Caste Part 13

"You know something?" he said, and he caressed the smooth black tresses.

"I did not see them, Sahib."

They rode in silence for half a mile and then she said, "Perhaps, Sahib, Bootea can help you--if the message is lost."

"And you will, girl?"

"I will, Sahib; even if I die for doing it, I will."

His arm tightened about her with a shrug of a.s.suring thankfulness, and she knew that this man trusted her and was not sorry of her burden.

Little child-dreams floated through her mind that the silver-faced moon would hang there above and light the world forever,--for the moon was the soul of the G.o.d Purusha whose sacrificed body had created the world,--and that she would ride forever in the arms of this fair-faced G.o.d, and that they were both of one caste, the caste that had as mark the sweet pain in the heart.

And Barlow was sometimes dropping the troubled thought of the missing order and the turmoil that would be in the Council of the Governor General when it became known, to mutter inwardly: "By Jove! if the chaps get wind of this, that I carried the Gulab throughout a moonlit night, there'll be nothing for me but to send in my papers. I'll be drawn;--my leg'll be pulled." And he reflected bitterly that nothing on earth, no protestation, no swearing by the G.o.ds, would make it believed as being what it was. He chuckled once, picturing the face of the immaculate Elizabeth while she thrust into him a bodkin of moral autopsy, should she come to know of it.

Bootea thought he had sighed, and laying her slim fingers against his neck said, "The Sahib is troubled."

"I don't care a d.a.m.n!" he declared in English, his mind still on the personal trail.

Seeing that she, not understanding, had taken the sharp tone as a rebuke, he said, "If I had been alone, Gulab, I'd have been troubled sorely, but perhaps the G.o.ds have sent you to help out."

"Ah, yes, G.o.d pulled our paths together. And if Bootea is but a sacrifice that will be a favour, she is happy."

If the girl had been of a white race, in her abandon of love she would have laid her lips against his, but the women of Hind do not kiss.

The big plate of burnished silver slid, as if pushed by celestial fingers, across the azure dome toward the loomed walls of the Ghats that it would cross to dip into the sea, the Indian Ocean, and mile upon mile was picked from the front and laid behind by the grey as he strode with untiring swing toward his bed that waited on the high plateau of Poona.

The night-jars, even the bats, had stilled their wings and slept in the limbs of the neem or the pipal, and the air that had borne the soft perfume of blossoms, and the pungent breath of jasmine, had chilled and grown heavy from the pressure of advancing night.

The two on the grey rode sleepily; the Gulab warm and happy, cuddled in the protecting cloak, and Barlow grim, oppressed by fatigue and the mental strain of feared disaster. Now the muscles of the horse rippled in heavier toil, and his hoofs beat the earth in shorted stride; the way was rising from the plain as it approached the plateau that was like an immense shelf let into the wall of the world above the lowland; a shelf that held jewels, topaz and diamonds, that glinted their red and yellow lights, and upon which rested giant pearls, the moonlight silvering the domes and minarets of white palaces and mosques of Poona.

The dark hill upon which rested the Temple of Parvati threw its black outline against the sky, and like a burnished helmet glowed the golden dome beneath which sat the alabaster G.o.ddess. At their feet, strung out between forbidding banks of clay and sand, ran a molten stream of silver, the sleepy waters of the Muta.

"By Jove!" and Barlow, suddenly cognisant that he had practically arrived at the end of his ride, that the windmill of Don Quixote stood yonder on the hill, realised that in a sense, so far as Bootea was concerned, he had just drifted. Now he asked: "I'm afraid, little girl, your Sahib is somewhat of a fool, for I have not asked where you want me to take you."

"Yonder, Sahib," and her eyes were turned toward the jewelled hill.

As they rose to the hilltop that was a slab of rock and sand carrying a city, he asked: "Where shall I put you down that will be near your place of rest, your friends?"

"Is there a memsahib in the home of the Sahib?" she asked.

"No, Bootea, not so lucky--n.o.body but servants."

"Then I will go to the bungalow of the Sahib."

