THE PERFUME OF THE ROSE

"I think we ought to be going back to the others," said the girl.

She was a pretty, fair English girl, fresh as a rose in her dainty pink muslin dress, flounced as they wore them in the mutiny year--in three full flounces to the waist, like the corolla of a flower. And the lace sunshade she held tilted over her shoulder as a protection against the slanting rays of the afternoon sun added to her rose-likeness by its calyx of pale green lining.

"Ought we?" said the young Englishman who walked beside her, his hand clasping hers. They were a good-looking pair, pleasant to behold. "What a bore; it is so jolly here."

The epithet was not happy, save as an expression of the speaker's frame of mind. For the garden into which these engaged lovers had wandered away from the gay party of English men and women who had taken possession of the marble summer-house in its centre for a picnic, or, as the natives call it, "a fool's dinner," was something more than jolly.

It was beautiful, this garden of a dead dynasty of kings past and gone like last year's roses.

But there were roses and to spare still within its high four-square walls that were hidden from each other by the burnished orange-groves, by the tall forest trees fringing its cross of wide marble aqueducts bordered by wide paths.

Such blossoming trees! The kachnar flinging its bare branches, set thick with its geranium flowers, against the creamy feathers waving among the dense dark foliage of the mangoes, the bakayun drooping its long lilac tassels beside the great gold ones of the umultâs, and here and there its whole vitality lavished on a monstrous leaf or two, a huge flower or two, white, curved, solid, as if cut in cold marble, yet with a warm fragrance at its heart, a hill magnolia challenged the scent of the roses below.

Ineffectually, at least here in this square of the garden; for that cross of wide, empty aqueducts divided it into squares.

And this one was a square of roses--roses everywhere, even in the lower level of what in the old kingly days had been a marble-edged water-way, which now, half filled with soil, held more roses.

But they were all of one kind--the pink Persian rose, whose outer petals pale in the sunlight, whose rose of roses heart is full of an almost piercing perfume.

What wonder, when it is the otto of roses rose! It grew here for that set purpose in orderly lines, its grey green, velvety leaves almost hidden by its profusion of flowers.

And the scent of them filled the whole square of garden, where the air, still warm from the past noon, lay prisoned in that fringe of blossoming trees.

It seemed to fill the brain, also, with the quintessence of gladness, beauty, life, and love.

So His arm sought Her waist and their eyes met.

But only for a second; the next, Her blush matching Her flounces, She had drawn back, and He with an angry frown was glaring in the direction of the voice which had interrupted them.

It was a high, clear voice full of little trills and bubblings like a bird's, and it sang on incessantly, as if to give those two time to recover from their confusion. And as it sang, the Persian vowels seemed as piercingly sweet as the perfume into which they echoed.

As the song ended, a head showed above the tufted bushes. It was rather a fine head; bare of covering, its long grizzled hair parted in the middle lying in a smooth outward curve on the high narrow forehead, then sweeping in an equal inside curve between the ear and throat. So much, no more, was to be seen above the roses, save, for a moment, a long-fingered, delicate brown hand hiding the face in its salaam.

"Who the shaitan are you?" asked the young man fiercely in Hindustani.

The head and hand met in a second salaam, then the face showed; rather a fine face, preternaturally grave, but with a cunning comprehension in its gravity.

"I am Hushmut the essence-maker, Huzoor," was the reply. "I belong to the garden, and, being hidden from the noble people in my occupation of plucking roses for my still, I sang to let them know."

The young Englishman gave a half-embarrassed laugh.

"What does he say?" asked the girl. She had only been two months in India, and these had been spent in falling in love.

"He thought we might like to know he was there, that's all--a joke, isn't it?" answered her lover. She smiled, and so holding each other's hands boldly they stood facing that head above the roses.

It nodded cheerfully.

"The Huzoors are doubtless about-to-marry persons," came the voice. "It is not always so, even with the Huzoors. But this being different, if they require essences for the bridal let them come to Hushmut. Rose, jasmine, orange, sandal, lemon grass. I make them all in their season. Yea, even 'wylet'^[4] which the memi love. It is not really banafsha, Huzoor; they grow not in the plains. I make it from the babul blossom, and none could tell the difference. Mayhap there is none, since He who makes the perfume of the flowers in His still, may send the same to many blossoms, as I send my essences to many lovers; even the noble people!"

There was distinct raillery in the last words, and the young Englishman's smile vanished.

"We people hold not with essences," he said curtly; adding to the girl, "Come, dear, I think we really ought to go back, your father will be wanting to go home--he has a lot of work, I know--"

A shuffle in the bushes made the lovers pause, a curious shuffle such as a wounded bird makes in its efforts to escape.

"If the most noble will tarry, this slave will at least make the luck-offering to the bride," came the voice again, and to point its meaning the delicate brown hand held up a circular shallow basket heaped with rose-petals. Heaped so lightly, that the hand held it level, and it seemed to glide on the top of the bushes, heralding the grizzled head which slid after it with a faintly undulating movement.

The cause of this became clear when the limit of the roses was reached.

Hushmut the essence-maker must have been a cripple from birth. The loose blue cloth, such as gardeners wear knotted round their loins like a petticoat, hid, however, all deformity, even when he clambered up the marble edge of the old water-way, and shuffled with sidelong jerks along the path to the pink muslin flounces.

The wearer's eyes grew soft suddenly. The mystery of such births came home to the woman who was so soon to be a wife, perhaps a mother.

She gave him a mother's look anyhow; the look of almost passionate pity a woman gives to a child's deformity.

Perhaps he saw it. Anyhow he paused; then, with his bold black eyes twinkling, held out the basket.

"A handful, Huzoor, for luck!" he cried.

