nerves were only in the way in a tight corner like this. So, one by
one, men fell away, leaving the one strong soul and body to wrestle
with a perfect hell.
For the rain never ceased, the thunder went on crashing, the lightning
was almost incessant. Thank God for that! Thank God for the inches of
running water on the floor of the tent that swept away its unspeakable
uncleanlinesses, for the thunder's voice that drowned all other sounds,
for the blessed light which made it possible to work.
The very sweepers disappeared at last. No one was left save that one
strong soul and body, and even he stood for a second, dazed,
irresolute.
"How can this slave help the Protector of the Poor," came a courteous
voice beside him, and he turned to see a smile at once familiar and
kindly.
"How?" echoed the doctor, stupidly; then he recovered himself. "You
can't. You're a br[=a]hman--high caste--all that----"
"This slave has come to help the Huzoor, so that he may be able to
reach M[=a]nasa Sarovara," was the quiet insistent reply. "Where shall
he begin?"
A sudden spasm almost of anger shot through the strong soul and body as
it realised and recollected, vaguely, dimly, as rudely, roughly, it
gave no choice save the most menial work. But instant obedience
followed, and the doctor, dismissing all other thoughts, plunged once
more into the immediate present. The rain pelted, the thunder roared,
but every time that blue brilliance filled the tent, it showed two men
at work, both doing their duty nobly.
A born nurse! thought the doctor almost remorsefully, as he saw the old
man moving about swiftly and remembered those blistered and bleeding
feet. "They must hurt you--awfully," he said at last.
"God's healing water cools them, Huzoor," replied the old man, with a
radiant smile, "I shall not be delayed in reaching the Lake of High
Hope."
So the long night drew down to dawn once more, and dawn brought peace
again, even to the cholera camp. An hour and a half passed without a
fresh case, and the doctor, realising that the crisis was over, found
time to notice the grey glimmer of light stealing through each crack
and cranny of the tent. He set the flap aside and looked out. The
primrose east was all barred with purple clouds, the distant _jheel_
lay in still shiny shadow, but there was no concerted dawn cry of the
wild birds, and the flights of whirring wings were isolated, errant.
"The call has come to them, Huzoor," said the suave old voice beside
him. "They have gone to M[=a]nasa Sarovara, leaving all things behind
them."
The Englishman turned abruptly, almost with an oath, and began to count
the costs of the night. Thirty-six dead bodies awaiting burial; but no
more--no more!
With the mysterious inconsequence of cholera, the scourge had come, and
gone. Seen in the first level rays of the sun, the camp looked almost
cheerful, almost bright. A couple of doctors had ridden out from
headquarters--there was no more to be done.
"I'll go out for a bit, and shake off the hell I've been in all night,"
said the doctor to the chief apothecary, who was recounting his past
symptoms with suspicious accuracy. So he went out and wandered round
the _jheel_, watching a flock of egrets--_Herodias alba_--that still
lingered in its level waters. Were they really Shiv's angels?--or did
they dance away men's brains----?
The sun was already high when he returned to camp, looking worn and
tired. The hospital orderly whom he had sent to bed with rum and
chlorodyne was standing, spruce and alert, at the canteen.
"Feeling better, eh, Green?" he said kindly, as he passed, then added:
"All right, I suppose. No more cases or deaths?"
"No, sir," replied the orderly, saluting somewhat shamefacedly.
"Leastways, not to count. There's a h'ole man as they found dead
outside the camp about quarter of an hour agone, but not being on the
strength of the regiment, 'e don't count."
Five minutes afterwards the doctor, his face still more tired and worn,
was looking down on the body of his helper. It must have been one of
those sudden cases in which collapse comes on from the very first, for
no one had seen the old man ill. They had simply found him lying
peacefully dead with his blistered deformed feet in a pool of water.
* * * * *
The doctor wrote a letter; it was rather a wild letter about plumes and
egrets and the difficulty of distinguishing _Herodias alba_ from the
stork which brought babies. For the strain of that night in hell, and
the subsequent fever brought on by wandering about the _jheel_ land
when he was outwearied had told even upon his body and soul.
