After the discussion on a certain story told by the grey man had reached dissolution point from sheer want of coherence, I observed that the Major--though still standing in his usual place by the fire--was looking into the embers instead of warming his coat-tails at them. This fact, and the expression of his face, convinced me that he had forgotten the present in some past experience.
"The Major remembers a story," I remarked aloud. He looked up with a smile.
"I must have a very transparent face," he said, "but it is quite true. I have been wondering if I ought not to tell you something that happened to some one--to me, in fact--a great many years ago. It seems to me that I ought. You see most of you are inclined to scoff at the story we have just heard; unwilling to allow anything but a rational explanation of the mysterious summons. I am not, simply because I happen to have had certain experiences which most of you have not had. The question therefore arises as to whether I am not bound to give my evidence, and so, perhaps, prevent you from forming a hasty judgment?"
He looked inquiringly round the room, but no one spoke. We were so much accustomed to accept the Major's decisions as, above all things, equitable, that we were content to let him arrive at one unbiassed by our views. During the pause which followed, I found myself thinking that weight for weight, inches for inches, brains for brains, I knew no man who had made a better use of life than our Major. Not over clever, certainly not handsome, handicapped heavily by having to start at scratch in worldly matters, he had a distinct personality of his own which influenced every society he entered. You felt somehow that your estimate of that society rose from his presence, and that he brought an element of sound, healthy strength of heart and mind into the mêlée which you would not willingly spare from the struggle for existence. It came to this. Had he not been there the world would have been the worse for his absence; high praise, indeed, for any man.
"Yes!" continued the Major, after a pause, "I'll have to tell my tale like the Ancient Mariner; and if in so doing I bore you with a few uninteresting confidences about myself, I can't help it. You shall have as little of them as possible."
He was so long settling himself in a chair, pulling up his trousers in his careful, economical way, and poking the fire, that our attention had begun to waver, when his opening words startled us into renewed curiosity.
"I don't suppose," he began, "that any of you know I am a widower; but I am. My wife died a year after our marriage; and the child too--a girl. If you search the whole wide world through you won't find a more desolate creature than a boy of two-and-twenty coming back alone in a strange country from the grave of his wife and child. Perhaps, as Rudyard Kipling says, he has no business to have a wife and child. Anyhow he feels a mistake somewhere in the universe when he tries to behave like a man in the little drawing-room she made so pretty. The twopenny-halfpenny fans put up to hide the bare walls--the little dodges to make the sticks of furniture look nice which seemed to you so clever, and over which you have both laughed so often--the unused basket thing done up with lace and frills over which she was so happy that last evening, while you sate by wondering if it could be true, and that your child would lie amongst the dainty furbelows. Well! I suppose it has to be sometimes, but it drove me mad. I was like the boy in another of Kipling's tales, and could think of nothing but death to end it all; just to creep away and die by myself somewhere. I did not want so much to be dead, but to be quite alone--by myself. You see I had lost everything--for ever--and the rest of the stupid world drove me wild with impatience.
"So I went out on leave to the old Salt Road, which ran right across the loneliest part of the district. Perhaps some of you don't know what a Salt Road is? Simply the Customs line which in old days used to be patrolled day and night in order to prevent smuggling. The cactus hedge had been cut down when the protection system was given up, but the road behind it was still passable, and the patrol houses, more or less dilapidated, stood at intervals of ten or twelve miles. I had seen some of them when out on shooting expeditions, and the remembrance of their desolation came back on me now with a new sort of fascination.
"After I settled to go I used to lie awake wondering which of them would be the place. Not the first. That was within hail of other people and help; besides, I could not so soon get rid of the servant whom I had to take with me in order to avoid suspicion. My plan was to send the man on early with orders to do two stages, and have everything ready for me at night in bungalow Number Three; then I should have all the day to myself. Would it be bungalow Number Two, at noon, I wondered? As there were five patrol houses in all, it would most likely be Two or Four; but if I liked any of the others better I could easily find some excuse for getting rid of the servant.
"This may seem unnatural, but I was really quite mad with a sort of rage and spite against everything and everybody; so utterly absorbed in myself that I felt as if I were taking a revenge on life by quitting it. My own pain being the axis of the universe, the world must surely be the loser by its removal. In fact, my mental position at this time might be fairly represented by that of a man quitting a pleasant society because some one has been rude to him. I had no hopes of bettering my condition; I simply wanted to show my resentment.
