Mr. Jervis, Vol. 3 (of 3)

When Mark Jervis awoke the next morning, in a totally unfamiliar room, he wondered if he was dreaming, as he gazed at the heavy old carved furniture, the faded window hangings, the curious devotional pictures, and the little black crucifix and holy water receptacle at the foot of the bed. (The Cardozo family had of course been Catholics.) No, he was not dreaming, but actually under his father’s roof at last.

As soon as he had dressed, he went out before breakfast to see after the welfare of his syce and pony. The yard resembled that of a serai, it was so full of natives, who gazed at him inquiringly, as he made his way through sheep, goats, buffalo calves, and children, to the stables, the tumble-down remains of what had once been an imposing pile. An old hairy Bhoetia pony and his own were now the sole occupants. His syce came to him eagerly, with a face of pitiful dismay.

“No gram for pony, sahib”—holding up his hands dramatically. “Never giving gram here—nothing.”

“I’ll see about that—go and buy some”—handing him rupees.

“Oh, sahib”—now putting his hands into an attitude of prayer. “Plenty, plenty Budmashes in this place. Sahib, let us travel to-day, quickly to Shirani.”

“In a few days, Dum Sing—not yet; meanwhile take care of yourself and the pony.” And he walked on to the garden.

The gardens, though somewhat neglected, were in perfect order in comparison to the house; they were laid out in stony terraces, the walls of which were loaded with fruit; there were flowers and vegetables in abundance, a round fish-pond, several statues, summer-houses, and a large staff of mallees working away with surprising zeal. A broad terrace walk commanded, as you arrived at one end, the snows, and a grand panorama of the plains as you reached the other. A well-worn track was beaten in the middle of this path, which indicated that it was a favourite promenade, and at the end nearest to the plains there was a seat.

Here Mark was joined by his father. He was dressed in a shrunken Puttoo suit, and looked frail and feeble, but such a gentleman in spite of all his shabbiness!

“This is my walk and my seat,” he explained. “I sit here for hours. That white line far below is the cart road, and with a good glass you can make out carts and tongas; and far away on the plains, twice a day in clear weather, you can see the smoke of the train. So I get some glimpses of the world after all.”

“And how are you off for neighbours, sir?”

“My nearest is an American missionary and doctor; he is twelve miles from here; and there is a German mission fifteen miles across that hill”—pointing with a stick.

“And your post? What about your letters?”

“Oh, I don’t want a post; once in six months or so I send a coolie down to Ramghur.”

“Then you don’t take a daily paper?”

“Oh no; why should I? There are stacks of old ones about the house,” was the amazing reply.

“And books?”

“I’m a man of one book. I read the Indian Army List; that is quite enough literature for me. Some fellow’s names alone call up a whole novel.”

“You feel better to-day, I hope?”

“Yes, I am unusually well. You are not married, are you?” he asked abruptly.

“No, not yet”—rather startled at the sudden change of topic. “But I hope to marry before long.”

“Hope, hope; that’s what we all say. Don’t let it go beyond that. Hope told a flattering tale. I don’t believe in hope.”

“Why not?” inquired his companion rather anxiously.

“You see this terrace,” he exclaimed, as if he had not heard; “I walk up and down it exactly a hundred times a day; I take a hundred beans in my pocket, and put one of them on that bench every time I come to it. I find it most interesting; only sometimes birds steal my beans, and that puts me out, and I lose count, and I have to begin the whole hundred over again, and I get so tired. But I must do it, or they would be angry.”

“Who would be angry, sir?”

“I forget, just this minute—the beans or the birds.”

“You seem to have wonderfully fine fruit-trees here,” said Mark, after an expressively long silence.

“Yes, the mallees work well, the rascals, because I give them all the vegetables and flowers and fruit, as well as their wages. They make a good thing out of it; the peaches and pears and plums from the Yellow House are celebrated.”

Mark now remembered having heard of their fame in far Shirani.

“Let us sit down here and talk,” continued Major Jervis. “For once I will forego my walk; it is not every day that I have my son to listen to me. Recent events seem blurred and dim, but I remember years back distinctly. Mark, my boy, shall I tell you something about myself, and how I have spent my life? Would you care to know?”

“I would, of course.”

