the local paper to the effect that King Kekeloganu would pay a visit of
one night to Mr. and Mrs. Howard-Cox at their residence, The Cedars.
His Majesty, it was announced, would travel incognito, and there would
be no special demonstration attending his arrival. But, as an incognito
is not easy to preserve if its owner happens to be black, there was
quite a little crowd assembled at the station when, in the fulness of
time, the obedient Mr. Howard-Cox went to meet his guest, leaving his
wife wandering excitedly from one expanse of red carpet to another and
giving the final directions to her agitated household. As the carriage
rolled towards The Cedars, the roads were sprinkled with onlookers, and
rows of small boys occupied the fences, giving vent to criticisms and
cheers as the august stranger passed. Kekeloganu, seated at his host’s
right hand, with Leo Carlton opposite, seemed quite to understand what
was expected of him, for he bowed and raised his hat as assiduously as
if the interior of Africa had been a training-ground of courtly
deportment.
Mrs. Howard-Cox, in maroon velvet, was at the hall-door when the
carriage drew up, and behind her stood Sylvia and her younger daughter
Dulcibell, the former rather pale, and the latter wearing an expression
of the most unbridled curiosity. Dulcibell was even better-looking than
her sister, but, as she was only sixteen and not yet “out,” her skirt
stopped at her ankles, and her thick and beautiful hair hung in a plait
to her waist. As the king descended, their mother subsided in a curtsy
which almost landed her on the earth; and Kekeloganu, who was dressed in
a very long frock-coat, swept off his tall silk hat, displaying a head
covered with black curls and a pair of eyebrows which reminded Dulcibell
of hearth-brushes. Otherwise he was not a bad-looking man, and far less
like a Christy-Minstrel than might have been expected, considering his
clothes. When the girls had been presented, he turned to Leo and
murmured some unintelligible sounds.
“His Majesty commands me to say that he is deeply grateful to you for
your hospitality, and to tell you that he will pray four times a day to
his god for your welfare,” said Leo, turning to his hostess.
It was evident that Kekeloganu, who was known to understand a few words
of English, felt very deeply on the subject, for a kind of spasm went
over his face.
“I hope ’e won’t take a fancy to one of our young ladies--nasty black
beast,” said the cook, who, with her kitchen-maid, was craning out of a
top window.
Mrs. Howard-Cox was beginning to move backwards up the steps, which was
no easy feat, because her gown had a train. But she finally engineered
herself back into the hall, where the useful Mr. Cox was again in
requisition to conduct the illustrious guest to his room. Leo
accompanied them, saying that he would come down to the drawing-room
when he had installed Kekeloganu, and have a talk with his hostess over
further details. The monarch would not appear again until dinner-time,
as it was his hour for prayer. It seemed that he was exceedingly
religious, and was even now disturbed, because his particular god,
which, according to the rites of his religion, he carried with him, was
among his baggage, in the charge of his body-servant, who had not yet
arrived.
“Well, Leo,” said Mrs. Howard-Cox breathlessly, as he entered the
drawing-room, “do you think His Majesty is pleased?”
(She had never called him Leo before.)
“Simply delighted,” replied Carlton; “and now Robertson has arrived with
his--his idol, so he is quite contented.”
“What’s the idol like?” asked Dulcibell.
Leo dropped his eyes.
“Oh, it’s red--quite red,” he said quickly. “And it has a frog’s tail.”
“A frog’s tail?” exclaimed the girl. “I never knew they had them!”
“Did I say frog?” said Leo, looking at her boldly. “I meant tadpole.”
“I scarcely realised there were tadpoles in Africa,” mused Mrs.
Howard-Cox; “one is _so_ ignorant.”
“Oh, yes, thousands,” said Leo.
Sylvia was sitting behind the tea-table, very silent, and busying
herself with the teacups.
“May I not send some tea to his Majesty--anything to eat or drink?”
inquired her mother.
“He never drinks tea,” replied the young man; “but I know he would like
a whisky-and-soda. (I fear he has learnt that from me.) In fact I made
bold to tell Robertson to go down for one, for I was certain you would
let his man ask for anything he required.”
“Of course, of course,” purred Mrs. Howard-Cox. “And now, Leo, about
dinner. There are one or two things you didn’t make clear. You said he
had learnt all about knives and forks, but you did not answer about the
cooking--does he like his meat _much_ done?”
“He eats it raw at home,” said Leo, looking very hard at Dulcibell
again; “but I am happy to say we’ve cured him of that, too. And he has
stopped asking to have the _whole_ joint put on his plate. It’s
etiquette at his court, of course.”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Howard-Cox faintly.
“I have seen him plunge his fist into a soup-tureen,” continued Leo;
“but that was just after he landed. You really need not fear these kind
of accidents now, and, if I may sit opposite to him at dinner, I can
keep an eye on him.”
“You shall,” exclaimed Mrs. Cox fervently.
“Do you think----” began Sylvia, in a strained voice; but she stopped,
for a prolonged drone floated through the house, rising at times into a
sharp nasal cry and punctuated by the strokes of a small drum.
For a moment the group in the drawing-room sat open-mouthed, listening.
Then Dulcibell got up and stared out of the window.
“That’s him praying,” said Leo.
The voice climbed higher, and then died away in a tempest of wavering
semi-tones.
“It seems a melancholy religion,” observed Dulcibell, facing round.
There was a knock at the door, and a man appeared, who raised his hand,
and, meeting Leo’s eyes, dropped it suddenly.
“His Majesty would like to speak to you, sir,” he said, standing very
erect and bringing his words out in a smart monotone.
“Thanks,” said Leo. “I’ll come. Robertson’s an old soldier,” he added,
as he rose.
As Leo entered the royal bedchamber, Kekeloganu was standing in his
shirt-sleeves. His frock-coat and his tall hat, which he had brought
upstairs with him, lay on the bed; beside them were a coal-black wig and
a little drum such as is sold in toy-shops.
“When can I see her?” exclaimed Kekeloganu, striding towards Carlton.
“Now, don’t be an ass, Reggie, or you’ll spoil everything!” began the
other.
“But I tell you I _will_ see her!” cried the black king, seizing him by
the arm.
“Well, you’re going to see her, man! Don’t, for heaven’s sake, make such
a noise!”
“Yes, but when?”
“Now--in a few minutes; but sit down first, Reggie, and attend to me.
There are one or two things I _must_ tell you.”
Kekeloganu obeyed with a groan.
“Now, look here,” said Leo, “everything is going splendidly, and if we
only keep our heads we shall pull it off all right. I’ve just had a talk
with mother Cox. It was pretty awful, because you pray so realistically,
and I had dreadful things to explain about your religion. And that
little devil, Dulcibell, was nearly too much for me--girls have no
business with a sense of humour--but I stuck it out somehow. She’s a
brick, all the same, for she is going to mount guard outside the old
schoolroom, while you go in there and have a talk with Sylvia and fix up
everything. If any one comes, Dulcibell will cough twice, and you must
get into the book-cupboard. She told me to tell you that.”
“She’s an angel!” cried Kekeloganu, springing up.
“Sit down, sit down, you silly ass! You really must listen to me. You’ve
got to do a few odd things at dinner, just to keep up appearances. I
told them I’d broken you of raw meat, and that you could use a fork--but
we mustn’t overdo it. And you’ll have to talk a little--through me, of
course.”
“I will,” said Reggie. “I’ll say a few memorable things, I promise.”
“Yes, but you mustn’t be _too_ memorable, my boy, because I am but
human, and it’s been a tough job for me already, hearing you pray.”
Kekeloganu looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, and then at his
friend.
“If you don’t let me go in five minutes,” he said firmly, “I’ll
undertake that you never forget to-night’s dinner as long as you live.
I’ll surpass myself.”
Leo was cowed. He was one of the very few people who knew Reggie Smith
intimately.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll go and get hold of the girls.”
“Yes, and when you’ve got them, you’ll have to take my place here and
keep on praying till I come back. That’ll make it perfectly safe. Mind
you keep it up. Remember, it’s the high notes that tell. Now, be off.”
It was not long afterwards that Reggie and Sylvia were closeted in the
old schoolroom, whilst Dulcibell sat on the stairs outside,
ostentatiously lacing up her boot. Leo could see her through the
key-hole of the royal chamber, which was opposite to the schoolroom, and
he heartily wished he were there to help her; for, in spite of his
remarks on the sense of humour in girls, he thought he had never seen
anything he liked better than Dulcibell’s copper-coloured pig-tail and
the beautiful outline of her cheek. But business was business, and he
took up the drum and cleared his throat. The house was soon resounding.
“Well?” he said, when Kekeloganu had returned safely, “I needn’t ask if
you’ve had a pleasant visit, because I can see it by your tie.”
“By Jove, you’re hoarse!” said Reggie.
“Am I? How odd!” exclaimed Leo, with some sarcasm. His friend’s
Napoleonic callousness irritated him sometimes.
“I hope that black staining we paid so much for is fast,” he added,
looking at him critically.
“Has it come off?” cried Kekeloganu, darting to the glass.
“I’ll tell you when I’ve seen Sylvia,” replied Leo grimly.
The party assembled with considerable ceremony that evening. Mrs.
Howard-Cox’s tiara sparkled above her yellow satin and sequins. Two
extra men had been hired for the occasion, and Robertson, the king’s
manservant, stood behind his chair.
