ON THE BED ROCK
'My dear Chris, if you insist on going to see your mother in that
horrid filthy city where, every one knows, the plague has regularly
begun,' said Mrs. Chris Davenant to her husband, 'I won't stop in your
house. That's an end of it. I don't see why I should. Of course, if it
was your duty to inspect, and that sort of thing, I'd have to grin and
bear it. But it isn't; so you can't expect me to run the risk.'
'It is my duty to see my mother,' replied Chris, with that faint pomp
which is inseparable in the native from a virtuous sentiment, be it
ever so trite.
She laughed, quite good-naturedly. 'The fact is, Chris, you've an
awkward team of duties to drive; but a man's got to leave his father
and mother, you know. Not that I want you to leave yours. Go to her, by
all means, if you want to, but in that case I shall go where _I_ want.'
'And where is that?' he asked almost fiercely.
She laughed again. 'To the hotel, of course. My dear Chris, I am not a
fool. Not as a rule, I mean, though I was one, of course, when I
married you. But you were a greater fool in marrying me; for you _knew_
you were a bit of a prig, and I didn't! However, let's drop that,
though, as I've told you before, the best thing for you to do would be
to let me slide and marry your cousin----'
'Will you hold your tongue,' he burst out, almost as an Englishman
might have done, and she raised her eyebrows and nodded approvingly.
'Bravo, Chris! that was very nearly right--but as you don't favour that
easy solution, you must stick to me. You can't eat your cake and have
it, my dear boy. If you marry a civilised woman, you must behave _as
sich_. And civilised people don't run the risk of infection needlessly.
They don't go and see their relations if though of course no civilised
person's mother would live in a dirty plague-stricken town by choice,
would she?'
Poor Chris! If he had not been so civilised himself, if he had not been
such a good sort, he could have faced the position better; but he saw
the justice of hers. 'I think if she were sick'--he began.
She gave a little scream. 'Sick! my dear Chris! that settles it. I
can't have you bringing back microbes. It--it isn't fair on _us_, you
know. And there are a lot of jolly globe-trotters at the hotel--one of
them says he knew me in London.'
There was a world of regret in her tone, and the pity of it, the
hideous mistake for _her_ came home to Chris. 'There is no reason,' he
said, in a sort of despair, 'why I should turn you out of this'--here
he gave a hard sort of laugh--'I don't really care for it, you know,
Viva, though I used to think I did. So you had better stop here,
and--I'll--I'll go.'
The pity of the hideous mistake for _him_ came home even to her.
'Where?' she asked. 'You won't go and live in that awful city--you
mustn't do that. You're not like them, you know; you'd die of it.'
He felt it was true; that he belonged to No-man's-land.
'Perhaps that would be the best solution of the difficulty,' he said
gloomily, with a sententiousness which quite took the pathos from the
remark.
She looked at him gloomily in her turn, with a certain exasperation.
'Oh! if you want to, of course; but, my dear Chris, do you really think
I'm worth that sort of thing; from your point of view, I mean?'
Something about her as she stood, dainty as ever, reminded him of those
days in the boarding-house down the Hammersmith Road, when India, and
that part of himself which belonged to India, had seemed so very far
off. He took a step nearer to her.
'You might be, Viva, you might be.'
She drew back. 'In fifty years' time, perhaps,' she replied
shrewdly--for, as she said, she was no fool. 'Why, Chris! can't you see
that you have just gone dotty over the new idea of woman as a helpmeet,
and companion, and that sort of "biz." And I--why--we girls have left
it behind us a bit in England, nowadays.
The fatal truth of her remarks invariably silenced Chris, born as he
was of a long line of men to whom argument was a religion.
'Well! good-bye, Viva, I will try and not trouble you any more,' he
said, accepting defeat with a pang of remorse at his own readiness to
do so, at the sense of relief which would not be ignored.
