The Mercy of the Lord Part 7

Was it not the wisdom of our Lord Ganesh?

I decided, at last, to say nothing about that dream of a marvellous moonlight ride on an elephant over half Wales. Twinges of conscience a.s.sailed me at times, but they were laid to rest for ever about Christmas-tide, when, going through a small town in the Midlands, I was met, in pa.s.sing a new cottage hospital on its environs, by a glad cry-- "The very man I want! I've got a poor soul here who won't die. He ought really to have been at peace two days ago--but he goes on and on. You see, he's an Indian or something, and we can't speak the lingo--you can, I expect?"

I followed the doctor, with whom I had a slight acquaintance, into the ward, with a foreboding at my heart. I knew it was old Mahadeo, and that, indeed, he wanted me. And it was. He lay tucked up between clean sheets on an English bed with two English hospital nurses fadding about him, speechless, gasping, at the very point and spit of death, yet waiting--waiting ...

I knew what he wanted, and without a word, his dark eyes following me in dim gladness, I threw back the clothes and got a firm grip of the sheet at his head. He should at least die as a Hindu should die. "Now, doctor!" I said, "if you'll take the feet we will let him find freedom outside."

A nurse started forward. "But the case is pneumonia--double pneumonia----"

The doctor hesitated; they always are in the hands of the nurses.

"Look here, Jones," I cried, sharply. "This man doesn't want clinical thermometers, and draw-sheets, and caps. He wants freedom. He wants to die as his religion tells him he must die, on Mother Earth--aye--even if her bosom is white with snow."

And it was, for it was Christmas-tide.

So we lifted him out, the doctor and I, and laid him down on Heaven's white quilt. He just rolled over, face down, into the cool pillow.

"_Ram-Ram--Sita-Ram_," I whispered, kneeling beside him to give the last dying benediction of his race. Such a quaint one! Only the name of what to it, is superman and superwoman. A last appeal to the higher instincts of humanity.

There was one little sob. I thought I heard the beginning of the old refrain:

"The wisdom of our Lord Ganesh----" Then he had found freedom.

"You seem to know their ways, sir," said a horsey-looking man who had come in with us and who had evidently something to do with the show.

"So, if you could give us a 'elp with this pore fellar's beast, I'd be obliged. Hasn't touched food this ten days--never since the old man took worse, and a elephant, sir, is a dead loss to a show. The master lef' 'im here with me, but I'm blowed if I can do nothing with him."

I found Ganesh happier than his master, for, no place being large enough for him, he lay in the open; but they had stretched a tarpaulin over him like a rick-cover, as a protection.

A glance told me he was far gone, though he lay crouched, not p.r.o.ne; his trunk--marvellous agent for good or ill--stretched out before him beyond shelter into the snow.

As I came up to him, I fancied I saw a flicker in his eyes, those eyes so small, so full of wisdom. Then I laid in front of him the old man's turban, ragged, worn, which I had begged of the prim nurses. In a second the whole, huge, inert ma.s.s of flesh became instinct with life.

He rose to his feet with incredible swiftness, and softly encircling the old ragged pugree, raised it gently and placed it in the master's seat. For a moment I doubted what would come next; but the instinct which is held in leviathan's small brain is great. He knew by some mysterious art that the master was dead, that the human mind which had been his guide was gone.

He took one step forward, threw up his trunk, and the echoes of the surrounding houses cracked with the roaring bellow of his trumpet as he swayed sideways and fell dead.

That was all the little smug provincial English town ever knew of the

"Wisdom of our Lord Ganesh."

THE SON OF A KING

I

"Barring my pay," he said, ruefully, "I haven't a coin in the world."

And for the moment, newly accepted lover as he was, his eyes actually left hers and wandered away to the reddening yellow of the sunset with a certain resentment at the limitations of his world.

"Father has plenty!" she put in joyously. And for the moment her hand actually touched his in a new-born sense of appropriation and right of re-a.s.surance which made her blush faintly. It also made his eyes return to hers, whereat she blushed furiously, and then tried to cover her confusion by a jest. "Well! he has. Hasn't he the best collection of coins in India?"

"He wouldn't part with one of them, though, for love or money. And I doubt his parting with you--though I could pay a lot--in love."

He had both her hands now, and the very newness of the position made her fence with the emotion it aroused.

"He parted with duplicates."

"But you aren't one--there isn't anyone like you in the wide, wide world. And I'm glad you're not. I don't want anyone else to be as lucky as I am."

