AN UNFORGOTTEN PAST
'Mr. Raymond!'
Lady Arbuthnot's voice was insistent, yet soft. She wanted to rouse the
sleeper without attracting attention, and now that the waning of
daylight had ended out-door amusements, people had begun to drift into
the club. The library tables were being rifled of the new picture
papers, the smoking bar was fast filling with men, and sounds of
women's laughter came from the quaint vaulted rooms where Badminton was
being continued by electric light.
But an almost Eastern peace still lingered in certain nooks between the
interlacing aisles of the building (which had once been the palace of
kings)--and in one of these Grace Arbuthnot had run her quarry, Jack
Raymond, to earth in a lounge-chair fast asleep over a French novel.
The remains of a stiff whisky-peg stood on a small table, and Grace
Arbuthnot looked at it vexedly, then at the face, but half visible in
the dim light; for the lamp had been deliberately turned down.
She had not seen it closely for twelve years except for those brief
minutes at the race-meeting, now nearly a week ago; for, rather to her
indignation, Mr. Raymond had not followed up the renewal of their
acquaintance by calling. What is more, he had emphasised the omission
by writing his name in the visitor's book, as a perfect stranger might
have done. The fact had roused her antagonism; she had told herself
that she would decline to have that past of theirs treated as if it
were not past and forgotten. For though, ten years ago, she had
certainly been engaged to Jack Raymond, they had broken off their
engagement by mutual consent, with their eyes open; so it was foolish
to fuss about it now. And so, partly from this antagonism, partly from
a diametrically opposite motive--the inevitable woman's desire to keep
some hold on the man she has once loved--it had occurred to her, when
the days passed and brought no news of the missing jewel-box, that if
she were to consult any one regarding the letter, it might be well to
choose Jack Raymond. He was one, she knew, absolutely to be trusted by
any woman; his position--miserable as it was from an official point of
view--gave him unusual opportunities of being able to help her; and
finally---- Why! Oh! why should he go off at a tangent and make her
feel responsible?
And yet, as she looked at his sleeping face, noting its change, the
unfamiliarity where once all had been so familiar, she frowned and
turned as if to go, wondering what had induced her to think of
consulting this man. What could _he_ do now? Once upon a time, when he
was different--when he was, as she recollected him----
The thought softened her face, and sent her back to call again, 'Mr.
Raymond!'
He did not stir. Was the whisky-peg responsible for the soundness of
his sleep? And was she responsible for the whisky-peg? She had
known for years that he had drifted away, as it were, from everything
that made life seem worth living to her, but the contrast between her
fate and his had never come home to her before. The wife of a
Lieutenant-Governor--as _he_ might have been if he had not thrown up
the service in a pet--and the Secretary to the club! What a miserable
failure for such a man! A man who for two long years had been her
ideal--who even now could do, should do---- She bent towards him
suddenly, quite irrationally, and whispered, '_Jack!_'
As she paused expectant, there was a half-mischievous smile in her
pretty eyes; and yet they held a suspicion of tears. It was such an odd
world. Why could not a woman forget when she had ceased to care? Men
did; this one certainly had--no!----
The still small voice had apparently taken time to filter through to
its destination; but it had found the chord of memory, and struck it
sharply.
'Yes! what is it, dear?' came the answer drowsily. Then Jack Raymond
stirred, stared, finally woke to facts.
'I beg your pardon, Lady Arbuthnot,' he began, rising hurriedly, 'I had
been playing some hard games at racquets and----'
'But you always do sleep about this time, don't you? I've noticed you
in the distance,' she said coolly. The suggestion in her words that she
still had some right to criticise, added to his surprised irritation at
finding that he had somehow gone back to the past. Why the deuce should
the memory of the very inflection of her voice as she used to say
'Jack' have come back to confuse his brain, and absolutely make his
heart beat?
'Yes!' he replied, with palpable hardihood, 'you're right. I generally
do sleep. There's nothing else to do, you see, between tennis and
whist. But if you want any stores from the go-down,[5] I am quite at
your commands. There is an awfully good Stilton on cut, if you'd like
some.'
She beat her foot impatiently. This thrusting forward of his duties as
a sort of high-class grocer was _impayable_! He _could_ not think she
had sought him out in order to buy Stilton cheese of him! And yet--how
like the old headstrong Jack it was!
