by Talbot Mundy
“Have they no fear then?”
“None. Only madness!”
“See that they bite thee not! Keep thy wits with thee, and be ready to bring me word in time, else—”
“Patience, sahib! Show me the coins again — one little look — again once!”
But Ali Partab would wheel and ride away, leaving her to mumble and gibber in the road and curl again on to her blanket in the blackest corner by the door.
Once, on an expedition of that kind, he encountered Duncan McClean himself. The lean, tall Scotsman, gray-headed from the cares he had taken on himself, a little bowed from heat and hopelessness, but showing no least symptom of surrender in the kind, strong lines of a rugged face, stood, eyes upward, in the moonlight. The moon, at least, looked cool. It was at the full, like a disk of silver, and he seemed to drink in the beams that bathed him.
“Does he worship it?” wondered Ali Partab, reining from an amble to a walk and watching half-reverently. The followers of Mohammed are most superstitious about the moon. The feeling that he had for this man of peace who could so gaze up at it was something very like respect, and, with the twenty-second sense that soldiers have, he knew, without a word spoken or a deed seen done, that this would be a wielder of cold steel to be reckoned should he ever slough the robes of peace and take it into his silvered head to fight. The Rajput, that respects decision above all other virtues, perhaps because it is the one that he most lacks, could sense firm, unshakable, quick-seized determination on the instant.
Duncan McClean acknowledged the fierce-seeming stare with a salute, and Ali Partab dismounted instantly. He who holds a trust from such as Mahommed Gunga is polite in recognition of the trust. He leaned, then, against the horse’s withers, wondering how far he ought to let politeness go and whether his honor bade him show contempt for the Christian’s creed.
“Is there any way, I wonder,” asked the Scotsman, the clean-clipped suspicion of Scots dialect betraying itself even through the Hindustanee that he used, “of getting letters through to some small station?”
“I know not,” said the Rajput.
“You are a Mohammedan?” The Scotsman peered at him, adjusting his viewpoint to the moon’s rays. “I see you are. A Rajput, too, I think.”
“Ha, sahib.”
“There was a Rangar here not very long ago.” This man evidently knew the proper title to give a he true believer of the proudest race there is. Ali Partab’s heart began to go out to him— “an officer, I think, once of the Rajput Horse, who very kindly carried letters for me. Perhaps you know of some other gentleman of your race about to travel northward? He could earn, at least, gratitude.”
“So-ho!” thought Ali Partab to himself. “I have known men of his race who would have offered money, to be spat on! — Not now, sahib,” he answered aloud.
“Mahommed Gunga was the officer’s name. Do you know him, or know of him, by any chance?”
“Ha, sahib, I know him well. It is an honor.”
The Scotsman smiled. “He must be very far away by this time. How many are there, I wonder, in India who have such things said of them when their backs are turned?”
“More than a few, sahib! I would draw steel for the good name of more than a hundred men whom I know, and there be many others!”
“Men of your own race?”
“And yours, sahib.”
There was no bombast in the man’s voice; it was said good-naturedly, as a man might say, “There are some friends to whom I would lend money.” No man with any insight could mistake the truth that underlay the boast. The Scotsman bowed.
“I am glad, indeed, to have met you. Will you sit down a little while?”
“Nay, sahib. The hour is late. I was but keeping the blood moving in this horse of mine.”
“Well, tell me, since you won’t stay, have you any notion who the man was whom Mahommed Gunga sent to get my letters? My daughter handed them to him one evening, late, at this door.”
“I am he, sahib.”
“Then — I understood — perhaps I was mistaken — I thought it was his man who came?”
“Praised be Allah, I am his man, sahib!”
“Oh! I wonder whether my servants praise God for the privilege!” McClean made the remark only half-aloud and in English. Ali Partab could not have understood the words, but he may have caught their meaning, for he glanced sideways at the old hag mumbling in the shadow and grinned into his beard. “Are you in communication with him? Could you get a letter to him?”
“I have no slightest notion where he is, sahib.”
