He looked out, when the stealthy footstep had gone, at the dusty trees
that were growing ghostly in the twilight, and told himself again that
none knew. Had _he_ known when, as a lad, he fought against the
Sahibs, that one day the death of a Sahib's five-year-old son would be
to him as the death of his own child? Had _he_ known when that
nursling's red-gold curls--so like Boy's curls--lay confidingly on his
breast, that one day he would be thief--perhaps murderer?
No! it was as Fate willed. He was, as ever, in Her hands to-night.
Another footstep! not stealthy this time, but hurried even in its
measured military rhythm.
It was Hirabul Khan, the disgraced native officer, seeking an appeal
to Colonel Gould before the limitations of an open arrest made it
necessary for him to return to his quarters.
"Yea, he was here!" replied Kunder, cynically. "He is ever here--after
the _mem!_ Where hides the doe thither comes the buck!"
Hirabul twirled his moustache fiercely. "Keep thy tongue off thy
betters, scum of the bazaars, or I break thy every bone. I give thee
womenkind in general--but _this_ one is different. Whither hath he
gone? for I must see him."
"No need," retorted Kunder, spitefully. "Thy pottage is cooked
already. He told the _mem_ so but now. 'No promotion,' said he--I know
their speech. And she--"
"Base-born!--and she?"
"She laughed, as I do--scum of the bazaars! Ha, ha!" A devilish
malignity had seized on him; he chuckled even while Hirabul shook him
like a rat.
"Liar! Cur! Whither hath he gone?"
"To the church--with the _mem!_ Thou wilt see! 'No promotion,' said
he; and she--"
With a curse Hirabul flung the chuckler from him, and strode away into
the growing darkness.
The church stood--after the manner of Indian churches--in a garden,
and on the wide sweep of gravel round it carriages were awaiting the
owners, who were busy within. The Colonel's dogcart was among them. So
he was there, sure enough.
Hirabul Khan, hesitating at the open door he dared not enter, could
see straight along the aisle to the altar; could see the cross of
poinsettia and white roses upon the latter, the text above it--
"Unto us a Child is Born."
Unmeaning as it all was to him, he stood looking at it dreamily, until
suddenly from the unseen transept the Christmas hymn began, and those
of the decorators who were not remaining for choir practice came
trooping down the aisle. Then he retreated hastily to where the
Colonel's dogcart stood, that being his best chance of the interview
which, if humble apology might avail, would mean much to his pride.
So he waited, watching with uncomprehending eyes, listening with
uncomprehensive ears--
"Oh! come all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant,
Oh! come ye, oh! come ye to Bethlehem."
Suddenly, on those distant voices, the sound of nearer ones became
audible. He stepped back a pace or two, and peered through the thicket
of rose and pomegranate.
The scum of the bazaars had spoken truth, then! That man and woman
standing so close to each other in the scented twilight were the new
Colonel, the real Colonel's wife! What infamy! He set his teeth and
listened--though this was to him as incomprehensible as the call to
peace and goodwill had been.
"For God's sake, have pity on her!" Boy's mother's voice was full of
tears. "I heard you settle it. But if you two pick that _dhatura_
tonight--'the last thing after the Tree, so that it may not wither!'
Oh, yes, I heard, Colonel Gould--"
"You _did_ hear. I don't deny it. My dear, kind lady--think! If it is
not to-night--it _must_ be soon. This life is killing her--it is
wiser, kinder, to end the struggle now--"
"No! no! give her time. It is in your power to do this, for she loves
you. Remember it is Christmas; you might, at least--"
"The better the day! No; Christmas must take care of itself--if _it_
can! I mean to take her away and care for her--if _I_ can. But thanks,
all the same. I shall never forget your kindness."
In the semi-darkness the listener could see the man stoop and kiss the
hand laid on his arm.
The next instant Colonel Gould was turning savagely on the figure
which had thrust itself on to the path.
"What the devil are you doing here, sir? You are under arrest, and
should be in quarters."
"It was only open arrest, sir, and the time--" Hirabul's tone matched
the mutiny in his heart, and the Colonel broke in on it roughly--
"Consider it close arrest now. Go back and report yourself at
once--and, by Heaven! if you say another word, I'll have you
court-martialled. Go!"
A wild surge of impotent rage kept Hirabul Khan speechless, and ere he
recovered himself the Colonel was driving off--the Colonel and a
woman!
