Six Women
By
VICTORIA CROSS
NEW YORK
MITCHELL KENNERLEY
* * * * *
_BY VICTORIA CROSS_
LIFE'S SHOP WINDOW
ANNA LOMBARD
SIX WOMEN
SIX CHAPTERS OF A MAN'S LIFE
THE WOMAN WHO DIDN'T
TO-MORROW?
PAULA
A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE
THE RELIGION OF EVELYN HASTINGS
LIFE OF MY HEART
* * * * *
DEDICATED TO
H.M.G. AND E.F.C.
AND OUR MEMORIES OF THE EAST.
SIX WOMEN
I
CHAPTER I
Listless and despondent, feeling that he hated everything in life,
Hamilton walked slowly down the street. The air was heavy, and the
sun beat down furiously on the yellow cotton awnings stretched over
his head. Clouds of dust rose in the roadway as the white bullocks
shuffled along, drawing their creaking wooden carts, and swarms of
flies buzzed noisily in the yellow, dusty sunshine. Hamilton went
on aimlessly; he was hot, he was tired, his eyes and head ached, he
was thirsty; but all these disagreeable sensations were nothing
beside the intense mental nausea that filled him, a nausea of life.
It rose up in and pervaded him, uncontrollable as a physical
malady. In vain he called upon his philosophy; he had practised it
so long that it was worn out. Like an old mantle from the
shoulders, it fell from him in rags, and he was glad. He felt he
hated his philosophy only less than he hated life--hated, yet
desired as the man hates a mistress he covets, and has never yet
possessed. "Never had anything, never done anything, never felt
anything decent yet," he mused.
He was an exceptionally handsome and attractive individual, and
though in reality forty years of age, he had the figure, the look,
and air of twenty-eight. Masses of black hair, without a white
thread, waved above a beautifully-cut and modelled face, of which
the clear bronze skin, with its warm colour in the cheeks, was not
the least striking feature. He was about six feet or a little over
in height, and had a wonderfully lithe, well-knit figure, and a
carriage full of grace and dignity. A bright, charming smile that
came easily to his face, and an air of absolute unconsciousness of
his own good looks, completed the armoury of weapons Venus had
endowed him with for breaking hearts. But Hamilton neglected his
vocation: he broke none. He got up early, and slaved away at his
duties for the Indian Civil Government in his office all day, and
went to bed dead tired at night, with nothing but a dreary
consciousness of duty done and more duty waiting for him the
following day, as a sleeping companion.
Hamilton's life had been ruined by an early and an unsuccessful
marriage. At twenty, when full of the early, divine fires of life,
he had married a girl of his own age and rank, dazzled by the
beauty she then, in his eyes, possessed, and in that amazing
blindness to character that make women view men with wondering
contempt. His blindness, however, ended with the ceremony. On his
wedding-night the woman, who, it must be admitted, had acted her
part of loving submissiveness, of gentle devotion, admirably,
mocked at him and his genuine, ardent passion.
How well he had always remembered her words to him as they stood
face to face in the chilly whiteness of an English bridal chamber
in midwinter! "It's no use, dear, I don't want any of this sort of
thing. It seems to me coarse and stupid, and I don't want the
bother of a dozen babies. I married because I wanted the position
of a married woman, and a nice presentable man to go about with in
society. Besides, things were not satisfactory at home, and I
wanted a man to keep me, and all that. But I don't see why you
should get into such a state of mind about it. I will keep house,
and be perfectly good and amiable, and we can go about together, of
course; only I want to keep my own room."
And how well he remembered her as she stood there, shattering his
life with her cold, light words--a tall, slim girl, in her white
dinner dress! She had been very fair then, with a quantity of soft
flaxen hair, which shortly after she had taken to dyeing--a thing
he had always hated. She had a small, heart-shaped face, so light
in colour as to suggest anæmia, with a high, thin nose, of which
the nostrils were excessively pinched together, a short upper lip,
and a thick, quite colourless mouth, small when closed, when she
laughed opening wide far back to her throat, showing, as it seemed,
an infinite quantity of long, narrow, white, wolf-like teeth.
How hideous she had suddenly appeared to him in those moments, seen
through the dark waves of passion she rolled back upon him! In the
hot, rosy glow she had deliberately conjured up before his eyes of
love and love returned he had thought her beautiful. Now, as she
took the veil from her mean, base mind, it fell also from her
beauty, and he saw her ugly, as she really was, body and soul.
