A great flock of fleecy white clouds were browsing up the steep
hillside like sheep, and hiding part of the great map of India which
lay spread out five thousand feet below one of the isolated peaks
which rise, in sheer masses of granite, from the dusty deserts of
Rajputana.
Even to their dustiness, however, had come a faint tinting of green,
since the seasonal rains had begun. For the moment, nevertheless, the
incessant deluge had ceased, giving place to one of those brilliantly
fine monsoon days--fine with the fineness of gentian skies, and
snowdrift clouds, which remind Indian exiles of the cold, crisp North.
But already these same clouds were losing their lightness and
beginning to sink earthwards; sure sign that the break in the rains
was at an end. Still here, in the little station beside the lake,
which looks as if the least tilt would make it brim over and send it
rolling like quicksilver to the sun-dry plains below, the sky was all
the clearer because of the steady increase of those fleecy flocks
among the glens and ravines which spread outwards, downwards,
ray-like, star-shaped, from the summit.
The increase was so steady that, after a time, the flocks coalesced,
and the likeness passed into that of a rolling sea, through whose
waves the knolls and peaks rose like islands; until the whole scene,
lake and all, showed as a clustered coral reef shows in the Pacific
Ocean--still, dream-like, peaceful utterly.
There was no peace, however, on the face of the Englishman in undress
uniform who was sitting at an office table in the verandah of a
thatched bungalow, which, fenced in perfunctorily from a sheer
precipice on three sides by a frail trellis of bamboo solidified by
morning glories, was perched above the now unseen levels below.
"If I could get reliable information," he muttered irritably, "I could
be prepared. But I can hear nothing of the relief columns, and it is
quite impossible for me to predicate the movements of the mutineers;
yet without this it is difficult to know how to receive them."
His voice rose as he went on, for a yawn and a stir from a
lounge-chair set in the shade, told him he had a listener.
"Not the laste bit in loife, me dear bhoy," came with the yawn. "Sure
we've got to kill them somehow."
The first speaker looked up angrily from the map he was studying.
"Perhaps if I were only directly responsible for fifteen
convalescents, as you are, Tiernay, I should be content to--to be in a
fog. But I am the Brigade Major, and in the absence on duty of the
commanding officer, and, I regret to say, all but a mere handful of
native troops, I am responsible for the safety of a hundred and
thirty-five helpless women and children--their lives and deaths--"
He was interrupted by the mixed sound of a laugh and the finishing of
some brandy and water over which Dr. Tiernay had evidently been
snoozing.
"Divvle a bit. Loife and death's my business from wan year's end to
the other. There's responsibility for yez. And I kill as many as I
cure, as all we pill-boxes do. Sure we haven't a fair chance, for a
man keeps well without a doctor. It's when he thinks of dyin' he comes
to us--an' nine toimes out of ten we can't help him. For talk of bein'
in a fog! Be jabers! it's nothing to the British Pharmacop[oe]ia. When
I write a prescription I always put D.V., weather permitting, at the
tail of it."
The Brigade Major looked at the dishevelled, lazy figure, so different
from his own, distastefully.
"Well, I prefer a clearer conception of my line of treatment. Now if
this portion of the rebels, which, there seems little doubt, are
making for us here"--his finger followed a red line he had marked,
"elect to proceed--"
"Elect, is it?" interrupted the doctor. "Sure they won't elect to do
anything. It will come to them widout their knowing how, like fayver
or catarrh. An' it's no manner of use beginning to physic a patient
till ye know what disease fancies him. So lave off wid worrying, me
dear bhoy, and just get out the salts and senna--"
"Salts and senna!" echoed the Brigade Major, angrily. "Really,
Tiernay, considering you are the only other man in the place--for I
don't count your miserable convalescents, of course, and my handful of
natives is more an anxiety than a help--I do think you might talk
sense."
Dr. Tiernay rose, yawned, and walked over to the office table, a tall,
lank figure with a reckless, whimsical face, alert now to the
uttermost.
