THE SINEWS OF WAR
There was a strong smell of carbolic in Miss Leezie's house, for the
bazaar on which it gave was being cleaned by half a dozen sweepers, a
water-carrier, and the conservancy overseer in a uniform coat with a
brass badge; his part being to dole out the disinfectant and survey the
proceedings from various doorsteps in advance of the slimy black
sludge, which was being propelled by the sweepers' brooms along the
open gutters--those scientifically-sloped, saucer-shaped gutters that
are the pride of every cantonment magistrate's heart.
The cleansing of them was scientific also; partly because the
conservancy _darogha_ knew that the Lieutenant-Governor was due in
cantonments that afternoon; mostly, however, because that particular
bazaar, being a favourite lounge for the dwellers in the barracks round
the corner, the orders regarding its cleanliness were strict.
It was, therefore, as clean as it is possible to keep a road between
two tight-packed rows of mud houses which are guiltless of any sanitary
appliances, unlimited as to inmates, and from which all refuse has to
find its way into the gutter; unless, as sometimes happens, the moving
of it even thus far is considered too much trouble, and it is left to
fester and rot in some dark corner within, until it betrays itself, and
brings raids and fines upon the injured inhabitants.
Even so, there was filth and to spare for the brooms; filth that smelt
horribly beneath its veneer of carbolic. More than once, indeed, the
white-trousered legs belonging to the uniform coat and the badge had,
when the wearer had forgotten sewage in a pull at some shopkeeper's
pipe, to withdraw themselves hastily from the oncoming of a regular
bore of unutterable muck, which came sweeping along like a tidal wave,
overwhelming even scientific saucers.
It happened so at the aerated-water seller's, whose shop was beneath
Miss Leezie's balconied apartments. It was an excellent position for
the trade, and though he only charged _two pice_ a bottle for soda and
lemonade, he found no difficulty in paying a heavy licence for the
privilege of selling Shahjeshanpore rum, potato brandy, and bad whisky,
in addition to the waters.
But then he could make the latter for less than they could at the
regimental factory, where they had to use filters, and satisfy the
inspecting doctor that everything was according to rule and regulation;
just as they had to satisfy him at the regimental dairies that the few
drops of milk given to the soldier in barracks were as pure as care
could make them.
The purity, of course, raised the price of milk to the authorities; but
they did not grudge the expense to themselves in such a good cause.
Besides, if the soldiers wanted more milk--and some of the boys fresh
out from home were still young enough to prefer a tumbler of it to one
of bad spirit and tepid soda--there was always plenty of the cheaper
quality to be bought at the sweetmeat shops.
And of these, as well as of fruit shops and sherbet shops, there were
many in the bazaar where Miss Leezie and her kind lodged in the upper
stories; so that either above or below, the dwellers in the barracks
round the corner could find enough to satisfy the appetite.
Therefore the smell of carbolic was conscientiously mingled with that
of decaying melon rinds, sour milk, drains, and musk; and the outcome
of the atmosphere was left to Providence.
The immediate result was not savoury; especially in the low stuffy
room, as yet shut out from the light and air of the balcony by wadded
_portières_, in which a woman, lounging in one corner, was idly
allowing her fingers to flirt on the parchment of a drum--one of those
small, quaint drums shaped like Time's hour-glass, which produce what
Grace Arbuthnot had told herself was the most restless sound on God's
earth.
It had the same passion of unrest, here in this squalid room, though it
was scarcely loud enough to stir the air heavy with that horrible
compound of smells.
The woman was Miss Leezie herself, as yet negligent in purely native
_déshabillé_; for the afternoon was still young, and she knew that
custom would be late owing to the Artillery Sports. Indeed, she was
going to them herself, by and by, with some of her apprentices, in a
hired carriage. But she was not taking Sobrai; for Sobrai was wilful,
oddly attractive withal, and therefore dangerous to the discipline of
cantonments. With an evil tongue also, so that Miss Leezie looked over
in lazy anger to the opposite corner of the room, whence a shrill
assertion that the speaker would not be put upon had just risen.
