OUT OF THE PAST
"I feel as if I had this moment arrived," said Muriel Smith, as she
looked down into the garden from a balcony which jutted out upon one
side of the wide flight of marble steps that led upwards to the loggia
of the palace. "Yet I know I've been here for hours. I wonder when the
sheer beauty will cease to--to take my breath away. _You_ understand,
don't you?"
"Yes!" assented Vincent Dering, half grudgingly. He would rather not
have understood more than others. But he did; that was the worst of it.
He was looking his best in the old cavalry uniform of grey, and silver,
and cherry colour, all laced, embroidered, and glittering with
epaulettes, sabretasche, and high stock,--the uniform of a hundred
years ago, when adventurers ruled half India, and Englishmen were
demi-gods. It seemed to have brought something of their pride and
recklessness, something of the dreams they dreamt into his whole
bearing, as he stood leaning over the balustrade gazing fixedly at the
scene before him. It was beautiful indeed! Beautiful with that
unearthly stillness which only comes to illuminations in a windless
Indian night. The lines on lines, the curves on curves of tiny lights
which outlined each pillar and arch, each buttress and recess of the
palace, the battlemented wall of the garden, and the turreted town
rising above it, were steady as the stars. The fine fret of the acacia
trees, showing white against the purple of the sky, was still as if
carved in stone. There was no flicker in the soft radiance, which made
the solid marble seem translucent, illumined mysteriously from within.
The very shadows slept. Such scented shadows, clinging to the burnished
orange trees, hidden in the wilderness of roses, dreaming on the
perfumed cushions of the quaint balconies and cupolas which overhung
the river.
But _it_ did not sleep. _It_ moved, sliding on and on ceaselessly.
So did the water which dimpled and tinkled--after Heaven only knew
how many sad years of silence and decorum--over the fretted marble
water-slides.
How it laughed and babbled to the cunning coloured lights placed behind
it! And the fountains below, rising out of the water-maze,--where there
was but room for the flying feet of a laughing girl on the marble
ledges between the lotus-leaves,--laughed and tinkled, also, as they
sent showers of diamonds back on the pale blossoms.
The "jewel in the lotus" indeed!
There was no colour to be seen anywhere. Only that soft, steady, white
radiance, those soft, sleeping, black shadows. Except in the drifting
water-maze, and the drifting men and women around it.
Restless, both of them; going on and on. Whither, and wherefore? It was
an idle question, Vincent told himself, if the move brought, as it did
here, fresh laughter, fresh colour.
"_On such a night did young Lorenzo_," quoted the Commissioner's brogue
from the flight of steps where, in the guise of a French cook, he was
fanning Laila Bonaventura, with whom he had been dancing; the latter
sitting still and silent as the shadow in which she was half hidden. A
crackling laugh betrayed Dr. Dillon's whereabouts. He was perched on a
balustrade above, his legs dangling, his trousers, as usual, displaying
his thin ankles; for he was dressed in his ordinary evening suit.
"And old Lorenzo also," he scoffed. "The disease is nonprotective,
contagious, and marked by extraordinary vitality in the virus, which
after long years may spring to fresh life from a dress, a bit of
ribbon, a lock of hair."
"Oh! have done with such blasphemy!" interrupted the Commissioner,
joyously, "and me racking me brains which of all the beauties of this
_hareem_ I'd better fall in love with! Dering, you're a steward, I
believe. Turn that man out for obtruding the exigencies of everyday
life--including a swallow-tail coat--into Paradise."
"I've objected already, sir," said Vincent Dering, laughing; "but he
declares he is a malarial bacillus."
"A what?" remonstrated the brogue.
"A malarial bacillus, sir," explained the doctor; "as I have failed
hitherto--like everybody else--to recognize the gentleman, even through
a microscope, I am naturally at sea as to the proper costume. And you
will, of course, admit the universal rule: 'When in doubt, play a dress
suit.'"
"By Jove!" ejaculated Lance Carlyon, who, mopping his face, had joined
the group, "what a ripping idea. Wish I'd thought of it instead of this
kit." He looked regretfully at his mailed limbs; for he was dressed as
Lancelot-du-Lac, a costume which had been chosen for him two years
before, at Simla, by a grass widow who had aspired to the part of
Guinevere; but who, retiring before the young fellow's absolute
unconsciousness of her intention, had left him saddled with an
expensive fancy dress which he felt bound to wear out; for all his
spare cash was kept for guns and polo ponies.