So they sent him to the hills when he began to recover, and being a
keen sportsman he did not stop in the Capuas of smart society, but made
straight for the solitudes, seeking for something to slay; for he felt
a bit savage sometimes. And ever, though he did not acknowledge the
fact, his route brought him nearer and nearer to that high Tibetan land
where ice and snow reign eternal. Through Garhw[=a]l and up by
Kidarn[=a]th where the new born Ganges issues from a frost-bound cave,
until one day he pitched his little six-foot hunter's tent on the other
side of the Holy Himalaya and looked down into the wide upland valleys
of Naki-khorsum and up beyond them to the great white cone of
Kail[=a]sa, the Paradise of Shiva.
A mere iceberg cutting the clear blue sky. How cold, how distant, how
utterly unsatisfactory! He stood looking at it in the chill moonlight
after his two servants were snoring round the juniper fire on their
beds of juniper boughs--looking, and smoking, and thinking.
He had thought much during his three months of solitary wandering, and
now the time was coming when thoughts must be translated into action,
for his leave was nearly up. Should he go backwards or forwards? Go on
to M[=a]nasa Sarovara, or set his face towards lower levels? Should
Hope of the mind take the place of Hope of the body? Bah! he was a
fool! He would be a sensible man and return. That was his last thought
as he rolled himself in his hunter's blanket and lay down to sleep.
But the dawn found him plodding on in front of his two coolies towards
that compelling cone of snow. He left the tent at the foot of the next
ridge, and that night the last thing he saw was Orion's Sword resting
upon the summit of Mount Kail[=a]sa.
Yes! he would go on. He would see if it were true that _Herodias alba_
disported its plumes on the waters of the Lake of High Hope.
During the latter part of his wanderings he had, partly owing to the
unsettled and hesitating state of his mind, diverged from the pilgrim
track; but here, on this last day, he rejoined it, and in more than one
place the bones of someone who had fallen by the way, showed amongst
the flowers which carpeted every rent in the world's white shroud of
snow; showed like streaks of snow itself, so bleached were they by long
months of frost.
But the flowers! what countless thousands of them--low, almost
leafless, hurrying in hot haste to blossom while they yet had time. And
yet how pure, how cold, how colourless had not this mountain-side
looked from afar. Almost as cold as Kail[=a]sa, which, viewed from the
height of the pass, seemed barely more significant.
But every foot of descent made a difference, and soon over the rocky
ravine it rose stupendous, its great glacier shiny cold, inaccessible.
Before long it would overtop the sky and reach High Heaven. No wonder
men thought of Paradise!
Down and down, through a mere cleft in the rocks that closed in,
shutting out all view....
Then, suddenly, he gave a little gasp and stood still.
So that was the Lake of the Soul's Hope--M[=a]nasa Sarovara! The pure
beauty of it sank into him, its rest and peace filled him with content.
A wilderness--a perfect wilderness of bright-hued flowers between the
snow slopes and the lake whose blue waters gleamed like sapphires
between the diamond icebergs that drifted hither and thither on its
breeze-kissed waves.
But not one sign of life; no movement, no noise, save every now and
again a far-distant thunderous roar, and a puff of distant white smoke
upon some mountain-side telling of a falling avalanche.
Cradled in snow, yet wreathed in flowers; solemn, secure, unchangeable!
It was a marvellous sight. He was glad he had come, for it was a place
where one could think--_really_ think.
So he stood and thought--really--for a while; and then he took out his
watch. Time was waning, for he had to re-climb the pass and rejoin his
tent ere sundown. Still there was enough left for him to reach that
jutting flower-set promontory, whence, surely the best view of the
whole would be obtained.
Yes! decidedly the best! Shiv's Paradise, rising from the water's edge,
showed from hence, equal-sided, serene, unassailable, a pure pyramid of
ice.
Truly a sight never to be forgotten; a sight well worth a pilgrimage.
And then some swift remembrance made him glance downwards, and he saw
before him the bleached skeleton of a man. Something in the attitude of
it, the feet hidden in the lake made him stoop curiously to see what
its sapphire surface covered.
What was it?
He stood looking down into the rippling water that whispered and
whispered to the flowers ceaselessly, for some time; then he turned and
climbed the hill again.
But, even if he had taken anything with him to M[=a]nasa Sarovara, he
left it behind him there beside the skeleton of a man with curiously
deformed feet. But the blisters had gone.