She shrugged her shoulders. 'Don't be so tragic, please. And remember I
didn't send you away. You want to go visiting your mother in the city,
and I'm quite willing you should, provided you take proper precautions;
so good-bye, and take care of yourself. There is nothing to worry
about. You are up to the ropes there, and I am up to them here, so
there is no harm done.'
Chris, however, as he packed a portmanteau of necessaries, felt that
though this might be true for the present, and though--so far as she
was concerned--it might even remain true, it was a different affair for
him; there was danger ahead in his future.
And this became more and more certain, as, in packing, he had to decide
on what were necessaries and what were not. For that depended so much
on the sort of life you were going to lead. And what sort of life _was_
he going to lead?
He ended by taking very little; but amongst that little were two things
which, though they both contained the staple of life--common corn--
could scarcely be called necessaries. Man, however, does not live by
bread alone.
So he put these and himself into a hired green box on wheels, and drove
to a lodging he knew of, close to the city, yet not of it. It was in
the upper part of a house used as a meeting-place by the Brahmo Somaj,
who, by this means, paid the rent of the quaint, semi-Europeanised
building. It stood in a bit of garden, thick with plantains, between
which two straight mud walks and a curved one showed curiously black
and damp, as if the soil was sodden with sewage, as it may have been.
But upstairs, when the green shutters were thrown back, it was fresh
and breezy enough.
A Brahmo-Somaj clerk in the railway, whom Chris knew and liked, had
quarters on the ground floor in consideration of his services as
secretary, and with his help Chris soon found himself settled in. A
bed, a table, a chair--the last two doubtfully desirable--completed the
furniture, and left a delightful sense of space and freedom in the wide
empty room. He had escaped, he felt, from Shark Lane. Surely from this
standpoint it might be possible to be sincere. Here it might be
possible to reconcile himself to his environment, his environment to
himself.
He took off his European dress, not from any distaste to it, but
because he knew it to be an absolute barrier between him and his
desire. So, in the ordinary costume of a native clerk, he strolled out
to pass the time till he could safely go and see his mother; safely,
because she lived amongst the strictest of neighbours, whom he did not
wish to meet--as yet. That might be afterwards, but not now. It was
already growing dusk--for he had changed his quarters after the day's
work was over--but the irregular sort of bazaar between him and one of
the city gates had not yet begun to twinkle with little lights after
its usual fashion. Indeed, many of the shops were closed. Yet there was
no lack of possible customers. The roadway was crowded with all sorts
and conditions of men. It suddenly struck him that nearly all were
coming towards him; therefore there must be some attraction behind him.
He turned and drifted with the tide until, after a few hundred yards,
he saw ahead of him to one side of the road, a dim clump of stunted
trees, with a red rag on a stick tied to the topmost branch, and,
showing in a soft yellow radiance which rose from the ground, a glint
of white tombs among the lower ones. Then he remembered--an odd regret
that he should have forgotten something which to his childhood had been
all-important, coming with the remembrance--that this must be the day
of Sheikh Chilli's fair, which was held every year at this shrine;
Sheikh Chilli, the pantaloon of India; the man of straw, the lover's
dupe, the butt of every one; the type which, in varying form, plays its
part in the serio-comic tragedy of sex all over the world. Sheikh
Chilli, whose beard any one can pull, whose wife is never his own, whom
a child can deceive.
Perhaps that was the reason, Chris thought, why, as a child,
Sheikh Chilli's fair had been such a supreme occasion; that and the
toys--those toys which, as it were, set Nushapore the fashion in
playthings for a whole year. And that meant something, since the two
hundred and odd thousand people in the city, idlers by inheritance,
were great in the manufacture of toys.