"I'm glad you didn't, Mr. Carlyon," protested Muriel Smith,
consolingly. "You look very nice in it. Only those things on your
legs--I forget the proper name--must be difficult to dance in."
"Greaves--the well-greaved Greeks, me dear madam," put in the
Commissioner. "Plural of grief. Ah! ye should have seen him come to it
just now with the general's wife. Your chance of promotion's gone, me
dear boy--the marble floor resounded."
"Well, it isn't half so inconvenient as my husband's dress, anyhow,"
continued Mrs. Smith, persisting in her mission of sympathy, when the
laugh at Lance's expense had subsided.
"That's all you know, my dear," remonstrated Mr. Smith, sleepily, from
a quiet nook in one corner. "I never said Robinson Crusoe was a good
dancing dress, but I claim it isn't bad to sleep in, especially out of
doors. Soft and furry--and--"
His voice sank into dreamful ease.
"And it can claim solitude, anyhow," added the doctor, mournfully.
"Think of the disgust of an old established microbe, like myself, when
his swept and garnished home is invaded by a party of seven strange
devils."
"How rude you are!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith. "Besides, we aren't seven,
and I believe Robinson Crusoe discovered this island before you did!"
"I think the French cook takes the cake, though," said poor Lance, who
had been following up his own grievance. "Shirt sleeves must be an
awful pull when you are dancing with a _burra mem_."[8]
"True for you!" assented the Commissioner, sympathetically. "That's the
very reason I took to it, me dear boy, when me own merits and me
advancing years doomed me to all the stout ladies in India. Besides, me
paper cap rids me of two of me reports anyhow. Ye see I always have to
wear two caps; one before, and one after supper. Otherwise I find the
contints get mixed, and make me statements unreliable; and then me
enemies say it's the champagne. I feel it coming on me now, but--" he
sprang to his feet, light as a boy--"by a merciful providence there's
the band at the 'Roast Beef.' Now, are ye coming in to supper with me,
Mrs. Smith, or are you one of those who have to change their identity?"
"Not I," she declared, taking his arm, "I'm quite content with myself,
thank you!"
She might well be, since her costume of water-nymph could not have been
improved upon. It enabled her to show off her long, rippling, pale gold
hair, and the filmy green and white, the feathery weeds, the iridescent
shells, matched her delicate face, which seemed almost overweighted by
her water-lily crown.
"Besides, Undine can always do quick-change artist, and assume a soul,"
suggested the Commissioner, as he led her off; adding, in mock alarm:
"Me dear madam! I apologize profoundly. Miss Bonaventura, Captain
Dering's waiting for you, I'm sure."
Laila, who had risen also, stood silent, looking taller and slimmer
than usual in her guise of Beatrice. It seemed to have brought out the
fact that she had some of the best blood of Italy in her veins. Vincent
Dering had recognized this fact--which Father Ninian had taken care to
communicate to him as soon as the latter had found out that, nominally
at any rate, the former was a Roman Catholic, and therefore a possible
lover--when he had gone up to apologize to the girl for having missed
that second dance, owing to his duties as steward. The recognition had
him vaguely sorry for the girl; sorry also for the old man who,
evidently, dreamt such idle dreams. He did not mean to marry a Begum!
He crossed over to her now, offering his arm, but she refused it,
saying she did not want supper.
"But you are enjoying yourself, surely?" he said.
"Oh, yes! thank you," she answered; "only it isn't real, of course. It
doesn't mean anything."
Dr. Dillon, who was within hearing, looked down at her sharply.
"Perhaps, my dear young lady, it is as well it doesn't. So let us eat,
drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"
She looked up at him quite shocked. "Oh! I didn't mean that, of course;
that is wrong. I only meant that things don't match--the place and the
people, I mean. Except one or two--those for instance." She pointed out
Roshan Khan who, dressed as himself, was taking advantage of the
emptiness of the garden during supper time, to go round it with old
Akbar Khan as guide, the latter in the wildest antics of alacrity.
"Did you ever see such a funny figure?" continued the girl, with an odd
little laugh. "He is quite crazy with joy. He told me to-day this was
the first time for forty years that he had been himself! That he has
been bewitched."