The voice trilled and bubbled quite decorously, but the young Englishman intercepted a deliberate wink, and felt inclined to kick Hushmut to lower levels; till he remembered that the girl could not understand.

"Take a handful," he said, "and let's get rid of him." The girl obeyed, but, by mere chance, the little white hand with his ring on it did tuck its handful of pink rose-leaves away in the loose pink ruffles on her breast. Whereat Hushmut's approval became so unmistakable that the young Englishman felt that the only thing was to escape from it.

Yet as he hurried the girl back to the summerhouse he turned to listen to the essence-maker's voice as he went on with his song, and his rose-picking.

There was nothing to be seen now but the stunted grey green bushes half hidden in blossom; even the head had disappeared. They were a queer people, thought the young man, very difficult to understand. Then the refrain returned to him--

"Hushmut?" answered an older man who lounged smoking in one of the marble-fretted balconies of the dead King's pleasure-house. "Oh, yes! he is quite a character. A scoundrel, I believe; at least he knows all the worst lots in the city. They come to the garden at night, you see, and the bazaar women get all their essences from him. So I expect he knows at any rate of all the devilry that's going on. I wish I did." The speaker's face looked a trifle harassed.

"Is it true, sir, what they say?" asked another voice, "that Hushmut is really the King's son. That his mother was a Brahmin girl they kidnapped, who cried herself to death in one of these rooms. Then, when the child was a cripple, the King--by Jove, he was a brute!--disowned it."

"Is that about Hushmut?" asked the girl, who had joined the group in time to hear the last words.

The men looked at each other, and the older one said: "Yes, my dear; they say he was deserted by his parents because he was a cripple. Rather rough on him. Now I think I'll go and get your mother to come home. It's getting late. You'll follow, I suppose?"

"Yes, father, with him," she said, with a rose-blush.

So, by degrees, in couples, as a rule, but sometimes with a pale-faced child tucked into the carriage between father and mother, the pleasure-seekers left the garden of dead Kings to the scent of the roses. Left it cheerfully, calling back to their friends times and places where they were to meet again, as English men and women did on those fatal evenings in May, '57.

Only the girl in the pink frock and her lover lingered; while the dogcart in which he was to drive her home waited under the blossoming trees.

And as they stood talking, as lovers will, Hushmut the essence-maker, thinking the coast was clear, came shuffling down the scented shadow of the path--for the sun had left the garden--pushing his basket of rose-leaves before him, dragging his crippledom behind him.

"Do you think he would show us his still?" said the girl, suddenly. "I've never seen one. Ask him, will you?"

Hushmut's big, bold black eyes twinkled. Certainly the Miss-sahiba might see. There was no secret in his work. He took the scent as he found it, as wise men took love. Again there was that faint suspicion of raillery only to be pardoned by the girl's ignorance, and also by a conviction that Hushmut counted on that ignorance, and meant the remark only for the young Englishman. And so, oddly, the latter became conscious of a distinct antagonism between himself and the crippled essence-maker. It was absurd, ludicrous; but it existed, nevertheless.

There was not much to see in those vaults under the plinth of the pleasure-palace in which Hushmut had set up his distillery. They were very low, very dark, the only light coming through the open door, and from the row of rose-shaped air-holes pierced at intervals in the plinth. Viewed from outside, these formed part of its raised and pierced marble decoration. From within they looked quaint and flower-like, set as they were in the dim shadowy vault, hidden here and there by the dumpy columns, showing through the arches distantly, softly, brightly pink; for Hushmut had pasted pink paper over them, to keep out the bees and wasps, he explained, which otherwise, led by the scent of the flowers, came in troublesome numbers.

The rude still, like a huge cooking-pot, stood in one corner, and all about it lay trays on trays of fading rose-leaves.

"Pah! How sickly sweet! Let's get outside," said the young man after a brief glance round. But the girl stood looking curiously at a brownish-yellow mass piled beside the still.

"What is that?" she asked. Hushmut's black eyes turned to her comprehendingly. He shuffled to the pile and held out a sample for her to see. She bent to look at it.

"Rose-leaves!" she said. "Oh! I see--after scent has been taken out of them. Poor things! What a shame!"

Hushmut said something rapidly in Hindustani, and the girl turned to her companion for explanation.

"He says," translated the latter, with a curiously grudging note in his voice, "that they have their use. He dries them in the sun and burns them in the furnace of his still."

She shook her head and smiled. "That's poor compensation!" Then she bent closer and sniffed regretfully at what Hushmut held.

"All gone!" she said, so like a child that her lover laughed at her tenderly.

"What else did you expect, you goose!

'Only the actions of the just, smell sweet and blossom in the dust!'

So come; we really must be off; it's getting late."

He felt in his pocket, and held out a baksheesh to Hushmut; but the latter shook his head, and once more said something rapidly in Hindustani. It had a note of petition in it, but the request was apparently not to the hearer's taste. That was to be seen from his face.

"What does he want?" asked the girl, curiously.

"Nothing he is going to get," replied her lover, moving off; "the cheek of the man!"

But the pink muslin stood its ground. "What is it?" she persisted; "I want to know. He doesn't look to me as if he meant to be rude, and--and"--her face softened--"if it is anything we can do, I'd--I'd like to do it. Tell me, please."

The young fellow shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"Oh! only fooling! He wants you to give him back some of the rose-leaves he gave you, that he may put them in his new brew, to--to make it sweeter; says the luck-gift of a bride always does--"

The girl blushed and smiled all over.

"Well, why not? It is a pretty idea, anyhow." She drew out the handful of rose-leaves as she spoke, then paused with a faint wonder, for the warmth of their shelter had made their perfume almost bewildering.

