by Talbot Mundy
Joanna disappeared, and that led to a chain of thought which was not creditable to any one concerned. They reasoned this way: Rosemary had seen Mahommed Gunga hold out a handful of gold coins for the old woman’s eyes to glitter at, therefore it was fair to presume that he had promised her a reward for bringing word to the man whom, it was now known, he had left behind. She had brought word to him and had disappeared. What more obvious than to reason that the man had gladly paid her, and had just as gladly ridden off, rejoicing at the thought that he could escape doing service?
“So much,” they argued, “for native constancy! So much for Mahommed Gunga’s boast that he knew of men who could be trusted! And so much for Joanna’s gratitude!”
The old woman had been saved by Rosemary McClean from the long-drawn-out hell that is the life portion of most Indian widows, even of low caste; she had had little to do, ever, beyond snooze in the shade and eat, and run sometimes behind the pony — a task which came as easily to her as did the other less active parts of her employment. Her desertion, particularly at a crisis, made Rosemary McClean cry, and set her father to quoting Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”
“Blow, blow, thou winter wind!
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude!”
All Scotsmen seem to have a natural proclivity for quoting the appropriate dirge when sorrow shows itself. The Book of Lamentations — Shakespeare’s sadder lines — roll off their tongues majestically and seem to give them consolation — as it were to lay a sound, unjoyous basis for the proper enjoyment of the songs of Robbie Burns.
The poor old king of the poet’s imagining, declaiming up above the cliffs of Dover, could have put no more pathos into those immortal lines than did Duncan McClean as he paced up and down between the hot wars of the darkened room. The dry air parched his throat, and his ambition seemed to shrivel in him as he saw the brave little woman who was all he had sobbing with her head between her hands.
He turned to the Bible, but he could find no precedent in any of its pages for abandoning a quest like his in the teeth of disaster or adversity. He read it for hour after crackling hour, moistening his throat from time to time with warm, unappetizing water from the improvised jar filter; but when the oven blast that makes the Indian summer day a hell on earth had waned and died away, he had found nothing but admonishment to stand firm. There had been women, too, whose deeds were worthy of record in that book, and he found no argument for deserting his post on his daughter’s account either. In the Bible account, as he read it, it had always been the devil who fled when things got too uncomfortable for him, and he was conscious of a tight-lipped, stern contempt for the devil.
He had about made up his mind what line to take with his daughter, when she ceased her sobbing and looked up through swollen eyes to relieve him of the necessity for talking her over to his point view. What she said amazed him, but not be cause it came to him as a new idea. She said, in different words, exactly what was passing in his own mind, and it was as though her tears and his search of the Scriptures had brought them both to one clear-cut conclusion.
“Why are we here, father?” she asked him suddenly; and because she took him by surprise he did not answer her at once. “We are here to do good aren’t we?” That was no question; it was beginning of a line of argument. Her father held his tongue, and laid his Bible down, and listened on. “How much good have we done yet?”
She paused, but the pause was rhetorical, and he knew it; he could see the light behind her eyes that was more than visionary; it was the light of practical Scots enthusiasm, unquenched and undiscouraged after a battle with fear itself. She began to be beautiful again as the spirit of unconquerable courage won its way.
“Have we won one convert? Is there one, of those you have taught who is with us still?”
The answer was self-evident. There was none. But there was no sting for him in what she asked. Rather her words came as a relief, for he could feel the strength behind them. He still said nothing.
“Have we stopped one single suttee? Have we once, in any least degree, lessened the sufferings of one of those poor widows?”
“Not once,” he answered her, without a trace of shame. He knew, and she knew, how hard the two of them had tried. There was nothing to apologize for.
“Have we undermined the power of the Hindoo priests? Have we removed one trace of superstition?”
“No,” he said quietly.
“Have we given up the fight?”
He looked hard at her. Gray eyes under gray brows met gray eyes that shone from under dark, wet lashes, and deep spoke unto deep. Scotsman recognized Scotswoman, and the bond between them tightened.
“It seems to me” — there was a new thrill in her voice— “that here is our opportunity! Either Jaimihr wants to frighten us away or he is in earnest with his impudent attentions to me. In either case let us make no attempt to go away. Let us refuse to go away. Let us stay here at all costs. If he wishes us to go away, then he must have a reason and will show it, or else try to force us. If he is really trying to make love to me, then let him try; if he has pluck enough, let him seize me. In either case we shall force his hand. I am willing to be the bait. The moment that he harms either you or me, the government will have to interfere. If he kills us so much the better, for that would mean swift vengeance and a British occupation. That would stop suttee for all time, and we would have given our lives for something worth while. As we are, we cannot communicate with our government, and Jaimihr thinks he has us in his grasp. Let him think it! Let him go ahead! Sooner or later the government must find out that we are missing Then — !” Her eyes blazed at the thought of what would happen then.
