John Raby's announcement that he was about to leave the service fell
like a thunderbolt on his old friend Shunker Dâs, for that astute
gentleman had sketched out a very different programme in which the
_shaitan sahib_ was to figure as chief actor. Indeed, when the latter
had first come nibbling round the indigo prize, Shunker had, as it
were, asked him to dine off it, chuckling in his sleeve the while at
the idea of getting his enemy into the toils. But then he knew nothing
of the thirty thousand pounds, which the young civilian rightly
considered a sufficient insurance against any punishment for breaking
the rules of his covenant. So all the Lâlâ's deft hounding of the
native papers on the track of "disgraceful corruption and disregard of
law on the part of Mr. John Raby of the Civil Service" had simply
resulted in bringing a personal supervision, destructive of
account-cooking, into the business.
He went down to Saudaghur shortly after the Rabys, and nearly had a
fit over the calm decision with which the young Englishman took
possession of the field. New machines were being imported, new vats
built, new contracts made with growers throughout a large stretch of
the district. On all sides Shunker found himself forestalled,
outpaced, left in the cold. He would dearly have liked to break
absolutely with this shrewd, unmerciful partner; yet to indulge this
desire meant loss, for the Lâlâ, despite his hatred of the work, was
not blind to John Raby's supreme capability for making the business
pay. He was torn asunder by rage at having been outwitted, and
admiration for the wit which had effected the task. He came home one
day to the square block of a house he owned on the outskirts of
Saudaghur village, cursing freely, and longing for some covert means
of relieving his spite. The recipient of his curses took them with
stolid indifference. She was a dark-browed, deep-chested lump of a
woman, engaged in cooking the Lâlâ's dinner in a dutiful,
conscientious sort of way, while she kept one eye on a solid
two-year-old boy who was busy over a pumpkin rind. This was Kirpo, the
absent Râm Lâl's wife, who had been sent to occupy this empty house of
the Lâlâ's for several reasons. Chiefly because it was out of the way
of scandal, and it had pleased Shunker to combine pleasure with the
business of supporting her during her husband's imprisonment;
wherefore, is one of those problems of human perversity best left
alone. Kirpo herself had merely adopted the surest way of securing
comfort and a pair of gold bangles, during this unpleasing interlude,
and in her heart was longing to return to her rightful owner; but not
without the bangles. There was, however, considerable divergence of
opinion between her and the Lâlâ on this point, resulting, on the one
side, in her refusal to retire discreetly before the off chance of any
remission of her husband's sentence which might induce a premature
appearance; and, on the other, in Shunker's half alarmed desire to let
her risk her nose by discovery. Neither of them being altogether in
earnest, and each anxiously awaiting symptoms of capitulation in the
other.
"I don't care for your words, Lâlâ-_ji_," she retorted in answer to
his abuse. "We women have to eat curses, aye! and blows too; but we
get our own way for all that. I mean to have the bangles, so the
sooner you unstomach them the better." Her black brows met in
determination as Shunker consigned her and all her female ancestors to
unspeakable torments. "If you say much more I'll have the evil eye
cast on that sickly Nuttu of yours. Mai-Bishen does it. You take seven
hairs--"
"Be silent, she-devil!" shouted the Lâlâ turning green. "What ails you
to give the mind freedom on such things? Lo! I have been good to you,
Kirpo, and the boy there,--would mine were like him!"
Kirpo caught the child in her arms, covering him with kisses as she
held him to her broad brown breast. "Thine! Pooh! thou art a poor body
and a poor spirit, Shunker. Afraid for all thy big belly; afraid of
Raby-_sahib!_ Look you, I will go to him: nay, I will go to his _mem_,
who loves to see the black women, and she will make you give me the
bangles."
Now Shunker's evil disposition partook of the nature of an am[oe]ba.