"How--how sweet they are!" she murmured. Then, still smiling, but with the blush faded almost to paleness, she dropped the rose-leaves into the delicate, long-fingered hand.

"I hope it will be the sweetest essence you ever made," she said with a laugh, and Hushmut seemed to understand, for he smiled back and salaamed as he, in his turn, tucked the charm into his bosom for use when the still should be ready for closing, and as he did so, he said in his high, suave voice--

"May He who knows the secret of the rose protect the bride." He said it without the least suspicion of reality; simply as a dignified piece of courtesy.

A minute afterwards the wheels of that last dogcart, as it drove out of the garden, disturbed the birds which had already begun to choose their resting-places for the night; since they too looked for the usual rest and peace in that fatal Maytime.

And for a space the peace, the rest settled on the garden. Only Hushmut's voice, as he busied himself in packing the pink petals into his still, told of any life in it beyond the birds, the flowers, the bees.

One of these, belated, drifted into the vault through the open door, and hummed a background to the high, trilling voice.

Then a faint, almost noiseless patter of bare running feet paused at the door, and some one looked in to say breathlessly--

"It hath begun, they say. But who knows? I am off to the city to see."

Hushmut looked up startled from his rose-leaves; startled, nothing more.

"Begun!--so soon--wherefore?"

"God knows!" came the breathless voice. "Mayhap it is a lie. Some thought it would not come at all. I will return and tell thee the news."

The faint, almost noiseless patter of bare feet died away, and there was peace and rest in the garden for another space. Only Hushmut shuffled to the door, looked out curiously, then shuffled back to his work, for that must be finished before dark, else the roses would spoil, squandering their sweetness. There was another pile of brownish, yellow residuum ready dried for the furnace, and as he filled a basket with it, his hands among the scentless stuff, a sudden remembrance of his own impotence, his own deprivation, came to him. Perhaps he had seen a hint of the simile in the English girl's face.

He smiled half cynically and muttered--

"Only the dust of the rose remains for the perfume-seller."

He paused almost before the bit of treasured wisdom was ended. There was a sound of wheels; of a galloping horse's feet.

Some one was coming back to the garden. The next instant, through the open door, he saw two figures running; an Englishman, an English girl in a pink dress. The man's arm was round her as he ran; he looked back fearfully, then seemed to whisper something in her ear, and she gave answer back.

"What was it?" they said to each other. Hushmut knew by instinct.

He was thinking of the roof of the palace pleasure-house, of the winding stair that led to it, down which it would at least be possible to fling a foe, before the end came; and She was thinking of the marble plinth below, where, when that end came, a woman might find safety from men's hands in death.

So they came on through the growing shadows.

Hushmut shuffled to the door and watched the figures calmly, indifferently, as they neared him; for the way to the winding stair lay up the steps which rose just beyond the low door of his distillery in the plinth.

Perhaps the dusk hid him from those two; perhaps even in broad daylight they would not, in their fierce desire to reach not safety but resistance, have seen him.

They did not, anyhow; but as they passed the door the girl's muslin flounce caught hard on its lintel hasp, and as in frantic haste she stooped to rip it free, the scent of those rose-leaves Hushmut had given her, still lingering in the ruffles at her breast, seemed to pass straight back into those same rose-leaves in his own.

That was all, nothing more. But it brought back his last words to her: "May He who knows the secret of the rose protect the bride."

Strange!

The same instant his long-fingered brown hand was on her white one as she tugged at her dress.

"This way, Huzoor!" he cried in a loud voice, for the man to hear. "There is a secret passage here; it leads to safety."

Safety! That word, better than resistance, not to the man himself, but as sole guardian to the girl, arrested him in a second, tempted him.

He looked, hesitated, then dragged his charge on--dragged her from anything with a dark skin to it.

But her white one touching this dark one, found something in it to give confidence; or perhaps that fragrance of the flower from His still which "He sends to many blossoms," had passed from Hushmut's breast to hers, as hers had to Hushmut's. He knows, who knows the secret of the perfume of the rose.

Anyhow she hung back, and she called pitifully, clamorously--

"No! No! Let us trust him--let us take the chance."

There was no time for remonstrance.

The next second they were in the cool, scented darkness of the vault, with those pink air-holes showing like shadowy roses among the low arches, the squat pillars.

"At the farther end," came Hushmut's voice, amid his shuffling, till the latter ceased in the rasping of a chain unhasped. "Here, Huzoor, it leads to the Summer Palace beyond the garden wall. So by the mango groves to the Residency. May He who knows the secret of the perfume of the rose protect the bride."

His voice sounded hollow in their ears as they ran down the vaulted passage which opened before them, lit at intervals by those cunning air-holes hidden flowerfully in the scrollwork of one of the marble-edged aqueducts, and the closing door behind them blew a breath of the rose scent from the vault after their retreating figures.

* * * * *

Two years had passed. Nine long months spent in keeping a foe at bay; three in following that spent and broken foe to the bitter end; and then a year of English skies and English faces to dull the memory of that long strain to mind and body.

And then once more a young Englishman, with a girl in a pink dress, drove into that garden of dead Kings. But the four-square wall was in ruins. It had been a rallying-point of that spent and broken foe.

The garden itself was neglected, the roses unpruned. And those two were changed also, and an ayah holding a baby remained in the hired carriage which they left waiting for them under the blossoming trees, as the dogcart had waited that May evening two years before.

"I'm afraid he must have thought us awfully ungrateful," said the man, regretfully. "But it couldn't be helped at first; then afterwards one had to move on. But I did write, you know, more than once about him, after we got a grip on the place again; so I hope they have done something."

"They will have to now, at any rate," said the wearer of the pink dress, firmly.

