The first shock of a bullet is no more than a brisk pinch. The wrecked
body does not send in its protest to the soul till ten or fifteen
seconds later. Holden realised his pain slowly, exactly as he had
realised his happiness, and with the same imperious necessity for hiding
all trace of it. In the beginning he only felt that there had been a
loss, and that Ameera needed comforting, where she sat with her head on
her knees shivering as Mian Mittu from the house-top called _Tota! Tota!
Tota!_ Later all his world and the daily life of it rose up to hurt him.
It was an outrage that any one of the children at the band-stand in the
evening should be alive and clamorous, when his own child lay dead. It
was more than mere pain when one of them touched him, and stories told
by over-fond fathers of their children’s latest performances cut him to
the quick. He could not declare his pain. He had neither help, comfort,
nor sympathy; and Ameera at the end of each weary day would lead him
through the hell of self-questioning reproach which is reserved for
those who have lost a child, and believe that with a little—just a
little—more care it might have been saved.
“Perhaps,” Ameera would say, “I did not take sufficient heed. Did I, or
did I not? The sun on the roof that day when he played so long alone and
I was—_ahi!_ braiding my hair—it may be that the sun then bred the
fever. If I had warned him from the sun he might have lived. But, oh my
life, say that I am guiltless! Thou knowest that I loved him as I love
thee. Say that there is no blame on me, or I shall die—I shall die!”
“There is no blame,—before God, none. It was written and how could we do
aught to save? What has been, has been. Let it go, beloved.”
“He was all my heart to me. How can I let the thought go when my arm
tells me every night that he is not here? _Ahi! Ahi!_ O Tota, come back
to me—come back again, and let us be all together as it was before!”
“Peace, peace! For thine own sake, and for mine also, if thou lovest
me—rest.”
“By this I know thou dost not care; and how shouldst thou? The white men
have hearts of stone and souls of iron. Oh, that I had married a man of
mine own people—though he beat me—and had never eaten the bread of an
alien!”
“Am I an alien—mother of my son?”
“What else—Sahib?... Oh, forgive me—forgive! The death has driven me
mad. Thou art the life of my heart, and the light of my eyes, and the
breath of my life, and—and I have put thee from me, though it was but
for a moment. If thou goest away to whom shall I look for help? Do not
be angry. Indeed, it was the pain that spoke and not thy slave.”
“I know, I know. We be two who were three. The greater need therefore
that we should be one.”
They were sitting on the roof as of custom. The night was a warm one in
early spring, and sheet-lightning was dancing on the horizon to a broken
tune played by far-off thunder. Ameera settled herself in Holden’s arms.
“The dry earth is lowing like a cow for the rain, and I—I am afraid. It
was not like this when we counted the stars. But thou lovest me as much
as before, though a bond is taken away? Answer!”
“I love more because a new bond has come out of the sorrow that we have
eaten together, and that thou knowest.”
“Yea, I knew,” said Ameera in a very small whisper. “But it is good to
hear thee say so, my life, who art so strong to help. I will be a child
no more, but a woman and an aid to thee. Listen! Give me my _sitar_ and
I will sing bravely.”
She took the light silver-studded _sitar_ and began a song of the great
hero Rajah Rasalu. The hand failed on the strings, the tune halted,
checked, and at a low note turned off to the poor little nursery-rhyme
about the wicked crow—
And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
Only a penny a pound, _baba_—only....
Then came the tears, and the piteous rebellion against fate till she
slept, moaning a little in her sleep, with the right arm thrown clear of
the body as though it protected something that was not there. It was
after this night that life became a little easier for Holden. The
ever-present pain of loss drove him into his work, and the work repaid
him by filling up his mind for nine or ten hours a day. Ameera sat alone
in the house and brooded, but grew happier when she understood that
Holden was more at ease, according to the custom of women. They touched
happiness again, but this time with caution.
“It was because we loved Tota that he died. The jealousy of God was upon
us,” said Ameera. “I have hung up a large black jar before our window to
turn the evil eye from us, and we must make no protestations of delight,
but go softly underneath the stars, lest God find us out. Is that not
good talk, worthless one?”
She had shifted the accent on the word that means “beloved,” in proof of
the sincerity of her purpose. But the kiss that followed the new
christening was a thing that any deity might have envied. They went
about henceforward saying, “It is naught, it is naught;” and hoping that
all the Powers heard.