That is to say, no sooner did a suggestion of food dawn upon it, than
straightway the undefined mass of spite shot out a new limb in that
direction. Kirpo's words had this effect upon him. After all why
should she not go to see the _mem?_ How angry the _shaitan_ would be
if he knew that his, Shunker's mistress, had had an interview with the
stuck-up English girl. What business, too, had she to bring her
husband money when her father was bankrupt? Rare sport indeed to
chuckle over when Raby put on his airs. "By the holy water of Gunga!"
he cried, "thou shalt go, Kirpo, as my wife. No one will know. Silks
and satins, Kirpo, and sheets held up for thee to scuttle through so
that none may see! Aha! And I have to take off my shoes at the door,
curse him!" He lay back and chuckled at the bare idea of the petty,
concealed insult of which no one but himself would know.
Kirpo looked at him in contemptuous dislike. "If I was a bad woman
like thy friends in the bazaar I would not go, for they say she is
easy to deceive and kind; but I am not bad. It is you who are bad.
So I will go; but with the bangles, and with the boy too, in a
_khim-khâb_ (cloth of gold) coat. 'Twill be as thy son. Lâlâ-_ji_,
remember, so thou wouldst not have him look a beggar."
Her shrill laughter rang through the empty house, making an old woman
glance upwards from the lower court. "Kirpo should go home," muttered
the hag, "or she will lose her nose like Dhundei when they let her
husband out of gaol by mistake. A grand mistake for poor Dhunnu! oho!
oho!"
"Kirpo Devi," returned the Lâlâ, with a grin of concentrated
wickedness. "Thou shalt have the bangles, and then thou shall go see
the _mem_ first, and to damnation after. Mark my words, 'tis a true
saying." For another suggestion of evil had sprung into vision, and he
already had a feeler out to seize it.
Two days later he sat on the same bed grinning over his own
cleverness, yet for all that disconcerted. Kirpo had fled, with her
boy and her bangles. That he had expected, but he was hardly prepared
to find a clean sweep of all his brass cooking-pots into the bargain.
He cursed a little, but on the whole felt satisfied, since his spite
against Belle Raby had been gratified and Kirpo got rid of, at the
price of a pair of deftly lacquered brass bangles. He grinned still
more wickedly at the thought of the latter's face when she found out
the trick.
As he sat smoking his pipe a man looked in at the door. A curiously
evasive, downcast figure in garments so rumpled as to suggest having
been tied up in tight bundles for months; as indeed they had been,
duly ticketed and put away in the store-rooms of the gaol.
"Holy Krishna!" muttered the Lâlâ, while drops of sweat at the thought
of the narrow escape oozed to his forehead, "'tis Râmu himself."
And Râmu it was, scowling and suspicious. "Where's my house?" he asked
after the curtest of greetings.
Unfortunately for the truth Shunker Dâs had answered this question in
anticipation many times. So he was quite prepared. "Thy house, oh
Râmu? If she be not at home, God knoweth whither she hath gone. I
sent her here, for safety, seeing that women are uncertain even when
ill-looking; but she hath left this security without my consent."
His hearer's face darkened still more deeply as he looked about him in
a dissatisfied way. "I went straight to Faizapore; they said she was
here." He did not add that he had purposely refrained from announcing
his remission (for good conduct) in order to see the state of affairs
for himself.
Shunker meanwhile was mentally offering a cheap but showy oblation to
his pet deity for having suggested the abstraction of the brass pots
to Kirpo. "I say nothing, Râmu," he replied unctuously; "but this I
know, that having placed her here virtuously with an old mother, who
is even now engaged in work below, she hath fled, nor stayed her hand
from taking things that are not hers. See, I am here without food
even, driven to eat it from the bazaar, by reason of her wickedness;
but I will call, and the old mother will fetch some; thou must be
hungry. Hadst thou sent word, Râmu, the faithful servant should have
had a feast from the faithful master."
Râmu and he looked at each other steadily for a moment, like two dogs
uncertain whether to growl or to be friends.
"Fret not because of one woman, Râmu," added his master peacefully.
"Hadst thou sent word, she would have been at home doubtless. She is
no worse than others."
"She shall be worse by a nose," retorted his hearer viciously. Whereat
the Lâlâ laughed.
He sat talking to his old henchman till late on into the night, during
the course of his conversation following so many trails of that
serpent, his own evil imaginings, that before Râmu, full of fresh
meats and wines, had fallen asleep, Shunker Dâs had almost persuaded
himself, as well as the husband, that Kirpo's disappearance had
something to do with gold bangles and a series of visits to the
_shaitan sahib_ in the rest-house, where, until their own was
finished, the Rabys were living.