When Kekeloganu entered, followed by Leo, his hostess advanced to meet
him, and almost sank at his feet, like a slimy yellow mushroom. It had
been a cruel disappointment to her when Leo had written to say that his
charge was anxious for a quiet evening, for the royal command had
precluded the presence of such county magnates as she had scraped
acquaintance with and hoped to invite. Only the local clergyman and his
wife were present.
When dinner was announced, Kekeloganu, prompted by Leo, advanced on his
hostess, holding out a sharp angle of arm. She put her hand on it, and
they sailed towards the dining-room.
“Ladee veree nice,” observed the monarch, pressing Mrs. Howard-Cox’s
wrist to his side.
“It is a _great, great_ pleasure to receive your Majesty,” she replied
emphatically.
“Ladee come Africa. Kekeloganu make happy,” he continued. “Much fat
ladee good in Africa.”
They sat down, his Majesty at his hostess’s right and Leo opposite, for
safety; and the meal began.
Soup was served, and it was noticeable that the king kept his eyes fixed
on Carlton, copying his every gesture with a faithfulness that had
something almost derisive about it. However, he seemed to be steering
wonderfully between the pitfalls of a civilised dinner-table, and Leo,
whose nerves had been a little shaken by his friend’s threat in the
afternoon, was beginning to feel comparatively happy, when, with the
fish, came the beginning of sorrows. He turned cold as he saw
Kekeloganu grasp a handful of whitebait from his own plate and convey
it, with a smile, to Mrs. Howard-Cox.
“For ladee, from Great King,” he announced, spreading his fingers wide
and raining a shower of small creatures into her sherry. “Great King
love much ladee.”
It was impossible for Leo to communicate with his charge in any known
language, and he had to face the ghastly necessity of sitting helpless,
perhaps for an hour, whilst the evil-minded Reggie took what line he
thought fit. His forehead grew damp and he cursed himself for not having
sufficiently realised what a remorseless scoundrel his friend could be.
Oh, how he wished he knew Hindustani! But though Reggie’s soldiering had
taken him to India, his own had not. He dared not look at Robertson,
standing at attention behind the king. He could only address a few
nonsense gutturals to the black figure opposite, and frown heavily.
Kekeloganu seemed a little abashed, for he joined his palms together and
put them to his forehead.
“You will forgive him, I know,” murmured the half-petrified Leo to his
hostess. “It is all meant for politeness.”
Mrs. Howard-Cox gave a wan smile. Her eye was a little wild, but her
good manners seemed inclined to hold. Dulcibell’s handkerchief was at
her face; and the parson, who was a jolly kind of man, seemed buffeted
by some inward storm. Even through his own distress, Leo pitied Sylvia.
The episode was tided over--as all episodes, however desperate, finally
are--and the entrée ran its course without disaster. Kekeloganu kept
silence, devoting himself to his _Poulet à la Marengo_, and, though he
held the bones in his fingers, he only did what a good many Europeans
have done before him when dining alone off game. Leo insisted upon his
helping of saddle of mutton being cut up for him, and the joint also
passed in peace, though Kekeloganu occasionally leaned forward and
addressed him with cryptic remarks, to which he merely bowed his head,
making no reply.
“What is his Majesty saying?” inquired Mrs. Howard-Cox at last.
“He says that he is enjoying his dinner,” stammered Leo.
“Tell his Majesty I am delighted,” was the gracious reply.
It was when the ices appeared that matters came to a crisis. Kekeloganu
seemed more at home with his spoon than with any other implement, and,
scooping up a portion of the small pink mountain that had been set
before him, he conveyed it carefully to his lips.
The spoon, with its load, had scarcely disappeared from sight, when,
with a shout that made Leo’s blood run cold, the king leaped from his
seat like a released spring and made for the butler, evidently believing
that the unexpected chill in his mouth had been a practical joke
prepared for him by the innocent man. Almost before the company could
breathe, he had caught him by the collar, whilst he reached out with his
free hand for some instrument of punishment. The only thing handy was
the ice in its silver dish; but, as the proverb says, “the brave man
never lacks a weapon,” and Kekeloganu, with grinding teeth and rolling
eyes, began to plaster his victim’s face with it.
Mrs. Howard-Cox screamed aloud; her husband rose irresolute in his
place; the parson stepped purposefully forward. With despair in his
heart Leo rushed at the struggling figures and tore them asunder. Then,
retaining a firm hold upon Kekeloganu, whose frenzy of rage seemed to
have abated and who was making piteous gestures of abasement, he
addressed himself to Mrs. Cox, begging her to excuse his Majesty, as he
found himself much upset, and to allow them both to retire. She made a
speechless assent and the two visitors left the room together.
They entered the king’s bedroom, and Leo, trembling with anger, put his
back to the door.
“Of all the ungrateful ruffians I’ve ever met, you are the worst!” he
burst out. “I’m sick of you--I’m done with you altogether! Here am I,
taking every risk to see you through this affair, and _this_ is how you
thank me! I tell you frankly, I’m tired of it; and the very moment they
come out of the dining-room I’ll go downstairs and tell old Cox the
whole truth!”
“Not you,” said Reggie. “You speak as if you were an innocent victim.
Think of the part you’ve played in it. Think of your letter!”
“I don’t care--I’ll chuck everything! By George, Reggie, my friendship
for you is costing me dear!”
“You see, I had to make Mrs. Cox’s enmity cost her something,” said
Reggie Smith thoughtfully.
“_You_ may have to pay, too,” said the other. “That’s my only comfort.
It’ll make that girl downstairs think twice before she marries such a
blackguard.”
“Oh, bless you, no,” said Reggie. “Sylvia understands me perfectly.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Leo bitterly.
Reggie took off his wig and examined it as if he had never seen it
before.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” he said. “It’s been a hard day to-day, and it
may be a harder one to-morrow. One mustn’t overtax one’s strength.”
Leo watched him, as he began to undress, with a sneaking admiration.
“Well,” he said; “if you’re not hanged before you’re a field officer,
you’ll go far.”
Then he went downstairs to make what he could of the bad job.
The household met in gloom next morning. Leo’s attempt at smoothing over
the occurrences of the previous night had been only tepidly successful,
and the tone of Mrs. Howard-Cox’s voice, when she offered him tea or
coffee from behind the urn, had given him to understand what she thought
of him. His “most misleading letter” (as she had called it in the
interview they had overnight) would, he knew, be a witness against him
for evermore; and he remembered Dulcibell’s copper-coloured plait and
sighed. The claims of friendship were heavy.
The author of the trouble was breakfasting upstairs. His train for the
north left at eleven o’clock, and he had sent down to say that his
devotions would keep him occupied till ten-thirty, it being his god’s
birthday.
But, below stairs, unknown to any one, the forces of destruction were
rolling up. Leo had made an abject apology to the butler, who, being an
exceedingly good fellow, was touched by his distress at what had
happened. Perhaps the reported lavishness of royal tips had helped him
to put last night’s dinner from his mind; in any case, he assured him
that he bore no malice. But the cook, to whom he was engaged, felt
differently. She was a brisk woman, with a mind of her own, and she had
already told the kitchen-maid that she would stay no longer in a place
“where cannibals was kept.” She was giving vent to her opinions in the
kitchen, when the housemaid came in, holding an envelope in her hand.
“Just look what I found last evening in “’is Majesty’s’ room!” she said.
“That impident valet of his, that looks as if ’e’d swallered the poker,
don’t let me in more’n ’e can ’elp; but I slipped in when dinner was on,
to get a look at the idol, and this is what I found, fallen down be’ind
the toilet-table.”
She held out the envelope, which was addressed to “Reginald Smith,
Esquire, Duke of Clarence’s Light Infantry.”
“_And there’s black streaks on ’is piller_,” she added.
The kitchen-maid went off into a shriek of laughter.
“You see,” continued the housemaid, “’e got the boot from the old woman
not long ago, and ’es paying her off. My! he’s a bold one!”
“Bold ’un or no bold ’un,” exclaimed the cook, who had turned purple,
“’e may play off ’is jokes on the missus; but ’e’s not goin’ to rub
respectable men’s noses in damson ice while _I’m_ alive to prevent it!
Give me that letter, Emma. As soon as breakfast’s cleared, upstairs it
goes along o’ me. King, indeed! ’Ark to ’im, ’owlin’! I lay ’e’ll ’owl
before I’m done with ’im!”
The carriage was at the door and Leo had gone upstairs to fetch
Kekeloganu, and to superintend his farewells. The red carpet was out
again, and the lawn a mass of bunting. Whatever Mrs. Howard-Cox might
feel, she was not going to fall short of her duty, and her august
visitor should lack nothing in the way of ceremony. It was due, not so
much to him as to herself, and more than due to the editor of the local
paper. The girls were summoned to be present in the hall, and Dulcibell,
who had been out to the stable to feed her dog, was coming in through
the back passages when she overtook the cook, hurrying in the same
direction and holding a paper.
“Fine doings!” she almost shouted--“fine doings, Miss Dulcie! but I see
through them, and your ma shall know it before the carriage leaves! I’ll
catch ’im in the ’all!”
Dulcibell saw the envelope and her heart stood still; but only for a
moment, for she was a girl of resource. They were passing an open
doorway, and she suddenly thrust the cook through it with all her might,
slammed the door, and turned the key.
Then she slid it into her pocket and ran into the hall.
* * * * *
The royal carriage had scarcely gone five minutes, when the two Misses
Cox put on their hats and said that they were going for a walk; and, as
soon as they were out of sight of the windows, they began to run. The
Cedars stood a little way back from the road, and they made for a copse
not far off. In it they found their bicycles, in charge of a maid. They
mounted.
