‘Steady! Fifty-six – fifty-five – fifty-four,’ said Holmer. ‘Here we are. “Lieutenant Austin Limmason. Missing.” That was before Sebastopol.13 What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped out.’
‘But he never apologized. Said he’d see him damned first,’ chorused the mess.
‘Poor chap! I suppose he never had the chance afterwards. How did he come here?’ said the colonel.
The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
‘Do you know who you are?’
It laughed weakly.
‘Do you know that you are Limmason – Lieutenant Limmason of the White Hussars?’
Swiftly as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, ‘Yes, I’m Limmason, of course.’ The light died out in his eyes, and the man collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not seem to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how, like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again. Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the toast of the Queen. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled and cowered alternately.
The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying slightly, gripped the table-edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and began:
‘Fellow-soldiers glorious – true friends and hospitables. It was an accident, and deplorable – most deplorable.’ Here he smiled sweetly all round the mess. ‘But you will think of this little, little thing. So little, is it not? The Czar! Posh! I slap my fingers – I snap my fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But in us Slav who has done nothing, him I believe. Seventy – how much – millions peoples that have done nothing – not one thing. Posh! Napoleon was an episode.’ He banged a hand on the table. ‘Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the world – out here. All our work is to do; and it shall be done, old peoples. Get a-way!’ He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the man. ‘You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little – oh, so little – accident, that no one remembered. Now he is That! So will you be, brother soldiers so brave – so will you be. But you will never come back. You will all go where he is gone, or’ – he pointed to the great coffin-shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, ‘Seventy millions – get a-way, you old peoples,’ fell asleep.
‘Sweet, and to the point,’ said little Mildred. ‘What’s the use of getting wroth? Let’s make this poor devil comfortable.’
But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table, that an officer of the regiment had resigned his newfound commission.
And Dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always genial, went away too by a night train. Little Mildred and another man saw him off, for he was the guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open hand, the law of that mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
‘Good-bye, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey,’ said little Mildred.
‘Au revoir,’ said the Russian.
‘Indeed! But we thought you were going home?’
‘Yes, but I will come again. My dear friends, is that road shut?’ He pointed to where the North Star burned over the Khyber Pass.
‘By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you like. Got everything you want? Cheroots, ice, bedding? That’s all right. Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch.’
‘Um,’ said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small. ‘Of – all – the – unmitigated –!’
Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the North Star and hummed a selection from a recent Simla burlesque that had much delighted the White Hussars. It ran –
I’m sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
I’m sorry to cause him pain;
But a terrible spree there’s sure to be
When he comes back again.
Without Benefit of Clergy1
Before my Spring I garnered Autumn’s gain,
Out of her time my field was white with grain,
The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
In mystery of increase and decay;
I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,
Who am too wise in that I should not know.
Bitter Waters.
I
‘But if it be a girl?’
‘Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have prayed for so many nights, and sent gifts to Sheikh Badl’s 2 shrine so often, that I know God will give us a son – a man-child that shall grow into a man. Think of this and be glad. My mother shall be his mother till I can take him again, and the mullah of the Pattan mosque shall cast his nativity – God send he be born in an auspicious hour! – and then, and then thou wilt never weary of me, thy slave.’
‘Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen?’
‘Since the beginning – till this mercy came to me. How could I be sure of thy love when I knew that I had been bought with silver?’
‘Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy mother.’
‘And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day long like a hen. What talk is yours of dower! I was bought as though I had been a Lucknow dancing-girl instead of a child.’
‘Art thou sorry for the sale?’
‘I have sorrowed; but today I am glad. Thou wilt never cease to love me now? – answer, my king.’
‘Never – never. No.’
‘Not even though the mem-log3 – the white women of thy own blood – love thee? And remember, I have watched them driving in the evening; they are very fair.’
‘I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred. I have seen the moon, and – then I saw no more fire-balloons.’
Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. ‘Very good talk,’ she said. Then with an assumption of great stateliness, ‘It is enough. Thou hast my permission to depart – if thou wilt.’
The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch in a room furnished only with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs, and a very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat a woman of sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes. By every rule and law she should have been otherwise, for he was an Englishman, and she a Mussulman’s daughter bought two years before from her mother, who, being left without money, would have sold Ameera shrieking to the Prince of Darkness if the price had been sufficient.
