On the Face of the Waters Part 19

There is always a suspense about that moment of search among the bundles of official correspondence, the files, the cases which fill up the camp mail, for the thin packet of private letters which is the only tie between you and the world; but when hopes of home news is superadded, the breath is apt to come faster. And so a scene, trivial in itself, points an inexorable finger to the broad fact underlying all our Indian administration, that we are strangers and exiles.

"Not in!" announced the Resident, studiously cheerful. "But there are heaps of letters for everybody. Did the mem-sahib come in the carriage, Gamu?" he added as he sorted out the owners.

"Huzoor!" replied the head orderly, who was also his master's factotum, thrusting the remainder back in the bags. "And the Major sahib also. According to order, refreshments are being offered."

"Glad Erlton could come," remarked a voice to its neighbor. "We want another good shot badly."

"And Mrs. Gissing is awfully good company too," a.s.sented the neighbor.

Jim Douglas, who was sitting on the other side, looked up quickly. The juxtaposition of the names surprised him after what he had seen, or thought he had seen at Christmas time.

"Is that Mrs. Gissing from Lucknow?" he asked.

"I believe so. She is a stranger here. Seems awfully jolly, but the women don't like her. Do you know anything of her?"

Jim Douglas hesitated. He could have easily satisfied the ear evidently agog for scandal; but what, after all, did he know of her?

What did he know of his own experience? It seemed to him as if she stood there, defiantly dignified, asking him the question, her china-blue eyes flas.h.i.+ng, the childish face set and stern.

"Personally I know little," he replied, "but that little is very much to her credit."

As he relapsed into silence and smoke he felt that she had once more walked boldly into his consciousness and claimed recognition. She had forced him to acknowledge something in her which corresponded with something in him. Something unexpected. If Kate Erlton's eyes with their cold glint in them had flashed like that, he would not have wondered; but they had not. They had done just the reverse. They had softened; they had only looked heroic. Underneath the glint which had sent him on a wild-goose chase had lain that commonplace indefinable womanhood, sweet enough, but a bit sickly, which could be in any woman's eyes if you fancied yourself in love with her. It had lain in the eyes belonging to the golden curl, in poor little Zora's eyes, might conceivably lie in half a dozen others.

"By George!" came an eager voice from the group of men who were reading their letters by the light of a lamp held for the purpose by a silent bronze image of a man in uniform. "I have some news here which will interest you, sir. There has been a row at Dum-Dum about the new Enfield cartridges."

"Eh! what's that?" asked the Brigadier, looking up from his own correspondence. "Nothing serious, I hope."

"Not yet, but it seems curious by the light of what we were discussing, and what Mr.--er--Capt----"

"Douglas," suggested the owner of the name, who at the first words had sat up to listen intently. His face had a certain antic.i.p.ation in it; almost an eagerness.

"Thanks. It's a letter from the musketry depot. Shall I read it, sir?"

The Brigadier nodded, one or two men looked up to listen, but most went on with their letters or discussed the chances of slaughter for the morrow.

"There is a most unpleasant feeling abroad respecting these new cartridges, which came to light a day or two ago in consequence of a high-caste sepoy refusing to let a lower caste workman drink out of his cup. The man retorted that as the cartridges being made in the a.r.s.enal were smeared with pig's grease and cow's fat there would soon be no caste left in the army. The sepoy complained, and it came out that this idea is already widely spread. Wright denied the fact flatly at first, but found out that large quant.i.ties of beef-tallow _had_ been indented for by the Ordnance. And that, of course, made the men think he had lied about it. Bontein, the chief, has wisely suggested altering the drill, since the men say they will not bite the cartridges. If they do, their relations won't eat with them when they go home on leave. You see, with this new rifle it is not really necessary to bite the cartridge at all, so it would be a quite natural alteration, and get us out of the difficulty without giving in. The suggestion has been forwarded, and if it could be settled sharp would smother the business; but what with duffers and----" The reader broke off, and a faint smile showed even on the Brigadier's face as the former skipped hurriedly to find something safer--"Old General Hea.r.s.ey, who knows the natives like a book, says there is trouble in it. He declares that the Moulvie of Fyzabad--whoever that may be----"

The faces looked at Jim Douglas curiously, but he was too eager to notice it.

"Is at the bottom of the _chupatties_ we hear are being sent round up-country; but that he is in league also with the Brahmins in Calcutta--especially the priests at Kali's shrine--over _suttee_ and widow remarriage and all that. However, all I know is that both Hindoos and Mohammedans in my cla.s.ses are in a blue funk about the cartridges, and swear even their wives won't live with them if they touch them."

"The common grievance," said Jim Douglas, in the silence that ensued.

"It alters the whole aspect of affairs."

"Prepare to receive cavalry?" yawned the man who had suggested betting on the chance of the home-mail. What was the use of a week's leave on the best snipe jheel about, if it was to be spent in talking shop?

"No!" cried the man in black, not unwilling to change the subject of which he had not yet official cognizance. "Prepare to receive ladies.

There is Mrs. Gissing, looking as fresh as paint!"

She looked fresh, indeed, as she came forward; her curly hair, rough when fas.h.i.+onable heads were smooth, glistening in the firelight, the fluffy swansdown on her long coat framing her childish face softly.

Behind her, heavy, handsome, came Major Erlton with the half-sheepish air men a.s.sume when they are following a woman's lead.