"Confusion!" he exclaimed in moral trepidation.

Bootea's hand touched his arm, and she turned her face inward to hide the hot flush that lay upon it. "No, Sahib, not because of Bootea; one does not sleep in the lap of a G.o.d."

"All right, girl," he answered--"sorry."

As the grey plodded tiredly down the avenue of trees, a smooth road bordered by a hedge of cactus and lanten, Barlow turned him to the right up a drive of broken stone, and dropping to the ground at the verandah of a white-waited bungalow, lifted the girl down, saying: "Within it can be arranged for a rest place for you."

A _chowkidar_, lean, like a mummified mendicant, rose up from a squeaking, roped _charpoy_ and salaamed.

"Take the horse to the stable, Jungwa, and tell the _syce_ to undress him. Remember to keep that monkey tongue of yours between your teeth for in my room hangs a bitter whip. It is a lie that I have not ridden home alone," Barlow commanded.

CHAPTER XII

As Barlow led the Gulab within the bungalow she drew, as a veil, a light silk scarf across her face.

Upon the floor of the front room a bearer, head buried in yards of pink cotton cloth, his _puggri_, lay fast asleep.

As Barlow raised a foot to touch the sleeper in the ribs the girl drew him back, put the tips of her finger to her lips, and pointed toward the bedroom door.

Barlow shook his head, the flickering flame of the wick in an iron oil-lamp that rested in a niche of the wall exaggerating to ferocity the frown that topped his eyes.

But Bootea pleaded with a mute salaam, and raising her lips to his ear whispered, "Not because of what is not permitted--not because of Bootea--please."

With an arm he swept back the beaded tendrils of a hanging door-curtain, the girl glided to the darkness of the room, and Barlow, lifting from its niche the iron lamp, followed. Within, she pointed to the door that lay open and Barlow, half in rebellion, softly closed it.

As he turned he saw that she had dropped from their holding cords the heavy brocaded silk curtains of the window.

His limbs were numb from the long ride with the weight of the girl's body across his thighs; he was tired; he was mentally distressed over the messengers he had failed to locate, and this, the almost forced intrusion of Bootea into his bedroom, the closed door and the curtained windows, her doing, was just another turn of the kaleidoscope with its bits of broken gla.s.s of a nightmare. He dropped wearily into a big cane-bottomed Hindu chair, saying; "Little wilted rose, cuddle up on that divan among the cus.h.i.+ons and rest, while you tell me why we sit in _purdah_."

The girl dragged a cus.h.i.+on from the divan, and placing it on the floor beside his chair, sat on it, curling her feet beneath her knees.

Barlow groaned inwardly. If his mind had not been so lethargic because of the things that weighted it, like the leaden soles upon a diver's boots, he would have roused himself to say, "Look here, a chap can't pull a girl who is as sweet as a flower and as trusting as a babe, out of trouble and then make bazaar love to her; he can't do it if he's any sort of a chap." All this was casually in his mind, but he let his tired eyes droop, and his hand that hung over the teak-wood arm of the chair rested upon the girl's shoulder.

"Bootea will soon go so that the Sahib may sleep, for he is tired," she said; "but first there is something to be said, and I have come close to the Sahib because men not alone whisper in the dark but they listen."

The hand that rested on Bootea's shoulder lifted to her cheek, and strong fingers caressed its oval.

"Would the Sahib sleep, and would his mind rest if he knew where the two who rode are?"

Barlow sat bolt upright in the chair, roused, the lethargy gone, as if he had poured raw whisky down his throat. And he was glad, the closed door and the drawn curtains were not now things of debas.e.m.e.nt. Curious that he should care what this little Hindu maid was like, but he did.

His hand now clasped the girl's wrist, it almost hurt in its tenseness.

"Yes, Gulab,"--and he subdued his voice,--"tell me if you know."

"They are dead upon the road beyond where you saved Bootea."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"It was too late, Sahib; and if you had gone there they would have killed you."

"Who?"

"That, I cannot tell."