This scandalous suggestion found, to Râmu's mind, a certain
corroboration next day; for on his way to the station in order to
return to Faizapore, he came full tilt on his wife, also hurrying to
catch the train. The gold bangles on her wrists, and the fact of her
having remained in Saudaghur after leaving the Lâlâ's house, pointed
to mischief. He flew at her like a mad dog, too angry even to listen.
Now the station of Saudaghur was a good two miles from the town, and
the road a lonely one; so that the enraged husband had no
interruptions, and finally marched on to his destination, leaving his
wife, half dead, behind a bush; a brutal, but not uncommon occurrence
in a land where animal jealousy is the only cause of women's
importance. That evening John Raby, riding back from a distant village
in the dusk, was nearly thrown at the rest-house gates by a sudden
swerve of his horse.
"_Dohai! Dohai! Dohai!_" The traditional appeal for justice rose to
high heaven as a female figure started from the shadow, and clutched
his bridle. It was Kirpo, with a bloody veil drawn close about her
face.
The young man swore, not unnaturally. "Well, what's the matter?" he
cried angrily; past experience teaching him the hopelessness of
escaping without some show of attention. "I'm not a magistrate any
longer, thank God! Go to the police, my good woman. Oh!" he continued,
in contemptuous comprehension, as the woman, clutching fiercely with
both hands, let go her veil, which falling aside, showed a noseless
face; "'tis your own fault, no doubt."
"The Lâlâ! the Lâlâ!" shrieked Kirpo. "'Tis his doing."
"Shunker Dâs?" asked John Raby, reining up his horse in sudden
interest.
"Yes, Shunker Dâs! He gave me the gold bangles for going to see your
_mem_ and pretending to be his wife. He did it. The ill-begotten son
of a hag, the vile offspring of a she-devil!"
So, with sobs and curses, she poured the whole tale of her wrong into
the young man's ear. He listened to it with wonderful patience. "All
you want, I suppose, is to punish your husband?" he asked, when she
paused for breath.
"No!" almost yelled the woman. "The Lâlâ! the Lâlâ! I could choke him
on his own flesh."
John Raby laughed. These half savages had certainly most expressive
methods of speech, a pity their actions were not as forcible. "Wait
here," he said quietly. "I'll send you out a note for the native
magistrate; but mind! no word of your visit to my wife. I'm not going
to have that all over the place."
Kirpo squatted down at the gate-post, wrapping the bloody veil round
her once more; a habit she would have to grow into with the years.
Not a stone's throw from this ghastly figure, in the large bare
sitting-room of the rest-house, which she had decorated to the best of
her ability with Indian draperies disposed after the fashion of the
West, sat Belle in a low wicker chair. A tea-table bright with silver
and china awaited the master's return, while a pile of music scattered
on the open piano showed her recent occupation. "There you are at
last, John!" she said. "Cold isn't it?--quite Christmas weather; but
your tea is ready."
"And what has my wife been doing with herself all day?" he asked, with
the complacent affection which invariably sprang up at the sight of
his own home comfort.
"Oh, I? Working, and reading, and practising as usual. There's a very
interesting article on the morality of the Vedas in the _Nineteenth
Century_. It seems wonderfully pure."
"A little more sugar, if you please, and one of those cakes with the
chocolate, dear," was the reply, given with a stretching of the limbs
into the curves of a cushioned chair. "Do you know, Belle, India is a
most delightful country. If Blanche Amory had lived here she would not
have had to say, '_Il me faut des emotions_.' They sit at the gate, so
to speak, and the contrasts give such a zest to life. You, with that
white gown and all the accessories (as the studio-slang has it) are
like _pâté de foie_ after the black bread of the Spartans. If you have
done your tea, go to the piano, there's a dear girl, and play me a
valse; _Rêves d'Amour_ for choice; that will put the truffles to the
_pâté_."
Kirpo squatting at the gate, waiting for vengeance, heard the gay
notes. "What a noise!" she said to herself; "no beginning or end, just
like a jackal's cry. I wish he would send the letter."
