ON THE RIDGE.
"A melly Klistmus to zoo, Miffis Erlton! An' oh! they's suts a lot of
boo'ful, boo'ful sings in a velanda."
Sonny's liquid lisp said true. On this Christmas morning the veranda
of Major Erlton's house on the Ridge of Delhi was full of beauties to
childish eyes. For, he being on special duty regarding a scheme for
cavalry remounts and having Delhi for his winter headquarters, there
were plenty of contractors, agents, troopers, dealers, what not, to be
remembered by one who might probably have a voice in much future
patronage. So there were trays on trays of oranges and apples,
pistachios, almonds, raisins, round boxes of Cabul grapes, all decked
with flowers. And on most of them, as the surest bid for recognition,
lay a trumpery toy of some sort for the Major sahib's little unknown
son, whose existence could, nevertheless, not be ignored by these
gift-bringers, to whom children are the greatest gift of all.
And so, as they waited, with a certain child-like complacency in their
own offerings, for the recipients' tardy appearance, they had smiled
on little Sonny Seymour as he passed them on his way to give greeting
to his dearest Mrs. Erlton. For the Seymours had had the expected
change to Delhi, and Sonny's mother was now complaining of the
climate, and the servants, and the babies, in one of the houses within
the Cashmere gate of the city; a fact which took from her the
grievance regarding dog-carts, since it lay within a walk of her
husband's office.
So some of the smiles had not simply been given to a child, but to a
child whose father was a sahib known to the smiler; and one broad grin
had come because Sonny had paused to say, with the quaint precision
with which all English children speak Hindustani.
"_Ai! Bij Rao! tu kyon aie?_" (Oh, Bij Rao, why are you here?) The
orderly's face, which Mrs. Seymour had said gave her the shivers, had
beamed over the recognition; he had risen and saluted, explaining
gravely to the _chota_ sahib that he came from Meerut, because the
Major sahib was now his sahib for the time. Sonny had nodded gravely
as if he understood the position perfectly, and passed on to the
drawing room, where Kate Erlton was sticking a few sprigs of holly and
mistletoe round the portrait of another fair-haired boy; these same
sprigs being themselves a Christmas offering from the Parsee merchant,
who had a branch establishment at a hill station. He sent for them
from the snows every year for his customers as a delicate attention.
And this year something still more reminiscent of home had come with
them: a real spruce fir for the Christmas tree which Kate Erlton was
organizing for the school children. The tree in itself was new to
India, and she had suggested a still greater innovation; namely, that
all children of parents employed in Government offices or workshops
should be invited, not only those with pretensions to white faces. For
Kate, being herself far happier and more contented than she had been
nine months before, when she begged that last chance from Jim Douglas,
had begun to look out from her own life into the world around her with
greater interest. In a way, it seemed to her that the chance had come.
Not tragically, as Jim Douglas had hinted, but easily, naturally, in
this special duty which had removed her husband both from Alice
Gissing and his own past reputation.
It had sent him to Simla, where people are accepted for what they are;
and here his good looks, his good-natured, devil-may-care desire for
amusement had made him a favorite in society, and his undoubted
knowledge of cavalry requirements stood him in good stead with the
authorities. So he had come down for the winter to Delhi on a new
track altogether. To begin with, his work interested him and made him
lead a more wholesome life. It took him away from home pretty often,
so lessening friction; for it was pleasant to return to a well-ordered
house after roughing it in out-stations. Then it took him into the
wilds where there was no betting or card-playing. He shot deer and
duck instead, and talked of caps and charges, instead of colors and
tricks. To his vast improvement; for though the slaying instinct may
not be admirable in itself, and though the hunter may rightly have
been branded from the beginning with the mark of Cain, still the
shooter or fisher generally lives straighter than his fellows, and
murder is not the most heinous of crimes. Not even in regard to the
safety and welfare of the community.
So Kate had begun to have those pangs of remorse which come to women
of her sort at the first symptom of regeneration in a sinner. Pangs of
pitiful consideration for the big, handsome fellow who could behave so
nicely when he chose, vague questionings as to whether the past had
not been partly her fault; whether if this were the chance, she ought
not to forget and forgive--many things.