"I don't believe I ever slept sounder in my life than on the first night after leaving cantonments. Perhaps it was the change; but I remember being disappointed and disgusted with myself when I woke to find broad daylight streaming in through the broken windows of Number One. My servant, according to his orders, had started at dawn, for the weather was still hot enough to make early marching necessary. He had, however, left me a bottle of cold tea and some provisions, which I ate with appetite. And now comes a curious thing. Though I had quite made up my mind to face death, and all the dangers it might bring, I positively hesitated about starting for a ten-mile walk in the sun from fear of heat apoplexy. It was very unreasonable, but it shows the force of habit. After I had decided on remaining where I was till the evening, I walked round the tumble-down mud building, wondering if it would do for the final tableau. It did not please me, so I lay down and slept, feeling that I ought really to have remained awake and brooded over my grief. But an unconquerable drowsiness was upon me, making me sleep like a child. How well I remember the ten-mile walk to the next bungalow! The afternoon shadows lengthened across the half-effaced road as I tramped along in solitary silence. I had nothing with me save my revolver and a small writing-case with which to inscribe my last words of defiance. My thoughts were full of what these should be, for I had now quite made up my mind that bungalow Number Two was to be the place, and that a very short time would rid me of all my foes. I felt distinctly easier than I had done before, and being, as it were, wound up to tragedy pitch, the cheerful appearance of Number Two as I came up to it in the sunset disappointed me. In cutting down the thorn and cactus hedge they had, as usual, left the kikar bushes, and these had grown into trees, forming an avenue, while a few more shaded the house itself. This was also far less dilapidated than Number One; not only were the doors and windows intact, but at a few of them still hung the usual reed blinds or chicks. As I wandered round the house before entering it, I noticed what one might call the graves of a garden. Broken mounds of earth giving a reminiscence of walks and beds, with here and there a globe amaranth doing chief mourner. Evidently bungalow Number Two had been the permanent residence of a patrol. It annoyed me to find myself wondering if he had had a wife and child, so I hastily entered the centre room, determined to put an end to all useless sympathies without delay. To my surprise it contained a few half-broken sticks of furniture; but telling myself that it would make my last task easier I laid my revolver on the table and, taking out my case, sat down to write. Again I felt curiously drowsy; more than once I rested my head on my hands and rubbed my eyes in the endeavour to collect my thoughts.
"A sudden increase of light in the room, visible even through my shading fingers, made me look up. The chick was turned aside, and holding it back with one chubby hand stood a little child about three years old. I think, without exception, the loveliest little girl I ever saw. Great mischievous brown eyes, and fluffy curls of that pale gold which turns black in after years. She raised her hand from the door-jamb, and placed her finger to her lips, brimming over with laughter.
"'Hush!! Ma-ma's a-teep. Dot's 'un away.'
"Such a ripple of a voice, musical with happiness. I was always fond of children, and this one was of the sort any man would notice--perhaps covet. I laid down my pen, forgetful of interruption.
"'Dot has run away, has she? That's very naughty of Dot, isn't it? But as she has run away she had better come in here. You are not afraid of me, are you?'
"She was already in the room; then I noticed for the first time that she was in her nightgown--a straight white thing like they put the angels into, and her small bare feet made no noise on the floor.
"'Dot's not af'aid. Dot's never af'aid. Dot's a b'aave girl. Dada says so.'
"She spoke more to herself than to me, and the words were evidently a formula well known and often repeated.
"'Who is Dada?' I asked, feeling the first curiosity that had had power to touch me for many days.
"Dot had raised herself to the level of the table with her tiny hands, and now stood on tiptoe opposite me. Her fair curls framed her face, as her laughing brown eyes fixed themselves on my revolver.
"'Dada's?' she said coaxingly. 'Dot wants to make a puff-puff-boom!'
"The childish words evoked a quick horror, why, I cannot tell; but a sudden vision of myself as I should be in that lonely room after the dull report rose up and blinded me. Somehow the coaxing babyish phrase filled me with an awful revulsion of feeling. My head sank into my hands; when I raised it the child had gone.
"I went into the verandah uncertain what to do. The room next mine had a chick also, so that I could not see in from the outside, but from within came a low crooning song like a lullaby. Every now and again little bursts of a child's voice. Dot, no doubt, recaptured and soothed to sleep. It was evident that the bungalow was occupied by others beside myself, for in the gathering dusk I thought I saw some white forms flitting about the servants' quarters. I wondered faintly at the latter, for I had a half recollection of noticing that the huts were entirely in ruins. My mind, however, had now reverted to its original purpose with increased strength, and I returned to the room considering what had best be done. The child's words, 'Dot's not af'aid! Dot wants to make a puff-puff-boom,' would not keep out of my head. After all, was it not only another way of phrasing my own desire? I was not afraid. Not afraid of what? Amid these questionings one thing was certain. It could not be bungalow Number Two-- I would not frighten the child Ah, no! I could not frighten Dot for ever with the awful puff-puff-boom I had set myself to make.