'Then thou hadst best go back to the city and Dilarâm, fool!' said the
mistress of the house sharply; 'for if thou stayest here, it must be to
walk sober, as we all do, to the time of the fifes and drums. My house
hath a good name, and I will not have it given an ill one for all the
apprentices in Nushapore. So if thou wilt not obey, go! There be plenty
of that sort, unlicensed, beyond the boundaries. But we are different;
we are approved!'
She leant back with palpable pride against a wall which found its only
purification from the rub of red coats, and that civilised flavouring
of carbolic in the smell of drains and garbage.
Sobrai scowled sulkily. She had set her heart on going to the sports in
a conglomerate attire of white flounced muslin, tight silk trousers,
nose-ring and kid gloves; preferably on the roof of the hired green box
on wheels within which Miss Leezie would sit in dignified state.
'I did not come hither to rot within four walls? I could have done that
in the city,' she shrilled, louder still.
'Hold thy peace, idiot!' interrupted Miss Leezie, 'if thou dost dare to
raise a commotion now, when at any moment the Lât-_sahib_ himself may
come driving past, 'twill be the worse for thee!'
'Wah! thou canst do nothing,' answered Sobrai; feeling cowed, despite
the assertion, by Miss Leezie's tone.
'Nothing!' echoed the latter, with a hideous laugh. 'Nay, sister, such
as thou art at the mercy of a whisper. I have but to make it, and out
thou goest, neck and crop, to the sound of the fifes and drums. Nay,
more'; she rose slowly, and with the hour-glass of bent wood and
parchment in her hand crossed to stand in front of the sullen figure,
and go on drumming softly in imitation of a march. Then after a glance
at the other drowsy figures in the room, she leant down to the girl's
ear to repeat savagely--'Ay! and more. I can put thee in, as well as
turn thee out. Put thee in the four walls of a real prison. Remember
the stolen pearls, Sobrai!'
The girl laughed defiantly, cunningly. 'Lo! hast thou thought of _that_
at last? but I am no fool, Leezie. I counted the cost ere I gave them
in payment to thee. See you, _thy_ blame for receiving them is as
_mine_ for taking them. That is the _sahib's_ law. And then, who is to
say they are stolen? Not Jehân. He would not own his loss, if the
owning meant that the city should know one of his women, Sobrai Begum,
princess, was in Miss Leezie's house. That would be dishonour, for all
it hath such a good name!'
She essayed a giggle, but it failed before the coarse sensuous face,
where the _blanc de perle_ of full dress still lingered in almost awful
contrast to the veil of Eastern modesty.
'Listen, fool!' replied the past mistress in the rules and regulations
within which vice is safer than virtue. 'Listen, and quit striving.
Thou art mine. Not only as those others,' she flirted her hand from the
drum to the dozing girls, 'whom fear of the fife and drum keeps in my
power. I would not have taken thee without other leading strings,
knowing thee as I do--wilful, ay! and clever too, girl--with patience,
sure to do well'--she threw this sop in carelessly.--'But I found the
reins to my hand. Or ever I took thy pearls, I knew there were more
than Jehân's amissing; for the police come ever to us first.'
'More than Jehân's?' echoed Sobrai stupidly. 'What then?'
'This,' whispered Miss Leezie fiercely. 'Those four paltry pearls shall
not be Jehân's leavings on the carpet, but earnest for the whole string
of the same set; mark you, the same set,' she laughed maliciously,
'which thou didst steal from the Lady-_sahib_. It is all in the power
of the police, and they are my friends. So if thou dost so much as
raise thy voice, I will raise mine.'
'From the Lady-_sahib_,' faltered Sobrai, aghast.
'Ay, from the Lady--_sahib_. Hark! that will be the Lât himself coming
to satisfy himself all is as it should be. Shall I tell him now, when I
make my _salaam_ as is due, or wilt thou promise?'