He looked very handsome as he lounged in, dressed spick and span in
full uniform for church parade. And she, poised on a chair, her dainty
ankles showing, looked spick and span also in a pretty new dress. He
noticed the fact instantly.
"A merry Christmas, Kate! Here! give me your hand and I'll help you
down."
How many years was it since he had spoken like that, with a glint in
his eyes, and she had had that faint flush in her cheek at his touch?
The consciousness of this stirring among the dry bones of something
they had both deemed dead, made her set to shaking some leaves from
her dress, while he, with an irrelevantly boisterous laugh, stooped to
swing Sonny to his shoulder. "You here, jackanapes!" he cried. "A
merry Christmas! Come and get a sweetie--you come too, Kate, the
beggars will like to see the _mem_. By Jove! what a jolly morning!"
A foretaste of the winter rains had fallen during the night, leaving a
crisp new-washed feeling in the air, a heavy rime-like dew on the
earth; the sky of a pale blue, yet colorful, vaulted the wide expanse
cloudlessly. And from the veranda of the Erltons' house the expanse
was wide indeed; for it stood on the summit of the Ridge at its
extreme northern end--the end, therefore, furthest from the city,
which, nearly three miles away, blocked the widening wedge of densely
wooded lowland lying between the rocky range and the river. The Ridge
itself was not unlike some huge spiny saurian, basking in the
sunlight; its tail in the river, its wider, flatter head, crowned by
Hindoo Rao's house, resting on the groves and gardens of the
Subz-mundi or Green Market, a suburb to the west of the town. It is a
quaint, fanciful spot, this Delhi Ridge, even without the history of
heroism crystallized into its very dust. A red dust which might almost
have been stained by blood. A dust which matches that history, since
it is formed of isolated atoms of rock, glittering, perfect in
themselves, like the isolated deeds which went to make up the finest
record of pluck and perseverance the world is ever likely to see.
Perseverance and pluck which sent more Englishmen to die cheerfully in
that red dust than in the defenses and reliefs of Lucknow, Cawnpore,
and the subsequent campaigns all combined. Let the verdict on the
wisdom of those months of stolid endurance be what it may, that fact
remains.
And the quaintness of the Ridge lies in its individuality. Not eighty
feet above the river, its gradients so slight that a driver scarce
slackens speed at its steepest, there is never a mistake possible as
to where it begins or ends. Here is the river bed, founded on sand;
there, cleaving the green with rough red shoulder, is the ridge of
rock.
From the veranda, then, its stony spine split by a road like a
parting, it trended southwest, so giving room between it and the river
for the rose-lit, lilac-shaded mass of the town, with the big white
bubble of the Jumma mosque in its midst; the delicate domes fringing
the palace gateways showing like strings of pearls on the blue sky.
And beyond them, a dazzle of gold among the green of the Garden of
Grapes, marked that last sanctuary of a dead dynasty upon the city's
eastern wall.
The cantonments lay to the back of the house on the western slope of
the Ridge and on the plain beyond. This also was a widening wedge of
green wooded land cut off from the rest of the plain by a tree-set
overflow canal. The Ridge, therefore, formed the backbone of a
triangle protected by water on two sides. On the third was the city
and its suburbs. But--to carry out the image of the lizard--a natural
outwork lay like a huge paw on either side of the head; on the river
side the spur of Ludlow Castle, on the canal side the General's mound.
A brisk breeze was fluttering the flag on the tower cresting the
ridge, a few hundred yards from the house, and as Major Erlton stepped
into the veranda, a puff of white smoke curled cityward, and the roll
of the time-gun reverberated among the rocks.
"By Jingo! I must hurry up if I'm to have breakfast before church," he
exclaimed, as the circle of gift-bringers, who had been waiting nearly
half an hour, rose simultaneously with salaams and good wishes. The
sudden action made a white cockatoo perched in the corner raise its
flame-colored crest and begin to prance.
"Naughty Poll! Bad Poll!" came Sonny's mellifluous lisp from the
Major's shoulder. "Zoo mufn't make a noise and interrupt."
The admonition made the bird smooth its ruffled temper and feathers.
Not that there was much to interrupt; the Major's halting
acknowledgments being of the briefest; partly because of breakfast,
partly from lack of Hindustani, mostly from the inherent insular
horror of a function.
