* * * * *
It was a fortnight after this, and the camp lay clustered closely in the mouth of a narrow defile down which rushed a torrent swollen from the snows above; a defile which meant decisive victory or defeat to the little force which had to push their way through it to the heights above. Yet, though death, maybe, lay close to each man, the whole camp was in an uproar because Major Griffiths' second pair of putties had gone astray. The other officers had been content with one set of these woollen bandages which in hill-marching serve as gaiters, and help so much to lessen fatigue; but the Major, being methodical, had provided against emergencies. And now, when, with that possibility of death before him, his soul craved an extreme order in all things, his clean pair had disappeared. Now the Major, though silent, always managed to say what he meant. So it ran through the camp that they had been stolen, and men compared notes over the fact in the mess-tent and in the canteen.
In the former, the Adjutant with a frown admitted that of late there had been a series of inexplicable petty thefts in camp, which had begun with the disappearance of Private Smith's rifle. That might perhaps be explained in an enemy's country, but what the deuce anybody could want with a pair of bone shirt-studs--
"And a shirt," put in a mournful voice.
"Item a cake of scented soap," said another.
"And a comb," began a third.
The Colonel, who had till then preserved a discreet silence, here broke in with great heat to the Adjutant.
"Upon my soul, sir, it's a disgrace to the staff, and I must insist on a stringent inquiry the instant we've licked these hill-men. I--I didn't mean to say anything about it--but I haven't been able to find my tooth-brush for a week."
Whereupon there was a general exodus into the crisp, cold air outside, where the darkness would hide inconvenient smiles, for the Colonel was one of those men who have a different towel for their face and hands.
The stars were shining in the cleft between the tall, shadowy cliffs which rose up on either side, vague masses of shadow on which--seen like stars upon a darker sky--the watchfires of the enemy sparkled here and there. The enemy powerful, vigilant; and yet beside the camp-fires close at hand the men had forgotten the danger of the morrow in the trivial loss of the moment, and were discussing the Major's putties.
"It's w'ot I say all along," reiterated the romancer of G Company. "It begun ever since Joey Smith was took from us at Number Two camp. It's 'is ghost--that's w'ot it is. 'Is ghost layin' in a trew-so. Jest you look 'ere! They bury 'im, didn't they? as 'e was--decent like in coat and pants--no more. Well! since then 'e's took 'is rifle off us, an' a greatcoat off D Company, and a knapsack off A."
"Don't be lavin' out thim blankets he tuk from the store, man," interrupted the tall Irishman. "Sure it's a testhimony to the pore bhoy's character annyhow that he shud be wantin' thim where he is."
"It is not laughing at all at such things I would be, whatever," put in another voice seriously, "for it is knowing of such things we are in the Highlands--"
"Hold your second sight, Mac," broke in a third; "we don't want none o' your shivers tonight. You're as bad as they blamed niggers, and they swear they seen Joey more nor once in a red coat dodging about our rear."
"Well! they won't see 'im no more, then," remarked a fourth philosophically, "for 'e change 'is tailor. Leastways, 'e got a service khakee off Sergeant Jones the night afore last; the Sergeant took his Bible oath to 'ave it off Joey Smith's ghost, w'en 'e got time to tackle 'im, if 'e 'ave ter go to 'ell for it."
Major Griffiths meantime was having a similar say as he stood, eye-glass in eye, at the door of the mess-tent. "Whoever the thief is," he admitted, with the justice common to him, "he appears to have the instincts of a gentleman; but, by Gad, sir, if I find him he shall know what it is to take a field officer's gaiters."
Whereupon he gave a dissatisfied look at his own legs, a more contented one at the glimmering stars of the enemy's watchfires, and then turned in to get a few hours' rest before the dawn.
But some one a few miles farther down the valley looked both at his legs and at the stars with equal satisfaction. Some one, tall, square, straight, smoking a pipe--some one else's pipe, no doubt--beside the hole in the ground where, on the preceding night, the camp flagstaff had stood. That fortnight had done more for George Afford than give his outward man a trousseau; it had clothed him with a certain righteousness, despite the inward conviction that Peroo must be a magnificent liar in protesting that the Huzoor's outfit had either been gifted to him or bought honestly.
In fact, as he stood looking down at his legs complacently, he murmured to himself, "I believe they're the Major's, poor chap; look like him somehow." Then he glanced at the Sergeant's coatee he wore and walked up and down thoughtfully--up and down beside the hole in the ground where the flagstaff had stood.
So to him from the dim shadows came a limping figure.
"Well?" he called sharply.
"The orders are for dawn, Huzoor, and here are some more cartridges."
George Afford laughed; an odd, low little laugh of sheer satisfaction.
* * * * *
It was past dawn by an hour or two, but the heights were still unwon.
"Send some one--any one!" gasped the Colonel, breathlessly, as he pressed on with a forlorn hope of veterans to take a knoll of rocks whence a galling fire had been decimating every attack. "Griffiths! for God's sake, go or get some one ahead of those youngsters on the right or they'll break--and then--"
Break! What more likely? A weak company, full of recruits, a company with its officers shot down, and before them a task for veterans--for that indifference to whizzing bullets which only custom brings. Major Griffiths, as he ran forward, saw all this, saw also the ominous waver. God! would he be in time to check it--to get ahead? that was what was wanted, some one ahead--no more than that--some one ahead!
There was some one. A tall figure ahead of the wavering boys.
"Come on! come on, my lads! follow me!" rang out a confident voice, and the Major, as he ran, half-blinded by the mists of his own haste, felt it was as a voice from heaven.
"Come on! come on!--give it 'em straight. Hip, hip, hurray!"