Stunned and amazed, loathing his own folly, his own blindness,
condemning these more than he did her cruelty, Hamilton had
listened in silence while she revealed herself. When the first
shock was over, he had set himself to talk and reason with her.
Naturally intensely kind and sympathetic, it was easy for him to
see another's view, to put himself in another's place. He blamed
himself at once, more than her, for the position he now found
himself in. And patiently he tried to understand it, to find the
clue, if possible, to remedy it. He reasoned long and gently with
her, but she, knowing well the generous nature she had to deal
with, yielded not an inch. Hamilton was not the man to use force or
violence. The passions of the body, divested of their soul, were
nothing to him. On that night she struck down within him all desire
for or interest in her. He left her at last, and withdrew to
another room, where he sat through the remaining hours of the
night, looking into the face of his future.
Shortly after, he had left for India, the corpse of dead passion
within his breast. He made a confident of no one, told no one of
his secret burden, remitted half his pay regularly to his wife with
that obedience to custom and duty as the world sees it, with that
quiet dutifulness that is so astounding to the onlooker, but
characteristic of so many Englishmen, and threw himself into his
work, avoiding women and personal relations with them.
Such a life as this invariably calls down the anger of Venus, and
Hamilton had worn out by now the patience of the goddess.
The tragedy of Euripides' Hippolytus is called a myth, but that
same tragedy is played out over and over again, year by year, in
all time, and is as true now as it was then. The slighted goddess
takes her revenge at last. As he walked on, the sound of some
tom-toms dulled by distance came to his ears. He hesitated at a
crossing where a side alley led down towards the bazaar, then
without thought or intention walked down the turning, the music
growing louder as he advanced.
It came from a house some way lower down, before the open door of
which hung a large white sheet with scarlet letters on it. Hamilton
glanced up and read on it, "Dancing girls from the Deccan.
Admission, six annas. Walk in." He stared dully at it till the red
letters danced in the fierce, torrid sunlight, and the flies,
finding him standing motionless, came thickly round his face. A
puff of hot wind blew down the street, bringing the dust: it lifted
a corner of the sheet and turned it back from the doorway. Within
looked cool and dark. The entry was a square of darkness. He was
tired of the sun, the heat, the noise, the dust and the flies. With
no thought other than seeking for shelter, he stepped behind the
sheet and was in the darkness; a turnstile barred his way: on the
top of it he laid down his six annas, his eyes too full of the
yellow glare of the outside to see whom he paid: he felt the
turnstile yield, and stumbled on in the obscurity. A hand pushed
him between two curtains. Then he found himself in a low square
room, and could see about him again by the subdued light of oil
lamps fixed against the wall. At one end was the small stage, its
scarlet curtain now down; in front a row of tin lamps, primitive
footlights, and the rest of the room was filled with rows of empty
chairs. Mechanically and without interest, Hamilton went forward
and seated himself in the first of these rows. The tom-toms had
ceased: there was quiet, an interval of rest presumably for the
dancers. It was far cooler than outside, and Hamilton breathed a
sigh of relief as he sank into his seat. The dimness of the light,
the quiet, the coolness all pleased him: he had not known till he
sat down how tired he was. He might have sat there a quarter of an
hour, his mind in that state of hopeless blank that supervenes on
overmuch unsatisfactory thinking, when suddenly the tom-toms
started up again with a terrific rattle, and the scarlet curtain
was somewhat spasmodically jerked up, displaying a semicircle of
girls seated on European chairs facing the tin lamps. Two of the
seven were African girls, with the woolly hair and jet black skin
of their race; they were seated one at each end of the semicircle,
dressed in short scarlet skirts, standing out from their waist in
English ballet-girl fashion, the upper part of their bodies bare,
except for the masses of coloured glass necklaces covering their
breast from throat to waist. The next pair of girls seemed to
represent Spanish dancers, and were in ankle-long black and yellow
dresses, little yellow caps with bells depending from them sat in
amongst their masses of black hair, and they held languidly to
their sides their tambourines and castenets. Next on the chairs sat
two strictly Eastern dancers in transparent pale green gauzy
clothing held into waist and each ankle by jeweled bands. Their
pale ivory bodies shone through the filmy green muslin as the moon
shines clearly in green water, and the jewels blazed like stars
with red and blue fires at each movement of their limbs. Their
heads were crowned simply with white clematis, and the glory of
their straight-featured Circassian faces, together with the
unrivalled contours of softly moulded throat and breast and perfect
limbs, veiled only so much as a light mist may veil, would have
taken the breath away of the most inveterate frequenter of the
Alhambra and Empire in dull old England. Hamilton drew in his
breath with a little start as he first saw the semicircle, but it
was not on the Circassians that his eyes were fixed, but on the
very centre figure of that beautiful half-moon. Set in the centre,
she seemed to be considered the pearl amongst them, as indeed she
was. The mist that enveloped her was not pale green as the veils of
the other two, but white, and the beautiful perfect form that it
enclosed was of a warmer, brighter tint than theirs.