"Thank God! that's over," he said piously, when the last tray had been
emptied on the miscellaneous pile, round which the servants were
already hovering expectantly, and the last well-wisher had
disappeared. "Still it was nice of them to remember Freddy," he added,
looking at the toys--"Wasn't it, wife?"
She looked up almost scared at the title. "Very," she replied, with a
faint quiver in her voice. "We must send some home to him, mustn't
we?"
The pronoun of union made the Major, in his turn, feel embarrassed. He
sought refuge once more in Sonny.
"You must have your choice first, jackanapes!" he said, swinging the
child to the ground again. "Which is it to be? A box of soldiers or a
monkey on a stick?"
"Fanks!" replied Sonny with honest dignity, "but I'se gotted my plesy
already. She's give-ded me the polly--be-tos it 'oves me dearly."
Kate answered her husband's look with a half-apology. "He means the
cockatoo. I thought you wouldn't mind, because it was so dreadfully
noisy. And it never screams at him. Sonny! give Polly an apple and
show Major Erlton how it loves you."
The child, nothing loth to show off, chose one from the heap and went
over fearlessly to the vicious bird; the servants pausing to look
admiringly. The cockatoo seized it eagerly, but only as a means to
draw the little fellow's arm within reach of its clambering feet. The
next moment it was on the narrow shoulder dipping and sidling among
the golden curls.
"See how it 'oves me," cried Sonny, his face all smiles.
Major Erlton laughed good-temperedly at the pretty sight and went in
to breakfast.
Then the dog-cart came round. It was the same one in which the Major
had been used to drive Alice Gissing. But this Christmas morning he
had forgotten the fact, as he drove Kate instead, with Sonny, who was
to be taken to church as a great treat, crushing the flounces of her
pretty dress.
Yet the fresh wind blew in their faces keenly, and the Major, pointing
with his whip to the scudding squirrels, said, "Jolly little beasts,
aren't they, Kate," just as he had said it to Alice Gissing. What is
more, she replied that it was jolly altogether, with much the same
enjoyment of the mere present as the other little lady had done. For
the larger part of life is normal, common to all.
So they sped past the rocks and trees swiftly, down and down, till
with a rumble they were on the draw-bridge, through the massive arch
of the Cashmere gate, into the square of the main-guard. The last
clang of the church bell seemed to come from the trees overhanging it,
and in the ensuing silence a sharp click of the whip sounded like a
pistol crack. The mare sped faster through the wooden gate into the
open. To the left the Court House showed among tall trees, to the
right Skinner's House. Straight ahead, down the road to the Calcutta
gate and the boat bridge, stood the College, the telegraph office, a
dozen or so of bungalows in gardens, and the magazine shouldering the
old cemetery. Quite a colony of Western ways and works within the city
wall, clinging to it between the water-bastion and the Calcutta gate.
Close at hand in a central plot of garden, circled by roads, was the
church, built after the design of St. Paul's; obtrusively Occidental,
crowned by a very large cross.
As the mare drew up among the other carriages, the first notes of the
Christmas hymn pealed out among the roses and the pointsettias, the
glare and the green. Not a Christmas environment; but the festival
brings its own atmosphere with it to most people, and Major Erlton,
admiring his wife's rapt face, remembered his own boyhood as he sang a
rumbling Gregorian bass of two tones and a semi-tone:
"Oh come, all ye faithful Joyful and triumphant."
The words echoed confidently into the heart of the great Mohammedan
stronghold, within earshot almost of the rose-red walls of the palace;
that survival of all the vices Christianity seeks to destroy.
"They have a new service to-night," yawned the chaplain's groom to
others grouped round a common pipe. "I, who have served _padrés_ all
my life--the pay is bad but the kicks less--saw never the like. 'Tis a
queer tree hung with lights, and toys to bribe the children to worship
it. They wanted mine to go, but their mother is pious and would not.
She says 'tis a spell."
"Doubtless!" assented a voice. "The spell Kali's priest, who came from
Calcutta seeking aid against it, warned us of--the spell which forces
a body to being Christian against his will."
A scornful cluck came from a younger, smarter man. "Trra! a trick that
for offerings, Dittu. The priest came to me also, but I told him my
master was not that sort. He goes not to church except on the big
day."