An answering cheer broke from the boys behind, and with a rush the weakest company in the regiment followed some one to victory.
* * * * *
"I don't understand what the dickens it means," said the Colonel almost fretfully that same evening, when, safe over the pass, the little force was bivouacking in a willow-set valley on the other side of the hills. Before it lay what it had come to gain, behind it danger past. "Some one in my regiment," he went on, "does a deuced plucky thing--between ourselves, saves the position: I want naturally to find out who it was, and am met by a cock and bull story about some one's ghost. What the devil does it mean, Major?"
The Major shook his head. "I couldn't swear to the figure, sir, though it reminded me a bit--but that's impossible. However, as I have by your orders to ride back to the top, sir, and see what can be done to hold it, I'll dip over a bit to where the rush was made, and see if there is any clue."
He had not to go so far. For in one of those tiny hollows in the level plateau of pass, whence the snow melts early, leaving a carpet of blue forget-me-nots and alpine primroses behind it, he, Sergeant Jones, and the small party going to make security still more secure, came upon Peroo, the water-carrier, trying to perform a tearful travesty of the burial service over the body of George Afford.
It was dressed in Sergeant Jones' tunic and Major Griffiths' putties, but the Sergeant knelt down beside it, and smoothed the stripes upon the cuff with a half-mechanical, half-caressing touch, and the Major interrupted Peroo's protestations with an odd tremor in his voice.
"What the devil does it matter," he said sharply, "what he took besides the pass? Stand aside, man; this is my work, not yours. Sergeant! form up your men for the salute--ball cartridge."
The Major's recollection of the service for the burial of the dead was not accurate, but it was comprehensive. So he committed the mortal remains of his brother soldier to the dust, confessing confusedly that there is a natural body and a spiritual body--a man that is of the earth earthy, and one that is the Lord from heaven. So following on a petition to be saved from temptation and delivered from evil, the salute startled the echoes, and they left George Afford in the keeping of the pass, and the pass in his keeping. And as the Major rode campwards, he wondered vaguely if some one before the great white throne wore a bad-character suit, or whether wisdom understood the plea, "I've had a very chequered life, I have indeed."
But Peroo had no such thoughts; needed no such excuse. It was sufficient for him that the Huzoor had once been the protector of the poor.
It was in a little lath-and-plaster house down by the river that it all happened. The veriest confection of a house, looking for all the world as if it were a Neapolitan ice. Strawberry and vanilla in alternate stripes, with shuttered windows of coffee, and a furled wafer of an awning over the filagree chocolate balcony. And it rested, so to speak, against a platter of green plantain-leaves, bright as any emerald. No doubt the trees belonging to the leaves grew somewhere to the back or the side of it, but from the wide street in front you could see nothing but the green leaves surrounding the ice-cream.
For the rest it was a three-storeyed house outwardly; inwardly a two-storeyed one; or to be strictly accurate, it consisted of a storey and a half, since the further half of the ground floor and the whole of the middle storey belonged to a different house, having a different entrance in a different street, which lay in a different quarter. A very respectable quarter indeed, whereas the less said about the morals of the wide street down by the river the better. They were so bad that the modesty of the middle storey did not permit of a single window whence they could be seen. And this gave the house a queer, half-hearted look, for the top storey, and that half of the lowest one which belonged to it, were full of windows and doors opening on to the broad path leading to destruction. There were five, with fretted wooden architraves filling up the whole of the ground floor, so that you could see straight into the long, shallow hall whence there was no exit save by a narrow slit in the middle, showing a dim, steep staircase. It was always empty, this hall, though it was carpeted with striped carpets, and painted elaborately in flowery arabesques of a dull, pale, pink and flaming crimson; an odd mixture reminding you vaguely of bloodstains on a rose-leaf. And there was a red lamp over the centre door, which sent a rosy redness into the growing dusk; for it was lit early.
So was the pale--the palest of green lights--on the top storey which you could see swinging from the roof when the coffee-ice shutters were thrown back as the evening breeze came down the river. It was pale, yet bright like the first star at sunsetting.
And sometimes, but not often, if you watched in the early dusk you might see the owner of the ice-cream house flit across the open window. She was like a sugar-drop herself, rose or saffron decked with silver leaf, a slender scrap of a creature who tinkled as she walked and gave out a perfume of heavy scented flowers. But this was seldom; more often you only heard the tinkle, either of silver or laughter, since Burfâni--for that was her name--was of those who barter the one for the other. It was in truth her hereditary trade, though neither her father nor her mother had practised it; their rôle in life having been that of pater and mater-familias. A very necessary one if the race is to survive, and so in this generation, also, her brother had undertaken the duty of marrying his first cousin. The young couple being now, in the privacy and propriety of the second storey, engaged in bringing up a fine family of girls to succeed to the top storey when Burfâni's age should drive her to a lower place in life. In the meantime, however, she allowed them so much a month; enough to enable idle Zulfkar to fight quail in the bazaars and keep his wife Lâzîzan in the very strictest seclusion--as befitted one filched from the profession of bartering smiles in order to fulfil the first duty of a woman--the rearing of babes.