"An' isn't it sinse? Salts and senna is what's generally wanted to
begin with. Well, I've collected every lethal weapon I can lay hands
on, including the dintistry case and the horse-pistols with which me
grand-uncle, Macturk of Turksville, shot his wife's brother; so me
salts and senna's ready. And, by the Lord, I'll exhibit it too whin
the patient comes along--trust Micky Tiernay for that. But till he
does"--here his face took a sudden, almost serious gravity--"ah, just
quit cultivating omniscience, and lave the fog alone. Sure only the
divvle himself could say what the blackguards will do."
"But Hoshyari Mul, the banker, thinks--"
"Is it that fat, oily brute? Oh, don't belave him. Don't belave what
anybody says. They don't know--not even what they'll be at themselves
if the mutineers _do_ come. There's only wan thing certain--there's
but wan straight road from Nusseerabad up the hill to us. That's the
tail end of it yonder through the break in the mist. Oh, I've been
kaping an eye on it, I tell yez, even in my sleep. Well, if they come,
they'll come that way."
"But Koomar the priest--"
Dr. Tiernay looked across the placid, still sunbright levels of the
little lake, at the wonderful Jain temples which made this hilltop one
of the holiest spots in all India, and shook his head.
"Don't trust him either, for all his white robes and his piety. He
means well; but he's more in a fog than we are, for we know that we
don't want the mutineers to come, and he isn't sure. How can he be?
I'd just throuble ye to imagine his mental position--if ye can."
So saying, he took up his battered helmet, which looked as if some one
had been playing football with it, and strolled over to the hospital.
It was perched on another knoll close by, yet the mist now lay almost
level between it and him; for the curved waves had given place, like
the fleecy flocks, to a new formation of fog. This, far as the eye
could see, was a flat plain of cotton-wool, white, luminous, on which
the knolls, the temples, the glittering lake, showed like jewels.
He dipped into the cotton-wool as it lay soft in the hollow, and out
of it again ere entering the hospital verandah, where a man in the
loose uniform of a dresser rose from his task of polishing a pair of
horse-pistols and saluted; a trifle unsteadily, for he, though the
best of the bunch of convalescents, was somewhat of a cripple. Had he
not been so, he would not have been left behind when every man who
could hold a rifle tramped down the hill to do the work that had to be
done in the plains, if not only Englishwomen, but England herself was
to be saved.
"Parade will be a bit short to-day, sir," he said, with cheerful
regret, "for Corporal Flanagan 'e 'ave 'ad to 'ave a hemetic, sir, and
the fly-blister on Private MacTartan's chest is has big has a
hostrich's hegg."
"Dear, dee-ar," commented the doctor in long-drawn sympathy,
as he passed into where a dozen or more of men in grey flannel
dressing-gowns were lounging about in their cots or out of them. They
were an unshaven, haggard-looking lot, though one or two were
beginning to show that air of alertness which tells that soul and body
are coming back to the bustle of life.
One or two, again, lay cuddled into their pallets with that other
hospital expression--impatient patience.
Most, however, were between these two extremes, and one of them asked
eagerly: "Any news of the brutes to-day, sir? It would be just my luck
when I'm down with another bad turn."
"Bad turn go to blazes," retorted Dr. Tiernay, with a reassuring
smile. "News of the varmint would have more therapeutic power than
every drug I possess, an' a galvanic batthery wouldn't be in it wid
the first shot. Faix even if I'd killed ye, ye'd do old Lazarus to
spite me. Oh, Flanagan, there ye are. A bit white about the gills, me
bhoy, but it's a foine thing to be in light inarching order. An' as
for you, MacTartan, sure you've the illigantest protective pad evver a
man wore above his heart. Is there any more of you would like wan?"
Yet as he made merry, the doctor's eye had wandered to where the tail
end of the upward road had shown more than once for a second, between
a rift in the wet blanket; for that only connection between mutiny and
helplessness climbed the hill perilously along a steep funnel-shaped
ravine, up which the draught, caused by the cool air above the hot air
below, swept like a chimney driving the fog before it.
There was nothing to be seen, however, not even a rift or break; so he
went on to dress the leg of a cripple on crutches. He was in the
middle of bandaging it when an excited voice called him by name from
the verandah, and he rushed out, bandage and all, so that his patient
remained attached to him by a fluttering ribbon of linen.
He found the Brigade Major on his pony. There was news at last. The
mutineers were coming, but not by the road. They had been seen on the
old footpath to the north--they evidently meant to steal a march in
the rear.
