Caravans By Night Part 21

Morning and a hint of coolness caressing the air. Sampans and other craft rocked and crooned in the murky Hoogly. Gauzy streamers of smoke floated over the jute-mills of Howrah. Suns.h.i.+ne drenched the modern buildings of Dalhousie Square and Government Row; submerged the myriad bazaars and shops in yellow liquor; crept into the room where Trent was sleeping and aroused him with an impelling finger.

He dressed and went to breakfast. When he left the dining-hall his attention was arrested by a black straw hat with a sheaf of cornflowers and ripe yellow wheat about the crown. A tendril of hair glowed against the somber brim. She was talking with a native, an itinerant merchant; a string of beads hung from her white fingers. Trent approached from behind and spoke.

"He's asking entirely too much for those stones, Miss Charteris."

She turned, smiling. He felt the same warmth in her brown eyes as on the previous night.

"You always appear at the psychological moment--or rather," she interpolated, "this time at the financial moment."

She returned the beads to the merchant, who took no pains to hide his displeasure at Trent's interposition.

"I'm really glad you appeared--for a purely selfish reason. I want to buy some things to send home, and I know if I go alone I'll be cheated outrageously. I wonder if you'd care to go with me? However, I suppose that, man-like, you detest shopping with a woman."

"I don't object at all," he said.

"And you really haven't any business engagements?"

"I'm free until to-morrow."

"Oh, you're leaving Calcutta then?"

"Yes."

"So am I"--with a smile.

She raised a silk parasol of pongee-color as they left the hotel, and the sun reflected a rich glow through the fine texture.

"You see," she explained, "I taught music at Bayou Latouche and I promised my pupils I'd send them each a remembrance from India."

He might have known she was a musician. There was a depth of conception in her that was lyrical, a somber yet thrillingly-alive tone, of which her eyes were the pinnacle-expression. _Andante appa.s.sionato._ Queerly, that term came to him. His mental portrait of the day before blended in with actuality: White hands brus.h.i.+ng the keys in a dusk-varnished room; nothing heavy, some old song, redolent of recollections....

"Is this your first trip to India?" he heard her asking. The clamor of Chowringhee was in his ears, but her voice rang clearly through the sounds, an unbroken thread in the tangle of city streets.

"No. Mother India called me when I was a boy. I used to hunt with my father." That was true; for some reason he detested lying to her.

"Hunting! Tiger?"

He nodded.

"Is it true," she queried, "that there are mystics who walk in the jungles with animals--who belong to a sort of brotherhood of the wild and understand tiger and python and cobra?"

"The jungle has her own secrets," was his reply; "things that white men will never know."

"I heard a man," she resumed, "a converted Brahmin priest, lecture in New Orleans. He told of his boyhood; of the magic lore of the 'Mahabarata' and the 'Ramayana'; and of a time when an old priest--he called him a _Saddhu_--took him into the jungle at night, and he heard the many animal-sounds--the voices of the jungle. He said that once green eyes peered at them, so close that he could hear the quick breathing of the beast, and the old priest only looked into the eyes--oh, he described that look as so potent and unafraid!--and soon the eyes disappeared. I've always remembered that. Since then I've wanted to _feel_ the jungle--and the power of will that can soothe a great animal. Yet I suppose Mother India, as you call her, is suspicious of us foreigners who try to pry into her secrets. And yet"--the brown eyes were filled with reflections--"perhaps she has a right to be resentful, for men have maligned and misrepresented her so, credited her with false mysticism, with _Mahatmas_ and cults of which she isn't guilty." Then she laughed--a little ripple that broke the smooth spell.

"I--an outsider--talk as if I were intimate with India! Although sometimes I do feel that I must have known India before; a haunting familiarity. That's why I came--to see if my visions were aright." Again the rippling laugh. "But I'm sure you'll think me an Annie Besant, incognito, if I talk on like this!"

"Not at all"--smiling. "I'm interested."

"But you should tell me of India; for you've hunted in her forests and wild places. Oh, it must be wonderful to know the world!"

"Well, I'd scarcely say I know the world," he corrected; "only a few Indian and Persian cities--and some of the more southern watering-places of Asia. I was stationed for a while at Singapore."

