Both for the reader's and writer's sake it is never fair to end a story
as you would end a play in a situation, for the former tries--vainly it
may be--to present life even in its trivialities, the latter only in
its more dramatic moments. So, though there is little more to tell,
save what might easily be filled in by the reader's own imagination, it
would give a false impression of the real value of poor Dan
Fitzgerald's tragic death, were the curtain to come down upon the rest
of the _dramatis personae_ in the first bewilderment and sorrow which
such unexpected and causeless accidents must always arouse. As a matter
of fact, there is no grief which passes sooner from the daily life than
that caused by death, especially when a real and unselfish love has
existed between the dead and the living. The mind, after the first
physical sense of loss has spent itself, refuses to believe in the
extinction of a feeling which, in its own experience, has survived
death, and so is comforted not by forgetfulness but remembrance.
Besides, it is false art to end any history embracing the life of more
than one person with the balance in favour of pain. For were this so in
reality, pain would cease to be pain and become pleasure, because it
would then be the normal condition of life; since it is clearly to be
demonstrated physiologically and psychologically that it is in the
disintegration of reminiscent habit that the phenomena of pain arise.
Indeed, in the mind, pain is incredible, impossible, unless we have
first formed the habit of pleasure; since it consists essentially in
privation.
Therefore the novelist who wishes to give a true picture of life will
always leave his puppets content. Nor does this limit the field unduly,
since it is clearly as much the duty and privilege of the writer to
present new sources of content to his readers, as it is for him to
present them with scenes, or situations, or characters of which they
have no previous knowledge. Because Jones thinks the soul of bliss is
incarnate in roast-beef and plum-pudding, is that any reason why the
more ethereal Brown should be denied his cup of nectar? or that the
philosophic Robinson, seeing that birth and death are alike inscrutable
phenomena, should refuse empirically to believe that the one is joyful
and the other sorrowful?
But the public seems to think differently; 'Oh don't kill him, or her,
or them,' it says cheerfully, 'let them enter into life halt, and
maimed, and blind. What does anything matter so long as they have the
average number of breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners allotted to
humanity, and can thus go down to their graves in the fulness of time
with the pleasing consciousness that their funeral _cortege_ is
followed by a Noah's ark, consisting of the ghosts of the animals they
have devoured?' For the world sides with Esau, who bartered away his
birthright for a mess of pottage. And good pottage is, no doubt,
warming, comforting, consoling. Yet some people who have it not are
happy; for instance, the two hundred and odd millions of India--but
then to them Birth and Death are alike the pivot on which the wheel of
life spins.
So thought the potter of Hodinuggur. So had thought his fathers who lay
buried in the dust beside him, and though the old man had no son to
step on to the treadles when his feet slipped from them, the wheel span
steadily, and the women of the village, as they rung the temper of the
water-jars before they bought them, nodded their heads saying--'Fuzl is
a good potter. Look you, it comes with a man's birth. When he goes,
we shall have to send for another. Meroo thinks he can make them,
because the Sirkar taught him when he was three years in jail for
cattle-thieving. But it takes more than three years to make a potter.'
Still Fuzl Elahi showed no signs of going; on the contrary, he seemed
to have a firmer hold on life than ever, as if Time had stood still for
him. Rose Gordon remarked on the fact to her husband as they sat side
by side one day on the old log. They had been married nearly a year,
and he had brought her out for change of air on one of his inspection
tours--for he had given up the Secretaryship on his marriage in favour
of greater quiet and more freedom.
'It is so strange, Lewis,' she said, 'you and I coming back, so
changed. And so many things have changed! even the palace scarcely
looks itself with that dreadful sort of Swiss chalet Dalel has built
for Beatrice Norma tacked on to the ruins of the old tower. And George
and Dan are dead, and the water is running in the cut yonder as if
there had never been any tragedy about preventing it from running. Yet
the village, with the potter sitting in the topmost house, is just the
same.'
Lewis Gordon smiled. 'You never read Megasthenes' account of his travel
through India in the year B.C. 300 or you wouldn't be surprised. It
might have been written today; for these people do not change except
under pressure from without, and then they disintegrate suddenly. But
the old man seems to me more sane than he was--more at rest. No doubt
Azizan's death----'
The familiar name caught the potter's ear and he looked up from his
work.
'Yea! she sleeps still, Huzoor. The breaking of the pot did not disturb
her at all. She was weary, see you, after sixteen years of waking. So
now when my fathers say, "Where is Azizan?" I can answer, "Hush! she
sleeps! she will waken when she is refreshed." Lo! it is well the pot
broke. It was accursed; bringing ill to all.'
'There you see, Lewis!' began Rose eagerly----
'It did not bring it to me, dear,' he replied, interrupting her, 'and a
man can but judge from his own experiences. And then, as I have often
told you, we really know nothing for certain----'
'Except,' put in Rose obstinately, 'that poor George----'
'Don't you think we ought to be moving?' he asked quietly. 'Remember
you promised Mrs. Dalel to have tea in the chalet and inspect the son
and heir, and you are tired enough as it is.'
