Caste

by William Alexander Fraser

CHAPTER XVI

Captain Barlow had been through a busy day. The very fact that all he did in preparation for his journey to the Pindari camp had been done with his own hands, held under water, out of sight, had increased the strain upon him.

In India in the usual routine of matters, a staff of ten servants form a composite second self to a Sahib: to hand him his boots, and lace them; to lay out his clothes, and hold them while slipped into; to bring a cheroot or a peg of whiskey; a syce to bring the horse and rub a towel over the saddle—to hold the stirrup, even, for the lifted foot, and trotting behind, guard the horse when the Sahib makes a call; a man to go here and there with a note or to post a letter; a servant to whisk away a plate and replenish the crystal glass with pearl-beaded wine without sign from the drinker, and appear like a bidden ghost, clad in speckless white, silent and impassive of face, behind his master's chair at the table when he dines out; everything in fact beyond the mental whirl of the brain to be arranged by one or other of the ten.

But this day Barlow had been like a man throwing detectives off his trail. Not one of his servants must suspect that he contemplated a trip—no, not just that, for the Captain had intimated casually to the butler that he would go soon to Satara.

Thus it had to be arranged secretly that he would ride from his bungalow as Captain Barlow and leave the city as Ayub Alli, an Afghan.

Perhaps Barlow was over tired, that curious knotted condition of the nerves through overstrain that rasps a man's mental fibre beyond the narcotic of sleep, and yet holds him in a hectic state of half unconsciousness. He counted camels—long strings of soured, complaining beasts, short-legged, stout, shaggy desert-ships, such as merchants of Kabul used to carry their dried fruits,—figs and dates and pomegranates, and the wondrous flavoured Sirdar melon,—wending across the Sind Desert of floating white sand to Rajasthan.

Once a male, tickled to frenzy by the caress of a female's velvet lips upon his rump, with a hoarse bubbling scream, wheeled suddenly, snapping the thin lead-cord that reached from the tail of the camel in front to the button in his nostril, and charged the lady in an exuberance of affection with a full broadside—thrust from his chest that bowled her over, where she lay among the fragments of two huge broken burnt-clay gumlas, that, filled with water, had been lashed to her sides.

Barlow sat up at this startling tumult that was the outcome of his slipping a little into slumber. He threw his head back on the pillow with a smothered, "Damn!"

His bed had creaked, and an answering echo as if something had slipped or slid, perhaps the sole of a bare foot on the fibrous floor matting, at the window, fell upon his senses. Turning his face toward the sound he waited, eyes trying to pierce the gloom, and ear attuned. He almost cried out in alarm as something floated through the dark from the window and fell with a soft thud upon his face. He brushed at the something—perhaps a bat, or a lizard, or a snake—with his hand and received a sharp prick, a little dart of pain in a thumb. He sprang from the bed, lighted the wick that floated in the iron lamp, and discovered that the thing of dread was a rose, its petals red against the white sheet.

He knew who must have thrown the rose, and almost wished that it had been a chance missil, even a snake, but he put the lamp down, passed into the bathroom, and unbarring the wooden door, called softly, "Who is there?"

From the cover of an oleander a slight girlish form rose up and came to the door saying, "It is Bootea, Sahib; do not be angry,—there is something to be said."

By the arm he led her within and bidding her wait, passed to the bedroom and drew the heavy curtains of the windows. Then he went through the drawing-room and out to the verandah, where the watchman lay asleep on his roped charpoy. Barlow woke him: "There's a thief prowling about the bungalow. Do not sleep till I give you permission. See that no one enters," he commanded.

He went back to his room, closed and barred the door, and told Bootea to come.

When the girl entered he said: "You should not have come here; there are eyes, and ears, and evil tongues."

"That is true, Sahib, but also death is evil—sometimes."

"I have brought this to the Sahib," Bootea said as she drew a paper from her breast and passed it to the Captain. It was the pardon the Resident had given that morning to Ajeet Singh.

Barlow, though startled, schooled his voice to an even tone as he asked: "Where did you get this—where is Ajeet?"

"As to the paper, Sahib, what matters how Bootea came by it; as to Ajeet, he is in the grasp of the Dewan who learned that he had been to the Resident in the way of treachery."

"Ajeet thought Nana Sahib had stolen you, Bootea."