'Do tennis and whist make up your day now, Mr. Raymond,' she said
swiftly. 'It used not to be so.'
The reproach in her voice was plain, and he resented it. She had left
him to go his own way, and he had gone it. What business was it of hers
now?
'You forget the racing and the betting,' he answered coolly; 'and my
incurable idleness has at least this virtue--it leaves me, as I said,
at Lady Arbuthnot's disposal.'
He gave a little formal bow, which sent another pang of memory through
her. The fact annoyed her. How intolerable it was, that despite his
degeneration into a high-class grocer--here she smiled faintly--he
could scarcely speak a word to her, here in the semi-darkness--they two
alone--without bringing back---- Ah! so much! Yes! it was intolerable.
It must be ignored; or rather the solid, sensible facts must be dragged
out into the daylight and given their real significance.
'I am glad of that,' she replied, 'for I want you to help me. But let
us sit down--people will be less likely to disturb us then.'
He obeyed, feeling restive under her calm superiority, yet admiring it.
She was no failure, anyhow; he had been right in his choice, years ago.
Not that it mattered; since all that had once been between them had
been forgotten--by him at any rate. Absolutely forgotten.
'Mr. Raymond!' she began suddenly, leaning closer to him over the
table, 'surely it would be foolish in either of us to be ashamed, or to
pretend forgetfulness of the close tie that was between us--once.'
'I have not forgotten,' he said involuntarily, then paused disconcerted
at his own collapse. Which was true, his denial or affirmation of
memory? Both, in a way.
She smiled, as women do, at remembrance, even when they believe they
wish forgetfulness.
'I said pretend, Mr. Raymond!' she corrected. 'We are not likely to
forget. Why should we?'
'On the other hand, why should we remember?' he asked. 'The past, Lady
Arbuthnot, is past.'
The very idea of his thinking it necessary to assert this made her
frown.
'Exactly so; therefore I come to you because memory gives me a friend,
nothing more. And I need a friend just now.'
'You have plenty of them to choose from,' he began, 'you always
had----'
'And I choose you,' she put in, with a charming little nod.
He sat bewildered for a moment, then said stiffly, 'May I ask why?'
'If I may answer by the question, why not? Surely we need not be
strangers? And besides----'
'And besides?'--he echoed grimly, 'a woman's second reason is generally
better than her first.'
Lady Arbuthnot's face grew grave. 'Mine is, Mr. Raymond, infinitely
better. What I want your help for is no mere personal matter;
it is something in which you might do a yeoman's service to the
Government----'
'You are very kind,' he interrupted brusquely; 'but, as I thought you
knew, I found out twelve years ago that the Government could do very
well without my services.'
'It might have done better with them----'
'You are very kind,' he repeated; 'and this difficulty of yours?'
She flushed up. 'Excuse me! It was you, not I, who wandered from the
point. I knew my reasons for choosing your help. However, let us stick
to business. I have lost a jewel-case.'
'So I heard,' he said, 'and I am sorry it should have contained your
pearls.'
Pearls! she thought vexedly; did he think she had come to him about the
pearls? That was but a step better than Stilton cheese. His following
words, however, disarmed her.
'They belonged to your mother, I remember; they were beautiful pearls!'
'Yes!' she assented softly, and paused. 'But it is not the pearls,' she
went on. 'I will tell you what it is, and why I am anxious.'
He sat listening to her story with rather a bored look.
'It is most unlikely the letter will turn up,' he said at last. 'An
Indian thief would throw it away, even though, as you say, it was in a
sealed official envelope; he knows nothing of the value of documents.
But it is a pity you kept it; for that matter, had it. That sort of
thing is a mistake.'
Something in his tone made her say quickly, 'You blame father--why? You
know how he trusted me-how you----' She felt inclined to remind
him of his own confidence in her, but she refrained. 'Remember I have
always----'
'Been in the swim,' he suggested.
'Could I help that?' she asked, feeling him unfair. 'What I mean is,
that every one, even my husband----'
'I have always heard you do a great deal for Sir George,' he said
nastily, regretting his unfairness even as he spoke. He need not have
done so, save for his own sake, since her defence annihilated him.
'As I would have done for you, Mr. Raymond.'