The white films of the drapery fell from the base of her throat,
leaving her arms quite bare, but softly clinging to breast and
flanks, till a gold band resting on her hips confined it closely,
and depressed in the centre, was fastened by a single enormous
ruby, the one spot of blood-red colour upon her. Beneath the
sloping belt of gold fell her loose Turkish trousers of gleaming
white, transparent tissue, clasped at the ankles by bands of gold.
On her feet were little Turkish slippers, on her brow--nothing, but
the crown of her radiant youth and beauty. Hamilton, gazing at it
across the footlights, thought he had never seen, either pictured
or in the flesh, a face so beautiful, so full of the beauty, the
goodness, the power and wonder of life.
The sight thrilled him. Like the power of electricity, its power
began to run along his veins, heating them, stirring them, calling
upon nerve and muscle and sense to wake up. He looked, and life
itself seemed to stream into him through his eyes. The girl's face
was a well-rounded oval, supported on the round, perfect column of
her throat; the eyes seemed pools of blackness that had caught all
the splendour and the radiance of a thousand Eastern nights. The
fires of many stars, the whole brilliance of the purple nights of
Asia were mirrored in them. Above them rose the dark, arching span
of the eyebrows on the soft warm-tinted forehead, cut in one line
of severest beauty with the delicate nose. Beneath, the curling
lips were like the flowers of the pomegranate, a living, vivid
scarlet, and the rounded chin had the contour and bloom of the
nectarine.
She smiled faintly as she met the fixed gaze of Hamilton's eyes
across the footlights--such an innocent, merry little smile it
seemed, not the mechanical contortions one buys with pieces of
silver. Hamilton's blood seemed to catch light at it and flame all
over his body. He sat upright in his seat: gone were his fatigue,
his thirst, his eye-ache. His frame felt no more discomfort: his
whole soul rushed to his eyes, and sat there watching. In some men
their physical constitution is so closely knitted to the mental,
that the slightest shock to either instantly vibrates through the
other and works its effect equally on both. Hamilton was of this
order, and his body responded, instantly now, to the joy and
interest born suddenly in his mind.
A moment after the curtain was rolled up, a huge negro, dressed in
a fancy dress of scarlet, and with a high cap of the same colour on
his head, came on from the side. In his hand he carried a small
dog-whip, and as he cracked it all the girls stood up. Hamilton
sickened as he looked at him: an indefinable feeling of horror came
over him as this man stalked about the stage. He pointed with his
whip to the two African girls at the end of the semicircle, and
they came forward, while the rest sat down. A horrid uneasy feeling
of discomfort grew up in Hamilton, similar to that which a lover of
animals feels, when called upon to witness performing dogs, and all
the fear and anxiety pent up in their fast-beating little hearts is
communicated to himself. He watched the girls' faces keenly as the
negro went round and placed himself behind the middle chair of the
semicircle, while the two Africans danced. Hamilton hardly noticed
their dance, a curious barbaric performance that would have been
alarming to the British matron, but was neither new nor interesting
to Hamilton. He kept his eyes fixed on the white-clothed girl in
the centre, and the sinister figure behind her chair. She seemed
calm and indifferent, and when the negro put his hand on her
shoulder looked up and listened to his words without fear or
repulsion. Hamilton, keenly alive, with every sense alert, sat in
his chair, a prey to the new and delightful feeling, not known for
years, of interest.