She retreated still further from realities into jesting. "Then he exchanges quite often, so, if you only set yourself to find something----" She broke off, and her face lit up. "Oh, Jim! I have such a delightful idea! You shall find the gold coin--you know the one I mean--with the date that is to settle, or unsettle, half the history of the world! Do you know, I really believe, if you helped him to confound all those German wiseacres, that father would be quite willing to exchange----"

"His daughter for the ducat! Perhaps. But, unfortunately--and quite between ourselves--I have my doubts about the existence of that coin.

Or if it does exist it is hopelessly hidden away for ever and ever and aye, like that blessed old buried city of his that we have all been hunting after this month past in the wilderness. I don't wish to be disrespectful to your father, Queenie, but I believe he dreamt of it--that is to say, if it didn't dream of him--one never knows which comes first----"

He paused, arrested in the egoism, the absolute individualism of love by the mystery of the collective life which was part even of that love, and once more his eyes wandered to the sun setting.

The sky had darkened on the horizon as the dust haze shadowed into purple, so that the distant edge of the low sand-hills, losing definite outline, seemed almost level. Yet far and near, from the feet of the lovers as they sat close together to that uncertain ending of their visible world, not a straight line was to be seen. Everything showed in curves--curves that told their unflinching tale of unseen circlings.

The wrinkled ripples left by the last wind upon the sea of sand around them waved over the endless undulations of the desert, the spa.r.s.e tussocks of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s fell in fountains from their own centres, the stunted thorn-bushes were coiled and twisted on themselves like tangled skeins without a clue, the faint tracks of the sand-rats and the partridges wound snake-like in every direction, and even the footprints which had brought the two lovers in their present resting-place held the same hint of reference to unseen continuity, for, absorbed in Love's new world, they had wandered on aimlessly unheeding of the old one at their feet.

The result stared them in the face, now, in a firm yet undecided trail that was by far the most salient feature in the indefinite landscape.

Jim Forrester laughed as he directed her attention to it.

"We seem to have gone round and round on our tracks; so the tents, and your respected father and civilisation generally must be--well! exactly where I would have sworn they were not. But that just bears out what I was saying. For all we know the whole thing may be a peculiarly vicious circle! The world may be going back when we think it is going forward, and all the fine new things we think we find, may only he ourselves again. You and I, and the buried city and the gold coin--everything that we dream of, or that dreams of us, may only be part of the hidden circle which belongs to the curve of a life which has no straight lines--My G.o.d! take care--what the devil is that?"

That, if anything, _was_ a straight line--straight as an arrow. And an arrow it was, still vibrating in the soft sand at their very feet. Jim Forrester stood up angrily and looked round for the archer who had drawn his bow at such an unpleasantly close venture. But no one was visible, so he stooped down and drew the arrow out of the sand. He had seen its like, or almost its like, before in those wild central tracts of sandy desert where the wandering tribes of goatherds still cling to the weapons of a past age. His companion, however, had not, and she bent to examine it curiously. The att.i.tude made the fair coils of her hair, which were plaited round her head, look more than ever like a heavy gold crown.

"It takes one back to another world altogether," she said, watching him as he balanced it critically to appraise the perfection of its poise.

"To a world where it was made, perhaps--for it looks old, doesn't it! I wonder who----"

She paused, becoming conscious that someone was standing behind her.

Jim Forrester became conscious of the fact also, and showed it in such an aggressive way that she exclaimed hastily:

"Don't be angry with him, please. It must have been quite a chance--he couldn't have known we were here."

Even without the plea it would have been difficult for the young Englishman to refuse the chance of explanation to the figure which had appeared so unexpectedly. For, though in all outward accessories it was only that of a wandering goatherd, there was a calm dignity about it which claimed consideration. The fillet which bound the hair, sun-ripened to a rich brown on its waves and curls, was only a knotted bit of goats'-hair string, but the head it encircled had a youthful buoyancy such as the Greek sculptors gave to the young Apollo, a resemblance enhanced by the statuesque folds of the rough goats'-hair blanketing which was spa.r.s.ely draped over the bare, sinewy yet fine-drawn frame.

The face, however, was faintly aquiline, and the eyes, deep set between prominent brow and cheek bone, had the mingled fire and softness which in India so often redeems an otherwise commonplace countenance.

"I was stalking bustard, Huzoor," said the goatherd frankly, with a flash of very white teeth, "and being face down on the sand yonder behind the gra.s.ses saw nothing till the Presences stood up, but a glint of the sun on something."

He spoke to the man, but his eyes were on the girl's golden crown of hair.

Jim Forrester suddenly broke the arrow across his knee and threw the fragments from him into the sand ripples.

"Hand me over the bow, too," he said, peremptorily, then paused.

"Hullo! Where the deuce did you get that--it is very old--the oldest I've seen--with a looped string, too?" he added, handling it curiously.