She paused, her hand on the _portière_, ere going into the balcony, and
waited for a sign of surrender from Sobrai.
'But it is not true'--protested the latter.
Miss Leezie laughed. 'As true as aught thou canst bring; since, as thou
sayest, Jehân will not own up. Quick! shall I speak?'
Sobrai sate stunned, silent, then dropped her head between her knees.
So the _portière_ slid sideways, letting in a shaft of sunlight, a
stronger whiff of carbolic, and the rumble of a passing vehicle. But
only for a second; for in the carriage which came rapidly down the
swept and garnished bazaar, ablaze with sunlight, there were ladies,
and Miss Leezie, therefore, drew back decorously; to continue gazing,
however, through a side slit.
'He hath his _mems_ with him,' she explained to the drowsy crew roused
by the rumble. 'Two, and one is beautiful as a _houri_. But they wear
no fringe. Is that to be "fassen," think you? 'Tis as well to be in
it.'
And, as the carriage passed, the slit grew wider and wider as one pair
after another of bold black eyes noted the lack of fringe in Grace
Arbuthnot and Lesley Drummond, who were accompanying Sir George so far,
on their way to be shown over one of the hospitals by the Head Sister;
under whom, it so happened, Lesley had served when, after modern
fashion, she had 'gone in for a year's nursing.'
'It is certainly most beautifully clean; it ought to be healthy
enough,' was her remark now, as she drove past, ignorant not only of
the eyes that were turning her into a fashion plate, but of everything
in the environment.
'It couldn't well be cleaner,' assented Grace, with a faint reservation
in her voice; but she, too, was unconscious of those watching eyes,
those mimicking minds.
'Quite so,' admitted Sir George dubiously. 'Everything is done that can
be done, of course; but it is uncommonly hard to make a bazaar
healthy.'
He glanced back, as he spoke, at the balcony above the soda-water shop.
The children, little naked happy brown creatures, were playing in the
sunshine. The shopkeepers stood up to _salaam_. An _ekka_ load or two
of soldiers in uniform, their legs dangling outwards on all sides,
their red bodies jammed to shapelessness in the effort to find sitting
room on the jimp seat till the whole looked like a huge toy crab on
wheels, rattled past towards the Artillery parade-ground, their songs
and laughter audible above the rattle.
So, abruptly, the bazaar ended, and the cantonment church showed its
spire above some stunted trees.
The sweepers, having finished the gutters by this time, were at work on
the church compound clearing away the litter of yesterday's services;
and they drew up in line, the _darogha_ with his disinfectants at their
head, to _salaam_, brooms in hand, as the carriage drove past.
Then suddenly, beyond the church, separated by it only from the bazaar,
was the bareness of the barracks. A dozen or more of them set at
different angles, long, low, all to pattern, absolutely
indistinguishable from each other save by the big black number painted
on the gable-ends. Desolate utterly, lacking for the most part any
reason, whatever, why they should stand on that particular spot instead
of upon another in the dry, bare, sun-scorched plots of ground
intersected by dry, white, dusty roads. But two or three of them--those
farthest away--apparently had a somewhat efficient one, for Sir George
said, pointing them out--
'Those are the hospitals, over there, close to the cemetery. I'll drop
you and go on to my committee. The carriage can return and take you on
to the sports. I can walk--I mean if there is time after we've settled
things.'
The dubious tone was in his voice once more; perhaps the renewed smell
of carbolic, mixed with iodoform, engendered doubt as to the efficacy
of anything but heroic treatment.
The smell was strong in the comfortable little room where Grace and
Lesley waited for Sister Mary, and it came in, still stronger, with the
latter's workmanlike grey dress and scarlet facings.
'Dr. Sullivan is here, and can take you round at once, Lady Arbuthnot,'
she said cheerfully; 'and then, if you will honour us, he will drive
you over to our mess for tea before you go on to the sports.'