"I believe I've been bewitched too," said Vincent, suddenly. "Let us
all go back forty years."
Dr. Dillon swung his feet further over, and dropped to the ground
almost between them.
"That would effectually annihilate two of the company, and reduce me to
cutting my teeth; and I want the use of them at supper. Come along and
have something solid, Miss Bonaventura; there is nothing so
indigestible as fancy sweets."
But she was firm, and moved away to where a small staircase led from
the balcony to the upper storey. She did not care for supper, she
repeated, and she had to mend her dress; someone had trodden on it, and
she would not be able to dance till it was mended.
"Don't forget ours--the first _extra_," called Vincent after her. She
turned where the narrow stair, after climbing the outside wall, against
which it clung like a swallow's nest, ended in the shadow of an
archway. "I shall be back in plenty of time," she said. Vincent thought
he had never seen her look so nice, so young, so fresh, so smiling.
"That's a queer girl," remarked the doctor, as he lounged off, "not
half bad. That is just it, in fact; she is a clear case of atavism, and
as her ancestors seem to have been either saints or sinners, there you
are! For it's the same tissue absolutely; indeed, there's precious
little difference between the two when you come to analyze."
"I never do," interrupted Vincent, shortly. The doctor's cynicism bored
him, especially here, where a man might at least be allowed to escape
the brutal realities. Here, where even the houses in the bazaar beyond
the garden wall--those houses that were by the common light of day so
squalid, so unsavoury, so full of mean, miserable detail--showed like
star-palaces against the sky!
A sudden comprehension came to him. How blind of the girl to say all
this meant nothing! How crassly idiotic of himself to think of going
back forty years to enjoy this! This was the same yesterday, to-day,
for ever! It was the love of physical pleasure, the desire to
appropriate, to have and to hold, which had civilized the world, and
made man out of a monkey.
"'The Cradle of the Gods,' did you say, my dear lady?" said a courteous
old voice from the stairs, breaking in on his solitude. "Just so--the
pilgrims go there every year. It lies--let me see--I think I can point
it out to you. Ah! Captain Dering!" continued Father Ninian, finding
the balcony into which he had stepped _en passant_, occupied. "We don't
disturb you, I hope; but Mrs. Palmer was speaking about the 'Cradle of
the Gods.' It must lie--don't you think so?--over there." He pointed
beyond the star-palaces.
"I should fancy so, sir," replied Vincent, "that is about due north."
"Then I am wrong," smiled the old priest; "the cave is northwest, and
the passage to it is difficult--almost incredibly difficult."
"Yet you have been there several times, haven't you?" said Mrs. Palmer.
Father Ninian shook his head. "Never to the cave itself, madam. I am
not quite sure whether I ever really meant to go so far,--and bow in
the House of Rimmon! It would have been interesting no doubt--but--" he
glanced down almost boyishly at his black _soutane_--"my cloth, my dear
lady, has to be considered. As a matter of fact, something always
hindered me. I went as a medicine man, you see; and so many fall
by the wayside. I wonder, indeed, how any reach it." He paused,
and a wistful smile made his face look dreamy. "Some say none do. A
_jogi_--Gorakh-nath, Captain Dering,--he whom you turned out of the
gun--claims to be the only man who has ever seen the real cave; the
rest have seen--_illusion!_" He paused again, and his smile changed.
"'Tis a claim, madam, made by more than Gorakh-nath; who, by the way,
promises to defy you, Captain Dering. Padlock or no padlock, he is to
get in and out of the gun as he chooses while the pilgrims are here."
Vincent laughed contemptuously. "I don't think miracles go down, even
in India, nowadays, sir."
The old priest's face grew grave. "I cannot give my assent to that; I
who have seen the blood of a saint turn crimson and flow. Faith,
Captain Dering,--that is, the belief of man in a power beyond his
own,--is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever!"
Vincent Dering bowed politely, and kept his shrug of the shoulders for
the old man's back, as he followed him upstairs to the supper room.
The same yesterday, to-day, for ever! True, in a way. There were two
stabilities amid the chances and changes of this mortal life. The
Garden of the Palace. The Cradle of the Gods. Faith and Love--for it
came to that in the end.
