They had gone perhaps an eighth of a mile when the road they followed
joined another, joined in an arrowhead. The grey turned to the left, to
the west, the homing instinct telling him that that way lay his stall in
the city of the Peshwa.
"This was the way of my journey, Bootea," Barlow said; "I rode from
yonder," and he nodded back toward the highway into which the two roads
wedged. "It was here that I heard your call, the call of a woman in
dread. Also it might have been a business that interested me if it were
a matter of waylaying travellers. Did you see two riders of large
horses, such as Arabs or of the breed I ride, men who rode as do
_sowars_?"
"No, Sahib, I did not see them."
This was not a lie for it was Ajeet who had seen them, and because of the
Sahib's interest she knew the two men must have been of his command; and
if she spoke of them undoubtedly he would go back and be killed.
"Were they servants of yours, Sahib--these men who rode?"
Barlow gave off but a little sliver of truth: "No," he answered; "but at
Manabad men spoke of them passing this way, journeying to Poona, and if
they were strangers to this district, it might be that they had taken the
wrong road at the fork. But if you did not see them they will be ahead."
"And meaning, Sahib, it would not be right if they saw you bearing on
your horse one who is not a memsahib?"
"As to that, Gulab, what might be thought by men of low rank is of no
consequence."
"But if the Sahib wishes to overtake them my burden upon the horse will
be an evil, and he will be sorry that Bootea had not shame sufficient to
refuse his help."
She felt the strong arm press her body closer, and heard him laugh. But
still he did not answer, did not say why he was interested in the two
horsemen. If it were vital, and she believed it was, for him to know
that they lay dead at the Bagree camp, it was wrong for her to not tell
him this, he who was a preserver. But to tell him would send him to his
death. She knew, as all the people of that land knew, that the sahibs
went where their Raja told them was their mission, and laughed at death;
and the face of this one spoke of strength, and the eyes of placid
fearlessness; so she said nothing.
The sandal soles that pinched her soft flesh she felt were a
reproach--they had something to do with the thing that was between the
Sahib and the dead soldiers. There were tears in her eyes and she
shivered.
Barlow, feeling this, said: "You're cold, Gulab, the night-wind that
comes up from the black muck of the cotton fields and across the river is
raw. Hang on for a minute," he added, as he slipped his arm from about
her shoulders and fumbled at the back of his saddle. A couple of buckles
were unclasped, and he swung loose a warm military cloak and wrapped it
about her, as he did so his cheek brushing hers.
Then she was like a bird lying against his chest, closed in from
everything but just this Sahib who was like a god.
A faint perfume lingered in Barlow's nostrils from the contact; it was
the perfume of attar, of the true oil of rose, such as only princes use
because of its costliness, and he wondered a little.
She saw his eyes looking down into hers, and asked, "What is it,
Sahib--what disturbs you? If it is a question, ask me."
His white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. "Just nothing that a man
should bother over--that he should ask a woman about."
But almost involuntarily he brushed his face across her black hair and
said, "Just that, Gulab--that it's like burying one's nose in a rose."
"The attar, Sahib? I love it because it's gentle."
"Ah, that's why you wore the rose that I came by at the _nautch_?"
"Yes, Sahib. Though I am Bootea, because of a passion for the rose I am
called Gulab."
"Lovely--the Rose! that's just what you are, Gulab. But the attar is so
costly! Are you a princess in disguise?"
"No, Sahib, but one brought me many bottles of it, the slim, long bottles
like a finger; and a drop of it lasts for a moon."
"Ah, I see," and Barlow smiled; "you have for lover a raja, the one who
brought the attar."
The figure in the cloak shivered again, but the girl said nothing. And
Barlow, rather to hear her voice, for it was sweet like flute music,
chaffed: "What is he like, the one that you love? A swaggering tall
black-whiskered Rajput, no doubt, with a purple vest embroidered in gold,
clanking with _tulwar_, and a voice like a Brahmini bull--full of demand."
The slim arms about his waist tightened a little--that was all.
"Confess, Gulab, it will pass the time; a love story is sweet, and Brahm,
who creates all things, creates flowers beautiful and sweet to stir
love," and he shook the small body reassuringly.