The Powers were busy on other things. They had allowed thirty million
people four years of plenty wherein men fed well and the crops were
certain, and the birth-rate rose year by year; the districts reported a
purely agricultural population varying from nine hundred to two thousand
to the square mile of the overburdened earth; and the Member for Lower
Tooting, wandering about India in pot-hat and frock-coat, talked largely
of the benefits of British rule and suggested as the one thing needful
the establishment of a duly qualified electoral system and a general
bestowal of the franchise. His long-suffering hosts smiled and made him
welcome, and when he paused to admire, with pretty picked words, the
blossom of the blood-red _dhak_-tree that had flowered untimely for a
sign of what was coming, they smiled more than ever.
It was the Deputy Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen, staying at the club for
a day, who lightly told a tale that made Holden’s blood run cold as he
overheard the end.
“He won’t bother any one any more. Never saw a man so astonished in my
life. By Jove, I thought he meant to ask a question in the House about
it. Fellow-passenger in his ship—dined next him—bowled over by cholera
and died in eighteen hours. You needn’t laugh, you fellows. The Member
for Lower Tooting is awfully angry about it; but he’s more scared. I
think he’s going to take his enlightened self out of India.”
“I’d give a good deal if he were knocked over. It might keep a few
vestrymen of his kidney to their own parish. But what’s this about
cholera? It’s full early for anything of that kind,” said the warden of
an unprofitable salt-lick.
“Don’t know,” said the Deputy Commissioner reflectively. “We’ve got
locusts with us. There’s sporadic cholera all along the north—at least
we’re calling it sporadic for decency’s sake. The spring crops are short
in five districts, and nobody seems to know where the rains are. It’s
nearly March now. I don’t want to scare anybody, but it seems to me that
Nature’s going to audit her accounts with a big red pencil this summer.”
“Just when I wanted to take leave, too!” said a voice across the room.
“There won’t be much leave this year, but there ought to be a great deal
of promotion. I’ve come in to persuade the Government to put my pet
canal on the list of famine-relief works. It’s an ill wind that blows no
good. I shall get that canal finished at last.”
“Is it the old programme then,” said Holden; “famine, fever, and
cholera?”
“Oh, no. Only local scarcity and an unusual prevalence of seasonal
sickness. You’ll find it all in the reports if you live till next year.
You’re a lucky chap. _You_ haven’t got a wife to send out of harm’s way.
The hill-stations ought to be full of women this year.”
“I think you’re inclined to exaggerate the talk in the _bazars_,” said a
young civilian in the Secretariat. “Now I have observed——”
“I daresay you have,” said the Deputy Commissioner, “but you’ve a great
deal more to observe, my son. In the meantime, I wish to observe to
you——” and he drew him aside to discuss the construction of the canal
that was so dear to his heart. Holden went to his bungalow and began to
understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was
afraid for the sake of another—which is the most soul-satisfying fear
known to man.
Two months later, as the Deputy had foretold, Nature began to audit her
accounts with a red pencil. On the heels of the spring-reapings came a
cry for bread, and the Government, which had decreed that no man should
die of want, sent wheat. Then came the cholera from all four quarters of
the compass. It struck a pilgrim-gathering of half a million at a sacred
shrine. Many died at the feet of their god; the others broke and ran
over the face of the land, carrying the pestilence with them. It smote a
walled city and killed two hundred a day. The people crowded the trains,
hanging on to the footboards and squatting on the roofs of the
carriages, and the cholera followed them, for at each station they
dragged out the dead and the dying. They died by the roadside, and the
horses of the Englishmen shied at the corpses in the grass. The rains
did not come, and the earth turned to iron lest man should escape death
by hiding in her. The English sent their wives away to the hills and
went about their work, coming forward as they were bidden to fill the
gaps in the fighting-line. Holden, sick with fear of losing his chiefest
treasure on earth, had done his best to persuade Ameera to go away with
her mother to the Himalayas.
“Why should I go?” said she one evening on the roof.
“There is sickness, and people are dying, and all the white _mem-log_
have gone.”
“All of them?”
“All—unless perhaps there remain some old scald-head who vexes her
husband’s heart by running risk of death.”
“Nay; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I will be
a scald-head too. I am glad all the bold _mem-log_ are gone.”
“Do I speak to a woman or a babe? Go to the hills and I will see to it
that thou goest like a queen’s daughter. Think, child. In a
red-lacquered bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks
upon the pole and red cloth hangings. I will send two orderlies for
guard, and——”
“Peace! Thou art the babe in speaking thus. What use are those toys to
me? _He_ would have patted the bullocks and played with the housings.