“Good-bye, Miss Sylvia,” said the girl.
They flew along till, after a quarter of an hour’s hard riding, they
neared a wayside railway station.
“Bell,” said Sylvia, “you’ve been a good sister to me, and I shall not
forget it. I hate leaving you alone. I only wish I could be at home to
stand by you when mother finds out.”
“But you can’t, my dear, so don’t worry,” replied Dulcibell, whose eyes
looked rather wet.
Soon a puff of smoke was seen in the distance, and they went on to the
platform.
“Why, there’s only Leo looking out,” said she, as the train pulled up.
“Where’s Reggie?” asked Sylvia.
“He can’t show just now because I’m in the middle of washing his head,
but he’ll be clean by the time we get to York,” said Leo. “I’ve got the
special licence in my pocket.”
He helped Sylvia into the saloon reserved for King Kekeloganu and the
train started.
Leo Carlton hung out of the window, looking back at the figure standing
on the platform. Like Sylvia, he hated leaving Dulcibell alone.
But though he was obliged to do so for the present, it was a matter that
he put right a couple of years later.
BEHIND THE WALL
Friday evenings set Arthur Wickham free from the Government office in
which his weeks were spent. By nature he was made for an active life,
but circumstances had headed him off his natural path and tethered him
to London. His friends--and he had a good many--said that golf had
spoilt him; that they never saw him nowadays; that it was a great pity
to be utterly engrossed, body and soul, in one pursuit, and all sorts of
things that friends say when other people’s doings do not exactly match
their own. But two days’ golf compensated him both for their opinions
and for the loss of their company on Saturdays and Sundays.
The golf-course at Shorne was a good one, lying on the high ground which
sloped up behind the town. The golfers could look down over the roofs of
the huddled streets--for Shorne was an ancient little place--to the
curving beach, beside which modern hotels and lodgings were disfiguring
the sea-wall. The town seemed to be drawing back in old-fashioned
distinction from these second-rate attractions to the security of the
hill from which the square tower of Shorne Church looked out towards the
Romney Marshes.
The golf-course tramped weekly by Wickham had flung its chain of smooth
putting-greens out among the humble farmhouses and woods which lie so
close to the Kentish shore, and the players could see from their
elevation the chalk-scarred downs on one hand, and the sea glittering
towards Dungeness on the other. Wickham liked the place better every
time he came to it. He had the happy temperament which is attracted by
casual sights, and the gift of loitering; so he often strolled among the
walled lanes and corners and under the ilex-avenue flanking the
massiveness of the church, when the business of golf was over. Shorne
was full of Georgian houses, and Wickham, who had a smattering of
architectural knowledge, liked Georgian houses.
One evening, when he had sent his clubs back to the inn in the High
Street, he whistled to his Aberdeen terrier, Skittles, and man and dog
went strolling up towards the church. They took their way between the
high garden-walls which enclose the older houses, and, having no special
goal, they turned at random into any byway that happened to appeal to
Wickham’s fancy. The little dog ran before his master, in the perpetual
search for imaginary adventure common to his kind.
The sun of the late June afternoon fell upon just and unjust, upon root
and foliage, upon brickwork and stem, and a late season had saved the
greens of nature from losing their translucent quality as they sprang
towards the blue above them. On either side of Wickham the high walls
had a foreign air which translated him, mentally, into the suburbs of
some French town. The one on his left was surmounted by a trellis which
dripped with a fringe of wistaria; and, above this, he could see the
tall head of an acacia-tree which seemed to grow somewhere near the
centre of the garden.
To many minds there is no more suggestive sight than that of a door in a
dead wall, and the young man stopped before the wooden one which broke
the mellow expanse of masonry at his side. It was small and
weather-stained and sunk a brick’s depth in the surface; and it was old
enough to have gained expression, as inanimate things, not in constant
use, will gain it with the lapse of time. The secrecy of its look was
enhanced by the absence of both handle and key.
Wickham paused before it; he knew that he would like to peer through the
empty key-hole, and he also knew that he would not do so. He smiled at
himself as he moved away.
Some paces farther on, the wistaria-plant fell over the coping, down to
the level of his shoulder, and he paused again to sniff at the trusses
of mauve blossom with which it was loaded. As his face came in contact
with the leaves, he saw that they covered a square cavity like an
unglazed window. Prejudices are strange things; though the particular
assortment owned by him had forbidden him the key-hole, they were silent
as he peeped between the stems. He pushed them aside with his fingers.
But, if he erred in his act, his punishment was swift. A few inches from
his own, a pair of eyes on the inner side of the wall were set on him
with an expression which made him start back. There was no movement in
them; they looked fixedly out of a pale face as absolutely still as
themselves. The presence of the unknown person made no rustle behind the
wistaria, and if he or she--for Wickham had no impression of sex--were
annoyed by his curiosity, there was neither sound nor sign to indicate
the fact. He was not sure whether the eyes were blind, and the thought
made him shudder, though there could be nothing to warrant his doing so,
were his suspicion correct. He walked on hurriedly. Skittles was at the
next corner, waiting to see which way his master would take.
He turned up towards the church, losing the disagreeable feeling
produced in him by the little incident as he went along the terrace of
ilex and up the steps into the churchyard. The blue sea lay beyond the
town, and the crosses and monuments in their ordered rows were
beginning to throw long shadows on the grass. The place was empty but
for an old man who was clipping a ragged yew-bush within the
chain-railing which encompassed an ordinary round-topped tombstone.
Wickham’s glance fell on the inscription as he passed it: “_Ellen
Swaysland, born 1808, died 1865._” He had never seen that sirname
before.
He entered the great porch of the Norman church, bidding Skittles wait
outside, and went to the door leading to the tower, for it had occurred
to him that if he climbed it he would be able to see into the garden
with the acacia-tree. Soon he was at the top of the stair, and, coming
out upon the tower, he looked over the parapet. Skittles was mounting
guard by his stick, and the clipping of shears came up to him from Ellen
Swaysland’s grave. He was above the level of the ilex-trees; there was
nothing to obstruct his view of the walled-in houses between himself and
the High Street.
He found the one he wanted at once; a narrow-windowed brick house, with
a steep roof and stone facings. To his surprise, it had the dead look of
an uninhabited building, and the lawn was under high grass. The acacia
stood where he had expected to find it, and round its trunk were the
remains of a circular seat. A weed-grown path ran the whole length of
the lower wall by which he had lately passed, and he could see the hole
which looked out on the lane. The wistaria hung round it on the inside
also. It seemed to have been trained down purposely in that spot.
While he watched from his isolated height a woman came out of the house,
and went quickly, with an odd, shuffling gait, into the alley of bushes
running down one side of the garden. It was not only her walk that was
strange; and Wickham’s lips parted in an astonishment which he could not
have explained. He did not know whether it was her dress or her
movements which seemed to him remarkable; but he leaned over the parapet
to watch her emerge from the alley and go straight to the hole in the
wall. He remained where he was, fascinated, as she stood, a black spot,
in the same place, until the striking of the hour from the church
reminded him of the futile nature of his occupation. The man below had
put away his shears, and Skittles, who had at last discovered his
whereabouts, was shivering and whining as he gazed at the silhouette of
his master’s head and shoulders dark against the sky. Wickham came down
the tower-stair.
Perhaps it was his knowledge of what the woman’s eyes were like that
made him endow her figure with some sinister quality. He went home to
his inn, not sorry to be welcomed back to the commonplace of the company
of his dog and the harmless gossip of a waiter to whom he was an
established acquaintance.
Next day was Sunday, and again Wickham left the golf-course in the
evening to return to the Crown; the early train on the morrow would take
him to London in good time for his office-hour. He parted with various
men he knew at the golf-house, for most of these stayed at the new hotel
on the esplanade, in preference to the old-fashioned inn which had
become a familiar haunt to him. He made, as usual, for the church, and
thence down to the High Street; and where the lane between the
garden-walls crossed his way he turned into it, impelled to pass once
more by the half-hidden aperture at which he had seen the strange eyes.
But this time he did not wish to look through. He was not anxious to
meet those eyes at such close quarters again.
He had almost reached the little wooden door farther on, when it opened
and the woman in black stepped out into the road a few paces in front of
him. There had been no sound of footsteps in the garden to give warning
of her approach. She drew the door to behind her, turning for one moment
to face the young man, and her look struck his soul again with the shock
of a blow.
She was a middle-aged woman--almost old--the pallor of whose face was
accentuated by the uncouth lines of a close bonnet; but all detail was
lost on Wickham by reason of her eyes. He was only conscious of them and
of the straight eyelids which cut the iris, lying on the upper half, as
a band of cloud lies on the disc of the sinking sun. The still, dead
malignity, emanating from beneath that level line, made him stop
involuntarily and step back a pace from her. Her lips were drawn back,
perhaps in a smile; but Wickham could not have told whether she smiled
or not. He realised nothing, neither then nor afterwards, but that
stream of expression concentrated on him from the unfocussed pupils. He
felt that there was nothing in it personal to himself, and that he
merely stood, by hazard, in its way, as he might have stood in the way
of a bull’s-eye lantern; but his horror was not lessened because of
that. She turned away, and his wits were brought back by the fury of his
dog, who had evidently been unprepared to see the figure emerge from the
door.
