"The good God will look after them, as He has after the crocodiles."
Since then, strangely enough, the memory of Lâl has remained with me, and I often ask myself if he really existed, and if he really died. Does he still slip silently into the stream, knife in hand? Does he still come back to his field under the broad harvest moon, to glean his scanty share after the other people have had their fill? I cannot say; but whenever I see a particularly fat squirrel I say to myself, "It has been feeding in the field of Lâl."
[A DEBT OF HONOUR.]
A flood of yellow sunshine on yellow sand, and a horse at the gallop. A horse guided by an English boy, in blue spectacles, sitting squarely enough, but somewhat stiffly, in his saddle, as if too independent to give himself away even to the joyous swing of the handsome little beast beneath him. A big boy undoubtedly; but a boy for all his size, and despite the fact that he was an Assistant Commissioner of the third grade. In other words, one appointed to administer justice to the ignorant heathen--those ignorant heathen who seemed to have such odd ideas of life, and to require such immediate regeneration--at the hands of English boys.
In front, across the foreground, the glaring white high road for which he was steering; to the left centre a gnarled, knotted old jhand tree hung with coloured threads and patches, proclaiming it to be still sacred to some effete modern form of serpent-worship--one of those mysterious Indian cults of which no one, not even the disciples themselves, know anything. Young Jones, or Smith--what matters the name when a character has but to figure before the footlights of a single scene?--noticed these threads and patches with the quick but incomprehensive eye of superiority. A not uncommon feeling of contemptuous interest came over him, which prolonged itself even when the cause changed into a wonder why the brute he was riding would not keep its head at the proper angle. Then darkness, and silence!
Smith-Jones's horse had put its foot into a rat-hole and given him a bad fall, about as bad a fall as could well have been, short of those curious plunges over the edge of one world into the next. He lay white and still on the yellow sand, neither in time nor eternity, for a long while. How long matters no more than his name, for this is the story of Smith-Jones, and it is through his eyes and his thoughts that it must be seen and told; therefore until he began to gain consciousness the scene remained, as it were, a blank, despite the fact that there were other actors on the stage.
Most people when coming to themselves (to use a popular, but confusing phrase) meet first of all with a sound of slow, storm-spent breakers rolling in on some unknown shore. Is it the one they are leaving, or the one to which they seek return? Who knows--for the vague wonder is stilled by a whispering hush! growing louder and louder as if both worlds were waiting, finger on lip, for a decision. Then, as a rule, comes a kindly, familiar voice or touch to settle the question in favour of this earth; perhaps some day it may come to summon us to another. Again, who knows?
Smith-Jones, however, felt something so distinctly unfamiliar that he opened his eyes in a fright, relieved to find himself in that unmistakable flood of sunshine which does not exist out of India. Briefly he felt, or thought he felt, a kiss upon his lips. Now Smith-Jones, like most well-trained, unemotional English boys, had a strong dislike to kisses. He lumped them, with many other things, under the generic term bosh, and confined himself to reserved pecks at the foreheads of his mother, his sisters, his aunts, and an occasional, a very occasional, cousin. Even when they had all stood round in tears while Robin the gardener hoisted the brand-new cabin-trunk on to the fly, which from the large white placards on the luggage was evidently destined to carry Smith-Jones part of the way to Bombay, he had only got as far as a kiss on the cheek, despite a choke in his throat, and a distinct inclination to cry.
And now? It was startling in the extreme!
Lying on his back, a prey to somewhat alarmed surprise, he became aware through his nose of a pleasant scent, and through his eyes, of the pendant mistletoe-like twigs of the jhand tree. Mistletoe,--yes, that might account for the kiss; but what about the perfume of roses? There it was again, in company with an old peacock's feather fan which looked as if it were half through a severe moulting. Some one was fanning him, positively fanning him! for the feathers swooped again and again just above his face in composed curves suggestive of leisure and perpetual motion. He tried to find out more by turning his head--an effort which made him realise that he had been within an ace of breaking his neck, and sobered him to acquiescence for a time. Not for long, however, seeing that the boy was a pertinacious boy. So, at the expense of a fearful rick, he discovered a hand and arm belonging to the fan--at least if it was a hand and arm after all, and not merely a withered brown branch. Smith-Jones's blue eyes came to the conclusion that it was at any rate the skeleton of a hand and arm, and what is more a curiously graceful skeleton. Then, being still confused out of speech, he tried to arrest the arm by catching hold of it; but either he had not yet recovered a just estimate of distance, or it eluded his grasp, for the even monotony of the curve continued. And, on the whole, it was pleasant enough to lie on one's back in the yellow sand and be fanned sleepily, gracefully. An enjoyment, however, which could not be allowed long continuance when there was a horse to be caught, a camp to be reached, a judgment to be written; the whole burden of a world, in short, on Smith-Jones's young shoulders.