Now, God give good going to master o' mine,
God speed him, and lead him, and nerve him;
God give him a lead of a length in the line,
And,--God let him boast that I serve him!
THE dawn was barely breaking yet when things stirred in the little
mission house. The flea-bitten gray pony was saddled by a sleepy saice,
and brought round from his open-sided thatch stable in the rear. The
violet and mauve, that precede the aching yellow glare of day were
fading; a coppersmith began his everlasting bong-bong-bong, apparently
reverberating from every direction; the last, almost indetectable, warm
whiff of night wind moved and died away, and the monkeys in the near-by
baobab chattered it a requiem. Almost on the stroke of sunrise Rosemary
McClean stepped out--settled her sun-helmet, with a moue above the
chin-strap that was wasted on flat-bosomed, black grandmotherdom and
sulky groom--and mounted.
She needed no help. The pony stood as though he knew that the hot wind
would soon dry the life out of him; and, though dark rings beneath dark
eyes betrayed the work of heat and sleepless worry on a girl who should
have graced the cool, sweet, rain-swept hills of Scotland, she had
spirit left yet and an unspent store of youth. The saice seemed more
weathered than the twenty-year-old girl, for he limped back into the
smelly shelter of the servants' quarters to cook his breakfast and
mumble about dogs and sahibs who prefer the sun.
She looked shrunk inside the riding-habit--not shrivelled, for she sat
too straight, but as though the cotton jacket had been made for a larger
woman. If she seemed tired, and if a stranger might have guessed that
her head ached until the chestnut curls were too heavy for it, she was
still supple. And, as she whipped the pony into an unwilling trot and
old mission-named Joanna broke into a jog behind, revolt--no longer
impatience, or discontent, or sorrow, but reckless rebellion--rode with
her.
It was there, plain for the world to see, in the firm lines of a little
Puritan mouth, in the angle of a high-held chin in the set of a gallant
little pair of shoulders. The pony felt it, and leaned forward to a
canter. Joanna scented, smelt, or sensed in some manner known to Eastern
old age, that purpose was afoot; this was to be no early-morning canter,
merely out and home again; there was no time, now, for the customary
tricks of corner-cutting and rest-snatching under eaves; she tucked her
head down and jogged forward in the dust, more like a dog than ever. It
was a dog's silent, striving determination to be there when the finish
came--a dog's disregard of all object or objective but his master's--but
a long-thrown stride, and a crafty, beady eye that promised more
usefulness than a dog's when called on.
The first word spoken was when Rosemary drew rein a little more than
half-way along the palace wall.
“Are you tired yet, Joanna?”
“Uh-uh!” the woman answered, shaking her head violently and pointing at
the sun that mounted every minute higher. The argument was obvious; in
less than twenty minutes the whole horizon would be shimmering again
like shaken plates of brass; wherever the other end might be, a rest
would be better there than here! Her mistress nodded, and rode on again,
faster yet; she had learned long ago that Joanna could show a dusty
pair of heels to almost anything that ran, and she had never yet
known distance tire her; it had been the thought of distance and speed
combined that made her pause and ask.
She did not stop again until they had cantered up through the awakening
bazaar, where unclean-looking merchants and their underlings rinsed out
their teeth noisily above the gutters, and the pariah dogs had started
nosing in among the muck for things unthinkable to eat. The sun had
shortened up the shadows and begun to beat down through the gaps; the
advance-guard of the shrivelling hot wind had raised foul dust eddies,
and the city was ahum when she halted at last beside the big brick arch
of the caravansary, where Mahommed Gunga's boots and spurs had caught
her eye once.
“Now, Joanna!” She leaned back from the saddle and spoke low, but with
a certain thrill. “Go in there, find me Mahommed Gunga-sahib's man, and
bring him out here!”
“And if he will not come?” The old woman seemed half-afraid to enter.
“Go in, and don't come out without him--unless you want to see me go in
by myself!”
The old woman looked at her piercingly with eyes that gleamed from amid
a bunch of wrinkles, then motioned with a skinny arm in the direction of
an awning where shade was to be had from the dangerous early sun-rays.
She made no move to enter through the arch until her mistress had taken
shelter.
Fifteen minutes later she emerged with Ali Partab, who looked sleepy,
but still more ashamed of his unmilitary dishabille. Rosemary McClean
glanced left and right--forgot about the awning and the custom which
decrees aloofness--ignored the old woman's waving arm and Ali Partab's
frown, and rode toward him eagerly.
“Did Mahommed Gunga-sahib leave you here with any orders relative to
me?” she asked.
The Rajput bowed.
“Before he went away, he spoke to me of safety, and told me he would
leave a link between me and men whom I may trust.”
The Rajput bowed again. Neither of them saw an elbow laid on the
window-ledge of a room above the arch; it disappeared, and very gingerly
a bared black head replaced it. Then the head too disappeared.
