record cupboard swung to its lock with a click, and the office was
empty.
* * * * *
The cactus flowers bloomed and faded; the violet-scented mimosa
puff-balls fell in gold showers on the green lobes, the aloe bells
withered in silence, the waiting, watching eyes waited and watched in
vain. If the snakes, as they slid over the netting-covered round hole
in the thickness of the great Salt Hedge, had looked down into the
widening sunlit circle below them, what would they have seen?
Who knows, since Suchet Singh the Sikh lay dead at his post.
AN APPRECIATED RUPEE
She was a poor Mahomedan widow, and lived in an unconceivable sort of
burrow under the tall winding stair of a big tenement house, which in
its turn was hidden away in a long, winding, sunless alley. The stair
centred round a sort of shaft, barred at each storey by iron gratings,
narrow enough to admit of refuse being thrown down--the shaft being,
briefly, the rubbish shoot of the building, so that old Maimuna--who
seldom left her seclusion till the evening--had, in passing to and fro,
to step over quite a pile of radish parings, cauliflower stalks, fluff,
rags--a whole day's sweepings and leavings of the folk higher up in the
world than she.
And even when she reached the odd-shaped cell of a place, whose only
furniture consisted of a rickety bed with string--halt in two of its
emaciated legs, a low stool and a spinning wheel, she was not free from
her neighbours' off-scourings; for down the wall beside the low
latticed window, where, perforce, she had to set her spinning wheel,
crept a slimy black streak of sewage from above, which smelt horribly,
on its way to join the open drain in the middle of the alley. Yet here
Maimuna Begam, Patha-ni from Kasur, had lived for fifteen years of
childless widowhood; lived far away from her home and people, too poor
to rejoin them, too ignorant to hold her own among strangers. For she
had been that most intolerable of interlopers--the wife of a man's old
age. Not a suitable wife bringing a dower into the family; but one who,
as a widow, might--unless the other heirs took active measures to
prevent it--claim her portion of one-sixth for life. A wife, too,
without a pretence of any position save that of the strictest
seclusion; a seclusion so untouched by modern latitude as to be in
itself second-rate. Without good looks also, and married simply and
solely because old Jehan Latif had fancied some quail curry which he
had eaten when business called him to Kasur, and, as the best way of
securing repetition of the delicacy, had married the compounder and
carried her back to Lucknow; where, to tell truth, he found more
attractions in the cook than he had anticipated when he paid a
good round sum for his middle-aged bride. For Maimuna was a good
woman--kindly, gentle, pious--who had lived discreetly in her father's
house, and helped to cook quail curry for that somewhat dissolute old
swashbuckler ever since, as a girl of twelve, her husband had died
before she had even seen him.
So, while she pounded the spices and boned the quails (since that was
one of the refinements of the _bonne-bouche_) for old Jehan Latif,
Maimuna used sometimes to think, with a kind of wondering regret, what
life would have been like if the husband of her youth had not died of
the measles; but, being conscientious, she never allowed the tears to
drop into the quail curry!
It was no carelessness of hers, therefore, which led to fat Jehan Latif
falling into a fit shortly after partaking of his favourite dish, which
for ten years she had dutifully prepared for him. None-the-less, his
heirs (who had had all these years in which to cook their accounts of
the matter) treated her as if it were. There is no need to enter into
details. Those who know India know how unscrupulous heirs can oppress a
strange lone woman--ignorant, secluded; a woman whose position as wife
has from the first been cavilled at, resented, impugned. It is
sufficient to say that Maimuna, after a few feeble protests, found
herself in the little cell under the stairs, earning a few farthings by
her spinning wheel, and thankful that her great skill at it kept her
from that last resort of deserted womanhood in India--the quern. Even
so, it was hard at times to wait till there was sufficient thread in
the percentage she got back for her spinning, to make it worth while
for the merchant to buy it from her, or for her to break in, by a cash
transaction, on the curious succession of cotton bought, and thread
returned, without a coin changing hands. And this winter it was harder
than ever, for the unusual cold made her fingers stiff, and sent
shoots of rheumatism up her arm as she sat spinning in the ray of light
which came in with the smell.
It was very cold indeed that New Year's afternoon, and Maimuna felt
more than usually down-hearted; for there had been a death upstairs,
and she knew that the stamping and shufflings she could hear coming
rhythmically downwards over her head were the feet of those carrying a
corpse. Now, weary and worn as she was, Maimuna--between the fifties
and sixties--did not yet feel inclined to fold her hands and give in.