'I--I beg your pardon,' he said limply, feeling himself a brute. 'This
paper or letter, then, as I understand it, would have been a sort of
safe-conduct to prevent the authorities rounding on Sir George after
the event, as they are apt to do. As--a thought seemed to strike him,
and he looked at her sharply--'as they did on me. Your experience has
been useful to you, Lady Arbuthnot!'
She flushed up again. 'How could I prevent its being so? I am not a
fool. But you know quite well I do not come to you on his account. It
is because I am so afraid of the contents of that unfortunate letter
leaking out. With this general election going on----'
He shrugged his shoulders and rose. 'I am no politician, as I told you;
but as a personal matter----'
She rose also and challenged him with eyes, voice, and manner. 'I do
not choose it to be a personal matter. It is more than that; it might
concern the prestige, the honour of our Government! Surely you must
still care for that? You used----'
He interrupted her with a laugh. 'It would be in a parlous state if it
depended on me. I don't trouble my head about patriotism nowadays, I
assure you.'
She came a step nearer, as if to bar a hint he gave of leaving. 'Is
that possible?' she asked, almost sternly; 'within gunshot, as we stand
now, of a place where Englishmen died in hundreds to keep the hand of
their race upon the plough of India.'
The lightness had no choice but to pass from his face.
'Mine left it ten years ago, Lady Arbuthnot,' he said, his voice
matching hers; 'and yours, excuse me, is not the one to wile it back.
But for your husband's sake--not for yours, that past is past--I
will----'
She lost her temper absolutely then. 'Who thinks, who wishes it
otherwise? Can you not understand my motive in coming to you?'
'Perfectly,' he said coolly. 'You feel responsible--why, God knows!--
for the hash I have made of my life. I speak from your point of view,
remember. Of course, nothing I can say will mitigate this feeling; it
is a habit you good women have. Now I, as a man, should have thought
that the palpable result of my going my own way, instead of yours,
would have given you the certainty of having been right in refusing to
countenance it.'
She did not speak for a second, and when she did there was a tremor
in her voice. 'That doesn't lessen--the--the pity of it,' she said,
half to herself; 'it is pitiful. Even if you had any one, wife or
child----' She broke off and added apologetically, 'One can scarcely
help regrets.'
Once more the man in him felt annihilated by the revelation of the
woman in her. 'My--my dear, kind lady,' he said, touched in spite of
himself, 'I can assure you I get along splendidly all round. You're
all too kind. And as for the kids,' he added half nervously, for she
looked as if she would cry, and he wished to cheer her up, 'I'm chums
with the lot of them. Jerry, for instance! What a ripping little chap
he is--such a lot of go; but he isn't a bit like you.'
She stood looking at him without replying for a moment, and the
half-puzzled expression which had been in her face when she had watched
him and the child standing hand-in-hand at the racecourse returned to
it. 'No!' she said. 'Nor like his father. He has harked back in face to
my mother's people--she was a distant cousin of your father's, you
remember. And in mind--who knows? But I'm glad you like him; he returns
the compliment.'
It seemed so, indeed, for Jerry himself, appearing that instant, had
his hand tucked into Jack Raymond's even before he delivered his
message, which was to the effect that dad was wanting mum to go home.
He gabbled this through, in order to say, with a military formality
learned, to his great delight, from Captain Lloyd, 'Ah, sir! I'm glad
it's you; 'cos it isn't weally dark, an' Miss Dwummond's weading the
_Spectator_, so it's just the time for you to show me the pwoperest
places in the Garden Mound, please, as you pwomised you would. I mean
the places where people was blown up--or deaded somehow!'
'You bloodthirsty young ruffian!' laughed Jack Raymond, feeling
relieved at the interruption. 'All right! come along! I promised to
take him round and tell him about the defence, Lady Arbuthnot,' he
explained; 'but perhaps you will allow me to find your carriage for you
first.'
'Thanks,' she replied curtly, 'my husband will do that. Good-night, Mr.
Raymond. I am sorry I was not so successful in my request as--as my
son.'
He stared after her yet once more. Women were inexplicable. Here was
this one quite happily married--he had known that for years--and yet
she would have liked--what the deuce would she have liked? He turned
half impatiently to the child, and said, 'Come along, young Briton, and
be sentimental over the past! Come and contemplate the deeds of your
ancestors and make believe you're a hero. That's the game!'