"Yes, Sahib, for he did not find me when he went to the camp, and I did not go there. But now he would betray the Sahibs, that is why I have brought back the paper of protection."

"Will they kill Ajeet?" Barlow asked.

"I will tell the Sahib what is," the girl answered, drawing her sari over her curled-in feet, and leaning one arm on Barlow's chair. "The decoity that was committed last night was, as Ajeet feared, because of treachery on the part of the Dewan. I will tell it all, though it might be thought a treachery to the decoits. As to being false to one's own clan Ajeet is, because he is a Bagree—but I am not."

Barlow pondered over this statement. The girl had mystified him—that is as to her breeding. Sometimes she spoke in the first person and again in the third person, like so many natives, as if her language had been picked up colloquially. But then the use of the third person when she used Bootea instead of a nominative pronoun might be due to a cultured deference toward a Sahib.

"I thought you were not of these people—you are of high caste,
Bootea," he said presently.

He heard the girl gasp, and looking quickly into her eyes saw that they were staring as if in fright.

For a space of a few seconds she did not answer; then she said, and Barlow felt her voice was being held under control by force of will: "I am Bootea, one in the care of Ajeet Singh. That is the present, Sahib, and the past—" She touched the iron bracelet on her arm, and looked into Barlow's eyes as if she asked him to bury the past.

"Sorry, girl—forgive me," he said.

"Ajeet has told why the men were brought—for what purpose?"

"Yes, Gulab; to kill Amir Khan."

"And when they refused to go on this mission, the Dewan, to get them in his power, connived with Hunsa to make the decoity so that their lives would be forfeit, then if the Dewan punished them for not going the Raja of Karowlee could not make trouble. Hunsa told the Dewan that if I were sent to dance before Amir Khan, some of the men going as musicians and actors, the Chief would fall in love with me, and that I could betray him to those who would kill him; that he would come to my tent at night unobserved—because he has a wife with him—and that Hunsa would creep into the tent and kill him as he slept; then we would escape."

Barlow sprang to his feet and paced the floor; then he plumped into the chair again, saying: "What an unholy scheme, even for India. Gad! how I wish I'd killed the brute when I had the chance."

"I did not know that Hunsa had proposed this—neither did Ajeet; for they wanted to get him in their power through the decoity so that if he refused permission he might be killed. And now Ajeet is trapped through the decoity and Bootea is going to the Pindari camp."

"You're not going to betray Amir Khan, have him murdered!" Barlow cried, aghast at the villainy, at the thought that one so sweet could be forced to complicity in such a ghastly crime.

"No, Sahib, to save his life, for if I do not go now Ajeet will be killed, and all the others put in prison because of the decoity. Worse will happen Bootea,—she will be placed in the seraglio of Nana Sahib."

"Damn it! they can't do that!" Barlow exclaimed angrily. "I'll stop that."

"No, the Sahib can't; and he has a mission, he is not of the service of protecting Bootea."

"You can't save Amir Khan's life unless you betray the Bagrees to him?"

"Yes, Sahib, I can. Perhaps the Chief will like Bootea, and will listen to what she says. Men such as brave warriors always treat Bootea not as a nautchni so I will ask him not to come to the tent at night because of ill repute. Hunsa will not be able to slay him unless it is a trap on my part to get him from the watching eyes of his men. If Hunsa becomes suspicious, and there is real danger, I will threaten that I will expose him to the Chief. If we come back because we have failed in our mission, having tried to succeed, it will not be like refusing to go; and perhaps there will be mercy shown."

"Mercy!" Barlow sneered; "Nana Sahib knows nothing of mercy, he's a tiger."

"But if I refuse to go another nautchni will be sent, perhaps more beautiful than I am, and she would betray the Chief, and perhaps all would be killed."

"By Jove! you're some woman, you're magnificent—you're like a Rajputni princess."

A slim hand was placed on Barlow's wrist and the girl said, "Sahib, I am just Bootea,—please, please!"

"And that's your reason for taking this awful chance, to save Ajeet and the others—is it?"

"There is another reason, Sahib." The girl dropped her eyes and turning a gold bangle on her wrist gazed upon a ruby that had the contour of a serpent's head. Presently she asked, "Will the Sahib go to Khureyra and have a knife thrust between his ribs?"

Barlow was startled by this query. "Why should I go to Khureyra,
Gulab?"