"Stationed? You mean in the interest of your firm--or were you in the Army then, like your brother?"

"In the Army," he answered, again experiencing that insurrection against falsehood.

"I see," she commented. A wistful sigh. "I think I should have been a man. Penang, Shanghai and Zanzibar, those cities with such thrillingly wicked names, fascinate me; Tibet and inner China, all the far places, call. There's something pagan and magnificent about it--a sort of broken thread in me that matches the tapestry of it all. Oh, I'm sure I should have been a man! I know if I were, I'd be an explorer and hunt among the ruins of the Phoenicians and the Incas, and those other remnants of ancient civilizations."

Her words brought a tightening of the cords in his throat. Another who dreamed of the fabulous isles! But, for a reason he did not a.n.a.lyze, he could not place her in the picture she painted. Always, to him, the music-room--white hands in the dusk.

"But I'll have my fling," she continued; "only in a mild degree. My brother's home is in Burma. I'm going to live with him, and we plan to slip off every now and then. A trip to Malaya or Borneo or Java--I've heard so much of the beauty of Batavia--or up the other way to Siam.

Siam! Isn't the very name magic? Bejewelled dancers and emerald Buddhas and theaters where they pantomime ancient tales!... I'm not a reformist in the least, but there's one sort of 'uplift work' I'd love to do--a 'purpose in life,' as some call it. I'd like to visit the far places and return home and lecture to those whose boundaries are their own yards, and try to make them understand that on the other side of the world there are civilizations so much mellower than their own, and doctrines of existence that have nothing to do with mints and stock exchanges!"

Her voice was an expression of the high arcanum that he had glimpsed in her eyes. Here was a woman who possessed the rare triumvirate of flesh and mind and soul; whose gifts to men were other than brief summer pa.s.sions and earthly donations. He felt that it was irreverent when he asked if he might smoke. As he touched a match to his cheroot, she went on:

"Oh, the West knows so little about the East, and the East so little about the West, that it isn't strange that one misunderstands the other.... But I'm boring you with this talk," she broke off irrelevantly.

"Won't you go on?"--earnestly.

She smiled. "It's impertinence for me to tamper with mysteries that I haven't explored. No,"--still smiling--"I'm going back to my ken--to Siamese dancers and pantomime shows. And that reminds me, is it safe to go to a native theater? I'd feel as if I'd missed part of Calcutta if I didn't see a Bengali performance."

"I wouldn't advise you to go alone." This soberly. "Too, if you don't understand the language, it would prove rather dry entertainment."

Another smile. "Why must a woman have such narrow man-made boundaries?

If you hint that it's dangerous, then you'll intrigue me the more."

A recollection of the Chinese quarter flashed through him.

"If you insist on going," he said, and he, too, was smiling, "I daresay nothing can stop you--and the best possible thing for me to do is to offer my guardians.h.i.+p."

"It really wouldn't be stealing your time? Oh, it would be splendid!...

But you're leading me by all these shops. Shall we go in here?"

It was an epochal morning for Trent. After the tension of the past few days, he craved relaxation. This recess had a warmth and exhilarating intimacy that was a stimulus to him, and he luxuriated in it, listening attentively as the girl talked--talk that revealed little brilliant flashes of her nature--and drinking in the study of rich tints that her face and hair presented in the straw-colored light beneath her sunshade.

He had the feeling of a seaman in port, a boyish thrill at the freedom from restraint; a few hours sh.o.r.e leave, then the sea again. He entirely forgot his substantial shadow until they returned to the hotel. The sight of the pink turban whipped him back into tension.

"At five-thirty," she said as they parted. "And I'm sure it will be a wonderful adventure."

As she left him, Tambusami approached, smiling his ingratiating smile.

"I have news to report, Presence," he announced. "It is indeed well that I am here to protect your interests, for while you were away some one entered your room, and had not I appeared at the opportune moment he might--"

"You had him arrested?" Trent cut in.

"I went to your room, and hearing strange sounds within, I looked through the keyhole and saw a man--a brown man. Knowing he was a thief, I took the liberty of entering. He had opened your trunk--oh, they are clever, these thieves!--but he did not have a chance to steal anything."

"You caught him?"