“If my letters could once reach him, wherever he might be, I would feel confident of their arriving at their destination.”
“I, too, sahib!”
“I sent one letter — to a government official. It cannot have reached him, for there should have been an answer and none has come. It had reference to this terrible suttee business. Suttee is against the law as well as against all dictates of reason and humanity; yet the Hindoos make a constant practice of it here under our very eyes. These native states are under treaty to observe the law. I intend to do all in my power to put a stop to their ghoulish practices, and Maharajah Howrah knows what my intentions are. It must be a Mohammedan, this time, to whom I intrust my correspondence on suttee!”
Now, a Rangar is a man whose ancestors were Hindoos but who became converts to Islam. Like all proselytes, they adhere more enthusiastically to their religion than do the men whose mother creed it is; and the fact that the Rangars originally became converts under duress is often thrown in their teeth by the Hindoos, who gain nothing in the way of brotherly regard in the process. A Rangar hates a Hindoo as enthusiastically as he loves a fight. Ali Partab began to drum his fingers on his teeth and to exhibit less impatience to be off.
“There is no knowing, sahib. I, too, am no advocate of superstitious practices involving cruelty. I might get a letter through. My commission from the risaldar-sahib would include all honorable matters not obstructive to the main issue. I have certain funds—”
“I, too, have funds,” smiled the missionary.
“I am not allowed, sahib, to involve myself in any brawl until after my business is accomplished. It would be necessary first to assure me on that point. My honor is involved in that matter. To whom, and of what nature, would the letter be?”
“A letter to the Company’s Resident at Abu, reporting to him that Hindoo widows are still compelled in this city to burn themselves to death above their husbands’ funeral pyres.”
The Rajput grinned. “Does the Resident sahib not know it, then?”
“There will be no chance of his not knowing should my report reach him!”
“I will see, sahib, what can be done, then, in the matter. If I can find a man, I will bring him to you.”
The missionary thanked him and stood watching as the Rajput rode away. When the horseman’s free, lean back had vanished in the inky darkness his eyes wandered over to a point where tongues of flame licked upward, casting a dull, dancing, crimson glow on the hot sky. Here and there, silhouetted in the firelight, he could see the pugrees and occasional long poles of men who prodded at the embers. Ululating through the din of tom-toms he could catch the wails of women. He shuddered, prayed a little, and went in.
That day even the little bazaar fosterlings, whom he had begged, and coaxed, and taught, had all deserted to be present at the burning of three widows. Even the lepers in the tiny hospital that he had started had limped out for a distant view. He had watched a year’s work all disintegrating in a minute at the call of bestial, loathsome, blood-hungry superstition.
And he was a man of iron, as Christian missionaries go. He had been hard-bitten in his youth and trained in a hard, grim school. In the Isle of Skye he had seen the little cabin where his mother lived pulled down to make more room for a fifty-thousand-acre deer-forest. He had seen his mother beg.
He had worked his way to Edinburgh, toiled at starvation wages for the sake of leave t
o learn at night, burned midnight oil, and failed at the end of it, through ill health, to pass for his degree.
He had loved as only hard-hammered men can love, and had married after a struggle the very thought of which would have melted the courage of an ordinary man, only to see his wife die when her child was born. And even then, in that awful hour, he had not felt the utterness of misery such as came to him when he saw that his work in Howrah was undone. He had given of his best, and all his best, and it seemed that he had given it for nothing.
“Who was that man, father?” asked a very weary voice through which courage seemed to live yet, as the tiniest suspicion of a sweet refrain still lives through melancholy bars.
“The man who took your home letters to Mahommed Gunga.”
“And — ?”
“He has promised to try to find a man for me who will take my report on this awful business to the Resident at Abu.”