It was a contract entered into with a light heart; but even before the girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John Holden’s life. For her, and the withered hag her mother, he had taken a little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found – when the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard, and Ameera had established herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her mother had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places, the distance from the daily market, and at matters of house-keeping in general – that the house was to him his home. Anyone could enter his bachelor’s bungalow by day or night, and the life that he led there was an unlovely one. In the house in the city his feet only could pass beyond the outer courtyard to the women’s rooms; and when the big wooden gate was bolted behind him he was king in his own territory, with Ameera for queen. And there was going to be added to this kingdom a third person whose arrival Holden felt inclined to resent. It interfered with his perfect happiness. It disarranged the orderly peace of the house that was his own. But Ameera was wild with delight at the thought of it,
and her mother not less so. The love of a man, and particularly a white man, was at the best an inconstant affair, but it might, both women argued, be held fast by a baby’s hands. ‘And then,’ Ameera would always say, ‘then he will never care for the white mem-log. I hate them all – I hate them all.’
‘He will go back to his own people in time,’ said the mother; ‘but by the blessing of God that time is yet afar off.’
Holden sat silent on the couch thinking of the future, and his thoughts were not pleasant. The drawbacks of a double life are manifold. The Government, with singular care, had ordered him out of the station for a fortnight on special duty in the place of a man who was watching by the bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification of the transfer had been edged by a cheerful remark that Holden ought to think himself lucky in being a bachelor and a free man. He came to break the news to Ameera.
‘It is not good,’ she said slowly, ‘but it is not all bad. There is my mother here, and no harm will come to me – unless indeed I die of pure joy. Go thou to thy work and think no troublesome thoughts. When the days are done I believe… nay, I am sure. And – and then I shall lay him in thy arms, and thou wilt love me for ever. The train goes tonight, at midnight is it not? Go now, and do not let thy heart be heavy by cause of me. But thou wilt not delay in returning? Thou wilt not stay on the road to talk to the bold white mem-log. Come back to me swiftly, my life.’
As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that was tethered to the gate-post, Holden spoke to the white-haired old watchman who guarded the house, and bade him under certain contingencies despatch the filled-up telegraph-form that Holden gave him. It was all that could be done, and with the sensations of a man who has attended his own funeral Holden went away by the night mail to his exile. Every hour of the day he dreaded the arrival of the telegram, and every hour of the night he pictured to himself the death of Ameera. In consequence his work for the State was not of first-rate quality, nor was his temper towards his colleagues of the most amiable. The fortnight ended without a sign from his home, and, torn to pieces by his anxieties, Holden returned to be swallowed up for two precious hours by a dinner at the club, wherein he heard, as a man hears in a swoon, voices telling him how execrably he had performed the other man’s duties, and how he had endeared himself to all his associates. Then he fled on horseback through the night with his heart in his mouth. There was no answer at first to his blows on the gate, and he had just wheeled his horse round to kick it in when Pir Khan appeared with a lantern and held his stirrup.
‘Has aught occurred?’ said Holden.
‘The news does not come from my mouth, Protector of the Poor, but –’ He held out his shaking hand as befitted the bearer of good news who is entitled to a reward.
Holden hurried through the courtyard. A light burned in the upper room. His horse neighed in the gateway, and he heard a shrill little wail that sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It was a new voice, but it did not prove that Ameera was alive.
‘Who is there?’ he called up the narrow brick staircase.
There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and then the voice of the mother, tremulous with old age and pride – ‘We be two women and – the – man – thy – son.’
On the threshold of the room Holden stepped on a naked dagger, that was laid there to avert ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his impatient heel.
‘God is great!’ cooed Ameera in the half-light. ‘Thou hast taken his misfortunes on thy head.’
‘Ay, but how is it with thee, life of my life? Old woman, how is it with her?’
‘She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the child is born. There is no harm; but speak softly,’ said the mother.
‘It only needed thy presence to make me all well,’ said Ameera. ‘My king, thou hast been very long away. What gifts hast thou for me? Ah, ah! It is I that bring gifts this time. Look, my life, look. Was there ever such a babe? Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from him.’
‘Rest then, and do not talk. I am here, bachari [little woman].’
‘Well said, for there is a bond and a heel-rope [peecharee] between us now that nothing can break. Look – canst thou see in this light? He is without spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child. Ya illah!4 he shall be a pundit – no, a trooper of the Queen. And, my life, dost thou love me as well as ever, though I am faint and sick and worn? Answer truly.’
‘Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul. Lie still, pearl, and rest.’