The sight of the garden, changed, neglected as it was, had brought back the very picture of that grizzled head with the curved hair, slipping through the rose-bushes, the delicate dark hand holding the tray of rose-leaves, as it slid over the bushes with its luck-offering for the bride. Yes! even if justice had been slow, inevitably slow, it should come now. This very evening, though she and her husband had only arrived in the station that morning.

They went to the rose square first, but Hushmut was not there. Then, seeing by the lack of blossom that the time of roses was not yet, they went on to the orange groves.

No one was there. So, doubtfully, they passed to the jasmine, to the lemon grass.

But no one was to be seen. Nothing was to be heard but the lazy yet insistent cry of some one scaring the birds from the pomegranates.

"Let us ask him. He may know," suggested the wearer of the pink dress. So they called him and he came--an old man, wizened, careworn.

Yes, he said, he knew. Wherefore not, when he had guarded fruit in that garden since he was a boy? There was not much to guard now, owing to past evils. Hushmut the essence-maker--Hushmut was dead. No one made essences any more. How did he die? Very simply. He had seen it with his own eyes when he was guarding fruit. The Huzoors had doubtless heard of the evil times, even though, as the coachman had told him, they had just come from wilayet. Well, it began quite suddenly one evening in May. It was the peaches he was guarding then. There had been a "fool's dinner" in the garden, and afterwards a young sahib and a miss in a pink dress had come running in to take refuge from the troopers. He had seen them, but what could he do? But Hushmut had shown them the secret passage, no doubt. Anyhow he had come out alone and closed the door, and sate beside it singing when the troopers rode up.

And doubtless they would have believed him, seeing that he was friends with all the bad walkers in the city through the selling of his essences; but for a bit of the Miss-sahiba's dress which had caught in the door hasp. So they knew what he had done, and being enraged, had killed him there, by the door. It was quite simple.

Quite. So simple that those two said nothing. Only their hands sought each other as they turned back to the summer-house.

"I should like to see the place again," said the wearer of the pink dress in a hard, even voice. "I wonder if the door is open?"

It was; for no one made essences now. So they entered.

The still stood in the corner as before. The pile of that strange fuel lay between it and the trays of rose-leaves. But there was no difference between them now. Both were yellow, scentless; and though the pink paper which Hushmut had pasted over the rose-shaped air-holes was all broken and torn by birds and winds and weather, the bees did not drift in.

For there was no scent to lead them on. None.

The winds of two long years had swept it away absolutely. What else was to be expected?

Yet a vague disappointment showed in the woman's face as it had in the girl's.

But this time the man's voice trembled as he answered her look with the words--

LITTLE HENRY AND HIS BEARER

CHAPTER I

When I was a child I wept over a story--if I remember right, by Mrs. Sherwood--which bore this title.

Years after I came to man's estate, I felt inclined to weep over an incident in real life which this title seemed to fit.

Looking back on those first tears, I judge them uncalled for by what my maturer age condemns as false sentiment. Perhaps my later emotion is equally at fault. The reader had better judge for himself.

* * * * *

"Speak on, O Bisrâm, bearer! Wherefore dost not obey? Speak on about Mai Kâli and the Noose--the Noose that is so soft, that never slips. Wherefore dost not speak, son of an owl?"

The voice was childish, fretful. So was the listless little figure in a flannel dressing-gown, which lay half upon the reed mat spread on the verandah floor, half against the red and yellow livery coat of Bisrâm, bearer. The latter remained silent, his dark eyes fixed deprecatingly on a taller figure within earshot. It was the child's mother, standing for a glance at her darling.

"Speak! Why dost not speak, base-born child of pigs? Lo! I will smite thee. Speak of Mai Kâli and the Noose. Lo! Bisrâm, bearer, be not unkind. Remember I am sick. Show me the Noose. Ai! Bisra! show it to Sonny Baba."

The liquid Urdu fell from the child's lips with quaint precision, and ended in the coaxing wail of one who knows his power.

That was unmistakable. The man's high-bred, sensitive face, which had not quivered under the parentage assigned to him by the thin, domineering voice, melted at the appeal, and the red and yellow arms seemed to close round their charge at the very suggestion of sickness. Bisrâm gave another deprecating glance at the tall white figure at the door, and then, from the folds of his waistcloth, took out a silk handkerchief crumpled into a ball. But a dexterous flutter left it in uncreased folds across the child's knees.

"Lo! Protector of the Poor! such is the Noose of Kâli," said Bisrâm, deferentially.

Seen thus, the handkerchief looked larger than one would have expected: or perhaps it is more correct to say longer, for, the texture being loose like canvas, even the slight drag across the child's knees stretched the stuff lengthwise. It was of that curious Indian colour called oodah, which is not purple or crimson, but which looks as if it had been the latter and might become the former--the colour, briefly, of recently spilt blood. It looked well, however, in the soft lustrous folds lying upon the child's white dressing-gown. He smiled down at it joyfully: yet not content, since there was more to come.

"Twist it for Mai Kâli. Twist it, Bisrâm, bearer! Ai! base-born, twist it or I will smite--"

"It is time for the Shelter of the World to take his medicine," began Bisrâm, interrupting the imperious little voice. "Lo! does his Honour not see the mem waiting for him?"

Sonny gave a quick glance at his mother. He knew his power there also. "I'se not goin' to take it, mum," he called decisively, "till he's twisted a' Noose. I won't--I want a' stwangle somefin' first. Tell him, mum--please. Then I'll 'waller it like a good boy."

"Do what he wants, Bisrâm, and then bring him here," said Sonny's mother, her eyes soft. For the child had but lately chosen the path of Life instead of the Valley of the Shadow, so even wayward footsteps along it were welcome.