"What made ye come and tell?" asked the doctor suddenly in Hindustani
to the naked figure which had brought the news. It was that of a Jain
ascetic with a muslin cloth bound about his mouth, so as to prevent
the destruction even of the unseen life around him.
The set brown sanctity of his face wavered. "They come to kill--and I
kill nothing."
Dr. Tiernay turned on his heel and faced the man on crutches (who,
after vainly begging to be told what was happening, had come crawling
on all-fours like a dog to the verandah), and began as it were to haul
him in by rolling up the bandage. "Who the divvle tould ye to move,
Tompkins?" he said; "come in at wanst and let me finish me job."
"But, doctor," protested the Brigade Major.
The doctor swung round again at the appeal.
"Don't believe his saintship. Don't, for God's sake. If it's killing
he objects to, sure isn't he helping us to kill them? That sort of
thing doesn't work. See you--he says there are five hundred of them.
Sainted Cecilia! if that's so, an' they mean to come and kill us, why
come up the back stairs?"
"But he says,--and Koomar also, and even Hoshiari Mul--"
"Well, I'd rather trust the fat little banker if it comes to
trustin'," interrupted the doctor, "for, see you, I owe him money, and
if I'm killed he won't get it. But if I were you I'd trust none of
them. Even Hoshiar, compound interest at a hundred and fifty per cent.
to boot, does not know what he'll be at, so take my advice and sit
tight where ye are."
The Brigade Major did, very tight and square on his pony.
"I'm sorry you don't agree with me, Dr. Tiernay," he said stiffly,
"and, of course, being in independent medical charge of this
convalescent depot, you can remain behind if you choose. Indeed I
think it would, in a way, be wiser, since your fellows would be of
little use."
Dr. Tiernay looked round on the contingent of crippledom which had
crowded and crawled to the verandah to listen. "Faix," he said, "their
hearts are whole, anyhow, an' that's half the battle. But what's your
plan?"
"I have thought out this eventuality before, and am certain that our
defence must be at the defile--you know--about four miles from here. I
shall take every soul I can--it's better to give every one something
to do."
The doctor nodded. "That's sound, anyhow. Satan finds--then I'll stay
here."
"If--I fail--you will do what you can for the women and children--I
shan't give the alarm now; so--so you might tell my wife by-and-by--if
necessary."
Mike Tiernay walked back and patted the pony's neck.
"I'll tell her. And ye may be right--ye can't tell--it's just a fog.
Anyhow, the cripples will do what they can for the ladies and the
babies--though wanst those murderin' villains set foot on the summit,
it's all up--so--so--I'll keep an eye on the road for ye. Well,
good-by, me dear bhoy, and good luck to ye."
The sun, that was still shining brightly above the mists, shone on the
men's clasped hands for a moment.
After that, Dr. Tiernay finished Tompkins' leg.
It was rather a long job, as it had to be done all over again. Then
there were minor hurts to arms and hands, so that an hour must have
passed before the doctor, wiping his hands with the curiously minute
care of the surgeon who knows what risks he runs, suddenly dropped the
towel and said--
"Sainted Sister Anne! they're coming."
Yes. The rift for which he had been watching with the carelessness
which comes with custom, had showed that tail end of the road for a
moment, and showed something on it--a trail of men and horses, a
flashing of bayonets and spear-points.
Ten minutes after the man on crutches was the only one left in the
hospital, and he was sitting on the edge of his cot sobbing like a
child disappointed of his holiday; but Mike Tiernay had left him the
horse-pistols by way of consolation, with instructions to hold the
fort as long as he could, and prevent the damned rascals from touching
even the drugs.
"Ye'll have the best of it after all, I tell ye," had been the
doctor's farewell, "for sure ye'll be sitting at your ease shootin'
straight long after we've been silenced; and a last shot is always a
last shot." He was wondering what his would be as he led his company
of cripples through the hollow of mist which lay between the hospital
and the head of that road whose tail had shown the upward gleam of
bayonets.
As yet, however, everything was peaceful. The lake, the temples, the
isolated houses set on their knolls, even the lower cluster of the
bazaar were all bathed in sunshine, with the curious, translucent
brilliance which only Indian sunshine can give. Only between them,
clinging to every hollow, lay the thick, luminous white fog.
