His companion brightened up immediately, 'It is not all a cough, Huzoor,' he replied hurriedly. 'It is fever. God! what fever. It is only a little cough, with a rattle, as of dead wheat-straw under my bosom as I draw breath; quick, quick, with curving nostrils like a horse galloping fast.'
The vivid accuracy of the word-picture made George realise an idea which had of late haunted his fancy. The idea of a hand-to-hand fight with death alone, unaided, as the beasts of the field meet the destroyer. Here was some one doing it; dying, perhaps, of pneumonia, when others were being nursed through a finger-ache. The pity, the injustice of it struck him fairly. Then the potter's voice going on softly gave inconsequent answer to the vague doubt surging against the boy's youthful content.
'Not that it matters, as I tell myself in the night season when I am worst. We of Hodinuggur do not die. We go and come, we come again and go.'
Something in his own words, perhaps, seemed to arrest the old man's attention, and he paused.
'Huzoor!' he cried suddenly, 'I have something which belongs to the mâdr mihrbân. If the Huzoor would write an address.'
'Belonging to Miss Tweedie,' echoed George in surprise.
'Do not thanks belong to those who earn them!' replied the potter evasively. 'If the Huzoor could write. I have pen and ink. Lo! it is naught but potter's work, and the miss was kind.'
He fumbled in the niche beside his seat, and drew out a parcel done up in waxcloth. Evidently a pot of some sort, thought George, beginning to print boldly, as one of his profession should, with the slant-cut native pen. The moonlight shone full on the potter seated at his wheel, and the young Englishman pencilling Rose Tweedie's name. What was that rising on the stillness of the night? A murmur from the hut? George could not say for certain, as the old man set his wheel a-humming instantly, but once more the feeling of injustice, the flash of pity came to disturb his self-complacency. The feeling lasted longer this time, and as he walked home his thoughts were full of that uncertainty which is so hateful to the young. The Mori gate showed black and white in the moonshine; a clash of silver bells rose from the shadows as he passed; a pomegranate blossom fell at his feet. He took a step aside to crush it fiercely, passionately; it lay between that and picking it up he felt uneasily. Life here, at Hodinuggur, was so simple, so confusing in its simplicity. To live and to die. Was that all?
He spent the remainder of the evening in writing to Mrs. Boynton, putting his heart into reserved, half-jesting hints at his own puzzles. And as he wrote, the potter, standing at the door of his hut, was listening to a murmur coming from the darkness within.
'It is sent, dear heart! She has it. No one shall know,' he answered softly. Then there was silence for a while. But only for a while. The murmur came again and again through the hot night, to be stilled by the same reply.