"Here I am at last, Sir Theophilus," she began, in a gay artificial voice as she pa.s.sed Jim Douglas, who stood up, pus.h.i.+ng his chair aside to give more room. "I'm so glad Major Erlton managed to get leave. I'm such a coward! I should have died of fright all by myself in that long, lonely----"

"Keep still!" interrupted a peremptory voice behind her, as a pair of swift unceremonious arms seized her round the waist, and by sheer force dragged her back a step, then held her tight-clasped to something that beat fast despite the calm tone. "Kill that snake, someone! There, right at her feet! It isn't a branch. I saw it move.

Don't stir, Mrs. Gissing, it's all right."

It might be, but the heart she felt beat hard; and the one beneath his hand gave a bound and then seemed to stand still, as the sticks and staves, hastily caught up, smote furiously on her very dress, so close did certain death lie to her. There was a faint scent of lavender about that dress, about her curly hair, which Jim Douglas never forgot; just as he never forgot the pa.s.sionate admiration which made his hands relax to an infinite tenderness, when she uttered no cry, no sound; when there was no need to hold her, so still did she stand, so absolutely in unison with the defiance of Fate which kept him steady as a rock. Surely no one in all his life, he thought, had ever stood so close to him, yet so far off!

"G.o.d bless my soul! My dear lady, what an escape!" The hurried faltering exclamation from a bystander heralded the holding up of a long limp rope of a thing hanging helplessly over a stick. It was the signal for a perfect babel. Many had seen the brute, but had thought it a branch, others had similar experiences of drowsy snakes scorched out of winter quarters in some hollow log, and all crowded round Mrs.

Gissing, loud in praise of her coolness. Only she turned quickly to see who had held her; and found Major Erlton.

"The brute hasn't touched you, has he?" he began huskily, then broke into almost a sob of relief, "My G.o.d! what an escape!"

She glanced at him with the faint distaste which any expression of strong emotion showed toward her by a man always provoked, and gave one of her high irrelevant laughs.

"Is it? I may die a worse death. But I want _him_--where is he?"

"Slipped away from your grat.i.tude, I expect," said the Collector. "But I'll betray him. It was the man who knew about the _chupatties_, Sir Theophilus; I don't know his name."

"Douglas," said the host. "He is in camp a mile or two down the jheel.

I expect he has gone back. He seemed a nice fellow."

Mrs. Gissing made a _moue_. "I would not have been so grateful as all that! I would only have said 'Bravo' to him."

Her own phrase seemed to startle her, she broke off with a sudden wistful look in her wide blue eyes.

"My dear Mrs. Gissing, have a gla.s.s of wine; you must indeed," fussed the Brigadier. But the little lady set the suggestion aside.

"Douglas!" she repeated. "I wonder where he comes from? Does anyone know a Douglas?"

"James Sholto Douglas," corrected the host. "It's a good name."

"And I knew a good fellow of that name once; but he went under," said an older man.

"About what?" Alice Gissing's eyes challenged the speaker, who stood close to her.

"About a woman, my dear lady."

"Poor dear! Erlton, you must fetch him over to see me to-morrow morning." She said it with infinite verve, and her hearers laughed.

"Him!" retorted someone. "How do you know it's the same man?"

She nodded her head gayly. "I've a fancy it is. And I am bound to be nice to him anyhow."

She had not the chance, however. Major Erlton, riding over before breakfast to catch him, found nothing but the square-shaped furrow surrounding a dry vacant spot which shows where a tent has been.

For Jim Douglas was already on his way back to Delhi, on his way back to more than Delhi if he succeeded in carrying out a plan which had suggested itself to him when he heard of General Hea.r.s.ey's belief that the priests conducting the agitation against widow remarriage and the abolition of _suttee_ were leagued with the Mohammedan revival. Tara, the would-be saint, was still in Delhi. He had not sought her out before, being in truth angry with the woman's duplicity, and not wanting to run the risk of her chattering about him. Now, as he had said, the whole position was changed. He had no common hold upon her, and might through her get some useful hints as to the leading men in the movement. She must have seen them when the miracle took place at Benares. The thought made him smile rather savagely. Decidedly she would not care to defy his tongue; from saint to sinner would be too great a fall.

So at dusk that very evening he was back in his mendicant's disguise, begging at a doorway in one of the oldest parts of Delhi. An insignificant doorway in an insignificant alley. But there was a faded wreath of yellow marigolds over the architrave, a deeper hollow in the stone threshold; sure signs, both, that something to attract wors.h.i.+ping feet lay within. Yet at first sight the court into which you entered, after a brief pa.s.sage barred by blank wall, was much as other courts. It was set round with high irregular houses, perfect rabbit-warrens of tiny rooms, slips of roof, and stairs; all conglomerate, yet distinct. Some reached from within, some from without, some from neighboring roofs, and some, Heaven knows how!

possibly by wings, after the fas.h.i.+on of the purple pigeons cooing and sidling on the purple brick cornices. In one corner, however, stood a huge _peepul-tree_, and partly shaded by this, partly attached to an arcaded building of two stories, was a small, squalid-looking, black stone Hindoo temple. It was not more than ten feet square, triply recessed at each corner, and with a pointed spire continuing the recesses of the base. A sort of hollow monolith raised on a plinth of three steps. In its dark windowless sanctuary, open to the outside world by a tingle arch, stood a polished black stone, resting on a polished black stone cup, like a large acorn. For this was the oldest s.h.i.+vala in Delhi, and in the rabbit-warrens surrounding this survival of Baal wors.h.i.+p lived and lodged _yogis_, beggars, saints, half the insanity and sacerdotalism of Delhi. It was not a place into which to venture rashly. So Jim Douglas sat at the gate begging while the clas.h.i.+ngs and brayings and drumings echoed out into the alley. For the seven fold circling of the Lamps was going on, and if Tara did not pa.s.s to this evening service from outside, she most likely lived within; that she lodged near the temple he knew.