Mike Tiernay took off his helmet, wiped his forehead, and looked
around.
"It's no good in life making the poor things anxious," he muttered to
himself, "an' if we can keep the divvles at bay _he_ will be back to
tell his own story. But I'll just give a look round to hearten them
up; there's plenty of time, for I can catch up the cripples in a
jiffy." So, bidding his men march slowly down the road (saving
themselves as much as possible, since their work would be cut out for
them afterwards) until he rejoined them, he set off with swinging
strides to the semi-fortified houses, in which, more for the name of
safety than for the hope of it, the helpless women and children had
been gathered during the last few days.
"Any news, doctor?" asked the Brigade Major's wife, coming out to meet
him, her six months' baby in her arms. "Dick isn't back from office
yet, and it's such weary work, waiting, waiting."
Dr. Tiernay bent rather abruptly to look at the fretful child, which
was teething badly. One or two other women, pale-faced, anxious, their
little ones clinging round them, had gathered to listen, and he spoke
as it were to all.
"Well, it can't be long now, any more than it can't be long before
Dick comes back, or before that troublesome eye-tooth comes through.
If all goes well, me dear madam, all the worry will be over by
tomorrow."
"And if it isn't you will come with your lancet, won't you?" asked the
mother, pleadingly.
Dr. Tiernay frowned portentously. "It's against me principles,
madam--but I'll use--well, some kind of lethal weapon, I promise you.
An' tell your husband, when ye see him, that my cripples did as well
as could be expected, considering the fog."
"Did as well?" she asked. "What have they done?"
"Gone for their first walk down the road," he replied, with a cheerful
laugh, "an' I must be affther them to stop them from overtiring
themselves. So good-by. Dick'll maybe bring good news."
"How cheerful he is always," said one pale-faced mother to another. "I
always feel safer when I've seen him; and, you know, he can't really
think there is any immediate danger or he wouldn't have talked of
coming to lance the baby's gums, would he?"
Whatever Dr. Tiernay might have _thought_, he was by this time
beginning to realise that in the fog it was impossible to _know_
anything--even the positions of his own cripples. "Are ye all there,
wid as many legs an' arms as ye have whole?" he called, after he had
given the order for them to fall in; "for, by the Lord that made me, I
must take ye on trust; ye might be anybody." He paused; his eyes lit
up suddenly; he gave a wild hooroosh.
"I have it, men; let's play the fog on the divvies, an' be damned to
them. They can't see us, so let's take them in flank at the zig-zag.
Smith, out wid yur engineer's eye an' tell me what's the length of the
zig-zag--wan zig of it, I mane."
Smith, in the fog, thought a moment or two. "Close on a mile, sir,
more or less, and there's four of them."
"Say three-quarters, and we are fifteen; no, it's fourteen, for we had
to leave poor Tompkins wid his crutches an' the horse-pistols.
Tompkins absent."
"Beg pardin', sir," came a voice from the fog; "Tompkins present. Come
a all-fours down the short cut quite easy."
"Fifteen," corrected the doctor, calmly, "fifteen into twelve hundred
yards. Faix, it'll have to be open order."--He paused for an odd catch
in his breath, something between a laugh and a sob. "See here, ye
gomerauns--English, Irish, Scotch, whatever ye are--that's our game.
We're not fifteen; we're fifteen hundred."
The cripples out of the fog broke into a faint cheer.
"You've got it, Mick Tiernay!" they assented wildly. "You've got it,
doctor dear! The fog's our game."
"We're fifteen hundred strong, an' we're each of us a hundred men an'
two officers," called the doctor back. "Now, d'ye understand, men?
open order it is--wan hundred yards or thereabouts, at the top
zig-zag, and chargin' down on the divvies in flank--an' the gift of
tongues--an' Donnybrook Fair--Hooroosh, Pat! come on, lads."
The next moment, hirpling, hobbling, unseen even of each other until
sometimes a jostle would bring a low-toned witticism--"Now, then,
Cap'n, keep your regiment orf mine, will ye?" or, "I'll throuble you,
sorr, to respect me formation!"--the men were making their way, fast
as crippledom would let them, towards their forlorn hope. And despite
the witticisms, their haggard lean faces, hidden, like all else, in
the fog, were stern and strained. Men's faces are so, when each man
has to find place in his body for a hundred souls.