"It must therefore be Number Four, so I packed up my writing things and set off to rejoin my servant at Number Three. How childish we are! As I trudged along I caught myself smiling more than once over the recollection of Dot's mischievous face at the door. My servant was patiently awaiting my arrival beside the dinner he had cooked for me. Supposing I had not turned up--according to my original plan--he would have waited calmly all night long, keeping his 'clear soup, chikhun cutlet, custel pudden' hot for a dead man. I must have been less mad, for the humour of the idea struck me at the time, and I laughed. He gravely asked why I had not brought on my pillow and sheets, and I laughed again as I told him I meant to do without them in the future. Everything was clear now. Fate had settled on Number Four, so there was nothing to worry or hustle about. I bade him call me early, determined this time to have all the day to myself. Then I fell asleep to dream the night long of Dot and the revolver. Indeed my thoughts were so full of her, that even when I woke I fancied, more than once, that I heard her voice in the verandah, though I knew it could only be a trick of fancy, for the bungalow was a perfect wreck, and even the room I occupied had but half a roof.
"It must have been about eleven o'clock ere I reached Number Four, which stood off the road a little and was much smaller than any of the other bungalows. Indeed it consisted of but two rooms opening the one into the other. It looked the very picture of desolation, planted square in the open with a single kikar tree struggling for life in one corner of the enclosure. Yet it was the best preserved of all the patrol-houses; perhaps because of its smaller size and greater compactness. Anyhow it needed little to fit it for habitation, and as I found out afterwards it was constantly used by the civil officers when on their tours of inspection. At the time, however, I was surprised to find signs of recent occupation about it in the shape of earthen pots and half-burnt sticks in a mud fireplace. Going into the outer room I found it contained, like Number Two, a few bits of furniture, and feeling weary I sat down by the table without looking into the other room, only a portion of which was visible through the half-closed door.
"Once more I laid my revolver beside me, and took out my writing materials. I had just begun my task when a deadly disgust at the whole business came over me, and I resolved to end everything without further delay. My hand sought the revolver, and fingered it mechanically to see if it were loaded. A sense of strangeness made me look at it, when, to my intense surprise, I found it was not my own weapon. This was an old-fashioned heavy revolver, and one of the chambers had evidently been recently fired. As I laid it down, astonished beyond measure, I saw my own on the table beside it!
"Whose then was the other? Did it belong to some one else in the bungalow? Was I once more to be disturbed? I rose instinctively and pushed open the door leading into the inner room. To my still greater surprise I found it littered with half-open boxes and various things lying about in great confusion. A few common toys were on the floor; on the bare string bed a bundle of bedding; on the table a heap of towels, and a basin of water ominously tinged with red. The fireplace was on the other side of the room beyond the table, and crouched beside it on the floor was a woman closely huddled up in a common grey shawl. She held something under its folds on her knee; something that drew breath in long gasping sighs, with a fatal pause between them.
"'I beg your pardon,' I stammered, intending to retire. Just then the woman looking up, showed me a young face, so wild with grief and terror that I paused irresolute.
"' Will no one come!' she wailed, seeming to look past me with eyes blind with grief. 'O God--dear God! will no one ever come?' Then, as her face fell again over the burden on her lap, she moaned like an animal in mortal agony. But above the moan I could still hear that curious gasping sigh. 'Can I not help?' I asked. She gave no reply, so I went up and stood beside her. Still she seemed unconscious of my presence, for once more came the wail. 'Will nobody come? O my God! will nobody come to help?' 'I have come,' I answered, touching her on the arm. She looked at me then, and a curious thrill made me feel quite dizzy for a moment. Perhaps that was the reason why both face and voice seemed to me changed and altered. Her eyes met mine doubtfully.
"'You did not come before,' she said. 'No one ever came--no one, no one.'
"As I removed my hand she bent once more over her burden with the same piteous moan.
"Evidently she was stupefied by horror and suspense, so I gently raised her shawl to see what was the matter.
"Great heavens! What a sight! After all these years I seem to see it now. Fair silky curls dabbled in blood that welled up from under the handkerchief which the woman held convulsively to the little white breast. One chubby hand thrown out stiff and clenched; great brown eyes glazed and dim; grey lips where each gasping sigh sent a tinge of red.
"'Dot!' I exclaimed, dropping on my knees the better to assure myself of the awful truth.
"The familiar name seemed to rouse the wavering life.
"'Dots not af'aid. Dot--only--wanted to make--a puff-puff-boom.'
