cutlets he was preparing, for he understood the frail foundation on
which his chance of manufacturing a husband stood. Jullunder-sahib must
be making a spring, and if the oil in which it had to be
boiled---- But no! As cook, he knew something of the properties of hot
fat, and felt convinced that the spring would never be fried in time.
So all that long hot day he toiled and slaved in company with an
anatomy of a man whom he had unearthed from the city. A man who had
also in his youth served the white blood, but had never risen beyond
the scullery. A man who called him "Great Artificer," and fanned him
and the charcoal fire indiscriminately according to their needs.
And all that long hot day on the other side of the arcaded square work
went on also, so that the clang of metal on anvil or cook-room fire
rose in antagonism on the dusty sunshine which slept between them.
Dinner or no dinner? Spring or no spring? And the circling dark shadows
of the kites above in the blue sky were almost the only other signs of
life, for Elflida Norma had found sleep the easiest way of keeping
Lily-_baba_ from the melons, and the boys slept as they slept always.
But as the sun set Imân knew that fate had decided in favour of the
dinner, for Jullunder-sahib came over from the smithy with empty hands,
and found hot water in his room, and the change of white raiment he
carried in his knapsack laid out decorously on the bed.
He took the hint and dressed for dinner, even to the buttonhole of
jasmine which he found beside his hair-brush.
Elflida Norma, under similar supervision, dressed also. In fact,
everything was dressed, including the flat tin lids of the saucepans
which Imân had impressed into doing duty as side-dishes. Surrounded by
castellated walls of rice paste, supporting cannon balls of alternate
spinach and cochinealed potatoes, they really looked very fine. So did
Imân himself, starched to inconceivable stiffness of deportment. So
even did the anatomy, who, promoted for once to the dining-room,
grinned at the young man and the girl, at the Great Artificer and all
his works, with his usual indiscrimination.
And, in truth, each and all deserved grins. Yet Elflida Norma looked at
Alec Alexander, he at her, and both at the dinner table set out
marvellously with great trails of the common pumpkin vine looped with
the cheap silver tinsel every Indian bazaar provides, and felt a sudden
shyness of themselves, of each other, and the unwonted snowiness and
glitter.
"Cler or wite?" said Imân, his old hands in difficulties with two soup
plates. There was a dead silence.
"He means soup," faltered Elflida Norma desperately, wishing herself
with the boys who were being regaled with curry and rice in her room,
and thereinafter became dumb until the next course, when a sense of
duty made her supplement Imân's "fish-bar'l" with the explanation that
it was not really fish, which was not procurable, but another form of
fowl.
So, in fact, were the side dishes which followed, and in which Imân had
so far surpassed his usual self that Elflida was perforce as helpless
as her companion for all save eating them solidly in due order. The old
man, however, was too much absorbed in the due handling of "bredsarse"
with the fowl, which was at last allowed to appear under the title of
"roschikken," too much discomforted by the subsidence of his favourite
"sikken," a cheese _soufflée_, to notice silence, or the lack of it,
until, just as--the worst strain over--he was perfunctorily apologising
for the impossibility of "Hice-puddeen," a fateful cry came from the
next room and Elflida started to her feet.
"It's Lily," she began; but Imân frowned her into her seat again, and
turned to the anatomy superbly. "Go!" he said with dignity, "and bid
the ayah see to Lily-_baba_."
The result, however, was unsatisfactory, and a certain obstinacy grew
to Elflida's small face, which finally blossomed into open rebellion
and a burst of confidence.
"You see," she said, those blue eyes of hers almost blinking as she
narrowed them with earnestness, "she smells guavas, and they are more
her hobby than melons even."
The young man smiled.
"Who's Lily?" he asked; "your sister, I suppose."
"My half-sister," she replied, solemnly. "But she will cry on, you see,
if she is not let to come to my place."
"Then let her come--why not?"
"It is an evil custom," began Imân, as the order was given. He knew no
graver blame than that even for a whole Decalogue in ruins; but Elflida
Norma stamped her foot as she had stamped it in the polka, so he had to
give in and thus avoid worse exposures.
And, after all, the introduction of the dimpled brown child in a little
white night-shift, who leant shyly against Elflida's blue beads, seemed
to help the conversation. So much so that after coffee and cigarettes
had been served in the verandah, old Imân felt as if success must crown
his efforts--if only there were time! But how could there be time when
the possible husband had arranged, since the motor bicycle refused to
be mended with the appliances at his disposal, to have it conveyed by
country cart overnight to the nearest railway station, five miles off,
whither he must tramp it, he supposed? next morning, to catch the mail
train.