Even now it needed a very little thing to bring a smile to her face;
and once, when a child had fallen downstairs, she had surprised the
neighbours by her alert decision. So that when she heard girls' shrill
voices in half-giggling alarm through her door--which was ajar--she
guessed at the cause, and called to the owners to come in until the
stairs should be clear.
One (a slip of a thing ten years old) she knew as the daughter of a
gold-thread worker higher up the stairs; the other (not more than five
or six) was a stranger; a fat broad-faced morsel, with a stolid look,
and something held very tight in one small chubby hand. She was dressed
in the cleanest of new clothes, scanty of stuff, but gay, with a yard
or two of tinsel on her scrap of a veil. Maimuna paused in the whirr
and hum of her wheel to look at the children wistfully; her own
childlessness had always seemed a crime to her.
"It is Fatma, the pen-maker's girl, _Mai_," said the gold-worker's
daughter, patronisingly. "She is just back from the Missen School,
where they have been having a big festival because it is the _sahib
log's_ big day."
"Tchuk," dissented the solemn-faced baby, clucking her tongue in
emphatic denial. "It is not the Big Day. It is because _Malika_
Victoria is--is----" The solemnity merged in confusion, finally into a
sort of appealing defiance: "Is--is--_that_----"
She unclasped her fist, and held out a brand new shining silver
two-anna bit. It was one of those struck when her Majesty the Queen
assumed the Imperial title.
The gold-worker's daughter giggled. "She means Wictoria
_Kaiser-i-hind_, you know. What the guns were about this morning. They
are to go off every year, they say. That will be fun!"
"But why?" asked Maimuna, puzzled. Her life for close on
five-and-twenty years had been spent in the cooking of quail curry and
spinning of cotton--the very Mutiny had passed by unknown to her. She
had heard vaguely of the Queen, and knew that it was her head on the
rupee which, despite the hard times, she always wore on a black silk
skein round her neck, because she had worn it since her babyhood, when
the parents of the boy who had died of the measles had sent it her; but
what the Queen had to do with John Company Bahadar, or he to her, was a
mystery.
"Why," giggled the elder girl, "because she is going to be the King,
and turn all the men out. That is what father says. He says she is sure
to favour the women, and I think that will be fun. But Fatma knows it
all. Come! dear one! Sing Maimuna that song the _miss sahibs_ made the
schools sing to-day. Sing it soft, close, close up to her ear, so that
no one may hear it--for they don't like her singing, you know, at home,
_Mai_: it isn't respectable."
So, standing on tip-toe, steadying herself against Maimuna's arm by the
hand which held the two-anna bit, Fatma began in a most unmelodious
whisper to chant a Hindee version of "God Save our Gracious Queen." The
words as well as the tune were a difficulty to the fat, solemn-faced
child, but the old woman sat listening and looking at the two-anna bit
with a new interest, a new wonder in her weary eyes.
"Bismillah!" she said, half way through, when the gold-worker's
daughter, becoming impatient, declared the corpse must have passed, and
dragged Fatma off incontinently. "And she is a woman--only a woman!"
The girls paused at the door; the elder to nod and giggle, the younger
to stand sedate and solemn, wagging one small forefinger backwards and
forwards in negation.
"Tchuk! you shouldn't say that, Mai! Little girls are made of sugar and
spice. It is little boys that are made nasty--the _miss_ says so."
"She should not say so," faltered Maimuna, aghast. The very idea was
preposterous, upsetting her whole cosmogony; but when they had closed
the door, she sat idle, too astonished to work. Then, suddenly, she
took off the black silk hank with its precious rupee, and looked at the
woman's head at the back.
It was a young woman there; young and unveiled--strange,
incomprehensible! But that other on the two-anna bit had been an old
woman, more decently dressed, and with a crown on her head.
"Frustrate their knavish tricks."
Fatma's song returned to memory. So the Queen, too, had enemies; and
yet she was Kaiser-i-hind, and, what is more, she made men like the
gold-thread worker upstairs tremble!
"On thee our hopes we fix!"
* * * * *
Maimuna sat, and sat, and sat, looking at that rupee.