Yes, he was interested, and the energetic sense of loathing for
the negro proved it. The music, loud and strident--an ordinary
Italian piano-organ having been introduced amongst the Oriental
instruments--banged on, and then abruptly came to a stop when the
negro cracked his whip. The two African women resumed their chairs,
there was some applause, and a good many small coins fell on the
stage from the hands of the audience. The second pair of girls
rose, came forward and commenced to dance, the organ playing some
appropriate Spanish airs. After these, the two Indian girls who
gave the usual _dance de ventre_ to a lively Italian air on the
organ. Then, at last, _she_ rose from her chair and approached the
footlights. The organ ceased playing, only the Indian music
continued: wild sensual music, imitating at intervals the cries of
passion.
To this accompaniment the girl danced.
Had any British matrons been present we must hope they would have
walked out, yet, to the eye of the artist, there was nothing coarse
or offending, simply a most beautiful harmony of motion. The girl's
beauty, her grace and youth, and the slight lissomness of all her
body lent to the dance a poetry, a refinement it would not have
possessed with another exponent.
Moreover, though there was a certain ardour in her looks and
gestures, in the way she yielded her limbs and body to the
influence of the music, yet there was also a gay innocence, a
bright naïve irresponsibility in it that contrasted strongly with
the sinister intention underlying all the movements of the other
two Indian dancers. At the end of the dance Hamilton took a rupee
from his pocket and threw it across the tin lamps towards her feet.
She picked it up smiling, though she left the other coins which
fell on the stage untouched, and went back to her chair.
After her dance, the great negro came forward and did a turn of his
own. Hamilton looked away. What was this man to the little circle?
he wondered. He could not keep his mind off that one query? Were
they his slaves? willing or unwilling? did they constitute his
harem? or were they paid, independent workers? His mind was made up
to get speech with this one girl, at least, that evening. This
delightful feeling of interest, this pleasure, even this keen
disgust, all were so welcome to him in the dreary mental state of
indifference that had become his habit, that he welcomed them
eagerly, and could not let them go. Beyond this there was rising
within him, suddenly and overwhelmingly, the force of Life,
indignant at the long repression it had been subjected to. Man may
be a civilized being, accustomed to the artificial restraints and
laws he has laid upon himself, but there remains within him still
that primitive nature that knows nothing, and never will learn
anything of those laws, and which leaps up suddenly after years of
its prison-life in overpowering revolt, and says, "Joy is my
birthright. I will have it!"
This moment is the crisis of most lives. It was with Hamilton now,
and it seemed suddenly to him that twenty years of fidelity to an
unloved, unloving woman was enough. The debt contracted at the
altar twenty years before had been paid off. The promise, given
under a misunderstanding to one who had wilfully deceived him, was
wiped out. It was a marvel to him in those moments how it had held
him so long.
Hamilton had one of those keen, brilliant minds that make their
decisions quickly, and rarely regret them. He took his resolution
now. That prisoner in revolt within him should be free; he would
strike off the fetters he had worn too long and vainly. He was
before the open book of Life, at that page where he had stood so
long. With a firm decisive hand he would take the new page, and
turn it over. That last page, on which his wife's name was written
large, was completely done with, closed.
The old joyous spirit, the keen eagerness for love and joy and
life, the Pagan's gay rejoicing in it, that had been such a marked
feature of his disposition before his marriage, came back to him,
rushed through him, refilled him.
His marriage, with its disillusionment, had crushed it out of him
for a time, and, with that same decisiveness that marked him now,
he had turned over the pages of youthful dreams and joys and loves,
and opened the next page of work, of strenuous endeavour, of a
hard, rigid observance of fidelity to the vows he had taken. And
for a time work and its rewards, effort and its returns, a hard,
practical life in the world amongst men, had held him. That now
was no longer to be all to him.
His life, and such joy as it might hold for him, was to be his own
again. The joy of the decisions filled him, elated him. He felt as
if his mind had sudden wings, and could lift him with it to the
roof.
Such a decision, when it comes, seems to oneself, as it seemed to
Hamilton now, a sudden thing. It has the force and shock of a
revelation, but it is not really sudden. The great rebellion nearly
all natures--certainly some, and these usually the greatest and
best--feel at the absence of joy in their lives had been gradually
growing within him, gathering a little strength each day. It is
only the climax of such feelings that is sudden--the awakening of
the mind to their presence. The growth has been going on day by
day, week by week, unmeasured, unreckoned with.
Immediately the curtain fell, Hamilton left his seat and went
up to a door, reached by a few steps, on the level of the
footlights, and at the left side of them. No one hindered him.