It was all so cut-and-dried, so commonplace, so, as it were,
inevitable, so almost proper, to this kind-faced woman whose work
it was; but the first glance into that unnaturally long, unnaturally
bare, unnaturally clean room, with its windows set high, so that the
twenty-four beds down one side and the twenty-four beds down the other
side should be free of draught yet full of air, gave Grace Arbuthnot a
sudden almost resistless desire to call aloud, to clap her hands, to do
something, anything, to drive the sight from her, to startle it into
flight, to rouse herself from the nightmare of it.
'This is the enteric ward,' said Sister Mary in a matter-of-fact tone.
'All the beds are full to-day, and Dr. Sullivan--but he will tell you
himself. There he is, coming from the officers' ward.'
'Have you many in there?' asked Lesley.
'Only three, and we are not sure of one. He owns, however, to having
drunk a lot of milk when he was thirsty out shooting, and that is
always suspicious. We shall know in a day or two.'
'It comes often through the milk, doesn't it?' remarked Grace dreamily;
she was absorbed in the face which showed on the bed beside which she
was standing. A face on the pillow. No more. All the rest tidy, folded
sheet and coverlet. Such a boyish face--sleeping or unconscious.
Peaceful absolutely, but so strangely aloof even from that long low
room, with its endless appliances, its evidence of energy, time, money,
lavished regardlessly in the effort to save.
Sister Mary smiled gently, tolerantly. 'I think generally. We always
sterilise _our_ milk in hospital, you know.
As Grace Arbuthnot shook hands with the doctor, who came up at that
moment, she was conscious of a confused quotation trying to formulate
itself at the back of her brain, about closing doors when steeds are
stolen, and sterilising seeds when they have been sown.
The doctor's kind eyes, however, drove the thought away; for they were
eyes which seemed to see the nightmare, hidden under all the care and
the comfort, more clearly than Sister Mary's; though hers were kind to
the uttermost also--kind and quick--so that, as she passed down the row
of beds with the visitors, she left the other sisters and the orderlies
busy. And more than once her eyes and the doctor's--the woman's and the
man's--met, after looking at a boy's face, with regret or relief in
them. But no one said a word of better or worse, except now and again a
wistful voice from the beds that stood so close together.
'What young faces!' said Grace in an undertone; there was a
constriction in her throat which might have prevented her speaking loud
had she wished to do so.
'I doubt if there is a case over two-and-twenty in the ward,' replied
Dr. Sullivan, 'except'--he paused beside a cot in the far corner, where
a nurse sate at the head and an orderly waited at the foot--'except
this one.'
He spoke without any attempt at an aside, for the face staring up with
open eyes at the ceiling was unmistakably unconscious; yet, even so,
curiously haggard, weary, anxious.
'He is a hospital orderly,' went on the doctor, 'the best nurse I ever
came across. I wonder how many fellows he's pulled through in his
fifteen years of it. But it has got him at last, though he was careful.
In a hurry possibly, and didn't disinfect; there's been a terrible rush
lately, and very little will do it. Poor old Steady Normal!' He laid
his hand regretfully on the anxious forehead for an instant, and the
expression on his face was mirrored in those around him. 'They called
him that, Lady Arbuthnot,' he explained, 'because he used to beam all
over when he could echo that report. Well, if anybody pulls through, he
ought to, in justice; but it's a bad case. You see, he is saturated
with the poison.'
So on and on they passed, down one side and up the other, pausing by
each bed to look at what lay there, and compare it with the chart which
Sister Mary unhooked from the wall and handed to the doctor.
It got on Grace Arbuthnot's nerves at last--the methodical calm of it
all, the smiles that were so cheerfully sympathetic or so wistfully
impatient, the studious speech, the still more studious silence. Until
at last, when the end was near, and Dr. Sullivan's finger, travelling
over a chart, pointed out a level after a series of peaks and passes,
she could not help seeking relief in the remark that 'some one was out
of the wood!'