Chris, who had not seen a Sheikh Chilli fair for years, went forward
eagerly as a child himself, the whole scene coming back to him with
absolute familiarity: the rows of little lights set on the ground to
mark the streets, and behind them, ranged in squares, the toys;
thousands of them, millions of them; baked mud, bent bamboo, curled
cotton; soda-water corks, match-boxes, even brass cartridges, all
pressed into the service by a truly marvellous ingenuity. And between
the lights, along the paths, jammed almost to solidity by the barriers
of toys, humanity of all sorts and sizes, seen in that curious soft
radiance rising from the earth below its feet! humanity trying to pause
and admire, trying to pause and laugh; helpless for either when
standing, and driven to gain absolute solidity by squatting down and
letting the stream sweep over it.
A group of dancing-girls showed on the flat plinth of the shrine;
musicians strummed here and there; here and there a conjurer essayed
tricks. But all this was trivial beside the toys.
Yet they were still more trivial: one for a farthing, two for a
farthing, even three for a farthing if you chose mud monkeys, or brass
rings made out of sliced cartridge-cases set with drops of blue or red
sealing-wax.
'Lo!' came the voices of peasants in for the show. 'See to that! That
is new!' And some grave-faced husbandman would buy a sort of Mercury's
_caduceus_ made of bamboo, with two writhing, twisting snakes to it,
fearfully, horribly alive.
This piece of ingenuity, indeed, ran a couple of cotton-wool bears who
chased each other endlessly over a loop of bamboo, close for the pride
of first place in the fair; a place for which there was keen
competition. So that, whenever any toy seemed to hit the fancy, there
were instantly trays of it being hawked about above the crush, above
the soft light, with the cry--'The best in the fair, one farthing! one
farthing for the best in the fair!'
Chris, caught in the crowd, drifted on with it, wondering, as he had
wondered as a child, which of the many claimants up aloft in the
semi-darkness was the true one. It was a strangely absorbing wonder;
but then the whole scene was absorbingly unlike anything else in the
world. It was humanity herded by toys, limited by them, forced to go
one way, and one way only, by them!
The rows of little flickering lamps between the two seemed as if they
were shaking with silent laughter at the sight.
'The best in the fair! one farthing! One farthing for the best in the
fair!'
The cry came this time with something that was hardly a toy, and yet
hands were stretched out to buy it. Chris, tall enough to see over the
heads of his neighbours, noticed that more trays, full of this
something, were being hawked on all sides.
It was only a hank of the coarse ring-streaked cotton thread used in
betrothals as an amulet for the bridegroom's wrist, and for plaiting
into the bride's hair. Attached to it was a thin brass medal,
apparently cut out of a cartridge case, and shaped like the talisman a
second wife wears as a safeguard against the machinations of the first.
It was stamped, Chris found on buying one, with what seemed, at first,
a crescent and a cross; but a closer look showed him that the latter
was a _swastika_, or death-mark. In other words, the equal-limbed cross
with bent ends. Below that again was a sort of Broad Arrow.
'The best in the fair! Safety for females! Victoria Queen's
mercifulness! Freedom from tyrannies for one farthing!'
These more elaborate cries came from farther down the serried band of
humanity of which Chris was a unit, and so beyond his reach; but, after
a while, the steady, glacier-like movement of the whole brought him
opposite to what was evidently the home of the amulet; for such the
something seemed to be. Here, behind the rows of lamps, thousands of
these cotton hanks lay in tangled heaps. Behind them again sat the
sellers, raking in money. Every one seemed to buy, even those who did
not know what they were buying.
'What is't for?' answered one of the sellers--whom Chris fancied he had
seen in some rather different position--to an old man who had bought a
whole penny's worth. 'For the plague, of course! Wear it, and none dare
come nigh thee. It gives the right to peace.'
'Dost pretend----?' began Chris hotly, when the seller, looking up,
interrupted him audaciously--
'I pretend naught, _baboo-jee_,' he replied. 'I sell amulets for what
they are worth, a farthing. The rest is God's will. Yet, have not all a
right to peace, my masters? Have we not all the right to live as we
have lived? Ay! and to quarrel with those who interfere; above all with
those who make promises and break them? Who'll buy? Who'll buy the
promise of peace, the freedom from tyranny, the female ruler's
mercifulness to females?'