The rest of the audience were going out. He pushed the door,
which yielded readily, and he passed through. A narrow,
white-washed, lath-and-plaster passage opened before him, at the
end of which he saw a tin lamp burning against the wall and heard
voices.
The passage led into a three-cornered room, where he found some of
the dancers and an old woman who was huddled up on a straw mat in
the corner. The negro was not there. The girls stood about idly;
some were changing their clothes. They did not seem to heed his
presence, except the one he was seeking, who came straight towards
him. As she moved across the dirty, littered room, her limbs under
their transparent covering moved, and her head was carried with the
air of an empress. "Will the Sahib come with me?" she said in a
low, soft tone. She raised her eyes to his face. They were wide,
enquiring, like the deer's brought face to face with the hunter in
the green thickets.
The other girls glanced towards him, and some smiles were
exchanged, but no one approached him. They seemed to understand he
was there only for the star of the troupe. Hamilton looked down
into those glorious midnight eyes fixed upon him, and a faint
colour came into his cheek.
"I will come wherever you lead," he answered in Hindustani. These
surroundings were horrible, but the shade of them did not seem to
dim her charm.
The scent in the air was disagreeable. Tawdry spangles and false
jewels lay about on the tumble-down settees. From behind little
doors that opened from the walls round came the sound of men's
voices.
"Let the Sahib come this way, then," she answered, and turned
towards one of the small doors in the wall. This took them into
another tiny, musty-smelling passage that wound about like the run
of a rabbit warren, only wide enough for one to pass along at a
time, and the strips of lath were so low overhead that Hamilton
bent his neck involuntarily to avoid them.
At a door in the side of this she stopped and pushed it open; the
little run way wound on beyond in the darkness.
Hamilton followed her into the sloping-roofed, lath-and-plaster
pent-house that had been run up between the back of the stage and
the wall of the building. Native lamps were hooked into the wall,
and their light showed the garish ugliness of it all--the hastily
whitewashed walls, the scraps of ragged, dirty, scarlet cloth hung
here and there over a bulge or stain in the plaster: the boarded
floor, uneven and cracked: the bed against the wall, not too clean
looking, its dingy curtains not quite concealing the dingier
pillows; the broken chair on which a basin stood, placed on two
grey-looking towels; another chair with the back rails knocked out
leaning against the wall.
He threw his gaze round it in a moment's rapid survey, then he
pressed to the rickety, uneven door and shot the bolt.
The girl stood in the middle of the room, an exquisitely lovely
figure. She regarded him with wide, innocent eyes. Hamilton felt
all the blood alight in his veins; it seemed to him he could hear
his pulses beating. Never in his life before had joy and passion
met within him to stir him as they did now, but in natures where
there is a strong, deep strain of intellectuality the body never
quite conquers the mind, the light of the intellect never quite
goes down, however strong the sea, however high the waves of
animal passion on which it rides; and now Hamilton felt the great
appeal to his brain as well as to his senses that the girl's beauty
made.
He went up to her. She looked at him with an intense admiration,
almost worship in her eyes. A man at such moments looks, as Nature
intended he should, his very best, and Hamilton's face, of a noble
and splendid type, lighted now by the keenest animation, held her
gaze.
"Tell me," he said in a low tone, for footsteps passed on the
creaking boards, and gibbering voices and laughter could be heard
outside, "tell me, what is that man to you? Do you belong to him,
all of you?"
"That...? He is not a man, he is a ... nothing," replied the girl,
looking up with calm, glorious eyes. "He can do no harm ... nor
good."
Hamilton drew a quick breath.
"You dance like this every evening, and then choose someone in the
audience in this way?" he questioned, slipping his hand round her
neck and looking down at her, a half-amused sadness coming into his
eyes.
The girl shook her head with a quick negation.
"No, I have only been here a few days--a week, I think. Did you
notice that old woman as we came through here? I belong to her; she
taught me to dance. She brought me here, and I dance for the
Nothing, but I have never taken any one like this before. The other
girls do, every night, but each night the Nothing said to me, 'No
one here to-night, good enough. Wait till an English Sahib comes.'"
Hamilton listened with a paling cheek; his breath came and went
faintly; he hardly seemed to draw it; he put his next question very
gently, watching her open brow and proud, fearless eyes.
"Do you know nothing of men at all, then?"