A contented smile came to the face she was leaving, but a look showed
on the one she was approaching which struck her like a blow, which she
felt she could never forget, so full was it of something akin to anger
in its hopeless, helpless blame.
'He is in the thick of it, poor chap,' said the doctor in a low voice;
'only came in yesterday.'
And Grace's eyes, dim with tears, could scarcely see the jagged notches
rising higher and higher in the fresh unfingered chart that was being
shown her.
'Can nothing be done?' she asked abruptly, when the doctor was driving
her over to the mess in his dogcart. The others were walking, and he
had just pointed out the temporary hospital they had had to open.
He shook his head. 'God knows! Sometimes I think I could, with a free
hand. We do what we can, as it is, but what can you expect when the men
get sitting about the bazaars, and eating and drinking filth. There is
only one way out of it now, Lady Arbuthnot, as I hope you'll tell Sir
George. Get 'em away into the desert, _not_ to be tempted of the devil,
but to--what shall we say?--to--to get back the sinews of war!' he
finished, proud of his quotation.
It was apt enough to recur more than once to Grace Arbuthnot's mind as
she watched the sports; once, especially, when a tug-of-war began, and
a team of boys, big enough, but soft-looking, stood up against the
Artillery.
'They haven't a chance against us!' said Nevill Lloyd, with pardonable
pride. 'To begin with, we are accustomed to handle ropes; and then!--of
course, if the Highlanders had been here still, there'd have been a
fight, but these new fellows haven't the sinew--as yet.'
They pulled pluckily, though, for all they were worth, encouraged
thereat, amongst other supporters, by a number of big upstanding sepoys
from the native lines. They were in _mufti_, which, however, was no
disguise to their martial swagger and palpable pride of strength.
'Don't pull, brotherlings!' they advised; 'put the weight on the rope
and stand steady. So! Oh, 'tis God's will! He has not given the weight
yet. It will come, brothers! Meanwhile it is fate, not defeat.'
But as they turned carelessly from the end, one said to his neighbour,
'_Ari bhai!_ We could have taught the _tope khana-wallahs_ a lesson.'
And the neighbour laughed.
'Yea, if they gave us the chance, but they will not. They know we of
the _pultans_ are bigger and stronger than they of the _rigiments_, but
they would not have the world know it; as if it could not see!'
As he stood aside cheerfully, almost respectfully, to let a
smooth-faced fresh-coloured boy in a red coat pass, he proved his
words, for he towered a good head above him, and could have covered two
of him in breadth.
Nevill Lloyd, standing beside the Arbuthnots' carriage, overheard the
remark and frowned.
'I should like to challenge those fellows,' he said vexedly. 'I know we
could pull 'em over and knock the conceit out of 'em.'
'Then why don't you?' asked Lesley, smiling; she and the aide-de-camp
had become fast friends, chiefly over their mutual devotion to Grace
Arbuthnot.
'They won't let us. They say it is likely to rouse ill-feeling and all
that. And then,' he went on frankly, 'of course it wouldn't do to get
licked too often, you know, and one can't expect our boys to collar men
who do dumb-bells all day like those fellows do.'
Grace, sitting beside Lesley, thought they might do worse.
But, boys or men, the sports were good, and held half cantonments and
not a few from the city, interested in the various events, while the
sun sank slowly to the curiously limitless limit of the level horizon.
Lateefa the kite-maker was there, amongst others, finding a sale for
his airy nothingnesses betweenwhiles, as he passed through the crowd
with that quaint cry of--
'Use eyes and choose
Eyes use and choose.'
Jehân Aziz was there also, in his third-best brocade coat, and with a
half-cringing, half-defiant avoidance of Mr. Lucanaster, who, red-tied
as usual, was betting gloves with Mrs. Chris Davenant. For that, the
lady in question told herself, was quite the correct thing to do; and
as the ball which was to prove her admittance into the best society had
not yet come off, Mrs. Chris, as Jack Raymond had predicted, was
careful. Though in truth she found a strict adherence to etiquette
somewhat slow.