'But I _am_ going to be one when I'm growed up, you know,' protested
Jerry.
The man paused and looked down at the child. 'If you get the chance,
dear little chap,' he said bitterly, 'but the mischief is that what
with express trains and telegrams, you've seldom to do more than you're
told to do. And so most of the C.B.'s and V.C.'s are given for doing
one's simple duty.'
'My dad's a C.B.,' commented the child sagely; 'but then he can do his
compound duties too. Can you?'
'Can I?' echoed the man, and his voice belied the inevitable smile on
his face. 'Well! I don't know. I expect I could, Jerry--if I tried.'
So hand-in-hand the two, boy and man, crossed the carriage-drive which
lay between the club and the rising ground beyond it. Ground kept as a
garden in memory of the deeds which had blossomed in its dust. For on
that scarce perceptible mound, the English flag, taking advantage of
every available inch to stand its highest, had floated for nine long
months over the rebel town of Nushapore. Had floated securely, though
the hands which held it grew fewer and weaker day by day. Had floated
royally, though kings' palaces challenged it from the right, challenged
it from the left.
And now, more than forty years after, the mound--set thick with
blossoming trees--stretched as a peaceful lawn between those palaces
still; but the one was an English club and the other Government House.
'That's the gate, Jerry,' said Jack Raymond, 'where Gunner Smith asked
the mutineers--they were only three feet from the wall, you know--to
oblige him with a pipe light, because he had been so long on duty that
he had run short.'
Jerry laughed vaingloriously, uproariously.
'That was to cheek 'em, sir, wasn't it, sir? For, of course, _he_
didn't care if he never smoked no more, so long as he kept 'em
outside! Oh! isn't it just orful nice?'--here he heaved a sigh of pure
delight--' and now, please, I want where boys like me did sentry, an'
where the guns got wed-hot and boomed off of 'emselves, an' where every
one blowed 'emselves up like in a stwawbewwy-cweam smash, becos' the
enemy was cweepin', cweepin' in, don't you know?'
The child's voice ran on, eager, joyous, hopeful, and the man was
conscious of a thrill that seemed to pass into his own veins from that
little clasping hand.
'All in good time, Jerry! don't rush your fences,' replied Jack
Raymond, and the thrill seemed to have invaded his voice.
So across the lawns, and along the winding walks bosomed in tall
trees, where the birds were twittering their nightly quarrel for the
uppermost roosting-place, those two, boy and man, the present and the
future of the race, with its unforgotten past linking them, strolled
hand-in-hand.
And the daylight lingering with the moonlight lay hand-in-hand also;
lay softly, kindly, upon all things.
'This is the east battery, Jerry,' said the man in a hushed voice, to
match the peace of the garden. 'Campbell--he was a relation of your
mother's, by the way, and so a sort of relation of mine--never left it
for five months. He is here still, if it comes to that, for he was
literally blown to bits at last by a shell he was trying to throw back
on the enemy. He'd done it dozens of times before, but this time--was
the last!'
There was not much to see. Only a slab in the dim grass with 'East
Battery' cut upon it.
'Mum told me about that,' said Jerry in an awed whisper. 'His name was
Gerald, same as mine,'--he paused to look doubtfully at the face above
him--'she said it was an eggsample to me. But I'm not goin' to be
blowed up first. My shells'll always burst just in the vewy wightest
places, bang in the middle of the enemy, so I can laugh at 'em before I
dead.'
Jack Raymond, passing on, felt a pang. 'Always in the very rightest
places!' That had been the dream of another boyhood.
The sky was as a pearl overhead; a pearl set in a darkening tracery of
trees. The moon began to stretch faint fingers of shadow after the
retreating day, and still those two, man and boy, passed from one
immemorial deed to another, while the small hand sent its thrill to the
big one, so that Jack Raymond wondered at the tremor in his voice as he
said, pointing through the trees--
'And there's the general's house with the English flag flying still!'
Jerry stiffened like a young pointer on its first covey, every inch of
him centred on the grey tower, its flagstaff draped dimly with the
royal ensign, which rose against the sky. Then, standing square, head
up, he saluted.
'Mum told me to do that always when I saw it,' he explained,
'because it's the only place in all the wide, wide world where the
flag flies day and night, to show, you know, that it never was hauled
down--never--never.' He heaved another sigh of satisfaction, but his
face took a puzzled expression. 'Only, you know, I've been here before.