"The words seemed to float in the air. I heard them as in a dream; and as in a dream also came an insight into what had happened. Dada's revolver within reach of those tiny hands. O Dot! poor little brave Dot! I felt helpless before the awful tragedy. Once I tried to take the child, but the woman resisted silently, nor could I get her to listen to my entreaties that she should at least move to an easier position. At last, seeing I could do nothing, and acknowledging sorrowfully that nothing I could do was likely to be of any avail, I contented myself with waiting beside her in silence, until the end. And as I waited a coherent story grew out of what I knew, and what I guessed. They had come on early that morning, the father on his way further afield, the mother and child to remain in the little bungalow till his return. Then all in a minute the accident; and then the only servant had been sent forth wildly for help whilst the wretched woman waited alone. Yes! that must have been it. So clear, so simple, so awful in its very simplicity.
"There was not a sound in the house save at intervals the woman's moan. 'Will no one ever come! O God; will no one ever come!' and always distinct above it the child's gasping sigh with a soft rattle in it.
"How long this lasted I cannot say. It was like some hideous nightmare, until suddenly the sighing ceased, and I became conscious of an immeasurable relief. Yet I knew the silence meant death.
"The woman did not move or notice me in any way, so once more I touched her on the arm.
"'There is no need to watch longer,' I said; 'Dot is asleep at last. It is your turn to rest. Give me the child, and believe me there is nothing to be done now.'
"As before, she raised her face to mine, and the same thrill came over me as I recognised an unmistakable change in features and voice; a deadening of expression, a hardening of the tone into a certain fretfulness.
"'But there is a great deal to be done,' she replied rapidly. 'Oh! so much. How can you know? We must dig the grave under the kikar tree and bury her in the sand--for it is sand below, and it creeps and creeps into the grave and will not leave room for Dot. And the night must fall--oh, so dark!--before her father gets home. There will hardly be time to dig the little grave before sunrise; and it must be dug--you know it must--'
"Her words seemed to me wild and distraught. To soothe her I repeated that there was plenty of time.
"She frowned, closed her eyes with one hand, and again replied in a curiously rapid, even tone.
"'No! no! there never has been time. It is always a hurry. Out in the dark digging the grave, and the sand slipping, slipping, slipping till there is no room. I have done it,--oh! so many times.'
"I was puzzled what to do or say. The wisest course seemed to leave her to herself until help arrived. So after one or two ineffectual attempts at consolation I went outside in despair to see if the assistance so sorely needed was not in sight. Surely it could not be delayed much longer. I was surprised to find how late it was: noon had long passed, and cool shadows were stretching themselves athwart the parched ground. One, darker and cooler than the rest, lay eastward of the solitary kikar tree. Here it was that the little grave was to be dug if the mother's wish were fulfilled. Quite mechanically I strolled to the spot, impelled by sad curiosity.
"As I approached, the fragments of a low railing, half standing, half lying, in a small oblong, made me wonder if the enclosure had already been a resting-place. That might account for the mother's wish. Yes! there was a grave; a tiny grave no bigger than little Dot's would be, with a roughly-hewn cross as a headstone.
"I bent to read the inscription:--
HERE LIES
Our Little Darling Dot.
1840.
"Dot! I stood up with heart and brain in a whirl. Dot! 1840. Five-and-twenty years ago, and Dot had died but half-an-hour before. What did it mean? What did it mean?
"A sudden fear of the solitude and silence of the place fell upon me. But for shame I would have turned tail on it then and there. As it was, scorn of my own suspicions made me return to the house. How still it was! how desolate. I remember standing at the outer door listening in vain for some sound within; I remember seeing my revolver and writing-case on the table in the outer room; I remember nerving myself to push open the inner door, but I remember no more.
* * * * *
"They told me in hospital that I must have tripped over the broken flooring between the two rooms, and in falling have cut my head against the lintel.
"Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn't. I only know that something--God knows what--stood between me and my madness, so that when I came to myself it was gone for ever. In its place had grown up a craving to live--to hear, to see, to know, to understand.
"As I got better I used to lie and cry like a woman. Then the other fellows would say it was all weakness, and that I must be a man and bear up. And sometimes I would lie and smile. Then they said I was a trump with more pluck than they had. And as often as not I wasn't thinking of myself or my own troubles at all, but of brave little Dot and her desire for a puff-puff-boom.