"Sing, choirs of angels,
Sing in exultation."
He turned and shook his fist at the church; then plunging recklessly
through the garden, sought silence and solitude. He needed calm before
he could even begin his revenge.
There was no doubt about the coming of the rains now. More than one
heavy, curiously round drop fell on the dust through which he strode;
but all was still--very still as yet.
By-and-by twinkling carriage-lights, like fireflies, began to sparkle
among the straight row of trees leading to the prison camp.
Yet the rain kept off, and it had not even begun to fall when the
_ayah's_ twinkling light roused Boy for his robing. But half awake,
the child grew fractious, calling all things "shkittles," save the
killing of Viljeon, who, he asserted, was hiding in the garden. To all
of which _Ayah_, awaiting the carriage, agreed, until her charge,
seated on his little bed, grew drowsy once more, and she stole off for
a last pull at her forbidden pipe.
But Kunder's light went on twinkling in the farther room, where he was
conscientiously finishing his old domestic duties, and preparing for
new ones.
So after a time the carriage arrived, bringing with it a smell of damp
dust.
"Hurry up, woman!" called the coachman. "It has begun down the road
like the storm of God. Bring the child; it were best he was soon in
safety."
Bring the child! How? When Boy, with his little pretence wings sewn on
to his nightgown behind, his little sword that was not all pretence,
was not to be found!
The twinkling lights--Kunder's among them--were all over the garden,
accompanied by endearments, threats, promises.
"_Shiv-jee_ save him!" muttered Kunder, as suddenly the rain began to
fall in torrents, quenching his light, and washing him from head to
foot. The child with the red-gold curls of his race might well drown
on a night like this!
The Colonel felt the same fear, as, waiting at the camp-gate to pass
the child in, he heard the news first; then, with a brief order that
the boy's mother was only to be told that the carriage had been
unable to return, owing to the violent storm, and that therefore the
gift-giving must go on without the little giver, started to join the
search.
Hirabul also, who, waiting his opportunity for revenge, had dogged the
Colonel's footsteps all that evening, heard the tale as he skulked in
the crowd, put up his revolver, and with a sob at the thought of his
far-away _sahib_, unconscious of his wife's treachery or his son's
danger, set himself another task.
So the rain fell, and the wayfarers, keeping by the flare of incessant
lightning to the raised roads, said to each other: "This is the deluge
of God! Repent, while there is time!"
* * * * *
"What a terrific noise it makes on this iron roof," said Boy's mother,
when the gift-giving was nearly over. "I'm glad Boy didn't come--he
might have been frightened."
* * * * *
Was he frightened out in the dark alone? He had been. Not at first,
however, when, half asleep, it had been almost a game to slip into the
garden to find and kill Viljeon, and so, cunningly, when he found no
one, into the belt of jungle adjoining it. He was not even frightened
when, stumbling over the rough ground and his long white robe, he
began to tire of his quest and tried to go back. It was not until the
lightning which heralded the bursting of the rain-cloud turned the
wilderness round him into black and white shadows that his courage
left him, and he started to run blindly, too terrified to think, still
too brave to scream.
But he was not frightened now. He was fast asleep, cuddled warmly on a
big, broad breast against a big brown beard.
For that quaint little figure, sword in hand and with its ridiculous
fluttering wings, had, almost in its first flight, run full tilt
against a man who was crouching to leeward of a big tuft of
tiger-grass--a man whose head was buried in his crossed arms, but who
sprang to his feet with a curse at the unmistakable touch of humanity;
then, as a flash of lightning showed him the white robe, the wings,
the golden aureole of hair, fell back faltering.
"God in heaven!" he muttered in a foreign tongue. "What dost Thou
here?"
Boy needed no question as to his wants. "Oh, please!" he panted, "take
me home. I wanted to kill Vile John with the sword as Kunder sharped;
but now I'd wather, please, give the Chrishmus fings--the peace, you
know, an' all that--please, sir. I weally would wather--"
A sudden smile, half bitter, came to the man's bewildered face. "You
wanted to kill Vile John," he said in English. "Why?"
"Oh, I don't know--but I don't want to now. I'd wather bring the
peace."
And then silently the rain had begun--not rain such as Christmas
usually brings in India, but the downpour as from a bucket which comes
at times after long drought; rain before which nothing can stand,
which seems to wash the world and the men in it from all things save a
desire for shelter.