‘Then do not go. Sit by my side here – so. Mother, the lord of this house needs a cushion. Bring it.’ There was an almost imperceptible movement on the part of the new life that lay in the hollow of Ameera’s arm. ‘Aho!’ she said, her voice breaking with love. ‘The babe is a champion from his birth. He is kicking me in the side with mighty kicks. Was there ever such a babe! And he is ours to us – thine and mine. Put thy hand on his head, but carefully, for he is very young, and men are unskilled in such matters.’
Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips of his fingers the downy head.
‘He is of the Faith,’ said Ameera; ‘for lying here in the night-watches I whispered the call to prayer and the profession of faith into his ears. And it is most marvellous that he was born upon a Friday, as I was born. Be careful of him, my life; but he can almost grip with his hands.’
Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger. And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart. Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realize that there was someone else in the world, but he could not feel that it was a veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think and Ameera dozed lightly.
‘Get hence, sahib,’ said her mother under her breath. ‘It is not good that she should find you here on waking. She must be still.’
‘I go,’ said Holden submissively. ‘Here be rupees. See that my baba gets fat and finds all that he needs.’
The chink of silver roused Ameera. ‘I am his mother, and no hireling,’ she said weakly. ‘Shall I look to him more or less for the sake of money? Mother, give it back. I have borne my lord a son.’
The deep sleep of weakness came upon her almost before the sentence was completed. Holden went down to the courtyard very softly with his heart at ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was chuckling with delight. ‘This house is now complete,’ he said, and without further comment thrust into Holden’s hands the hilt of a sabre worn many years ago when he, Pir Khan, served the Queen in the police. The bleat of a tethered goat came from the well-kerb.
‘There be two,’ said Pir Khan, ‘two goats of the best. I bought them, and they cost much money; and since there is no birth-party assembled their flesh will be all mine. Strike craftily, sahib! ’Tis an ill-balanced sabre at the best. Wait till they raise their heads from cropping the marigolds.’
‘And why?’ said Holden, bewildered.
‘For the birth-sacrifice. What else? Otherwise the child being unguarded from fate may die. The Protector of the Poor knows the fitting words to be said.’
Holden had learned them once with little thought that he would ever speak them in earnest. The touch of the cold sabre-hilt in his palm turned suddenly to the clinging grip of the child up-stairs – the child that was his own son – and a dread of loss filled him.
‘Strike!’ said Pir Khan. ‘Never life came into the world but life was paid for it. See, the goats have raised their heads. Now! With a drawing cut!’
Hardly knowing what he did, Holden cut twice as he muttered the Mahomedan prayer that runs: ‘Almighty! In place of this my son I offer life for life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair for hair, skin for skin.’ The waiting horse snorted and bounded in his pickets at the smell of the raw blood that spirted over Holden’s riding-boots.
‘Well smitten!’ said Pir Khan wiping the sabre. ‘A swordsman was lost in thee. Go with a light heart, Heaven-born. I am thy servant, and the servant of thy son. May the Presence liv
e a thousand years and… the flesh of the goats is all mine?’ Pir Khan drew back richer by a month’s pay. Holden swung himself into the saddle and rode off through the low-hanging wood-smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous exultation, alternating with a vast vague tenderness directed towards no particular object, that made him choke as he bent over the neck of his uneasy horse. ‘I never felt like this in my life,’ he thought. ‘I’ll go to the club and pull myself together.’
A game of pool was beginning, and the room was full of men. Holden entered, eager to get to the light and the company of his fellows, singing at the top of his voice –
‘In Baltimore a-walking, a lady I did meet!’
‘Did you?’ said the club-secretary from his corner. ‘Did she happen to tell you that your boots were wringing wet? Great goodness, man, it’s blood!’
‘Bosh!’ said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. ‘May I cut in? It’s dew. I’ve been riding through high crops. My faith! my boots are in a mess though!
‘And if it be a girl she shall wear a wedding-ring,
And if it be a boy he shall fight for his king,
With his dirk, and his cap, and his little jacket blue,
He shall walk the quarter-deck –’
‘Yellow on blue – green next player,’ said the marker monotonously.
‘He shall walk the quarter-deck – Am I green, marker? He shall walk the quarter-deck – eh! that’s a bad shot – As his daddy used to do!’
‘I don’t see that you have anything to crow about,’ said a zealous junior civilian acidly. ‘The Government is not exactly pleased with your work when you relieved Sanders.’
‘Does that mean a wigging from headquarters?’ said Holden with an abstracted smile. ‘I think I can stand it.’