I weally have. I wemember it quite, quite well. An' the guns was
booming, an' they was wanting to pull down the flag, an' I wouldn't let
them.'
Jack Raymond looked down at the child and smiled. 'You, or some one of
your sort, dear old chap; and I'll bet you'd do it again, wouldn't you,
Jerry?'
Jerry pulled himself together from the mysterious inheritance of the
past. 'I'm goin' to, some day,' he said succinctly. 'An' now, please, I
want where they buried 'em after dark. All pwoper wif surplices an'
"Safe, safe home in port," and all that; but torches and crack-bang
firings over the walls--though they was deaders already.'
The description, confused though it was by excess of picturesqueness,
sent Jack Raymond unerringly towards the little cemetery where so many
heroes rest. But ere they reached the gate, a woman's figure showed
upon a side-path.
'There's Miss Drummond; you'll have to go home now, young man,'
remarked Jack Raymond, feeling that though Jerrys enthusiasm did not
bore him, Lesley's might. But Jerry would have no excuse.
'Oh!' he said confidentially, '_she_ is only a woman. You tell her to
come, and she'll come all wight.
Jack Raymond looked towards the springy step and determined pose of the
head which was approaching him with alarm; but Jerry had already run
forward, slipped his hand into the girl's, and said--
'He says you're to come too, because he is going to tell us all about
the gwaves.'
'Not all,' protested Jack Raymond resignedly; 'but if Miss Drummond can
spare us a minute, I'll show you John Ellison's.'
The girl's face lit up. 'Isn't that about all?' she asked quickly. 'The
very name seems to dominate the place still. _Jân-Ali-shân!_ That's
what the natives call him, your father says, Jerry. It means the
"Spirit of Kings." A good name, isn't it, for the man who held this
garden against all comers, even starvation?'
Her head was up, her voice rang; but the thrill did not pass to the
man's heart from these as it had from the clasp of that little hand,
which some day would have a man's grip.
'There was a heap of bunkum talked, though, about the actual physical
privations of the mutiny time; they had iced soda and Moselle cup on
the ridge at Delhi, you know, Miss Drummond,' he said, out of pure
contrariety.
'I should like to be sure of that,' she began indignantly.
'I should like to be sure of a lot of mutiny tales,' he interrupted;
'but there's a halo of romance on our side and a shadow of fear on
theirs, which plays the deuce with abstract truth. I wish we could
forget the whole business.'
'Forget! Forget our glorious past!'
'Was it so glorious? I asked Budlu once'--he pointed to a white
ghostlike figure which had begun to follow them from the cemetery
gate--'how a mere handful of us here kept their thousands at bay.
Budlu is supposed to have been inside, during the siege, as a child's
bearer--that's why they made him caretaker; but I've reason to believe
he was outside--not that it matters now! Well, his answer was: "The
_sahibs_ had nothing to do with it. It was the dead women and the dead
babies. Every one knows that the strength of the strongest man is water
before the ghost of a mother and child."'
They had reached the slope of that gentle hollow where, even in their
bitterest stress, the living had crept obstinately, under cover of
night, to lay their dead to rest in the shadow of the deserted church,
and he paused to point downwards to a tall cypress and add, 'There is
John Ellison's grave.'
Lesley paused too. Calm and still in the moonlight, the grassy slopes,
set with flowers and blossoming shrubs, seemed to centre on that hollow
of heroes' graves, as they, in their turn, centred round the plain
plinth, with its marble slab under the cypress tree.
There were but two words on it--'John Ellison'--but they filled the
eye, the heart, the brain.
Lesley Drummond stood looking at them silently, and Jack Raymond stood
watching her, approving her silence. But Jerry, whose round childish
face had a curious ghostly look on it, as if he were seeing visions,
went creeping on round the plinth, his grey eyes wide; a stealthy
little figure dreaming of torches and deaders and crack-bang firings
over walls. But he was back in a second, his face eager, startled.
'Oh, if you please--he's quite, quite shot--lyin' there close by.
Hadn't we better buwy him?'
'Bury him? who?' asked Lesley; but Jack Raymond had grasped the child's
meaning, and was passing to the other side of the plinth to see for
himself. Then he looked up from the figure of a man which lay on its
back, its head supported on the first step of the plinth, asked a
question of Budlu the caretaker in Hindustani, and finally turned
reassuringly to Lesley.