It came at last; and Kirpo, for one, always believed that to it she
owed the fact that Râmu was caught, tried, sentenced, and imprisoned
for a whole year; for as she used to say, in telling the tale to her
cronies, "I hadn't a cowrie or an ornament left, so it would have been
no use complaining to the police."
The Lâlâ, too, impressed a like belief on the indignant Râmu. "'Tis
true enough," he said, "that it is tyranny to deny a man his right to
teach his wife caution; but there!--she went straight to Raby _sahib_,
and now you are in for a whole year without a friend to stand treat,
my poor Râmu."
Râm Lâl's teeth chattered at the prospect of desertion. "But you will
stand by me still, master?" he asked piteously.
"Wherefore, Râmu? Even a _buniah_ leaves old scores alone when there
is a receipt-stamp on the paper," chuckled the usurer. "Pray that thou
hast not the same warder, oh my son! and come back to me, if thou
wilst, when the time is over." He happened to be in high good spirits
that morning owing to a slip on John Raby's part in regard to the
signing of some contract which promised to put rupees into the Lâlâ's
private pocket. So much so, that he went to the rest-house in order to
gloat over the prospect in his unconscious partner's presence. It was
the first time that the latter had seen him since Kirpo's appeal and
confession, for John Raby had purposely avoided an interview until the
trial, with its possibility of unpleasantness, was over. Now he calmly
shut the door, and made the practical joker acquire a thorough and yet
superficial knowledge of the ways of the ruling race, finishing up by
a contemptuous recommendation to vinegar and brown paper.
"I've been fighting your battles, dear," he said, coming into his
wife's room, and leaning over to kiss her as she lay resting on the
sofa. A pile of dainty lace and muslin things on the table beside her,
told tales for the future.
"My battles, John? I didn't know I had any enemies here." Or any
friends she might have added, for those three months in the rest-house
had been inexpressibly lonely; her husband away all day, and no white
face within fifty miles.
"Enemies? No, Belle, I should say not; but I have, and what's mine's
yours, you know." Then, half amused, half irritated, he told her of
Kirpo's visit.
Her eyes sought his with the puzzled look which life was beginning to
put into them. "I suppose it was intended as an insult," she said;
"but when a man has half a dozen wives, some married one, some another
way, it,--it doesn't seem to matter if they are married or not."
"My dear!" cried he, aghast. "I do hope you haven't been reading my
French novels."
She smiled, a trifle bitterly. "No; they bore me. It's the gazeteer of
this district which is to blame. How many kinds of marriage? I forget;
one is called a kicking-strap, I know. It is a mere question of names
all through. What difference can it make?"
John Raby walked up and down the room in, for him, quite a disturbed
manner. "I'm sorry to hear you speak that way, Belle. It's always a
mistake. If you can't see the insult, you will at least allow that it
confirms what I have always maintained, the undesirability of mixing
yourself up with a social life that doesn't fit in with ours. It has
put me into rather a hole at all events."
"A hole, John? What do you mean?"
"Why, even the Lâlâ won't work with me after this, and I must take all
the risk; there isn't much of course; but somehow I've been hustled
all through. First by that foolish trial--"
"I thought we had agreed to leave that alone, John?" interrupted his
wife with a heightened colour.
"True, O queen! And you needn't be afraid, Belle. You and the babies
shall be millionaires, billionaires if you like." And a speech like
this, accompanied as it was by the half-careless, half-affectionate
glance she knew so well, would start her self-reproach on the road to
that sanctuary from all her vague puzzles; the fixed belief that she
and John were the most attached of couples.
