, or blue pill, for by the powers his liver's not acting.' So 'twas to hound you into exercise I came annyhow."

A feverish desire to amend and excuse my own lukewarmness shot up through the loophole his words afforded. "To tell the truth, I was feeling a bit slack; but if you'll wait five minutes while I slip over to the bungalow and change my clothes, I'll ride with you to Hairan-wallah. It will be better for me than polo; I might get over-heated, you know."

"'Tis over-eating, not over-heating that's the matter with you, me bhoy," he replied coolly; "but I'm proud,--and by the powers!" he added, starting up in great excitement, "you shall ride my pony; I call him Blue Pill, for he's better than wan anny day; and while you're dressing I'll send me syce round for the Lily of Killarney. I've a bet on her at the gymkhana next Monday, and we'll try her on the quiet against the stable."

Half an hour afterwards I was enjoying plenteous exercise, and it seemed to me, far behind, as if the Lily--a great black beast without a single white hair on her--was trying to buck Terence over into the saffron-coloured horizon, as she went along in a series of wild bounds. He came back to me, however, after a time, as fresh as paint; but the mare, with head down and heaving flanks, appeared to have had enough of it.

"'Tis a pity the faymale sex is so narvous," he said casually. "Ye can't hold 'em responsible for annything; but if it wasn't for hysteria they'd be angels entirely. She has the paces of wan, annyhow."

Fourteen miles of constant canal cuts, that were a perpetual joy to the doctor and a terror to me, brought us to Hairan-wallah, a large village standing among irrigated fields. Here cautious inquiries for the devil led us to a cluster of mud huts beyond the pale, where the low-caste servants of the community dwelt apart. Before reaching it we were joined by the head-men and their followers, all anxious to explain and excuse the calamity which had befallen their reputation; but as the fear of evil eye had prevented any of them from personally inspecting the fiend, the accounts of its appearance were wildly conflicting. The doctor, indeed, refused to listen to them, on the ground that it was sheer waste of time, and rode along affably discussing the crops with an aged patriarch. His manner changed, however, when we were requested to dismount, and he led the way into the enclosure where, guarded by the police chowkidar, the devil-baby lay awaiting Government orders. The courtyard was hung round with coloured thread, old iron, and other devices against witchcraft, and a group of low-caste men and women were huddled up dejectedly in one corner. So far the crowd followed us; but when some of the reputed relations showed us into a dark out-house at the further end, even curiosity failed to prevent a visible hanging-back. Blinded by the change from the glare outside, I could at first see nothing but my companion's tall form bending over a bundle of rags on a low stool, beside which a half-naked hag sat chanting a guttural charm; and before I regained clearer sight his voice rang out in tones of evident relief, "By the powers! 'tis only a black albino."

The bull was perfect, seeing that it conveyed succinctly a very accurate description. The bhut-baby was a black, a very black albino, for the abnormal colouring was confined to its hair, which was unusally well developed, and grew in tight clustering curls over its head like a coachman's wig. The faint eyebrows and eyelashes were also white, and the result, if not devilish, was extremely startling. For the rest, it was as fine a man-child as ever came to gladden a mother's heart. I deemed it asleep till I saw the doctor bend closer, and then raise the eyelid in keen professional scrutiny.

"Where's the mother?" he cried, turning like lightning on the nearest male relative, and seizing him by the scruff of the neck in order to emphasise his words. "Bring her at once, or I'll go inside and fetch her myself. The child has been left to starve," he added rapidly in English, "and it's nigh dead of neglect. You're a magistrate! Make them bring the devil of a mother here at once, or it will die."

But they met my commands and remonstrances with frightened obstinacy, asserting after some hesitation that the mother was dead, had died virtuously of shame at bringing such disgrace to her people. I had every reason to believe this statement was a lie, but no means of proving it to be one, for of course the whole village favoured it.

Then there came to Terence O'Reilly's face a look that was good to see, but not to endure. "And if the poor little creature has lost its own mother," he cried in that strong, round voice of his, "are there no other women among you all with the milk of kindness in their breasts that will give it a drink for the sake of the time when they took suck themselves? Look at it! What are you all frightened of? 'Tis as fine a babe as a woman could bear. Only the white hair of it, and God knows we shall all come to that if we are spared. Look at it, I say! Handle it, and see for yourselves!"

Suiting the action to the word, he lifted the infant in his arms and carried it out to the lingering light of day, among the crowd which fell back in alarm from him and his burden. He did, indeed, look somewhat of an avenging angel with his face ablaze with indignant appeal. There was a scuttling from behind as some of the head-men tried to force a sweeper-woman to the front, but ere they succeeded she had promptly gone into hysterics, and so roused a murmur of disapprobation and dismay among the rest. Her shrieks brought Terence back to earth; and ceasing to hold the child at arm's length, as if offering it for acceptance, he turned to me once more. "At least your magistracy can make them bring me milk. If ye can't even do that, then God help the British rule!"

Stung by the sarcasm, I exerted myself to such an extent, that three separate head-men arrived breathless at the same moment with large lotahs full of nourishment for the devil, or any one else on whom the Presence was foolish enough to bestow it. So much lay within their conceptions of duty.

The scene which followed will linger in my memory until memory itself ceases to be. Terence in polo-costume seated on a string bed under the darkening skies with the devil on his lap, feeding it methodically with the corner of his pocket-handkerchief moistened in the milk held by three trembling lambadars. Beside him the Presence, with, thank God, sufficient vitality left for admiration. And round about a cloud of awestruck witnesses, wondering at his audacity, doubtful of its effect on the future.

"Sure 'tis the firrst toime I ever did dhry-nurse," he remarked after a long silence, during which I became absorbingly interested in the little imp's growing desire for life. "Hark to that, now! The ungrateful divvle's wanting to cry just because it's got something to digest, as if that wasn't the firrst duty of a human stomach. Great Moses! don't ye think it's time you stepped in as ripresentative of the Kaiser-i-Hind, and took things in hand a bit? Ah, it's after having dill-water ye are now, is it? Whist, whist, whist now!"

He walked up and down, the crowd swaying from him, as he dandled the infant with what seemed to me marvellous skill, while I did my best to argue sense into the dull brains of the villagers. I was quite unsuccessful, of course, and after many words found myself, as before, with two courses open to me; either to leave the bhut-baby where it was, or give it in charge of the head-men--the one a swift, the other a more tardy certainty of death from that mysterious disease called "by the cause of not drinking milk properly," which figures so largely in the records of infant mortality in India; the former for choice, since, as Terence remarked, "It would save trouble to kill it at the beginning instead of the end of its life."

"So the magistracy can do nothing," he said at last; "thin I will. Chowkidar! take this baby to the headquarters' hospital. I'm master there, annyhow, and I'll make it anny case I please, and dye its hair, an' no man shall say me nay!"

So the chowkidar was ordered to carry the devil to hospital to be cured of its devilry, and we rode home in frantic haste, because Terence was engaged to sing "Killaloe" that evening in barracks. Some of the relations ran about a mile after us yelling out blessings for having removed the curse from them.

Six weeks after I saw an atrocious hag nursing a white-haired infant in the doctor's own compound, and questioned him on the subject. "The fact is," he said ruefully, "it gave fits to the patients. I tried shaving its head, but it grew so fast and the white eyelashes of it betrayed the cloven hoof. And dye wouldn't stick on; so I've hired a harridan on two rupees a month to look after it under my own eye."

There was, no doubt, something of combativeness in this particular instance of Terence O'Reilly's charity; but the bhut-baby was by no means the only pensioner on his bounty. The row of mud houses beyond the cook-room was filled with the halt, the maimed, and the blind--especially the latter, for the fame of his infinite skill and patience as an eye-doctor was spreading far and wide. Besides, he had the secret, possessed by some Englishmen unconsciously, of inspiring the natives with absolutely unbounded devotion, and many of his patients would literally have laid down their lives for him; among others his bearer, a high-caste Brahman. The man, who had originally come to him for blindness of long standing, had, on recovery, made his way straight from hospital to the doctor's house, and announced his intention of serving him till death. "What are hands, and feet, or brain," he answered calmly to all objections, "if they have not eyes to guide them? Therefore are they all predestined since all time to be servants to my Lord the Light-bringer for ever and ever."

Treated at first as a joke, Shivdeo's determination had outlived opposition, and at the time of the bhut-baby's advent he had achieved his intention of becoming trusted personal attendant to the "Light of the World," for without some such allusion to the benefit he had received at his hands he never spoke of his master. The introduction of a baby, pariah to begin with and devil to follow, brought about a temporary disturbance of his office; for he was haughty, with all the pride of his race, and superstitious beyond belief. But after a week of dismissal consequent on failing to provide the harridan with proper milk for the bottle, Shivdeo, almost blind again with fruitless tears, crept back to the Light-giver's feet and swore a big oath to feed the low-caste demon himself if thereby he might return to the only life he could live. He kept his promise of strict neutrality to the letter, never by word or deed showing his aversion to the child; affecting indeed not to see it with those mild, short-sighted eyes of his. Yet, as it grew older, he must often have been brought into contact with the child, for it would crawl after the doctor like a dog. Despite the peculiarity of its silvery curls and pale blue eyes, it was really pretty, and by the time it was two years old had picked up such a variety of comical tricks and odd ways, that Boots, as we called it, became quite an institution with the doctor's friends. We used to send for it to the verandah and laugh at the silent agility with which it tumbled for sweetmeats, and the equally silent quickness of its mimicry; for to all intents and purposes the child was dumb. Beyond a very rare repetition of the feeble wail I had first heard from it in the doctor's arms at Hairan-wallah, it made no articulate sound whatever; but once or twice when we tired of it and forgot its presence, I have heard a purring noise like a cat, and looking down, found that the little creature was curled up with its silver curls resting on the doctor's foot in perfect content. He spent many hours in demonstrating its full possession of all five senses, and always declared it would speak in time; certainly if speech went by intelligence it would have been the most eloquent of babies. As it was, its unusual silence undoubtedly added to its uncanny appearance, and helped to strengthen the still lingering belief in its devilish origin. As long, however, as Terence O'Reilly's voice gave the orders for its well-being, not a soul in his compound or elsewhere would have dreamt of disobedience. Indeed, it often struck me that poor little Boots lived by virtue of his exuberant vitality, and by nothing else.

I remember one evening we had been screaming with laughter over the comical little creature's mimicry of Shivdeo's stately, short-sighted way of bringing in whisky and soda-water. The applause seemed to get into the baby's brain, and it took us off one after the other with such deadly truth that we nearly rolled off our chairs. Then some one suggested that we should ask it to imitate Terence, who happened to be absent; and when it failed to respond, a young subaltern, thinking it had not understood, came out with a fair copy of the doctor's round, rich brogue. We were all startled at the result; the child made for the speaker like a wild beast, stopped suddenly, then crept away with silent tears brimming up into its eyes. I think we all felt a bit ashamed, especially when Terence, coming in from a patient, found Boots curled up asleep in a damp corner by the tattie, and, with a mild rebuke that, "'Twas enough to give the poor little crayture fayver an' ague," lifted the child in his arms, and proceeded to carry it across the garden to its harridan. But he had hardly raised it before Shivdeo, gliding in like a ghost from heaven knows where, came forward and took the child from him with a rapid insistence that left me wondering. So, when the man brought me my parting cheroot, I questioned him on his interference. He looked startled for a moment; then replied gravely that it was not meet for the Light of the Universe to bear a sweeper's child in his bosom. "Nor is it meet for a Brahman either," I returned, feeling sure he had some other reason. The man's eyes flashed before they dropped submissively: "Nor is it meet for a Brahman to serve; but the Presence knows that this slave cares not if he wakes as a dog so that the Lord of Light remains to give sight to the blind."

Shortly after this Boots sickened for some childish complaint, in the course of which pneumonia developed, making it hover for a day or two between this world and the next. Once more Terence stood between the bhut-baby and the shadow of death, and had it been the heir of princes, the resources of modern science could not have been more diligently ransacked for its benefit. Indeed the doctor looked quite worn out when I met him one morning, going, as he said, to give himself a freshener by taking the Lily round the steeple-chase course.

"You're over-working, Terence," said I, noting his fine-drawn clearness of feature; "up all night after Boots (I'm glad to hear the little fellow's better, by the way), and Blue Pill waiting for you day after day till after dark at the hospital gates, to say nothing of gymkhanas. It won't do for long; I'm serious about it, old chap."