With an easier code and a greater inclination to scorn it, Sobrai Begum
was finding the same thing in the half-empty bazaar, where she had been
left in charge of a toothless old hag who had once enjoyed the doubtful
dignity of Miss Leezie's position, but who, having grown too old for
the post, had remained on in the house as a domestic drudge of the most
exemplary pattern. The poor old soul, however, suffered from an all too
intimate acquaintance with the gutters as they lay reeking in the chill
dawns, when those for whom she worked lay still curled up in their
wadded quilts. So, when an hour or so had been spent after the approved
fashion of her kind, in cozening her charge out of ill-humour, the
fever fiend seized on her, and laid her by the heels in a backyard,
more than half-unconscious.
Sobrai therefore, relaxed from surveillance, began to wonder sulkily
how she had best utilise her freedom. She had been long enough with
Miss Leezie to make her remember Lateefa's caution; to make her wonder
if Dilarâm and the old ways were not best.
There was no reason, nevertheless, why they should be so. She was a
clever girl in her way, with an ancestry of pride as well as
wickedness; and above all, of a fierce faculty for obtaining personal
gratification.
And there was none here. All was rule and regulation. No freedom, no
fun, no frivolity; in a way, no choice. But that, she told herself, was
the result of Miss Leezie's mean breeding. Dilarâm enjoyed herself
more, and so would she, Sobrai Begum of the King's House, if _she_ had
the management of affairs! Miss Leezie said it would not pay; but what
was money beside amusement? And who was Miss Leezie to judge? A low
born, who did not know, who could not play the part!
A sudden determination to play it for an hour, and see the result,
seized on the girl. She had the necessary dress; an old one of her
mother's, which she had brought with her in case. The jewels were
trumpery, of course, but they looked well. There would be time for a
little fun, perhaps, before her task-mistress returned and the bazaar
filled.
It was a full hour after this determination of hers, and the dusk had
begun to fall, when a young fellow in a red coat came lounging through
the still empty bazaar.
He had just come out of a six weeks' sojourn in hospital, and so his
pockets were full, for a soldier's, with unstopped ration money. He
had, indeed, intended to lavish some of it at the sports, and so
celebrate his return to freedom; but, being still given to invalid
habits, he had fallen asleep after barrack dinner, only awaking to
find his comrades, and every available conveyance, gone. So, feeling
ill-used, he had shirked the walk, sulked for a while, and finally,
having nothing else to do, sought the perennial possibilities of the
bazaar round the corner.
Even that was dreary. Sweetmeat sellers, fruit sellers, liquor sellers,
had all followed their clients to the Artillery parade-ground. The very
balconies were empty. So, in a mood compounded of recklessness and
bitter home-sickness, he kicked up some one in the shop below Miss
Leezie's apartments, insisted on drink, and sitting down on a chair
placed for him over the gutter, relapsed into a sort of half-fierce,
half-sullen torpor. It was not in truth very lively for a fairly well
educated boy, who had only himself to thank that he was not--as his
schoolfellows were, for the most part--a city clerk with a cycle! But
he had been restless, and he had read _Soldiers Three_ and the _Arabian
Nights_.
He looked savagely round the glowing gloom--for the attractions of a
musical ride by torchlight kept even the shopkeepers late, and so the
cavernous shadows of their squalid shops were still unlit--and swore
under his breath at India, and all its ways and works. No fun, no
music-halls, no anything. Nothing worth being wicked about, even.
He gulped down the vile mixture of flat soda and bad brandy, turned his
chair round to face the houses, and cocking his feet up on the plinth
before the stairs which led up to Miss Leezie's balconies, settled
himself to wait till the bazaar became lively. It would be more so than
usual, of course, that evening, since the men had to return to barracks
through it. It was only a question of waiting till some interest came
into life.
One came very soon and quite unexpectedly.
This entrance to the balconies was partitioned off from the shops on
either side, and consisted of a tiny, empty square, hung with a
withered garland or two above the door which blocked the stairs.
