IN THE BAZAAR
As was to be expected the camp took a rest next morning. When Coventry
left his tent the hot wind had lulled, and the shadows of the trees had
stretched half-way across the tract of bare ground that led to the edge
of the jungle. He looked a wreck, for the touch of malaria that had
ruffled his temper the previous evening, and ruined his chance of
killing the tiger, had since developed into a sharp though short attack
with the usual ague, and a temperature that would terrify those
unacquainted with the common complaint of the country. It is surprising
how quickly malarial fever in India can lay a man low, and yet leave him
strength sufficient to rise, once it is over, and pursue his general
doings as though nothing unusual had happened. Many even continue to
work with fever actually on them.
All the way home from the forest Coventry had shivered and grumbled and
scolded the rest of the party because he had missed the tiger, and now,
though the fever had left him, he felt languid and limp, and peevish,
and was hardly the best of companions. On the outskirts of the camp the
man-eater's skin was being pegged out to dry surrounded by a chattering
concourse. Half the village had been in the camp since daybreak,
squatting around the carcase, helping to rub the raw skin with ashes,
lauding the sahibs who had slain the destroyer, rejoicing over the death
of the enemy. Now they could travel in safety, at least for the present,
could tend their crops, and take out their cattle to graze. Their
gratitude did not deter them, however, from furtive attempts to annex
the whiskers and claws, and lumps of the fat said to be a miraculous
cure for rheumatism. There was to be a "tomasha" to-night in the village
to celebrate the event, with music and feasting and fireworks, for
which, with the usual fate of the benefactor, the sahibs were expected
to pay.
Coventry sat dreamily watching the group. The shikari was directing his
assistants, abusing them in the loud arbitrary voice that the native so
often assumes towards those whom he considers to be his inferiors,
holding forth at the same time on the subject of tigers in general. Most
of the servants were idling round, joining in the jokes and
altercations; and big, blue-black crows skipped boldly into the midst of
the gathering, snatching at morsels of flesh and cawing in hoarse
excitement. Near at hand some vultures, bald and repulsive, had
collected, gloating in expectation of a feast; overhead, in the hard
blue sky, kites were soaring, and diving and screaming. In the
background the elephants, chained to their posts, showed massive and
dark, swinging their heads, beating off the flies with branches of trees
or wisps of their fodder held in their trunks.
It was a picturesque scene alluring to a sportsman, yet Coventry was
conscious of a sudden satiety of sport and all its appurtenances. He had
enjoyed the shoot, had been thoroughly keen throughout, but whether the
fever was to blame, or his annoyance at missing the tiger, or the
nostalgia for wife and home that had been on the increase the last few
days, he now felt he wished never to hear of a tiger or find himself in
a machan or a howdah again. He looked at his watch--it had struck him
that if he could start to-night he might catch the mail train before the
one by which he had meant to travel. Trixie would be so surprised and
delighted to see him arrive before he was due; she must have had a dull,
empty time, poor child, during his absence. He inferred as much from her
letters, though she never complained; Trixie was not one to grumble or
whine. He reproached himself for having left her alone, and determined
to try and make up to her for his selfishness; should he buy her some
nice piece of jewellery when he got back? A new ring. Trixie liked
rings, and they looked so well on her pretty pink fingers. Later on he
would take her away to the hills and let her enjoy herself just as she
liked. Then jealousy stirred in his heart, and whispered: "Of course,
within reason." He tried to stifle the whisper, but could not succeed;
after all, if Trixie kept well she ought to be happy enough in the
plains with him, and her pets, and the riding and tennis.
Markham came out of his tent. "Better, old chap?"
"Yes, better, fairly all right again, thanks. I think I'll go off,
though, to-night, all the same. I don't feel quite up to another day's
beat with a journey to follow. If I hurry a bit I could catch the mail
in the morning."
"You might, but it'll be rather a rush, and you'll get no sleep."
"I can sleep in the train to-morrow."
