'And yet you say every one is fundamental,' she interrupted in a voice that held both tears and laughter, tenderness and a faint resentment. 'And that is so true--we go back and back.'
'Then I shall go back too,' he replied cheerfully. 'Only I must give the New Diplomacy a chance. Besides'--here an obstinate look crept over his face--'as a matter of fact I have to obey orders like every one else, and my orders are clear; thanks--I don't mean it nastily--to you and your father. In fact I'm very much obliged to you. It relieves me of a lot of responsibility. All the same, I can assure that there is not the very faintest chance of difficulty for the next week at any rate. There cannot be--for the simple reason that we are not going to offend any one's prejudices. For instance, no search for plague patients will be made for the present except by special request of the natives themselves. So I really cannot see----'
'Is it likely we could?' asked Grace quickly, 'when we cannot see if a woman is young or old?--when we have to trust interested people for information? George! I often wonder you men have the courage to rule India, when you know nothing of its women, except that there has been one at the bottom of every trouble you have ever had.'
Sir George smiled indulgently. 'Well, my dear, I hope they will keep their fingers out of this pie.'
It was rather a vain hope, considering that at that very moment Govind Râm's fingers were all black with lithographic ink, and that the first edition of his broadsheet was being hawked through the bazaars. There was quite a crowd round Dilarâm's balcony where, in full dress, she sat, defiant yet sullen; now refusing to say a word, now letting herself loose in shrill abuse with disconcerting candour. She find recruits for such as Miss Leezie? Not she! Though, had she chosen, she might here had followed tales half-true, half false, that were listened to, not with eagerness or anger, but with the calm assent which is so much more dangerous, since it passes on to tell the tale with additions in the next street.
By evening it was all over the city that Dilarâm and her like were to be put in gaol for refusing to kidnap girls for the Sirkar. And that the Sirkar in consequence, being hard put to it, would be sure to make the plague--which the doctors had discovered that very day, though, God knows, folk had been dying that way for a week--an excuse to search respectable houses for recruits to Miss Leezie's profession.
Such a thing may seem impossible to those who have not lived in a native town, but those who have, know that nothing is incredible to its vast curiosity, its still more vast ignorance. In the dead darkness of that, as in the darkness of night, all voices are equal.
And so round the smouldering rubbish-heaps and within the closed doors of the courtyards where the women gathered, as in the bazaar, the tale was told; not with absolute assurance, but tentatively. So folk said; and so, no doubt, it had been in the past. It remained to be seen if it would be so in the present, since that was all poor folk had to consider. And as the tale was told, a sound of sudden wailing would rise far or near in the city to prove part of the tale was true.
The plague had come.