The hands were stretching out on all sides still, as the onward sweep
of that human glacier carried Chris beyond the power of argument or
denial.
He found the opportunity of both, however, when he joined a group
beyond the crush in which he recognised several of his Shark Lane
acquaintances. He had not meant to show himself in his present
dress to them, but he was eager for sympathy. 'The police ought
not to allow that sort of thing,' he said decisively; 'it might lead
to-to--trouble.'
'I fail to see your point, sir,' replied a keen-faced lawyer. 'It
appears to me to lead to the soothing of groundless terrors. Then the
sale of amulets is not prohibited by law. Nor is there fraudulent
statement over and above a general appeal to superstition and
ignorance, which, alas! are but too common.
'I join issue with you, sir,' put in another keen face; 'nor, to my
mind, is there even _suggestio falsi_. Is not our beloved Queen
merciful to females, and has not the Government graciously asserted
that there _shall_ be no interference with the liberty of the subject?'
Some one behind laughed loudly, a trifle uncontrollably, and a voice,
which Chris instantly recognised as Govind the editor's, said jeeringly
in Hindustani, '_Alâ! lâlâ-jee!_ there is no lack of gracious words!
But as I have said ever, as I mean to prove when I choose, there is
more than the words in the Lord-_sahib's_ office-box!'
'Prove!' echoed another of the same type who had paused, in passing, to
join the group; 'thou art behind the times, Govind! It is proved
already. But this morning two Englishmen, on excuse of plague
visitation, offered such insult to three virtuous females that with one
accord they threw themselves down the well!'
'Impossible!' cried Chris; and not he only, for nearly every man
present voiced doubt, if not denial.
'There is no doubt,' reiterated the news-bringer complacently; 'I had
it from a man whose uncle was outside. They closed the doors, and none
could enter, despite the women's screams. It was in the Bâdshâhzâi
quarter, and the folk have closed their gates and sit in terror.'
'Small wonder!' put in Govind, eager to have his say in horrors; 'it
was thence that the girl was abducted the other day. Lo! 'tis a good
beginning! What wonder if folk lay hold of amulets and fair promises!'
'I tell you,' asserted Chris passionately, 'it cannot be true. And as
for the other story, was it not told on the word of Jehân Aziz, and
which of us would trust him? None. Shall we believe him in this,
against what we see, and know, of our own senses?'
'We do not believe these stories, sir,' remarked the lawyer pompously.
'False evidence is, alas! a hobby of our ignorant countrymen. There is
no doubt a substratum of truth in these stories----'
'No! pleader-_jee_,' interrupted Chris vehemently--the conversation
shifted between English and Hindustani in the strangest fashion--'there
is no foundation for such stories, and we all know it. There is
foundation for mistakes, for wrong enough, God knows--but for such as
that, no!'
'Your contention is true,' put in a temperate voice; 'but the
difficulty of sifting wheat from chaff is proverbial.'
Once again Chris broke from his like in absolute discouragement. And
yet what could he do to dissociate himself from their policy of
non-interference? Absolutely nothing. Here, in this world mapped out by
toys, with that soft unsteady brilliance rising from about men's feet,
he could not even hope to rouse dissent. That onward glacierlike sweep,
full of outstretched hands buying a piceworth of promises, would pass
by him and his words, unheeding of either.
And, after all, the lawyer was right so far. That miserable strand of
the wedding-skein which links man and woman--that trumpery brass
cartridge-case medal, rudely stamped with the Hindoo death-mark, the
Mohammedan faith-mark, and the English possession-mark--would carry
comfort and calm to many a hearth.
And yet the promise that could not be kept was dangerous. He must write
of that to Mr. Raymond. And then the question came, Why should he? Why
should he, who had no voice at all in his own country's welfare, help
those who thought they could dispense with the services of such as he?
The clock, striking nine from the tall Italian campanile on which some
past bureaucrat had spent money that might have been better used,
warned him that if he was to write that evening he must do it at once;
but it warned him also that it was time he went to his mother's.