The desire to start had now become almost an obsession, and he held out
obstinately against Markham's well-meant persuasions that he should
wait, as previously planned, to benefit by the arrangements already
concluded for the convenient return of the party to the nearest junction
on the railway. Finally it was settled that he should journey on one of
the elephants to a point of habitation where some sort of vehicle could
be procured to take him to meet the earlier mail.
Therefore it came about that George Coventry, with his bearer and his
baggage, rattled up to his bungalow in a dilapidated "ticca-gharry,"
hired at the railway station, twelve hours sooner than he was expected.
From the moment of his catching, as by a miracle, the earlier mail
train, he had been thrilled with sweet impatience, anticipating Trixie's
welcome, all her glad surprise, their interchange of little news, the
pleasant disturbance of his premature home-coming. Her last letter,
which was safe in his breast pocket, together with all the others she
had written to him during his absence, had told him how she longed for
his return, had declared that the final twenty-four hours would seem
longer, more tedious than all the rest. To shorten the time of
separation he had jolted and bumped over miles of rough country,
enduring horrible discomfort, that he might arrive to-night instead of
to-morrow, even if he roused her and the establishment at an
inconvenient hour.
Needless to say, his much-needed sleep in the train had been broken and
restless. Fever still lurked in his system, and whenever he dozed the
beat of the wheels had formed itself into a clockwork song with
relentless persistence: "The woman in the bazaar. The woman in the
bazaar." He could not get rid of it, could not divert its maddening
rhythm. Even now as he got out of the gharry it followed him up the
steps and clamoured inside his brain.
The bungalow was silent, dimly lit. A servant lay rolled up in a cotton
sheet, like a corpse, across the threshold of the drawing-room door,
which was open. Why was the door open? Why were the venetian outer doors
not closed and bolted?
The gharry, with his baggage on the roof, the sleepy driver and the
miserable ponies, waited at the foot of the veranda steps while the
sahib awoke the slumbering servant both with voice and foot.
The man sprang up with the terrified bewilderment of the suddenly
awakened native. "Thieves! Murder! Thieves!" he yelled, until he
recognised his master, when he bound his turban hastily about his
dishevelled head and salaamed in respectful apology. The gharry man was
paid, the luggage was deposited in the veranda, and the ramshackle
conveyance rattled out of the compound. It all caused a noisy
disturbance, and yet Trixie had not been aroused. No questioning call
came from her bedroom to know what it all meant. In puzzled apprehension
Coventry passed through the drawing-room, where a couple of wall lamps
still burned low. Also the light in her bedroom had not been put out. He
pushed aside the short curtain and looked into the room. She was not
there. The bed was empty, undisturbed.
He returned to the drawing-room and called the bearer. "Where has the
memsahib gone to dine?" he asked, realising at the same moment that it
was long past the hour for dinner parties to break up.
The man told him blandly that he "believed the memsahib had gone to dine
with Captain Roy-memsahib," then added, standing on one foot and rubbing
a great toe against the other ankle, that he thought the syce had
brought the "tum-tum" back some time ago.
"Call the syce!" said Coventry shortly; and the bearer obeyed, obviously
relieved that he was to be questioned no further, since the sahib seemed
annoyed.
The syce, a dull but well-intentioned person, could only say that the
memsahib had told him to take the cart and the pony home from Roy-mem's
bungalow. He did not know why. He also stood on one foot, vaguely
apprehensive of the Colonel-sahib's displeasure.
"It was the memsahib's order," he added in hopeful self-exoneration.
"Very well," said Coventry; "go and get the tum-tum ready."
He stood and smoked in the veranda until the trap came round. His mind
was in chaos; he could not think connectedly. What was Trixie doing? Had
she been taken ill at Mrs. Roy's bungalow? Or had Mrs. Roy been taken
ill, and was Trixie staying with her for the night? Either reason, lots
of reasons, would explain her absence. Yet beneath the plausible
explaining there lurked a dreadful doubt that clutched malevolently at
his heart.