"Quiet's the word. Let them come on almost to the turn," was the
doctor's last injunction as he posted his men; the strongest at the
narrowest end of the zig-zag because they would the soonest come upon
the enemy, and so on in varying gradations of convalescence, till the
line of the supposed battalion stopped at the widest end with
Tompkins, who was given as much ammunition as they could spare, and
told to fire freely, regardlessly.
The doctor himself, with MacTartan close beside him ("so as," he said,
"to increase the illushion"), were at the extreme angle. The unseen
road lay below them, not fifty yards off, and below that again, the
doctor knew, was an almost precipitous grass slope down to the next
zig.
"We must start them on that short cut, if we can," he said to his
supporter, "an' if we do, they'll rowl and rowl and rowl to perdition,
please the Lord!" So they waited, the jest forgotten in earnest.
Then suddenly through the fog came a jingle.
"Tenshion, B Company," whispered the man who had had a bad turn (his
name was Brown) to himself, and steadied his shaking hands on his
musket as he listened. Another jingle. A sound of voices first; then,
as suddenly as the jingle had come, came a thud of many feet.
_Thud, thud, thud_.
Then all along the hillside, all along that three-quarters of a mile
or more, a volley--not of rifles, but orders--orders familiar to those
below, and suggestive of colonels and majors, regiments and wings, and
companies. Finally, at the narrowest end, a call to fire and charge; a
reckless volley into the fog, and then two reckless figures flinging
themselves into the uttermost void, God knows how, God knows where,
save that it was downwards on that climbing foe.
MacTartan first; remembering his Highland corries and half bursting
his lungs in his effort to give the Highland yell of a whole regiment.
Yet beneath the grim joke a grimmer earnest lay, as in the fog he and
his bayonet found something.
"Hech, now! Is that you?" he said grimly, and the something was a man
no more!
"Steady, men. Follow me!" shouted Dr. Tiernay. Once more the mist
produced something, and two men in deadly earnest hacked at each other
with swords.
"Go on, brothers! run! they are behind us! run! Go back, brothers!
they are ahead!" came the cry. And above it rose those orders. From
close at hand a dropping fire; and from the far end--Tompkins' end--
quite a respectable volley.
"Come on! come on! and let them have the bayonet!" shouted the doctor
again; and with the shout one or two more men grew to sight from the
mist upon one side of the climbing road. But the men who had been on
the road first were disappearing into the fog on the other side;
disappearing down the grass slope to the next zag. Only at the turn
where the doctor and MacTartan fought side by side, the difficulty of
escape made resistance fierce from a knot of troopers, till, with a
curse, MacTartan caught one horse by the bridle, and deliberately
backed it over the edge; but not before, in his desperate effort to be
strong as he once had been, he had stumbled and fallen before the
flash of a sabre that passed in mad flight downwards. "Gorsh me, I've
spoilt myself," he murmured sadly, as he rose with difficulty.
"What is it, man? Are you wounded?" cried the doctor, rushing up.
"Bruk me blister, sir," replied MacTartan, stolidly, reaching for his
bayonet and going on.
That upper zig-zag was clear now; but below in the fog lay another,
and another, and another, where the fugitives might be caught. So the
battalion charged again and again, while Tompkins coming down quite
easily, "a all-fours," fired volleys steadily.
The jest and the earnest of it, what pen can tell?
Till through the fog rang a faint hurrah. The last of the zig-zags had
blindly been reached, and neither far nor near upon the hillside down
which the battalion had charged in open order, was foe--not to be
seen, but felt! The uttermost void was void indeed.
"We've got no dooleys, men," said Dr. Tiernay, wiping his forehead
once more, "so the wounded must crawl back to hospital as best they
can."
So they crawled. All but Tompkins; the doctor insisted upon carrying
him pick-a-back, on the ground that he, the doctor, was the only whole
man in the battalion, and was bound to do double work.
And the next morning, when he went his rounds, he stood for a minute
or two beside a fretful baby, and then took out his lancet.