The girl's eyes sparkled as the reassurance came that at least one good
fighting man was waiting to do nothing but assist her. For the moment
she threw caution to the winds and remembered nothing but her plight and
her father's stubbornness.
“My father will not come away, but--”
Ali Partab's eyes betrayed no trace of concern.
“But--I thought--Are you all alone?”
“All alone, Miss-sahib, but your servant.”
“Oh! I thought--perhaps that”--she checked herself, then rushed the
words out as though ashamed of them--“that, if you had men to help you,
you might carry him away against his will! Where are these others who
are to be trusted?”
Ali Partab grinned and then drew himself up with a movement of polite
dissent. It was not for him to question the suggestions of a Miss-sahib;
he conveyed that much with an inimitable air. But it was his business to
keep strictly to the letter of his orders.
“Miss-sahib, I cannot do that. So said Mahommed Gunga: 'When the hag
brings word, then take three horses and bear the Miss-sahib and her
father to my cousin Alwa's place.' I stand ready to obey, but the
padre-sahib comes not against his will.”
“To whose place?”
“Alwa's, Miss-sahib.”
“And who is he?” She seemed bewildered. “I had hoped to be escorted to
some British residency.”
“That would be for Alwa, should he see fit. He has men and horses, and
a fort that is impregnable. The Miss-sahib would be safe there under all
circumstances.”
“But--but, supposing I declined to accept that invitation? Supposing I
preferred not to be carried off to a--er--a Mohammedan gentleman's fort.
What then?”
“I could but wait here, Miss-sahib, until the hour came when you
changed your mind, or until Mahommed Gunga by letter or by word of mouth
relieved me of my trust.”
“Oh! Then you will wait here until I ask?”
“Surely, Miss-sahib.”
The head again peered through the window up above them, but disappeared
below the ledge furtively, and none of the three were aware of it.
For that matter, the old woman was gazing intently at Ali Partab and
listening eagerly; he stood almost underneath the arch, and Miss McClean
was staring at him frowning with the effort to translate her thoughts
into a language that is very far from easy. They would none of them have
seen the roof descending on them.
“And--and won't you under any circumstances take us, say, to the
Resident at Abu instead?”
“I may not, Miss-sahib.”
“But why?”
“Of a truth I know not. I never yet knew Mahommed Gunga to give an order
without good reason for it; but beyond that he chose me, because he said
the task might prove difficult and he trusted me, I know nothing.”
“Have you no idea of the reason?”
“Miss-sahib, I am a soldier. To me an order is an order to be carried
out; suspicions, fears are nothing unless they stand in the way of
accomplishment. I await your word. I am ready. The horses are here--good
horses--lean and hard. The order is that you must ask me.”
“Thank you--er--Ali what?--thank you, Ali Partab.” The disappointment in
her voice was scarcely more noticeable than the despondency her drooping
figure showed. The little shoulders that had sat so square and gallantly
seemed to have lost their strength, and there was none of the determined
ring left in the words she hesitated for. “I--hope you will understand
that I am grateful--but--I cannot--er--see my way just yet to--”
“In your good time, Miss-sahib. I was ordered to have patience!”
“At least I will have more confidence, knowing that you are always close
at hand.”
The Rajput bowed. She reined back. He saluted, and she bowed again;
then, with a glance to make sure that Joanna followed, she started back
at little more than a walking pace--a dejected wraith of a girl on a
dejected-looking pony, too overcome by the upsetting of her rebellious
scheme to care or even think whether Joanna dropped out of sight or
not. Ali Partab watched her down the street with a face that betrayed no
emotion and no suspicion of what his thoughts might be. When she was out
of sight he went back under the arch to attend to his three horses;
and the moment that he did so a fat but very furtive Hindoo took his
place--glanced down the street once in the direction that Rosemary had
taken--and then darted up-street as fast as his shaking paunch would
let him. He had been gone at the least ten minutes, when Joanna, also
furtive, also in a hurry, dodged here and there among the commencing
surge of traffic and approached the arch again.
It would be useless to try to read her mind, or to translate the glitter
of her beady eyes into thoughts intelligible to any but an Oriental.
It was quite clear, though, that she wished not to be noticed, that she
feared the occupants of the caravansary, and that she had returned for
word with Ali Partab. He, least of all, would have doubted her intention
of demanding the two gold mohurs, for it was she who had brought the
word that Miss McClean wanted him. But what relation that intention
had to her loyalty or treachery, or whether she were capable of
either--capable of anything except greed, and obedience for the sake of
pay--were problems no man living could have guessed.