He got into his trap and swung rapidly out of the compound. In the light
of the moon the dust-white road had a luminous appearance. Coventry
remembered that the shortest route to the Roys' bungalow was by the
bazaar; he judged that at this time of the night the streets would be
clear. He would save a mile at least if he drove through the city.
He came to the outskirts of the great northern native town, a huddle of
thatched huts, their thresholds blocked with sleeping forms. Pariah dogs
fought and foraged among the rubbish festering in the gutters; their
snarls mingled with raucous native coughing, the wail of fretful
infants, long echoing yawns.
Then brick walls rose up, dark and irregular, topped with flat roofs,
whence rose faint sounds of music and the murmur of voices. Now he had
entered one of the main streets of the city that yet was hardly wider
than a lane; here and there the road space was rendered still narrower
by rough string bedsteads set outside the shops and dwellings, figures,
scantily clothed, sprawling upon them. Bats flickered from the roofs
across the strip of moonlit sky that was like a lid to the street. The
air was stifling; indescribable exhalations, odours of kerosene oil,
rancid butter, garlic, sandal-wood, spices, sweating Eastern humanity,
thickened and soured the atmosphere, nauseating the white man who drove
steadily on through the densely packed clusters of buildings. His head
ached, his veins felt as though they must burst in his temples; it
seemed to him that he had been driving for hours through this fetid
wilderness of bricks, as if he should never emerge into air that was
pure and untainted.
The beat of his pony's hoofs echoed loud and regular from wall to wall;
otherwise there was a heavy silence as he drove through the
silversmiths' quarter, and went past the side street where shoes and
sandals were made and sold, a fact proclaimed by a horrible stench of
badly cured hide. Suddenly he came upon a patch of light and noise. Some
important domestic event was in course of celebration, perhaps a
wedding, or the birth of a much-desired son. Rows of little lamps
illumined one of the houses, just wicks alight floating in pans of
coco-nut oil, diffusing smoke and smell; a gaudy group of nautch girls
singing, twirling, blocked the doorway, and a crowd of musicians and
guests and sightseers pushed and jostled each other for some distance
down the street. Somehow he got through the flare, and confusion, and
clamour, into the dimness beyond, only to find his way barred by a
procession of camels padding towards him in shadowy, leisurely progress,
groaning and grumbling, escorted by tall men clad in flowing garments
and loose turbans, men with snaky black locks, hooked noses and fierce
eyes; a camel caravan arriving from the north, laden with merchandise,
weary and dusty with arduous travel.
Coventry was forced to halt. It would be impossible in this narrow
thoroughfare to get past the long line of beasts burdened with huge
bales that swung broadside from their backs. The syce stood up behind
him to proffer advice.
That street, he said--the one to the left--would take them into another
main road and thence out of the city just as quickly as if they waited
for the camel folk to pass.
"It is the street," added the syce casually, "of the dancing women and
such-like."
The leading camel, a towering, loose-lipped shape, lurched and lumbered
almost on to the trap. Coventry, to avoid the bubbling beast, turned his
pony's head, and next moment he was driving down the side street, down
"the street of the dancing women and such-like."
Some of the balconies were silent and deserted, others held shadowy
shapes; one or two interiors were ablaze with light, and the sound of
tinkling music floated from them. There came to his mind the
recollection of the hideous story he had heard on the racquet court, now
some weeks ago, and he glanced about him with aversion.
The road was rough, scored with ruts and little hollows. Presently the
pony stumbled badly, made a desperate struggle to regain his balance,
and came down. By an acrobatic leap Coventry avoided being pitched into
the road, the syce was shot beneath the seat of the trap, and the pony
lay motionless, inert, in helpless submission to fate.
Coventry stood for a moment to steady his senses. The syce crawled from
the trap, rubbing his leg, calling encouragement to the prostrate pony,
blaming some omen of evil he had observed in the stables only that
morning. It was evident, even in the uncertain light, that the trap was
badly damaged; both shafts were broken, and Coventry realised that he
would drive no farther that night.