This was closed; but it opened slowly, after a time, and a girl stepped
out into the square, that was little bigger than a sentry-box, stepped
out till the billowy curves of faded brocade about her feet almost
touched those of No. 34 B Company.
He sate up and stared. This was something he had never seen before!
This was the Arabian Nights!
It was, however, only Sobrai in the dress of a princess of the blood
royal; softly orange and yellow in her trailing skirts, faintly purple
and gold above, with a starred green veil hiding all but the gleam of
sham jewels, the lustre of false pearls, and a finger-tip placed in
warning where the lips should be.
He took the hint and stared silently, his blood racing through his
veins, not from any suggestion of balconies and their like, but from
curiosity, from excitement, from, in a way, the admiration which is the
antithesis of balconies; for though he knew it not, Sobrai's dress and
address were those of the virtuous woman entertaining her lawful owner.
So, with a _salaam_, whose grace had been caught from Noormahal, the
girl slipped to the ground among her brocades, and No. 34 B Company
instinctively slipped his feet from the plinth also.
There was silence for a second or two; then another hand stole out from
the green and gold stars that were so shadowy, yet so clear. A hand
clasping an hour-glass drum by its narrow waist, and twirling it gently
so that the leaded silken tassels on its fringe did the duty of
fingers, and sent that strange unrest throbbing out into the air.
But the voice that followed it robbed the sound of its usual character,
and took the restlessness into a definite cause. For Sobrai's song was
not of the bazaars. It was of the palaces. A bard's song of old days
and dead kings, of war, and death, and victory. No. 34 B Company sate
with his hands clenching his knees and listened almost stupidly, until,
suddenly, a returning torch flung a great beam of glaring light into
the shadows which almost hid the singer, and revealed a pair of black
eyes amid the stars.
He stood up then, and caught his breath in hard.
This was ripping, simply ripping. He had not had to use the adjective
for months, and with it came back a world of recollection--of idle
harmless larks, of boyish mischief. It almost seemed as if the figure
understood, for a gleam of pure mischief came to the black eyes, as
Sobrai stood up also. In truth she found it ripping also, the only bit
of fun she had had in a fortnight's freedom!
And behind No. 34 B Company's red coat some fresh spectators had
gathered, curious, surprised.
A sudden dare-devil delight seized on the girl, her voice rose to its
fullest pitch, she began to dance. Not with the posturings and
suggestions of the bazaar, but with dignified gestures and scarcely
perceptible swayings suited to her heavy robes, and to the words she
sang. And all but her eyes were still covered by the green and the
stars. And now a rushlight or two, caught hastily from the neighbouring
shops, came to show more distinctly that graceful figure, and a voice
or two in English called out to friends behind to come and see.
The bazaar was re-filling; but it was forgetting other things in
her--Sobrai!
The thought, the unmistakable admiration, drove caution to the
right-about. Let Miss Leezie come and see, if she chose! See that the
apprentice had been right, that it was amusement people wanted!
For the present, indeed, it seemed so.
How long the novelty might have kept familiarity in check, it is
impossible to say; for there was Miss Leezie horrified, indignant,
forcing her way shrilly through a gathering of red-coats sufficient to
ruin the good name of her house, should it be seen by any of the
authorities.
And Heaven only knew whether some might not fancy that bazaar as a
short-cut home!
'You let 'er be--she's worth ten o' your lot,' remonstrated more than
one voice; but No. 34 B Company had got further in admiration than
that. Sobrai, for the time, had captured his imagination. It was vice
against virtue, or at any rate dull sensuality against romance.
Perhaps Sobrai saw something of this in his eyes. Anyhow, with a fierce
exultation, she threw back her veil, and the hour-glass drum, twirled
above her head, sent its message out over the clustering crowd.
So it came to pass that Lady Arbuthnot, driving home, saw in the flesh
what she had seen in her mind's eye--the woman's figure centring a
circle of eager men's faces.