For his sake, perhaps,—thou hast made me very English—I might have gone.
Now, I will not. Let the _mem-log_ run.”
“Their husbands are sending them, beloved.”
“Very good talk. Since when hast thou been my husband to tell me what to
do? I have but borne thee a son. Thou art only all the desire of my soul
to me. How shall I depart when I know that if evil befall thee by the
breadth of so much as my littlest finger-nail—is that not small?—I
should be aware of it though I were in paradise. And here, this summer
thou mayest die—_ai, janee_, die!—and in dying they might call to tend
thee a white woman, and she would rob me in the last of thy love!”
“But love is not born in a moment or on a death-bed!”
“What dost thou know of love, stoneheart? She would take thy thanks at
least, and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam the mother of thy
Prophet, that I will never endure. My lord and my love, let there be no
more foolish talk of going away. Where thou art, I am. It is enough.”
She put an arm round his neck and a hand on his mouth.
There are not many happinesses so complete as those that are snatched
under the shadow of the sword. They sat together and laughed, calling
each other openly by every pet name that could move the wrath of the
gods. The city below them was locked up in its own torments. Sulphur
fires blazed in the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples screamed
and bellowed, for the gods were inattentive in those days. There was a
service in the great Mahomedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the
minarets was almost unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of
the dead, and once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was
calling for its return. In the gray dawn they saw the dead borne out
through the city gates, each litter with its own little knot of
mourners. Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered.
It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and needed a
little breathing-space ere the torrent of cheap life should flood it
anew. The children of immature fathers and undeveloped mothers made no
resistance. They were cowed and sat still, waiting till the sword should
be sheathed in November if it were so willed. There were gaps among the
English, but the gaps were filled. The work of superintending
famine-relief, cholera-sheds, medicine-distribution, and what little
sanitation was possible, went forward because it was so ordered.
Holden had been told to keep himself in readiness to move to replace the
next man who should fall. There were twelve hours in each day when he
could not see Ameera, and she might die in three. He was considering
what his pain would be if he could not see her for three months, or if
she died out of his sight. He was absolutely certain that her death
would be demanded—so certain that when he looked up from the telegram
and saw Pir Khan breathless in the doorway, he laughed aloud. “And?”
said he,——
“When there is a cry in the night and the spirit flutters into the
throat, who has a charm that will restore? Come swiftly, Heaven-born! It
is the black cholera.”
Holden galloped to his home. The sky was heavy with clouds, for the
long-deferred rains were near and the heat was stifling. Ameera’s mother
met him in the courtyard, whimpering, “She is dying. She is nursing
herself into death. She is all but dead. What shall I do, Sahib?”
Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota had been born. She made no
sign when Holden entered, because the human soul is a very lonely thing,
and, when it is getting ready to go away, hides itself in a misty
borderland where the living may not follow. The black cholera does its
work quietly and without explanation. Ameera was being thrust out of
life as though the Angel of Death had himself put his hand upon her. The
quick breathing seemed to show that she was either afraid or in pain,
but neither eyes nor mouth gave any answer to Holden’s kisses. There was
nothing to be said or done. Holden could only wait and suffer. The first
drops of the rain began to fall on the roof, and he could hear shouts of
joy in the parched city.
The soul came back a little and the lips moved. Holden bent down to
listen. “Keep nothing of mine,” said Ameera. “Take no hair from my head.
_She_ would make thee burn it later on. That flame I should feel. Lower!
Stoop lower! Remember only that I was thine and bore thee a son. Though
thou wed a white woman to-morrow, the pleasure of receiving in thy arms
thy first son is taken from thee for ever. Remember me when thy son is
born—the one that shall carry thy name before all men. His misfortunes
be on my head. I bear witness—I bear witness”—the lips were forming the
words on his ear—“that there is no God but—thee, beloved!”
Then she died. Holden sat still, and all thought was taken from
him,—till he heard Ameera’s mother lift the curtain.
“Is she dead, Sahib?”
“She is dead.”
“Then I will mourn, and afterwards take an inventory of the furniture in
this house. For that will be mine. The Sahib does not mean to resume it?
It is so little, so very little, Sahib, and I am an old woman. I would
like to lie softly.”