RETAINING FEES
It is not always on rocks and rapids that the cockle shell of human
happiness meets with the direst shipwreck. Often in the quietest
backwaters, where no current is, where not a ripple disturbs the still
surface, disaster so absolute, so overwhelming comes, that the very
tragedy of it sinks out of sight also, unrecognised, unrecorded.
Such a backwater was a little square of roof four pair back, in a tall
tenement house in Lucknow, where one blazing hot day in June a buxom
woman, with a yellow-skinned baby hitched to her hip outside the
voluminous veil of dirty crushed calico, which for the present was
mostly in folds about her feet, was haranguing three other women who
sat working as for dear life in the hard unyielding shadow of the high
walls, which were deemed necessary even here to shut out the
possibility of prying eyes.
"What you need, honourable ladies," finished Mussumet Jewuni
decisively, "is a 'bannister.'"
"A 'bannister!'" echoed the eldest of the three listeners. "And what
new-fangled thing is that?"
She did not slacken a second in her deft twirling of her distaff,
neither did the others, despite their questioning eyes, relax their
swift business. Indeed, as they sat in the shadows, the three might
have served as a model for the Fates, since Khulâsa Khânum span
ceaselessly. Aftâba Khânum wound yarn on a circling bamboo frame, and
Lateefa Khânum snipped with a very large pair of scissors at the shirt
she was making; for, being many years younger than the others, her eyes
were still fit for fine back-stitching. Beautiful hazel eyes they were,
too: large, soft, full of sunshine and shadow.
Jewuni dismissed one mouthful of betel nut and began on another ere she
replied.
"A 'bannister' is a pleader, who, having been across the black water to
London, knows new tricks wherewith to confound the old ones. 'Tis the
only chance for justice, ladies. I know of such an one, and could bring
him here to receive instruction, and mayhap there would be no need for
the honourable ladies to answer in Court."
Khulâsa Khânum's hands froze in horror; she glanced anxiously towards
Lateefa. "Talk not like that before the child, woman!" she interrupted,
almost fiercely. "No strange man, as thou knowest, comes to this
virtuous house, and no woman goes out of it."
Both statements were absolutely true; these women, distant relations,
yet bound to each other by the tie of a common poverty, a common wrong,
had not set foot beyond that square of roof for years and no men--save
those whose interest it was to keep them poor--had ever climbed the
steep stair hole which showed like a cavernous shadow in the high back
wall.
Yet Jewuni Begum laughed. She was a very different stamp of woman. Her
oil-beplastered hair narrowing her forehead beyond even Nature's
intention, and the soap curls at her silver and gold tasselled ears
were of a fashion which left little doubt as to her moral character;
but, being a bottomless receptacle for the gossip of the whole town,
owing to her husband's position as a paid tout at the Law Courts, the
neighbourhood in general, and even that virtuous roof in particular,
had left inquiry and condemnation alone for the present.
"Lo! Khânum!" she giggled, "that is true enough, God knows; yet what
avails it for reputation? None. 'Tis a rare joke, and I meant not to
tell it thee; still, 'tis too good to be lost. In the Mirza's reply to
the last petition sent from this house for direct payment of the
pension due to honourable ladies, it is written--my man saw it, and
there was laughter among the writers, I will go bail--that the
petitioners, being giddy young things, given to wanton ways, it is
necessary for the honour of a princely family that they be held under
restraint; such money as is due being expended lavishly, aye! and more,
in securing the luxury due to gentlewomen of your estate."
Here she herself went off into such chuckles that the yellow baby had
to be shifted higher on her shaking side.
The three women ceased working, and looked at each other helplessly,
while underneath their curiously fair skins a flush showed distinctly.
"Did they say that--of us?" asked Aftâba Khânum at last, in a faltering
voice. Perhaps it was her occupation of winding hanks without tangle
which made her always so keen to have all things clear.
"And of me?" echoed Khulâsa faintly. Her old face had grown very grey,
her hands, though they had ceased working, were no longer frozen; they
trembled visibly.
Only Lateefa sat silent, a swift yet sullen anger on her still young
face.