'But you said you wanted to go and see some slope or another, and I'm
not in the least tired,' she insisted when they had left the yard and
reached the road. 'Lewis! you never used to fuss this way. I wish you
wouldn't.'
'It is only another method of showing my real views on the mental and
physical calibre of women. You must have read, my dear, of the
wonderful recuperative power which the lower animals have of
reproducing another tail when----ahem--by the way, this is not a safe
spot! I remember saying something of the same sort on purpose to annoy
when we were here before----'
He paused, and looked down the narrow alley of the village to where the
palace was beginning to share the unreal beauty which the dust-cloud
from the feet of the homing cattle gave to the whole scene, by hiding
the dull plain in a golden mist that gave distance and height to the
low sand-hillocks behind which the sun was setting cloudlessly. A
glorious sight, the dignity and calm majesty of which lingers long in
the memory of those who have seen it in India, day after day, month
after month; lingers to claim a higher place in the imagination than
the more varied and complex sunsets of the West with their stormy
contrasts and passionate beauty.
'Leave me here,' she said suddenly. 'I should like it. I'll sit on that
pile of old potsherds, and wait till you come back. It will rest me.'
It was peaceful enough of a certainty, and silent too. Only every now
and again the tinkle of a low-toned bell from some leader of the herds
below chiming in on the musical moan of the potter's wheel heard over
the low wall.
'It was a woman seeking something.'
The rhythm came back to her, stirring the old sense of curious unrest.
Stirring it in others of her sex also, if one might judge by the eyes
which, seeing the stranger alone, began to peer from the neighbouring
hovels. Eyes followed by figures; deep-bosomed mothers most of them,
with a slim girl or two doing nursemaid to other folks' babies.
Nearer and nearer they came, attracted by the great feminine quality,
until in answer to Rose's nod of welcome and encouragement they
squatted near, yet far, gathered in as it were upon themselves, apart
even from that other woman; even from her, with the cares of coming
motherhood writ clear upon her, and causing her to look at those other
mothers with kindly, friendly eyes.
'Ari bahin!' said one with a nudge to her neighbour. 'Tis for sure she
who played bat and ball last year like a boy. Wah! that is over; she
knows her work now.'
'I trow not,' replied another shrilly. 'She hath been sitting with the
potter's eyes upon her this half hour past. She is bad, caring but for
her pleasure.'
'Mayhap she knows not,' said an older voice, 'and they have no mothers,
these ones, nor mothers-in-law. Yea! 'tis true. My man went to dig for
the sahibs the year there was no corn in the land, and he hath told me.
They marry of themselves and there is none to see to them that they
fall not into ignorant mischief. It is fool's work.'
'No mothers-in-law?' tittered a bold-faced lump. 'Ai teri! that is no
fool's work.'
But the elder woman had risen, to stand a few steps nearer Rose,
looking down at her with dignified wonder.
'May the Lord send a son,' she began, going to the very root of the
matter without preamble.
'I will take what He chooses to send me, mother,' replied Rose,
smiling.
'Tsi-si-si!' The matron's pliant forefinger wagged _sideways_, in that
most impressive gesture of denial never seen out of India.
'Mention not such things, my daughter,' went on the grave voice, 'lest
He take thee at the word. Then what wouldst say? And see! Go no more to
the potter's yard. It is not safe. Wouldst have the son come to thee
with his mark on the breast? I trow not.'
They had come forward one by one to cluster round the speaker, their
dark assenting eyes on Rose.
''Tis not to be helped, though,' put in another. 'Do I not know? I,
Jewun, whose son died of it this year; yet I remember the old ways and
my mother's counsel. Lo! it is Fate; naught else. And 'tis better to
crack and be done with it. Then folk know. Not like my new milk-jar
this day. Sound to sight and touch, yet six good quarts of milk spilled
on the ground, as it crumbled like sand ere a body could get a hand to
it. The old man shall give me another in its place. It is not fair.'
'Nay! Mai Jewun,' put in a third, 'a pot comes to pieces ever; if not
one, then another way, when it is tired of going to the well for water.
Thou hast naught to complain about. Ai sisters! hither returns the
sahib! He will be angry that we have spoken to his mem.'
'He will not be angry,' protested Rose; but the thought was beyond
them. They were off swiftly, yet sedately, only the elder woman pausing
to waggle her finger again, and say, 'Go not to the potter's. It is not
well. I, Junto, mother of seven, say so.'
There were tears in Rose's eyes when Lewis came up and in consequence
he did look angrily at the retreating figures. She was pale and tired,
he said, and must send an excuse to Mrs. Dalel. He would not have her
knocking herself up with other folks' infants. So they went back
quietly to the two white tents standing beyond the Mori gate, where the
pigeons, as of old, circled iridescent round the dark niches. As of
old, too, the clash of silver anklets came from the shadows, since
Chandni was back again in her old haunts; but with a recognised
position, for her Highness Beatrice Elflida Norma was a shrewd little
person, and knew that she would need help to hold her own amid the
intrigues of that surely-coming long minority which lay in the future.