"Are you? Well, it's kind of you to be that," he laughed; "though mayhap 'twould be more of a change for your friends if you were the t'other thing. Don't fret yourself about me, annyhow; I'm well enough. Maybe 'tis having done dhry-nurse to him at first that makes me feel Boots on me mind; but I think he's well through. And d'ye know! the little beggar wouldn't touch a thing unless I gave it him. 'Tis a queer place this worrld, annyhow."

His voice had a suspicion of a break in it, and his eyes were brighter than ever; whence I augured that he felt worse than he cared to confess. Next day he sent a note asking me to inspect the jail for him, as he was going to try conclusions with his liver; the day after I found him in bed, but lively. Then the deadly fever which kills so many fine young fellows in India laid fast hold on him, and for three long weeks we, who loved him, watched the struggle for life, helpless to do aught save keep up his strength as best we might against the coming crisis. It was as if a calamity had befallen the whole Station. Men when they met each other asked first of all how he was; and women sent jellies and soups enough for a regiment to the bungalow where the young doctor, who had soothed so many of their troubles, lay bravely fighting out his own. Quite a crowd of natives gathered round the gate by early dawn, waiting for news of the past night; and, so far as I knew, Shivdeo never left the verandah during all those weary days. I could see him from my post by the bed, sitting like a bronze statue against a pillar, whence my slightest sign would rouse him. For I assumed the office of head-nurse after Terence, full of gratitude for the kindly offers of help showered upon him, had said with a wistful gleam of the old mischief, "But I loike your sober face best, old man; it makes me feel so pious." I sent in for leave that morning and never left him again. It was the twenty-sixth day, about ten o'clock in the evening, that the doctor in charge shook his head over my patient sorrowfully. "He is terribly weak, but while there's life-- We shall know by dawn."

The old formula fell on my ears--though I had been waiting for it--with a sense of sickening failure, and unable to reply, I turned away from the figure which lay so still and lifeless despite all my care. As I did so I noticed Shivdeo listening with eyes and ears at the door. For the last three days the man had been strangely restless, and more than once I had discovered odd things disposed about the room, and even on poor Terence's pillow--things used as talismans to keep away the evil eye, such as I had seen in Hairan-wallah when the bhut-baby was born; and I had smiled--good heavens, how ignorant we are in India!--smiled at the silly superstition which evidently lingered in Shivdeo's mind. He came to me when the doctor left to ask if he had understood rightly that the great hour of hope or dread drew nigh. I told him we should know by dawn, and that till then all must be quiet as the grave. His face startled me by its intensity, as standing at the foot of the bed he fixed his eyes on the unconscious face of his master and salaamed to it with all the reverence he would have given to a god. But he spoke calmly to me, saying that as I would doubtless be loth to leave the room he would order the servants to bring me something to eat there. He presently appeared, bearing the tray himself, giving as a reason for this unusual service his desire to avoid any disturbance. It was just upon twelve o'clock when, with Shivdeo's help, I gave Terence, who was quite unconscious, a few drops of stimulant before sitting down with a sinking heart to my anxious watch. It was early April, and the doors, set wide open to let in the cool air, showed a stretch of moonlit grass where shadows from the unseen trees above quivered and shifted as the night-wind stirred the leaves. In the breathless silence I could hear even the faint respiration of the sick man, and found myself counting its rise and fall, until the last thing I remembered was Shivdeo's immovable figure with the moonlight streaming full in his face.

When I awoke the rapid Eastern dawn had come. The sparrows were twittering in the verandah, and Shivdeo stood by his master's bed holding his finger to his lips. "Hush!" he whispered, as my eyes met his; "the light has brought life to the Giver of Light."

It must have been the sound of wheels which woke me, for ere I had time to reply the doctor entered the room, and after a glance at his patient shook me silently by the hand. "I believe he's through," he said, when he had cautiously examined the sleeping man; "fever gone, pulse stronger. I scarcely dared to hope for it even with his splendid constitution. Hullo! what's that?" It was only a tiny spot of blood on the forehead just where the trident of Shiva is painted by his worshippers, but it showed vividly against the pallor of the skin.

"There is a little spot by the Light-giver's feet also," remarked Shivdeo quietly. "I noticed it yesterday just after the Presence cut his hand with the soda-water bottle." And sure enough there was one.

"I can't think how I came to fall asleep," I said to him after the doctor had gone; "just at the critical time, too, when I was most wanted."

The man smiled. "We do not always guess aright when we are wanted, Huzoor. You slept and the Light-giver got better. It is God's way; He has refreshed you both."

"Refreshed!" I retorted crossly. "I feel as if I had been pounded in a mortar. I had the most frightful dreams, but I can't recall what they were."

"It is not well to try," replied Shivdeo, with rather an odd look. "If I were the Presence I would forget them. There is enough evil to come without recalling what is past and over for ever."

Perhaps involuntarily I followed his suggestion, for, though I chased the fleeting memory more than once through my brain, I never overtook it.

Terence O'Reilly made a quick recovery; but in view of the fast approaching hot weather, the doctors put him on board ship as soon as it could be done with safety. Hurry was the order of the day, so it was not until my return from seeing him to Bombay that I found time for outside affairs. Then it was that Shivdeo informed me of poor little Boots' death in the interval. As the Presence was aware, he said, it had been thought advisable when perfect quiet was necessary to the Light-bringer to send the child away from the compound, because of the difficulty experienced in keeping it out of the house. So it had gone with its nurse to the cantonment-sweeper's hut, where it had caught fresh cold and died. By the advice of the native doctor who had seen it, he had kept the death secret at first, from fear of the news delaying his master's recovery. I made every inquiry, but found nothing of any kind to give rise to suspicion of foul play. The native doctor had sent medicine three days running as for bronchitis, and on the fourth he had seen the child's dead body. It had died, he thought, of croup.

"You will write and tell the Light-bringer?" asked Shivdeo, when the inquiry was over. "And you will say that I did my best, my very best, for my lord's interest?"

"Certainly," I replied; "but he will be sorry, the child was so fond of him."

"When people are beautiful as Krishna, like the Lord of Light, it is easy to be fond of them."

I did not see Shivdeo again for over three months; and the bungalow in the Civil Lines, which he kept swept and garnished against his master's return, gradually assumed the soulless, empty appearance peculiar to the dwelling-places of those who make holiday at the other side of the world. Then a message came to say that he was ill, and wished to see me on business. I found him, a mere wreck and shadow of his former self, propped up against his old pillar in the verandah. He shook his head over my suggestions of remedies. "I have taken many," he replied quietly, "for the native doctor is my caste-brother. The hand of Shiva is not to be turned aside, and am I not his sworn servant? What ails me? Nay, who can say what ails the heart when it ceases to beat? Men cannot live without the light, and it is night for me now. Perhaps that is it, who knows? Yonder old man is my father come to see me die; yet ere the last 'Ram-Ram' sounds in mine ears I want the Presence to understand something, else would I not have vexed his quiet. It will be hard for the Huzoor to understand, because he is not of our race."

He paused so long that I asked what he wished me to understand, thinking that in his weakness he had drifted away from his desire. "Something new and strange," he answered, "yet old and true. See! I sit here in the old place, and the Presence shall sit there as he used to do, because old memories return in the old places, making us see and remember things that are past or forgotten. Is it not so?"

Truly enough, as I humoured him by occupying the familiar chair, ready placed half-way between the bed and the window, it seemed to me as if I were once more watching Terence pass through the valley of the shadow.

"The Presence once slept in that chair," continued the weak voice, "and he dreamed a dream. Let him recall it now, if he can."

How or wherefore I know not, but as he spoke a sudden certainty as to what he wished me to know rushed in on me. "Great God," I cried, starting up and seizing him roughly by the shoulder, "you killed poor little Boots! You brought the child here! You killed it before his very eyes and mine! I know it! I think--I think I saw it done!"

He set my hand aside with unexpected force and a strange dignity. "I am the prisoner of Death, Huzoor! There is no need to hold me; I cannot escape him. For the rest, if I killed the child, what then? The Lord of Light lives, and that is enough for me. What is a Sudra or two more or less to the Brahman? But what if it was a devil sucking his heart's blood because of his beauty? Shall I not have honour for saving him? Thus both ways I am absolved; but not from my oath, the false oath which I swore to my lord for my own sake. When I wander through the shades waiting for Vishnu's decree, it will lead my blind steps to the body of a foul thing. So I speak that the Presence may judge and say if I were not justified, and confess that we people of the old knowledge are not always wrong. Huzoor! you have seen its eyes glisten, as its body clung to his beauty; you know he sickened after it had lain night and day in his arms; you know how it crept and crawled to get at him while he lay helpless. Now listen! One day he was better, brighter in all things, and bid you refresh yourself in the air. I sat here, and like you I fell asleep; and when I woke the thing was at him, close to his heart, its arms round his neck, its devilish lips at his throat, crooning away like an accursed cat! And he was in the death-sleep that lasted till the dawn came that you and I remember so well. Then I knew it must be, and that my oath was as a reed in the flood. Yet would I not be hasty. I took counsel with holy men, men of mighty wisdom, men with such tenderness for life that they bid God speed to the flea which keeps them wakeful; but they all said, 'Yea! one of the two must die.' Did I stop to ask which? Not I. So I fasted, and prayed, and made clean my heart, and waited patiently for the moment of fate; for so they bid me. Even then, Huzoor, the holy men would do naught by chance or without proof. It was a bright moonlight night, and the Presence slept by reason of our arts and drugs; and so we put the accursed creature we had brought from the sweeper's hut down at the gate, yonder by the flowering oleanders, and hiding ourselves among them, watched it. Straight, straight as a hawk or a bustard, until we found it there in the old place! Devil of Hell! we made it vomit back the blood, we--"

My hand was on his mouth, my one thought to stop the horrible words that somehow conjured up the still more horrible sight before my eyes. "I know,--there is no need for more,--I cannot bear it."

And indeed, the vision of poor dumb little Boots in their relentless hold froze my blood. As my hands fell away from him in sudden, shrinking horror, he looked at me compassionately. "The Presence does not understand aright. Let him remember the strange doctor's face when he came in the dawn, thinking to find hope had fled. One of the two had to die. If the Presence had thought as I did, as I knew, what would he have done?"

I was silent.

His face, which had remained calm enough so far, assumed a look of agonised entreaty, as with an effort painful to see he dragged himself to my feet and clung to them. "What would you have done, Huzoor, in my place? What would you have done?"

Then a fearful fit of coughing seized him, and his lips were tinged with blood. Water lay close at hand, yet I knew that this murderer would sooner have died than accept it from my defiling hand; so I called the old man who all this time had sat like a carven image in the next archway. He came, and wiped the dews of death from his son's face without a word; and as he did so, Shivdeo, looking at the faint stains on the cloth, smiled an unearthly smile, and whispered, "I did not suck my lord's blood, for all that. It comes from my own heart."

I am not ashamed to say that my brain was in such a whirl that I turned to escape from a situation where I felt utterly lost. As I did so, I heard Shivdeo's voice for the last time. The old man was holding a little brass cup of water to the parched lips; but it was arrested by the dying hand, and the dying eyes looked wistfully up into his father's.

"Did I do well, O my father?" he asked.

"You did well, my son; drink in peace."

When I reached home, the English mail was in. It brought a letter from Terence. He was in Dublin and engaged to be married; considering that he was an Irishman, no more need be said. He wrote the kindest letter, saying that the great happiness which had come into his life made him all the more grateful to me, seeing that but for my care he would have gone down to the grave without knowing how the love of a good woman can make existence seem a sacred trust. He ended by these words: "And sure, old man, if it be true that all happiness is bought, some one must have paid dear for mine!"

I could not sleep that night--the war of conflicting thoughts waged too fiercely; but it was nearly dawn before I found it impossible to withstand the memory of Shivdeo's cry: "If the Presence had thought as I did, what would he have done?"

He was dead before I reached the house, but surely if he knows anything, he must know that I, for one, cast no stone.

[RÂMCHUNDERJI.]

"But the tenth avatar of the Lord Vishnu is yet to come."

"Exactly so, pundit-ji," I replied, looking at my watch. "It is yet to come, seeing that time's up. Half-past eight; so not another stroke of work to-day. No, not for twice a thousand rupees!"