Skittles’s tail was between his legs and his growls and barking filled
the lane. Wickham was so much afraid that he would pursue the retreating
woman, that he laid hold of his collar and did not let go till she had
disappeared round the first corner, which led down to the town. He had
reached the Crown before the little terrier had ceased to whine and
protest. Skittles stopped, looking behind him at intervals the whole way
down the High Street.
* * * * *
Chance brought Wickham back to Shorne the next week sooner than he
expected; for some repairs in his particular department of the office
liberated the clerks on the following Thursday night. Friday morning
found him once more in the train with his golf-clubs, and by
luncheon-time he was sitting at his own table in the window of the Crown
dining-room, looking into the huddle of old houses and new shops which
formed the narrow High Street.
There was more movement going on than he ever remembered seeing in the
little place; but those who caused it added nothing to the liveliness of
the outlook. Some event had produced an outbreak of black-coated and
tall-hatted men, as a spell of summer after cold weather will produce
flies from hidden corners. All moved in one direction, and all had the
air of rising consciously to an occasion. The explanation could only be
a funeral.
“Who’s being buried?” inquired Wickham of his friend the waiter.
“Mr. Swaysland, sir; solicitor, sir,” replied the man, whipping his
napkin under his arm, and going to the window as though he expected to
see the deceased in the street.
Wickham stared.
“Swaysland--Swaysland,” he repeated, looking through the waiter’s head.
Then he remembered Ellen Swaysland’s tombstone, and the man with the
shears clipping the yew-bush on her grave as he entered the church last
week.
“Acquainted with the family, sir?” hazarded his companion.
“No--no,” said Wickham. “I only noticed the name in the churchyard. I
suppose they’re well-known people here?”
“Lor’, yes, sir; they’ve been here for more than a hundred years. Two
houses here Mr. Swaysland had. One at the bottom of this street, and one
between this and the church. But he lived in the small one down here,
sir. He couldn’t abide to be in the other. He hadn’t gone inside the
walls since Miss Ellen’s death--his half-sister, sir. Fine garden it has
too.”
Wickham pricked up his ears.
“You can’t see the house from the road, the walls is that high. Old Mr.
Swaysland----”
“Is it the one with the acacia-tree in the middle?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir,” replied the waiter, looking puzzled.
Like most indoor servants, he did not know one tree from another.
“But there’s a door at the bottom of the garden--a little wooden door?”
continued Wickham. “When you turn the corner of the wall, coming this
way, you go straight up to the church?”
“That’s it, sir.”
The interest on Wickham’s face appeared to please his companion. He came
close to the table, and laid his hand on the empty chair opposite to the
young man.
“I expect you’ve heard something about it,” said he. “Well, I was born
in this town, and I’ve seen Miss Ellen myself when I was a little brat
of a boy. I’m a good bit older than you, sir, if I may take the liberty
to say so.”
“Miss Ellen?” said Wickham. “I know nothing about Miss Ellen. I’ve never
even heard the name Swaysland before.”
The waiter dropped his voice confidentially.
“Twenty years, sir, she lived there. She was thirty-seven when they put
her in that house, and she was fifty-seven when they took her out of it
to lay her in the churchyard.”
“How do you mean ‘put her in’?” asked Wickham, quickly. “Was she mad?”
“Ah! that’s what nobody knows. But old Swaysland said so, and that was
good enough for the doctors and lawyers. Her being mad meant a fine bit
of money to her half-brother, you see--Mr. Swaysland, that is.”
“And so you mean that they shut her up there?”
“They did--between them,” said the waiter. “She never came out of them
walls again. There used to be a little square hole, a little place where
she could see into the road, and she used to sit there looking out, day
after day. That’s when I saw her, sir, when I was a boy.”
Wickham had laid down his knife and fork; he leaned across the table,
drinking in every word.
“He never went into that house again after Miss Ellen’s death, Mr.
Swaysland didn’t,” continued the man. “I was too young to understand
anything about it when it happened, but I heard enough about it when I
grew older. My father’s sister was a kind of a nurse hereabouts, before
them ladies in the white caps was invented (she’s gone, now, poor soul,
too), and she was sent for to Miss Ellen. Many’s the time I’ve heard her
telling mother about it. Mr. Swaysland come into the room the night the
lady died, but he kept out of sight of the bed till the doctor thought
she was going and beckoned to him. When he come close, Miss Ellen opened
her eyes, and aunt used to say they were like the eyes of a serpent.
‘Richard,’ says she, looking at him (Mr. Swaysland’s name was Richard),
‘you can’t keep me here any longer, for I’m going. Some day,’ says she,
‘your turn ’ll come, as mine’s coming now, and when it does, I’ll fetch
you. You’ve kept me here for twenty years,’ she says, ‘but you won’t be
able to keep me back--not then. I’ll come for you.’ And she died, with
her face turned to Mr. Swaysland. Here they are now, sir,” he added,
looking down the street; “they’re obliged to go the longest way. The
’osses can’t get up the asphalted lanes to the church.”
But Wickham did not look out. He saw in his mind a stranger sight than
that which occupied his companion; for he was standing again, in
recollection, by the door in the wall.
“Can you tell me exactly when Mr. Swaysland died?” he said, at last.
“It was very sudden,” replied the waiter, who was now absorbed in the
passing procession; “it was last Sunday evening about this time--a
little earlier, perhaps.”
When the last carriage had gone by, he turned again to the young man.
“People think of queer things sometimes,” he observed apologetically.
“D’you know, sir, I’ve wondered two or three times since last Sunday
whether the poor lady kept her word.”
Wickham looked at him for a moment in silence.
“I think she did,” said he, with a curious smile; “and, what’s more, my
dog thinks so too.”
‘KINGS’ CROWNS’
The widow Stevens’s white cottage stood a little back from a lane which
went from Crishowell village towards the region of the Wye. Just after
you passed the wicket leading to her door you came to a small stone
bridge; and, because the brook ran strong under it, Ann Stevens’s
dwelling was filled day and night with the rush of hurrying water. It
was near the edge of the overhanging bank, high above the flow, and many
floods had eaten away the earth which rose above the smooth channel of
rock and boulder. A green tangle hung over it from the red soil, scrubby
elder and whips of bramble, and, with its roots almost in the eddy, grew
a bush of guelder-rose--not the ‘snowball-tree’ of gardens, but the wild
viburnam, whose flat flower-heads have an outer circle of large
ivory-coloured blossoms.
The brook, as it ran down from the Black Mountain, was flung like a
trailing ribbon upon the green carpet of Crishowell parish, and lay here
in open loops and festoons, and there in hidden places--now singing
amongst rocks, and now drawing its length along meadows and by ancient
willow-stumps. It had acquired a semi-human personality in the parish,
because of the important part it played in the lives of the inhabitants.
Up above, in the widow’s garden, a few white stones bordered the crooked
path to her door, between the red flowering currants whose hanging
tassels were some of spring’s earliest comers, and inside the cottage
the eight-day clock ticked away the time, year in, year out, adding its
steady, remorseless voice to the more impetuous voice of the water.
Together the two accentuated to Ann the changelessness of her days.
Twenty years ago her son Tom had left her to enlist, and she had never
heard of him since.
His return was always in her thoughts--a hope that, after many years of
steadfast anticipation, was beginning at last to die a lingering death.
He had not been a satisfactory son; but Ann had ceased to think of that
as season followed season and no word came of the young fellow who had
disappeared into that vast unknown tract surrounding Crishowell parish,
called the world.
Ann was a tall, gaunt old woman, bony and strong. She had a little
money, inherited from a brother, and she had put by a little more,
earned in her hardworking life. Occasionally she went out charing,
employed by the farmers’ wives, but the main part of her time was now
spent at home; and neighbours, passing down the lane, would look in over
the currant-bushes and see her digging her garden, which was partly laid
out in vegetables. These she sold in small quantities, when her own
needs were supplied. She was something of a reader, too, this lean,
hard-featured old widow, and in the evening she would light her
blue-glass lamp--a gift from the parson--and, putting on her spectacles,
would sit down with some borrowed book. She read whatever she was given
with steady, solemn interest, which did not always depend on
comprehension; and when her light was out, she would lie down on her bed
in the inner room, with the ceaseless rush of the brook in her ears and
the measured beat of the clock. And sometimes she would dream of Tom.
It was on an evening of early summer that she started for home. She had
been at work all day, cleaning and scrubbing, at a farm in the hilly
region above Crishowell village. She was tired as she came slowly down
one of the narrow lanes. Before her, that familiar noise, the rush of
water, lay like a band across the road; for the brook, which had so many
meanderings to accomplish ere it reached the gully beneath her home,
crossed the path fifty yards farther on. As she descended towards it she
had to pass a patch of grass under the hedge, and there, among the hazel
scrub, was a small tilt set on the turf, with a newly made fire before
it. A man was sitting beside it smoking, and a tall young woman stood,
with her hands on her hips, watching the flame rise. She bid the widow
good evening.
Ann stopped and set her unemotional, considering gaze upon the couple.
She looked at them with the same conscientious interest that she gave
to her books, and there was no sign of what she gathered from her
scrutiny on her face. She merely took stock of the scene. The man took
his pipe from his teeth and spat. The woman came forward; this passer-by
was not of the kind from which much could be expected, but she asked her
for a copper.
“Where be you going?” said Ann, taking no notice of the request.
“Losbury.”
“And what be you doing?” asked the persistent Ann.
“Come you,” said the young woman, with a half-laughing backward glance
at her mate; “I’ll tell you your luck for a copper. Maybe there’s a rich
man waitin’ for you.”