Thus, in more ways than one, the house was conglomerate. On the side overlooking the broad path there was the stained rose-leaf hall, empty, swept, and garnished, and the dark stair leading up and up to the wandering star of a lamp twinkling out into the sunset amid the sound of laughter and money. On the side giving upon narrow respectability a hall full of household gear and dirt where the little girls played, and a dark stair leading to a darker room where Lâzîzan sat day after day bewailing her sad fate; for, of course, life would have been much gayer over the way, since she was a beautiful woman. Far more beautiful in a lavish, somewhat loud fashion, than the lady belonging to the ice-cream house with her delicate, small face; but that was the very reason why she had been chosen out from many to carry on the race as it ought to be carried on. Burfâni, of course, was clever, and that counted for much, but it never did in their profession to rely on brains above looks. Nevertheless Lâzîzan, when in a bad temper, was in the habit of telling herself that if she had been taught to sing and dance, as the little lady had been taught, she could have made the ice-cream house a more paying concern than it was--to judge by the pittance they received from it! And this angry complaint grew with her years until as she sat suckling her fourth child, she felt sometimes as if she could strangle it, even though it was a boy, and though as a rule she was an affectionate mother. In truth the sheer animal instinct natural to so finely developed a creature lasted out the two or three years during which her children were hers alone; after that, when they began crawling downstairs and playing in the hall where she might never go, she became jealous and then forgot all about them.
Nevertheless, the boy being only some nine months old when he was suddenly carried off by one of those mysterious diseases common to Indian children, she wept profusely, and told Burfâni--who, as in duty bound, came round decently swathed in a burka to offer condolence on hearing of the sad event--that some childless one had doubtless cast a shadow on him for his beauty's sake, seeing that--thank Heaven!--all her children were beautiful. There was always a militant flavour underlying the politeness of these two, and even the presence of the quaint little overdressed dead baby awaiting its bier on the bed did not prevent attack and defence.
"They favour thee, sister," replied Burfâni, suavely. "In mind also, to judge from what I see. Therefore I shall await God's will in the future ere I choose one to educate."
Lâzîzan tittered sarcastically, despite her half-dried tears.
"'Tis my choice first, nevertheless. The best of this bunch in looks--ay, in brains too, perchance--marries my brother's son, according to custom. Sure my mother chose thus, and I must do the same, sister."
She spoke evenly, though for the moment the longing to strangle something had transferred itself to the saffron-coloured sugar-drop all spangled with silver which had emerged from its chrysalis of a burka. What business had the poor thin creature with such garments when her beauty was hidden by mere rags?
Burfâni laughed in her turn; an easy, indifferent laugh, and stretched out her slim henna-dyed palm with the usual friendly offering of cardamoms.
"Take one, sister," she said soothingly, "they are good for spleen and excessive grief. Hai! Hai! thou wilt be forlorn, indeed, now thy occupation is gone."
Lâzîzan, with her mouth full of spices, tittered again more artificially than ever. "I can do other things, perchance, beside suckle babes. Maybe I weary of it, and am glad of a change."
The saffron-coloured sugar-drop, seated on a low stool in front of the white-sheeted bed with its solemn little gaily-dressed burden, looked at its companion distastefully through its long lashes, and the slender, henna-dyed hand, catching some loops of the jasmine chaplets it wore, held them like a bouquet close to the crimson-tinted lips.
"It is a virtuous task, my sister," quoth Burfâni, gravely sniffing away at the heavy perfume, as if she needed something to make her environment less objectionable. "Besides, it is ever a mistake to forsake the profession of one's birth--"
"And wherefore should I?" interrupted Lâzîzan, seizing her opportunity recklessly. "Hast thou forsaken it, and are we not sisters?"
Again a cold, critical look of dislike came from the long, narrow eyes with their drowsy lids.
"Such words are idle, sister. Forget them. Thou wouldst not find it easier--"
"How canst tell?" interrupted Lâzîzan once more. "As well say that thou couldst put up with my life."
The saffron and silver daintiness shifted its look towards the bed, and the henna-dyed hand straightened a wrinkle in the sheet softly.
"God knows!" she said with a sudden smile. "Anyhow, sister, 'tis not wise to change one's profession as one grows old."
As one grows old! This parting shot rankled long after the decent burka had slipped like a shadow through the swept and garnished hall, and so up the dark stairs to the wandering starlight shining feebly out into the sunset; long after the preacher and the bier, and the family friends had carried the gaily-dressed baby to its grave, leaving the mother to the select and secluded tears of her neighbours; long after the little girls, wearied out with excitement, had fallen asleep cuddled together peacefully, innocent of that choice in the future; long after Zulfkar, full of liquor, tears, and curses, due to a surplusage in the funeral expenses allowed by Burfâni, to parental grief, and to bad luck at cards, came home, desirous of sympathy. He got none, for Lâzîzan, despite her seclusion, had never lost the empire which he felt she deserved as the handsomest woman he knew. 'Twas his own fault, she said curtly; he could marry another wife, have more liquor, and gamble as much as he liked if he chose. It was but a question of money, and if he were content to put up with beggarly alms from his sister, that ended the matter.
Whereupon, being in the maudlin stage of drink, he wept still more.
It must have been fully three months after the baby's funeral procession had gone down the respectable street, and so by a side alley found its way into the broad path leading alike to destruction and the graveyard, that Burfâni went round to her sister-in-law's again. This time she was in pink and silver, like a rose-water ice, and her words were cold as her looks.
"Say what thou wilt, Lâzîzan, the youth lingers. Have I not windows to my house? Have I not eyes? And such things shall not be bringing disgrace to respectable families."
Lâzîzan tittered as usual: "Lo! what a coil, because an idle stranger lingers at the back instead of the front, 'Tis for thy sake doubtless, sister, though thou art unkind. I wonder at it, seeing he is not ill-favoured."
"So thou hast seen him! So be it. See him no more, or I tell Zulfkar."
"Tell him what? That thou hast cast eyes on a handsome stranger, and because he comes not to thy call wouldst fasten the quarrel upon me? Zulfkar is no fool, sister, he will not listen!"
"If he listen not, he can leave my house--for 'tis mine. And mark my words, Lâzîzan Bibi, no scandal comes nigh it."