"Now is it Government orders," boasted Sonny, reverting to the precisions and peremptoriness of Hindustani with a wave of his small hand. "So twist and strangle, and if thou dost it not, my father will cause hanging to come to thee."

"Huzoor!" assented Bisrâm, cheerfully, as he shifted his burden slightly so as to free his left hand. The next instant a purple crimson rope of a thing, circled on itself, settled down upon the neck of a big painted mud tiger, bright yellow with black stripes and fiery red eyes, which one of the native visitors had brought that morning for the magistrate's little son.

"Now the Protector of the Poor can pull," said Bisrâm, bearer. "It will not slip."

But Sonny's wan little face had perplexity and doubt in it. "But, Bisra, Mai Kâli rides a tiger. She wouldn't stwangle it. Would she, mum? I wouldn't stwangle my pony. I'd wather stwangle the gwoom; wouldn't you, mum? I would. I'd wather like to stwangle Gâmoo."

"My dear Sonny!" exclaimed his mother, looking with amused horror at the still, helpless little figure which Bisrâm had brought to her. "You wouldn't murder poor Gâmoo, surely!"

Sonny made faces over his quinine, as if that were a matter of much more importance.

"'Ess, I would," he said, with his mouth full of sweet biscuits. "I'd stwangle him, and then Mai Kâli would be pleased for a fousand years; and then I'd stwangle Ditto an' Peroo too; so she'd be pleased for a fousand fousand years--wouldn't she, Bisra?"

"Huzoor!" assented Bisrâm, bearer.

"My dear," said Sonny's mother, going back with a somewhat disturbed look to the room where the magistrate, Sonny's father, was busy over crabbed Sanskrit texts and bright-coloured talc pictures; for in his leisure hours he was compiling a Hindu Pantheon for the use of students, "I almost wish Bisrâm would not tell Sonny so many stories about the gods and goddesses. They do such horrid things."

The scholar, who in his heart nourished a hope that his son might in due time follow in his footsteps, and, perhaps, gain reputation where his father only found amusement, looked up from his books mildly.

"Gods and goddesses always do, my dear. Their morality seldom conforms to that which obtains among their worshippers. I intend to draw general attention to this anomaly. Besides, Sonny will have to learn these things anyhow when he begins Greek and Latin; he will in fact find this previous knowledge of great use. Kâli, for instance, is the terrific form of Durga who, of course, corresponds to the Juno of the Greeks and Romans and the Isis of Egypt. She is also the crescent-crowned Diana, and as Parbutt the Earth-mother Ceres. Under the name of Atma, again, she is 'goddess of souls governing the three worlds,' and so equivalent to Hecate Triformis--"

"Yes! my dear," interrupted his wife, meekly. "But for all that I don't want Sonny to talk of strangling the grooms; it really doesn't sound nice. However, as Bisrâm is eager, now Sonny is really recovering, to get away at once for his usual leave, I won't say anything to the child. He will forget while Bisrâm is away, and I will give orders that the latter is not to mention the subject on his return."

Bisrâm himself, receiving his pay and his orders ere starting on the yearly visit to his own country, which was the only portion of his life by day or night not absolutely--without any reservation whatever--at the disposal of his employers, fully acquiesced in the mem-sahiba's dictum. The Noose of Kâli was scarcely a nice game for the little master; indeed his slave would never have introduced it under ordinary circumstances. But the mem must remember that dreadful day when the Heart's-eye lay so still, caring for nothing, and the doctor-sahib had said there was nothing to be done save to coax him into looking into the restless Face of Life instead of into the restful Face of Death. That was when he, Bisrâm, who knew, had spoken of the Noose; and, at least, it had done the little Shelter of the World no harm.

"Harm?" echoed Sonny's mother, gently. "You have never done him harm, Bisra. Why, the doctor-sahib himself said your hand was fortunate with the child. If you had not been with him, I think--I think, Bisrâm--he might have died. And now I am even wondering if I am wise to let you go--"

Bisrâm looked up eagerly. "I must go, Huzoor--I must go without fail to-night--the year is over--" He paused abruptly, then added quietly: "The Huzoor need have no fear. The little master will do well. The Mighty One who cares for children will protect this one."

He spoke with such faith in voice and face, that Sonny's mother going back once more to the study, and finding her husband busy as usual over his Pantheon, lingered to look doubtfully at the talc pictures, and finally remark that after all the people really had a good deal of religious feeling, and actually seemed to believe in a God. Bisrâm, for instance, had said that Sonny was in the guardianship of One who suffered the little children-- Here her eyes filled with tears, and her voice sank.

"He meant Mâta Devi, I expect, my dear," replied the scholar without looking up. "She is another form of Kâli or Durga, and corresponds to Cybele or the Mater Montana--"

"He was very eager to get away, however," went on Sonny's mother, almost aggrievedly. "I really think he might have stayed a few days longer till the boy was quite himself. But devoted as he is, he is just like the rest of them--selfishly set on what they are accustomed to--"

"He put off going nearly a month though, and you know, my dear, that when he took service as Sonny's bearer, he stipulated for a fortnight's leave every spring, about a certain time, in order to perform some religious ceremonial," protested the justice.

"Well, and he has had it. Every year for five years; so he might have given it up for once. But he wouldn't. I don't believe he would, not even to save Sonny's life. However, I think the child is all right, and even if I had kept Bisrâm, he wouldn't have been much good, for he has been frightfully restless and hurried the last few days."