The man at the fire grinned, looking at the widow’s grey head and
weather-beaten face, dull with years of patiently accepted toil; at her
coarse clothes and the marks of creeping age which had obliterated sex.
Ann stood taking them in slowly, completely unconscious of veiled
derision or of the acid humour of the young woman’s proposal. She
neither refused nor accepted.
The tinker-woman took up her hand and turned it over; then, as she
looked up into the widow’s eyes, a different expression came into her
own.
Perhaps something of Ann’s solid strength had penetrated from them into
her vagabond soul; perhaps in them she saw a dim ray from uncomprehended
sources, from a light unknown to her own insolent youth. She ceased
smiling.
“Your heart’s desire be to come to you with a crown in its hand,” she
said.
Ann stood astonished. Then she turned away and went down to the brook.
Before she got there it struck her that she should pay her debts. She
retraced her steps, and put a halfpenny from her day’s earnings into the
young woman’s hand.
“Be that all?” called the man after her.
The tinker-woman turned round and cursed him. But Ann heard neither of
them, for she was crossing the rush of the brook.
Nearly a week had passed since the tinker-woman had spoken her careless
words. The hot high-road, which ran alongside the Wye, was thick in its
white dust, and the clear pink of the dog-roses was smothered under a
powdery veil cast upon the hedges. The distance, which had looked thick,
too, was growing definite in the coolness, for the sun had been gone
some time and the long twilight had etherealised the objects that
flaunted all day.
The tread of a man’s feet was muffled in dust as he came shuffling
along, a tall, stooping creature, surrounded by a furtive atmosphere
made of the remembrance of many failures. Though he was not old, his
hair was grizzled, and the lines of his neck had lost their firmness;
this was the more conspicuous because there was nothing between them and
the collar of his coat. He had neither shirt nor scarf, and one foot
protruded from its boot. He was unlike the ordinary tramp in one
particular, for, instead of plodding on with eyes fixed before him, he
looked from side to side. Now and again he would stop, staring at the
fields and at the rising slope of Radnorshire across the river.
When he came to a spot where a lane met the road he sat down. Farther up
it stood the little stone bridge by which Ann Stevens’s cottage was set
above the water. He put his arms on his knees and laid his head on them.
He was physically worn out and very thirsty. He thought of the brook up
yonder, sliding dark and cool over the slippery channel of rock, of the
scented leaves of the great walnut-tree growing by the bridge; and, as
he raised his head and looked into the lane, he caught sight of the
flat, white circles of the guelder-roses woven into the hedge. ‘Kings’
Crowns,’ he had called them in his childhood, he and the children who
had seen them come out, year by year. There was a bush of them, he knew,
standing with its feet almost in the water, below the bank under his
mother’s house. He did not know whether she was alive or dead, and
perhaps he did not greatly care, for everything was dulled to him now by
the deadening influences of his life since he had deserted, years and
years ago, as the roadside bushes were dulled by dust. Perhaps the sight
of the ‘Kings’ Crowns’ penetrated a little through the veil, for these
thornless things gave him a stab of pain. He neither liked them nor
hated them, but they spoke, in spite of that.
He rose at last and shuffled up the lane. The water was luring him, for
raging thirst had come on him since afternoon, though he now found
himself shivering. He stopped where his way sloped gently down to the
bridge. It all looked just as he had seen it in his mind whenever he had
chosen to think of it, which was not often. The walnut-trunk was grey
beside the low parapet, and its noble leaves made a green light overhead
in the falling dusk.
He stood staring. Then he heard the brook’s voice.
He groped his way down to it, stumbling in the briars.
It was dark among the rocks as he stopped by the water-side, and, across
the dimness of the overhung channel, he could see the ‘Kings’ Crowns’
looking at him like pale faces. Under that bush he had often gone down
on his hands and knees to drink when he was a boy, and it was in his
mind that he must get to it; he walked across a shallow and laid hold of
one of its lower branches. His knees shook so much that he clung to it
to steady himself as he stooped.
Then he was conscious of nothing but a terrible giddiness that took him,
as the slide and rush swept by, and the brook’s voice seemed to be
raised in a deafening shout that stunned him, even before he fell, with
one side of his body in the water.
The branch broke in his hand, leaving a starry circle of blossom
clutched between his fingers.
And, just above the spot where he lay, Ann Stevens sat at her deal table
with a book in front of her. It was the dry biography of an early
nineteenth-century bishop, and, though the widow had pushed her way
doggedly through the good man’s barren early years to his ordination,
she had wearied of it. The calm of her mind had been assailed by the
tinker-woman’s speech, and she had found it hard, since its utterance,
to concentrate her mind upon anything.
There was only one interpretation to “her heart’s desire,” and the
overlying soil of patience deposited by time had been stirred by the
bold vagrant-girl’s words. She attached no importance to them, while the
preposterous image of the crown in poor Tom’s hand made them a mockery.
But she was disturbed, and her hard-won endurance was shaken.
It was characteristic of her to plough on with her reading, though she
got so little joy of it; and it was her failure to persevere which now
brought the slow tears; for overladen humanity is so curious a thing
that it will bear up under the burden which breaks its back, only to
weep at last for some childish triviality that takes it unawares. Ann
had not wept twice in the last ten years, but, as she shut her book, a
sob escaped her.
Consciously or unconsciously, it had come to be the pivot of her
life--the hold she had on herself. It was a dreadful thing to lose it.
It unnerved her so cruelly that she went to the inner room and sank
down, dressed, as she was, on the bed, with her knotted hands clasped on
her chest; she would make a determined effort to compose herself. She
lay stifling her sobs, until her spirit wearied with its struggle and
she dozed, losing consciousness of the familiar surroundings, one by
one.
The cottage was very silent.
Suddenly she sat up with a great start and looked with bewildered eyes
into the dimness. The knowledge of some presence in it had come to her
through her sleep, imperatively and sharply. The place was empty, but
she rose, half dazed still, and stumbled into the other room. That was
empty too, but she could not understand the turmoil in her soul, and,
driven by it, she ran out.
Ever afterwards, as she thought about it, she wondered at herself, for
she went straight to the edge of the overhanging bank and peered down
into the brook’s bed. Beneath her, in the darkness, standing up like the
pale lights of a seven-branched candlestick, were the ‘Kings’ Crowns.’
Something dark lay between their roots and the water, and the sight of
its human outline called the old woman back from the illusive borderland
in which she had been wandering since she awoke. Having satisfied
herself that it was a fellow creature who lay on the rocks of the
channel, she began to descend by a cleft in the bank which had once been
cut in rough steps to the floor. She reached the bottom, stepped past
the ghostly guelder-roses, and, kneeling down, looked into the face of
the unconscious man.
Summer was ended, and Ann Stevens was on her way to the hill farm once
more. A day’s earnings were more necessary to her now than before; for
there was another mouth to feed and the doctor to pay. Tom lay in the
inner room, making his slow recovery, for the low fever, brought on by
exhaustion and starvation and the time he had lain in the damp of
evening, half in and half out of the brook, had left him. Soon he would
be able to rise and do his share and already an odd job or two had been
promised to him. The bishop’s biography had been returned, unfinished.
As Ann passed the grassy place where she had met the vagrant couple, she
stopped to look at the charred black mark of their fire.
“True it were, too,” she said, half aloud. “He had a ‘King’s Crown’ in
his hand.”
THE FRINGE OF THE JUNGLE
We sat together outside our tents, Ewald and I, looking across the
broken country that lies on the confines of the Bhilsa jungle. The sun
had only just begun to decline, and Ewald had been busy all day with his
maps and his writing. The little tent in which he did his office-work
was being taken down and packed up, for we were to move on at daybreak
on the following morning.
Ewald was a tall, spare, sunburnt man, an excellent shot; one of that
vast crowd of ungregarious bachelors who serve India in her solitary
places, and who lie down to rest on most nights of the year with a piece
of canvas between themselves and the stars. It had been a busy day with
him, and I, who was on leave and had joined him just before midday, had
spent the afternoon half asleep on a _charpoy_ under the great banyan
that sheltered our camp. We hoped for some shooting when we should get
further into the jungle.
The camp was pitched in a hollow of the hillside, where a few square
yards of even ground surrounded the banyan, and from it we looked down
over the dry scrub and brown grass. Below us the tiny travellers’
bungalow with its thatched roof made a white spot in the untenanted
stretch, and beyond it lay Kodria village, revealing its presence only
by an occasional throbbing of tom-toms and a bit of mud wall visible
under the round mass of its mango-trees. Here and there, in the expanse
of scrub, the _dhâk_ bushes were beginning to show themselves like
pointing, red hands sticking up in the rustling waste.
I had been thinking of many things as I sat waiting for Ewald; for we
were at the end of March, and to those who have lived through many
changes of season in India the flowering of the _dhâk_ will suggest more
than the mere outbreak of claw-like scarlet blossom. They know that this
flame, beginning to pierce like a tongue of fire through the
tinder-brown jungle, tells that the Hôli, the spring festival of the
Hindoos, is at hand, and that, its rioting and debauchery once over and
its emblems burnt outside the villages, the hot weather, which all
through the stifling days of the feast has lain like a tiger waiting to
spring, will have the world in its fell grip. To Europe, the words ‘hot
weather’ stand for very little, conjuring up, maybe, some vision of
oppressive skies, langour and white umbrellas; to Asia, they mean
anything between a time of discomfort and tension, which to be even
dimly understood must be endured, and a three months’ fight with death.