"Nothing, Sahib, nothing," she answered, falling on her knees
suddenly at his feet, and raising her hands towards him. "This will
be my bridal night with the Sahib. The Nothing told me to please
you, to do all you told me. What shall I do? how shall I please
you?"
Hamilton looked down upon her: his brain seemed whirling; the
pulses along his veins beat heavily; new worlds, new vistas of life
seemed opening before him as he looked at her, so beautiful in her
first youth, in her unclouded innocence, full, it is true, of
Oriental passion, with a certain Oriental absence of shame, but
untouched, able to be his, and his only.
Before he could speak again, or collect his thoughts that the
girl's words had scattered, her soft voice went on:
"Surely the Sahib is a god, not a man. I have seen the men across
the footlights: there were none like the Sahib. I said to my
mother, 'I do not like men, I do not want them; what shall I do?'
And my mother said, 'There is no hurry, my child; we will wait till
a rich Sahib comes.' But you are not a man, you must be a god, you
are so beautiful; and I am the slave of the Sahib, for ever and
ever."
She looked up at him, great lights seemed to have been lighted in
the midnight pools of her eyes, the curved lips parted a little,
showing the perfect, even teeth; the rounded, warm-hued cheeks
glowed; the lids of her eyes lifted as those of a person looking
out into a new world.
Hamilton stood looking at her, and two great seas of conflicting
emotions swept into his brain, and under their tumult he remained
irresolute. Mere instincts and nature, the common impulse of the
male to take his pleasure whenever offered, prompted him to draw
her to his breast and let her learn the great joy of life in his
arms; but some higher feeling held him back: the knowledge that the
first way in which a woman learns these things colours her whole
after estimation of them, restrained him.
Here he saw, suddenly, there was new ground for Love to build
himself a habitation upon. Should it be but a rude shanty, loosely
constructed of Desire? Was it not rather such a fair and lovely
site that it was worthy a perfect temple, built and finished with
delicate care?
This flower of wonderful bloom he had found by chance in such a
poor, rough garden, was it not better to carry it gently to some
sheltered spot, to transplant and keep it for his own, rather than
just tear at it with a careless touch in passing by?
Hamilton had the brain of the artist and the poet; things touched
him less by their reality than by that strange halo imagination
throws round them.
The sound of some shuffling steps in the passage outside, a lurch
as of some drunken and unsteady figure, some whispered words, and
then a burst of ribald laughter just outside the door, decided him.
No: her wedding night should not be here. Keen in his sympathy with
women, Hamilton knew how often that night recurs to a woman's
thoughts, and should its memories always bring back to her this
loathsome shed, these hideous sounds?
A repulsion so great filled him that it swept back his desire for
the moment. A great eagerness to get her away unharmed, unsoiled
from such a place, filled him. Already she seemed to be part of
himself, to be a possession he must guard. His heart was empty and
hungry: by means of her beauty and this strange unexpected
innocence she had so suddenly revealed to him, she had leapt into
it, made it her own. He sat down on the mean, dingy bed, and drew
her warm, supple body into his arms: she stood within their circle
submissively, quivering with pleasure. His touch was very gentle
and reverent, for he was a man who knew the value of essentials;
his brain was keen enough to go down to them and judge of them,
undeterred and unhindered and undeceived by externals, by
fictitious emblems. He saw here that he was in the presence of a
tender, youthful, unformed mind of complete innocence, and the
abhorrent surroundings affected that essential not at all.
A married woman in his own rank, with her dozen lovers and her
knowledge of evil, high in the favour of the world, could never
have had from him the same reverence that he gave to this
dancing-girl of the Deccan, who in the world's eyes was but a
creature put under his feet for him to trample on.
"Would you like to leave all these people and come to live only
with me? dance only for me?" he said softly, looking into those
great wondering eyes fixed in awe upon his face.
"Would you like to have a house to yourself, and a garden full of
flowers, and stay there with me alone?"
The girl clasped her hands joyously, smile after smile rippled
over the brilliant face.
"Oh, Sahib, it would be paradise! If I can stay with the Sahib, I
shall be happy anywhere. I am the slave of the Sahib. If he but use
me as the mat before his door to walk upon, I shall be content."
Hamilton shivered. He drew her a little closer. "Hush! I do not
like to hear you say those things. You shall come to me and sleep
in my arms, but not to-night. Love is a very great thing: it will
be a great thing with us, and it must not be thought of lightly, do
you see? Will you stay here and think of me only till I come again?