A thousand rupees being the sum with which the Government of India rewards what they are pleased to call "high proficiency" in languages, I, having regard to its literature, had chosen Sanskrit as a means of paying certain just debts. To which end the head-master of the district school came to me for two hours every morning, and prosed away over the doings of the Hindoo pantheon until I came to the conclusion that my Lord Vishnu had been rather extravagant in the matter of incarnations.

The pundit, however, to whom would be due a hundred rupees of the thousand if I succeeded, smiled blandly. "The tenth avatar will doubtless await his Honour's leisure; the tenth, and last."

"Last!" I echoed with scorn. "How do you know? Some authorities hold there are twenty-four, and upon my soul I don't see why there should not be twenty-four thousand. 'Tis the same old story all through; devils and demigods, rakshas and rishies, Noah's ark and Excalibur. That sort of thing might go on for ever."

Now, Pundit Narayan Das was a very learned man. He had taken a Calcutta degree, and was accustomed to educate the rising generation on a mixture of the Rig-Veda and The Spectator. So he smiled again, saying in English, "'History repeats itself.'"

Thereupon he left me, and I, going into the verandah with my cigar, came straight upon Râmchunderji and his wife Seeta. At least I think so.

They were the oddest little couple. He, at a stretch, might have touched a decade of life, she, something more than half such distance of time. That is, taking them by size: in mind and manners, and in their grave, careworn faces, they were centuries old. His sole garment consisted of a large yellow turban twined high into a sort of mitre, with just a tip of burnished silver fringe sprouting from the top; and, as he sat cross-legged against the verandah pillar, a hand resting on each knee, his figure awoke a fleeting memory which, at the time, I failed to catch. Afterwards I remembered the effigies in Indra's celestial court as represented by some Parsee actors I had once seen. Seeta was simply a bundle, owing to her being huddled and cuddled up in a veil ample enough for an ample woman.

"I am Râmchunderji, and this is my wife Seeta," said the boy gravely. "If the Presence pleases, I will beguile time by singing."

"What will you sing?" I asked, preparing to idle away ten minutes comfortably in a lounge-chair which lay convenient.

"I sing what I sing. Give me the vina, woman."

The veil gave up such a very large instrument that the smallness of the remaining wife became oppressive. So large indeed was it, that one gourd over-filled the boy's lap, while the other acted as a prop to the high twined turban. Even the connecting bamboo, slender though it was, seemed all too wide for those small fingers on the frets.

"Is the permission of the Presence bestowed?" suggested Râmchunderji, with the utmost solemnity.

Twang, twang, twangle! Heavens, what a vina and what a voice! I nearly stopped both at the first bar; then patience prevailing, I lay back and closed my eyes. Twang, twangle! A sudden difference in the tone made me open them again, only to find the same little bronze image busy in making a perfectly purgatorial noise; so I resigned myself once more. Palm-trees waving, odorous thickets starred with jasmin, forms, half-mortal, half-divine, stealing through the shadows, the flash of shining swords, the twang of golden bows bent on ten-headed many-handed monsters. Bah! Pundit Narayan Das, prosing over those epic poems of his, had made me drowsy. "What have you been singing?" I asked, rousing myself.

Râmchunderji spread his hands thumbs outwards, and the three wrinkles on his high forehead deepened: "God knows! It is what they sang before the great flood came. The vina was theirs, and my turban, and my wife's veil; the rest was too big altogether, so I gave it away for some bread. When the belly is full of greed the heart hath none left, and the nine-lakh necklace is worth no more than a mouthful. If the Presence could see into my heart now, he would find no greed there."

This delicate allusion to an inward craving produced a four-anna bit from my pocket, and sent Râmchunderji away to the sweet-meat sellers in order to appease his hunger; for sweet-stuff is cheap in the East, especially when it is stale. Seeta and the vina, mysteriously intertwined beneath the veil, followed duteously behind.

The next day they were back again, and the twang of that infernal instrument broke in on the pundit's impassioned regrets over the heroic days of his favourite poems. "By the by," I interrupted, "can you tell me what that boy is singing? I can't make out a word, and yet--But it was no use bringing fancy to bear on Narayan Das, so we went out to listen. They were sitting under a trellised arch covered with jasmin and roses, and a great Gloire de Dijon had sent a shower of blown petals over Seeta's veil.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," quoted Narayan Das sententiously, after listening a while. "It is Râmayâna, the immortal poem your honour reads even now; but debase, illiterate. You say wrong, boy! it is thus."

Râmchunderji waited till the pompous periods ceased; then he shook his head gravely. "We did not sing it so in the days before the great flood came."

His words gave me a curious thrill; but there is no more matter-of-fact being in the world than a Calcutta Bachelor of Arts; so the pundit at once began a cross-examination that would have done credit to a Queen's counsel. "What flood? who were 'we'?" These and many other questions put with brutal bluntness met with a patient reply.

It had been a very big flood, somewhere, God knows how far, in the south country. One, two, three years ago? Oh, more than that! but he could not say how much more. The bard who sang and the woman who carried the vina had disappeared, been swept away perhaps. Since then he, Râmchunderji, had wandered over the world filling his stomach and that of his wife Seeta with songs. Their stomachs were not always full; oh, no! Of late (perhaps because the vina was so old) people had not cared to listen, and since the great flood nothing could be got without money. Seeta? Oh, yes! she was his wife. They had been married ever so long; he could not remember the time when they had not been married.

It was Narayan Das's opportunity for shaking his head. These infant marriages were subversive of due education. Here was a boy, who should be in Standard II. doing the compound rules, idling about in ignorance. It struck me, however, that Râmchunderji must be pretty well on to vulgar fractions and rule of three, with himself, Seeta, and the world as the denominators, so I asked him if his heart were still so devoid of greed that another four-anna bit would be welcome. His face showed a pained surprise. The Presence, he said, must be aware that four annas would fill their stomachs (which were not big) for many days. They had not come for alms, only to make music for the Presence out of gratitude. Thinking that music out of an ill-tuned vina was hardly the same thing, I forced another four-anna bit on the boy and sent him away.

Nearly a month passed ere I saw him again, though Narayan Das and I used, as the days grew warmer, to sit out in the trellised arch, within sight of the road. My knowledge of Sanskrit increased as I read of Râmchunderji's long exile, shared by Seeta, his wife; of how he killed the beasts in the enchanted forest; how she was reft from him by Râvana, the hydra-headed many-handed monster; and of how finally she was restored to his arms by the help of Hanumân the man-monkey, the child of the wild winds. But though the pundit used to waste many words in pointing out the beauties of a poem which held such hold on the minds of the people that their commonest names were derived from it, I never seemed to get into the spirit of the time as I had done when I listened with closed eyes to the boy's debased, illiterate rendering of the s'lokas.

It was after the school vacation had sent Narayan Das to see his relatives at Benares that the odd little couple turned up again. Râmchunderji's face looked more pinched and careworn than ever, and as he held the vina across his knees, Seeta, losing its contours, seemed more than ever inadequate to her veil.

"Perhaps one of the many devils which beset the virtuous has entered into the instrument," he said despondently; "but when I play, folk listen not at all. So greed remaineth in the stomach, and the heart is empty."

I offered him another four-anna bit, and when he demurred at taking it before beguiling the time with music, I laid it on the flat skin top of one of the gourds, hoping thus to ensure silence.

The wrinkles on his forehead seemed to go right up into his turban, and his voice took a perplexed tone. "It used not to be so. Before the flood Seeta and I had no thought of money; but now--" He began fingering the strings softly, and as they thrilled, the four-anna bit vibrated and jigged in a murmur of money that fitted strangely to the sort of rude chant in which he went on.

"Money is in the hands, the head, the heart;

Give! give, give, before we give again;

Money hath ten heads to think out evil-doing;

Money hath twenty hands to mete out pain.

Money! money! money! money!

Money steals the heart's love from our life.

Money I have not--say! art thou hungry, wife?"

If anything was possessed of a devil it was that four-anna bit. It buzzed, and hummed, and jigged infernally, as the boy's finger on the strings struck more firmly.

"I'll tell you what it is, Râmchunderji," said I uneasily, "that vina is enough to ruin Orpheus. As you don't care for my money, I'll give you another instrument instead. I have one inside which is easier to play, and more your style in every way."

So I brought out a ravanâstron, such as professional beggars use, a thing with two strings and a gourd covered with snake-skin. To my surprise the boy's face lost its impassive melancholy in palpable anger.

"The Presence does not understand," he said quite hotly. "We do not beg; Seeta and I fill ourselves with songs. That thing whines for money, money, money, like the devil who made it. Rather would I live by this than by mine enemy." And as he spoke he struck the snake-skin with his supple fingers till it resounded again. "Yea! thus will I find bread," he went on, "but the vina must find a home first. Therefore I came to the Presence, hearing that he collected such things. Perhaps he will keep it in exchange for one rupee. It is worth one rupee, surely."

His wistful look as he handed me the instrument made me feel inclined to offer a hundred; but in good sooth the vina was worth five, and I told him so, adding, as I looked at some curious tracery round the gourds, that it appeared to be very old indeed.

"The Presence saith truly; it is very old," echoed Râmchunderji drearily. "That is why folk will not listen. It is too old; too old to be worth money."

Nevertheless he cheered up at the sight of his rupee; for he would not take more, saying he had every intention of returning to claim the vina ere long, and that five rupees would be beyond his hopes of gain.

A fortnight after I came home from my early morning ride by the police office, which stood outside the native town, close to a brick-stepped tank shaded by peepul-trees, my object being to check the tally of poisonous snakes brought in for the reward given by Government for their capture. The first time I saw some six or seven hundred deadly serpents ranged in a row with all their heads one way, and all their unwinking eyes apparently fixed on me, I felt queer, and the fact of their being dead did not somehow enter into the equation. But habit inures one, and I walked along the thin grey fringe of certain death spread out on the first step of the tank with an air of stolid business, only stopping before an unusually large specimen to ask the captor, who sat behind awaiting his pence, where he had come across it.

"Six hundred and seventy in all, Huzoor" remarked the Deputy Inspector of Police, following me, resplendent in silver trappings and white cotton gloves. "That is owing to the floods, and the season, since this is the sixth of Bhâdron (August) the month of snakes. Yet the outlay is excessive to the Government, and perhaps with justice the price of small ones, such as these, might be reduced one-half."

I looked up, and behind a fringe of diminutive vipers sat Râmchunderji and the bundle he called Seeta. On his bare right arm he wore a much betasselled floss silk bracelet bound with tinsel.

"I am glad to see the greed is in your heart again," said I, pointing to the ornament.

"The Râm-rucki is not bought, but given, as in the days before the flood," replied the boy. "Every one wears the Râm-rucki still, every one!"

The Deputy Inspector pulled down the cuff of his uniform hastily, but against the gleam of his white gloves I caught a glimpse of bright colours. The Râm-rucki, he explained evasively, was the bracelet of luck given to Râmchunderji in old days before his search for Seeta, and common, ill-educated people still retained the superstitious custom of binding one on the wrist of each male during the month of Bhâdron. There was so much deplorable ignorance amongst the uneducated classes, and did the Presence look with favour on the proposal for reducing the rewards? Perhaps it was Râmchunderji's eager, wistful face hinting at the way promises were kept before the flood, which made me reply that I considered no one but the Viceroy in Council had power to reduce the price of snakes.

Several times after this I found the odd little couple disposed behind their tally of small vipers; then the season of serpents ceased, and one by one the habitués of the tank steps dropped off to pursue other professions. The fringe broke into isolated tassels, and finally the worn, ruddy steps lay bare of all save the flickering light and shade of the leaves above.