"They sent me down the Indus to Bombay, so as to avoid the rattle of the train, for my head was still weak. We stuck on a sandbank at Sukkhur, being made unmanageable by two flats we were towing. They were laden mostly with cargo, but carried a good many third-class passengers. I don't know why I had risen from my sick-bed full of a great curiosity, but I had. Somehow I never seemed to have looked at life before, whereas now everything interested me. So I went down to the flats and talked to the people. There was a cabin on one, carrying a few second-class passengers, and as I was walking along a gangway between some bales I saw an Englishwoman, holding a child on her lap. The crouching attitude struck me as familiar; I stopped and spoke about the weather or something. She looked up, and then I knew where I had seen that attitude, for it was Dot's mother. I don't think I should have recognised her--for she was an old woman with grey hair--but for the remembrance of the changed look which, as you may recollect, she had when I roused her in the bungalow by touching her arm.
"'Is that your child?' I asked courteously, for, poorly dressed as she was, her face was unmistakably refined.
"'No!' she replied; and I recognised the somewhat querulous voice. 'It's my granddaughter, but I am as fond of her as if she were my own--almost.'
"As she spoke she shifted the child's head higher up on her arm, and I saw a mass of fluffy light gold curls.
"'Perhaps she reminds you of your own,' I continued at a venture, anxious only to make her talk.
"A faint curiosity came to her worn face.
"'It's funny you should say so--just as if you had seen our Dot. So like--so wonderfully like. Sometimes it seems as if she had come back again, yet it is five-and-twenty years since I lost her.'
"'That is a long time.'
"'A long, long time to remember, isn't it? And I've had so many and lost so many. But I never forgot Dot--she was so pretty! Ah, well! I daresay it would have been against her, poor lamb. "Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain."'
"She lulled the child on her lap to deeper slumber with a gentle rocking. It seemed to me as if she were soothing regret to sleep also.
"'She had curls like this one?' I remarked, cruelly anxious to keep her to the subject.
"Once more she looked at me with that oddly familiar bewilderment.
"'I can't think where I've seen you before,' she said after a pause. 'I never met you in those old days, did I? Ah, well! I've lived so long and travelled so far that I can't remember it all. Sometimes I seem to forget everything except what I see--and Dot. I never forget her. Only last month I was coming down the river not far from the place where the little dear shot herself--she was playing with her father's revolver, you know--and I seemed to go through it all again. Her father--he left the Salt soon after--was downright vexed with me because I fretted so. He said no good could come of remembering grief so long. But I don't know. I've heard it said that there is only so much sorrow and happiness in the world; then if one person gets a lot there must be less trouble left for others. I've held on to my share anyhow, though maybe, as father says, it isn't any good.'
"Her tired eyes sought the distant sandhills wistfully and her mouth trembled a little.
"Just then the whistle sounded, bidding all stragglers go on board the steamer.
"'Good-by,' said I, holding out my hand. 'To-morrow, if I may, I will come again and tell you what your unforgotten grief did for me.'
"But next morning I found that the flat had been left at its destination during the night. That is all."
There was a long pause.
"And your explanation?" asked a somewhat tremulous voice from a dark corner.
"Gentlemen," said the Major, "I have none to offer. What I know is this. Somehow--God knows how--I saw that mother's unforgotten grief, and it saved me from shirking my share."
"Christmas Eve!" echoed Mrs. Langford. "Yes! I suppose it is; but I had forgotten--there isn't much to remind one of it in India--is there?"
As she paused half-way up the verandah steps she glanced back at the creeper-hung porch where the high spider-cart, in which she had come home from the club, waited for its owner to return to the box-seat. He seemed in no hurry to do so, and his glance followed hers as he stood on the step below her. He was a tall man, so his face was on a level with hers, and the two showed young, handsome--hers a trifle pale, his a trifle red.
There was a stretch of garden visible beyond the creepers. It was not flowerful, since Christmas, even in India, comes when the tide of sap, the flow of life, is at its lowest; yet, in the growing dusk, the great scarlet hands of the poinsettias could be seen thrusting themselves out wickedly from the leafy shadows as if to clutch the faint white stars of the oleanders blossoming above them; and there was a bunch of Maréchal Niel roses in the silver belt of the woman's white tennis dress, which told of sweeter, more home-like blossom.
"And it is just as well," she continued, with a bitter little laugh, "that there isn't, for it's a deadly, dreary time--"
"All times are dreary," assented the tall man in a low voice, rapidly, passionately, "when there is no one who cares--"
"There is my husband," she interrupted, this time with a nervous laugh. The answer fitted doubly, for she turned to a figure which at that moment came out of the soft rose-tinted light of the room within, and said in a faintly fretful tone, "You don't mean to say, George, surely, that you've been working till now?"