Cæsar's wife could not have spoken with greater unction, and in good sooth she meant her words, since in no class is seclusion bound to be more virtuous than in that to which Burfâni belonged.
So, as the motes in the sunbeam of life danced along the broad path in front of the ice-cream house, and drifted up its dark stair, the painted and perfumed little lady under the pale green lamp kept an eye upon the virtue of her family. Thus ere long it came to be Zulfkar's turn to listen to his sister's warning, and as he listened he sucked fiercely, confusedly, at the inlaid hookah which stood for the use of approved visitors; for in good sooth there had been more money to spend of late, and Lâzîzan was discreet enough save to those watchful, experienced eyes. The sound of his hubblings and bubblings therefore was his only answer, and they filled the wide, low, white-plastered upper storey, frescoed round each coffee-shuttered window with flowery devices, until Burfâni lost patience, and began coldly:
"Hast been taking lessons of a camel, brother?" she asked, rustling the tinsel-decked fan she held; and then suddenly she seemed to grasp something, and the contemptuous indifference of her bearing changed to passionate anger. Her silver-set feet clashed as they touched the floor, and she rose first to a sitting posture, finally to stand before the culprit, the very personification of righteous wrath.
"So! thou hast taken gold! This is why thou canst ruffle with the best at Gulâbun's--base-born parvenu who takes to the life out of wickedness--as she hath done, bringing disgrace to the screened house where thy mother dwelt in decency. But thou dwellest there no longer--thou eatest no bread of mine--I will choose my pupil from another brood."
"Nay, sister, 'tis not proved," stammered Zulfkar.
"Not proved!" she went on still more passionately. "Nay, 'tis not proved to thy neighbours, maybe, but to me? Mine eyes have seen--I know the trick--and out thou goest. I will have no such doings in my house, and so I warned her months ago. But there! what need for railing? Live on her gold an thou wiliest, it shall not chink beside mine."
She sank back upon the silk coverlet again, and with a bitter laugh began to rustle the tinsel fan once more. And Zulfkar, after unavailing protests, slunk down the dark stairs, and so along the street to a certain house over the liquor-seller's shop, about which a noisy crowd gathered all day long.
And that night screams and blows came from the second storey, and unavailing curses on the mischief-maker. But if the latter heard them, she gave no sign to the approved visitors drinking sherbets in the cool upper storey with the windows set wide to the stars.
It was Zulfkar beating his wife, of course, because she was so handsome primarily; secondly, because she had been foolish enough to be found out; thirdly, because even in liquor he was sharp enough to recognise that Burfâni would keep her word.
And she did. The supplies stopped from that day. Within a week the second storey lay empty, while Lâzîzan wept tears of pain and spite in a miserable little lodging in the very heart of the city. It is difficult even to hint at the impotent rage the woman felt towards her sister-in-law. Even Zulfkar's blows were forgotten in the one mad longing to revenge herself upon the pink-and-saffron daintiness which would not spare one crumb from a full table. For so to Lâzîzan's coarse, passionate nature the matter presented itself, bringing with it a fierce delight at the perfections of her own lover. He had deserted her for the time, it is true, but that was the way of lovers when husbands were angry; by-and-by he would come back, and there would be peace, since Zulfkar must have gold.
So ran her calculations; but she reckoned without a certain fierce intolerance which the latter shared with his sister; also somewhat prematurely on an immediate emptying of his pockets. But luck was not all against him; the cards favoured him. And so, when a few days after the flitting from the second storey, she, being sick to death of dulness, thought the time had come for self-assertion, she found herself mistaken. Zulfkar, still full of Dutch courage, fell upon her again, and beat her most unmercifully, finishing up with an intimidatory slash at her nose. It was not much, not half so serious as the beating, but the very thought of possible disfigurement drove her mad, and the madness drove her to a corner where she could plan revenge while Zulfkar slept heavily--for he was more than half drunk. And this, too, was the fault of the saffron-and-rose devil in the upper storey, who had her amusement and spied upon other women's ways. And this meant days more ere she, Lâzîzan, would be presentable, even if she did not carry the mark to her grave, and all because that she-devil was jealous--jealous of her lover!
Oh for revenge! And why not? The door was unlatched, since Zulfkar had forgotten it in his anger; the streets were deserted. Even the broad path down by the river would be asleep, the green light gone from above, only the red lamp swinging over the outer door, sending a glow.... Fire! The thought leapt to her brain like a flame itself. Why not? Zulfkar had purposely kept--all unbeknown to the she-devil--a second key to that empty second floor, and he was in a drunken sleep. If she stole it--if she took the bottle of paraffin--if she set fire to the wooden partition separating the stairs--if she broke the red lamp and pretended that was it--
She did not stop to think. She had begun the task almost before she had thought out the details, and was fumbling in Zulfkar's pockets as he lay. And there were two bottles of paraffin in the corner; that was because he had brought one home, and the market-woman another by mistake. So much the better, so much the bigger blaze. Then out into the street, not forgetting a box of safety matches--strange companions to such a task. She knew her way well, having wandered free enough as a child before the lot was drawn, the die cast which sent her to suckle babes. Yet, being a woman beset by a thousand superstitious fears, it needed all her courage ere she found herself face to face with the thin wooden partition surrounding the steep stair leading upwards. How many times had she not listened to feet ascending those unseen stairs, and heard the tinkle of laughter as the unseen door above opened?
Well, it would blaze finely, and cut off at once all means of escape. A devilish plan indeed, and the leaping flames, ere she left them to their task, showed the face of a fiend incarnate.
And so to wait for the few minutes before the whole world must know that the saffron and the rose daintiness was doomed. No more laughter--no more lovers--that would be for her, Lâzîzan, not for the other with her cold sneers.