Should he, should he not?
It was no sense of duty which decided him. It was the remembrance that
if he went back to his lodging, he could kill two birds with one stone.
He could not only write the warning, but also put a certain small
rose-scented, rose-satin-covered boxlet and a paper of corn in his
pocket, in case Naraini, poor little soul, needed comforting.
Something that was not Eastern or Western, but simply human, surged up
in him as he thought of what her face would be when he proved to her
that, so far from being angry at her throwing the corn into the gutter,
he had gathered it up--every grain!
He had not told his mother that he had done so; that is not the sort of
information sons give their mothers, East or West.
But he meant to tell Naraini!
He ran up the brick stairs which led from outside to the upper story
lightly as a boy, feeling a sort of exultation in his new freedom of
circumstance. He had purposely brought no servant with him, for _they_,
he knew, would have brought Shark Lane with _them_, and he wished to
forget its ways and works for a time. So he had determined to engage a
new and uncontaminated attendant on the morrow. One consequence of
this, however, was that his room was dark to-day!
He stood on its threshold feeling, of a sudden, strangely forlorn and
lost. Then he pulled himself together sharply. What a trivial thing is
man, that even the lack of a bedroom candle should discourage him! On
the threshold, too, of a new life! Especially when he had not so far
forsaken civilisation as to be without wax vestas!
He lit one after another, laboriously, and managed by their light to
scrawl a short note to Jack Raymond. Then he rummaged in his
portmanteau for the rose-scented box, trusting more to touch and smell
than sight, until, having found it, he laid it beside him on the floor
in order to relock the portmanteau, ere leaving the room to take care
of itself. And then? Then a travelling-inkstand and the little casket
got mixed up in the darkness, and he became conscious of something wet
on his hands.
He swore--in English--and lit another match. The rose-coloured box was
uninjured, but his fingers were hopeless. He turned naturally to soap,
water, towels; and found none.
There was the well in the compound, of course, but--he swore again.
Then, half inclined to laugh half to frown, at the annoyance he felt,
he began to feel his way towards the stairs. As he did so, a chink of
light at the bottom of a door, farther down the wider roof of the lower
story from which the upper rooms rose, arrested him. He might beg for a
wash there. A voice answered his knock. He opened the door and went in;
then stood petrified.
Seated on a chair facing him, his legs very wide apart, a bit of
looking-glass in one hand, a brush in the other, Jân-Ali-shân was
putting the finishing touches to an elaborate parting. He was otherwise
got up to the nines in an old dress-suit, which he had picked up for
the half of nothing at an officer's sale. His white tie and shirt-front
were irreproachable; he had a flower in his buttonhole. The only
discordant note was a reminiscent odour of patchouli.
He paused, awestruck--hair-brush and looking-glass severed from each
other by the width of his arm-stretch--at the sight of his superior
officer in native costume.
'Well! I--am--eternally'--his present and future state was evidently an
uncertainty, but he finally said, a trifle doubtfully--'blessed!'
Then he rose, and accepted the situation with his usual confidential
cheerfulness.
'Beg pardin, sir,' he explained, 'titivatin' for a 'op. The girls like
it, an' you likes yourself; so it's all round my 'at for the lot o' us,
an' a straight tip to "England expec's every man to do 'is dooty." An'
wot was you please to want, sir?'
Chris paused in his turn for a second; then followed suit in
confidential explanation. 'I want to wash my hands, please. You are
wondering how I got here--in--in this dress. I came to the room over
there this afternoon, because--my mother is sick, Ellison, and I want
to be near her, and see her.'
Jân-Ali-shân's face expressed unqualified approval. 'Right you are,
sir!' he said. 'I disremember mine, seein' she went out as I come in;
but I know this, sir--I've missed 'er all my life--an' shall do, please
God, till I die.' He had gone to the washhand-stand and was making
elaborate preparations with soap and a clean towel. 'Lor' bless you,
sir!' he went on, 'I'd 'ave 'ad cleaner 'ands myself to-day if she'd
bin there to smack 'em w'en I was a hinfant. She's powerful for
horderin' a man's ways, sir, is a mother.'
