Howrah City bows the knee
More or less to masters three,
King, and Prince, and Siva.
Howrah City pays in pain
Taxes which the royal twain
Give to priests, to give again
(More or less) to Siva.
THAT was no time or place for any girl of twenty to be wandering
unprotected. Rosemary McClean knew it; the old woman, of the sweeper
caste, that is no caste at all,--the hag with the flat breasts and
wrinkled skin, who followed her dogwise, and was no more protection
than a toothless dog,--knew it well, and growled about it in incessant
undertones that met with neither comment nor response.
“Leave a pearl of price to glisten on the street, yes!” she grumbled.
“Perhaps none might notice it--perhaps! But her--here--at this time--”
She would continue in a rumbling growl of half-prophetic catalogues of
evil--some that she had seen to happen, some that she imagined, and not
any part of which was in the least improbable.
As the girl passed through the stenching, many-hued bazaar, the
roar would cease for a second and then rise again. Turbaned and
pugreed--Mohammedan and Hindoo--men of all grades of color, language,
and belief, but with only one theory on women, would stare first at the
pony that she rode, then at her, and then at the ancient grandmother who
trotted in her wake. Low jests would greet the grandmother, and then the
trading and the gambling would resume, together with the under-thread of
restlessness that was so evidently there and yet so hard to lay a finger
on.
The sun beat down pitilessly--brass--like the din of cymbals. Beneath
the sun helmet that sat so squarely and straightforwardly on the tidy
chestnut curls, her face was pale. She smiled as she guided her pony
in and out amid the roaring throng, and carefully refused to see the
scowls, her brave little shoulders seconded a pair of quiet, brave gray
eyes in showing an unconquerable courage to the world, and her clean,
neat cotton riding-habit gave the lie and the laugh in one to poverty;
but, as the crowd had its atmosphere of secret murmuring, she had
another of secret anxiety.
Neither had fear. She did not believe in it. She was there to help her
father fight inhuman wrong, and die, if need be, in the last ditch. T
a two-hundred-million crowd, held down and compelled by less than a
hundred thousand aliens. And, least of all, had the man who followed
her at a little distance the slightest sense of fear. He was far more
conversant with it than she, but--unlike her, and far more than the
seething crowd--he knew the trend of events, and just what likelihood
there was of insult or injury to Rosemary McClean being avenged in a
generation.
He caused more comment than she, and of a different kind. His rose-pink
pugree, with the egret and the diamond brooch to hold the egret in its
place--his jeweled sabre--his swaggering, almost ruffianly air--were
no more meant to escape attention than his charger that clattered and
kicked among the crowd, or his following, who cleared a way for him with
the butt ends of their lances. He rode ahead, but every other minute a
mounted sepoy would reach out past him and drive his lance-end into the
ribs of some one in the way.
There would follow much deep salaaming; more than one head would bow
very low indeed; and in many languages, by the names of many gods, he
would be cursed in undertones. Aloud, they would bless him and call him
“Heaven-born!”
But he took no interest whatever in the crowd. His dark-brown eyes were
fixed incessantly on Rosemary McClean's back. Whenever she turned a
corner in the crowded maze of streets, he would spur on in a hurry until
she was in sight again, and then his handsome, swarthy face would light
with pleasure--wicked pleasure--self-assertive, certain, cruel. He would
rein in again to let her draw once more ahead.
Rosemary McClean knew quite well who was following her, and knew, too,
that she could do nothing to prevent him. Once, as she passed a species
of caravansary--low-roofed, divided into many lockable partitions, and
packed tight with babbling humanity--she caught sight of a pair of long,
black thigh boots, silver-spurred, and of a polished scabbard that moved
spasmodically, as though its owner were impatient.
“Mahommed Gunga!” she muttered to herself. “I wonder whether he
would come to my assistance if I needed him. He fought once--or so he
says--for the British; he might be loyal still. I wonder what he is
doing here, and what--Oh, I wonder!”
She was very careful not to seem to look sideways, or seek acquaintance
with the wearer of the boots; had she done so, she would have gained
nothing, for the moment that he caught sight of her through the opened
door he drew back into a shadow, and swore lustily. What he said to
himself would have been little comfort to her.