"It's against me principles, me dear madam," he said, with a shrug of
his shoulders; "for there's a toime for everything, and everything in
its toime; and no one, not even a tooth, knows what it would be at
till that toime comes. But as I said the throuble would be over, and
the rest of it is;--why, I'll keep my word!"
And it was over; for a message saying he was close on the heels of his
messenger came from the general in command of relief.
The fog had lifted by this time, lifted for steady rain; so the
English troops coming up found the foes more easily than the battalion
had done. But the foes were dead. Those random shots, those reckless
charges from nothingness to nothingness had done some work.
And part of it was on the naked body of a Jain ascetic, with a bit of
muslin swathed about his mouth, lest, inadvertently, he should bring
death to the smallest of God's creatures.
GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND
MYRRH
"Oh! Mummy," said the Boy, as his mother slipped a sort of nightgown
over his trim little khaki uniform, "I think it'sh shkittles!"
Boy's invariable dissent--picked up about the barracks of an Indian
cantonment--was applied in this instance both to the angelic robe
represented by the nightgown, and the angelic part the child was to
play in it.
For it was Christmas Eve, and the vague desire for peace and goodwill
which, even in these latter days, comes with Christmas-tide, had made
the English aliens in the station devise a Tree for those still
greater aliens--the Boer prisoners--who lived among them in the
strange spider's web of barbed wire, which to the casual eye seemed so
inefficient a prison for enemies who had defied capture so long, so
bravely.
It was Boy's mother who had started the idea. She was one of those
women, lovable utterly, not always reasonable, who find solace in
dramatising their own sorrows. So when, two years before, her husband,
commanding a native cavalry regiment still quartered in the station,
had been ordered to Africa on Staff duty, she had remained on in the
big house, sharing it with a friend, and continuing religiously to
care for all things for which her absent soldier had cared--even for
the regiment which was still so proud of its Colonel at the front.
It was a heartrending solace, indeed, to see the native officers and
men, when they inquired for the latest news, salute Boy as solemnly as
they would have saluted his father; and it pleased her to perceive
that the only regard these warriors had for _her_ was as guardian of
their Sahib's honour and of his only son; for the wellbeing of which
things they were fiercely jealous.
To this woman, militant to the heart's core yet sentimentally pitiful,
it had seemed appropriate that Boy--son of the only fighting father in
the station--should play the part of the "_Christ-kind_," the Bringer
of good gifts at the Christmas-tree. There was no geographical or
ethnological reason why this German custom should obtain among the
Boers, but Boy's mother had recollections of school-days abroad, and
thought that her little son, with his aureole of red hair and grave
baby face, so like the absent hero, would look sweet in the part.
"It isn't skittles at all, Boy," she said softly. "Remember what I
told you about loving your enemies."
"I'd wather fight 'em, like Daddy," replied Boy, drawing from its
scabbard the miniature sword of strict regimental pattern which--it
being a new toy--he had refused to lay aside even for angelic robings.
"But it is Christmas," persisted his mother. "Remember what I told you
about it--about the angels, and the peace, and goodwill."
"I shink Chrishmus shkittles, too."
"Quite right, youngster! It _is_ skittles in India," put in a tall
man, who, farther down the verandah, was watching a woman's fingers
busy themselves over church decorations.
His rather reckless expression changed as, stooping to select a
brilliant branch of scarlet-fingered poinsettia from the confused heap
of flowers and greenery at their feet, he handed it to his companion,
and she looked up to thank him with her eyes.
Boy's mother, who had glanced towards them at the interrupting voice,
paused over the angelic robe, uneasily silent.
"I wish I had something white, beside the roses," remarked the
cross-maker a trifle hurriedly. "They don't look a bit Christmassy."
"Lilies?" suggested the man.
She shook her head. "Lilies don't suit the climate; there aren't
any--_here_."
He stooped and spoke lower. "Yes! it's a God-forsaken spot all
round--for _you_. But, look here! I saw a _dhatura_ actually in
blossom to-day--close to my bungalow. It's not unlike a lily--as
white, anyhow--and sweeter. They use it in their temples--so why not
in church? It doesn't do to be too particular--when you want
anything."
She shook her head again. "It's poisonous--besides, it doesn't do--to
leave the beaten path."
