Routledge rides alone

by Will Levington Comfort

Any suffering was cheap to prevent her coming—but he could not prevent! One cannot run from a vision or a prophecy. It is well to obey when one is ordered up into Nineveh. Even Sekar had cast him off, because he was a counter-attraction to the soul of Rawder. He could not forswear war—and so avoid the promised wound, which would enable her to find him—since he was not to meet the levelling stroke during a collision of troops, but somewhere apart. It was a chain of circumstances in which he was absolutely powerless—and she was coming to him!

First, it would mean that Jerry Cardinegh, the man he had preserved, was dead. If he were dead with his secret, Noreen would find him—Routledge—identify herself with the most loathed of outcasts, fleeing forever before the eyes and fingers of England. There was rebellion against this in every plane of the man’s consciousness. He could not suffer his love, nor hers, to be tested by such a tragedy. He would flee again from her.... But if old Jerry had remembered the truth at the last—if the fates had willed him to tell the monstrous truth—and the Hate of London were lifted from the name of Routledge, to become a heritage of Noreen Cardinegh—and then if she should come to him! He could not cover his eyes to the flash of radiance which this thought brought him.... He would have died to prevent such a thing from coming to pass. For more than a year, he had kept out of the ken of the world, to forestall any efforts on the part of the Cardineghs, to find him. He was worn to a shadow, hunted, harrowed, hated, lost to himself in disguises, ever apart from the gatherings of men and the decent offerings of life—all to prevent the very thing which, in thinking of now, lit every lamp of his being. Quite as readily would he have performed the treachery for which he suffered as return to the father of Noreen Cardinegh, saying: “I am tired, Jerry. Give me back my name.” But if, after all he had done to spare her from the truth, the fates ruled against him—then he would not flee from her!

Hours passed. Every little while, through the piling cumulus of disorder, would flash the reality, and for the interval he ceased to breathe.... To think of looking up from some half-delirium and discovering her face! To feel the touch of her hand—this woman—attuned to respond to every vibration of his voice and brain and heart.... Sometimes he fell into a heresy of manhood and demanded of himself what significance had England, the world, compared with the rest of his days with Noreen Cardinegh, in the glory of their union which formed a trinity—man and woman and happiness....

He laughed bitterly at the starry distances. “It would be a fitting end for a man who is supposed to have betrayed the country he served—to allow a woman to share such fortunes as mine, and take up the trail of an outcast.”

Routledge rose to go to the Rest House, but reflected that it must be nearer dawn than midnight. He was curiously disinclined to seek his room at this hour. With his face to the doorway, he sank down upon the matting and rested his chin in his palms.... The touch of Rawder’s hand awoke him, and he stared in wonder at the chela, his own eyes stinging from the East. The figure of a woman was prone before him.

“Routledge, my brother, here is work for you. I found her far out on the road. She was crawling into Rydamphur, carrying the child. I could not leave her. She is close to death. Sekar waits for me, and so again, good-by.”

Rawder had turned with a quick hand-clasp, and hurried away in the dawn-light to his master. It was all over quickly and strangely—as some psychic visitation. Routledge was already weary of the pitiless day. The blazing temple of dawn had shone full upon his eyelids as he slept, and there was an ache deep in his brain from the light.... The woman raised her head from the ground waveringly, like a crushed serpent, and plucked at his garments. There was a still, white-lipped babe at her breast. Her voice was like dried sticks rubbing together. He held the cup of water to her lips.

“I am the widow of Madan Das, who is dead since the drouth,” she told him. “The white holy man carried me here, leaving the other on the road. This is my son—the son of Madan Das. There were two others, both girls, but they are dead since the drouth. Also the brother of my husband, who was a leper. My husband worked, but there has been no work since the drouth. First we sold the cow——”

“My good mother, don’t try to talk,” Routledge said, as he lifted her into the hut, but she could not understand. As soon as he had placed her upon the matting, she took up the tale, thinking that she must tell it all. Her face was like dusty paper; her lips dried and stretched apart. Her hair had fallen away in patches, and her throat was like an aged wrist.

“First we sold the cow,” she mumbled, trying to find him with her eyes, “then we sold the household things. After that we sold the doors and door-posts. Even after that the food was all gone, and my husband, whose name is Madan Das, gave his clothing to his brother, who is a leper, to sell in the village for food. A neighbor lent my husband a cotton cloth to put about his loins. The chaukadari tax was due. Madan Das could not pay. We were starving, and one of the babes, a girl, was dead. The tahsildar” (a collector for the English) “came and took away from the second babe, who was in the doorway of our house, a little brass bowl for the tax. There was in the bowl some soup which my babe was eating—a little soup made of bark, flower-pods and wild berries.... Since then there has been no food. Madan Das is dead, and the two girls are dead, and the brother of Madan Das, who is a leper, died last night. The white holy man carried me here, leaving the other on the road. This is the son of Madan Das——”