Here the familiar sight of a ball supper in full swing ended his rare
reflections, and he slipped into a place beside a lively vivandiere,
who welcomed him with entreaties to join in a comic opera she was going
to get up at Simla. The last new rage in London; she had written home
for the rights.
He was in a new atmosphere in a moment, and straightway forgot the
garden; forgot everything but that the supper was excellent, his
companion gay. Even the Commissioner's high voice, as he talked
nonsense, seemed far from the gravity even of conferring titles, and it
seemed incredible that the small man who sat surrounded by a host of
departmental heads was really representing a whole Empire.
When the band downstairs, by beginning on Strauss's "Lovelong livelong
day," warned him of his engagement to Laila, he passed to it half
reluctantly. She would be sure to dance badly: that make of girl always
did. So he was relieved to find the ball room, and the wide loggia into
which it opened, almost empty. Only a couple or two were spinning
slowly, idly, in and out of the resounding arches.
He went on, therefore, to the balcony beside the stairs. If the girl
was there it would be an excuse for sitting out. If not, he could
always say he had waited for her. Either way, he would have time for a
cigarette.
As he went down towards it he met Lance Carlyon coming up, and called
to him: "Supper's A1; so's the wine. It's going awfully well, isn't
it?"
"Suppose so," replied Lance, "but I'm going to cut. These togs are
awful; but if I go now I'll have time to change and have a shoot down
the river. Am-ma says the ducks sit like stones before dawn. They won't
miss me, as a bachelor, I suppose?"
Vincent looked at him compassionately. "A bachelor," he echoed. "It's
about your last chance, I take it. However, if you want to kill
something--it's a common symptom--go! I shall stop till the bitter--or
sweet--end! One doesn't get into a streak like this once in a blue
moon! I feel fit for anything."
As he sat down for a smoke in the corner vacated by Robinson Crusoe,
this feeling was strong upon him, and sent the blood tingling to his
finger-tips.
The band had by this time ceased piping to unwilling dancers, so the
still, warm, scented air was left to the tinkling ripple of the water,
the rippling tinkle of distant voices; for supper had almost emptied
the garden also. The better for its picturesque effect. Now the
imagination could people it--as Laila Bonaventura (the girl had sense)
had phrased it--with figures that matched; real figures.
A chiming silvery clash above him made him turn to look upwards to the
archway where Laila Bonaventura had disappeared. It would be a bore if
she were returning to interrupt his cigarette; though, in truth, she
had been, he remembered, almost attractive.
Almost--
He gave an exclamation, and rose to his feet. She was coming, indeed,
but not as she had gone.
There is no dress in the world which is at once so dainty and so
sensuous, as the court dress of a Mahomedan lady, and Laila Bonaventura
was wearing one as she came slowly down the stairs towards him, a
radiant white figure against the radiant white marble.
The folds of her long silver-gauze skirt--so cunningly fashioned that
it trailed in rolling shimmer-crested billows behind her, yet left no
beauty of her round limbs hidden--clipped her about the waist like a
serpent's skin. So hiding, yet revealing, was the soft film of fine
muslin over the scented, ivory-tinted corselet, which fitted close to
the full curves of her figure. So was it with the silver-streaked veil,
through which the jewels in her dusky hair, the bracelets on her fair
arms, shone undimmed. So was it even with the chiming fringes of her
silver anklets, as they slid merrily to cover and uncover the small
feet, tucked so carelessly into the little silver-tipped slippers.
To hide and to reveal, that was the note of all!
As she came nearer, too, he saw that her lips were reddened, her dark
eyes darkened artificially. And yet her face did not correspond to all
this. It was curiously grave, dignified, almost anxious.
"Do you like it?" she asked, suddenly pausing a pace or two from him to
stand still, heaped round by those shimmer-crested billows, and so,
with one hand, gather the straight folds of her veil to curves over her
arm. As she did so, he saw, with a curious throb at his heart, that her
wrists were fettered to each other by long trailing chains of scented
jasmine flowers.
A dainty prisoning indeed! The suggestion of it set his head whirling.
Like it!--His very admiration kept him silent.
"It makes it feel more real," she went on, "don't you think it does?"
Real, or a dream? He did not know which. He felt a fool to stand so
silent; yet no words--as she would phrase it--came to match. None, at
least, that he dare use to her unconscious dignity.