November had chilled the welcome cool weather to cold, when a report came in the usual course that a boy calling himself Râmchunderji, and a girl said to be his wife, had been found in a jasmin garden outside the city, half dead of exhaustion and without any ostensible means of livelihood. They had been taken up as vagrants and sent to hospital, pending Government orders. Now the Jubilee year was coming to a close, leaving behind it a legacy of new charities throughout the length and breadth of India. Of some the foundation stone only had been laid by direct telegram to the Queen-Empress; others had sprung to life in a manner suggestive of workmen's tenements. Among the latter was a Female Boarding School and Orphanage for the children of high-caste Hindus, which had been built and endowed by a number of rich contractors and usurers, not one of whom would have sent their daughters to it for all their hoarded wealth. Persistent pennies had attracted a creditable, if intermittent, supply of day-scholars to its stucco walls; but despite an appropriate inscription in three languages over the gate, the orphanage remained empty. Money can do much, but it cannot produce homeless orphans of good family in a society where the patriarchal system lingers in all its crass disregard of the main chance. So at the first hint of Seeta I was besieged on all sides. A real live, genuine, Hindu female orphan going a begging! Preposterous! Sacrilegious! The Chairman of the Orphanage Committee almost wept as he pictured the emptiness of those white walls, and actually shed tears over the building estimates which he produced in order to strengthen his claim to poor little Seeta. Was it fair, he asked, that such a total of munificent charity should not have a single orphan to show the Commissioner-sahib when he came on tour? His distress touched me. Then winter, hard on the poor even in sunlit India, was on us; besides, Narayan Das tempted me further, with suggestions of a Jubilee Scholarship at the district school for Râmchunderji himself.

I broke it very gently to the boy as he lay on a mat in the sun, slowly absorbing warmth and nourishment. He was too weak to contest the point, but I felt bad, exceedingly, when I saw him turn face down as if the end of all things was upon him. I knew he must be whispering confidences to Mother Earth respecting that happy time before the flood, and I slunk away as though I had been whipped.

Now, if in telling this veracious history I seem too intermittent, I can but offer as an excuse the fact that an official's work in India is like that of a Jacquard loom. A thread slips forward, shows for a second, and disappears; a pause, and there it is again. Sometimes not until the pattern is complete is it possible to realise that the series of trivial incidents has combined to weave an indelible record on the warp and woof. So it was early January before the Râmchunderji shuttle stirred again. Narayan Das came to me with a look on his face suggestive that neither the Rig-Veda nor The Spectator was entirely satisfactory. The boy, he said, was not a bad boy, though he seemed absolutely unable to learn; but his influence on Standard I. was strictly non-regulation, nor did any section of the Educational Code apply to the case. If I would come down at recess time, I could see and judge for myself what ought to be done. When I reached the play-ground the bigger boys were at krikutts (cricket) or gymnastics, the medium ones engaged on marbles, but in a sunny corner backed by warm brick walls sat Râmchunderji surrounded by a circle of Standard I. Small as he was, he was still so much larger than the average of the class, that, as he leant his high yellow turban against the wall, with half-closed eyes, and hands upon his knees, the memory of India's Court came back to me once more. He was reciting something in a low voice, and as the children munched popcorn or sucked sweeties their eyes never left his face.

"Look!" said Narayan Das in a whisper from our spying-ground behind the master's window. The song came to an end, a stir circled through the audience, and one by one the solid children of the fields, and the slender, sharp little imps of the bazaars, rose up and put something into the singer's lap. A few grains of corn, a scrap of sweet stuff, and as they did so each said in turn, "Salaam, Râmchunderji!" "No wonder the boy has grown fat," I whispered, dropping the reed screen round which I had been peeping.

Narayan Das shook his head. "If it were only comestibles," he replied gravely, "I could arrange; but when they are devoid of victuals they give their slate-pencils, their ink-pots, even their First-Lesson books. Then, if nobody sees and stops, there is vacancy when such things are applied for. Thus it is subversive of discipline, and parents object to pay. Besides, the in forma-pauperis pupils come on contingent with great expense to Government."

I looked through the screen again with a growing respect for Râmchunderji. "Does he eat them too?" I asked.

The head-master smiled the sickly smile of one who is not quite sure if his superior officer intends a joke, and fell back as usual on quotation, "The ostrich is supposed by some to digest nails, but--"

I laughed aloud, and being discovered, went out and spoke seriously to the offender. His calm was not in the least disturbed. "I do not ask, or beg," he replied; "they give of their hearts and their abundance, as in old days before the flood. Is it my fault if they possess slate-pencils, and ink-pots, and First-Lesson books?"

I must confess that this argument seemed to me unanswerable, but I advised him, seeing that the flood had come, to return such offerings in future to the store. He did not take my advice, and, about a week after, being discovered selling these things to the bigger boys at a reduced price, he was caned by the head-master. That night he disappeared from the boarding-house and was no more seen. His name was removed from the rolls, his scholarship forfeited for absence without leave, and the arrears absorbed in refunds for slate-pencils and ink-pots. So that was an end of Râmchunderji's schooling, and Standard I. once more became amenable to the Code.

Winter was warming to spring, the first bronze vine leaves were budding, and the young wheat shooting to silvery ears, before the Commissioner, coming his rounds, was taken in pomp to visit the Orphanage and its occupants. I remember it so well. The Committee and the Commissioner, and I, and every one interested in female orphans and female education, on one side of a red baize table decorated with posies of decayed rosebuds and jasmin in green-glass tumblers; and on the other Seeta and the matron. The former, to enhance her value as a genuine half-caste waif, was still a mere bundle, and I fancied she looked smaller than ever; perhaps because the veil was not so large. Then the accounts were passed, and the matron's report read. Nothing, she said, could be more satisfactory than the general behaviour and moral tone of the inmates, except in one point. And this was the feeding of the monkeys, which, as every one knew, infested the town. The result being that the bunder-lôg had become bold even to the dropping down of stones into the court--quite large stones, such as the one placed as a stepping-stone over the runnel of water from the well.

Here I unguardedly suggested an air-gun; whereupon Narayan Das, who always attended these functions as an educational authority, reminded me reproachfully that monkeys were sacred to the god Hanumân, who, if I remembered, had finally rescued Seeta from the ten-headed, many-armed monster Ravana, the inventor of the ravanastron or beggar's fiddle.

It was at this juncture that I suddenly became aware that the Jacquard loom of Fate was weaving a pattern; Râmchunderji! Seeta! the exile! the killing of the wild beasts! the ten-headed, many-handed monster Râvana! Yet I could tell you almost every word of the Commissioner's speech, though he prosed on for the next ten minutes complacently about the pleasure he felt, and the authorities felt, and the whole civilised world felt, at seeing "Money, the great curse and blessing of humanity, employed as it should be employed in snatching the female orphan of India from unmerited misfortune, and educating her to be an example to the nineteenth century." Every one was highly delighted, and the Committee approached me with a view of adding the Commissioner's name as a second title to the school.

But I awaited the completion of the pattern. It was on the eleventh of April, that is to say, on the High Festival of Spring, at the fair held beside the tank where humanity in thousands was washing away the old year, and putting on the new in the shape of gay-coloured clothing, that my attention was attracted by a small, dense crowd whence came hearty guffaws of laughter.

"'Tis a performing monkey," said a bearded villager in response to my question as to what was amusing them so hugely. "The boy makes him do tricks worthy of Hanumân; yet he saith he taught him yonder down by the canal. Will not the Protector of the Poor step in and see? Ho, ho! 'twould make a suitor laugh even if the digri (decree) were against him." But I recognised the pattern this time, and I had made up my mind not to interfere with the shuttle again. As I turned away, another roar of laughter and a general feeling in pockets and turbans told me that the final tip had succeeded, and that collection was going on satisfactorily.

A few days later the Chairman of the Committee came to me in excited despair. The real, genuine female Hindu orphan was not to be found, and the stucco walls were once more empty. Inquiries were made on all sides, but when it came out, casually, that a boy, a girl, and a monkey, had taken a third-class ticket to Benares I said nothing. I was not going to aid Râvana, or prevent the due course of incarnation, if it was an incarnation. That great city of men, women, and monkeys should give the trio fair play.

Last year, when I was in Simla, I overheard a traveller giving his impressions of India to a lady who was longing all the time to find out from a gentleman with a mustache when the polo-match was to begin at Annandale next day.

"The performing troupes are certainly above the European average," he said. "At Benares, especially, I remember seeing a monkey; he, his master, and a girl, did quite a variety of scenes out of the Râmayâna, and really, considering who they were, I--"

"Excuse me,--but--oh! Captain Smith, is it half-past eleven or twelve?"

The vina still hangs in my collection next the ravanastron. Sometimes I take it down and sound the strings. But the waving palms, the odorous thickets, and the shadowy, immortal forms have got mixed up somehow with that infernal humming and bumming of the four-anna bit. So I get no help in trying to decide the question,--"Who was Râmchunderji?"

[HEERA NUND.]

He stood in the verandah, salaaming with both hands, in each of which he held a bouquet--round-topped, compressed, prim little posies, with fat bundles of stalk bound spirally with date-fibre; altogether more like ninepins than bouquets, for the time of flowers was not yet, and only a few ill-conditioned rosebuds, suggestive of worms, and a dejected champak or two, showed amongst the green.

The holder was hardly more decorative than the posies. Bandy, hairy brown legs, with toes set wide open by big brass rings--a sight bringing discomfort within one's own slippers from sheer sympathy; a squat body, tightly buttoned into a sleeveless white coat; a face of mild ugliness overshadowed by an immaculately white turban. From the coral and gold necklace round his thick throat, and the crescent-shaped ear-rings in his spreading ears, I guessed him to be of the Arain caste. He was, in fact, Heera Nund, gardener to my new landlord; therefore, for the present, my servant. Had I inquired into the matter, I should probably have found that his forbears had cultivated the surrounding land for centuries; certainly long years before masterful men from the West had jotted down their trivial boundary pillars to divide light from darkness, the black man from the white, cantonments from the rest of God's earth. One of these little white pillars stood in a corner of my garden, and beyond it lay an illimitable stretch of bare brown plain, waiting till the young wheat came to clothe its nakedness.

I did not inquire, however; few people do in India. Perhaps they are intimidated by the extreme antiquity of all things, and dread letting loose the floodgates of garrulous memory. Be that as it may, I was content to accept the fact that Heera Nund, whether representing ancestral proprietors or not, had come to congratulate me, a stranger, on having taken, not only the house, but the garden also. The sahibs, he said, went home so often nowadays that they had ceased to care for gardens. This one having been in a contractor's hands for years had become, as it were, a miserable low-degree native place. In fact, he had found it necessary to steep his own knowledge in oblivion in order that content should grow side by side with country vegetables. Yet he had not forgotten the golden age, when, under the ægis of some judge with a mysterious name, he, too, Heera Nund the Arain, had raised celery and beetroot, French beans and artichokes, asparagus and parsley. He reeled off the English names with a glibness and inaccuracy in which, somehow, there lurked a pathetic dignity. Then suddenly, from behind a favouring pillar, he sprung upon me the usual native offering, consisting of a flat basket decorated with a few coarse vegetables. A bunch of rank-smelling turnips, half-a-dozen blue radishes running two to the pound, various heaps of native greens, a bit off an overblown cauliflower proclaiming its bazaar origin by the turmeric powder adhering to it in patches, a leaf-cup of mint ornamented by two glowing chillies. He laid the whole at my feet with a profound obeisance. "This dust-like offering," he said gravely, "is all that the good God (Khuda) can give to the sahib. Let the Presence (Huzoor) wait a few months and see what Heera Nund can do for him."

I shall not soon forget the ludicrous solemnity of voice and gesture, or the simple self-importance overlaying the ugly face with the smile of a cat licking cream.

I did not see him again for some days, for accession to a new office curtails leisure. When, however, I found time for a stroll round my new domain I discovered Heera Nund hard at work. His coatee hung on a bush; his bare, brown back glistened in the sunshine as he stooped down to deepen a watercourse with his adze-like shovel. A brake of sugarcane, red-brown and gold, showed where the garden proper merged into the peasants' land beyond; for the well, whence the water came that flowed round Heera Nund's hidden feet as he stood in the runnel, irrigated quite a large stretch of the fields around my holding. The well-wheel creaked in recurring discords, every now and again giving out a note or two as if it were going to begin a tune. The red evening sun shone through the mango-trees, where the green parrots hung like unripe fruit. The bullocks circled round and round; the water dripped and gurgled.

"How about the seeds I sent you?" I asked, when Heera Nund drew his wet feet from the stream, and composing himself for the effort, produced an elaborate salaam.

He left humility behind him as he stalked over to a narrow strip of ground on the other side of the well, a long strip portioned out into squares and circles like a doll's garden, with tiny one-span walks between.

"Behold!" he said, "his Honour will observe that the cabbage caste have life already."

Truly enough the half-covered seeds showed gussets of white in their brown jackets. "But where are the tickets? I sent word specially that you were to be sure and stick the labels on each bed. How am I to know which is which?"