"Working!" echoed George Langford, absently. "Yes! why not? Ah! is that you, Campbell? Brought the missus home, like a good chap. Sorry I couldn't come, my dear; but there was a beastly report overdue, so now I've only time for a spin on the bicycle before dinner, for I must have some exercise. By the way, Laura, you'd better send off your home letter without mine. I really haven't had time to write to the boys this mail."
He was busy now, in the same absent, preoccupied, yet energetic way, in seeing to the machine, which a red-coated servant held for him; but he looked up quickly at his wife's reply--
"I haven't written either."
"Haven't you? That's a pity," he began, then paused, with a vaguely unquiet look at her and her tall companion, which merged, however, into a good-natured smile. "Well, they won't know it was Christmas mail anyhow. 'Pon my soul I'd forgotten it myself, Campbell, or I'd have made a point.... But there's the devil of a crush of work just now, though I shall clear some of the arrears off to-morrow. That's about the only good of a holiday to me!" He was off as he spoke--a shadow gliding into the shadows, where the red hands of the poinsettias and the white stars of the oleanders showed fainter as the dusk deepened.
But he left a pair of covetous, entreating hands and a white face behind him in the verandah, between the rosy light of comfort from within and the grey gloom of the world without.
"It cannot go on--this sort of thing--for ever," said the man, still in that low, passionate voice. "It will kill--"
"Kill him? Do you think so?" she interrupted, still with that little half-nervous, half-bitter laugh. "I don't; he's awfully strong and awfully clever, you know."
The owner of the dogcart turned to it impatiently.
"You will come to-morrow at eleven, anyhow," he said, bringing the patience back to his voice with an effort, for it seemed to him--as it so often seems to a man--that the woman did not know what she would be at. "It will be a jolly drive; and, as they are sending out a mess-tent, we need not come back till late. Your husband said he was to be busy all day."
He waited, reins in hand, for an answer. It came after a pause; came decidedly.
"Yes; at eleven, please. It will be better anyhow than stopping here. There isn't even tennis on Christmas Day, you know; and the house is--is so deadly quiet." She turned to it slowly as she spoke, passed into the rose light, and stood listening to the sound of the dogcart wheels growing fainter and fainter. When it had gone an intense stillness seemed to settle over the wide, empty house--that stillness and emptiness which must perforce settle round many an Englishwoman in India; the stillness and emptiness of a house where children have been, and are not.
It made her shiver slightly as she stood alone, thinking of the dogcart wheels.
Yet just at the back of the screen of poinsettias and oleanders which hid the servants' quarters from the creeper-hung porch there were children and to spare. Dozens of them, all ages, all sizes, belonging to the posse of followers which hangs to the skirts of bureaucracy in India.
Here, as the lights of the dogcart flashed by, they lit up for an instant a quaint little group gathered round a rushlight set on the ground. It consisted of a very old man, almost naked, with a grey frost of beard on his withered cheeks, and of a semicircle of wide-eyed, solemn-faced, brown babies--toddlers of two and three, with a sprinkling of demure little maidens of four and five.
The centre of the group lay beside the rushlight. It was a rudimentary attempt at a rag doll; so rudimentary indeed that as the passing flash of the lamps disclosed its proportions, or rather the lack of them, a titter rose from the darkness behind, where some older folk were lounging.
The old doll-maker, who was attempting to thread a big packing-needle by the faint flicker, turned towards the sound in mild reproof: "Lo! brothers and sisters," he said, "have patience awhile. Even the Creator takes time to make His puppets, and this of mine will be as dolls are always when it is done. And a doll is a doll ever, nothing more, nothing less."
"Yet thou art sadly behind the world in them, babajee," put in a pale young man, with a pen-box under his arm, who had paused on his way to the cook-room, whither he was going to write up the daily account for the butler; since a man must live even if he has a University degree, and, if Government service be not forthcoming, must earn a penny or two as best he can. "That sort of image did for the dark ages of ignorance, but now the mind must have more reality; glass eyes and such like. The world changes."
The old man's face took an almost cunning expression by reason of its self-complacent wisdom. "But not the puppets which play in it, my son. The Final One makes them in the same mould ever; as I do my dolls, as my fathers made theirs. Ay! and thine too, babajee! As for eyes, they come with the sight that sees them, since all things are illusion. For the rest"--here he shot a glance of fiery disdain at the titterers--"I make not dolls for these scoffers, but for their betters. This is for the little masters on their Big Day. To-morrow I will present it to the sahib and the mem, since the little sahibs themselves are away over the Black Water. For old Premoo knows what is due. This dust-like one, lame of a leg and blind of an eye, has not always been a garden coolie--a mere picker of weeds, a gatherer of dried leaves, saved from starvation by such trivial tasks. In his youth Premoo hath carried young masters in his bosom, and guarded them night and day after the manner of bearers. And hath found amusement for them also; even to the making of dolls as this one. Ay! it is true," he went on, led to garrulous indignation by renewed sounds of mirth from behind; "dolls which gave them delight, for they were not as some folk, black of face, but sahib logue who, by God's grace, grew to be ginerâls and jedges, and commissioners, and--and even Lât-sahibs."