“Father, listen! Listen, please!” Rosemary McClean drew a chair for him and knelt beside him. Youth saved her face from being drawn as his, but the heat and horror had begun to undermine youth’s powers of resistance. She looked more beautiful than ever, but no law lays down that a wraith shall be unlovely. She had tried the personal appeal with him a hundred times, and argument a thousand; now, she used both in a concentrated, earnest effort to prevail over his stubborn will. Her will was as strong as his, and yielded place to nothing but her sense of loyalty. There were not only Rajputs, as the Rajputs knew, who could be true to a high ideal. “I am sure that whoever that man is he must be the link between us and the safety Mahommed Gunga spoke of. Otherwise, why does he stay behind? Native officers who have servants take their servants with them, as a rule.”
“Well?”
“Give the word! Let us at least get in touch with safety!”
“For myself, no. For you, yes! I have been weak with you, dear. I have let my selfish pleasure in having you near me overcome my sense of duty — that, and my faithless fear that you would not be properly provided for. I think, too, that I have never quite induced myself to trust natives sufficiently — even native gentlemen. You shall go, Rosemary. You shall go as soon as I can get word to Mahommed Gunga’s man. Call that old woman in.”
“Father, I will not go without you, and you know it! My place is with you, and I have quite made up my mind. If you stay, I stay! My presence here has saved your life a hundred times over. No, I don’t mean just when you were ill; I mean that they dare not lay a finger on me! They know that a nation which respects their women would strike hard and swiftly to avenge a woman of its own! If I were to go away and leave you they would poison you or stab you within a day, and then hold a mock trial and hang some innocent or other to blind the British Government. I would be a murderess if I left you here alone! Come! Come away!”
He shook his head. “It was wrong of me to ever bring you here,” he said sadly. “But I did not know — I would never have believed.” Then wrath took hold of him — the awful, cold anger of the Puritan that hates evil as a concrete thing, to be ripped apart with steel. “God’s wrath shall burst on Howrah!” he declared. “Sodom and Gomorrah were no worse! Remember what befell them!”
“Remember Lot!” said Rosemary. “Come away!”
“Lot stayed on to the last, and tried to warn them! I will warn the Resident! Here, give me my writing things — where are they?”
He pushed her aside, none too gently, for the fire of a Covenanter’s anger was blazing in his eyes.
“There are forty thousand British soldiers standing still, and wrong — black, shameful wrong — is being done! For a matter of gold — for fear of the cost in filthy lucre — they refrain from hurling wrong-doers in the dust! For the sake of dishonorable peace they leave these native states to misgovern themselves and stink to high heaven! Will God allow what they do? The shame and the sin is on England’s head! Her statesmen shut their eyes and cry ‘Peace, peace!’ where there is no peace. Her queen sits idle on the throne while widows burn, screaming, in the flames of superstitious priests. Men tell her, ‘All is well; there is British rule in India!’ They are too busy robbing widows in the Isle of Skye to lend an ear to the cries of India’s widows! Corruption — superstition — murder — lies — black wrong — black selfishness — all growing rank beneath the shadow of the British rule — how long will God let that last?”
He was pacing up and down like a caged lion, not looking at Rosemary, not speaking to her — speaking to himself, and giving rein to all the rankling rage at wrong that wrong had nurtured in him since his boyhood. She knelt still by the chair, her eyes following him as he raged up and down the matted floor. She pitied him more than she did India.
When he took the one lamp at last and set it where the light would fall above his writing pad, she left the room and went to stand at the street-door, where the sluggish night air was a degree less stifling than in the mud-plastered, low-ceilinged room. As she stood there, one hand on either door-post to remind her she was living in a concrete world, not a charred whisp swaying in the heat, a black thing rose out of the blackness, and the toothless hag held out a bony hand and touched her.
“Is it not time yet for the word to go?” she asked.
“No. No word yet, Joanna.”
CHAPTER IX
Now, God give good going to master o’ mine,
God speed him, and lead him, and nerve him;
God give him a lead of a length in the line,
And, — God let him boast that I serve him!