* * * * *
It was a day or two after this that an English official was sitting
smoking in his verandah, when he became aware of a whispered colloquy
behind him. It was someone, no doubt, trying, through the red-coated
_chaprasi_, to gain an audience of him; and he was newly back from
office, tired, impatient, perhaps, of the hopelessness of doing justice
always. So he took no notice till something roused him to a swift turn,
a swifter question. "What's that, _chaprasi?_" _That_ was the
unmistakable chink of fallen silver, the unmistakable whirr of a
running rupee, the unmistakable buzzing ring of its settling to rest.
And there, midway between a giving and a taking hand, lay the rupee
itself--the Queen's head uppermost.
"_Hazoor!_" explained the _chaprasi_, glibly, "your slave was
virtuously refusing; he was sending this ill-bred one away. Hat!
_budhi!_[2] Hat!"
But the sight of that head on the precious rupee, which, after many
heartsearchings, poor Maimuna had determined to risk in this effort to
gain justice from a _budhi_ like herself, whose enemies also had
knavish tricks, brought courage to the old heart, and the old woman
stood her ground.
"_Gharibparwar!_" she said quietly, with her best salaam--and in the
old Pathan house they had taught manners, if nothing else--"Little
Fatma, the pen-maker's daughter, says that Wictoria Kaiser-i-hind is an
old woman like me, and so I have fixed my hopes on her. There is my
rupee. It is all I have, and I want my widow's portion."
* * * * *
And she got it. It happened years ago, but the story is worth telling
to-day, when women can no longer sing "God Save the Queen."
THE LAKE OF HIGH HOPE
A man stood watching a primrose dawn. There was a cloud upon his
face; none on the wide expanse of light-suffused sky beyond the dim
distance of the world. At his feet lay, stretching far, irregularly,
into the grey mistiness of morning, a great sheet of water. The dawn
showed on it as in a mirror, save where tall sedges and reeds sent
still-shining shadows over its level light. Unutterable peace lay upon
all things. They seemed still asleep, though the new day had come,
bringing with it good and evil, rest and strife.
And then, suddenly, there was a change. The man turned swiftly at a
light footstep behind him, to see a woman, and in an instant passion
leapt up, bringing with it joy and despair. For the woman was another
man's wife.
But something in her face made him open his arms and take her close to
his clasp. It seemed to him as if he had been waiting for this moment
ever since he was born.
She was a little bit of a woman, frail and fair, who looked
over-weighted by her dark riding habit, but both seemed lost in the
man's hold, as vibrating with tense emotion, he stood silent, their
mingled figures forming a swaying shadow against that further light.
"At last," he said, in tender exultation, "at long last!"
She threw back her head then, and looked him in the eyes, hope and
fear, and joy and sorrow showing in her face.
"I couldn't stand it--at the last," she almost sobbed, "when it came to
going away, and leaving you here--alone--with that awful risk--for no
one can say what mayn't come--with cholera---- _He_"--her voice
trembled over the small syllable--"started earlier--I am to meet him
by-and-by--so I came round--just to see you--and now----" She buried
her face again, and the sobs shook her gently. He tightened his hold.
"I'm glad!" he replied, in a hard voice. "It was bound to come sooner
or later--you couldn't go on for ever--an angel from heaven couldn't go
on standing--it all. But now----" his voice changed--"now you and
I----" he broke off and raised his head to listen.
It was a wild weird cry, that echoed and re-echoed over the wide
stretches of water, that rose in one long continuous melodious wail
from every reed bed, every thicket of sedge, every tuft of low lamarisk
and bent-rush; for it was the dawn-cry of the myriad wild fowl which
haunted this low-lying _jheel_ of Northern India, and swift as thought,
with a thunderous whirr of wide wings, the birds, teal and mallard and
widgeon, white eye, pochard, and green shank, purple heron and white,
rose in ones, in twos, in threes, in flocks, in companies, in serried
battalions.
The primrose dawn was half effaced, the coming day was darkened by
wheeling, veering, eddying flight, and the peace vanished in the strife
of wings.
"By George! what a shot," cried the man excitedly, even passion
forgotten as a trail of whistling teal swooped past, unconscious of
them, to settle on the still water, then, recognising unlooked for
humanity, veered at sharp angle to rise again into the troubled air.
But the woman clung closer. To her the interruption was terrible. The
soaring birds brought home to her what she had done, and before that
knowledge compelling emotion stopped abruptly.
"It is very foolish of me," she murmured brokenly, "and very
wrong--though I don't know!--I don't know! It was your danger--and I
was so tired--besides it--it need make no difference."