The old voice, though it rose in pitch with each rise in rank, was not strong enough to overbear the titter, and the doll-maker paused in startled doubt to look at his own creation.
"I can see naught amiss," he muttered to himself; "it is as I used to make them, for sure." His anxious critical eye lingered almost wistfully over the bald head, the pincushion body, the sausage limbs of his creature, yet found no flaw in it; since fingers and toes were a mere detail, and as for hair, a tuft of wool would settle that point. What more could folk want, sensible folk, who knew that a doll must be always a doll--nothing more, nothing less?
Suddenly a thought came to make him put doubt to the test, and he turned to the nearest of the solemn-faced, wide-eyed semicircle of babies.
"Thou canst dandle it whilst I thread the needle, Gungi," he said pompously, "but have a care not to injure the child, and let not the others touch it."
The solemnity left one chubby brown face, and one pair of chubby brown hands closed in glad possession round the despised rag doll. Old Premoo heaved a sigh of relief.
"Said I not so, brothers and sisters?" he cried exultingly. "My hand has not lost its art with the years. A doll is a doll ever to a child, as a child is a child ever to the man and the woman. As for glass eyes, they are illusion--they perish!"
"Nevertheless, thou wilt put clothes to it, for sure, brother," remonstrated the fat butler, who had joined the group, "ere giving it to the Presences. 'Tis like a skinned fowl now, and bare decent."
Premoo shook his head mournfully. "Lo! khângee, my rags, as thou seest, scarce run to a big enough body and legs! And the Huzoor's tailor would give no scraps to Premoo the garden coolie; though in the old days, when the little masters lay in these arms, and there was favour to be carried by the dressing of dolls, such as he were ready to make them, male and female, kings and queens, fairies and heroes, mem-sahibs and Lât-sahibs after their kind. But it matters not in the end, khânjee, it matters not! The doll is a doll ever to a child, as a child is a child ever to the man and the woman, though they know not whether it will wear a crown or a shroud."
So as Christmas Eve passed into Christmas night, Premoo stitched away contentedly as he sat under the stars. There was no Christmas message in them for the old man. The master's Big Day meant nothing to him save an occasion for the giving of gifts, notably rag dolls! There was no vision for him in the velvet darkness of the spangled sky of angels proclaiming the glad tidings of birth; and yet in a way his old heart, wise with the dim wisdom which long life brings, held the answer to the great Problem, as in vague self-consolation for the titterings he murmured to himself now and again: "It is so always; naught matters but the children, and the children's children."
And when his task was over, he laid the result for safety on the basket of withered leaves which he had swept up from the path that evening, and wrapping himself in his thin cotton shawl, lay down to sleep in the shelter of the poinsettia and oleander hedge.
So, the Christmas sun peering through the morning mists shone upon a quaint crèche indeed--on the veriest simulacrum of a child lying on a heap of faded red hand-like leaves and white star-like blossoms. Perhaps it smiled at the sight. Humanity did, anyhow, as it passed and repassed from the servants' quarters to its work in the house. For in truth old Premoo's creation looked even more comical in the daylight than it had by the faint flicker of the lamp. There was something about it productive of sheer mirth, yet of mirth that was tender. Even the fat butler, on his way to set breakfast, stopped to giggle foolishly in its face.
"God knows what it is like," he said finally. "I deemed it was a skinned fowl last night, but 'tis not that. It might be anything."
"Ay!" assented the bearer, who had come out, duster in hand. "That is just where it comes. A body cannot say what it might or might not be. Bala Krishna himself, for aught I know." Whereupon he salaamed; and others passing followed suit, in jest at first, afterwards with a suspicion of gravity in their mirth, since, when all was said and done, who knew what anything was really in this illusory world?
So the rag doll held its levée that Christmas morning, and when the time came for its presentation to the Huzoors there were curious eyes watching the old man as he sate with his offering on the lowest step of the silent, empty house, waiting for the master and mistress to come out into the verandah. Premoo had covered the doll's bed of withered flowers with some fresh ones, so it lay in pomp in its basket, amid royal scarlet and white and gold; nevertheless he waited till the very last, until the smallest platter of sugar and oranges and almonds had been ranged at the master's feet, ere he crept up the steps, salaaming humbly, yet with a vague confidence on his old face.