For with the flowering of the _dhâk_ the shrill pipes of the East are
playing up for tragedy, and the European, riding home in the evening
under a low, hot moon, hears the crickets’ intrusive and throbbing
chorus in the darkness of the wayside trees crying to every British
subject that the time is at hand when he must take up his little corner
of the Empire’s burden and stand up with it. Then the flight of women
and children to the hills begins, and the furnace doors close down upon
those who are left.
Some men spend years in India and never feel its curious influences. So
many human beings carry with them an impenetrable atmosphere through
which nothing from outside seems able to reach them; but the country had
laid its stealthy hand upon me, and at the beginning of the hot weather
it always lay heavy. It was to me as if the obscene yearly riot of the
Hôli let loose the forces of darkness to stalk the land in the time of
stress that was coming, and that the live ember of the _dhâk_--the flame
of the jungle, as it is called--was their forerunner. To natives, too,
the associations of the _dhâk_ blossom are sinister. In years when it is
luxuriant the wiseacres of bazaar and village say that no good will come
of those red fires burning in the country round. Sitting under the local
peepul-tree in the evenings before the hot weather begins, when the air
is heavy and vibrating with the muffled voice of the tom-tom and the
dust hangs over the homeward-bound flocks of goats, they tell each other
that they are a pressage of cholera. And, beyond these forebodings, the
tree is sacred in their eyes, because the three divisions of the leaf
represent the Hindoo trinity of Birth, Life, and Death--Brama, Vishnu,
and Siva. In essence the _dhâk_ belongs to Siva, for its whole leaf is
an emblem of the trident in the hand of the Great God--that God whose
attribute is destruction; who waits among the shadows of every temple
and village, every grove and cantonment, and who, as the heavy days draw
near, is more surely than ever standing out there among the stretches of
burnt grass, but whose meaning is not death alone, but
Life-through-Death.
I was full of these thoughts as Ewald came out of his tent, and dropped
into the camp chair which his servant had set for him.
“Well?” said he, as he stretched out his long legs, “you look solemn
enough. What is it?”
I laughed.
“It’s the country that’s solemn, not I,” I said.
“Solemn, do you call it?” said he, screwing up his eyes in a way
peculiar to him.
“That’s the wrong word, but it’s difficult to find the right one,” I
replied.
“Uncanny,” said Ewald.
“Then you feel that, too? It’s what I was thinking about.”
“With me its association, no doubt,” said he. “The strangest thing I
ever knew of happened here--just over that rise and the bare bit of rock
yonder. The _dhâk_ is coming out, too. I remember that it was coming out
then.”
He pointed to a ridge that broke the undergrowth about half a mile away.
The red trees were starting up thick in its neighbourhood. My eye
followed his hand, but I said nothing, because Ewald--the thorough
Ewald--was a man who saw a subject through to the end if he began it,
and there was no need for me to ask for the history I wanted to hear.
“I know this bit of the world pretty well,” he went on, “for this is the
half-dozenth time I have been here, I should think. Down yonder, towards
the jungle, the line runs up to Gwalior. You wouldn’t fancy, would you,
looking down from this camp, that there was such a thing within fifty
miles? But, just there, is a great _nullah_ dividing the country, and
the permanent way runs over it. The viaduct is constantly under repair.
It’s a difficult place, for a lot of reasons you wouldn’t understand
unless you were in the trade, and I suppose there are seldom six
consecutive months in the year when it’s not being tinkered at. It’s a
kind of byword among engineers, the Lal Nullah viaduct. When you get
over that bare ridge there’s a miniature ravine, a natural formation no
bigger than a cutting, and if you go through it you take the shortest
possible cut from Kodria to the viaduct.
“The very first bit of jungle I saw anything of when I came out, as a
youngster, twenty years ago, was this one. I had a cousin in the police,
and before I settled down into harness I got leave to spend a week with
him, and I had no sooner arrived than he was sent hot-foot over here,
and we camped in this very spot we are sitting on now. Beyond Kodria
there is a little insignificant village, a miserable nest of hovels
crowded together round a Mohammedan _musjid_, and in it lived a man
called Waly Gafur. He was an oldish man, a peaceable-looking
individual, I believe--I never saw him--but with a reputation that
covered more miles than he had ever travelled in his life.
“There were horrid stories of his treatment of his children that had
leaked through even to British ears, and in the district round the
natives gave him credit for supernatural powers, as they give it to all
sorts of uncommon objects, animate and inanimate. People went about in
terror of him. There was a potter he was supposed to have murdered, and
an ugly story of a woman found brutally mauled and lying in a patch of
sugar-cane, who accused him with her last breath--not that that goes for
much with these people! The odd thing was that his motive did not seem
to be robbery, but a mere devilish love of slaughter. He used to be
absent from his village for days at a time, and nobody had a notion
where he went. Well, to cut it short, Government grew tired of Waly
Gafur, and when a fresh murder was reported, though nothing had been
definitely brought home to the man, Bob, my cousin, was sent up here to
investigate matters, and I came with him. It seemed to me a great
chance of seeing more of the country than is visible from a British
cantonment.
“Bob had got hold of a certain amount of evidence, and he began a
systematic search of the district, for Waly Gafur had disappeared as
usual. I stayed up here in the camp. Bob would have no encumbrances, he
said, when he was out for blood. At last he got upon his tracks, and for
three days he seemed to be hunting him round in a circle. He could not
make out who the man’s accomplice in his flight was, but it was evident,
so he told me afterwards, that there was some one helping Waly Gafur.
“Well, the end of it was that, after all his doublings and twistings, he
found him in a hut in Kodria village, and I suppose the only reason he
ever found him at all was the fact that he was dying. No doubt he had
been lying up in _nullahs_ and pestiferous places, for he was in the
last stages of fever, and had a wound in his head which his last victim,
a native soldier at home on furlough, had evidently given him.
“Bob sent a message to tell me the news, and I set off at once to meet
him. I found him under the mangoes at Kodria, talking to the headman.
The whole neighbourhood appeared to be collected round them, and inside
one of the mud huts Waly Gafur lay dying. It had been impossible to move
him, he was so far gone. He had escaped Bob many times, and now he was
going to do so again. To my raw European mind it was the most curious
scene, and it struck me then, as I suppose it has struck every soul who
has ever come out to this country, how impossible it would be to give
the stay-at-home Briton the faintest idea of what India is like. It was
all so strange to me: the mighty tree-shadows, cut sharp on the
pervading dust-colour, the acrid smell, the incessant noise of native
talk; the skulking yellow pariah dogs and the black spots of the kites
wheeling far above; the ubiquitous tom-tom that accompanies every
incident in life, every breath of the swarming native world; and Bob,
standing there in his shabby khaki and frayed putties, as much an
embodiment of the Empire as if he were in gold-laced uniform and stiff
with medals and orders!
“I had scarcely got off my pony when a native policeman came out of the
hut to say that the prisoner was dead. So Bob went in to see the body,
and then we left Kodria, for he had reports to write and he was longing
to get back to some sort of comfort. We left the policeman in the
village, and we had a pleasant evening together--my last with him, for I
had to return to Bombay next morning; and before it was light I set off
on my ride to the nearest point at which I could pick up the south-bound
Bombay mail.
“I must say that my work seemed dull to me after Bob’s kind of life, but
I settled down to it, knowing that I had my own way to make, and that I
had better begin on it in earnest. I was a good deal interested when I
got a letter from him telling me that Waly Gafur’s body had been taken
away mysteriously, and that no one knew what had become of it or who had
removed it from the hut. Since the man was undoubtedly dead, it did not
matter much. He finished up with the time-honoured remark that India
was a rum place, and I certainly agreed with him.
“It seems odd, but I’ve never seen Bob from that day to this. He fell
ill not long after and was invalided home, where he married, and I
stayed out here, knocking about from place to place. I ground away, and
time went by, and at last, about seven years afterwards, the Lal Nullah
viaduct behaved worse than usual, and I and a man called Rollo were sent
up to put it right.
“Nobody cared much about coming up to the Lal Nullah, but I was rather
glad to be going with Rollo. He was a man every one had a good word for.
He was very clever at his work, excellent company, good-looking and
good-hearted. Natives liked him and worked well for him, his colleagues
praised him; everywhere it was the same story. I thought myself lucky to
be his understrapper, though I had never set eyes on him.
“We met on the platform at Ujjain and came up here together. He was a
well-set-up, clear-eyed fellow, with a manner that made one feel at home
with him at once, and a laugh that nobody could resist; and I thought,
as I took stock of him, that, so far as all but money was concerned, he
must have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His look of good
health, good luck, and good character, too, was exhilarating. His bearer
had been with him for years, and seemed devoted to him. By the time we
had reached the little bungalow down there I felt as if I had known him
all my life. He took possession of it, for he had a lot of writing to
do, and he needed more elbow-room than one gets in a tent. So, as one of
us had to be on the spot, I pitched a little camp on the _nullah_ bank
near the viaduct.
“It was pretty hot, for the weather was stoking up, and Rollo used to
come down to the _nullah_ early, returning to do his office work just
before midday. We dined in the bungalow and spent our evenings in the
verandah. Among his other gifts Rollo could play the _sitar_ quite
wonderfully, for he had learnt it from one of the queerest of his great
host of friends, a travelling _sadhu_--an awful scoundrel, I
believe--who used to go about to the native fairs in Central India. It
was funny to hear his European voice singing with all the native
semitones to the twanging strings.