It was when, pleasantly, yet still carelessly, Alec Alexander was
saying good-bye to the blue eyes and the blue beads, with the brown
baby cuddled up comfortably in the girl's slender arms, that Imân, with
a sinking heart, played his last card by saying that there was no need
for the Huzoor to tramp. The Miss-_Sahiba_ and Lily-_baba_ invariably
took a carriage airing before breakfast, and could quite easily drop
the Huzoor at the railway station.
"Yes! I could drop you quite easily at that place. It would be more
better than the walk," assented Elflida Norma, with a Sphinx-like
smile. Her heart was beating faster than usual. She was beginning
to be amused with the tinsel glitter and the general pretence.
It was like playing a game. Still she slept soundly; and so
did the young engineer, and Lily-_baba_, and the boys gorged with
as-a-rule-prohibited native dainties. Even the smith slept, and the
anatomy had already reverted to reality, his transient dignity
vanishing into thin air. So that in that wide ruined serai, built by
dead kings, all were at rest save the Great Artificer, Imân, who sate
among the ruins of his dinner, satisfied, yet still conscious of
failure. Something was lacking, which once more only God could
create--only a miraculous car could bring.
In truth, if any vehicle might from outward appearance claim miraculous
powers, it was the extraordinary sort of four-wheeled dogcart which, in
the cool morning air, appeared as Imân's last card. He had, indeed, not
wandered from the truth in telling Alec Alexander that carriages were
not to be hired in that sahib-forsaken spot, and it had been only with
extreme difficulty that he had raised these four wheels of varying
colours and a body painted with festoons of grapes, all tied together
with ropes.
Still, it held the party. Imân, with Lily-_baba_ in his arms, on the
box by the driver, Elflida and the young engineer disposed on the back
seat. The horse, it is true, showed signs of never having been in
harness before, but this was not so evident to those behind, and Imân
held tight and set his teeth, knowing that success has sometimes to be
bought dearly.
Still, it was with no small measure of relief when they were close on
their destination, and the beast settled down to the two hundred yards
of collar work leading up to the small station level with the high
embankment of the permanent way, that he turned round to peep at
progress on the back seat.
Had anything happened? His heart sank at the cool, collected air with
which the possible husband took his ticket; but it rose again, when,
after saying good-bye to Lily-_baba_ and tipping the coachman, the
young man went off to the platform with Elflida, as if it were a matter
of course she should see him off. In truth, that is exactly what he did
feel concerning this distinctly pretty and rather jolly little girl
with a bad temper.
And Elflida? Her world seemed to have had a fresh start in growth, it
held greater possibilities than before, that was all.
So everything had been in vain, even Imân's sense of duty towards the
white blood he had served so long.
"Good-bye!" He could not hear the words, but he saw the young hands
meet to unclasp again, as with a whistle the mail train rushed out from
behind a dense mango clump, and the Westinghouse brakes brought a
sudden grinding rattle to the quiet morning air.
"All was over!" thought Imân sadly, as still sitting on the box with
Lily-_baba_, he watched. Surely it had not been his fault. He had done
all--only the cheese _soufflée_ had failed, and that happened sometimes
even in the house of Lât-Sahibs. Yet it was over.
It was, indeed. Almost including the miraculous car, as deprived of its
driver, who was spending part of his tip in the sweet stall, the horse,
frightened at the train, reared, bounded forward, and then, finding its
progress barred in front by a railing, swerved on its track, and came
past the station again, heading for that downward incline with the
steep banks falling away on either side.
Elflida grasped the position first, and with a cry of "Lily! Lily!" was
at the horse's head as it passed. The possible husband was not far
behind--just far enough to make the off rein as convenient to his
pursuing feet as the near one, to which she clung, half dragged,
helpless, half in wild determination to keep pace with the terrified
beast.
"Let go!" he shouted. "He'll get you down, and then--let go, I say!"
She did not answer. In truth, she had no breath for words. And,
besides, her mind was not clear enough to grasp his order, though it
grasped something else--namely, that relief from her dead weight on one
side must bring a swerve to the other. And that must not be till the
embankment was passed, or the man holding to the off rein must go
under.
"Let go!" he shouted, again and again, as he, in his turn, grasped her
purpose; but he might as well have shouted to the dead.