Think of your bridal night with me, dream of me till I come back
for you?"
"The Sahib's will is my law; but even if I wished, I could think of
nothing else but him till I see him again," she responded, her eyes
fixed upon his face. Hamilton gazed upon her. She made such a
lovely picture standing there: he thought he had never seen beauty
so perfect, so exquisitely fresh. The soft transparent tunic did
not conceal it, only lightly veiled its bloom. Her breasts, rounded
and firm, stood out as a statue's. They seemed to express the
vigour of her buoyant youth: they had never known artificial
support, and needed none. The waist was naturally slight, the hips
also, the straight supple limbs and round arms were the most
richly-modelled parts, perhaps, of the whole perfect form.
Hamilton slipped his arm down to her yielding waist and drew her
closer. Then he bent his head and kissed the wonderfully-carved and
glowing mouth. With a little cry of joy the girl threw both arms
about his neck and kissed him back with a wealth of fervour in her
lips, pressing her soft bosom against his in all the natural,
unrestrained ardour of a first and new-found love.
"Sahib, Sahib! do not leave me long. Come and take me away soon! I
am all yours! No other shall see me till you come again."
Hamilton was satisfied. He raised his head, his whole ardent nature
aflame.
"Dear little girl, let us go then to the old woman, and perhaps I
can pay her enough to make her take you away from here, and keep
you safe till I can come for you."
"Come, Sahib, come!" she answered, joyfully drawing out of his
arms and running across the room; she unbolted the door and pulled
it open, nearly causing the old woman who was crouched just
outside, and apparently leaning against it, to roll into the room.
"Saidie, Saidie! you have no respect for me," she grumbled, getting
on her feet with some difficulty. Hamilton came up, and helped to
balance her as she stood.
"Your Saidie pleases me very much," he said, drawing out a
pocket-book. "I want to take her away from here altogether. How
much do you ask for her?"
The old woman's beady-black eyes twinkled and gleamed, and fixed on
the pocket-book.
"It is not possible, Sahib," she said in a grumbling tone, "for me
to part with her and her services. A girl like that with her
beauty, her dancing, her singing! She will earn gold every night.
Let the Sahib come here each evening if he will and take his turn
with the rest. For a girl like that to go to one man alone is waste
and folly."
The colour mounted to Hamilton's face. His brows contracted.
"What I have to say is this," he answered sternly and briefly, "I
want this girl, and if you take her with you to some place of
safety for to-night, I will come to-morrow or the next day and give
you 2000 rupees for her--no more and no less. I have spoken."
"Two thousand rupees!" replied shrilly the old woman, "for Saidie,
the star of the dancers, and not yet fifteen! No, Sahib, no! a
Parsee will give more than that for a half hour with her."
Hamilton caught the old creature by her skinny arm:
"You waste your words talking to me," he said. "I am a police
magistrate, and I can have your whole place here closed, and all of
you put in prison, if I choose. The girl is willing to come with
me, and I will take her and pay you well for her. You have her
ready for me to-morrow night, or you go to prison--which you
please." The old woman shivered at the word magistrate, and fell
trembling on her knees.
"Let the Sahib have mercy! That great black brute will kill me if
the police come here. I take Saidie to my house, the Sahib comes
there when he will. He pays, he has her. It is all finished."
She spread out her thin black hands in a shaking gesture of
finality, and then fell forward and kissed Hamilton's boots after
the complimentary but embarrassing manner of natives. Hamilton drew
back a little. He was angered that Saidie should be witness,
auditor of all this. She stood silent, passive, gazing at the hot,
angry colour mounting to his face. He bent forward and dragged the
old woman up by her arms.
"Take this for yourself now," he said, putting a hundred-rupee note
into her hand, "and make no more difficulty. Take every care of
Saidie, and you will have your two thousand rupees very shortly."
The old woman seized the note, and began to mumble blessings on
Hamilton, which he cut short: "Give me the name of your street and
the house where you live, that I may find you easily," he said, and
noted down the directions she gave him. Then he turned to the girl
and put his arm round her neck.
"Dear Saidie! I trust to you. Remember it is your innocence, your
virtue, I love more than your beauty. Do not dance nor let anyone
see you till I come again."