And as he resumed his interrupted occupation, thus leaving Chris
unobserved, he hummed 'My mother bids me bind my hair' with a
superfluity of grace-notes.
'And I want also,' went on Chris, recovering his lost sense of dignity
under the effects of a nail-brush and a piece of pumice-stone--he had
often noticed Jân-Ali-shân's hands and wondered at their tidiness for a
working man's--'to find out the state of feeling in the city. From what
I hear people are saying--and you must hear a lot too----'
Jân-Ali-shân laid down the brush and the looking-glass. 'Hear?' he
echoed, 'Lor' love you, they don't tell me them tales. I'm a _sahib_, I
am. An' I wouldn't listen if they did. 'Tisn't as if we 'ad to do with
words ourselves; but we ain't. "By their works shall ye know them," as
it say in 'Oly Writ; an' if it come to that, sir, why, they shall know
'oo 's 'oo in John Ellison. An' now, sir, if you've done, I'll light
you down them stairs, for of all the inconsiderate, on-Christian stairs
a 'eathen ever built, them's the most disconcertin' in the "stilly
night."' There was pure pathos in the voice that wandered off into the
song.
'I didn't know you lived here, Ellison,' said Chris, following
cautiously. 'You were in another house when I----'
A chuckle was wafted back from the candle. 'Wen 'Oneyman titivated in
dress bags! If you'll excuse me, sir, that story's bin worth a fiver to
me nigger-minstreling, as Bones. I don't give no names, sir; but you
should 'ear the Tommies laugh! No offence, sir, but it do tell awful
comic, and they needs perkin' up a bit, pore lads, in them beastly
barracks. Better'n the bazaar for 'em any'ow, so that's something due
to 'Oneyman, ain't it? Yes, sir!' he went on, still piloting the way
towards the gate, 'I left them diggin's soon's I could pay a better
lot, for I likes a bit o' 'ome, sir, an' a bit o' furniture. "An' who
shall dare to chide me for lovin' an old arm-chair?" That's about it,
sir. The "'appy 'omes of Hengland," and Hingia too, sir,' he added, as,
after blowing out the end of candle and putting it into his pocket for
future use, he paused to say--'Good-night, sir, an' I 'ope you'll find
the good lady better.'
'Good-night, Ellison, I hope you'll enjoy yourself.'
Jân-Ali-shân gave an odd, half-sheepish laugh. 'An' oughter, sir; she's
an awful nice girl, an' not a drop o' black blood in 'er veins--beggin'
your pardin, sir, but you know 'ow 'tis.'
'Yes!' said Chris suddenly, 'I know how it is.'
He knew better than he had ever known before, when hours
afterwards--his blood running like new wine in his veins--he came back
from the city and stumbled up to his room.
The stairs were certainly, as John Ellison had said, most
inconsiderate. Yet one stumble was not due to them, but to John Ellison
himself, who was crumpled up, snoring peacefully, at the most difficult
turn.
'Hillo!' he said conclusively, after a prolonged stare at Chris, made
possible by another resort to wax vestas on the latter's part, 'Is that
you, sonny?' And then he wandered off melodiously into the parody--
'My mother bids me dye my hair the fashionable hue.'
When Chris had seen his subordinate safe to bed, he made free with the
bit of candle-end for his own use.
And by its light he saw his letter to Jack Raymond lying forgotten on
the floor in a half-dried pool of ink.
'I cannot send that one, anyhow,' he said to himself as he tore it up.
But he felt as if he could send nothing--that he could never give
another thought to such things. For Naraini had needed comfort, and he
had given it to her. But he could not even think of her; a profound
physical content lulled him to a dreamless sleep, his last thought, ere
that sleep claimed him, being that he had not felt so happy for years.