“By the breath of God!” he growled. “These preachers of new creeds are
the last straw, if one were wanting! They choose the one soft place
where Mohammedan and Hindoo think alike, and smite! If I wanted to raise
hell from end to end of Hind, I too would preach a new creed, and turn
good-looking women loose to wander on the country-side!--Ah!” He drew
back even further, as he spied the egret and the sabre and the stallion
cavorting down the street--then thought better of it and strode
swaggering to the doorway, and stood, crimson-coated, in the sunlight,
stroking upward insolently at his black, fierce-barbered beard. There
was a row of medal ribbons on his left breast that bore out something at
least of his contention; he had been loyal to the British once, whether
he was so now or not.
The man on the charger eyed him sideways and passed on. Mahommed Gunga
waited. One of the prince's followers rode close to him--leaned low from
the saddle--and leered into his face.
“Knowest not enough to salute thy betters?” he demanded.
Mahommed Gunga made a movement with his right hand in the direction of
his left hip--one that needed no explanation; the other legged his
horse away, and rode on, grinning nastily. To reassure himself of his
superiority over everybody but his master, he spun his horse presently
so that its rump struck against a tented stall, and upset tent and
goods. Then he spent two full minutes in outrageous execration of the
men who struggled underneath the gaudy cloth, before cantering away,
looking, feeling, riding like a fearless man again. Mahommed Gunga
sneered after him, and spat, and turned his back on the sunshine and the
street.
“I had a mind to teach that Hindoo who his betters are!” he growled.
“Come in, risaldar-sahib!” said a voice persuasively. “By your own
showing the hour is not yet--why spill blood before the hour?”
The Rajput swaggered to the dark door, spurs jingling, looking back
across his shoulder once or twice, as though he half-regretted leaving
the Hindoo horseman's head upon his shoulders.
“Come in, sahib,” advised the voice again. “They be many. We are few.
And, who knows--our roads may lie together yet.”
Mahommed Gunga kicked his scabbard clear, and strode through the door.
The shadows inside and the hum of voices swallowed him as though he were
a big, red, black-legged devil reassimilated in the brewing broth of
trouble; but his voice boomed deep and loud after he had disappeared
from view.
“When their road and my road lie together, we will travel all feet
foremost!” he asserted.
Ten turnings further away by that time, Rosemary McClean pressed on
through the hot, dinning swarm of humanity, missing no opportunity to
slip her pony through an opening, but trying, too, to seem unaware that
she was followed. She chose narrow, winding ways, where the awnings
almost met above the middle of the street, and where a cavalcade of
horsemen would not be likely to follow her--only to hear a roar behind
her, as the prince's escort started slashing at the awnings with their
swords.
There was a rush and a din of shouting beside her and ahead, as the
frightened merchants scurried to pull down their awnings before
the ruthless horse-men could ride down on them; the narrow street
transformed itself almost on the instant into a undraped, cleared defile
between two walls. And after that she kept to the broader streets, where
there was room in the middle for a troop to follow, four abreast, should
it choose. She had no mind to seek her own safety at the expense of men
whose souls her father was laboring so hard to save.
She got no credit, though, for consideration--only blame for what the
swordsmen had already done. One man--a Maharati trader--half-naked,
his black hair coiled into a shaggy rope and twisted up above his
neck--followed her, side-tracking through the mazy byways of the
bewildering mart, and coming out ahead of her--or lurking beside bales
of merchandise and waiting his opportunity to leap from shadow into
shadow unobserved.
He followed her until she reached the open, where a double row of trees
on each side marked the edge of a big square, large enough for the
drilling of an army. Along one side of the square there ran the
high brick wall, topped with a kind of battlement, that guarded the
Maharajah's palace grounds from the eyes of men.
Just as she turned, just as she was starting to canter her pony beside
the long wall, he leaped out at her and seized her reins. The old woman
screamed, and ran to the wall and cowered there.
Very likely the man only meant to frighten her and heap insults on her,
for in '56, though wrath ran deep and strong, men waited. There was to
be sudden, swift whelming when the time came, not intermittent outrage.
But he had no time to do more than rein her pony back onto its haunches.