By now a small crowd had collected, men and youths chiefly of the Babu
persuasion, wearing muslin shawls and embroidered pork-pie caps. They
gazed with relish at the spectacle of a white man in a rather
undignified quandary, and none of them offered to help while sahib and
syce busied themselves with the pony.
Attracted by the little commotion, a woman emerged on to a balcony
above, and stood looking down on the group. From the room behind her
someone brought out a lamp and held it aloft, so that the woman's face
became suddenly visible to those in the street below.
Coventry looked up involuntarily, and his attention was held, riveted,
for, though not young, the woman was fair, most strangely fair, in her
native dress and tinselled veil; and even the paint that was thick on
her eyes and cheeks could not conceal her unusual beauty. Coventry
guessed, with a sick conviction, that this was "the woman in the
bazaar," the woman of whom he had heard.
Appalled by the certainty, he still peered upward, fascinated yet
repelled; and softly the woman laughed--not only laughed, but threw
something down that landed, lightly, at his feet. A hoarse murmur of
comment went up from the onlookers; one of them, a weedy youth, picked
the object up and tendered it to the sahib, exclaiming with insolent
politeness: "Thou art favoured, heaven-born."
It was a bunch of crudely artificial violets, drenched with heavy scent
that mingled with other odours of the suffocating night. Coventry
recoiled as though the sham flowers, with their sickly perfume, had been
a deadly reptile. Then he stepped forward, menace in his bearing, and
the officious youth, with his companions, shrank, close-packed, from the
wrath of the Englishman; only to be scattered by the noisy progress down
the narrow street of a clumsy, scarlet-hooded vehicle on four wheels,
drawn by a pair of powerful white bullocks. It was a wonderful
conveyance, gold-braided, tasselled, lacquered, and the trappings of the
animals were gay, and sown with bells. It drew up beneath the balcony on
which, a moment ago, the woman had leaned and laughed. Now she had
re-entered the lighted room behind her, and the venetian doors were
closed.
"That is the _rath_[A] of Babu Chandra Das," remarked a bystander in a
loud voice, for the crowd had collected again. "To-night he goes South,
and the woman goes with him, for is he not rich? See, she comes forth."
[A] Bullock-carriage.
The worm-eaten door of the house was pulled half open from within, and
an old and ugly native female staggered out bearing an armful of
bundles. This, being unexpected, raised a laugh among the youths.
During the little scene Coventry had stood by, feeling half-dazed,
sickened with the sight and the scent of the violets, oppressed with a
vague dread that burdened his body and spirit. He made an effort to turn
to the syce and the pony that waited with drooping head and trailing
harness; but something held him, kept him, as though his feet were
weighted, till she came out--the woman he had seen on the balcony--and
as she climbed into the red-hooded carriage her veil fell back, and the
moonlight gleamed on her hair. It was then that full recognition struck
at George Coventry's heart like the stab of a knife. The woman in the
bazaar, who lived in the street of the dancers and such-like, who now
drove away in the _rath_ of Babu Chandra Das, was Rafella, his wife of
the years that were over and dead.
His impulse was to run madly, blindly, after her, but horror paralysed
his limbs, and he saw, as in an evil dream, the red hood with the
swaying curtains disappear into the shadows.
Coventry felt a touch on his arm.
"What order, sahib? Protector of the poor, what order?" the syce was
repeating.
"Make some arrangement," said the sahib, at last, mechanically; "I will
walk home."
And mechanically, too, he walked up the street, noticing nothing, not
heeding the loitering figures that got in his way, that muttered abuse
as he moved them aside, till he came to the corner where, years ago as
it seemed to him now, his path had been blocked by the camel caravan. As
by instinct, he turned into the principal thoroughfare, passing in time
by the house of rejoicing. It was quieter now, the crowd had dispersed,
the lights in the pans had begun to burn low, and only a faint sound of
singing and music came from within the building. With quick, regular
tramp he continued his way through the stifling city, meeting again the
odour of badly cured hides that drifted across from the place of the
workers in leather; on through the hot, still streets that led to the
squalid mud suburb outside, and thence to the broad, empty road where
his steps sank soundless into the heavy dust.