A licking tongue of flame showed for an instant and made her pray Heaven none might see it too soon. Then a crackle, a puff of smoke, next a cry of fire, but, thank Heaven, only from the broad path. And what good were the running feet, what good the shouts of the crowd in which her shrouded figure passed unnoticed, unless the upper storey had wings? For the stairs must be gone--hopelessly gone--by this time.
More than the stairs, for with one sudden blaze the lath-and-plaster house seemed to melt like ice itself before the sheet of flame which the soft night wind bent riverwards.
And still the top storey slept, or was it suffocated? No! there was some one at the window--some one gesticulating wildly. A man--not a woman.
"Throw yourself down!" cried an authoritative foreign voice, "'tis your only chance."
Surely, since the ice melted visibly during the sudden hush which fell upon the jostling crowd.
"Throw yourself down!" came the order again; "we'll catch you if we can. Stand back, good people."
"Quick! it's your last chance," came the inexorable voice once more. Then there was a leap, a scream--a crash, as in his despair the man overleapt the mark and fell among the parting crowd. Fell right at Lâzîzan's feet face uppermost.
And it was the face of the handsome stranger--of her lover.
Her shriek echoed his as she flung herself beside him. And at the sound something white and ghostlike slipped back from the window with a tinkle of laughter.
"Burfâni! Burfâni!" shouted the crowd. "Drop gently--we'll save you! Burfâni! Burfâni!"
But there was no answer; and the next moment with a roar and a crash Vice fell upon Virtue, and both together upon the swept and garnished hall and the hall where the little girls had played.
The ice-cream house had become a blazing pile of fire.
Shâhbâsh, Bhaiyan, Shâhbâsh!
The words, signifying "Bravo, boys, bravo!" came in a despondent drawl from the coolie leaning against the ladder--one of those crazy bamboo ladders with its rungs tied on with grass twine at varying slants and distances, whereon the Indian house-decorator loves to spend long days in company with a pot of colour-wash and a grass brush made from the leavings of the twine.
There were two such ladders in the bare, oblong, lofty room, set round with open doors and windows, and on each was balanced a man, a pot, and a brush--all doing nothing. So was the coolie below.
He was a small, slight man, with a dejected expression. Stark naked, save for two yards or so of coarse muslin wisped about his short hair and a similar length knotted about his middle. What colour either had been originally could not be guessed, since both were completely covered with splashes of colour-wash--blue, green, yellow, and pink. So was his thin body, which, as he stood immovable at the bottom of the ladder, looked as if it was carved out of some rare scagiola.
For they were doing up the hospital in Fort Lawrence, and Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, of the 10th Sikh Pioneers--then engaged in making military roads over the Beloochistan frontier--had an eye for colour. Not so, however, Surgeon-Major Pringle, who that very morning had marched in with the detachment of young English recruits which had been sent to take possession of the newly enlarged fort. It was a queer mud building, looking as if it were a part of the mud promontory which blocked a sharp turn in the sun-dried, heat-baked mud valley, through which the dry bed of a watercourse twisted like the dry skin of a snake. Everything dry, everything mud, baked to hardness by the fierce sun. It was an ugly country in one way, picturesque in another, with its yawning fissures cracking the mud hills into miniature peaks and passes, its almost leafless flowering shrubs, aromatic, honeyful, and its clouds of painted butterflies. A country in which colour was lost in sheer excess of sunshine.
That, however, was not the reason why Surgeon-Captain O'Brien had painted his wards to match Joseph's coat. As he explained to Surgeon-Major Pringle, who, as senior officer, took over charge, it was wiser, in his opinion--especially with youngsters about--to call wards by the colour of their walls rather than by the diseases to be treated in them; since if a patient "wance found out what was really wrong with his insoide, he was sure to get it insthanter."
The Surgeon-Major, fresh from England and professional precisions--fresh also to India and its appeals to the imagination--had felt it impossible to combat such statements seriously. Besides, there was no use in doing so. The walls were past remedy for that year, and even the post-mortem house--that last refuge of all diseases--was being washed bright pink; a colour which, according to Terence O'Brien, was "a nice, cheerful tint, that could not give annyone, not even a corpse, the blues."
In the course of which piece of work the small man at the foot of the ladder was becoming more and more like a statue in rosso antico, as he repeated: "Shâhbâsh, bhaiyan, shâhbâsh!" at regular intervals.
His voice had no resonance, and not an atom of enthusiasm about it; but, like a breeze among rain-soaked trees, it always provoked a pitter-patter of falling drops--a patter of pink splashes like huge tears--upon the concrete floor and the scagiola figure. For the words set the brushes above moving slowly for a while; then the spasm of energy passed, all was still again, until a fresh "Bravo, boys, bravo!" was followed by a fresh shower of pink tears.
"Lazy brutes!" came a boy's voice from the group of young recruits who were enjoying a well-earned rest after having marched in fifteen miles, carrying their kits as if they had been born with them, and settling down into quarters as if they were veterans. For they were smart boys, belonging to a smart regiment, whose recruiting ground lay far from slums and scums; one whose officers were smart also, and kept up the tone of their men by teaching them a superior tolerance for the rest of the world. "Jest look at that feller--like an alley taw. He ain't done a blessed 'and's turn since I began to watch 'im." They were seated on some shady mud steps right over against the hospital compound, and the post-mortem house being separate from the wards, and having all its many windows and doors set wide, the inside of it was as plainly visible as the out.