It is a recurring fraction that long minority, in the problem of our
dealings with petty principalities and powers; for civilisation does
not conduce to longevity with the native nobleman, and Dalel, with the
income from the stud farm, was diligently burning his feeble little
constitution at both ends. On the sly, however, for virtue, to all
outward appearance, reigned at Hodinuggur. Only that morning Rose had
inspected a female school with rows of nice little girls with very
clean primers and brand-new slates. A brand-new visitors' book, too, in
which Rose had, with some misgivings, inscribed her name at the end of
a trite little remark on the blessings of education; for she was only
just beginning to make up her bundle of opinions, and was not quite
sure of them.
But that night, as he was carefully guiding her steps through the maze
of ropes and pegs to the door of the sleeping-tent, she paused suddenly
to say to her husband--
'Lewis! I'm glad we came here. I thought it would be so painful seeing
George's deserted grave and reviving the old memories; but it has only
seemed to make it all more natural, to make everything, somehow, more
simple.'
This, then, was what the years were bringing to Rose. She and Lewis
were very happy; though sometimes, especially when they were out in
camp together, alone, he would enter a feeble protest against her lack
of sentiment. When, after work and dinner were over, they sat beside
the roaring stove--the mingled lamplight and firelight making the tent
cosy beyond belief--and he, laying down the volume of Thackeray from
which he was reading aloud, would remark, for the hundredth time, that
Rose was like one of his favourite heroines.
'If you say those stupid things, Lewis,' she would reply, 'I will make
you read shilling shockers, and then you can't--or I hope you won't.'
'Oh! it is all very well to scoff,' he would continue in injured tones,
'but I am the victim of an unrequited attachment. You are the heroine
of my romance always, and you never had a romance at all.'
'Well, dear! that is better than having one with some one else, isn't
it?' she would reply placidly, and Lewis's hand would reach out to
touch the one which was so busy with needles, and thimbles, and
threads--just to touch it for an instant, in a certain shamefast,
deprecatory acknowledgment of her wisdom. For he knew quite well that
he, like most men, had had several romances in his life, and that the
possibility of several more remained in him. Whether the climax of
Rose's dream of the future ever came about, and the boys got into
scrapes, cannot be told; for the simple reason that Lewis himself is
still within the torrid zone of life. But he does his best to prepare
for the crisis, and he follows his wife's lead in this; that he finds
life more simple and less sad as time goes on and he faces its facts
less egotistically.
Gwen Boynton, however, found it quite the reverse. She married Colonel
Tweedie two years after Dan's death, having, she said, buried all
thoughts of personal happiness in the grave of the only man she had
ever loved. This, as usual with Gwen's remarks, was true in itself, and
yet left her free to marry for position without remorse; or rather,
accurately speaking, to utilise her regrets as a motive for doing what
she wanted to do without remorse. So she made Colonel Tweedie an
excellent wife, much to his delight and comfort, for as Rose
acknowledged, he sorely needed some one to keep him from fussing when
she had gone to perform the same kind office to Lewis. Nevertheless,
Gwen Boynton, when she came back to society after the shock of Dan's
death, had lost some of her charm, and, from being a fascinating woman,
had become elegant and interesting, as befitted one with a history.
Life, she said, was so mysterious. Humanity a mere shuttlecock in the
hand of Fate beaten backwards and forwards by devastating passions!
Altogether the world was a sad sojourning in which a vague mysticism
was the only anodyne for the sensitive.
She became a half-hearted disciple of Madame Blavatsky's, and reached
what may be called the climax of her kindly, absolutely untrustworthy
nature, when with tears in her eyes and much gentle mournful
resignation to the mysterious inevitable, she would tell the story
which she had heard from Rose, of how Dan Fitzgerald and George Keene
had been measured for heroes in the potter's yard, and of their sad
deaths within the year. Of course it was incredible; and yet----?
Thus, none of the actors in the little drama ever knew the whole truth
about it. Gwen had the best chance so far as facts went, but she, being
handicapped by her method of vision, failed to see her real part in the
tragedy; for she resolutely set aside the possibilities of that hour
during which her _dandy_ waited outside the dressmaker's.
Besides, she knew no more than the rest of the other key to the
position which lay in Azizan's love for George. And this was hidden
even from him, though every night, winter and summer, an odd little
light--like a lost star--twinkled on the summit of the shadowy Mound of
Hodinuggur. It was the oil-cresset which the old potter put nightly on
the girl's grave to prevent her from having bad dreams. The branded
brick bungalow was empty and deserted now that the sluice-gate required
no guarding, so there was no one to see its feeble yet persistent
light; still it could be seen distinctly from the little enclosure
where, on a white marble slab, the legend ran--
'St. George Keene, aged 21,
Who died alone at his post.'
And between the two graves the gleaming streak of the big canal lay
like a sword splitting the world into East and West.
THE END.
* * * * *
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Literally, _evil-walker_.]
[Footnote 2: On sleep--sleeping, sleeping like a child.]
[Footnote 3: The police.]
[Footnote 4: Full two maunds.]
[Footnote 5: My man is dead, my heart is dead--is dead.]
[Footnote 6: Reign.]