He was barely conscious of physical being. All the time, as he walked
automatically through the bazaars, mid the heat and the smells, his
thoughts had been chained to the past. Trixie might not have
existed--her puzzling absence, his quest, his doubts and his
apprehensions had gone from his mind. He was living once more in those
far-away days that had begun with such happiness, only to end in such
failure and pain; they had seemed to him over and dead, as leaves torn
out of his volume of life and destroyed, and now a result had arisen,
alive and awful and tragic--the woman in the bazaar! Was it a dire
pre-warning, those words that had haunted his dreams and his mind in the
jungle, that had harassed him in the train, followed him up to the door
of his house?
Memory tortured his soul, sparing him nothing. Again he found himself
riding along in a country lane on a summer morning in England; he saw
the vicarage garden, the tangle of blossoming shrubs, the ragged riot of
flowers, and visioned a slender figure in blue crossing the unkempt
lawn, with hair glinting gold in the sunshine. A clear young voice was
trilling a verse of an old, familiar hymn:
"Other refuge have I none;
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;
Leave, ah! leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me."
He went through it all in hopeless, despairing surrender--the simple
wedding in the village church, the period of placid happiness, and then
the doubt, the jealousy, the torment of suspicion, culminating in that
dreadful night--the night of the ball. It returned to him now with cruel
distinctness; he could see Rafella running to the door, her white arms
lifted as she struggled with the bolt; he heard her fleeing from him
through the compound....
"Other refuge have I none----" But she herself had chosen to seek other
refuge, knowing full well what she did! Should he have tried to prevent
her, to understand her distress, her condition of mind? She was
frightened, indignant, and helpless, whatever her fault; and he had
allowed her to go, had made no effort to save her, because he was
blinded with fury, was jealous and hard, and perhaps unjust.... What was
the story of all those years? He sickened to think. What had she
suffered, endured, to bring her to this--poor little fair Rafella, with
her gentle ways and her narrow knowledge of life?
"Still support and comfort me----" He remembered her protest--how
shocked she had been at his personal rendering of the words, how he had
said in the rain that morning--the morning on which he had told her he
loved her--that he meant to protect and support her as long as he lived.
How had he kept his vow?
"Leave, ah! leave me not alone----" Yes, he had left her alone, had been
harsh and unyielding, without patience, without pity for the "helpless
soul"; he had put her away, condemned her unheard, abandoned her to her
fate....
He walked on, his head bent, his heart racked with a sharp and terrible
remorse; it was his fault, his alone, that she had fallen to this
hideous degradation; and now there was nothing he could do. It was
irredeemable, beyond his power to cancel or to atone.
As he turned into the compound his consciousness came back, as it were,
to the present. The bungalow stood dark and silent, just as he had left
it. Trixie was not there; he knew it, though he went inside and called
her. Alarm again assailed him for her safety, and he paced the drive in
nervous agitation, fearing she was ill, that an accident had happened.
Never had she seemed so dear, so precious to him; that he could have
mistrusted her at all now caused him shamed contrition, and all his
grudging of her gaieties and freedom struck him at this moment in the
light of selfishness and petty tyranny. The recognition, wakened by the
bitter lesson of to-night, of how in time he might have strained her
love and trust beyond endurance, filled him with acute dismay and
consternation.
If he only could know that Trixie was well, had met with no harm. For
the twentieth time he went down the drive to the gate, and stood
surveying the road that stretched white between the shadows of the trees
to the right and to the left. Away in the distance jackals were howling,
and over the plain in front of the house there floated the regular beat
of a tom-tom. The immediate silence around him, the moonlight, the heat,
and the faint, far sounds, seemed charged with a nameless despondence
that weighed on his soul. He felt indescribably wretched and weary.
Fever was creeping again through his veins, and his limbs and his head
ached sorely. He turned at last and went back to the house, intending to
order a horse to be saddled that he might set out again to search for
Trixie; but as he reached the veranda the sound of wheels and the
trotting of a horse came faintly to his ears. He stood still and
listened.