He did not seem so, however, as he stood quietly in the growing dusk at the gateless gate of the compound to look back at the house where he had left the little Shelter of the World asleep. His scarlet and yellow coat was gone, replaced by the faint coral-coloured garments of the pilgrim; he carried a network-covered pot for holy water, slung on his left wrist, and the yellow trident of Siva showed like a frown on his forehead. The thickets of flowering shrubs, the tangles of white petunias bordering the path, sent their perfume into the air; but above it rose the heavy, dead-sweet scent from a wild dhatura plant which, taking advantage of an unweeded nook by the gate, thrust its long white flowers across the pilaster; one of them indeed reaching past it, and so, seen five-pointed against the dusk beyond, looking like a slim white hand pointing the way thither.

Bisrâm stooped deliberately to pick it, tore it into its five segments, and placed the pieces in his bosom, muttering softly, "With heart and brain and feet, and hands and eyes, Devi, I am thy servant." Then for a second he raised himself to his full height, and stretched both his thin, fine hands--such delicately supple, strong hands--towards the house. "Sleep sound, Life of my Life," he murmured again. "Sleep sound, and have no fear. The offering will be complete, though the time is short indeed."

So, turning on his heel, he passed into the dusk, beyond the gate, whither the flower had pointed.

A fortnight later he came out of it once more, passed into his hut in the gloaming, dressed as a pilgrim, and emerged therefrom ten minutes afterwards in the red and yellow coat, with a huge white turban with a bend, as the heralds call it, across it bearing his master's crest. So altered, he slipped back into his place as if he had never left it, and setting aside the reed screen at the door of Sonny's nursery, stood within. Sonny, in his white flannel dressing-gown, was convalescent enough to be saying his prayers, kneeling on his mother's knee.

"Go on, dear," she said gently. "You can speak to Bisrâm afterwards."

Sonny, whose feet were less wayward, now shut his eyes again, and assumed a prayerful expression.

"--an' all kine friends, an' make me a velly good boy--yamen--O Bisra! where's the Noose?" The mother might smile, unable so far to pretend ignorance. Not so Bisrâm, bearer, who had his orders.

"What Noose, Shelter of the World?" he asked gravely. "Thy servant remembers none; but he hath brought the Protector of the Poor a toy."

It was only one of the many which you can buy in any Indian town for the fraction of a farthing, made of mud, straw, cane; a bit of tinsel perhaps, or tuft of cotton-wool, their sole value over and above the ingenuity and time spent in making them. But Sonny had never seen this kind before, and laughed as the snakes, made out of curled shavings, leapt and twisted. Leapt so like life that his mother drew back hastily, telling herself that the bearer had certainly a fine taste in horrors. And no doubt there would be some tale to match these. Sonny, however, seemed to know it vaguely, for a puzzled look replaced the laugh. "Yea! Bisra," he said in imperious argument, "Mai Kâli had snakes and skulls too; but I like the Noose best. Why didst not bring it back, son of an owl?"

The man never moved a muscle. "The little master mistakes," he replied calmly. "It was some others who tied the Noose. Not this dustlike one. He is but the Protector of the Poor's bearer, Bisrâm."

CHAPTER II

A year is an eternity to the memory of a child. Indeed before a twelfth of one was over Sonny had ceased from suddenly, irrelevantly asking, "O Bisra! where is the Noose? Why didst not bring it back, son of an owl?" The thought seemed to have passed from his life altogether. From Bisrâm also, as he tended the child night and day, day and night, unremittingly, contentedly.

So the spring of the year returned, and with it, by one of those mysterious coincidences beyond classification, came the old desire. It came suddenly--irrelevantly it seemed to Sonny's parents--during a brief attack of fever which the changing season brought to the boy. But Bisrâm, bearer, hearing the little fretful wail, "O Bisra, where is the Noose? I want the Noose," stood silent for a moment with a scared look in his eyes, then turned them in quick appeal to his mistress, as if to ask leave for something. But she was silent also, so the old formula came gently--

"What Noose, Shelter of the World?"

That evening, however, when Harry--as his mother vainly strove to call him, now that, as she used to tell the boy fondly, he was a man and had had his curls cut--had fallen into the heavy sleep which brings so little relief, the bearer came into the study and asked for his usual yearly leave. A week might do, but leave he must have at once. True, the year was not up, but the master would doubtless remember that his slave had deferred going at the proper season last time because of Harry-sahib's illness (Bisrâm, punctilious to the least order, never forgot the child's new dignity). He did not want to lose the right season again; and so, if he went now, at once, even for a week, he would be back in time even if Harry-sahib were to be ill as he was last year, which Heaven forbid!

He was quite calm, but there was an almost pathetic entreaty in his dark eyes, so soft, so dark, that looking into them, one seemed to see nothing save soft darkness.

"Go!" commented Sonny's mother, when, moved by a vague feeling that Bisrâm meant well, his master handed on his request to the real authority. "Certainly not. I wonder he has the face to ask for leave when Sonny--I mean Harry--is down with fever. Not that it is anything, the doctor says, but a passing attack. Still, I am not going to run any risks with a strange servant. Go, indeed! It shows what his pretended devotion is worth--"

"Surely, my dear, he is devoted--"

"Oh, very! in his way. But really you spoil Bisra, Edward. Just because he can tell you things about those horrid gods and goddesses. Do you know, I really think of getting an English nurse for the child until I have--until I have to take him home," interrupted his wife, her initial sharpness of tone softening over the inevitable certainty of separation which clouds Indian motherhood. "It cannot be right to let him live in such an atmosphere of superstition and ignorance."

The magistrate, who was leaving the room, had paused at her remark about the nurse as he might have paused before a painful scene. "By Jove!" he murmured as if to himself, "I believe it would break the man's heart. I often wonder what on earth he'll do when the child has--to go home."