Jewuni giggled again. "There was no distinction of decency, Khânum. But
'tis too bad, and that is why I spoke of a 'bannister' to confound such
old tricks with new ones. However, 'tis no business of mine, only," she
paused in her conversation, and, going beside Lateefa, she lowered her
voice, "there is no need for stitching shirts till shroud-time comes.
There be other ways, as I have told thee before, of earning money, aye!
enough even to pay a 'bannister's' fee, and get the truth made known.
So, if thou preferest to be as a hooded falcon, seeing nothing of the
sport in life, sit and stitch. If not, come to me and claim freedom--in
all things."
When she and the yellow baby had gone, silence fell on the desecrated
little square of virtuous roof.
Truly it was hard! After a life-time of patient propriety, long years
of self-denial involving silence and seclusion even from scant justice,
to have all these virtues reft from them in order that wantonness and
giddiness and youth might serve as an excuse for withholding their
rights! That these rights should be traversed was to their experience
no new thing, though to Western ears it may seem inconceivable that
even under British rule it is the easiest thing in the world to treat
secluded women as these three had been treated. Briefly, for the male
head of the family, as guardian, to leave them to starve, while he made
merry over their poor pittances of pensions granted to them by
Government in consideration of their race, or its good services. No
wonder, then, that Khulâsa sat helpless, resorting for comfort to the
little rosary she always carried, that Aftâba's tears ran silently down
her withered cheeks, or that Lateefa's sullen anger gave a dangerous
look to her still handsome face. So dangerous that fear pierced
Aftâba's soft self-pity at last, making her ask anxiously:
"What was it she said to thee privately, Lateefa? Naught worse,
surely?"
The darkening of the handsome face was not all anger now. Lateefa rose
with a bitter laugh.
"Nay! she but spoke of 'fees' for justice, as if we had aught to pay.
Yet something must be done."
"We have done too much already," came Khulâsa's shaking voice. "If we
had trusted in the Lord instead of sending petitions there would have
been no need for them to tell the lie. If we had waited----"
"Lo! we had waited," put in Aftâba, "and petitions are no new thing.
Our fathers made them. They are not like 'bannisters' and strange men.
These----"
There was no need for her to explain what these were to that virtuous
roof, for at the moment a tentative cough from the stair-hole
accompanied by the rhythmic squelching of water in a skin-bag announced
the daily visitation of old Shamira, the _bhisti_, who had filled their
earthen pots for them for years and years; and in an instant veils were
hastily drawn close, faces turned to the wall.
"_Bismillah!_" came the orthodox greeting, for old Shamira knew all
about the honourable ladies, and in a way loved them, though he had
never once seen them in all the long years.
"_Bismillah! irruhman, niruheem!_" returned the virtuous ones
decorously. Only Lateefa, standing in the corner, felt that there was
but half a truth in the words. God might be clement in the next world,
but he was far from merciful in this. Yet it was not the fault of the
world itself; that was fair enough. There was a displaced brick in the
corner where she stood, and, profiting by the temporary blindness of
her veiled companions, she did what she had done several times on the
sly, during the past few weeks--she took advantage of the brick-hole
and tip-toe to gain a glimpse of that outside world. It was the veriest
glimpse indeed, of purpling shadowy roofs huddled against a flare of
sunset sky, but the dust haze through which she saw it seemed a golden
halo of transfiguration, and in a second she had made her choice. She
would pay a retaining fee for bare justice to her own womanhood. Jewuni
was right! Times had changed. Why should she waste her life clinging to
old ways when new freedom was within reach.
Yet there was a startled, half-frightened look both in the sunshine and
shadow of her hazel eyes, as she waited, face towards the wall, till
the cool sound of pouring water have ceased, she was free to resume her
limited life. Limited, indeed! How strange those limitations seemed in
the light of her new decision!
But those brief minutes of arrest, due to old Shamira's entry into the
feminine cosmogony, had, curiously enough, brought decision to the
other two women, for, in truth, Jewuni's story, Jewuni's giggle at the
joke, had been the last straw to their patience, the final goad rousing
them to action of which, each in her own way, they had been dreaming
for long.
They, too, felt that the time was past for temporising, for trimming
their sails to suit each other's opinions.