"Sahib, when a girl dances before the great ones to please, it is
permitted that she may play at being a princess to win the favour of a
raja, and sing the love song to the music of the _sitar_ (guitar), but it
is a matter of shame to speak it alone to the Presence."
"Tell me, Gulab," and his strong fingers swept the smooth black hair.
The girl unclasped her arms from about Barlow's waist and led his finger
to a harsh iron bracelet upon her arm.
At the touch of the cold metal, iron emblem of a child marriage, a
shackle never to be removed, he knew that she was a widow, accounted by
Brahminical caste an offence to the gods, an outcast, because if the
husband still lived she would be in a _zenanna_ of gloomy walls, and not
one who danced as she had at Nana Sahib's.
"And the man to whom you were bound by your parents died?" he asked.
"I am a widow, Sahib, as the iron bracelet testifies with cold
bitterness; it is the badge of one who is outcast, of one who has not
become _sati_, has not sat on the wood to find death in its devouring
flame."
Barlow knew all the false logic, the metaphysical Machiavellians, the
Brahmins, advanced to thin out the undesirable females,--women considered
at all times in that land of overpopulation of less value than men,--by
the simple expedient of self-destruction. He knew the Brahmins' thesis
culled from their Word of God, the Vedas or the Puranas, calculated to
make the widow a voluntary, willing suicide. They would tell Bootea that
owing to having been evil in former incarnations her sins had been
visited upon her husband, had caused his death; that in a former life she
had been a snake, or a rat.
The dead husband's mother, had Bootea come of an age to live with him,
though yet but a child of twelve years, would, on the slightest
provocation, beat her--even brand her with a hot iron; he had known of it
having been done. She would be given but one meal a day--rice and
chillies. Even if she had not yet left her father's house he would look
upon her as a shameful thing, an undesirable member of the family, one
not to be rid of again in the way of marriage; for if a Hindu married her
it would break his caste--he would be a veritable pariah. No servant
would serve him; no man would sell him anything; if he kept a shop no one
would buy of him; no one would sit and speak with him--he would be
ostracised.
The only life possible for the girl would be that of a prostitute. She
might be married by the temple priests to the god Khandoka, as thousands
of widows had been, and thus become a nun of the temple, a prostitute to
the celibate priests. Knowing all this, and that Bootea was what she
was, her face and eyes holding all that sweetness and cleanness, that she
lived in the guardianship of Ajeet Singh, very much a man, Barlow admired
her the more in that she had escaped moral destruction. Her face was the
face of one of high caste; she was not like the ordinary _nautch_ girl of
the fourth caste. Everything about Bootea suggested breeding, quality.
The iron bracelet, indicated why she had socially passed down the
scale--there was no doubt about it.
"I understand, Gulab," he said; "the Sahibs all understand, and know that
widowhood is not a reproach."
"But the Sahib questioned of love; and how can one such know of love?
The heart starves and does not grow for it feeds upon love--what we of
Hind call the sweet pain in the heart."
"But have none been kind, Gulab--pleased by your flower face, has no one
warmed your heart?"
The slim arms that gripped Barlow in a new tightening trembled, the face
that fled from the betraying moonlight was buried against his tunic, and
the warm body quivered from sobs.
Barlow turned her face up, and the moonlight showed vagrant pearls that
lay against the olive cheeks, now tinted like the petals of a rose. Then
from a service point of view, and as a matter of caste, Barlow went
_ghazi_. He drooped his head and let his lips linger against the girl's
eyes, and uttered a superb common-place: "Don't cry, little girl," he
said; "I am seven kinds of a brute to bother you!"
And Bootea thought it would have been better if he had driven a knife
into her heart, and sobbed with increased bitterness. Once her fingers
wandered up searchingly and touched his throat.
Barlow casting about for the wherefore of his madness, discovered the
moonlight, and heard the soft night-air whispering through the harp
chords of trees that threw a tracery of black lines across the white
road; and from a grove of mango trees came the gentle scent of their
blossoms; and he remembered that statistics had it that there was but one
memsahib to so many square miles in that land of expatriation; and he
knew that he was young and full of the joy of life; that a British
soldier was not like a man of Hind who looked upon women as cattle.