"But the _mem?_" asked a new speaker enviously. "'Tis the _mems_ do
the mischief to please the _padres_; just as our women do it to please
the priests. My _mem_ reads prayers to her ayah."
"Paremeshwar be praised!" ejaculated the man to whom the pipe
belonged. "My master keeps no _mem_, but the other sort. Though as for
the ayah it matters not, she has no caste to lose."
There was a grunt of general assent. The remark crystallized the whole
question to unmistakable form. So long as a man could get a pull from
his neighbor's pipe and have a right to one in return, the master
might say and do what he chose. If not; then----?
An evil-faced man who still smarted from a righteous licking, given
him that morning for stealing his horse's grain, put his view of what
would happen in that case plainly.
"Bullah!" sneered a bearded Sikh orderly waiting to carry his master's
prayer-book. "You Poorbeahs can talk glibly of change. And why not?
seeing it is but a change of masters to born slaves. Oil burns to
butter! butter to oil!"
The evil face scowled. "Thou wilt have to shave under thy master,
anyhow, Gooroo-jee! Ay! and dock thy pigtail too."
This allusion to a late ruling against the Nazarene customs of the
newly raised Sikh levies might have led to blows--the bearded one
being a born fighter--if, the short service coming to an end, the
masters had not trooped out, pausing to exchange Christmas greetings
ere they dispersed.
"Never saw Mrs. Erlton looking so pretty," remarked Captain Seymour to
his wife, as, with the restored Sonny between them, they moved off to
their own house, which stood close by, plumb on the city wall. He
spoke in a low voice, but Major Erlton happened to be within earshot.
He turned complacently to identify the speaker, then looked at his
wife to see if the remark was true. Scarcely; to Herbert Erlton's
quickened recollection of the girl he had married. Yet she looked
distinctly creditable, desirable, as she stood, the center of a little
group of men and women eager to help her with the Christmas tree. It
struck him suddenly, not in the least unpleasantly, that of late his
wife had had no lack of aids-de-camp, and that one, Captain Morecombe,
the pick of the lot, seemed to have little else to do. A symptom which
the Major could explain from his own experience, and which made him
smile; he being of those who admire women for being admired.
"I have arranged about the conjuror, Mrs. Erlton," said Captain
Morecombe, who was, indeed, quite ready to do her behests; "that
sweep, Prince Abool-bukr,--who is coming, by the way, to see the
show,--has promised me the best in the bazaar. And some Bunjârah
fellows who act, and that sort of business."
"Better find out first what they do act," put in young Mainwaring, who
chafed under the superior knowledge which the Captain claimed as
interpreter to the Staff. "I saw some of those brutes in Lucknow last
spring, and----"
"Oh! there is no fear," retorted the other with a condescending smile.
"The Prince is no fool, and he is responsible. It will most likely be
something extremely instructive. Now, Mrs. Erlton, I will drive you
round to the College and you can show me anything else you want done.
I can drive you home afterward."
"Don't think we need trouble you, thanks, Morecombe," said a voice
behind. "I'll drive my wife. I'll stay as long as you like, Kate; and
I can stick things high up, you know."
There was no appeal in his tone, but Kate, looking up at his
great height, felt one; and with it came a fresh spasm of that
self-reproach. As she had knelt beside him in church she had been
asking herself if she was not unforgiving; if it was not hard on him.
"That will be a great help," she said soberly.
So Mrs. Seymour, coming in daintily when the hard work was over to put
a Father Christmas on the topmost shoot, wondered plaintively how she
could have managed it without Major Erlton, and put so much soft
admiration into her pretty eyes, that he could scarcely fail to feel a
fine fellow. He was in consequence a better one for the time being. So
that he insisted on returning in the afternoon to hand the tea and
cake, when he made several black-and-tan matrons profusely apologetic
and proud at having the finest gentleman there to wait upon them. For
the Major was a very fine animal, indeed. As Alice Gissing had told
him frankly, over and over again, his looks were his strong point.
The larger portion of the guests were of this black-and-tan
complexion. Of varying shades, however, from the unmistakably
pure-blooded native Christian, to the pasty-faced baby with all the
yellow tones of skin due to its pretty, languid mother, emphasized by
the ruddiness of the English father who carried it.