"Only I can't dance, you see," she continued, bending to look at the
billows about her feet. "Besides,"--she looked up suddenly, her whole
expression changed, she flung her fettered hands forward almost into
his face. The strings on strings of scented flowers looping themselves
in ever widening curves, hung like a screen between him and her
laughter.
"I'm a prisoner--yours, I suppose." He fell back for half a second,
then caught the hand in his.
And then, in an instant, it came back to him--the measureless glad
content of that mistake in the dark! He had told himself ever since
that it had come, then, by mistake--incomprehensible, it is true,
horrible to a certain extent, but still in error. But this was no
mistake!
"Yes!--my prisoner," he said. "Come, and sit down, and let us talk." He
wanted time to think.
She shook her head. "Not here, please! No one is to see me but you,
only you. That is why I waited till I saw you were alone. I only put it
on for you to see."
A sudden remembrance of something she had said to him--"When it is
real, and you give yourself--everything, and ask nothing." The
certainty that she was doing this now made him say quickly:--
"Don't be afraid--they shall not see. Come, let us go into the
garden--those balconies by the river--"
She shook her head again.
"They are not safe, and my guardian would be so angry. Though it isn't
really wrong"--she added, with her odd vein of piety; "but when
somebody sent me the dress, I thought it would be fun, and I wanted you
to see."
"Sent you the dress?" he echoed hotly. "Who?"
She looked at him vastly amused. "Are you jealous? But I'm not going to
tell you. That is just like the novels, isn't it; but what is the use
of making people angry?"
"How do you know I should be angry," he asked coldly.
She smiled like a Sphinx might smile. "I'm certain. Come! Perhaps I'll
tell you when we get to a safe place. There's one close by. My guardian
wouldn't have it lit up because--he always has the same reason for
everything, you know, and it _is_ so dull--because something happened
there long ago. As if it mattered!"
As she spoke, they had been passing down the marble steps, her silver
anklets chiming; and now, as they paused an instant on the edge of the
water-maze, they chimed still. But to a new, curiously provocative
measure, and her face, her figure, her very voice, changed as if to
keep time with it.
"I used to run all over it, in and out, when I was little," she
chattered mischievously, "and old Akbar used to run after me and
tumble in! I could do it now, and you could chase me, if I hadn't all
this-" she gave a little mutinous kick at her sweeping skirt. Then
suddenly she laughed. "Poor old Akbar! I'd like him to see me, but I
don't see how it could be managed. And nobody else must--but you. So
come--come quick!"
She drew him after her by one hand, like a child at play. Across the
marble plinth, right to the wide arched passage in the lower storey;
and when, having gained in the race, he would from habit have gone
straight on towards the courtyard, she pulled him back with a peal of
laughter.
"Not that way, stupid! Here--it's a dear little balcony all by itself
with steps down to the river and a boat."
"Perfect!" he exclaimed with an answering laugh, as he disappeared
after her.
But in that instant's pause two figures had passed into the other end
of the long passage from the chapel. Two figures, one of which,
half-disdainfully, half-regretfully, had been going round the beauties
of the palace; the other, gambolling sideways by reason of its curbing
deference its urging servility, engaged in garrulous tales of past
glory.
"Yea! _Ger-eeb-pun-waz_," it was saying, "Bun-avatar used to meet Anari
Begum here. She liked him best in uniform, and she wore--"
It was then that, framed in the distant archway, seen clear against the
radiance of the garden, that vision of a laughing girl, a flashing
uniform appeared.
Old Akbar Khan gave a faint mumbling petition to be preserved, and fell
back, his teeth chattering.
"Anar--Anar--herself," he muttered. "And he--God help us all! Why did
they light up the garden?"
But Roshan Khan knew better. His eyes were younger. And he had the
key--the key of that shimmering silver dress.
"Fool!" he said sharply. "They are no ghosts. 'Twas Dering-_sahib_
and--and--" he gave a bitter laugh--"one of his _mems_. They do such
things often."
But as he walked on, his hands clenched themselves to the tune of the
words which sang in his brain, "God smite his soul to hell! God smite
his soul to hell!"
The two great stabilities, Love of God and Love of woman, had joined
hands, as they always do.
A formidable combination.