"Rum lot," assented another voice with the same ring of wholesome self-complacency in it. "I arst one of the Sickees, as seems a decent chap for a nigger and knows a little decent lingo, wot the spotted pig was at with his everlastin' shabbashes, an' 'e says it's to put courage to the Johnnies up top. Not that I don't say I shouldn't cotton myself much to them ladders, that's more like caterpillars than a decent pair o' 'ouse-steps. A poor lot--that's wot they are, as doesn't know the differ in holt between a nail and a bit o' twine."
"Well, mates," said a third voice, "all I can say is that if they ain't got no more courage than shâhbâsh can put to them, it's no wonder we licks the blooming lot of them--as we does constant."
There was a faint laugh first, and then the group sucked at their pipes decisively as they watched the doings in the post-mortem. Though they would have scouted the suggestion, the shâhbâsh wallah had justified his calling; for patriotism brings courage with it.
He did not trouble his head about justification, however. Some one, in his experience, always did the shouting, and it suited him better than more active occupation, for he was lame; stiff, too, in his back. Surgeon-Major Pringle, coming in later to find the post-mortem very much as it had been hours before, looked at him distastefully, and began a remark about what two English workmen could have done, which Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien interrupted with his charming smile: "Sure, sir, the sun rises a considerable trifle airlier East than West, an' that's enough energy for wan hemisphere. Besides, ye can't get on in India without a shâhbâsh wallah. Or elsewhere, for that matter. Ye always require 'the something not ourselves which makes for righteousness'--"
"Makes for fiddlesticks!" muttered the senior under his breath, adding aloud, "Who the dickens is the shâhbâsh wallah when he is at home, and what's his work?" He asked the question almost reluctantly, for his junior's extremely varied information had, since the morning, imparted a vague uncertainty to a round world which had hitherto, in Dr. Pringle's estimation of it, been absolutely sure--cocksure!
"What is he? Oh! he's a variety of names. He's objective reality, moral sanction, antecedent experience, unconditioned good. Ye can take yer choice of the lot, sir; and if ye can't win the thrick with metaphysics--I can't, and that's the thruth--play thrumps. Sentiment!--sympathy! Ye can't go wrong there. Ye can't leave them out of life's equation, East or West. Just some one--a fool, maybe--to say ye're a fine fellow, an' no misthake, at the very moment whin ye know ye're not. Biogenesis, sir, is the Law of Life. As Schopenhauer says, the secret that two is wan, is the--"
His senior gave an exasperated sigh, and preferred changing the subject. So at the appointed time, no sooner, no later, the last patter of pink tears fell from the brushes upon the floor of the post-mortem and upon the still figure, which might have been a corpse save for its drowsy applause--"Bravo, boys, bravo!" Then the caterpillar ladders, with the decorators and the pots of colour-wash and the brushes still attached to them, crawled away, and the shâhbâsh wallah followed in their wake, his skin bearing mute evidence to the amount of work he had provoked.
His turban and waistcloth testified to it for days--in lessening variety of tint as the layers of pink, green, blue, and yellow splashes wore off--for at least a fortnight, during which time Surgeon-Major Pringle, busy in making all things conform to his ideal, constantly came across the shâhbâsh wallah bestowing praise where, in the doctor's opinion, none was deserved. What right, for instance, had the water-carriers filling their pots, the sweepers removing the refuse, to senseless commendation for the performance of their daily round, their common task?
Especially when it was so ill performed; even in the matter of punkah-pulling, a subject on which the native might be credited with some knowledge. Surgeon-Major Pringle seethed with repressed resentment for days over the intermittent pulse of the office punkah, and finally, in a white heat of discomfort and indignation, burst out into the verandah, harangued the coolie at length, and in the fulness of Western energy went so far as to show him how to keep up a regular, even swing. His masterly grasp of a till then untouched occupation not only satisfied himself but also the shâhbâsh wallah, who, as usual, was lounging about in the verandah doing nothing. So, of course, his "Shâhbâsh, jee, shâhbâsh," preceded Surgeon-Major Pringle's hasty return to the office and prepared Terence O'Brien for the dictum that the offender must be sent about his business; for if he was a camp-follower he must have some business, some regular work.
"Worrk, is it?" echoed Terence with his charming smile of pure sympathy. "Be jabers! yes. Worrk--plenty, but not regular, as a rule. The man's a torch-bearer. If it happens to be a dark night, and annybody wants a dhooli, he carries the torch for it."
Dr. Pringle's resentful surprise made him stutter: "Do you mean to say that--that--that--that--the public money--the ratepayers' money--is wasted in entertaining a whole man for so trivial a task?"
"Trivial, is it? When he's a pillar of fire by night an' a cloud of witnesses by day? And then he isn't a whole man, sir, at all at all. Wan of his legs is shorter than the other. I had to break it twice, sir, to get it as straight as it is. Thin, I've grave doubts about his spinal column; and as I trepanned him myself, I know his head isn't sound. It was two ton of earth fell on him, sir, last rains, when he was givin' a drink to wan of the Sikhs that got hurt blasting. It's nasty, shifty stuff, sir, is the mud in these low hills--nasty silted alluvial stuff, with a bias in it. So, poor divvle! seeing he wasn't fit for much but the hospital, I put him to the staff of it. And he kapes things going. Indeed, I wouldn't take it upon myself to say that he doesn't do the native patients as much good as half the drugs I exhibit to the unfortunate craythurs, since for sheer mystherious dispensations of Providence commend me to the British pharmacopœia."
Once again Surgeon-Major Pringle felt that professional dignity could best be served by silent contempt, and orders that the offender was, at least, not to loaf about the verandahs.