* * * * *
"I believe--I hope--she has fainted," said Alec Alexander, with a catch
in his voice not all due to breathlessness, as, the runaway safe held
by other captors, he stooped over the girl who lay in the dust, her
hands still clenched over a broken rein. Then he lifted her tenderly
and carried her back to the station whence the mail train, careless of
such trivialities as miraculous cart, had departed.
And if on his way he kissed the closed blue eyes and the blue beads
round the childish throat, who shall blame him?
* * * * *
Anyhow, the hot dry nights of May were not over before old Imân's voice
rose once more in declamation over the unforgettable story of the white
blood.
But this time sleep did not come to the black-and-tan tribe gathered in
the light of the floating oil wick. For the boys were watching
something they had never seen before--the icing of a wedding cake.
And so the long-deferred personal climax came at last.
"The trouble being over, the masters were masters again, and I took
Sonny-_baba_ back to his people. And wherefore not? Seeing I had eaten
of their salt all my life and they of mine. Yea! even unto wedding
cakes. Look, my sons! That is done, and I, Imân, the faithful one by
name and nature made it."
* * * * *
There was but one flaw in the old man's content on the great day; for
he had managed to get a ham cheap for the "suffer," and Mrs. Hastings,
only too glad of greater freedom in the future, had consented to his
turning his attention to the education of the young couple and
Lily-_baba_, who was to live with them. That flaw was a slight
irregularity in what he was pleased to call a "too-liver-ot" on the
said cake. Not that it really mattered. The true lover's knot itself
was there, though the hands which fashioned it were not so young and
steady as they had been when they caught up Sonny-_baba_ and carried
him to the safe shadows.
Yet, old as they were, those hands had forgotten no duty. _E-stink
Sahib's_ widow, absorbed with a friend in the recipe of a mango pickle
she meant to make on the morrow--a pickle full of forbidden turmeric
and mustard oil--had to be reminded of her _rôle_ as bride's mother
over and over again, but it was Imân who hung a horseshoe for luck on
the miraculous car--drawn this time by an old stager--Imân, who was
ready with rice, Imân, who finally ran after the departing lovers to
fling the old white shoe, in which Elflida had danced the hee-haw
polka, into their laps as they sate on the back seat, and then,
overbalancing himself in the final effort, to tumble into the dust,
where he remained blissfully uncertain as to praise or blame, murmuring
blandly, "What a custom is here!"
THE WISDOM OF OUR LORD GANESH
"The wisdom of Sri Ganêsh--the wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh."[1]
Through and through my fever-drugged brain the words came, compelling,
insistent; forcing me away from reality, forcing me back into the past.
Yet I knew perfectly where I was; I remembered distinctly that having
felt unusually tired after rather a hot day's march I had pitched the
little _tente d'abri_--which was my home during a sketching tour in
Wales--rather closer to the main road than I generally did, and had
thereinafter promptly succumbed to an unmistakable go of fever and
ague, a half-forgotten legacy left behind by many years of Indian life.
Yes, I could remember distinctly the bramble-and-nut-hidden quarry
hole, with its little inner sward of sweet sheep-bitten grass where I
had pitched the tent. I knew that if I were to call, someone of the
rumbling cart wheels, which came at intervals along the road, might
stop and seek for the caller; but I lay still. I was hard-happed round
and round with the curious content which comes as the chills and the
aches are passing into the fire flood of fever that thrills the
finger-tips and sets the brain fizzling like champagne.
"The wisdom of Sri Ganêsh--the wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh."
Why on earth should that haunt me here in Wales? on a piece, no doubt,
of Nat Gwynne's property.
Nat Gwynne! Then I knew. It was because I had seen him in the distance
that day, driving a pair of grey ponies, tandem, with a pretty young
girl beside his coarse, heavy, good looks; heavier than they had been,
though, heaven knows! refinement had never stood much in his way. And
they were to be married to-morrow! Married to Gwynne of Garthgwynne!
Couldn't anyone tell her what she was doing? Couldn't anyone save her,
as the wisdom of Sri Ganêsh had saved that other one?...
And then in a second I was gone. I was under the brassy blue
sky of India, and from the twisted tufts of marsh-grasses by the
elephant's feet came a native beater's lament--"As God sees me it is
invisible--what a tyranny is here."
"Bid Ganêsh seek," said Nat Gwynne's voice, imperatively from the
howdah from which we were both shooting. He was in a Lancer regiment
cantooned in the native State where for many years I had been
consulting engineer.