"The Presence can see that the sticks are there," he answered with a superior smile; "but there are others beside the sahibs who love tickets."

He pointed to the tree above us, where on a branch sat a peculiarly bushy-tailed squirrel, as happy as a king over the brussels-sprouts' wrapper, which he was crumpling into a ball with deft hands and sharp teeth. How I came to know it was this particular wrapper happened thus: I threw my cap at the offender, and in his flight he dropped the paper on my bald head; it was hard, and had points.

"They are mis-begotten devils," remarked Heera cheerfully; "but they are building nests, sahib, and like to paper the inside. Notwithstanding, the Presence need fear no confusion; his slave has many names in his head. This is arly walkrin (Early Walcheren), that is droomade (Drumhead), yonder is dookoyark (Duke of York), and that, that, and that--He would have gone on interminably, had I not changed the subject by asking what was growing beneath a dilapidated hand-light, which stood next to a sturdy crop of broadcast radishes. Only a few panes of glass remained intact, but the vacancies had been neatly supplied by coarse muslin. The gardener's face, always simple in expression, became quite homogeneous with pure content.

"Huzoor! It is the mâlin (female gardener)!"

"The mâlin! What on earth do you mean?"

Have you ever watched the face of a general servant when she takes the covers off the Christmas dinner? Have you ever seen a very young conjurer lift his father's hat to show you that the handkerchief (which he has palpably secreted elsewhere) is no longer in its legitimate hiding-place? Something of that mingled triumph and fear lest some accident may have befallen skill in the interim showed itself in Heera Nund's countenance as he removed the light with a flourish, thus disclosing to view a fat and remarkably black baby asleep on a bed of leaves. It was attired in a pair of silver bangles, and a Maw's feeding-bottle grew, like some new kind of root-crop, from the ground beside it.

"My daughter, Huzoor--little Dhropudi the mâlin."

His voice thrilled even my bachelor ears as he squatted down and began mechanically to fan the swift-gathering flies from the sleeping child.

"You seem to be very fond of her," I remarked after a pause. "It is only a girl after all. Have you no son?"

He shook his head.

"She is the only one, and I waited for her ten years--ten long years; so I was glad even to get a mâlin. Dhropudi grows as fast as a boy, almost as fast as the Huzoor's cabbages. Only the other day she was no bigger than my hand."

"Your wife is dead, I suppose?" The question was, perhaps, a little brutal, but it was so unusual to see a man doing dry nurse to a baby girl, that I took it for granted that the mother had died months before, at the child's birth. I never saw a face change more rapidly than his; the simplicity left it, and in place thereof came a curious anxiety such as a child might show with the dawning conviction that it has lost itself.

"She is not at all dead, Huzoor; on the contrary, she is very young. Children cry sometimes, and my house does not like crying. You see, when people are young they require more sleep; when she is old as I am she will be able to keep awake."

His tone was argumentative, as if he were reasoning the matter out for his own edification. "Not that Dhropudi keeps me awake often," he added, in hasty apology to that infant's reputation; "considering how young a person she is, her ways are very straight-walking and meek."

"If she cries you can always stop her with the watering-pot, I suppose."

He looked shocked at the suggestion.

"Huzoor! it is not difficult to stop them; such a very little thing pleases a baby. Sometimes it is the sunshine--sometimes it is the wind in the trees--sometimes it is the birds, or the squirrels, or the flowers. When it is tired of these there is always the milk in its stomach. Dhropudi's goat is yonder; it lives on your Honour's weeds. You are her father and her mother."

However much I might repudiate the relationship, I soon became quite accustomed to finding Dhropudi in the most unexpected places in my garden. For, soon after my first introduction to her, the claims of an early crop of lettuces to protection from the squirrels led Heera Nund to transfer the hand-light from one of his charges to another. Dhropudi, he said, could grow nicely without it now; the black ants could not carry her off, and the squirrels had quite begun to recognise that she was of the race of Adam. At first, however, he took precautions against mistakes, and many a time I have seen the sleeping child stuck round with pea-sticks, or decorated with fluttering feathers on a string, to scare away the birds. Sometimes she was blanching with the celery, and once I nearly trod on her as she lay among the toppings in a thick plantation of blossoming beans. But she never came to harm; the only misadventure being when her father would lay her to sleep in some dry water channel, and, forgetting which one it was, turn the shallow stream that way. Then there would be a momentary outcry at the cold bath; but the next, she would be pacified with a flower, and sit in the sun to dry, for to say sooth, no more good-tempered child ever existed than Dhropudi. In this, at any rate, she was like her father, though I could trace no resemblance in other ways. "She is like my house," he would say, when I noticed the fact. "She is young, and I am old--quite old."

Indeed, as time passed I saw that Heera Nund was older than I thought at first. Before the barber came in the morning there was quite a silver stubble on his bronze cheek, and his bright, restless eyes were haggard and anxious. Despite his almost comic jauntiness and self-importance, he struck me as having a hunted look at times, especially when he came out from the mud-walled enclosure at the further end of the garden, where his "house" lived. He went there but seldom, spending his days in tending Dhropudi and his plants with an almost extravagant devotion. His state of mind when that young lady used her new accomplishment of crawling, to the detriment of a bed of sootullians (Sweet Williams) in which he took special pride, was quite pathetic. I found him simply howling between regret for the plants and fear lest I should order punishment to the offender. His gratitude when I laughed was unbounded.

After this Dhropudi used to be set in a twelve-inch pot, half sunk in the ground, where she would stay contentedly for hours, drumming the sides with a carrot, while Heera weeded and dibbled.

"She grows," he would say, snatching her up fiercely in his arms; "she grows as all my plants grow. See my sootullians! They will blossom soon, and then all the sahibs will come and say, 'See the sootullians which Heera Nund and Dhropudi have grown for the Huzoor.'"

Yet with all this blazoning of content the man was curiously restless--almost like a child in his desire for action and vivid interest in trivialities. "See the misbegotten creature I have found eating the honourable Huzoor's roots!" he would say, casting a wire-worm on the verandah steps, and dancing on it vindictively. "It was in the Huzoor's carnations, but by the blessing of God and Heera Nund's vigilance it is dead. Nothing escapes me. Have I not fought wire-worms since the beginning of all things, I and my fathers? We kill all creeping, crawling things, except the holy snake that brings fruit and blossom to the garden."

One night I was disturbed by unseemly noises, coming apparently from the servants' quarters; but my remonstrances next morning were met by my bearer, with swift denial. "It is Heera. He, poor man, has to beat his wife almost every night now. I wonder the Presence has not heard her before; she screams very loud."

I stood aghast.

"He should let her go, or kill her," continued the bearer placidly. "She is not worth the trouble of beating; but he is a fool, because she is Dhropudi's mother. Yes, he is a fool; he beats her when he finds her lover there. He should beat her well before the man comes. That is the best way with women."

It was an old story, it seemed, dating before Dhropudi's appearance on the scene. It occurred to me that perhaps a deeper tragedy than I had thought for was ripening in my garden among the ripening plants. I found myself watching Dhropudi and her father with an almost morbid interest, and hoping that, if my idle suspicion was right, kindly fate might hide the truth away forever in the bottom of that well where Heera often held the child to smile at her own reflection, far down where the water showed like a huge round dewdrop.

So time went on, until the sootullians showed blossom buds, and Dhropudi cut her first tooth on one and the same day. Perhaps the excitement of the double event was too much for Heera's nerves; perhaps what happened was due anyhow; but as I strolled through the garden that evening at sundown I saw the most comically pathetic sight my eyes ever beheld. Heera Nund, clothed, but not in his right mind, was dancing a can-can among his sootullians, while Dhropudi shrieked with delight and beat frantically on her flower-pot. Even with the knowledge of all that came after, the remembrance provokes a smile,--the rhythmic bobbing up and down of the uncouth figure, the cowlike kicks of the bandy legs, the preternaturally grave face above, the crushed sootullians below.

I sent him in charge of two sepoys to the Dispensary, and there he remained for two months, more or less. When he came back he was very quiet, very thin, and there were the marks of several blisters on the back of his head. He resumed work cheerfully, with many apologies for having been ill, and once more he and Dhropudi--who had been handed over meantime, under police supervision, to her mother--were to be found spending their days together in amicable companionship; his only regrets being, apparently, that the sootullians had blossomed and Dhropudi learnt to walk in his absence.

But for one or two little eccentricities I might have been tempted to forget that can-can among the flowers; indeed, I always met his inquiries as to the sootullians with the remark that they had done as well as could be expected in the circumstances. The eccentricities, however, if few, were striking. One was his exaggerated gratitude for the blisters on the back of his head; the last thing in the world one would have thought likely to produce an outburst of that Christian virtue. But it did, and an allusion to the all too visible scars invariably crowned the frequent recital of the benefits he had received at my hands. Another was the difficulty he had in distinguishing Dhropudi from the other fruits of his labor. On two separate occasions she formed part of the daily basket of vegetables which he brought in to me, and very quaint the little black morsel looked sitting surrounded by tomatoes and melons. But though he treated the matter as an elaborate joke when I remarked on it, there was a dazed, uncertain look in his eyes as if he were not quite sure as to the right end of the stick.

Nevertheless peace and contentment reigned apparently in his house. When I sat out in the dark, hot evenings, a glow of flickering firelight from within showed the mysterious mud-walled enclosure by the wall, decorous and conventional. The winking stars looking down into it knew more of the life within than I did, but at any rate no unseemly cries disturbed the scented night air and the Huzoor's slumbers. Perhaps the police supervision had impressed the lover with the dangers of lurking house-trespass by night; perhaps the dark-browed, heavy-jowled young woman who had taken my warning so sullenly had learnt more craft; perhaps the languor which creeps over all things in May had sucked the vigour even from passion. Who could say? Those crumbling mud walls hid it all, and Heera seemed to have begun a new life with the hot-weather vegetables.

So matters stood when an old enemy laid hold of me. Ten days after I found myself racing Death with a determination to reach the sea, and feel the salt west wind on my face before he and I closed with each other. The strange hurry and eagerness of it all comes back to some of us like a nightmare, years after the exile is over; the doctor's verdict, the swift packing of a trunk or two, the hope, the fear, the mad longing at least to see the dear faces once more.

They packed me and a half hundred pillows into a palki ghâri one afternoon. The servants stood, white clad, in a row beside the white pillars, dazzling in the slanting sunlight. I drove through the flower garden dusty and scorched. At the gate stood Heera Nund, one arm occupied by Dhropudi, the other supporting a huge basket of vegetables. He looked uncertain which to present; finally, seeing the carriage drive on, he deliberately let the basket fall, and running to my side, thrust the child's chubby hands forward. They held just such ninepin bouquets as he had carried on our first introduction. "Take them, sahib!" he cried. "Take them for luck! and come back soon to the mâdli and the mâlin." As the ghâri turned sharp down the road I saw him standing amidst the ruins of the basket with Dhropudi in his arms.

Six months passed before I set foot on Indian soil again, and then fate and a restless Government sent me to a new station. When my servants arrived with my baggage from the old one, I naturally fell to asking questions. "And how is Heera Nund?" was one. My bearer smiled benignly. "Huzoor, he is well--in the month of July he was hanged."

"Bearer!"

"Without doubt; it was in the month of July. He killed his wife with an axe. Dhropudi was bitten by a snake while she slept one day when Heera had to leave her with her mother; and that night he killed his wife as she slept also. It was a mistake to be so revengeful, for every one knew Dhropudi was not really his daughter."

"Do you think that Heera knew?"

"She told him when the child died, in order to stop his grief; but it did not. She was very kind to him,--after the other one went to prison for lurking about."

"And did no one tell about it all?"

"About what, Huzoor?"

"About the vegetables, and Dhropudi, and the sootullians, and the blisters on the back of his head! Did no one say the man was mad?"

"There was a new assistant at the Dispensary, sahib, and her people were very rich; besides, Heera was not mad at all. He did it on purpose. He was a bad man, and the Sirkâr did right to hang him--in July."

But as I turned away I could think of nothing but that can-can among the sootullians, with little Dhropudi beating time with a carrot.

[FEROZA.]