"Try!"
There was a pause; for the undercurrent, which had seemed to sweep
each trivial word to another meaning, seemed suddenly to sweep this
man and woman within touch--dangerous touch--of each other.
"What _are_ you two talking about?" asked Boy's mother, coming towards
them. "What a lovely cross, Muriel! And why, please, should Christmas
in India be skittles, Colonel Gould?"
He laughed. "How stern you look! I wish I could get that righteous
indignation up for orderly room. I need it!"
"My husband never found the regiment difficult to manage," interrupted
the wife of its absent commander jealously.
"Nor do I," retorted its present head, "but--" he paused, not caring
to explain that he, an outsider sent but lately to drill a corps back
to the discipline it had lost after her husband's departure, had
naturally a very different task.
"Hullo, Boy!" he said, to change the subject, "that is a jolly little
sword! Who gave it you?"
"Hirabul Khan gaved it me," replied the child. "When I'm Colonel,
he'sh going to be my risshildar, 'cos you shee he was my Daddy's
orderly first, an' then Daddy made him--oh, lotsh of fings."
"He'll have to look out if he doesn't want to lose some things," said
Colonel Gould, sharply; then answering a vexed look of Boy's mother,
continued: "He was a _protege_ of your husband's, I know--but he
really has wind in his head. For his own sake it must be got out. I
put him under arrest to-day, and told him squarely I'd have to block
his promotion."
"What had he done?" She spoke quite fiercely.
"Cheek, as usual. It was over that escape from the camp. Haven't you
heard? Viljeon, that cantankerous brute who gives so much trouble,
managed to get out again last night. I wish it had been any one
else--for he's half mad and dangerous. I'm glad the General has
ordered the search-party to shoot at sight if he offers resistance."
Boy, in his white robe, his toy sword in his hand still, nodded his
red aureole sagely.
"The Tommies down at the camp told _me_. He'sh just an awful brute,
Vile John is. He is goin' to kill all the little English children he
meets, 'cos--'cos they killed his: but that's a damned lie."
The calm deliberation of the last was so evidently imitative that
Boy's mother smiled, despite a sudden pain at her heart.
"They died, dear, and so you must be very sorry for him. Think how sad
I should be if--" The thought produced a sudden caress, a sudden
glisten in her grey eyes. "Now, Boy of mine, let me take that thing
off. Then you must go and lie down and sleep, for you'll have to keep
wide awake half the night."
"Take care of my shword, Mummy, please!" said Boy, superbly, as, in
unrobing, he shifted it from one hand to the other; "it's most
dweadful sharp!"
"By George, it is," remarked Colonel Gould; "a trifle too sharp for
safety."
"Is it?" said Boy's mother, anxiously. "Hirabul ought not--"
"It wasn't Hira," interrupted Boy. "It was Kunder sharped it, so as I
could kill Vile John if I met him, like as my Daddy done over in
Africa. Didn't you, Kunder?"
A figure squatting in a far corner rose and salaamed.
"The _Huzoor_ speaks truth."
The speaker was an old man, slender, upright, unusually dark-skinned;
this latter fact made his bare limbs look curiously youthful and
lissom.
"Done it uncommonly well, too," assented Colonel Gould, feeling the
edge. "Where did you learn the trick?"
"Your slave was once sword-sharpener by trade," was the submissive
reply.
"Kunder'sh an awful clever chap," said Boy, loquaciously. "He can
make--oh! all sorts of fings as deads people--bows and stwangles, you
know--can't you, Kunder?"
The man salaamed, with a watchful look at his other hearers.
"And," continued Boy, in vicarious boasting, "he can do all sorts of
dweadful fings, too! He can steal people's purses when they'se
sleepin', an' make dicky-birds tumble off bwanches, an' little boys
like me wake never no more--can't you, Kunder?"
Submissiveness grew crafty. "This slave has certainly told such tales
to the children-people."
"Looks scoundrel enough," remarked Colonel Gould, carelessly. "Where
did you pick him up?"
"Oh! he isn't _my_ servant," replied Boy's mother. "He is Muriel's. I
can't think why she keeps him."