There did not obtrude into his mental retrospect as an accusation against
this unwarrantable tenderness the vision of the Resident's
daughter--almost his fiancée. Indeed Elizabeth was the antithesis in
physical appeal of the gentle Gulab; the drawing-room perhaps; repartee
of Damascus steel fineness; tutored polish, class, cold integrity--these
things associated admirably with the unsensuous Elizabeth. Thoughts of
her, remembrances, had no place in glamorous perfumed moonlight.
So he set his teeth and admonished the grey Turcoman, called him the
decrepit son of a donkey, being without speed; and to punish him stroked
his neck gently: even this forced diversion bringing him closer to the
torturing sweetness of the girl.
But now he was aware of a throbbing on the night wind, and a faint shrill
note that lay deep in the shadows beyond. It was a curious rumbling
noise, as though ghosts of the hills on the right were playing bowls with
rounded rocks. And the shrilling skirl grew louder as if men marched
behind bagpipes.
The Gulab heard it, too, and her body stiffened, her head thrust from the
enveloping cloak, and her eyes showed like darkened sapphires.
"Carts carrying cotton perhaps," he said. But presently he knew that
small cotton carts but rattled, the volume of rumbling was as if an army
moved.
From up the road floated the staccato note of a staff beating its
surface, and the clanking tinkle of an iron ring against the wooden staff.
"A mail-carrier," Barlow said.
And then to the monotonous pat-pat-pat of trotting feet the mail-carrier
emerged from the grey wall of night.
"Here, you, what comes?" the Captain queried, checking the grey.
The postie stopped in terror at the English voice.
"Salaam, Bahadur Sahib; it is war."
"Thou art a tree owl," and Barlow laughed. "A war does not spring up
like a drift of driven dust. Is it some raja's elephants and carts with
his harem going to a _durbar_?"
"Sahib, it is, as I have said, war. The big brass cannon that is called
'The Humbler of Cities,' goes forth to speak its order, and with it are
sepoys to feed it the food of destruction. Beyond that I know not,
Sahib, for I am a man of peace, being but a runner of the post."
Then he salaamed and sifted into the night gloom like a thrown handful of
white sand, echoing back the clamp-clamp-clamp of his staff's iron ring,
which was a signal to all cobras to move from the path of him who ran,
slip their chilled folds from the warm dust of the road.
And on in front what had been sounds of mystery was now a turmoil of
noises. The hissing screech, the wails, were the expostulations of
tortured axles; the rumbling boom was unexplainable; but the jungle of
the hillside was possessed of screaming devils. Black-faced,
white-whiskered monkeys roused by the din, screamed cries of hate and
alarm as they scurried in volplaning leaps from tree to tree. And
peacocks, awakened when they should have slept, called with their harsh
voices from lofty perches.
A party of villagers hurried by, shifting their cheap turbans to hide
faces as they scurried along.
The Gulab was trembling; perhaps the decoits, led by Hunsa, had come by a
shorter way; for they were like beasts of the jungle in this art of
silent, swift travel.
"Sahib," she pleaded, "go from the road."
"Why, Bootea?"
"The one with the staff spoke of soldiers."
He laughed and patted her shoulder. "Don't fear, little lady," he said,
"an army doesn't make war upon one, even if they are soldiers. It will
be but a wedding party who now take the wife to the village of her
husband."
"Not at night; and a Sahib who carries a woman upon his saddle will hear
words of offence."
Though Barlow laughed he was troubled. What if the smouldering fire of
sedition had flared up, and that even now men of Sindhia's were slipping
on a night march toward some massing of rebels. The resonant, heavy
moaning of massive wheels was like the rumble of a gun carriage. And,
too, there was the drumming of many hoofs upon the road. Barlow's ear
told him it was the rhythmic beat of cavalry horses, not the erratic
rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat of native ponies.
With a pressure upon the rein he edged the grey from the white road to a
fringe of bamboo and date palms, saying; "If you will wait here, Gulab,
I'll see what this is all about."