The _mahout_, seated on the big brute's neck, turned calmly. "It is
against the orders that Sri Ganêsh, King of Elephants and Lord of
Wisdom, should touch carrion even of the Huzoor's."
I looked at my old friend Mahadeo with astonishment. He and I had been
out on Ganêsh, the Rajah's finest elephant, scores of times, and again
and again the cunning old rogue's inquisitive trunk had nosed out and
up a partridge or snipe which the coolies had failed to find.
"He hath a scent like a bed of roses," old Mahadeo would say proudly,
"and as for wisdom! Doth he not hold the Huzoor even as his own
_mahout?_"
Which delicate piece of flattery was true, for old Ganêsh, pad elephant
to the bankrupt young scoundrel of a Rajah, had taken a fancy to me, as
elephants do take fancies.
So, seeing at a glance that something lay beneath the surface of the
bitter hatred in the dark face, and the wild, wicked rage of the white
one, I said, quickly. "Seek! my brother!"
Ganêsh swayed forward, his trunk curling like a snake, his wicked
little eyes alert, a faint _frou-frou_ of a blowing sound seeming to
quiver the grasses; and there, grasped softly in the prehensile end was
a dead jack snipe! As he put it deferentially and politely into my
outstretched hand I seemed to catch a contemptuous flicker in his eye,
as who would say, "What an amount of fuss about such a very little
piece of pork," as the Jew said when a thunderstorm found him eating
sausage.
But that it was _not_ a little piece of pork between those two, still
glaring at each other, was evident.
Mahadeo's usually gentle face had taken on a stony stare that held in
it something of limitless power; while Nat Gwynne's anger was almost
obscured by sheer disgust at having to keep his hands off another man's
servant.
"By God!" he cried. "It's lucky for you, you pig, that I'm not your
master--but--but I'll try to be--I'll buy this big brute when they sell
the bankrupt State up next month, and I'll buy you, curse you, and
I'll ..."
"Do hold your tongue, Gwynne," I said to him in a low voice, for his
temper was notorious, and once he lost control over himself he would
often behave like a madman. As, indeed, he had every right to be, since
the record of the Gwynnes of Garthgwynne was a black one.
Mahadeo, however, supplied the return to calm.
"The Huzoor is _mast_," he said to me, rapidly in low contemptuous
Hindustani, turning the while to sit, immovable as ever, a mere head
and trunk of a man, all else being hidden by the elephant's great
shields of ears. "He is as the beasts that perish. And Ganêsh, too,
nears his time of power--" he pointed to the great head he bestrode
where, oozing apparently from a slight hollow in the skin a few drops
of ichor showed, half hardened into amber, "so let those who would harm
him--or _his friends_ beware!"
But there was nothing of which to be beware thereinafter, for all
became peace. How hot the sun was! And the guns, too! Almost too hot to
hold. But how cool it was in the camp down in a mango-grove beside a
tank with great cane brakes stretching away into the stars under the
moonlight! And how peaceful! How one slept, and slept, and slept,
drowsed to dreamlessness by the great peace of the immovable shadows,
the greater peace of the light behind them....
Ye powers above! What was that? Even now, remembering it, all was as it
had seemed then. Shadow on light, light on shadow ... a curse, a
cry ... something young and slim fleeing, half in light, half in shadow!
Then a sudden trumpet, a rattle as of chained front feet, one little
sob....
How steadily the moonlight shone through the branches on that small
upturned face which was all Ganêsh's feet had spared.
"Who? What?" I gasped, uncomprehending, staring stupidly at Mahadeo on
his knees beside the dead girl, at Gwynne, still dressed, the buttons
on his mess jacket glittering like diamonds, his face all working with
horror and dismay. But there was no room for anything but the old man's
voice, quiet, restrained:
"She was my granddaughter, Huzoor. But a light thing. She must have
gone too near the King of Elephants, being as this slave said, near to
his time of power. What then? _It is the wisdom, of our Lord Ganêsh!
The wisdom of Sri Ganêsh!_"
The sound of his voice died away softly, and the wind carried it
further, and further, and further....
Such an odd wind! Soft, warm, with a faint perfume in it, blowing on my
hands, my face. And behind it a familiar sighing sound with the echo of
a chuckle in it....