It would, nevertheless, be almost impossible to over-colour the
absolute loneliness of the girl's life at this time. Her husband away
from dawn till sundown, her only companions a people whose uncouth
_patois_ she hardly understood, whose broad simplicity of purpose and
passion positively confused her own complexity. It was utter
isolation, combined with the persistent reflection that close by in
the native town, humanity went to and fro full to the brim with the
same emotions of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, though the causes were
different. It made her feel as if she had dropped from another world;
and being, from physical causes, fanciful, she often thought, when
looking over the wide level plain, without one tree to break its
contour, which stretched away from her to the horizon, that, but for
the force of gravity, she could walk over its visible curve into
space. One of her chief amusements was what her husband laughingly
called her _jardin d'acclimatisation_; a dreary row of pots where, in
defiance of a daily efflorescence of Glaubers salt, she coaxed a dozen
or so of disheartened pansies into producing feeble flowers half the
size of a wild heart's-ease. She was extremely patient, was Belle
Raby, and given to watering and tending all things which she fancied
should adorn a woman's house and home; and among them gratitude.
Scarcely a day passed but the thought of Philip Marsden's ill-requited
kindness set this irreclaimable hero-worshipper into metaphorically
besprinkling his grave with her tears, until countless flowers of fact
and fancy grew up to weave a crown for his memory, a frame for his
virtues. The extent to which she idealised him never came home to her,
for the fact of his having passed finally from life prevented her from
having to decide his exact position in her Pantheon. Another thing
which intensified her inclination to over-estimate the benefits she
had received at Philip's hands was her husband's evident desire for
complete silence on this subject. Naturally in one so impulsively
generous as Belle, this seemed to make her remembrance, and her
gratitude, all the more necessary.
So time passed until, as women have to do, she began to set her house
in order against life or death. To-day, to-morrow, the next day,
everything familiar, commonplace,--and then? How the heart beats in
swift wonder and impatience even though the cradle may be the grave!
A hint of spring was in the air; that sudden spring which in Northern
India follows close on the first footsteps of the new year. Belle,
with a light heart, sat sorting her husband's wardrobe, and laying
aside in camphor and peppercorns, things not likely to be required;
for who could tell how long it might be ere she could look after
John's clothes again? As she paused to search the pockets of a coat, a
building sparrow hopped across the floor to tug at a loose thread in
the pile of miscellaneous garments among which she was sitting, and a
bright-eyed squirrel, hanging on the open door, cast watchful glances
on a skein of Berlin wool, which appeared utterly desirable for a
nest. The whole world, she thought, seemed preparing for new life,
working for the unknown, and she smiled at the fancy as she began
methodically to fold and smooth. More carefully than usual, for this
was John's political uniform, and the sight of it invariably brought
her a pang of regret for the career that had been given up. Suddenly
her half-caressing fingers distinguished something unusual between the
linings; something that must have slipped from the pocket, for she had
to unrip a rough mend in the latter ere she could remove a sheet of
thin paper folded in two, smooth, uncrushed.
The writing startled her; it was Philip Marsden's, and she sat there
for a minute staring at it blankly. In after years the smell of
camphor always brought her back to that moment of life; the sunlight
streaming on the floor beside her, the twittering bird, the watchful
squirrel.
The draft of a will,--surely _the_ will--and yet! How came it in her
husband's pocket, in the coat that he must have worn? Then he had
known--he _must_ have known about the money! Money! Yes, the one
passion she had ever seen on his face; the one love--
The sparrow came back again and again robbing one life for another.
The squirrel, emboldened at her silence, made off with its heart's
desire; but still poor Belle lay in a dead faint on the floor. And
there she might have remained, with the accusing paper in her hand to
face her husband, had not pain, sharp compelling pain, roused her. To
what? To a new life, to something beyond, yet of herself, something to
defy fate and carry hope and fear from the present to the future.
A vague understanding of her own position came to her as she lay
slowly gathering consciousness, until she rose to her feet and looked
round her almost fearfully. "It must not alter anything," she
muttered, as the torn shreds of paper fell from her shaking hand. "It
cannot,--oh, dear God! it shall not. Not now, not now; I could not
bear it; not now, not now!"
All that night Belle Raby fought a strange, uncertain battle, fought
hard for the old life and the new, for life or death, scarcely knowing
why she did either, and caring little, thinking little, of anything
save the blind instinct of fight. And with the dawn the child which
was hers, but which she was never to see, gave up its feeble desire,
and left nothing but a pitiful waxen image to tell of life that had
been and was gone.
But Belle, fast clasping her husband's hand, was in the Land of
Dreams; the land to which many things besides the dead child must
belong forever.