'It is only an idle sweep of a loafer, Miss Drummond, who has rather a
queer story. Stay! I'll wake him--Budlu reports him sober--and he will
tell the story himself, I've no doubt.' As he spoke, a vigorous shake
roused the sleeper to an oath, then to a stare, finally to a bland
smile as he rose.
'Bin overtook by slumber, sir,' said a rich, mellow voice as (possibly
in evasion of more salient faults in his personality) the owner of it
began to brush away the dust and dry twigs which clung to his dirty
drill-clothing. 'The w'ich we all of us shall be w'en our time comes to
lie within the silent toomb--b.' He prolonged the final syllable into a
reminiscent humming of a funeral hymn until his task was done. Then he
looked up, and showed in the moonlight the face of a man about forty,
smooth shaven, of the bulldog type, with the mobile lips of a born
comedian.
'I done my level best with the job you giv' me down country, sir,' he
continued affably, yet with a furtive apology lurking beneath his
assurance, 'but it done no sort of dooty by me. I gone down two stone
in a six weeks with them pestilential chills, so w'ot with plague
follerin' famine like the prayer-book, sir, I made bold to cut back to
Nushapore. I 'adn't a grave bespoke there, sir, as I 'ave here; an' so
I didn't want no
"Death's bright Angel speakin' in a chord a-ga-ain."'
Once more that prolongation of the final syllable was followed by an
appropriate tune.
'If you don't mend your ways, my man,' said Jack Raymond severely,
'you'll have no grave bespoke here either. The authorities won't
allow----'
'Can't 'elp 'emselves, sir,' interrupted the loafer, touching the
battered billycock hat which he had resumed after a careful dusting.
'It's the Queen's regulations, sir, that them as went through the siege
may wait for the las' trump in an 'ero's grave beside _'is_, if they
choose. An', Lord love you! I do choose, for they chris'en me in token
I shouldn't fear the very day _'e_ died.' He laid his hand on the slab.
'That was why they called you John Ellison, wasn't it?' asked Jack
Raymond, with a side-look at Lesley, which the loafer appraised, for he
replied coolly--
'Yes, m'lady! Mr. Raymon', 'e know the story correc'! My father died o'
the drink a few days afore we come into the Garding Mound, an' my
mother--savin' your presence, m'lady, she didn't 'ave bin to church
with 'im through 'er real 'usband 'aving deserted 'er or died, cruel
uncertain--she popped off a few days after I, so to speak, popped in.
That was nigh on a nine-months' sequent. So I was through the siege,
m'lady, from the beginnin', an' 'avin' no one to promise an' vow when
they Holy baptismed me the day _'e_ died, they called me John Ellison.
And an uncommon good name it is, m'lady, though I've took it to a sight
o' queer places since; for I seen a deal o' life at 'ome an' abroad, as
the sayin' is. Bin in a surplus chore singin' 'ymns seven year, m'lady;
an' pickin' up sticks for a Aunt Sally two. Then I served my way out to
see
"--the place where I was born"'--
he paused for a faint humming--'an' Mr. Raymon', good gentleman, 'e
'ave put me in to a many jobs, but only local demons; they ain't
some'ow bin no sort of permanent. An'
"So the world goes round and round
Until our life with sleep is crowned--d--d."'
He was fairly afloat this time with his rich mellow voice, when Jack
Raymond bid him shut up and not play the fool. Why couldn't he stick to
work when it was given him?
The jauntiness disappeared in a curiously dignified dejection. 'By the
Lord 'oo made me, sir,' he said contritely, 'I dun'no. I begins well;
then--I--I don't! I git on the lap foolin' round them bazaars, until I
'aven't a feather ter fly with. Then _'e_ begin to dror me to 'im--m.'
He paused again to indicate the slab, and the final syllable merged
into the whole first line of 'They grew in beauty side by side.' 'Beg
parding, sir,' he went on, anticipating reproof, 'but the warblin'
fetches me 'ome so often, wot with penny gaffs an' such like, that it
gits a continooal hold on me too frequent.'
'You'll lay hold of nothing else soon,' retorted Jack Raymond. 'You're
out of work now, I suppose?'
'Jes' so, sir; ready for active service.'