But the fates were against the fiat. In the moonless half of May, driest of all months, a Hindu returning from Hurdwar fell sick, and half-an-hour after the report, Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, going out of the ward with his senior, paused in his cheerful whistling of "Belave me, if all those endearing young charms," to say under his breath, "Cholera, mild type." Now cholera, no matter of what type, has an ugly face when seen for the first time, especially when the face which looks into it, wondering if it means life or death, has youth in its eyes. So in the dark nights the dhooli came into requisition, and with it the torch-bearer, until the green and the blue and yellow wards overflowed into the verandahs, and even the pink post-mortem claimed its final share of boys. Not a large one, however, since, as Terence O'Brien said, "It was wan of those epidemics when ye couldn't rightly say a man had cholera till he died of it."
It was bad enough, however, to make the Surgeon-Major, who had never seen one before, set to work when it passed, suddenly as it had come, to cipher out averages, and tabulate treatments, with a view to what is called future guidance. And so, as he confided to his assistant with great complacency, it became clear as daylight that the largest percentage of recoveries, their rapidity, and as a natural corollary the incidence of mildness in the attack itself, seemed in connection with the position of the cots. Those close to the doors, or actually on the verandahs, were the most fortunate, and so he was inclined to believe in the value of currents of fresh air.
"Fresh air, is it?" echoed Terence, with an encouraging smile. "Maybe; maybe not. God knows, it may be anything in the wide wurrld, since there's but wan thing you can bet your bottom dollar on in cholera, sir, and that is that ye can't tell anything about it for certain, and that your experience of wan epidemic won't be that of the next."
"Neither does your experience, Mr. O'Brien," retorted his senior, sarcastically, "militate against mine being more fortunate. I mean to leave no stone unturned to arrive at reliable data on points which appear to me to have been overlooked. For instance, I shall begin by asking those cases of recovery if they remember anything which seemed at the time to bring them relief, to stimulate in them that vitality which it is so essential to preserve."
In pursuance of which plan he went out then and there to the verandah, where a dozen or more lank boys were lounging about listlessly, just beginning to feel that life might soon mean more than a grey duffle dressing-gown and a long chair.
"No, sir," said the first, firmly. "I disremember anythin' that done me good. I jest lay with a sickenin' pain in my inside, an' a don't-care-if-I-do feelin' outside." He paused, and another boy took up the tale sympathetically.
"So it was. A reg'lar, don't-care except w'en that little 'eathen--'im that's always saying shâhbâsh, sir, come along; an' that seem to me most times. 'E made me feel a blamed sight--beggin' pardon, sir--worse. For I kep' thinkin' of where I see 'im first, like a alley taw in the dead 'ouse; and the dead 'ouse isn't a cheerful sorter think w'en you ain't sure but wot you're going there. It made me--" he paused in his turn.
"Made you what?" asked Terence O'Brien, who had followed to listen.
"Give me the 'orrors, sir, till I'd 'ave swopped all I knew to kick 'im quiet; but not bein' able, I jest lay and kep' it for 'im against I could, till it seemed like as I must; an' so I will."
"In cases of extreme nervous depression, sir," began the junior, mischievously, "a counter irritant--"
"Pshaw!" interrupted Dr. Pringle, angrily, and walked back with great dignity to the office.
But the conversation thus started lingered among the grey dressing-gowns, the result of comparing notes being a general verdict that "Alley taw" deserved that kicking. He did not actually get it, however; the boys were too big, and he too small for that. But he sank into still greater disrepute, becoming, in truth, that most unenviable of all things not made nor created, but begotten of idle wit--a garrison butt. Not that he seemed to care much. He grew more furtive in his lounging, but nothing seemed to disturb the divine calm of his commendation for the world which he had created for himself with his "Bravo, boys, bravo!" Behold, all things in it were very good! That, at least, was Terence O'Brien's fanciful way of looking at the position. As he went about his work whistling "Belave me, if all those endearing young charms"--a tune which, he said, cheered the boys--he would often pause to smile at the shâhbâsh wallah. After a time, however, the smile would change to a quick narrowing of the eyes, as if something in the bearing of the man was puzzling. Finally, one day, coming upon the man sidling along a bit of brick wall, which had been built to strengthen a crack in the mud one overhanging the dry watercourse, he pulled up, asked a few rapid questions, and then lifted the man's eyelids and peered into the soft brown eyes, as if he wanted to see through them to a crack he knew of in the back of the man's skull.
"And you are sure you see as well as ever?" he asked again.
"Quite as well, Huzoor," came the answer, with a faint tremor in it. "I can see to carry the torch on the darkest of nights if it is wanted, Huzoor!"
"Hm!" said Dr. O'Brien, doubtfully, promising himself to test the truth of this statement. But the fates again decreed otherwise. The next day's mail brought orders for him to go and act elsewhere for a senior on two months' leave.
Dr. Pringle was not sorry. How could you collaborate properly with a man who calmly admitted that at a pinch he had used a bullet-mould to extract a tooth?
The monsoon had long since broken in the plains ere the young doctor returned; but in the arid tract in which Fort Lawrence lay rain came seldom at any time. And that was a year of abnormal drought. The fissures in the mud seemed to widen with the heat, and the fringe of green oleanders which followed every turn of the dry watercourse, mutely witnessing to unseen moisture below, wilted and drooped. In the new-built fort itself a crack or two showed in the level platform jutting out across the low valley on which the building stood, and in more than one place portions of the low mud-cliffs crumbled and broke away. The whole earth, indeed, seemed agape with thirst.
But water in plenty came at last. On the very day, in fact, when Terence O'Brien returned to the fort, which he reached on foot, having had to leave his dhooli behind, owing to a small slip on the road; nevertheless, as he crossed over from the mess to his quarters close to the hospital that evening, he told himself that he had the devil's own luck to be there at all. For the rain was then hitting the hard ground with a distinct thud, and spurting up from it in spray, showing white against the black mirk of the night. And the rush of the stream filling up the dry bed of the watercourse, and playing marbles with the boulders, was like a lion's roar.