The inevitable lent a tremor to the father's voice also. But Bisrâm, despite the former's belief, spoke of the same separation quite calmly when, the very next morning the doctor coming early, found his little patient in the verandah getting the advantage of the fresh, bright air in Bisra's arms.

"When," asked the latter, calmly, but with that slow pathetic anxiety in his eyes, "was Harry-sahib going across the black water?"

"You think he ought to go?" said the doctor. "Why?"

"This slave does not think; he knows! The little master must go--go at once," replied the man, still calmly, though he held the child to him with a visibly closer strain. "The Huzoor himself knows how bad Hindustan is for the little ones. He must go, Huzoor, before he gets worse."

"But he is not going to get worse," said the doctor, kindly. "He is better already, and if he has another bout of fever his mother has promised to take him to the hills, so don't distress yourself."

Bisrâm's dark eyes looked wistfully into the doctor's.

"The hills? That would be worse. That would be nearer the evil. He must go far from Hindustan at once, Huzoor; and if you tell the mem this she will go--she will not mind."

"And you, Bisra?" asked the doctor, curiously.

The man's eyes flinched, but he never stirred a muscle under the blow.

"I am only the little master's bearer, Huzoor. He will not need one much longer: he grows big."

"It is only because he is in a hurry to get away himself, I verily believe," said Sonny's mother, when the doctor, also vaguely impressed with something in the man's appeal, told her of it. "You can't fathom these people. Oh! I know he wouldn't abate one atom of his care, and it is simply wonderful. All the same, I believe that just now he would be glad to be rid of the necessity for it, since it clashes with some of his religious notions. That's it, depend upon it. And I mean to let him go as soon as Sonny--I mean Harry--is better; and he really is better to-day, isn't he?"

"Much better. And you may be right; only it's always impossible to lay down the law for men like Bisra. Those high-caste hill Brahmins are a law unto themselves. However, I expect to find the boy quite cool to-morrow." He was not, however, and more than once, as he lay in Bisra's arms, the little fretful wail rose between sleeping and waking. "Where's the Noose, Bisra? I want the Noose." And Bisra would pause as if waiting for a promise of wayward life in threat or abuse, and when neither came would turn a wistful appeal to authority, and when it was silent say--

"What Noose, Shelter of the World?"

But in the dead of night a day or two later, when even maternal authority slept for a brief spell, Bisra's answer to the request, which came almost incoherently from the child's dry lips, was different.

Then he stood bent over the boy's cot in the attitude of a suppliant, and his joined petitioning hands trembled.

"Why dost ask it, Kâli ma?" he whispered rapidly. "Lo! have I not served thee? Would I not serve thee now if I could? But I have promised this, and they will not let me go for the other. Lo! Kâli ma! be merciful and ask no more, and when the child has gone away, I will serve thee all the years--yea! every day of all the years."

There was no passion, no excitement in his face or voice; only that pathetic appeal which passed into a murmured lullaby as the restless little sleeper turned on his pillow with a sigh of greater content.

"Better again this morning," was the doctor's verdict, with the rider that Bisrâm himself stood in need of a little rest. The man smiled faintly when his mistress replied that it would be her turn that night; though, to say sooth, Harry certainly did seem to improve when she slept.

"Perhaps Bisrâm works charms," remarked the doctor, thoughtlessly; whereat she frowned.

Charms or no charms, the boy was certainly worse next morning, and that despite the fact that Bisrâm, who had steadily refused to go further than the verandah, had spent the night huddled up outside the threshold, within which his mistress refused to allow him to come. He needed rest, she said, and though she could not compel him to take it, he should at least not work.

"You had better let him have his own way to-night," said the doctor at his evening visit. "The child gets on better, and you are fresher for the day's nursing. Those thin, delicate-looking natives are very wiry, and if the man won't rest, he won't, and that's an end of it."

He spoke cheerfully; but as he was getting into his dogcart he saw Bisrâm at his elbow. "The doctor-sahib thinks the little master very ill to-night?" he asked quietly.

"So ill that you must do your very best for him to-night. If any one can pull him through, you can, remember that."

"Huzoor!" said Bisrâm, submissively.

It was a very dark night; so dark that the rushlight in Sonny's room seemed almost brilliant from the verandah. Looking thence you could see the child's cot, one of its side rails removed, and in its place, as it were, the protection of Bisrâm's crouching figure. He did not touch the cot; he crouched beside it with clasped hands hanging over his knees, and dark eyes staring hard into the darkness as if waiting and listening.

So he sate, his clasped hands loosening, his eyes growing softer as the hours passed, bringing nothing but half-conscious sleep, half-conscious wakening to the child. Until suddenly, irrelevantly, just on the border-land of night and day, the fretful wail rose upon the silence loudly, insistently--

"Where is the Noose, Bisra? I want it. O Bisrâm, bearer, bring the Noose, and strangle something."

The slackness, the dreaminess left the man's hands and eyes. He stood up blindly, desperately to face these last words; the words for which he had been listening. Yet there was still the same pathetic self-control as he stretched his hands out over the sleeping child.

"Lo! Kâli ma," he muttered, "have I not served thee as ever, despite the child. Have I set him before thee? Nay! thou knowest I have risked life itself to have thy tale of offering complete when I was hindered. Thou didst not suffer. Wilt not wait for once? Wilt not wait one little while?"

His voice, sinking in its entreaty, ended in silence. But only for a second. Then the fretful wail began again.

"The Noose, Bisra! Be not unkind. Remember I am ill. O Bisra! I want you to strangle something for me--"

Bisra gave a faint sob; then joined his outstretched hands.

"Huzoor! so be it! the Noose shall find a victim. Yea, Shelter of the World, Bisra will strangle something. Sleep in peace!"

There was no sound in the room after that save the little contented sigh in which restlessness finds rest.