So Khulâsa Khânum's pallid, high-featured face was more like that of
one new-dead than ever, when Shamira gone, she returned to work. And,
in truth, she had in those few seconds died for ever to this world and
its works.
Delicate from her babyhood, saintly from pure suffering, joy had had
small part even in her desire, and her resistance to pain had been
always half-hearted. For what was even the justice of man worth in
comparison with the justice of God? Naturally enough, then, Jewuni's
tale of the sorry jest had been more a horror to her than to either of
the others, making her turn to the hidden meaning of her thwarted life
for comfort. Her retaining fee for justice should be paid where there
was no fear of a miscarriage. And in the meantime, while the tyranny of
life lasted, she must work--work to the end.
For on her work, practically, those others lived. In all the town no
hands could spin a finer thread than old Khulâsa Khânum's. The very
spinning jennies of Bombay could not compete with her ceaseless
industry; and there still remained noble folk who clung to the
spider's-web muslin of the old times. So her hands twirled faster, more
deftly. The rest was with God.
Aftâba Khânum, on the contrary, had decided for the world; not, as
Lateefa had done, for the world as it was in these latter days, but for
the world as it ought to be, as it used to be. She had a very different
strain in her from those other two; from Khulâsa in her spirituality
Lateefa in her emotionality. Aftâba, even when things were at their
worst, smiled, consoling herself and the roof generally with some
unexpected and perhaps extravagant scrap of amusement. A mouthful of
pillau concocted out of nothing to season a dry bread dinner, a
ridiculous toy made out of rubbish, whereat all laughed. Courtier-born,
she loved even the old etiquettes by instinct, while her keen wit could
find a clue of an intrigue as deftly as her fingers could disentangle
Khulâsa's cobwebs. And, of all three, she kept in closer touch with a
world with which she had not quarrelled, despite its injustice towards
her. There was, indeed, a certain Uncle Chirâgh who still came to see
her, and her only, once or twice a year. A blue-beard dodderer, with a
twinkling eye, and a still mellow voice, who sometimes brought quails
with him, and spices, so that Aftâba might regale him with one of her
best curries; for she was a great cook.
So the spur of Jewuni's retailed insult came as a challenge to Aftâba's
sense of propriety. The world might be diseased by novelty, but the
foundations were sure. She had been a fool all these years to acquiesce
in impersonal petitions with purposeless stamps to them, instead of
some graceful tribute, after the older, approved method. True, she had
once broached the subject to Jewuni. She had even gone so far as to
bring out a certain faded brocaded bag, which was her greatest
treasure, and produce therefrom a medal or two, a dozen or more worn
letters. Quaint, old-world informations to the reader, that the bearer,
Futteh, or Iman, or Hassan, was such and such a worthy person--a
gold-spangled record of thanks for service in the Mutiny--the
intimation of one Rissildar Tez Khan's death in action; which latter
had indeed been the cause of Aftâba's loneliness. Even (curious
survival of friendly days gone, never to return) a few English words,
in sprawling, irresponsible, boyish handwriting, to say that the
self-same Tez Khan knew the whereabouts of every living creature fit to
shoot in the whole countryside!
But Jewuni had scorned the suggestion of sending these to the bigwig
with, say, a basket of Aftâba's famous pumpkin preserve, since, alas,
oranges stuffed with rupees were out of the question. Indeed, she had
said succinctly:
"Keep them till the Day of Judgment. The Lord may look at them, the law
will not. For, see, they are not even stamped, and without stamps is no
justice possible."
Even then old Aftâba had felt, with dim obstinacy, that it was not law
or justice she sought: it was favour! Favour such as the great had to
give in a well-ordered world!
And so she, in her turn, came back to the limitations of her life with
a decision. Uncle Chirâgh had told her but a week or two before--as
luck would have it!--that the whole town was to be in an uproar the
very next day over the unveiling of a statue of Malika Victoria. The
anniversary of a great day in the heroic annals of the Defence of the
Residency--for which, by the way, that gold-spangled gratitude had been
given--had been chosen as fitting for the ceremonial. The grounds were
to be lit up, fireworks let off, and special messages sent to and from
the Queen herself, while the statue would be covered with offerings.
Could anything be more opportune for the decorous presentation of a
retaining fee?