“Then listen to me. You know I am the younger son of a good old family—Jervis of Jervis. My father, your grandfather, was General Vincent Jervis, and—I can’t tell him that” (aside to himself). “My family bequeathed me a handsome profile, an aristocratic type of face, and something else (but I can’t tell him that). I married for love, and I can recommend the experiment. Your mother and I scrambled along most happily, though I had always extravagant tastes—inherited, like my nose and yours. When she died, I lost my better half indeed—my headpiece, my best adviser, my all. I drifted back into my old squandering bachelor ways, and into debt; but I paid for you to the hour. Then I came across Miss Cardozo. She was not very young, but handsome, pleasant, and rich—she fell in love with me. I was a good-looking, dashing, devil-may-care major in a crack native cavalry regiment. She belonged to this country by race and taste. There was a good deal of the begum about her; she hated the idea of a stepson, and I reluctantly allowed your uncle to adopt you. I knew you would be rich and well cared for; but even then, I struggled against your uncle’s persuasions. I must have had a presentiment of these days, when I would be desolate and alone. I was happy enough with Mércèdes; we led a gay, roving, extravagant life. We had plenty of friends, plenty of spirits, plenty of money. Mércèdes had no relations, but one, thank God; a greasy-looking cousin in Calcutta. Lord forgive me, but I hate him! My wife had a kind, warm heart, but she was passionate, excitable—and jealous. She allowed her feelings too much liberty; she slapped another woman’s face at a public ball, she slippered her servants, she ran up huge bills, and she could never speak the truth. She actually preferred to tell a lie, even when she had nothing to gain by it. Can you imagine such a thing? However, we have all our faults; and she was a good soul, though she was not like your mother. They say a man prefers his first wife, a woman her second husband—what is your opinion, eh, Mark?”

“I am not in a position to offer one,” he answered, with a smile.

“Oh, I forgot—of course not. Well, eight years ago this very month we were coming away from Mussouri to our place in the Doon; we were in the mail tonga, our ponies were half broken; though we had a good driver—the best on the road—it was all he could do to hold them, as they rattled down with the heavy steel bar, going clank, clank, clank. Just one mile out a goat on the cliff dropped suddenly into the road, the brutes shied wildly across, the strong wooden railings caught the side of the tonga, they strained—I hear them now—snapped, crashed, then there was a moment’s mad struggle of driver and ponies—too late, over we went! They show the place still, I dare say—a drop of two hundred feet. The ponies were killed, and the driver and my wife. How I escaped was a marvel. My leg was broken, my head cut about, but I survived. Osman, my orderly, who had been in the old regiment for twenty years, nursed me, at Mussouri; and, as soon as I could be moved, I came here. I remembered it as a retired, quiet spot, with a charming garden. I wanted rest; my head was injured, and I thought I would pull myself together here, and then go home—but here I am still.”

“Yes, but not for much longer,” added his son, cheerily; “you will come home with me.”

“Mércèdes’ will was produced,” he proceeded, calmly ignoring the question; “she had made it when she was not pleased with me, seemingly. This place and three hundred acres are mine, and one thousand rupees a month for life; also her jewels and gold ornaments—as much use to me as a heap of stones. Fernandez receives a fine income even now. All her wealth accumulates till my death, and then everything—jewels, rents, shares—goes to him. He is my heir. I cannot leave you a penny; nothing but the old Yellow House.”

“I don’t want the Cardozo money, sir.”

“No; and you will have plenty. Meanwhile Fuzzil Houssan spends my income on his relations to the third and fourth generation, and laughs and grows fat.”

“Surely you do not leave it all in his hands?” asked his listener incredulously.

“Yes, most of it. Only for that, I suppose he would poison me. I believe he is in Fernandez’ pay—Fernandez, who I am keeping out of thousands a year. Occasionally he comes in person to see if there is any chance of my dying? I have given him great hopes more than once. Now that Osman is dead, he and Fuzzil will certainly hurry me out of the world—and that speedily.”

“Who was Osman?”

“He was a sowar in my regiment—a Sikh—we had known each other for half a lifetime, and he was more to me than a brother. We joined the same month, we left the same day. He gave up home, country, people, and followed my fortunes, and died in my arms last week.” Here Major Jervis’s voice became almost inaudible.

“We had braved heat and snow, fire and water, together, and in the long evenings here whilst I smoked my pipe, he would talk to me by the hour of the old regiment; such talk is better than any book. If Osman had lived, I never would have summoned you—no, never; he stayed with me till death took him, and you must remain here till death takes me.”

“I will take you with me,” said his son, resolutely. “All you have been telling me shows me that this country is not the place for you. The sooner you are back in England, the better; you will come home with me, will you not?”