Was it possible? I started up, my brain in a whirl. Did I, or did I not
see in the moonbeam which stole through a chink in the tent flap,
something sinuous, that curved and bent caressingly? And beyond it,
where the flap divided, was or was that not a rough image of the
Elephant Headed God of Wisdom painted in hot ochres on an elephant's
fore front? I was out of the blankets in a second, flinging back the
tent flaps with a delirious laugh. Aye! It was true! Earth and air
alike seemed blocked by a huge mass of flesh that quivered all over
with delight. Come! this was something like a fever dream! To have an
Indian Rajah's pad elephant to ride on--to go whither you would for a
fresh breeze--to cool your brain.
"_Baito_, Ganêsh! _Baito!_" I cried, giving the familiar order; but the
next instant my vaingloriousness ended in a shiver, almost of fear, as
the brute obeyed, sinking noiselessly and laying its trunk, curled
round to protect itself against injury, ready for me to mount.
Scarcely knowing what I did I caught familiarly at the big drooping
ears, I felt the trunk beneath my feet tilted gingerly to aid me, and
there I was, my head reeling madly, in the old familiar place!
But around me? Around me half Wales, bathed in broad moonlight, lay
peaceful; with, in the distance, a faint shimmer telling of the
sea--the far sea that still seemed to sound in my ears as if, indeed, I
lay upon its very shore listening to the break and burden of the waves
which came from far away--so very far away.
I think the effort must have made me relapse into unconsciousness, for
the next thing I remember is finding myself propped up by pillows in
the howdah, and hearing a familiar voice break in upon the ceaseless
fall of the waves which filled my ears.
And from the voice I gathered vaguely that it was not a dream at all.
This was indeed Ganêsh, who had been sold because of his great height
to an English showman, and this was no other than old Mahadeo, who
would not leave his charge, and had come over the black water, also,
where there was nothing good to be had save rum; rum that kept the cold
out on these chill September nights when Ganêsh had to do his marches
from town to town, since the sight of an elephant might frighten the
traffic by day. There was evidently some of that rum still in the old
man's voice as he chid Ganêsh glibly for having been restive and thrown
his unsteady _mahout_ on the road. But then had not the animal always
loved the Huzoor, even as his master? And must he not have nosed him
out as he passed, the Lord of Elephants having, as ever, a scent as of
rose gardens? Which was as well, since now the Huzoor would be able to
get a doctor-_sahib_ and medicine....
I tried to understand, but it was hard to get at anything with fever
raging in one's brain, while the rhythmic roll of the elephant's pace
as we lilted away over half Wales seemed to blend with the fall of
those waves from very far away. Once I remember asking how many couple
of snipe we had killed. After that Mahadeo furtively brought out a
bottle and gave me something fiery which seemed to do me good, though
he muttered to himself that he could but do his best--his was not the
wisdom of Sri Ganêsh.
"You--you shouldn't say that to me, you--you old fool," I
murmured, weakly. "You should say it as you said to--to--to
Gwynne-_sahib_--Gwynne-_sahib_, who is going to be married
to-morrow--don't you know? Such a pretty girl--such a very pretty
girl--such a poor, pretty girl...."
I don't know quite what I said; I am glad, indeed, not to be able to
remember, but I have a vague recollection of becoming a trifle maudlin,
and finally of pointing out, amid a cloud-like shadow of trees that lay
on the far horizon, the position--or thereabouts--of Garthgwynne,
whither the young bride was to be led the next evening.
Now, in all this, as I recount it from a blurred, fever-stricken
memory, allowance must be made for illusion. I don't know if it really
happened, I can only vouch for my belief that I actually saw and did
these things. I think now, therefore, that I fell asleep, always with
that recurring fall of distant waves in my ear, until I woke suddenly
to a loud hilarious burst of half-drunken laughter.
"Stop him! Hie! Gone away! Hello! Gwynne! Pity the bride! If you don't
go to bed there'll be no wedding day! Yoicks! Poor devil! wants to
escape the halter. Hie! You there! Best man! You're bound to bring him
up sober."
We were in the deep shadow of the famous cedar trees, and one look at
the old house beyond the lawn was enough for recognition. Yes! it was
Plas Garthgwynne, favoured of picture postcards, favoured of wild,
wicked romance and legend. It was all blazing with lights, so, despite
the waning of the moon, I could see--clustering at the door and
dispersed over the gravel sweep--the mad rush of Gwynne of
Garthgwynne's last bachelor party as it tumbled tipsily in chase of a
reeling figure that came straight towards us across the lawn to lose
itself in the opposite shadows.