Two hen sparrows quarrelling over a feather, while a girl watched them listlessly; for the rest, sunshine imprisoned by blank walls, save where at one end a row of scalloped arches gave on two shallow, shadowy verandah-rooms, and at the other a low doorway led to the world beyond. But even this was veiled by a brick screen, forced by the light into unison with the brick building behind. The girl sat with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chin, and her little, bare, brown feet moulding themselves in the warm, sun-steeped dust of the courtyard. In the hands clasped round her green trousers she held an unopened letter from which the London post-mark stared up into the brazen Indian sky. She was waiting to have it read to her--waiting with a dull, almost sullen patience, for the afternoon was still young. It was old enough, however, to make a sheeted figure in the shadow sit up on its string bed and yawn because siesta time was past.

"Still thinking of thy letter, Feroz? Bismillah! I'm glad my man doesn't live in a country where the women go about half naked."

"Who told thee so, Kareem? The Meer sahib said naught."

A light laugh seemed prisoned in the echoing walls. "Wah! How canst tell? 'Tis father-in-law reads thy letters. Inaiyut saith so. He saw them at Delhi dancing like bad ones with--"

"Peace, Kareema! Hast no decency?"

"Enough for my years, whilst thou art more like a grandam than a scarce-wed girl. Why should not Inaiyut be a man? A husband is none the worse for knowing a pretty woman when he sees one."

She settled the veil on her sleek black head and laughed again. Feroza Begum's small brown face hardened into scorn. "Inaiyut hath experience and practice in the art doubtless, as he hath in cockfighting and dicing."

"Now, don't gibe at him for that. Sure 'tis the younger son's portion amongst us Moguls. Do I sneer at thy Meer amusing himself over the black water amongst the mems?"

"The Meer is not amusing himself. He is learning to be a barrister."

Kareema swung her legs to the ground with another giggle. "Wah! Men are men all the world over, and so are women. Yea! 'tis true." She looked like some gay butterfly as she flashed out into the sunlight, and began with outstretched arms and floating veil to imitate the sidelong graces of a dancing girl.

"Hai! Hai! Bad one!" cried a quavering voice behind her, as an old woman clutching for scant covering at a dirty white sheet shambled forward. "Can I not close an eye but thou must bring iniquity to respectable houses? 'Tis all thy scapegrace husband; for when I brought thee hither thou wast meek-spirited and--"

"Deck me not out with lies, nurse," laughed Kareema. "Sure I was ever to behaviour as a babe to walking--unsteady on its legs. So wast thou as a bride; so are all women." She seized the withered old arms as she spoke, and threw them up in an attitude. "Dance, Mytâben! dance! 'Tis the best way."

The forced frown faded hopelessly before the young, dimpling face. "Kareema! Why will'st not be decent like little Feroz yonder?"

"Why? Because my man thinks I'm pretty! Because I've fine clothes! Feroza hath old green trousers and her man is learning to be 'wise,' forsooth! amongst the mems. So she is jealous--"

"I'm not jealous," interrupted the other hotly.

"Peace, peace, little doves!" expostulated the old nurse. "Feroz is no fool to be jealous of a mem. Holy Prophet, Kareem! hadst thou seen them at Delhi as I have--"

"Inaiyut hath seen them too. He saith they are as houris in silk and satins with bare breasts and arms--"

Mytâben's bony fingers crackled in a shake of horrified denial. "Silence! shameless one! I tell thee they have no beauty, no clothes--"

"There! I said they had no clothes," pouted Kareema.

The duenna folded her sheet round her with great dignity. "Thy wit is sharp, Kareema! 'Tis as well; for thou wilt need it to protect thy nose! The mems have many clothes; God knows how many, or how they bear them when even the skin He gives is too hot. They are sad-coloured, these mems, with green spectacles serving as veils. Not that they need them, for they are virtuous and keep their eyes from men truck. Not like bad bold hussies who dance--"

"'Tis not true," cried Kareema shrilly. "Thou sayest it to please Feroza. Inaiyut holds they are houris for beauty, and he knows."

In the wrangle which ensued the London postmark revolved between earth and heaven as the letter turned over and over in Feroza's listless fingers.

"I wish I knew," she muttered with a frown puckering her forehead. "He saith they are so wise, and yet--"

Mytâben paused in the war of words and laid her wrinkled old fingers on the girl's head. "Plague on new-fangled ways!" she grumbled half to herself. "Have no fear, heart's life! they are uncomely. But for all that, 'tis a shame of the Meer to leave thee pining."

A hand was on her mouth. "Hush, Mytâben! 'Tis a wife's duty to wait her lord's pleasure to stay or come."

There is a dignity in submission, but Kareema laughed again, and even old Mytâb looked at the girl compassionately. "For all that, heart's life, 'tis well to be sure. Certainty soothes the liver more than hope. So thou shalt see a mem. For lo! the book-readers have come to this town, and one passeth the door every eve at sundown."

"Oh, Mytâb! why didn't you tell us before?" cried both the girls in a breath.

"Because 'tis enough as it is, to keep two married girls straight, with never a mother-in-law to make them dance to her tune," grumbled the nurse evasively. "Hai, Kareema! I will tell thy father-in-law the Moulvie,[^[18]] and then 'twill be bread and water."

"Bread and water is not good for brides," retorted Kareema with a giggle. "And I will see the mems too, or I will cry, and then--" She nodded her head maliciously.

That evening at sundown the two girls sat huddled up by the latticed window of the outer vestibule, while Mytâb watched at the door of the men's court which, with that of the women's apartments, opened into this shadowy entrance. By putting their eyes close to the fret-work they could see up and down a narrow alley where a central drain, full of black sewage, usurped the larger half of the rough brick pavement.

"Look, Feroza! look!" cried Kareema in a choked voice. A white umbrella lined with green, a huge pith hat tied round with a blue veil, a gingham dress, a bag of books, white stockings, and tan shoes,--that was all. They watched the strange apparition breathlessly till it came abreast of them.

Then Kareema's pent-up mirth burst forth in peals of laughter so distinctly audible through the open lattice that the cause stopped in surprise.

Feroza started to her feet. "For shame, Kareem, for shame! He says they are so good." And before they guessed what she would be at, the wicket-gate was open, and she was on the bare, indecent doorstep.

"Salaam! mem sahib, salaam!" rang her high-pitched, girlish voice. "I, Feroza Begum of the house of Meer Ahmed Ali, barrister-at-law, am glad to see you."

Before Kareema, by hanging on to Mytâb's scanty attire, lent weight enough to drag the offender back to seclusion, the English lady raised her veil, and Feroza Begum, Moguli, caught her first glimpse of a pair of mild blue eyes. She never forgot the introduction to Miss Julia Smith, spinster of Clapham. Perhaps she had reason to remember it.

"I might have believed it of Kareem," whimpered the duenna over a consolatory pipe, "but Feroz! To stand out in the world yelling like a hawker. Ai, Ai! Give me your quiet ones for wickedness. Phut! in a moment, like water from the skin-bag, spoiling everything."

"'Twas Kareem's laugh burst the mashk, nursie," laughed Feroza. She and her sister-in-law seemed to have changed places for the time, and she was flitting about gay as a wren, while the former sulked moodily on her bed.

Yet as the days passed a new jealousy came like seven devils to possess poor Feroza utterly.

What was this wisdom which inspired so many well-turned periods in the Meer's somewhat prosy letters? Beauty was beyond her, but women even of her race had been wise; passionate Nurjehan, and even pious Fâtma--God forgive her for evening her chances with that saintly woman's! The thought led to such earnest study of the Koran that old Mytâb's wrath was mollified into a hope of permanent penitence. And all the time the girl's heart was singing pæans of praise over the ease with which she remembered the long strings of meaningless words. Buoyed up by hope she confided her heart's desire to Kareema.

"Eat more butter and grow fat," replied that little coquette. "Dress in bright colours and redden thy lips. And thou mightest use that powder the mems have to make their skins fair. Inaiyut saith he will buy me some in the bazaar. That is true wisdom; the other is for wrinkles."

Despite this cold water, the very next London post-mark brought matters to a crisis.

"Is that all?" asked Feroza dismally, when her father-in-law, the Moulvie, had duly intoned her husband's letter. "It looks, oh! it looks ever so much more on paper."

The old Mohammedan stared through his big horn-rimmed spectacles at her reluctant finger feeling its way along the crabbed writing.

"Quite enough for a good wife, daughter-in-law," he replied. "Bring my pipe, and thank God he is well."

As she sat fanning the old man duteously, her mind was full of suspicion. Could she have compressed the desire and love of her heart into a few well-turned sentences? Ah! if she could only learn to read for herself. The thought found utterance in a tentative remark that it would save the Moulvie trouble if she were a scholar.

"'Tis not much trouble," said the old man courteously; "the letters are not long."

The effect of these words surprised him into taking off his spectacles, as if this new departure of quiet Feroza's could be better seen by the naked eye.

"So thou thinkest to learn all the Meer has learnt?" he asked scornfully, when her eloquence abated. "Wah illah! What? Euclidus and Algebra, Political Economy and Justinian?"

The desire of the girl's heart was not this, but jealousy and shame combined prevented her declaring the real standard of her aims, so she replied defiantly, "Why not? I can learn the Koran fast--oh, ever so fast."

It was an unfortunate speech, since it brought down on her the inevitable reply that such knowledge was enough for those who, at best, must enter Paradise at a man's coat-tails. Driven into a corner, she felt the hopelessness of the struggle, until, flushed by success, the Moulvie forgot caution, and declaimed against his son's stupidity in desiring more.

Feroza seized on this slip swiftly. If it was as she feared, if her husband's wishes were kept from her ignorance, she must, she would learn. If she could not go to school, the mems would come and teach her at home. They did such work at Delhi; why not here? As for the Moulvie's determination that no singing should be heard in his house, that was a righteous wish, and she would tell the mems not to sing their hymns. Indeed, such a question seemed all too trivial for comparison with her future happiness. Therefore her disappointment when Mytâben brought back a peremptory refusal from the mission-ladies to teach on such condition was very keen. Her piteous, surprised tears roused Kareema's scornful wonder.

"I can't think why thou shouldst weep; it thickens the nose, and thine is over-broad as it is. Inaiyut offered once to teach me, but when I asked him if learning would make him love me better, he kissed me with a laugh. So I let it alone."

"Thou dost not understand," sobbed Feroza; "no one does. The Meer is wise, and I am different."

"Wah! Thou art but a woman at best, and life is over for us with the first wrinkle, no matter what we learn. Ah, Feroz! let's enjoy youth whilst we have it. See! I have a rare bit of fun for thee if thou wilt not blab to Mytâben. Promise!"

Three days afterwards Feroza, escaping from the turmoil of a great marriage in a relative's house, found herself, much to her own surprise and bewilderment, forming one of a merry party of young women disguised in boy's clothes, and bound for an hour or so of high jinks in one of the walled orange gardens which lay on the outskirts of the quarter. The idea, which had at first filled her with dismay, had next grown tempting, and then become irresistible with Kareema's artful suggestion that it would give occasion for a personal interview with the mission-ladies who had taken up their abode close by. So she had allowed her doubts and fears to be allayed; though inwardly she failed to see the vast difference on which her sister-in-law insisted, between the iniquity of standing on doorsteps in the full light of day, and sneaking out at night on the quiet.

"Verily," said Kareema in a pet, "thou art a real noodle, Feroz! I tell thee all the good-style women do thus, and my sister will be there with her boys. Wah! were it not for my handsome Inaiyut, I should die in this dull old house where folk wish to be better than God made them."

So it came to pass that while Miss Julia Smith, spinster of Clapham, sat with her fellow-workers in the verandah resting after their labours, a boyish figure with a beating heart was creeping towards her as the goal of every hope.

The English mail was in; an event which by accentuating the severance from home ties is apt to raise the enthusiasm of the mission-house beyond normal.

"How very, very interesting it is about the young man Ahmed Ali," remarked Julia, in a voice tuned to superlatives. "Dearest Mrs. Cranston writes that he spoke so sweetly about his ignorant child-wife. As she says, there is something so--so--so comforting, you know, in the thought of work coming to us, as if--well, I can't quite express it, you know,--but from our own homes,--from dear, dear, old England!"

There was a large amount of confused good feeling in Julia Smith. A kindly soul she was, if a little over-sentimental. Perhaps a broken sixpence, stored side by side with a decayed vegetable in her desk, formed a creditable explanation of the latter weakness. Such things account for much in the lives of most women.