“I don’t want to see England,” he answered peevishly. “India is my country, it has got into my blood. I have spent my bright days out here, and here I’ll spend my dark ones. My days are dark indeed, but they will soon be over, and so much the better. And now it is eleven o’clock,” he said, rising stiffly. “Let us go in to breakfast.”

After breakfast Major Jervis promptly disappeared, leaving his guest to wander about alone; to wonder at the extraordinary ménage, the troops of native children, pattering in and out, the fowl, the goats—who stumped through the hall as if they wore boots—the overpowering smell of huka, the great dreary rooms, piled up with rotting furniture, saddlery, and carpets. Among other wrecks, he noticed an old dandy and a side-saddle—doubtless the property of the dead Mércèdes.

He strolled about the valley, to the amazement of the hill people, who stared at him open-mouthed. How, he asked himself, was he to pass the long empty hours till sunset? For the bearer had condescendingly assured him, that “the sahib would sleep until then.” He had taken a violent dislike to fat-cheeked Fuzzil, who scarcely troubled himself to obey an order, and had invariably to be summoned several times before he condescended to appear. A civil Pahari, touched by the young sahib’s forlorn and aimless wanderings, volunteered to guide him to the cantonment. “A cantonment here?” he echoed incredulously, and accepted the offer with alacrity. A brisk walk by narrow tracks and goat-paths brought them to the brow of a hill in a southward direction, overlooking an abandoned station, Mark’s guide volubly explaining to him that thirty years before had been full of gorrah-log (soldiers) from the plains. There were the barracks, the bungalows, and gardens, with trees that bore apples even now! But the cholera came one year and killed half a pultoon (regiment) and the rest went away, and never came back, except once or twice, so folks said, for “a tamashah.”

“A tamashah—what do you mean?” asked Jervis, sharply. Was this burly hill man daring to chaff him?

“Sahibs and mem sahibs—eating, drinking, and having music and nautches. For the rest,” with a shrug, “the place was given over to Bhoots and fiends.”

A wide cart road, grass grown, led into the deserted cantonment, and Mark followed it on to the parade ground. There was the mess-house still habitable, the church roofless, encircled by a well-filled God’s acre, kept in perfect order. Here was, indeed, a most surprising sight, a graveyard in the wilds, not over-grown or choked with weeds and bushes, but every stone and slab free from moss, every grave tended with reverent care. He went into the old echoing mess-house, and found it in excellent repair—thanks to its beams and doors of deodar wood—as the Pahari proudly pointed out. There were at least twenty bungalows standing, half buried among trees and jungle; with creepers matted down over their windows; in some the verandahs had given away, in some the roofs had fallen in, some, on the other hand, appeared to set time at defiance. The site was beautifully chosen, nestling in the lap of the hills, with a peep of the far-away plains; not a sound was to be heard save the trickling of a streamlet, nor a living thing to be seen, save a few hill cattle, and under a tree some vultures who were picking the bones of a dead pony. The condemned cantonment was, for all its beauty, a melancholy place. Beyond Haval Ghat, and sloping towards the plains, were fields of golden corn, and villages sheltering in clumps of trees, picturesque bananas waving their graceful leaves over huts, that with their comfortable slab roofs resembled English cottages.

The coolie now explained that he wished to show his honour yet another sight, and to guide him home by a different route.

Half an hour’s climbing brought them to a good-sized street, of carved-fronted, flat-roofed hill houses. To the stranger’s horror it seemed to be altogether populated by lepers—lepers who were old, middle-aged, young—there were also leper children. They swarmed out and surrounded the sahib, exhibiting every form of their hideous disease, as they clamoured for assistance. Jervis emptied his pockets of everything they contained in the shape of money, dispensed alms hastily, and among the worst cases, and then hurried away. He felt heartily ashamed of his feelings of shuddering repulsion. Supposing he had been a leper himself—and such things as Englishmen who were lepers were known to exist. Still he turned headlong from that awful village of life in death, and hastily reascended the hill towards the Pela Kothi.

The desolate cantonment and the leper-colony combined to depress him beyond words, although the scenery was unsurpassed, the air as exhilarating as a tonic, and the scents and sounds of the forest enough to stir the most torpid imagination; nevertheless, Mark Jervis felt as if he had a load upon his back, as if he had grown ten years older in the last two days. It was not merely the scenes of the afternoon that preyed on his spirits. There was his father—his mind was undoubtedly shaken—he must endeavour to get him away, to take him home; yes, at all costs.

“What a curious way he talked. Sometimes so well and sensibly; sometimes in such incomprehensible jargon. What did he mean by saying, ‘Osman stayed here till death took him. You must remain here until death takes me’?”