He slipped from the saddle and lifted her gently to the ground saying,
"Don't move; of a certainty it is nothing but the passing of some raja.
But, if by any chance I don't return, wait until all is still, until all
have gone, and then some well-disposed driver of a bullock cart will take
you on your way." Putting his hand in his pocket, and drawing it forth,
he added: "Here is the compeller of friendship--silver; for a bribe even
an enemy will become a friend."
But the Gulab with her slim fingers closed his hand over the rupees, and
pressed the back of it against her lips saying, "If I die it is nothing.
But stay here, Sahib, they may be--"
She stopped, and he asked, "May be who, Gulab?"
"Men who will harm thee."
But Barlow lifting to the saddle passed to the road, and Bootea crumpled
down in a little desolate heap of misery, her fingers thrust within her
bodice, pleading with an amulet for protection for the Sahib. She prayed
to her own village god to breathe mercy into the hearts of those who
marched in war, and if it were the Bagrees, that Bhowanee would vouchsafe
them an omen that to harm the one on a white horse would bring her wrath
upon their families and their villages.
Captain Barlow reined in the grey on the roadside, for those that marched
were close. Now he could see, two abreast, horses that carried cavalry
men. Ten couples of the troop rode by with low-voiced exchanges of words
amongst themselves. A petty officer rode at their heels, and behind him,
on a bay Arab, whose sweated skin glistened like red wine in the
moonlight, came a _risiladar_, the commander of the troop. A little down
the road Barlow could see an undulating, swaying huge ribbon of
white-and-pink bullocks, twenty-four yoke of the tall lean-flanked
powerful _Amrit Mahal_, the breed that Hyder Ali long ago had brought on
his conquering way to the land of the Mahrattas. And beyond the
ghost-like line of white creatures was some huge thing that they drew.
The commander reined his Arab to a stand beside Barlow and saluted,
saying, "Salaam, Major Sahib--you ride alone?"
Barlow said: "My salaams, Risiladar, and I am but a captain. I ride at
night because the days are hot. My two men have gone before me because
my horse dropped a shoe which had to be replaced. Did the Risiladar see
my two servants that were mounted?"
"I met none such," the commander answered. "Perhaps in some village they
have rested for a drink of liquor; they of the army are given to such
practices when their Captain's eye is not upon them. I go with
this"--and he waved a gauntleted hand back toward the thing that loomed
beyond the bullocks that had now come to a halt. "It is the brass
cannon, the like of which there is no other. We go to the camp of the
Amil, who commands the Sindhia troops, taking him the brass cannon that
it may compel a Musselman zemindar to pay the tax that is long past due.
Why the barbarian should not pay I know not for a tax of one-fourth is
not much for a foreigner, a debased follower of Mahomet, to render unto
the ruler of this land that is the garden of the world. He has shut
himself and men up in his mud fort, but when this brass mother of
destruction spits into his stronghold a ball or two that is not opium he
will come forth or we will enter by the gate the cannon has made."
"Then there will be bloodshed, Risiladar," Barlow declared.
"True, Captain Sahib; but that is, after a manner, the method of
collecting just dues in this land where those who till the soil now,
were, but a generation or two since, men of the sword,--they can't forget
the traditions. In the land of the British Raj six inches of a paper,
with a big seal duly affixed, would do the business. That I know, for I
have travelled far, Sahib. As to the bloodshed, worse will be the
trampling of crops, for in the district of this worshipper of Mahomet the
wheat grows like wild scrub in the jungle, taller than up to the belly of
my horse. That is the whyfore of the cannon, in a way of speaking,
because from a hill we can send to this man a slaying message, and leave
the wheat standing to fill the bellies of those who are in his hands as a
tyrant. Sirdar Baptiste was for sending a thousand sepoys to put the
fear of destruction in the debtor; but the Dewan with his eye on revenue
from crops, hit upon this plan of the loud-voiced one of brass."
Then the commander ordered the advance, and saluting, said: "Salaam,
Captain Sahib, and if I meet with your servants I will give them news
that you desire their presence."
When the huge cannon had rumbled by, and behind it had passed a company
of sepoys on foot, Barlow turned his horse into the jungle for Gulab.