"I suppose," she continued, "we were right to refuse without hymns; but I shall never forget the sweet child's face as she popped from her prison. I am making up the incident for our magazine; it will be most touching. But now that dearest Mrs. Cranston has written, it seems like the finger of Providence--"

"A boy wanting a Miss," interrupted the nondescript familiar, inseparable from philanthropy in India. "The one with an umbrella, a big hat, and a bag of books."

A very womanly laugh with an undercurrent of militant pleasure, ran round the company. The description fitted one and all, and they were proud of the fact.

The moon shone bright behind the arches, the scent of orange blossoms drifted over the high garden wall, and every now and again a burst of laughter close at hand overbore the more distant noise of wedding drums and pipes.

"What do you want, my son?"

The soft voice with its strange inflections took away the last vestige of Feroza's courage. She stood dizzy with absolute fear, her tongue cleaving to her mouth. A repetition of the question roused her to the memory that here lay her one chance. She gave a despairing glance into the gloom in search of those pale blue eyes; then, suddenly, inheritance broke through her terror. She flung her hands up to heaven, and her young voice rose in the traditional cry for justice. "Dohai! Dohai!"

"We do not keep justice here," was the soft answer. "You must go to the Courts for that. We are but women--"

"And I too am a woman! Listen!" The words which had lagged a moment before now crowded to her lips, and as she stepped closer her raised arm commanded attention. "You have taken my husband and left me; and I will not be left! You gave him scholarships and prizes, tempting him away; and when I also ask for learning, you say, 'You must sing.' What is singing when I am sad? Surely God will hear my tears and not your songs!"

Her passion swayed her so that but for Julia Smith's supporting arm she would have fallen. "I don't understand," said the Englishwoman kindly. "What have we done? Who are you?"

"I am the wife of Meer Ahmed Ali, barrister-at-law, and I want to be taught Euclidus, and Justinian, and the--the other things. You shall not take him away for always. Justice! I say, justice!"

"My dears! My dears!" cried Julia Smith, "didn't I tell you it was the finger of Providence--"

Half-an-hour afterwards little Feroza, flying back to rejoin her companions, felt as if Paradise had been opened to her by a promise. But if Paradise was ajar, the orange garden was closed, the gate locked, the key gone. She peered through the bars, hoping it was a practical joke to alarm her. All was still and silent save for the creak of the well-wheel and a soft rustle from the burnished leaves where the moonlight glistened white.

"Kareem! let me in! for pity sake let me in!"

Then a wild, uncontrollable fear at finding herself alone in an unknown world claimed her body and soul, and she fled like a hare to the only refuge she knew. The mems must protect her; for were they not the cause of her venturing forth at all? But for them, or their like, would she not have been well content at home? Yea! well content.

The verandah was empty, and from within came a monotonous voice. She peered into the dimly lit room to see a circle of kneeling figures, and hear her own name welded into the even flow of prayer. God and his Holy Prophet! They were praying that she might become apostate from the faith of her fathers! Tales of girls seized and baptised against their will leapt to her memory. She covered her eyes as if to shut out the horrid sight and fled; whither she neither knew nor cared.

"Hai! have I found thee at last, graceless! scandalous!" scolded some one into whose arms she ran at full tilt.

"Mytâb! oh, dear Mytâb!" she cried, clinging frantically to the familiar figure. "Take me home, oh, please take me home! I will never go out again, no, never!"

That was the determination of ignorance. Eighteen months after wisdom had altered it and many other things, for during that time Julia Smith had sung hymns on the doorstep three days a week. Sometimes she had quite a large audience, and sometimes Feroza herself would listen at the lattice. On these occasions the thin voice had a ring in it; for, despite the fact that her pupil was taught all the truths of religion in prose and monotone, poor Julia used to wonder if this relegating of hymns to the doorstep was not a bowing in the house of Rimmon; nay, worse, a neglect of grace, for she loved her pupil dearly. Not one, but two pair of eyes glistened over the surprise in preparation for the absent husband. Wherefore a surprise no one knew, but surprise it was to be. Feroza said the idea originated in her teacher's sentimental brain; if so, it took root quickly in the girl's passionate heart. Thus, beyond the fact of her learning to read and write, the Meer knew nothing of the change wisdom was working in his wife. And meanwhile time brought other changes to the quiet courtyard. Handsome, dissipated Inaiyut died of cholera, and over him, and the boy-baby she lost, Kareema shed tears which did not dim her beauty. Three months after she was once more making the bare walls ring with her inconsequent laughter. She jeered at Feroza's diligence with increased scorn. No man, she said, was worth the losing of looks in books, and if the Meer really spoke of return, a course of cosmetics would be more advisable.

Even Julia shook her head over Feroza's thin face. "You work too hard, dear," she sighed. "Ah! if it were the one thing needful; but I have failed to teach you that."

"Dear Miss! don't look sad; think of the difference you have wrought. Oh, do not cry," she went on passionately, for the mild blue eyes were filling with tears. "Come, we will talk of his return, full of noble resolutions of self-sacrifice to find--oh dear, dear, Miss! I am so happy, so dreadfully happy!" As she buried her face in the gingham dress her voice sank to a murmur of pure content. But some unkind person had poisoned Julia's peace with remarks of the mixing of unknown chemicals. After all, what did she know of this absent husband, save that dear Mrs. Cranston had met him at a conversazione?

"I suppose the Meer is really an enlightened man?" she asked dubiously.

The gingham dress gave up a scared face. "Dear Miss! why, he is a barrister-at-law!"

Her teacher coughed. "But are you sure, dear, that he wanted you to learn?"

"Not everything; because he did not think I could; but he spoke of many things. I have learnt all,--except--"

"Except what?"

Feroza hesitated. "I was not sure,--Inaiyut said he would teach it, but he died-- 'Tis only a game called whist."

"Whist!"

"Do I not say it right? W-h-i-s-t--wist. Oh, Miss! is it a wicked game? Is it not fit? Ought I not to learn it?"

The fire of questions reduced Julia Smith's confusion to simple tears. "I don't know," she moaned, "that is the worst! I thought it was the finger of Providence, and--ah, Feroza! If I have done you harm!"

"You have done me no harm," said Feroza, with a kind smile. "You have harmed yourself with cinnamon tea and greasy fritters in the other zenanas, and you shall have some, English fashion, to take away your headache."

So grumbling Mytâb brought an afternoon tea-tray duly supplied with a plate of thin bread-and-butter from within, and Feroza's small brown face beamed over Julia Smith's surprise. "He will think himself back amongst the mems! won't he?" she asked with a happy laugh.

Would he? As she jolted home in her palanquin Julia's head whirled. Old and new, ignorance and wisdom!--here was a jumble. A stronger brain than hers might well have felt confusion. For it was sunset in that heathen town, and from the housetops, in the courtyards, in the very streets, men paused to lay aside their trivial selves and worship an ideal. Not one of the crowd giving place to the mission-lady but had in some way or another, if only by a perfunctory performance of some rite, testified that day to the fact that religion formed a part of his daily round, his common task. And on the other side of the world, whence the missions come?--

Meanwhile Kareema, bewailing the useless cards, found herself backed up by old Mytâben. Such knowledge, the old woman said, would have been more useful than learning to be cleaner than God made you. 'Twas easy to sneer at henna-dyed hands; but was that worse than using scented soaps like a bad one, and living luxurious? Sheets and towels, forsooth! Why, Shah-jehan himself never dreamed of such expenses.

"I like them, for all that," cried Kareema gaily; "and I think the mems are wise to have big looking-glasses. It is hateful only seeing a little bit of one's self at a time. And Feroza and I are going out to be admired like the mems, aren't we, Feroza?"

"If the Meer wishes it," replied her sister-in-law gravely.

Mytâb looked from one to the other. "Have a care, players with fire!" she said shrilly. "Have a care! Is the world changed because it reads books and washes? Lo! the customs of the fathers bind the children."

"Mytâb hath been mysterious of late," remarked Kareema, giving a queer look, as the old lady moved away in wrath. "Ah me! if I had but my handsome Inaiyut dicing in the vestibule 'twould be better for all of us, maybe."

Feroza laid her soft hand gently on the other's shoulder. "I am so sorry for thee, dear! but we will love thee always and be a sister and brother--"

Kareema's look was queerer than ever, and she laughed hysterically.

The day came at last when Feroza sat in the sunlit courtyard holding another unopened letter in her hand, knowing that ere a week was over the writer would be prisoned in her kind arms, surrounded by friendly faces, caught in the meshes of familiar custom. She was not afraid, even though his letters gave her small clue to the man himself. Her own convictions were strong enough to supply him with opinions also, and even if she did not come up to his ideal at first, she felt that the sweet satisfaction of a return to home and kindred would count for, and not against her. So she sat idly, delaying to read, and dreaming over the past, much as she had dreamt over the future nearly two years before. Only she sat on a chair now, and her white stockings and patent-leather shoes twisted themselves tortuously about its legs. She thought mostly of the childish time when she, their cousin, had played with Ahmed Ali and Inaiyut; it seemed somehow nearer than those other days, when the studious lad's departure for college had been prefaced by that strange, unreal marriage.

And Kareema watched her furtively from the far corner where she and Mytâb were making preserves.

Suddenly a loud call, fiercely imperative, made them come sheepishly forward to where Feroza stood at bay, one hand at her throat, the other crushing her husband's letter. "What is this? What have you all been keeping from me? What does he mean?--this talk of duty and custom. Ah-h-h--!"

Her voice, steady till then, broke into a ringing cry as a trivial detail in Kareema's reluctant figure caught her eye. The palms and nails of those delicate hands were no longer stained with henna. They were as her own, as nature made them, as the Meer sahib said he liked them! She seized both wrists fiercely, turning the accusing palms to heaven, while a tempest of sheer animal jealousy beat the wretched girl down from each new-won foothold, down, down, to the inherited nature underneath.

"Then it is true," she gasped. "I see! I know! Holy Prophet! what infamy to talk of duty. He is to marry,--and I who have slaved--He is mine, mine, I say! Thou shalt not have him!"

Mytâb's chill old hand fell on the girl's straining arm like the touch of Death. "Allah akhbâr wa Mohammed rasul![^[19]] Hast forgotten the faith, Feroza Begum, Moguli? Thine? Since when has the wife a right to claim all? Since when hast thou become a mem?"

The girl glared at her with wild passion, and Kareema gave a whimper as the grip bit into her tender wrists. "Don't; you hurt me!"

Feroza flung them from her in contemptuous loathing. "Fool! coward! as if he would touch you. I will tell him all. He will know--Ah God! my head! my head!--" She was in the dust at their feet stunned by her own passion.

"I warned the Moulvie to break it by degrees," grumbled Mytâb, dragging the girl to some matting; "but he said 'twould make no more to her than to the Meer. Books don't seem to change a man, but women are different."

"It's not my fault," whimpered Kareema. "I don't want to marry the Meer; he was ever a noodle. Prating of its being a duty, forsooth!"

"So it is! a bounden duty. Never hath childless widow had to leave this house, and never shall, till God makes us pigs of unbelievers."

"I wish my handsome Inaiyut had lived for all that," muttered the girl, as Feroza showed signs of recovery. She resisted all attempts at explanation or comfort, however, and made her way alone, a solitary resolute figure, to her windowless room, where, when she shut the door, all was dark. There she lay tearless while the others, sitting in the sunlight, talked in whispers as if the dead were within.

"The Moulvie must bid her repeat the creed," was old Mytâb's ultimatum. "God send the Miss has not made a Christian of her, with all those soapings and washings!" She had no spark of pity. Such was woman's lot, and to rebel was sacrilege.

"Don't make sure of my consent," pouted Kareema, her pretty face swollen with easy tears. "If he is really the noodle Feroza deems, I'd rather be a religious. 'Twould be just as amusing."

Mytâb laughed derisively. "Thou a religious! The gossips would have tired tongues. Besides, choice is over. Had the child lived, perhaps; but now the Moulvie hath a right to see Inaiyut's children on his knee."

The sunshine had given place to shadow before Feroza appeared.

"Bring me a burka;[^[20]] I am going to see the Miss. Follow if thou wilt," she said; and though her voice had lost its ring, the tone warned Mytâb to raise no objection. Ere she left the sheltering walls she stood a moment before her sister-in-law, all the character, and grief, and passion blotted out by the formless white domino she wore. "I could kill you for being pretty," she said in a hard whisper, as she turned away.