She asked the lounging sweeper by the arch whether Ali Partab had ridden
out as yet. He jeered back outrageous improprieties, suggestive of
impossible ambition on the hag's part. She called him “sahib,” dubbed
him “father of a dozen stalwart sons,” returned a few of his immodest
compliments with a flattering laugh, and learned that Ali Partab was
still busy in the caravansary. Then she proceeded to make herself
very inconspicuous beside a two-wheeled wagon, up-ended in the gutter
opposite the arch, and waited with eastern patience for the horseman to
ride out.
She saw the fat Hindoo come back, in no particular hurry now, and seat
himself not far from her. Later she saw eight horsemen ride down the
street, pass the arch, wheel, and halt. She noticed that they were
not Maharajah Howrah's men but a portion of his brother Jaimihr's
body-guard, then took no further notice of them. If they chose to wait
there, it was no affair of hers, and to appear inquisitive would be to
invite a lance-butt, very shrewdly thrust where it would hurt.
It was an hour at least before Ali Partab rode out through the arch,
looking down anxiously at his horse's off-hind that had been showing
symptoms of “brushing” lately. Joanna rose instantly to cross the street
and intercept him; and she recoiled in the nick of time to save herself
from being ridden down.
At a sign from the fat Hindoo the eight horsemen spurred, and swooped
up-street with the speed and certainty of sparrow-hawks and the noise of
devastation. They rode down Ali Partab--unhorsed him--bound him--threw
him on his horse again--and galloped off before any but the Hindoo had
time to realize that he was their objective. He was gone--snatched
like a chicken from the coop. Noise and dust were all the trace or
explanation that he left. The mazy streets swallowed him; the Hindoo
waddled over to the arch and disappeared without a smile on his face to
show even interest. The interrupted trading and bartering went on again,
and no one commented or made a move to follow but Joanna.
She watched the fat Hindoo, and made sure that she would recognize him
anywhere again. Then, by a trail that no one would have guessed at and
few could have followed, she made her way to Jaimihr's palace--three
miles away from Howrah's--where a dozen sulky-looking sepoys lolled,
dismounted, by the wooden gate. There was neither sight nor sound of
mounted men, and the gate was shut; but in the middle of the roadway
there was smoking dung, and there was a suspicion of overacting about
the indifference of the guardians of the entrance.
There was no overacting, though, in what Joanna did. Nobody would have
dreamed that she was playing any kind of part, or interested in anything
at all except the coppers that she begged for. She squatted in
the roadway, ink-black and clear-cut in the now blazing sunlight,
alternately flattering them and pretending to a knowledge of
unguessed-at witchcraft.
She was there still at midday when they changed the guard. She was
there when night fell, still squatting in the roadway, still exchanging
repartee and hints at the supernatural with armed men who shuddered now
and then between their bursts of mockery. The sore, suffering dogs that
sniff through the night for worse eyesores than themselves whimpered and
watched her. The guard changed and the moon paled, but she stayed
on; and whatever her purpose, or whatever information she obtained in
fragments amid the raillery, she did not return to the mission house.
It was not until Rosemary McClean returned and dismounted by the door
that she realized Joanna had not kept pace. Even then she thought little
of it; the old woman often lingered on the homeward way when the chance
of her being needed was remote. Two or three hours passed before the
suspicion rose that anything might have happened to Joanna, and even
then she might not have been remembered had not Duncan McClean asked for
her.
“I have changed my mind,” he said, calling Rosemary into the long, low
living-room. It was darkened to exclude the hot wind and the glare, and
he looked like a ghost as he rose to meet her. “I have decided that my
duty is to get away from this place for your sake and for the sake of
the cause I have at heart. We are doing no good here. I can do most by
going to the Resident, or even to somebody higher up than he, and laying
my case before him personally. Send for Joanna, and tell her to go and
bring Mahommed Gunga's man.”
It was then that they missed Joanna and began to search for her. But no
Joanna came. It was then that Rosemary McClean rehearsed with her father
her former conversation with Mahommed Gunga and part, at least, of her
recent one with Ali Partab, and the missionary started off himself to
find the horseman whom Mahommed Gunga had so thoughtfully left behind.
But he very naturally found no Ali Partab. What he did discover was that
he was followed--that a guard, unarmed but obvious, was placed around
the mission house--that his servants deserted one by one--that no more
children came to the mission school.
He decided to take chances and ride off with his daughter in the night.
But the ponies went mysteriously lame, and nobody would lend or sell him
horses on any terms at all. He did his best to get a letter through to
anywhere where there were British, but nobody would take it. And then
Jaimihr came, swaggering with his escort, to offer him and his daughter
the hospitality of his palace.
He declined that offer a little testily, for the insolence behind the
offer was less than half concealed. Jaimihr sneered as he rode away.
“Perhaps a month or two of undisturbed enjoyment will induce the
padre-sahib to change his mind about my invitation!” he said nastily.
And he made no secret then, as he ordered them about before he went,
that the men who lounged and watched at every vantage-point were his.