"To see Amir Khan."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because it is known. But the Chief is not now there—he has taken his horsemen to Saugor."

Again this was startling. Also the information was of great value. If the Pindari horde had left the territory of Sindhia and crossed the border into Saugor they were closer to the British.

Barlow patted the girl's hand, saying, "My salaams to you, little girl."

He felt her slim cool fingers press his hand, but he shrank from the claiming touch, muttering, "The damned barrier!"

Suddenly Barlow remembered Bootea had spoken of another reason for going to the Pindari camp. He puzzled over this a little, hesitating to question her; she had not told him what it was, but had asked if he were going there; the reason evidently had something to do with him. It couldn't be treachery—she had done so much for him; it must be the something that looked out of her eyes when they rested on his face, the unworded greatest thing on earth in the way of fealty and devotion. Possibly this was the grand motive, the reason she had given being secondary.

"You said, Gulab, that you had another reason for this awful trip; what is it?" he asked.

The girl's eyes dropped to the ruby bracelet again; "To acquire merit in the eyes of Mahadeo, Sahib."

"To do good acts so that you may be reincarnated as a heaven-born, a
Brahmini, perhaps even come back as a memsahib."

At this her big eyes rose to Barlow's face, and he could swear that there were tears misting them; and sensing that if she had fallen in love with him, what he had said about her becoming a memsahib had hurt. Perhaps she, as he did, realised that that was the barred door to happiness—that she wasn't of the white race.

"Yes, Sahib," she said presently, "a Swami told me that in a former life I had been evil."

"The Swami is an awful liar!" Barlow ejaculated.

"The holy ones speak the truth, Sahib. The Swami said that because of having been beautiful I had caused deaths through jealousy."

"Oh, the crazy fool!" Barlow declared in English; "and it's all rot! This is the reason you spoke of, Gulab—good deeds; is it the only other reason?"

The girl turned her face away, and Barlow saw her shoulders quiver.

He rose from the chair, and lifting the girl to her feet held her in his arms, saying: "Look me in the eyes, Gulab, and tell me if you are going through this devilish thing because of me."

"Bootea is going to the camp of Amir Khan because Hunsa and the others have been told to kill the Sahib; and she will see that this is not accomplished."

Barlow clasped the girl to his breast and smothered her face in kisses; "You are the sweetest little woman that ever lived," he said; "and I am a sinner, for this can only bring you misery."

"Sahib—it can't be, but it is not misery. The sweet pain has been put in the heart of Bootea by the Sahib's eyes, and she is happy. But do not go as a Sahib."

Barlow cursed softly to himself, muttering, "India! Even dreams are not unheard!" Then, "What made you say that?" he queried.

"It is known because that is the way of the Sahib. He knows that where he sleeps or eats, or plays games with the little balls, that there are always servants, and it is known that Captain Barrle is called the Patan by his friends."

"St. George and the Cross!" he ejaculated. "If I were thus would they know me?" he asked. "There would be danger, but the Sahib knowing of this, could take more care in the way of deceit. But Bootea will know—the eyes will not be hidden."

Then he thought of Hunsa, and asked, "But aren't you afraid to go with that beast, Hunsa?"

The girl laughed. "The decoits have orders from the Dewan to kill him if I complain of him; but if they do not he is promised the torture when he comes back if I make complaint. If the Sahib will but wait a few days before the journey so that Bootea has made friends with Amir Kami before he comes, it will be better. We will start in two days."

"I'll see, Gulab," he answered evasively. "You are going now?"

"Yes, Sahib—it has been said."

"I'll send the doorman with you."

"No, Bootea will be better alone," she touched the knife in her sash; "it must not be known that Bootea came to the Sahib."

Barlow took her arm leading her through the bathroom to the back door; he opened it, and listened intently for a few seconds. Then he took her oval face in his palms and kissed her, passionately, saying, "Good-bye, little girl; God be with you. You are sweet."

"The Sahib is like a god to Bootea," she whispered.

As the girl slipped away between the bushes, like something floating out of a dream, Barlow stood at the open door, a resurge of abasement flooding his soul. In the combat between his mentality and his heart the heart was making him a weakling, a dishonourable weakling, so it seemed. He pulled the door shut, and went back to his bed and finally fell asleep, a thing of tortured unrest.