“For the mercy of God be silent a while. Go out and mourn where I cannot
hear.”
“Sahib, she will be buried in four hours.”
“I know the custom. I shall go ere she is taken away. That matter is in
thy hands. Look to it, that the bed on which—on which she lies——”
“Aha! That beautiful red-lacquered bed. I have long desired——”
“That the bed is left here untouched for my disposal. All else in the
house is thine. Hire a cart, take everything, go hence, and before
sunrise let there be nothing in this house but that which I have ordered
thee to respect.”
“I am an old woman. I would stay at least for the days of mourning, and
the rains have just broken. Whither shall I go?”
“What is that to me? My order is that there is a going. The house gear
is worth a thousand rupees, and my orderly shall bring thee a hundred
rupees to-night.”
“That is very little. Think of the cart-hire.”
“It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with speed. O woman, get
hence and leave me with my dead!”
The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in her anxiety to take stock
of the house-fittings forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by Ameera’s side
and the rain roared on the roof. He could not think connectedly by
reason of the noise, though he made many attempts to do so. Then four
sheeted ghosts glided dripping into the room and stared at him through
their veils. They were the washers of the dead. Holden left the room and
went out to his horse. He had come in a dead, stifling calm through
ankle-deep dust. He found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with
frogs; a torrent of yellow water ran under the gate, and a roaring wind
drove the bolts of the rain like buckshot against the mud walls. Pir
Khan was shivering in his little hut by the gate, and the horse was
stamping uneasily in the water.
“I have been told the Sahib’s order,” said Pir Khan. “It is well. This
house is now desolate. I go also, for my monkey-face would be a reminder
of that which has been. Concerning the bed, I will bring that to thy
house yonder in the morning; but remember, Sahib, it will be to thee a
knife turning in a green wound. I go upon a pilgrimage, and I will take
no money. I have grown fat in the protection of the Presence whose
sorrow is my sorrow. For the last time I hold his stirrup.”
He touched Holden’s foot with both hands and the horse sprang out into
the road, where the creaking bamboos were whipping the sky, and all the
frogs were chuckling. Holden could not see for the rain in his face. He
put his hands before his eyes and muttered—
“Oh, you brute! You utter brute!”
The news of his trouble was already in his bungalow. He read the
knowledge in his butler’s eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food, and for
the first and last time in his life laid a hand upon his master’s
shoulder, saying, “Eat, Sahib, eat. Meat is good against sorrow. I also
have known. Moreover, the shadows come and go, Sahib; the shadows come
and go. These be curried eggs.”
Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The heavens sent down eight inches
of rain in that night and washed the earth clean. The waters tore down
walls, broke roads, and scoured open the shallow graves on the Mahomedan
burying-ground. All next day it rained, and Holden sat still in his
house considering his sorrow. On the morning of the third day he
received a telegram which said only, “Ricketts, Myndonie. Dying. Holden
relieve. Immediate.” Then he thought that before he departed he would
look at the house wherein he had been master and lord. There was a break
in the weather, and the rank earth steamed with vapour.
He found that the rains had torn down the mud pillars of the gateway,
and the heavy wooden gate that had guarded his life hung lazily from one
hinge. There was grass three inches high in the courtyard; Pir Khan’s
lodge was empty, and the sodden thatch sagged between the beams. A gray
squirrel was in possession of the verandah, as if the house had been
untenanted for thirty years instead of three days. Ameera’s mother had
removed everything except some mildewed matting. The _tick-tick_ of the
little scorpions as they hurried across the floor was the only sound in
the house. Ameera’s room and the other one where Tota had lived were
heavy with mildew; and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was
streaked and stained with rain-borne mud. Holden saw all these things,
and came out again to meet in the road Durga Dass, his landlord,—portly,
affable, clothed in white muslin, and driving a Cee-spring buggy. He was
overlooking his property to see how the roofs stood the stress of the
first rains.
“I have heard,” said he, “you will not take this place any more, Sahib?”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Perhaps I shall let it again.”
“Then I will keep it on while I am away.”
Durga Dass was silent for some time. “You shall not take it on, Sahib,”
he said. “When I was a young man I also——, but to-day I am a member of
the Municipality. Ho! Ho! No. When the birds have gone what need to keep
the nest? I will have it pulled down—the timber will sell for something
always. It shall be pulled down, and the Municipality shall make a road
across, as they desire, from the burning-ghaut to the city wall, so that
no man may say where this house stood.”