They came chiefly from Duryagunj, a quarter of the city close to the
Palace, between the river and the Thunbi Bazaar. It had once been the
artillery lines, and now its pleasant garden-set houses were occupied
by clerks, contractors, overseers, and such like. Then later on, for
the sports and games, came a contingent of College lads, speaking
English fluently, and younger boys clinging affrightedly to their
father's hand as he smirked and bowed to the special master for whose
favor he had perhaps braved bitter tears of opposition from the women
at home. The mission school sent orderly bands, and there was a ruck
of servants' children, who would have gone to the gates of hell for a
gift.
"You will tire yourself to death, Kate," called her husband, as, quite
in his element, he handicapped the boys for the races. He spoke in a
half-satisfied, half-dissatisfied tone, for though her success pleased
him, he fancied she looked less dainty, less attractive.
"Come and see the play," suggested Captain Morecombe, who did not seem
to notice anything amiss. "It will be rest, and we needn't light up
yet a while."
"I'm going wis zoo," said Sonny confidently, escaping from his ayah as
they passed; so, with the child's hand in hers, Kate went on into the
long narrow veranda which had been inclosed by tent-walls as a
theater. Open to the sunlight at the entrance, it was dark enough to
make a swinging lamp necessary at the further end. There was no stage,
no scenery, only a coarse cotton cloth with indistinguishable shadows
and lights on it hung over a rope at the very end. The place was
nearly empty. A few native lads squatted in front, a bench or two held
a sprinkling of half-castes, and at the entrance a group of English
ladies and gentlemen waited for the performance to begin, laughing and
talking the while.
"You look quite done," said Captain Morecombe tenderly, as Kate sank
back in the armchair he placed for her halfway down, where a chink of
light and air came through a slit in the canvas.
"I didn't feel tired before," she replied dreamily. "I suppose it is
the quiet, and the giving in. Tell me about the play, please," she
went on more briskly. "If I don't know something of the plot before it
begins, I shall not understand."
"I expect you will," he began; but at that moment a cry for Captain
Morecombe arose, and to his infinite anger he had to go off and
interpret for the Colonel and Prince Abool-Bukr, who had just arrived.
Kate, to tell truth, felt relieved. After the clamor outside, and the
constant appeals to her, the peace within was delightful. She leaned
back, with Sonny in her arms, feeling so disposed for sleep that her
husband's loud voice coming through the chink startled her.
"Can't possibly take that into consideration. The race must be run on
the runners' own merits only."
He was only, she knew, laying down the law of handicaps to some
dissentient; but the words thrilled her. Poor Herbert! What had _his_
merits been? And then she wondered how long it had been since she had
thought of him thus by his Christian name, as it were. Would it be
possible----
"It's a story of Fate, really," said one of the spectators at the
entrance, to the ladies who were with him; his voice clearly audible
in a sudden hush which had come to the dim veranda that grew dimmer
and dimmer to the end, despite the swinging lamp. "A sort of miracle
play, called 'The Lord of Life, and the Lord of Death.' Yama and Indra
of course. I saw it two days ago, and one of the actors is the best
pantomimist--That's the man--now."
Kate turned her eyes instinctively to the open space which was to do
duty as a stage. The play had begun; must have been going on while she
was thinking, for a scene was in full swing. A scene? A misnomer that,
surely! when there was no scenery, nothing but that strange dim
curtain with its indefinite lights and shadows. Or was there some
meaning in the dabs and splashes after all? Was that a corn merchant's
shop? Yes, there were the gleaming pots, the cavernous shadows, the
piled baskets of flour and turmeric and pulse, the odd little strings
of dried cocoanuts and pipe cups, the blocks of red rock-salt. And
that--she gave an odd little sigh of certainty--was the corn merchant
himself selling flour, with a weighted balance, to a poor widow. What
magnificent pantomime it was! And what a relief that it was pantomime;
so leaving her no whit behind anyone in comprehension; but the equal
of all the world, as far as this story was concerned. And it was
unmistakable. She seemed to hear the chink of money, to see the
juggling with the change, the substitution of inferior flour for that
chosen; the whole give and take of cheating, till the ill-gotten gain
was clutched tight, and the robbed woman turned away patiently,
unconsciously.