"God in heaven!" exclaimed the man, reverting to his own tongue. "We
shall be drowned if we stop here. Come, little rat! Let us find a spot
where we can keep dry."
A difficult job even for this man--Viljeon, prince of veldt
roamers--to whom this country with its rapidly filling watercourses,
its wide stretches of flood-land, was almost familiar. Seen, indeed,
by the rapid shimmer of the lightning as he steered his way, the
instinct of a pioneer waking in him at every step, he could scarce
believe he was not mastering an African drift.
And the child cuddled close to his breast, wrapped for shelter in his
coat? Who was this child which he held as if it had been his own--the
child with its travesty of wings, its travesty of a sword?
Half bewildered as he was, the humour, the pathos of the strange
chance made his heart softer, and his eyes grew keener, not only for
himself but for his charge, as the danger increased minute by minute.
At first, mixed with his desire for present shelter had been that of
future escape for himself. But by degrees the thought of the child
came uppermost. Safety for it lay on different lines from safety to a
strong man untrammelled; and the instinct of the veldtsman told him
that the former was on the higher ground near the cantonment--near the
prison he had left!
So, through the incessant rain, he threaded his way wading waist-deep
at times, till on a rising bit of land the lightning showed him a
ruined mud hovel. It might serve for shelter and rest for the time: if
the flood rose to it he could but go on.
It was a sort of cattle-shed he found; a rude trough of mud ran round
it, and in one corner was a pile of straw. He drew the driest of this
from beneath the leaking roof, and, placing it in the trough, laid the
still sleeping child upon it. It was better so than in his damp coat.
Then, creeping to the doorway, he sate down to think and watch--alone.
Not quite so much alone, however, as the darkness of the night which
followed on the sudden cessation of rain led him to believe; for not
two hundred yards away, in another cattle-shed on this Government
grazing-ground, three other refugees were also awaiting the dawn.
For Kunder, who had abandoned jewels in the search for gold curls, had
happened in the dark upon Hirabul Khan, who in his turn was
desperately seeking aid for a disabled man whose shouts for help he
had answered, unwitting who gave them.
And if it _was_ the Colonel, explained Hirabul, half apologetically,
as they made their way back together to give the help--well! a man
might be disloyal over women--who were the devil--yea! even to a real
hero like the absent _sahib_, and yet not deserve to drown like a rat
in a drain; and as for the other question, _that_ stood over for
settlement.
Whereupon Kunder had asked what treacherous woman had an absent hero,
and had thereupon fallen into jeers over Hirabul's mistake. Was he a
fool not to know it was the other _mem_ who lived in the house? As for
Boy's mother, was she not palpably a _pudmuni_, with no thought save
for husband and son?
In consequence of which explanation a new and remorseful respect had
come to Hirabul's helping of the Colonel, so that when the latter was
at last in comparative safety in the cattle-shed, he, too, found food
for thought as he also sate waiting for daylight, hoping against hope
for Boy and Boy's mother.
So the grey dawn found him dozing at the door. But he started to his
feet at an exclamation from Kunder, who was standing outside; and
then across a stretch of shallowing water he saw another ruined
cattle-shed, and at the doorway a tall, broad man, with a big brown
beard.
"Viljeon!" he exclaimed under his breath.
"To be shot at sight," mumbled Hirabul, but half awake, as he reached
round aimlessly for a rifle.
"Fool!" cavilled Kunder, all unwitting of the revolver in Hirabul's
belt, "thou art not safe with things that kill, so 'tis well thou hast
none. See! he beckons to us. Let us go to him. The rain hath washed
evil from us all!"
They helped the Colonel, who could scarce believe his senses, to
hobble across, while Viljeon stood guarding the door with a still,
stern look on his face.
"You will find the Child lying in the manger," he said; "bring your
offerings--I have brought mine."
* * * * *
But only three wise men went down to cantonments that Christmas
morning, bringing the child with them; for Kunder, wiser perhaps, or
less wise, felt that his new virtue was better away from the proximity
of the jewels he had left tied up ready in a bundle; so, seizing his
opportunity, he slipped like a water-snake into the tangle of floods
and was seen no more.
* * * * *
"And after all," said Boy's mother, softly, "Christmas _did_ take care
of itself!"
"Yes!" answered the Colonel, quietly. "We all brought our
offerings--gold and frankincense and myrrh."