'Stand back! clear the way! _Hut! Hut!_' came the orders of policemen,
recalled to a sense of duty. Then came a louder one, as an inspector on
his way back rode up to see what caused the block.
In an instant there was an uproar, a boy's voice, 'Don't you touch her,
you----' a scuffle, a blow, a fall, a girl's shriek.
Finally there was a lull, with two red-coats, under the orders of a
passing officer, holding back a third, Miss Leezie protesting
innocence, and a girl, still defiant, shrinking back into the darkest
corner of the narrow entrance.
'She doth not belong to me,' shrilled Miss Leezie. 'She comes from the
city. I am not responsible. I will prove her thief.'
'It is a lie! I am no thief,' gasped Sobrai, shrinking still farther
from the policeman, who stepped up on to the plinth, while the
red-coat, held by the other two, struggled madly.
'Oh! dash it all,' muttered the officer to himself, 'this can't be
allowed. Sergeant, send your prisoner to the quarter-guard under
escort, and see that every one returns to barracks at once. Constable,
arrest both women.'
Miss Leezie fell on her knees and shrieked.
'_Huzoor!_ I can prove her thief. She hath pearls like the
Lady-_sahib's_ pearls. She offered them to me as a bribe to take her
into my house this very day, and I, dissembling, said I would see, and
kept the pearls to show the police. I have them. She is thief for
sure!'
'Touch me not! I am no thief; they are mine!' panted Sobrai as the
policeman dragged her forward. Then, as the sense of indignity came to
her, she fought desperately. 'I am no thief--I am no common woman.
Touch me not, I am Sobrai of the Nawâb's house! The pearls are his. I
am princess, I say? Will none help me? Oh! Lateef, Lateef! say it is
true!'
She had broken from her captor with sudden irresistible passion, and
thrown herself at the feet of some one who had newly pushed his way
into the crowd; so, her hands clasping a pair of thin legs, she looked
in frantic appeal to the thin face of the kite-maker.
But Lateefa knew his part of hanger-on to nobility better than to admit
anything derogatory to its honour. He essayed to pass on with his
quaint cry--
'Use eyes and choose,
Use and choose.'
It was, perhaps, an unfortunately well-known one; and many of those
present, seeing the girl's brocades and remembering her gestures,
hesitated; while one said--
'He is Lateefa of Jehân's house for sure. She hath his name pat. Mayhap
she says truth!'
The sergeant of police pulled out another pair of handcuffs with
evident joy.
'There is room for both in the lock-up,' he said cheerfully.
Lateefa gave a jerk to the string he held, which sent the single kite,
which he always reserved as his trade-mark, skimming downwards in the
gloom, to rise again higher than ever.
'Mayhap! I am Lateef, for sure, as God made me. And she is what the
devil made her--a woman!'
There was something of Lateefa's philosophy in the police-officer's
words when, an hour or two later, he called round at Government House
to say that four pearls, apparently belonging to Lady Arbuthnot's
string, had been found in the Lal bazaar in a dancing-girl's house.
'The house where I saw that girl as I passed?' asked Grace quickly. She
felt, somehow, that it must be so; that there was a fate in it.
'I expect so,' answered the police-officer, then he paused. 'It is
likely to be a troublesome case, sir,' he continued, turning to Sir
George, 'for she claims to belong to the Nawâb s house. And as if that
wasn't enough, it seems that one of the soldiers knocked a man down.
Just knocked him down as one would anybody, you know. He seemed none
the worse for half an hour, when he suddenly went out. Spleen, of
course. I wonder when Tommy will remember that half the natives about
him ought to be in glass cases!'
Sir George Arbuthnot frowned too. 'It is most unfortunate; especially
just now. These women are really----' he paused and looked
apologetically at his wife. 'However, we shall have no more of this
sort of thing. Both regiments go out to Morâdki as soon as we can get
the carriage together. We settled that finally. The desert will do them
good!'