"No difference?" he echoed, in joyous, incredulous exultation. "Why, of
course, it makes all the difference in the world, little woman! You and
I can never go back again, _now!_ We can never pretend again that we
don't care! No! when this cholera camp is over, and I have time, we
must think over what is to be done--but it's final. Yes! it's final, my
darling, my darling!"
His kisses rained on her face, his heart encompassed her. So they stood
for a while, oblivious of the wheeling, veering, eddying wings above
them, oblivious of all things save that they were lovers, and that they
knew it.
Then she left him. "He" would be wondering why she was so late; but
Suleiman, the Arab pony, would soon carry her over the sandy plain.
The man remained watching the slight figure on the bounding grey till
it was lost in the "azure silk of morning." Then he returned slowly to
the _jheel_ again, lost in thought. There was a good deal whereof to
think, for she was a mother; by ill luck the mother of girls. Why had
she worn those tiny presentments of their sweet baby faces in the
double heart brooch which fastened her folded tie! She had not thought,
of course; but it had somehow come between him and his kisses after he
had noticed it.
Well! it was unfortunate; but that sort of thing had to be faced, and
he _would_ face it after he had seen his cholera camp through; for he
was a doctor, and the thought of what might lie before him was with him
as a background to all others. He had chosen a good place for the camp,
yonder among the low sandhills, which were the highest point in all the
desert plain, and, if that did not kill the germ, they could move on.
Meanwhile---- He drew a long breath and looked out over the water. The
primrose dawn had passed to amber, the amber was beginning to flame,
the whirring wings had carried the birds to distant feeding grounds,
only a flock of egrets remained fishing solemnly in a distant shallow.
"The Huzoor is looking for God's birds," said a courteous voice beside
him. "They have gone, likely, to the Lake of High Hope, for it nears
the time of transit to a Higher Land."
The speaker was an old man seated so close to the water that his feet
and legs were hidden by it. He had a simple, pleasant face, which
over-thinness had refined almost to austerity.
The doctor took stock of him quietly. His speech proclaimed him a down
country man, his lack of any garment save a strip of saffron cloth
around his loins suggested asceticism, but his smile was at once
familiar and kindly.
"M[=a]nasa Sarovara?" replied the Englishman, carelessly, "is that what
you mean? I am told the birds really do go there during the hot
weather. I wonder if it is true. I should like to see it." He spoke
half to himself, for he was somewhat of an ornothologist and the tale
of the great West Tibetan Lake of Refuge for God's dear birds--that
lake far from the haunts of men amid the eternal snow and ice, into
which so many streams flow, out of which come none--had caught his
fancy.
"The Huzoor can go when he chooses," remarked the old man placidly;
"but he must leave many things behind him first; the _mem sahiba_, for
instance."
The doctor felt himself flush up to the very roots of his hair, and his
first instinct was to fall upon the evident eavesdropper. Consideration
natheless condemning this course, he tried cool indifference.
"You have been here some time, I perceive," he said calmly.
"I have been all the time behind the _shivala_," acquiesced the other,
with beautiful frankness, as he pointed to a large black upright stone
set on end by the water. "The Huzoor was--was too much occupied to
observe this slave."
"So that is a _shivala_, is it?" interpolated the Englishman hurriedly;
"it doesn't look much like a temple."
"We pilgrims call it so, Huzoor, and we worship it."
"Then you are a pilgrim--whither?"
"To the Lake of High Hope, Huzoor," came the answer, and there was a
tinge of sadness in the tone. "I have been going thither these twenty
years past, but my feet are against me. God made them crooked."
He drew them out of the water as he spoke, and the doctor's
professional eye recognised a rare deformity; recognised also that they
were unconceivably blistered and worn.
"You will not get to M[=a]nasa Sarovara on those," he said kindly;
"they need rest, not travel."
The old man shook his head, and a trace of hurry crept into his voice.
"I give them such rest as I can, Huzoor. That is why I sat with them in
heaven's healing water; but I must get to M[=a]nasa Sarovara, or my
pilgrimage will be lost--and it is not for my own soul, see you." Then
he smiled brilliantly. "And this slave will reach it, Huzoor. Shiv's
angels tell me so."
"Shiv's angels?" queried the doctor.