There came a clatter of scurrying hoofs behind, and from a whirl of
dust, topped by a rose-pink pugree, a steel blade swooped down on her
and him. A surge of brown and pink and cream, and a dozen rainbow tints
flashed past her; a long boot brushed her saddle on the off side. There
was a sickening sound, as something hard swished and whicked home;
her pony reeled from the shock of a horse's shoulder, and--none too
gently--none too modestly--the prince with the egret and the handsome
face reined in on his horse's haunches and saluted her.
There was blood, becoming dull-brown in the dust between them. He shook
his sabre, and the blood dripped from it then he held it outstretched,
and a horseman wiped it, before he returned it with a clang.
“The sahiba's servant!” he said magnificently, making no motion to let
her pass, but twisting with his sword-hand at his waxed mustache and
smiling darkly.
She looked down between them at the thing that but a minute since had
lived, and loved perhaps as well as hated.
“Shame on you, Jaimihr-sahib!” she said, shuddering. A year ago she
would have fallen from her pony in a swoon, but one year of Howrah and
its daily horrors had so hardened her that she could look and loathe
without the saving grace of losing consciousness.
“The shame would have been easier to realize, had I taken more than
one stroke!” he answered irritably, still blocking the way on his great
horse, still twisting at his mustache point, still looking down at her
through eyes that blazed a dozen accumulated centuries' store of lawless
ambition. He was proud of that back-handed swipe of his that would
cleave a man each time at one blow from shoulder-joint to ribs, severing
the backbone. A woman of his own race would have been singing songs in
praise of him and his skill in swordsman-ship already; but no woman of
his own race would have looked him in the eye like that and dared him,
nor have done what she did next. She leaned over and swished his charger
with her little whip, and slipped past him.
He swore, deep and fiercely, as he spurred and wheeled, and cantered
after her. His great stallion could overhaul her pony in a minute, going
stride for stride; the wall was more than two miles long with no break
in it other than locked gates; there was no hurry. He watched her
through half-closed, glowering, appraising eyes as he cantered in her
wake, admiring the frail, slight figure in the gray cotton habit, and
bridling his desire to make her--seize her reins, and halt, and make
her--admit him master of the situation.
As he reached her stirrup, she reined in and faced him, after a hurried
glance that told her her duenna had failed her. The old woman was
invisible.
“Will you leave that body to lie there in the dust and sun?” she asked
indignantly.
“I am no vulture, or jackal, or hyena, sahiba!” he smiled. “I do not eat
carrion!” He seemed to think that that was a very good retort, for he
showed his wonderful white teeth until his handsome face was the epitome
of self-satisfied amusement. His horse blocked the way again, and all
retreat was cut off, for his escort were behind her, and three of them
had ridden to the right, outside the row of trees, to cut off possible
escape in that direction. “Was it not well that I was near, sahiba?
Would it have been better to die at the hands of a Maharati of no
caste--?”
“Than to see blood spilt--than to be beholden to a murderer? Infinitely
better! There was no need to kill that man--I could have quieted him.
Let me pass, please, Jaimihr-sahib!”
He reined aside; but if she thought that cold scorn or hot anger would
either of them quell his ardor, she had things reversed. The less she
behaved as a native woman would have done--the more she flouted him--the
more enthusiastic he became.
“Sahiba!”--he trotted beside her, his great horse keeping up easily with
her pony's canter--“I have told you oftener than once that I make a good
friend and a bad enemy!”
“And I have answered oftener than once that I do not need your
friendship, and am not afraid of you! You forget that the British
Government will hold your royal brother liable for my safety and my
father's!”
“You, too, overlook certain things, sahiba.” He spoke evenly, with a
little space between each word. With the dark look that accompanied it,
with the blood barely dry yet on the dusty road behind, his speech
was not calculated to reassure a slip of a girl, gray-eyed or not,
stiff-chinned or not, borne up or not by Scots enthusiasm for a cause.
“This is a native state. My brother rules. The British--”
“Are near enough, and strong enough, to strike and to bring you and your
brother to your knees if you harm a British woman!” she retorted. “You
forget--when the British Government gives leave to missionaries to go
into a native state, it backs them up with a strong arm!”
“You build too much on the British and my brother, sahiba!