THE dawn was barely breaking yet when things stirred in the little mission house. The flea-bitten gray pony was saddled by a sleepy saice, and brought round from his open-sided thatch stable in the rear. The violet and mauve, that precede the aching yellow glare of day were fading; a coppersmith began his everlasting bong-bong-bong, apparently reverberating from every direction; the last, almost indetectable, warm whiff of night wind moved and died away, and the monkeys in the near-by baobab chattered it a requiem. Almost on the stroke of sunrise Rosemary McClean stepped out — settled her sun-helmet, with a moue above the chin-strap that was wasted on flat-bosomed, black grandmotherdom and sulky groom — and mounted.
She needed no help. The pony stood as though he knew that the hot wind would soon dry the life out of him; and, though dark rings beneath dark eyes betrayed the work of heat and sleepless worry on a girl who should have graced the cool, sweet, rain-swept hills of Scotland, she had spirit left yet and an unspent store of youth. The saice seemed more weathered than the twenty-year-old girl, for he limped back into the smelly shelter of the servants’ quarters to cook his breakfast and mumble about dogs and sahibs who prefer the sun.
She looked shrunk inside the riding-habit — not shrivelled, for she sat too straight, but as though the cotton jacket had been made for a larger woman. If she seemed tired, and if a stranger might have guessed that her head ached until the chestnut curls were too heavy for it, she was still supple. And, as she whipped the pony into an unwilling trot and old mission-named Joanna broke into a jog behind, revolt — no longer impatience, or discontent, or sorrow, but reckless rebellion — rode with her.
It was there, plain for the world to see, in the firm lines of a little Puritan mouth, in the angle of a high-held chin in the set of a gallant little pair of shoulders. The pony felt it, and leaned forward to a canter. Joanna scented, smelt, or sensed in some manner known to Eastern old age, that purpose was afoot; this was to be no early-morning canter, merely out and home again; there was no time, now, for the customary tricks of corner-cutting and rest-snatching under eaves; she tucked her head down and jogged forward in the dust, more like a dog than ever. It was a dog’s silent, striving determination to be there when the finish came — a dog’s disregard of all object or objective but his master’s — but a long-thrown stride, and a crafty, beady eye that promised more usefulness than a dog’s when called on.
The first word spoken was when Rosemary drew rein a little more than half-way along the
palace wall.
“Are you tired yet, Joanna?”
“Uh-uh!” the woman answered, shaking her head violently and pointing at the sun that mounted every minute higher. The argument was obvious; in less than twenty minutes the whole horizon would be shimmering again like shaken plates of brass; wherever the other end might be, a rest would be better there than here! Her mistress nodded, and rode on again, faster yet; she had learned long ago that Joanna could show a dusty pair of heels to almost anything that ran, and she had never yet known distance tire her; it had been the thought of distance and speed combined that made her pause and ask.
She did not stop again until they had cantered up through the awakening bazaar, where unclean-looking merchants and their underlings rinsed out their teeth noisily above the gutters, and the pariah dogs had started nosing in among the muck for things unthinkable to eat. The sun had shortened up the shadows and begun to beat down through the gaps; the advance-guard of the shrivelling hot wind had raised foul dust eddies, and the city was ahum when she halted at last beside the big brick arch of the caravansary, where Mahommed Gunga’s boots and spurs had caught her eye once.
“Now, Joanna!” She leaned back from the saddle and spoke low, but with a certain thrill. “Go in there, find me Mahommed Gunga-sahib’s man, and bring him out here!”
“And if he will not come?” The old woman seemed half-afraid to enter.
“Go in, and don’t come out without him — unless you want to see me go in by myself!”
The old woman looked at her piercingly with eyes that gleamed from amid a bunch of wrinkles, then motioned with a skinny arm in the direction of an awning where shade was to be had from the dangerous early sun-rays. She made no move to enter through the arch until her mistress had taken shelter.
Fifteen minutes later she emerged with Ali Partab, who looked sleepy, but still more ashamed of his unmilitary dishabille. Rosemary McClean glanced left and right — forgot about the awning and the custom which decrees aloofness — ignored the old woman’s waving arm and Ali Partab’s frown, and rode toward him eagerly.