Outside, the shiver of the cicalas seemed to count the seconds, but inside the hours seemed to pass unnoticed as Bisra sate beside the cot, his hands listless, his eyes dreamy. There was nothing to wait for now, nothing to fear. That which had to come had come.

So with the first glint of light, a stealthy step glided in, and an anxious voice whispered--

"How is it with the child, Bisra?"

"It is well!" he whispered back, rising rather stiffly. "He hath slept since the darkest hour. He will sleep on."

The mother, peering carefully for a glimpse of the child's face, smiled at what she saw.

"He sleeps, indeed. Thou hast done well, Bisra!"

He made no answer. But ere he left the room, his night-watch being over, he paused to touch the foot-rail of the cot with both hands and so salaam, as those do who leave the presence.

Sonny was still sleeping when his father, entering his study with a lighter heart, found a stranger, as he thought, awaiting him there. It was a man, naked save for a waistcloth, lean, sinewy, lithe; the head was clean-shaven, save for the Brahminical tuft, and the face was disfigured by the weird caste marks of extreme fanaticism.

"Who--?" he began, shrinking involuntarily from one who might well be dangerous.

"It is Bisra, Huzoor" said a familiar voice, gently. "Bisra, the child-bearer. Bisra, the servant of Kâli also. Lo! here is Her Noose." As he spoke he held out the crimson-scarlet handkerchief twisted to a rope, and coiled in his curved palms like a snake. "The master, being learned, will know the Noose and its meaning. It hath brought Her many a blood-offering, Huzoor. Many and many every year without fail. And it will not fail this year either. It will bring Her the blood of Her servant, the blood of Bisrâm the Strangler."

"Bisrâm the Strangler!" echoed the magistrate, stupidly, as the even, monotonous voice ceased. Then he sate down helplessly in his chair. In truth he knew too much of the mystery of India to be quite incredulous.

Yet two hours after, when with the help of the police-officer he had been cross-questioning Bisra upon his confession, he told himself as helplessly that it was incredible--the man must be mad. He had been born to strangle, he said, and had strangled to keep Kâli ma content. That was necessary when you were born Her servant, especially when you had children. Perhaps he had let the little Shelter of the World creep too close to his heart, though he had striven to be just. At any rate Kâli ma had become jealous. He had not known this, at first, or he would never have given the mistress that promise about the Noose, for if it had been in Harry-sahib's hands Devi would never have sought his life. She always protected those with the Noose--they never came to harm--unless-- He had paused there, and then asked quickly if he had not said enough? Did they want him to tell any more! He could not give them the names of the victims, of course, not knowing them; but they were many--very many.

"There is nothing against him but his own story," said the magistrate, fighting against his growing conviction that the man spoke truth. "I can't commit him to the sessions on that."

"There is something more, I think," replied the police-officer, reluctantly. "Don't you remember that man who was found dead in a railway carriage about this time last year? He had an up-country ticket on him, and as this was out of the beat of Stranglers, no inquiry was made here. It was just about this time, and--and Bisrâm says he was in a hurry because the year was nearly up. He had been nursing the boy."

The boy's father, leaning with his head on his hand, groaned.

But Bisra was quite cheerful. He looked a little anxious, however, when two days after he was brought up formally to be committed for trial. There was still nothing definite against him save his own confession and the coincidence of the strangled man in the railway carriage. But opinion was dead against him amongst his countrymen. Of course he was one of Kâli's Stranglers. Did he not look one? Was he not born one? So how could he help being one? The argument brought no consolation to Sonny's father. But Bisrâm again was cheerful. He stood patiently between two yellow-legged policemen and told his tale at length, as if anxious to incriminate himself as much as possible, anxious that there should be no mistake. And when all the mysterious intricacies of charges and papers were over, and the two policemen nudged him to make place for other criminals, with a friendly "Come along, brother," he paused a moment with handcuffed, petitioning hands to ask how soon he was to be hanged.

The magistrate, leaning his head on his hand, made no answer. He knew what the question meant, and could not. The thought of his little son came between him and the truth; namely, that Bisra's sacrifice must wait the law's pleasure.

The doctor, too, in charge of the gaol where Bisra awaited trial, had not the heart to tell the truth. Every day when on his rounds he looked into the cell, like a wild beast's cage, where Bisra, being a Strangler, and therefore dangerous to life, was confined alone, he answered the question which the tall, naked figure stood up at his entrance to ask in the same words. Harry-sahib was better, and as for the hanging, that would come soon enough, never fear. Yet every day the pathetic, self-controlled eagerness on the man's face struck him with a sense of physical pain, and left him helpless before his own pity.

Until a day came--after not many days--when with a face sad from the sight of bitter grief that he could understand, the sense of his absolute helplessness before the mystery of this man's nature made the doctor feel inclined to throw pity to the winds and fall back on sheer common sense. After all the man was a murderer; and if he had been fond of the child--what then? Such criminals were often men of strong affections.

Yet once again, the sight of the submissive, salaaming figure, the sound of the wistful yet calm voice made him answer as usual. The child was better. The hanging would doubtless come ere long.

For once, however, Bisrâm did not accept the reply as final.

"The Huzoor means that it will not come today?" he asked quietly.

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "To-day? What made you think of to-day? Certainly not. There's no chance of it."

But he was wrong. Two hours afterwards the gaol overseer sent for him in a hurry, because Bisrâm had completed his sacrifice by strangling himself in his cell with his waistcloth. What else could he do, seeing that it was the last day of the year during which the propitiation of a sacrifice kept Kâli ma from revenge?

"Poor devil!" said the doctor, as he stood up after his useless examination. "I'm glad now I didn't tell him the child was dead."