It did not keep him awake, however, for he was dead tired. So he slept the sleep of the just. For how long he did not know. It was darker than ever when he woke suddenly--why he knew not, and with the same blind instinct was out into the open, quick as he could grope his way.
Not an instant too soon, either. A deafening crash told him that, though he could not see his own hand. The rain had ceased, but the rush of the river dulled hearing to all lesser sounds. As he stood dazed, he staggered, slipped, almost fell. Was that an earthquake, or was the solid ground parting somewhere close at hand? And if his house was down, how about the hospital and the sick folk?
He turned at the thought and ran till, in the dark and the silence of that overwhelming roar, he came full tilt upon some one else running in the dark also. It was the Surgeon-Major.
"The hospital's down. Have you a light--anything--a match?" panted Dr. Pringle. "We must have a light to see--"
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!" (Oh, the torch! Oh, the torch-bearer!) shouted Terence at the top of his voice as he ran on till stopped by something blocking the way. Ruins! And that was the sound of voices.
"What's up?" he cried.
"Don' know, sir," came from unseen hearers. "Part o' the 'orspital's down, but we can't see. It's a slide o' some sort, for there's a crack right across nigh under our feet. If we could get a light!"
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!" The doctor's voice rang out again towards the camp-followers' lines, but the roar was deafening. And in the night, when all men are asleep, the news of disaster travels slowly. Yet without a light it was impossible even to realise what had happened, still less to help the sick who might lie crushed.
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!--thank God! there's a light at last."
There was, in the far distance across the quadrangle. But it was not a torch; it was only an officer in a gorgeous sleeping-suit running with a bedroom candle. Still it was a light!
"Come on, man!" shouted Terence O'Brien, as it slackened speed, paused, stopped dead. His was the only voice that seemed to carry through the roar.
But the gay sleeping-suit stood still, waving its candle.
"It's the crack, sir," called some one in Terence O'Brien's ear. "It goes right across, I expect--we'd best find out first."
It did. A yawning fissure, twenty feet wide, had cut the hospital compound in two, and isolated one angle of the fort--that nearest the river--from the rest. Twenty feet wide, at least, judged by the glimmer of light! And how deep? Had the river cut it? Was it only a matter of time when the mud island on which they stood should be swept away? And what were the means of escape? There was more light now; more bedroom candles and sleeping-suits; a lamp or two, and others behind, as the boys--last to wake--came running, to pause like the first-comers, at the unpassable gulf; for the more it could be seen, the more difficult seemed the task of crossing it at once. By-and-by, perhaps, with ladders and ropes it would be possible--but now? Terence O'Brien, feeling the "now" imperative, skirted the crumbling edge almost too near for safety in his eagerness to find some foothold for a daring man; but there was none. True, the brick wall, built to strengthen the cracked mud one, still bridged the extreme end of the fissure, looking as if the mud had deliberately shrunk from its intrusion. It hung there half seen, on God knows what slender foundation--perhaps on none. But it could give no help. To trust it would be madness; a touch might send it down into the river below. No! Since none could cross the gap there must be more light on the farther side; torches, a bonfire, anything to pierce the dark and let men see how to help themselves and other men!
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee-ân!" The cry went out with all the force of his lungs. Surely the camp-followers must be awake by now.
One was, at any rate; for, surrounded by a halo from the faggot of blazing pitch-pine it carried, a figure showed upon the path worn, close to the mud walls of the native quarters, by the foot-tracks of those whose duty took them to the hospital. It was the shâhbâsh wallah, coming slowly, almost indifferently, in answer to the call; coming as if to his ordinary duty towards the growing fringe of ineffectual candles and eager men bordering the impossible. That was better! Given half-a-dozen more such haloes--and there were plenty if they would only come--and eager men on the other side would see how to help themselves and their comrades!
But no other halo appeared behind the one which followed the foot-track of others so closely; and so once again the call was given--
"Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee-ân! Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!"
"Hâzr, Huzoor!" (Present, sir).
The nearness of the voice made Terence O'Brien look up, for it was the first voice he had heard clearly from the other side against that roar of the river. But as he looked another voice beside him said hurriedly--
"My God! he's coming across!"
He was. Surrounded by the halo of his own light, and keeping religiously to the beaten path, the shâhbâsh wallah, leaving the mud wall of the quarters, had struck the outer brick one as it stood, supported for a few yards by a spit of earth upon which the foot-track showed as the light passed. A spit narrowing to nothing--no! not to nothing, but to a mere ledge of earth and mortar clinging like a swallow's nest to the brick--wider here, narrower there, yet still able to give faint foothold upon the traces of those feet which had passed and repassed so often to their trivial round, their common task. Foothold! Ay! But what of the brain guiding the feet? What of the courage guiding the brain?
And even then, what of the foundation?
A sort of murmur rose above the roar. "He can't do it--impossible--tell him. Call to him, O'Brien. Tell him not to try."
The doctor stood for one second watching the figure centring its circle of light against the background of wall; then, even though there was no need for it, his voice fell to a whisper. "Hush!" he said. "Don't hustle him. By the Lord who made me, he doesn't know; he's feeling his way every inch by the wall! He's blind, and by God! if anybody can do it, he will."
He did. Step by step, slowly, confidently, in the footsteps of others.
And the great cry of "Bravo, brother, bravo!" which went up from both sides of the gap as he and his torch stepped on to firm ground, brought him as much surprise as a voice from heaven might have done.