On the Face of the Waters: A Tale of the Mutiny

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

Yet in his heart he knew that there was danger in so many confederates. He felt that this incredibly peaceful home on the housetop could not last. Here he was looking at a woman who was not his wife, a child who was not his child, and feeling vaguely that they were as much a part of his life as if they were. As if, had they been so, he would have been quite contented. More contented than he had been on that other roof. He was, even now, more contented than he had been there. As he sat, his head on his hand, watching the pretty picture which Kate, in Zora's jewels, made with the be-tinseled, be-scented, bedecked child, he thought of his relief when years before he had looked at a still little morsel lying in Zora's veil. Had it been brutal of him? Would that dead baby have grown into a Sonny? Or was it because Sonny's skin was really white beneath the stain that he thought of him as something to be proud of possessing; of a boy who would go to school and be fagged and flogged and inherit familiar virtues and vices instead of strange ones?

"What are you thinking of, Mr. Greyman? Do you want anything?" came Kate's kind voice.

"Nothing," he replied in the half-bantering tone he so often used toward her; "I have more than my fair share of things already, surely! I was only meditating on the word 'Om'--the final mystery of all things."

So, in a way, he was. On the mystery of fatherhood and motherhood, which had nothing to do with that pure idyl of romantic passion on the terraced roof at Lucknow, yet which seemed to touch him here, where there was not even love. Yet it was a better thing. The passion of protection, of absolute self-forgetfulness, seeking no reward, which the sight of those two raised in him, was a better thing than that absorption in another self. The thought made him cross over to where Kate sat with the child in her lap, and say gravely:

"The crèche is more interesting than the convalescent home, at least to me, Mrs. Erlton! I shall be quite sorry when it ends."

"When it ends?" she echoed quickly. "There is nothing wrong, is there? Sonny has been so good, and that time when he was naughty the sweeper-woman seemed quite satisfied when Tara said he was speaking Pushtoo."

"But it cannot last for all that," he replied. "It is dangerous. I feel it is. This is the 5th, and I am nearly all right. I must get Tiddu to arrange for Sonny first. Then for you."

"And you?" she asked.

"I'll follow. It will be safer, and there is no fear for me. I can't understand why I've had no answer from your husband. The letter went two days ago, and I am convinced we ought."

The frown was back on his face, the restlessness in his brain; and both grew when in private talk with Tiddu the latter hinted at suspicions in the caravan which had made it necessary for him to be very cautious. The letter, therefore, had certainly been delayed, might never have reached. If no answer came by the morrow, he himself would take the opportunity of a portion of the caravan having a permit to pass out, and so insure the news reaching the Ridge; trusting to get into the city again without delay, though the gates were very strictly kept. Nevertheless, in his opinion, the Huzoor would be wiser with patience. There was no immediate danger in continuing as they were, and the end could not be long if it were true that the great Nikalseyn was with the Punjâb reinforcements. Since all the world knew that Nikalseyn was the prince of sahibs, having the gift, not only of being all things to all people, but of making all people be all things to him, which was more than the Baharupas could do.