Listen--Howrah is as strong as I am, and no stronger. Had he been
stronger, he would have slain me long ago. The British are--” He checked
himself and trotted beside her in silence for a minute. She affected
complete indifference; it was as though she had not heard him; if she
could not be rid of him, she at least knew how to show him his utter
unimportance in her estimation.
“Have you heard, sahiba, of the Howrah treasure? Of the rubies? Of the
pearls? Of the emeralds? Of the bars of gold? It is foolishness, of
course; we who are modern-minded see the crime of hoarding all that
wealth, and adding to it, for twenty generations. Have you heard of it,
sahiba?”
“Yes!” she answered savagely, swishing at his charger again to make him
keep his distance. “You have told me of it twice. You have told me that
you know where it is, and you have offered to show it to me. You have
told me that you and your brother Maharajah Howrah and the priests
of Siva are the only men who know where it is, and you lust for that
treasure! I can see you lust! You think that I lust too, and you make a
great mistake Jaimihr-sahib! You see, I remember what you have told me.
Now, go away and remember what I tell you. I care for you and for your
treasure exactly that!” She hit his charger with all her might, and
at the sting of the little whip he shied clear of the road before the
Rajah's brother could rein him in.
Again her effort to destroy his admiration for her had directly the
opposite effect. He swore, and he swore vengeance; but he swore, too,
that there was no woman in the East so worth a prince's while as this
one, who dared flout him with her riding-whip before his men!
“Sahiba!” he said, sidling close to her again, and bowing in the saddle
in mock cavalier humility. “The time will come when your government
and my brother, who--at present--is Maharajah Howrah--will be of little
service to you. Then, perhaps, you may care to recall my promise to load
all the jewels you can choose out of the treasure-house on you. Then,
perhaps, you may, remember that I said 'a throne is better than a grave,
sahiba.' Or else--”
“Or else what, Jaimihr-sahib?” She reined again and wheeled about and
faced him--pale-trembling a little--looking very small and frail beside
him on his great war-horse, but not flinching under his gaze for a
single second.
“Or else, sahiba--I think you saw me slay the Maharati? Do you think
that I would stop at anything to accomplish what I had set out to do?
See, sahiba--there is a little blood there on your jacket! Let that be
for a pledge between us--for a sign--or a token of my oath that on the
day I am Maharajah Howrah, you are Maharanee--mistress of all the jewels
in the treasure-house!”
She shuddered. She did not look to find the blood; she took his word for
that, if for nothing else.
“I wonder you dare tell me that you plot against your brother!” That was
more a spoken thought than a statement or a question.
“I would be very glad if you would warn my brother!” he answered her;
and she knew like a flash, and on the instant, that what he said was
true. She had been warned before she came to bear no tales to any one.
No Oriental would believe the tale, coming from her; the Maharajah would
arrest her promptly, glad of the excuse to vent his hatred of Christian
missionaries. Jaimihr would attempt a rescue; it was common knowledge
that he plotted for the throne. There would be instant civil war,
in which the British Government would perforce back up the alleged
protector of a defenseless woman. There would be a new Maharajah; then,
in a little while, and in all likelihood, she would have disappeared
forever while the war raged. There would be, no doubt, a circumstantial
story of her death from natural causes.
She did not answer. She stared back at him, and he smiled down at her,
twisting at his mustache.
“Think!” he said, nodding. “A throne, sahiba, is considerably better
than a grave!” Then he wheeled like a sudden dust-devil and decamped
in a cloud of dust, followed at full pelt by his clattering escort. She
watched their horses leap one after the other the corpse of the Maharati
that lay by the corner where it fell, and she saw the last of them go
clattering, whirling up the street through the bazaar. The old hag rose
out of a shadow and trotted after her again as she turned and rode on,
pale-faced and crying now a little, to the little begged school place
where her father tried to din the alphabet into a dozen low-caste
fosterlings.
“Father!” she cried, and she all but fell out of the saddle into his
arms as the tall, lean Scotsman came to the door to meet her and stood
blinking in the sunlight. “Father, I've seen another man killed! I've
had another scene with Jaimihr! I can't endure it! I--I--Oh, why did I
ever come?”
“I don't know, dear,” he answered. “But you would come, wouldn't you?”