She had never been to the mission-house since that eventful night, and the sight of its familiar unfamiliarity renewed the sense of injury with which she had last seen it. "Miss Eshsmitt sahib," they told her, was ill; but she would take no denial, and so, for the first time in her life, Feroza entered an English lady's bedroom. Simple, almost poor as this one was in its appointments, the sight sent a throb of fear to the girl's heart. What! Was not Kareema's beauty odds enough, that she must fight also against this undreamed-of comfort? She flung up her arms with the old cry, "Dohai! Dohai!" The fever-flushed face on the frilled pillows turned fearfully. "What is it, Feroza? Oh! what is it?"

The question was hard to solve even in the calm sessions of thought, well-nigh impossible here. Why had she been lured from the old life in some ways and not in all? Was their boasted influence all words? Then why had they prated of higher things? Why had they lied to her?

Poor Julia buried her face in a pocket-handkerchief drenched in eau-de-Cologne, and sobbed, "Ah, take her away! Please take her away!"

So they led her gently to the text-hung drawing-room with a cottage piano in one corner, and shook their heads over her passionate appeals. They could do nothing, they said,--nothing at all,--unless she cast in her lot with them absolutely; so she turned and left them with a sombre fire in her eyes.

She never knew how the days passed until, as she watched the sunlight creep up the eastern wall of the court, it came home to her that on the next evening Meer Ahmed Ali would watch it also. She seemed not to have thought, and it was Kareema, and not she, who had shed tears. On that last night the latter came to where her cousin lay still, but sleepless. "Why wilt be so foolish, Feroza?" she said petulantly. "Nothing is settled. If he is a noodle, I will none of him, I tell thee. If not, thou art too much of one thyself to care. God knows he may not look at either, through being enamoured of the mems. And oh, Feroza," she added, her sympathy overborne by curiosity, "think you he will wear the strange dress of the Miss sahib's sun-pictures? If so I shall laugh of a surety."

A gleam of consolation shot through poor Feroza's brain. Men disliked ridicule. "Of course the Meer dresses Europe-fashion," she replied stiffly. "Thou seemest to forget that my husband is a man of culture."

A man of culture! undoubtedly, if by culture we mean dutiful self-improvement. That had been Meer Ahmed Ali's occupation for years, and his gentle, high-bred face bore unmistakably the look of one stowing away knowledge for future use. He was really an excellent young man; and, during his three years at a boarding-house in Notting Hill, had behaved himself as few young men do when first turned loose in London. He spoke English perfectly, and it would be difficult to say what he had not learnt that could be learnt by an adaptive nature in the space of thirty-six calendar months spent in diligent polishing of the surface of things. He learnt, for instance, that people looking at his handsome, intelligent face, said it made them sad to think of his being married as a boy to a girl he did not love. Thence the idea that he was a martyr took root and flourished, and he acquiesced proudly in his own sacrifice on the altar of progress. For him the love of the poets was not, and even in his desire for Feroza's education he told himself that he was more actuated by a sense of duty than by any hope of greater happiness for himself. The natural suggestion that he should marry his brother's widow he looked on merely as a further development of previous bondage; and he told himself again that, not having swerved a hair's breadth from his faith, he was bound to set his own views aside in favour of a custom desired by those chiefly concerned. Besides, in the atmosphere of surprised sympathy in which he lived it was hard, indeed, not to pose as a victim.

And so, just as poor Feroza was confidently asserting his culture, he, having given his English fellow-passengers the slip, was once more putting on the clothes of an orthodox Mohammedan. Feroza, on the other hand, had adopted the dress of the advanced Indian lady, which, with surprisingly little change, manages to destroy all the grace of the original costume. The lack of braided hair and clustering jewels degrades the veil to an unnecessary wrap; the propriety of the bodice intensifies its shapelessness; the very face suffers by the unconcealed holes in ears and nose.

Kareema stared with a smile akin to tears. "There is time," she pleaded. "Come! I can make you look twice as well."

Their eyes met with something of the old affection, but Feroza shook her head. "I must find out--"

"If he is a noodle?" The interrupting giggle was almost a whimper. "You mean if he is blind! Ah, Feroza! look at me."

No need to say that; the puzzled eyes had taken in the sight already. Gleams of jewelled hair under the gold threaded veil; a figure revealed by the net bodice worn over a scantier one of flowered muslin; bare feet tucked away in shells of shoes; long gauze draperies showing a shadow of silk-clad limbs; above it all that dimpling, smiling face. She shook her head again.

In the long minutes of waiting she lost herself in counting the bricks on the familiar wall until the sight of a tall man at the door dressed as a Mohammedan startled her into drawing the veil to her face in fear of intrusion.

As the man withdrew quickly Kareema's laugh rang out. "To think, Feroza! thou shouldest be purdah to him after all thy big talk."

"The Meer! Was that the Meer?" faltered Feroza. "I did not--the dress--"

"Bah! I knew the likeness to my poor Inaiyut. See! yonder he comes again ushered by father-in-law. Now, quick, Feroza!"

The voice quavering over the prepared phrases of thanks to the Great Giver of home-coming was infinitely pathetic; and yet, as Ahmed Ali took the outstretched hand, he was conscious above all things of a regret, almost a sense of outrage; for the bondage of custom was upon him already. Kareema, catching his look, came forward with ready tact. "We welcome my lord," she said in the rounded tone of ceremony, "as one who, having travelled far, returns to those who have naught worthy his acceptance save the memory of kinship. My sister and I greet you, as sisters. Nay, more," she added lightly; "I too shake hands English-fashion, and if I do it wrong forgive us both, since learned Feroza is teacher."

"You make me very happy," answered the Meer heartily. "How well you are all looking!"

No need to say where his eyes were.

"You mistake, Meer sahib," cried Kareema swiftly, "Feroza looks ill. 'Tis your blame, since she worked over-hard to please you."

The forbidden frown came too late to prevent Ahmed Ali's glance finding it on his wife's face. It was not becoming. "Was it so hard to learn?" he asked with a patronising smile. "But your handwriting improved immensely of late."

The tips of Feroza's fingers showed bloodless under their nervous clasp, but she said nothing. Indeed, she scarcely opened her lips as they sat talking over the morning meal. Even when the Meer refused tea and toast in favour of chupatties and koftas[^[21]] it was Kareema who supplied surprise. Feroza was all eyes and ears, and not till the sun tipping over the high walls glared down on them did she lose patience enough to ask, vaguely, what he thought about it all.

"Wah illah," cried the Moulvie, "Feroza hits the mark! What thinkest thou, my son? But I fear not, for thou hast the faithful air, and canst doubtless repeat thy creed purely."

The young man looked round the familiar scene, every detail of which fitted so closely to memory that no room remained for the seven years' absence. A rush of glad recognition surged to heart and brain, making him stand up and give the Kalma.[^[22]]

"I am content, oh, my father!" he cried in ringing tones, as the sonorous echoes died away to silence. "I am content to come back to the old life, to the old duties."

"The sun makes my head ache," said Feroza, rising abruptly, "I will go into the dark and rest."

"Don't go, Feroza! Thou hast not told the Meer about thyself," pleaded Kareema, rising in her turn. "She hath worked so hard," she added petulantly to the young man. "No one is worth it, no one."

The Meer looked from one to the other. "Learning is hard for women," he began. Then something in his wife's face roused the new man in him, making him say in a totally different tone and manner, "I am afraid I hardly understand."

"That is what Kareema says of me," replied Feroza icily.

Her cousin, as she sat down once more to listen, shrugged her shoulders. "And she counted herself as something better than a woman," was her inward comment amid her smiles.

Feroza saw nothing of her husband for the rest of the day. The men's court was crowded with visitors, and she herself had to bear the brunt of many feminine congratulations. Only at sunset, before starting to attend a feast given in his honour, he found time for five minutes' speech with her; but, almost to her relief, he was far too content, far too excited by his own pleasure to be able to distinguish any other feeling in her mind. Yet a momentary hesitation on his part as he was leaving made her heart bound, and a distinct pause brought her to his side with wistful eyes, only to see Kareema nodding and smiling to him from the roof, whither she had gone for fresher air. "What is it?" he asked kindly, though his looks were elsewhere.

"Nothing," she answered, "nothing at all. Go in peace!"

The moon, rising ere the sun set, stole the twilight. So she sat gazing at the hard square outlines of the walls till far on into the night, her mind filled with but one thought. The thought that by and by Ahmed Ali, flushed with content at things which she had taught herself for his sake to despise, would come home to her--to his wife. The little room she had travestied into a pitiful caricature of foreign fashions seemed to mock her foolish hopes, so she crept away to the lattice whence she had had her first glimpse of wisdom. Even on that brilliant night the vestibule itself was dark; but through the door she could see the empty arcades of the men's court surrounding the well where she and her cousins used to play.

A rustle in the alley made her peer through the fret-work, for the veriest trifle swayed her; but it was only a dog seeking garbage in the gutter. Then a door creaked and she started, wondering if Ahmed Ali could be home already. Silence brought her a dim suspicion that, but for this wisdom of hers, she might have waited his return calmly enough. Footsteps now! She cowered to the shadow at the sight of Kareema followed by Mytâb bearing something.

"He mayn't be back till late," came the familiar giggle; "and a soft pillow will please him."

The pair were back again before she recovered her surprise, and Kareema paused ere re-entering the women's door. "Poor Feroza! She will get accustomed to it, I suppose."

"Of what hath she to complain?" retorted the old voice; "he is a properer man than I deemed. Say, heart's desire, what said he when I saw thee--?"

"Mytâb! thou mean spy! Bah! he told me he would change a letter and call me Carina, since it meant dearest in some heathen tongue. They begin thus over the black water likely; 'tis not bad, and new at any rate."

Feroza scarcely waited for distance to deaden the answering giggle. She was on her feet, pacing to and fro like a mad creature. Ah! to get away from it all--from that name, from the look he must have given--to get something cold and still to quench the raging fire in her veins! Suddenly, without a waver, she walked to the well and leant over its low parapet. Her hands sought the cool damp stones, her eyes rested themselves on the faint glimmer far down--ever, oh, ever so far away! Hark! some one in the alley. If it were he? Ah! then she must go away, ever so far away--

Meer Ahmed Ali found his pillow comfortable, and only woke in the dawn to see Mytâb standing beside him.

"Feroza!" she cried. "Where is Feroza?"

A dull remorse came to his drowsy brain. "It was so late--I--"

"Holy Prophet, she is not here! Thou hast not seen her! Then she hath gone to the Missen to be baptised. Why didst turn her brain with books? Fool! Idiot!"

"The Mission!" Meer Ahmed Ali was awake now, and the peaceful party, gathered in the verandah for early tea, stared as the young man burst in on it with imperious demands for his wife. Then his surroundings recalled his acquired courtesy, and he stammered an apologetic explanation.

"She has gone away?" cried Julia, with a queer catch in her breath. "Oh, Meer sahib! what a mistake we have all made. It was too late to write, and then I got ill; but, indeed! I was going down this very morning to try and make you understand."

"Understand what?" asked the Meer, helplessly confused, adding hurriedly, "but I can't stay now. She must be found. I will not have her run away. I will have her back--yes! I will have her back."

Half-an-hour later Julia Smith, driven to the Moulvie's house by remorseful anxiety, found the wicket-gate ajar. She entered silently upon a scene framed like a picture by the dark doorway of the men's court.

Feroza had come back to those familiar walls. She lay beside the well, and the water from her clinging garments crept in dark stains through the dust. She had wrapped her veil round her to stifle useless cries, and so the dead face, as in life, was decently hidden from the eyes of men. She lay alone under the cloudless sky, for her friends, shrinking from the defilement of death, stood apart: Kareema sobbing on Mytâb's breast, with Ahmed Ali, dazed yet indignant, holding her hand; the Moulvie, repeating a prayer; the servants still breathless from their ghastly toil. Julia Smith saw it all with her bodily eyes; yet nothing seemed worth seeing save that veiled figure in the dust. She knelt beside it and took the slender cold hand in hers. "My dear, my dear!" she whispered through her sobs. "Surely you need not have gone so far, so very far--for help."

But the dead face was hidden even from her tears.

[IN THE HOUSE OF A COPPERSMITH.]