"It is for the child-people," he said, in his cracked old voice. "This dust-like one has nothing else, but a doll is always a doll to them, as a child is a child to the man and the woman."
Then for an instant the rag doll lay, as it were, in state, surrounded by offerings. But not for long. Some one laughed, then another, till even old Premoo joined doubtfully in the general mirth.
"The devil is in it," chuckled the fat butler, apologetically; "but the twelve Imâms themselves would not keep grave over it during the requiem!"
"By Jove, Laura," cried George Langford, "we must really send that home to the kids. It's too absurd!"
"Yes," she assented, a trifle absently, "we must indeed." She stopped to take the quaint travesty from its basket, and as she did so one of the red hands of the poinsettias clung to its sausage legs. She brushed the flower aside with a smile which broadened to a laugh; for in truth the thing was more ludicrously comical than ever seen thus, held in mid-air. George Langford found it so, anyhow, and exploded into a fresh guffaw.
She flushed suddenly, and gathered the unshapen thing in her arms as if to hide it from his laughter.
"Don't, George," she said, "it--it seems unkind. Thank you, Premoo, very much. We will certainly send it home to the little masters; and they, I am sure--" Here her eyes fell upon the doll again, and mirth got the better of her gravity once more.
Half-an-hour afterwards, however, as she stood alone in the drawing-room, ready dressed for her drive, the gravity had returned as she looked down on the quaint monstrosity spread out on the table, where on the evening before the rose-shaded lamp had been. It was ridiculous, certainly, but beneath that there was something else. What was it? What had the old man said: "A doll is always a doll...." He had said that and something more: "As the child is always a child to the man and the woman." It ought to be--but was it? Was not that tie forgotten, lost sight of in others ... sometimes?
Half mechanically she took the rag doll, and sitting down on a rocking-chair laid the caricature on her lap among the dainty frills and laces of her pretty gown. And this was Christmas Day--the children's day--she thought vaguely, dreamily, as she rocked herself backwards and forwards slowly. But the house was empty save for this--this idea, like nothing really in heaven or earth; yet for all that giving the Christmas message, the message of peace and goodwill which the birth of a child into the world should give to the man and the woman:--
"Unto us a child is born."
She smiled faintly--the thing on her lap seemed so far from such a memory--and then, with that sudden half-remorseful pity, she once more gathered the rag doll closer in her arms, as if to shield it from her own laughter.
And as she sate so, her face soft and kind, her husband coming into the room behind her, paused at what he saw. And something that was not laughter surged up in him; for he understood in a flash, understood once and for all, how empty his house had been to her, how empty her arms, how empty her life.
He crossed to her quickly, but she was on her feet almost defiantly at the first sight of him. "Ridiculous monster!" she exclaimed, gaily tossing the doll back on the table. "But it has an uncanny look about it which fascinates one. Gracious! Where are my gloves? I must have left them in my room, and I promised to be ready at eleven!"
When she had gone to look for them, George Langford took up the rag doll in his turn--took it up gingerly, as men take their babies--and stared at it almost fiercely. And he stood there, stern, square, silent, staring at it until his wife came back. Then he walked up to her deliberately and laid his hands on hers.
"I'm going to pack this thing up at once, my dear," he said, "and take it over this morning to little Mrs. Greville. She starts this afternoon, you know, to catch the Messageries steamer. She'll take it home for us; and so the boys could have it by the Christmas mail, which I forgot."
The words were commonplace, but there was a world of meaning in the tone.
"I--I thought you were busy," she said indistinctly, after a pause in which the one thing in the world seemed to her that tightening hold upon her hand. "If you are--I--I could go...."
There was another pause--a longer one.
"I thought you were going out," he said at last, and his voice, though distinct, was not quite steady; "but if you aren't, we might go together. My work can easily stand over, and--and Campbell can drive you out some other day when I can't."
She gave an odd little sound between a laugh and a sob.
"That would be best, perhaps," she said. "I'd like the boys to have this"--she laid her other hand tenderly on the rag doll--"by the Christmas mail I had forgotten."
Old Premoo was sweeping up the withered leaves and flowers from the poinsettia and oleander hedge, when first one and then another high dogcart drove past him. And when the second one had disappeared, he turned to the general audience on the other side of the hedge, and said with great pride and pomp--
"Look you! The scoffers mocked at my doll, but the Huzoors understand. The sahib himself has taken it to send to the little sahibs, and the mem packed it up herself and went with him, instead of going in the Captain sahib's dogcart. That is because a doll is always a doll; as for glass eyes and such like, they perish."
And with that he crushed a handful of withered red poinsettias into the rubbish basket triumphantly.