He kissed her on the lips as she promised him. The soft, warm form
thrilled against him as their lips met. Then with a mental wrench
he turned and went out of the room and quickly down the dark
passage.
At the end his way was barred by the immense form of the negro.
"Something for me, master; do not forget me! I keep the pretty
things here for the gentlemen to see."
Hamilton drew back with loathing. Then he reflected--it was better,
perhaps, to keep all smooth.
He dived into his pockets and found a roll of small notes, which he
pushed into the negro's hand. The man bowed and let him pass, and
Hamilton went on out into the street.
It was evening now. The calm, lovely golden light of an Indian
evening fell all around him as he walked rapidly back to his
bungalow. As he entered it, how different he felt from the man who
had left it that morning! How light his footstep, how bright and
keen the tone of his voice! It quite surprised himself as he called
out to his butler that he was ready for dinner. Then he bounded up
to his room humming. His very muscles were of quite a different
texture seemingly now from an hour or two ago! How the blood flew
about joyously in his body! Dear Venus! she makes us pay generally,
but who can cavil at the glorious gifts she gives? As soon as his
dinner was disposed of, and all his other servants had retired from
the room, Hamilton called his butler, Pir Bakhs, to him, and held a
long conference with that intelligent and trustworthy individual.
Hamilton was one of those men that by reason of his strikingly good
looks, his charm of manner, his consideration for others, and his
complete control over himself that never allowed him to be betrayed
into an unjust word or action was greatly liked by every one, and
simply worshipped by his servants and all those in any way in a
position dependent on him.
When to-night Pir Bakhs was honoured by his confidence, the
servant's whole will and all his keen energies rose with delight
to serve his master. After he had listened in silence to
Hamilton's wishes, he proceeded to make himself master of the whole
scheme, detail by detail.
"The Sahib wishes a very beautiful bungalow far out, away from the
city? I know of one house across the desert; my cousin was butler
there. The Sahib went away to England, and the bungalow is to be
let furnished. Have I the Sahib's permission to go down to bazaar,
see my cousin to-night? I make all arrangements. I go to-morrow
morning; I get cook and all other servants. I stay there and make
all ready for the Sahib to-morrow evening."
Hamilton smiled at the man's eagerness to serve him. He knew well
that secretly in his heart his Mahommedan butler had always
deplored the severely monastic style in which he had lived, the
absence of women in his master's bungalow, the emptiness of his
arms that should have had to bear his master's children, and that
he now was ready to welcome heartily his master's reformation.
"Could you really do all that, Pir Bakhs?" he asked; "and can you
assure me that the house is a good one, and has the compound been
well kept up?"
"The house is about the same as this, but not quite so large. It is
in the oasis of Deira, across the desert. The Sahib knows how well
the palms grow there. My cousin tells me the compound is very
large; the Sahib there kept four malis;[1] very fine garden, many
English roses there."
[Footnote 1: Gardeners.]
"English roses I do not care for, Pir Bakhs," returned Hamilton
with a melancholy smile. "The roses of the East are far fairer to
me."
The butler bowed with his hand to his forehead. He took his
master's speech as a gracious compliment to his country.
"Everything grow there," he answered, spreading out his hands:
"pomegranates, bamboo, mangoes, bananas, sago palm, cocoanut palm,
magnolia--everything. I go to-morrow, I engage malis; I have all
ready for the Sahib."
"Very well, I trust you with it all. I shall keep on this house
just as it is, and leave most of the servants here. You and your
wives must come out with me, and you engage any other necessary
servants and hire any extra furniture you want."
"The Sahib is very good to his servant," returned the butler, his
face lighting up joyfully. "When will the Sahib shed the light of
his countenance on the bungalow?"
"I will try to run out to see it, to-morrow, after office hours,"
replied Hamilton, "if you will have all ready by then. I shall look
over it, and return to dine here as usual. Then about ten or later,
I will come over and bring your new mistress out with me. You must
have a good supper waiting for us. Take over all the linen and
plate you may want, but see that enough is left in this house so
that I can entertain the English Sahibs here if I want to, and let
my riding camel be well fed early. I shall use him for coming and
going. That's all, I think."
The butler bowed, and retired radiant with joyous importance, and
Hamilton sat on alone by the table thinking. The blood ran at high
tide along his veins, his eyes glowed, looking into space. Life, he
thought, what a joyous thing it was when it stretched out its hands
full of gifts!