“We had only been a few days at our work when I began to modify my
opinion of Rollo. The good temper I had heard so much about seemed to be
an insecure quality when one came to live with him. There were times
when he would come down to the camp looking like a thundercloud, and for
the whole morning life anywhere near him would be a penance. Nothing
that anybody did was right. He would answer me when I spoke, and that
was all, and he generally did it in a way that made my blood boil. A
perfect devil of ill-temper sat in his eyes, and he cursed and swore at
the coolies till I hated to listen to him. I had heard so much of his
admirable way of dealing with them, that I was astonished beyond
measure, and I began to suspect that the man was ill, for the hot
weather was coming on, and I fancied he might be exposing himself too
much to the sun. What put it into my head was the fact that when he rode
from the bungalow to the _nullah_ instead of walking he seemed quite
like himself--like the self I had met at Ujjain. One day I suggested to
him that it was getting too hot to go on foot, even at that hour of the
morning, and I was told, with a look of sullen rage, to mind my own
business and to go to a very much hotter place than the Bhilsa jungle. I
was furious, and I was grieved too, for I had liked him so much.
“One day I saw him thrash a coolee with his Nilgherri cane, and I
wondered how he had the face to do such a thing after the opinion he had
expressed to me on the way up about those who struck natives. To
complicate matters, our gang was beginning to desert, and I thought that
if we went on at this rate we should never have done with that blessed
viaduct. Sometimes, in wild moments, I vowed to myself that I would
wire, asking to be relieved, though I knew in my heart that it would be
a suicidal thing to do. I couldn’t afford it. I couldn’t give health as
a reason, for I never was fitter, and if I spoke the truth no one would
believe me. I should be told that, if I couldn’t get on with Rollo, I
wasn’t likely to be able to get on with anybody else. And even yet
there was something about him that would have kept me from complaining
of him had there been a chance of being believed. I could not quite
forget him as he had been.
“I longed to take counsel with his bearer, but I couldn’t bring myself
to speak my mind about the white man to the black one; besides which, it
looked to me as if the decent old Hindoo was as much puzzled as myself.
Often and often I saw his looking at his master with an expression of
bewildered dismay. The only thing that made Rollo endurable was that, in
a couple of hours after his arrival at the _nullah_, that black
obsession of his would begin to wear off, and by the time his pony came
for him (he always rode home) he was almost right. He was moody,
certainly, and dull all the evening, and he played the _sitar_ no more;
but it was possible to get on with him. At last I made up my mind that
the poor devil was going mad.
“One afternoon, when Rollo had gone, the bearer appeared in the camp and
approached me with many salaams. Poor old boy, he looked the picture of
misery, and, seeing that he had something to say, I beckoned him into
the tent.
“‘What is it?’ said I. ‘Come near, Sakaram, and speak.’
“He kicked off his shoes and entered.
“‘My sahib is ill,’ he said, lowering his eyes.
“‘And what is the matter?’ I asked, for I was determined he should speak
first. ‘Has he fever? Is he in bed? He was here all the morning.’
“The sahib has seen what I see,’ he replied. ‘I have known that many
days. The sahib knows what I know.’
“There was no good in beating about the bush, so I motioned him to go
on. I listened, silent, to the long recital of Rollo’s virtues; I heard
of the years they had lived together, of the services rendered, of the
journeys taken, and finally of the dreadful change that had befallen
Rollo since he had come to this evil place. There were devils here,
certainly, said Sakaram, as it was well known there were in all jungles,
but these were the most powerful of all. They were so powerful that not
an hour since they had caused the sahib to beat his servant. The old
chap rolled back his sleeve and showed me a long, reddish bruise upon
his brown skin.
“‘Never has he done this!’ he cried. ‘Not when, in an accursed moment, I
slept when I should have waked, and so left him in his bed; and lo! when
he rose and rode to the station like a mad one, the train was gone. To
me it was no harm, for was it not but a day, and would not the sun rise
as surely on the morrow as it had set at night? But the sahib-log do not
consider these things, I know. Yet he smote me not; but now----’
“The old boy choked and broke down.
“‘It is not for this that I weep,’ he continued, ‘but that these devils
will kill him, and he will certainly die. Ai! Ai!’
“‘Sakaram, have you noticed that by evening the sahib is well, and that
the evil goes from him before he lies down?’ said I.
“‘I have seen it,’ he said. ‘He goes forth in the morning like my own
sahib, and he returns to the bungalow at noon without compassion and
without reason.’
“‘But when he goes upon a horse, it is different,’ I added.
“‘The sahib is right,’ said he. ‘I have seen that too.’
“Well, finally I settled to get up before it was light and go to the
bungalow, for I was determined to see what could possibly occur in the
morning to upset Rollo. Sakaram besought me to write to some one who
could recall him--to do anything I could to get his master away; but I
did not imagine, as he did, that Rollo would die, and I meant to find
out something more before taking such a step. I dismissed him at last,
telling him I should arrive early. He was a little comforted, but not
much.
“As I entered the verandah next day, according to my promise, I heard
Rollo whistling as he dressed, and, when he came out and found me, he
gave me a friendly nod.
“‘Hullo,’ said he, ‘you’re out early. Nothing wrong down there, I hope?’
“I reassured him.
“Sakaram appeared, bringing his matches and cigarette-case. His salaam
to me was as impassive as if he had never seen me before.
“We stepped out into the increasing sunlight. The morning shadows were
long, and the world that would soon be a clay-coloured furnace was fresh
and clean. Rollo looked tired and worn, but he talked cheerily as we
went along the sandy track leading to the Lal Nullah.
“‘It’s a longer way than one thinks,’ said I; ‘the path takes such an
enormous left-hand loop round all that undergrowth.’
“‘I always go by the short cut when I’m walking,’ said he.
“He pointed to the bare ridge which was sticking up in front of us to
the right.
“‘You can hardly ride that way,’ he went on. ‘It’s too bad even for a
country-bred pony. The path pays you better, though this cuts off a good
half-mile.’
“As he spoke he turned in through a division in the bushes, and we came
out on the backbone of slippery rock which ascended to the ridge. There
were worn places in it that showed how much it had once been
used--ancient, permanent marks, not recent ones. The inhabitants of
Kodria and the villages beyond the bungalow had evidently taken the
direct line to the _nullah_ long before the railway was built. It was
only the thinness of the upper soil on the stone that had kept the old
path from being swallowed by the jungle growth, but the track was now so
brown and bare that it was as easy to see as the one we had left.
“From the top of the rise we went down into a narrow cleft about a
hundred yards long. On either side the banks were covered with scrub. On
our left the matted growth had formed itself into a great hump, and
above it was one of those bare trees which stand like deserted skeletons
in the jungle land, white and solitary. The spot was cut off from its
surroundings by the rock. As we entered the cleft, I was struck with
violent instinctive aversion for the place. It was so obvious to me that
I hurried on in advance of Rollo, and stood, when I reached the other
end, looking round and waiting for him to come up.
“I was just going to say something, when I saw his face, and was
shocked. He was talking to himself--or I suppose he was, for his lips
were moving, though I heard nothing. Then he stopped and looked back, as
if some other man were behind us.
“‘What are you standing there staring at me for?’ he yelled, as he came
up. ‘Get on, get out of my way, you fool!’
“He stood for a moment pouring abuse and blasphemy upon me, and then he
shouldered past, pushing up against me as though it was all he could do
not to strike me.
“I said nothing, though I was shaking with anger, for I saw that he was
beyond reasoning with, and that one word from me might be the beginning
of some hateful, irreparable quarrel. One might as well reason with a
madman. He strode on in front without noticing me again, and I followed,
marvelling and sick at heart. He made me think of a noble animal
demented and urged to destruction by some baser force. It was horrible!
When we reached the camp, I went into my tent, and he continued his way
down the _nullah_ to where the work was going on. I could foresee that
we should have more desertions that day.
“I sat on my bed racking my brains. At last I had made one discovery. It
was quite plain that whatever insanity or evil sprung on Rollo overtook
him in the cleft among the rocks. I had almost seen it happen, and two
things proved to me that its occurrence in that particular spot was no
mere chance: first, Sakaram had told me how his master would leave in
the morning ‘like his own sahib,’ while I, waiting for him at the camp,
would see him arrive like Satan himself; secondly, both the bearer and I
had noticed that when he rode all was well. And Rollo had told me that
he always took the short cut on foot. For some unknown reason it was his
passage through that place that did the mischief.
“In any case something had to be done. The whole affair was beyond my
comprehension, but I made up my mind that he must be got away, for I
began to believe, with Sakaram, that if things went on like this he
would die. I had seen such an awful expression on his face when he
barged up against me at the end of that loathsome by-track. Nobody could
receive a shock that could make him look like that on four days out of
the seven without suffering--permanently. I began to think what I should
say in my report. I should have to put it down to the sun, and to
represent Rollo as becoming seriously ill. Yet, if he were recalled, he
might return to Ajmere perfectly well, so far as bodily health went. I
couldn’t give an exact account of what was happening without drawing
censure and ridicule on myself, and probably my report would have no
effect, and Rollo would remain where he was. But I decided to write
without delay, and I only prayed that some catastrophe might not happen
before the letter could reach headquarters.