An odd, doubtful murmur rose among the squatting boys, checked almost
as it began; for the shadowy curtain behind wavered, seemed to grow
dimmer, to curve in cloud-like festoons, and then disclosed a sitting
figure.
There was a burst of laughter from the entrance. "Rum sort of God,
isn't he?" came the voice again. But from the front rose an uneasy
whisper. "Yama! Sri Yama himself; look at his nose!"
Viewed without reference to either remark, the figure, if quaint,
almost ludicrous, did not lack dignity. There was impassiveness in the
pea-green mask below the miter-like gilt tiara, and impressiveness in
the immovability of the pea-green hands folded on the scarlet
draperies.
"He answers to Charon, you know," went on the voice again. "I suppose
it means that the _buniya-jee_ will need all his ill-gotten gain to
pay fare to Paradise."
Did it mean that? Kate wondered, as she leaned back clasping Sonny
tighter in her arms, or was it only to show that Fate lay behind the
daily life of every man. Then what a farce it was to talk of chance!
Yet she had pleaded for it, till she had gained it. "Let him have his
chance. Let us all have our chance. You and I into the bargain. You
and I!" What made her think of that now?
A snigger from the lads in front roused her to a new scene; a
serio-comic dispute, evidently, between a termagant of a mother-in-law
and a tearful daughter. Kate found herself following it closely
enough, even smiling at it, but Sonny shifted restlessly on her knee.
"I 'ikes a funny man," he said plaintively. "Tell a funny man to come
again, Miffis Erlton."
"I expect he will come soon, dear," she replied, conscious of a
foolish awe behind her own words. Fate lay there also, no doubt.
It did, but as the termagant triumphed and the dutiful daughter-in-law
wept over her baking, the figure that showed wore a white mask, the
rainbow-hued garments were hung with flowers, and the white hands held
a parti-colored bow.
The boys nodded and smiled. "Sri Indra himself," they said. "Look at
his bow!"
"Who is Indra, Mr. Jones?" asked a feminine voice from behind.
"Lord of Paradise. And that is the whole show. It goes on and on. Some
of the scenes are awfully funny, but they wouldn't act the funniest
ones here. And they all end with the green or white dummy; so it gets
a bit monotonous. Shall we go and look at the conjurors now?"
The voices departed; once more to Kate's relief. She felt that the
explanation spoiled the play. And that was no dummy! She could see the
same eyes through the mask; curious, steady, indifferent eyes. The
eyes of a Fate indifferent as to what mask it wore. So the play went
on and on. Some of the Eurasians slipped away, but the boys remained
ready with awe or rejoicing, while Kate sat by the chink through which
the light came more and more dimly as the day darkened. She scarcely
noticed the actors; she waited dreamily for the Lord of Life or the
Lord of Death; for there was never any doubt as to which was coming.
But the child in her lap waited indiscriminately for the funny man.
The thought of the contrast struck her, making her smile. Yet, after
all, the difference only lay in the way you looked at life. There was
no possibility of change to it; the Great Handicap was run on its own
merits. And then, like an unseen hand brushing away the cobwebs which
of late had been obscuring the unalterable facts, like a wave
collapsing her house of sand, came the memory of words which at the
time they were spoken had made her cry out on their cruelty. "What
possible right have you or I to suppose that anything you or I can do
now will alter the initial fact?" If he--that stranger who had stepped
in and laid rude touch on her very soul, had been the Lord of Life or
Death himself, could he have been more remorseless? And what possessed
her that she should think of him again and again; that she should
wonder what his verdict would be on those vague thoughts of
compromise?
"Mrs. Erlton! Mrs. Erlton, everything is ready. Everybody is waiting!
I have been hunting for you everywhere. It never occurred to me you
would be here after all this time. Why, you are almost alone!" Captain
Morecombe's aggrieved regret was scarcely appeased by her hurried
excuse that she believed she had been half-asleep. For the Christmas
tree was lit to its topmost branch, the guests admitted, the drawings
begun.