'And I've a great mind to let you find it for yourself. However, you're
in the Strangers' Home, I suppose, as usual?'
'As usooal, sir!' came the cheerful reply, and as they passed on, the
mellow rich tenor followed them in a florid rendering of 'Home, sweet
Home.' It echoed through the hollow of heroes, over the grave-set slope
where the descendants of those who held the fort are allowed burial,
and so passed with the little party to the gate. Here Budlu, who had
followed all the time, ghostlike, silent, made some petition in Urdu,
to which Jack Raymond replied with a smile.
'He said something about "_Jân-Ali-shân_," didn't he?' asked Lesley.
'You must excuse the curiosity, but I am naturally anxious to learn
everything about India.'
'A most laudable ambition, I'm sure,' he replied drily. 'Budlu only
wanted to know, Miss Drummond, if _Jân-Ali-shân_ was going back to his
grave to-night; for if not, it would be better to leave the cemetery
gate open--he usually locks it at sundown.'
'_Jân-Ali-shân_!' she echoed aghast. 'He can't call that wretched
creature--he can't think----'
Jack Raymond interrupted her. 'I don't know very much about the
possibilities or impossibilities of India, though I've lived in it for
twenty years; but I do happen to know that half Nushapore has a
sneaking idea that the wretched creature is, well, a sort of emanation
of the great John Ellison. He has the same strain, you see, of sheer
devilry, pluck, ability, call it what you will--the something that
makes its mark on Eastern people. And they think he comes for revenge,
because, as you heard him say, he is in such a mortal funk of being
cheated out of "an 'ero's grave" if he dies away from Nushapore, that
he always comes back when there's trouble about. The natives are quick
to notice such things. Well, he may have his tens of thousands this
year.'
'You mean that the plague will come?'
'And a row, too, if we aren't careful.'
Jerry's hand tightened on Jack Raymond's. 'A weal wow, sir, with sieges
and everything?'
'Sieges? Well, I don't know. What do you want sieges for, young man?'
The child's face showed confident. 'Because I want an 'ero's grave
of my vewy own, like what that man's got. An' it wouldn't be
dog-in-the-mangery, like two pieces of cake, Miss Dwummond, 'cos I
could lend it to other people till I weally did want it; but if it was
my vewy own, you see'--he hesitated, then a sudden comprehension seemed
to come to him--'then I could fight all the vewy biggest big boys
wifout caring. For I could pop into my gwave an' laugh at 'em, even if
I was licked--'cos--'cos I should have won weally--shouldn't I, sir?'
The moon shone clear on the ruins before them, and all around them,
hidden in the shadows of the trees, lay the little world which forty
years before had defied a big one. Through the still silence came only
that twittering of birds fighting for a roosting-place, until the man's
voice said evenly--
'It is a question, Jerry, "_how far high failure overleaps the bound of
low successes_." Ask Miss Drummond; I don't know.'
The answering woman's voice came swiftly. 'Surely this is no place for
an Englishman to talk of failure!'
He turned sharply. So this girl was at it now; she too wanted to rouse
him; she had heard the story--or part of it.
'I almost wish it were,' he answered bitterly; 'then we might forget
it. But the glory of it gets to our heads--we come back to it again and
again.'
He stopped abruptly, for a tenor voice rose in sweet undertones upon
that twittering of birds--
'There is a green hill far away,
Outside a city wall.'
The singing and the faint crush of gravel ceased together, as the
singer, passing them, drew up and touched the old billycock hat.
'Beg parding, sir,' said John Ellison, loafer, 'but p'r'aps you'd care
to 'ear there was a man dead o' plague taken out o' the train I come in
this mornin'.'
'Thanks,' replied Jack Raymond. 'I know there have been several
isolated cases.'
'Jes' so, sir; not as there's so much isolation, not to speak of, in
them third-class cattle-pens,' assented the mellow voice; and as the
footstep passed on, it kept time to the refrain of
'Wait for the wagon, and we'll all take a ride.'
'I expect we shall,' remarked Jack Raymond grimly, and his mind
reverted to Grace Arbuthnot and her husband. There might be need for
that safe-conduct ere long. Well, they must manage things as best they
could; he wouldn't.
'Oh! I do hope there'll be a wow, a weal wow!' came Jerry's prayerful
voice.