"The birds yonder, Huzoor," replied the old man gravely, pointing to
the flock of fishing egrets. "Some call them rice birds, and others
egrets, but they come from Shiv's Paradise--one can tell that by their
plumes--perhaps that is why the _mems_ are so fond of wearing them."
A sudden memory of her face as he had first seen it beneath a snowy
aigrette of such plumes assailed the doctor's mind; but it brought a
vague dissatisfaction. "_Herodias alba_," he muttered to himself,
giving the Latin name of the bird, "more likely to have something to do
with dancing away a man's head!" Then a vague remorse at the harshness
of his thought made him say curiously: "And why must I leave the _mem_
behind if I want to reach the Lake of High Hope?"
"Because she is a mother, Huzoor," came the unexpected reply, followed
by deprecating explanation. "This slave has good eyes--he saw the
childs' faces on her breast."
Once again the doctor felt that unaccustomed thrill along the roots of
his hair. What right had this old man to see--everything?--and to
preach at him? A sudden antagonism leapt up in him against all rules,
all limitations.
"Well! I don't mean to leave her behind, I can tell you," he said
almost petulantly. "When a man has found Paradise----"
"Shiv's Paradise is close to the Lake of High Hope," interrupted the
suave old voice.
"D--n Shiv's Paradise!" cried the doctor; then he laughed. "It's no
use, br[=a]hman-_jee_, for I suppose you are a br[=a]hman. I'm not
going to be stopped by snow or ice. Look here,"--his mood changed
abruptly to quick masterful protest--"that would be to give up
happiness. Now! what makes you happy? Holiness, I expect, being a
pilgrim! high caste! one of the elect! Give that all up,
br[=a]hman-_jee_--and--and I'll think about it. And if you'll come over
there," he pointed to the low sandhills as he spoke, "this evening.
I'll give you an ointment for those blistered feet of yours--you'll
never get to M[=a]nasa Sarovara otherwise, you know."
"I shall get there some time, Huzoor," came the confident reply.
Perhaps the old man came; perhaps he did not. The doctor was far too
busy to care, since before daylight failed he found himself face to
face with the tightest corner of his life. The promise of the primrose
dawn passed before noon. Heavy rain clouds massed themselves into a
purple pall, dull, lowering, silent, until, with the close of day, the
courage of the coming storm rose in low mutterings.
And then, at last, the rain fell--fell in torrents. It found the
regiment--seeking safety from the scourge of cholera,--on the march,
and disorganised it utterly. With baggage waggons bogged, soldiers
already discouraged by dread, all drenched and disordered, there was
nothing to be done but keep cool and trust that chance might avert
disaster, since no man could hurry up tents that were miles behind.
"There's another man in G company down, sir," said the hospital
sergeant, "and the apothecary reports no more room in his ward."
"There's room here," replied the doctor, setting his teeth. "Orderly!
put a blanket in that corner and lift Smith to it--he's getting
better--he'll do all right."
So yet one more man found a cot and such comfort as skill and strength
of purpose could give him, while the thunder crashed overhead and the
pitiless rain hammered at the taut tent roof like a drum. One had to
shout to make oneself heard.
"Lights! I say, lights! I've been calling for them these ten minutes.
Why the devil doesn't someone bring them? I can't see to do anything."
The doctor's voice rang resonantly; but the lights did not come. The
waggon with the petroleum tins was hopelessly bogged miles away, and in
the confusion no one had thought of lights.
"Thank God for the lightning," muttered the doctor with unwonted piety,
as with awful blinding suddenness the whole hospital tent blazed into
blue brilliance, putting out the miserable glimmer of the oil lantern
that had been raised from somewhere. In that brief luminous second he
could at least see his patients--thirty of them or more. It was not an
encouraging sight. The livid look on many faces might be discounted by
the lightning, but there was an ominous stillness in some that told its
tale.
"Gone! Bring in another man from outside," came the swift verdict and
order after a moment's inspection with the oil lantern.
"Beg pardin', sir," almost whined a hospital orderly "but Apothecary
Jones has sent to say he's took himself, an' can't go on no more; an'
beggin' your pardin, sir, I'm feeling awful bad myself."
The doctor held up the lantern, and its bull's eye showed a face as
livid as any in the tent; a face distorted by justifiable horror and
fear.
"Go into the quarantine tent, it's up by now, and tell them to give you
a stiff-un of rum with chlorodyne in it. You'll be better by-and-by.
I've no use for you here."