“I did not go up to fetch him next day, knowing that if I did he would
walk to the _nullah_ with me. He had looked worn out overnight, and had
said he would ride, for which I was truly thankful. I wondered whether
he had the least recollection of what had happened in the morning; he
had never yet, in the quiet evenings we spent together, made any apology
for his extraordinary conduct, or for the outrageous things he had said
to me. He always seemed quite oblivious of anything having gone wrong in
the day. And yet he had looked behind him in that strange manner as we
came through that hateful little place! Whatever he saw there, how could
he forget it? It was beyond me.
“I was listening for his pony’s tread when a man came running towards
me. It was Rollo’s dog-boy, whom he had brought with him from Ajmere to
be useful in camp. His _pagaree_ had come untwisted and streamed out as
he ran, a dirty, brick-red rag. He flung himself on his face at my feet.
He had to wait till he found breath enough to speak, and when he did, he
raised such an outcry that the camp began to fill with black figures
from the _nullah_.
“The sahib was dead! The sahib lay dead in the jungle! He was killed. He
was a great sahib, a strong sahib; but he was killed, and he, Budloo,
had escaped by a miracle!
“I seized the frantic man, and tried to get something coherent out of
him, shaking him, and demanding where Rollo lay, and who had killed him,
and how; and I dragged from him that Rollo had walked, sending him
forward with a box of mathematical instruments. He had departed,
thinking no evil, and seeing the sahib following afar off. But he had
made haste, and when he was not very far from the camp he had looked and
seen the sahib approaching by an evil road. The sahib did not know it
was a bad place, but _he_ knew, for a village man had told him. Before
he could cry to him to hasten, the sahib turned and smote the air,
struggling as though he were fighting with some _badmash_. He had fought
terribly, though there was no man to be seen. The sahib was a strong
man, a great man--where was there a stronger? But he had fallen. Had he
not seen him fall as he stood at the joining of the ways? Then he had
run, for he was afraid.
“I had some difficulty in getting any one to go with me, the effect of
the dog-boy’s story upon the men was so great. But my servant and three
of the boldest spirits followed as I ran to the place where Rollo had
dropped. The dog-boy refused to move. This time he might not escape, he
explained, and he was a poor man. All his family were poor. Why should
he die? Even now I told myself that Rollo, who was already affected by
the sun, had had a sunstroke.
“He was not dead. He lay unconscious, half-way through that cursed
cleft. The skeleton tree held up its dry, white arms against the baking
sky, and the lump of tangled, withered scrub was like a cushion at its
feet. He was not twenty paces from it. The sandy track on which he lay
was marked and trampled round him, but the prints of his own boots were
half obliterated by other marks that I could not make out. They were not
the tracks of any beast I knew, nor were they quite like those of a man.
They were at the side nearest to the tree. I could not stay to examine
them, for Rollo could not be left in his unconscious state to lie in
that fiery heat that struck from the rocks as if from the walls of an
oven. We raised him up, I and my servant, while two of the coolies held
my coat over his head for shelter as we went. The third had fled at the
entrance to the cleft.
“For more than a week old Sakaram and I nursed Rollo in the white
bungalow down there. I managed to get a doctor from Jhansi to come out
to us for a couple of days. He was a dull man, and not best pleased at
being sent out into the Bhilsa jungle in the heat. He called the case
‘sunstroke,’ but he admitted that it was not quite like most of the
sunstroke cases he had seen. He added the comprehensive word ‘shock,’
which covered everything, and left as soon as he could, thankful to see
the last of us, and to turn his face once more to civilisation. I was
glad to see the last of him, too, for his only merit in my eyes was that
he had assured me that the patient was perfectly sane. I made no
confidences to him. Rollo was recovering, and that was all that
mattered.
“One night I sat alone in the verandah. Rollo was asleep inside the
bungalow, and I had slept there every night since his illness. In a few
days he would be up. The full moon was high, and the sharp white light
brought out every detail of the country. It was as clear as day. The
jungle lay in a black line, and a faint tom-toming came from the Lal
Nullah. The only other sound was the bearer’s voice talking on and on
to some one in the verandah at the other side of the house.
“There was nobody living in it besides myself, Sakaram, and Rollo, so I
went into my room, and peeped through the _chick_ to see who the
stranger was. Just below the window, squatting on his heels by the old
man, was a tall young _sadhu_, with a twist of saffron loin-cloth about
his waist. The grey ash smeared on his face and body made him look like
a corpse in the strong moonlight. His long hair was heaped in a lump on
the top of his head, and plastered with clay; his thin beard wagged as
he talked, and his iron tongs and bowl glittered on the verandah floor
as the moon touched them. He wore the half-sinister, half-detached
expression, that mixture of the snake, the somnambulist, and the graven
image that belongs to none but his like. I knew him for an unmitigated
ruffian, and it annoyed me to see the touch of deference in the worthy
old bearer’s manner. But what he was saying attracted my attention.
“‘I have heard of this sahib, for I know him who taught him wisdom in
the making of music,’ said he.
“He pointed to Rollo’s _sitar_, which stood in a corner of the verandah.
“‘And thou sayest that he was first made mad and pursued of devils?’ he
continued.
“‘It is true, Maharaj. His friend, the other sahib, knows it even as I
do.’
“‘Then there is another sahib?’ asked the _sadhu_, with the wanton,
vagabond curiosity that will wander down any side-issue; ‘what manner of
man is he?’
“Sakaram shrugged his shoulders.
“‘There is no harm in him,’ he said.
“I smiled wryly behind my _chick_.
“‘If the sahib in his foolishness had not walked in the accursed place
he had been well now. The blame is his,’ said the _sadhu_.
“He turned his bold onyx eyes on the bearer.
“‘Then this jungle is accursed?’ faltered Sakaram, edging nearer to his
companion.
“‘I said not so. But the spot where he fell is an accursed spot. It is
there that the murderer, Waly Gafur, is buried. He lies under the white
tree that has arms like a man.’
“I stepped out through the _chick_. Sakaram sprang to his feet with a
cry. The _sadhu_ rose more slowly; he looked sideways at me and began to
sing softly on two or three notes in a nasal minor. It was the
perfection of insolence. I should have liked to kick him, but I did not
want to drive him away. I had some use for him now.
“‘Tell this man to go,’ said I to Sakaram; ‘but tell him if he comes
back in the morning a reward shall be his.’
“Next day the _sadhu_ came, and he and I took the road to the ridge
together. I made him walk in front of me, for I’d no mind to have a
character of his sort treading close upon my heels. His supple grey body
slipped through the flaming _dhâk_ bushes, and we soon stood looking
down into the cleft. It was easy to see he had some misgivings.
“‘Go on!’ said I, ‘thou who art a holy one!’ But he shrank back.
“I turned back my coat and showed him the revolver in its leather case
that hung at my belt.
“‘Get on!’ I shouted.
“He obeyed, and I followed.
“‘Show me the spot, and there is reward,’ I said. ‘Show it not, and I
shall know that thou hast lied, and there will be reward of another
kind.’ I tapped my belt.
“He went up to the tangled lump at the foot of the bare tree and tore
the twigs and matted grass apart; then he beckoned to me, holding the
rent open.
“I looked in, and there, choked and hidden, smothered by the growth, was
the remains of a crumbling Mohammedan tomb that had once been
whitewashed. The clay it was built of broke asunder in clods under his
hands, for only the matted stuff held it together.
“‘I spoke truth,’ said he; and again the insolence in him swam up into
his face, like a submerged creature swimming to the surface of a still
pond.
“Having seen all I wanted, I held out a little heap of silver. He came
near, and I dropped the coins one by one into his palm. I think he would
have liked to demand more, but perhaps the presence of that companion at
my belt dissuaded him.
“‘Now go,’ said I.
“I hated to think that I had bargained with one who looked like the
very embodiment of the world’s age-long wickedness, but I felt I had
left the ordinary respectable conditions of life somewhere far outside
the Bhilsa jungle and this plague-spot of a place.
“He climbed the track, and stood a moment against the sky, turning his
head back over his shoulder towards me. He was singing again in his
nasal minor. I drew the pistol from its case, but before it was out he
had vanished. I went up and stood on the spot where he had been, and I
saw a kind of ripple running along the bushes as he passed through them,
like the movement made on water by a shark’s fin, but no more.
“One still night very soon afterwards I returned to the ridge. Rollo had
been sitting up in the verandah, and next day he was to leave for a
hill-station. Another man was coming in his place. The moon was still
brilliant, though she was on the wane. I was smoking, and when my
cigarette was half finished I ran down between the rocks and threw it
into the matted covering that had woven itself round Waly Gafur’s bones.
Then I stepped back and waited till the crawling flame began its work.
It shot up suddenly, showing the broken outline of the hidden tomb.
There was not a breath of wind down here in this accursed cleft, and I
was certain that the flame would not spread beyond it. But, in any case,
I was going to risk it. It makes me shudder now to think of the mad
thing I did. But that tomb had to go.
“When I got back to the bungalow, Rollo was still up.
“‘Just look at that light!’ exclaimed he. ‘What can it be? Good Lord! I
hope the grass doesn’t catch.’
“We stood gazing at it. All at once the flames shot up, and the top
boughs of the bare tree, which could just be seen from the bungalow,
rose, white and gaunt, in the blaze.
“Rollo shivered a little.
“‘Being ill plays the devil with your nerves,’ said he. ‘I can hardly
bear to look at that thing.’”
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
galabiyech=> galabiyeh {pg 120}
galubiyeh=> galabiyeh {pg 132}
which seemed to to him=> which seemed to him {pg 295}