The cross-maker rose and held her work at arm's length. "Does any one
really know why they do anything?" she asked. "Perhaps, as you say, he
will steal my jewels some day--or murder me. But, as Boy says, he's
awful clever, and one must be amused! Now I must go and put this up.
Will you drive me to the church, Colonel Gould?"
"Better come in the victoria with me," said Boy's mother, hastily; "it
is going to rain." This other woman, this childless wife with an
unspeakable husband, must be guarded from herself.
"I don't think so," put in the Colonel, firmly. "Kunder! call my
dogcart, and we can go round by my bungalow and pick the _dhatura_."
Kunder, passing on his errand, looked up curiously at the last word.
Colonel Gould gave back the look. "Queer customer! Shouldn't wonder if
he's a Thug--they use _dhatura_ poison to stupefy their victims, you
know."
He spoke carelessly as they stood looking out at the bare patch of
parched ground called by courtesy a garden. The lowering sky, of an
even purplish grey, was so dark that the level lines of dust-laden
_sirus_ trees along the road showed light against it.
"I wish some one would stupefy me," said Muriel, with a sudden passion
in her voice; to cover which she went on recklessly: "How I hate
Christmas in India!--the sham of it--sham decorations--sham church,
for it isn't real! The reality is outside among the poor folk in the
fields and the towns, to whom Christmas is a day when _we_ guzzle and
_they_ pay the piper!"
"My dear Muriel!"
"It's true! Think of it! Peace and goodwill? Isn't the whole station
at daggers-drawing because one lady said another wasn't the
best-dressed woman in India? Isn't your regiment, Colonel, ready to
murder you? Then that camp, right in the middle of us Christians, with
how many prisoners eating their hearts out? And Vile John--as Boy has
been taught to call him--half mad in thinking of his children who have
died. Oh, I know it is all inevitable--but think, just think of him
wandering about this Christmas Eve, liable to be shot at sight.
There's a Santa Claus for you!"
Her voice had risen, her fingers had closed tremblingly on the sprig
of poinsettia she had fastened in her breast. It showed against the
white laces of her dress like a clutching scarlet hand.
Colonel Gould shrugged his shoulders uneasily. "Don't forget Kunder in
the picture of peace and goodwill!--Kunder with his 'fings as kills';
for the matter of that don't forget _you_ and _me_, and the rest of
us! The Decalogue is in danger on Christmas Eve as always--perhaps
more so."
"I don't believe it," exclaimed Boy's mother in sudden pitiful
emotion. "Don't believe him, Muriel! Wait and see! Why, even that
storm brewing"--as she spoke a shivering seam of lightning shot
slanting across the purple pall behind the dusty trees--"only means
the Christmas rains. How welcome they will be after this endless
drought! They will perhaps save millions of lives--"
"A doubtful message of peace," put in the Colonel, drily. "But hadn't
we better start? or we shan't have time for the _dhatura_."
"You haven't time," said Boy's mother, sharply. "You must be back by
eight, Muriel, for we have to be at the camp by nine. Ayah will bring
Boy down ready dressed when we want him--so please don't be late."
This thing which she saw looming as plainly as she saw that storm in
the sky, should not be if she could help it. They were too good, both
the man and the woman, for that sort of ruin.
She shivered as she watched the dogcart drive off. Truly
there were storms ahead! And that thought of Viljeon--childless,
half-distraught--wandering about, liable to be shot like a wild beast,
made her fear for what might happen ere Christmas dawned.
The verandah darkened silently after she left it. Every now and again
a puff of wind rattled the dry pods of the _sirus_ trees, making them
give out a faint crackle like that of a scaled viper coiled watchfully
in a corner.
Kunder, in _his_ corner, sate up keenly as a snake does. There was a
louder crackle of a stealthy footstep.
"Is it well?" came a stealthy voice.
"If Fate wills," replied Kunder, sinking back again to sloth.
A stealthy hand reached out a tiny paper packet wound with unspun
silk.
"The sleep-giver--from the Master--it is fresh and good."
"There is no need for sleep-giving," replied Kunder, passively.
"The _mem_ is drunk with the love-philtre women crave. I know their
ways"--he gave a little soft laugh. "She will not return to-night. So,
at dawn, I and the jewels will be--with the Master--if Fate so wills."
"Why should She _not_ will?"