Perhaps it was the sudden change from dark to light, silence to
clamor, which gave Kate Erlton the dazed look with which she came into
that circle of radiant faces where Prince Abool-Bukr was clapping his
hands like a child and thinking, as he generally did when his
pleasures could be shared by virtue, of how he would describe it all
to Newâsi Begum on her roof. He drew a spotless white lamb as his
gift; Major Erlton its fellow, and the two men compared notes in
sheer laughter, broken English, and shattered Hindustani. And through
the fun and the pulling of crackers, Kate, who recovered herself
rapidly, flitted here and there, arranging, deciding, setting the
ball a-rolling. There was a flush on her cheek, a light in her eyes
which forced other eyes to follow her, even among the packed, prying
faces, peeping from every door and window at the strange sight, the
strange spell. One pair of eyes in particular, belonging to a slight,
clean-shaven man standing beside two others who carried bundles in
their hands, and who, having come from the inside veranda, had found
space to slip well to the front. They were the actors in the now
forsaken drama of Life and Death. One of them, however, had evidently
seen a Christmas tree before, since he suddenly called out in the
purest English:
"The top branch on the left has caught! Put it out, someone!"
The sound seemed to discomfit him utterly. He looked round him
quickly, then realizing that the crowd was too dense for the voice to
be accurately located save by his immediate neighbors, gave a half
apologetic sign to the older of his two companions and slipped away.
They followed obediently, but once outside Tiddu shook his head at his
pupil.
"The Huzoor will never remember to forget. He will get into trouble
some day," he said reproachfully.
"Not if I stick to playing Yama and Indra," replied Jim Douglas with a
shrug of his shoulders. "The Mask of Fate is apt to be inscrutable."
He made the remark chiefly for his own benefit; for he was thinking of
the strange chance of meeting those cold blue-gray eyes again in that
fashion. Beautiful eyes, brilliant eyes! Then he smiled cynically. The
chance he had given had evidently borne fruit. She seemed quite happy,
and there was no mistaking the look on her owner's heavy face. So the
heroics had meant nothing, and he had given up his chance for a vulgar
kiss-and-make-it-up-again!
It was too dark to see that look on Major Erlton's face, but it was
there, as, carrying Kate off with a certain air of proprietorship from
the compliments which had grown stale, they went to find the dog-cart,
which, in deference to the mare's nerves, had been told to await them
in a quiet corner of the compound.
"You did it splendidly, Kate!"
His voice came contentedly through the soft darkness which hid the
easy arm which slipped to her waist, the easy smiling face which bent
to kiss hers.
"Oh, don't! Please don't!" The cry, almost a sob, was unmistakable. So
was the start which made her stumble over an unseen edging to the
path. Even Herbert Erlton with his blunted delicacy could not misjudge
it. He stood silent for a moment, then gave a short hard laugh.
"You haven't hurt yourself, I expect," he said dryly, "so there's no
harm done. I'll call that fellow with the lantern to give us a light."
He did, and the vague shadow preceded by a swinging light turned out
to be young Mainwaring on his pony, with the groom carrying a lantern.
"Mrs. Erlton," cried the lad, slipping to the ground, "what luck! The
very person I wanted. I was going round by your house on the chance of
catching you, as it was useless trying to get in a quiet word this
afternoon. I want to ask if you know of any houses to let! I had a
letter this morning from Mrs. Gissing asking me to look out one for
her."
"For her?" The echo came in a dull voice. Kate had scarcely recovered
from her own recoil, from a vague doubt of what she had done.
"Yes! Her husband had to go home on business and won't be out till
May. So, as the new people at Lucknow seem a poor lot, and she has old
friends at Delhi----" A remembrance that some of these old friendships
must be an unwelcome memory to his hearer made the boy pause. But the
man, smarting with resentment, had no such scruples--what was the use
of them?
"Coming here, is she?" he echoed. "Then we may hope to have some fun
in this deadly-lively stuck-up place. I say, Mainwaring, would you
mind driving my wife home and lending me your pony to gallop round to
the mess. I must go there, and as it is getting late there is no use
dragging Mrs. Erlton all that way. And she has a big Christmas dinner
on, haven't you, Kate?"
As the young fellow climbed up into the dog-cart beside her, Kate
Erlton knew that one chance had gone irretrievably, irrevocably. Would
there be another? Suddenly in the darkness she clasped her hands tight
and prayed that there might be--that it might come soon!
And round them as they drove slowly to gain the city gate, the
half-seen crowd which had gathered to see the strange spell were
drifting homeward to spread the tale of it from hearth to hearth.