Her father looked at her for about a minute, sadness and pride in her fighting in him for the mastery. Then he rose and crossed the little space between them.
“Lassie!” he said. “Lassie!”
She took his hand — the one little touch of human sentiment lacking to disturb his emotional balance. The Scots will talk readily enough of sorrow, but at showing it they are a grudging race of men. Unless a Scotsman thinks he can gain something for his cause by showing what emotion racks him, he will swallow down the choking flood of grief, and keep a straight face to the world and his own as well. Duncan McClean turned from her — drew his hand away — and walked to open the slit shutters. A moment later he came back, once more master of himself.
“As things are, dear,” he said gently, “how would it be possible for us to get away?”
“‘We canna gang awa’!” she quoted, with a smile.
“NO, lassie. We must stay here and be brave. This matter is not in our hands. We must wait, and watch, and see. If opportunity should come to us to make our escape, we will seize it. Should it not come — should Jaimihr, or some other of them, make occasion to molest us — it may be — it might be that — surely the day of martyrs is not past — it might be that — well, well, in either case we will eventually win. Should they kill us, the government must send here to avenge us; should we get away, surely our report will be listened to. A month or two — perhaps only a week or two — even a day or two, who knows? — and the last suttee will have been performed!”
He stood and stroked her head — then stooped and kissed it — an unusual betrayal of emotion from him.
“Ye’re a brave lassie,” he said, leaving the room hurriedly, to escape the shame of letting her see tears welling from his eyes — salt tears that scalded as they broke their hot-wind-wearied bounds.
Five minutes later she arose, dry-eyed, and went to stand in the doorway, where an eddy or two of lukewarm evening breeze might possibly be stirring. But a dirtily clad Hindoo, lounging on a raised, railless store veranda opposite, leered at her impudently, and she came inside again — to pass the evening and the sultry, black, breathless night out of sight, at least, of the brutes who shut her off from even exercise.
CHAPTER XIV
So, I am a dog? Hence I must come
/> To do thy bidding faster?
Must tell thee — Nay, a dog stays dumb!
A dog obeys one master!
NOT many yards from where the restless elephants stood lined under big brick arches — in an age-old courtyard, three sides of which were stone-carved splendor and the fourth a typically Eastern mess of stables, servants’ quarters, litter, stink, and noisy confusion — a stone door, slab-hewn, gave back the aching glitter of the sun. Its only opening — a narrow slit quite near the top — was barred. A man — his face close-pressed against them — peered through the interwoven iron rods from within.
Jaimihr, in a rose-pink pugree still, but not at all the swaggering cavalier who pranced, high-booted, through the streets — a down-at-heel prince, looking slovenly and heavy-eyed from too much opium — sat in a long chair under the cloister which faced the barred stone door. He swished with a rhino riding-whip at the stone column beside him, and the much-swathed individual of the plethoric paunch who stood and spoke with him kept a very leery eye on it; he seemed to expect the binding swish of it across his own shins, and the thought seemed tantalizing.
“It is not to be done,” said Jaimihr, speaking in a dialect peculiar to Howrah. “That — of all the idiotic notions I have listened to — is the least worth while! Thy brains are in thy belly and are lost amid the fat! If my brother Howrah only had such counsellors as thou — such monkey folk to make his plans for him — the jackals would have finished with him long ago.”
“Sahib, did I not bring word, and overhear, and trap the man?”
“Truly! Overheard whisperings, and trapped me a hyena I must feed! Now thou sayest, ‘Torture him!’ He is a Rangar, and of good stock; therefore, no amount of torturing will make him speak. He is that pig Mahommed Gunga’s man; therefore, there’ is nothing more sure than that Mahommed Gunga will be here, sooner or later, to look for him — Mahommed Gunga, with the half of a Hindoo name, the whole of a Moslem’s fire, and the blind friendship of the British to rely on!”
“But if the man be dead when Mahommed Gunga comes?”
“He will be dead when Mahommed Gunga comes, if only what we await has first happened. But this rising that is planned hangs fire. Were I Maharajah I would like to see the Rangar who dare flout me or ask questions! I would like but to set eyes on that Rangar once! But I am not yet Maharajah; I am a prince — a younger brother — surrounded, counselled, impeded, hampered, rendered laughable by fat idiots!”
“My belly but shows your highness’s generosity. At whose cost have I grown fat?”
“Ay, at whose cost? I should have kept thee slim, on prison diet, and saved myself a world of useless problems! Cease prattling! Get away from me! If I have to poison this Ali Partab, or wring his casteless neck, I will make thee do it, and give thee to Mahommed Gunga to wreak vengeance on. Leave me to think!”
The fat former occupant of the room above the arch of the caravansary waddled to the far end of the cloister, and sat down, cross-legged, to grumble to himself and scratch his paunch at intervals. His master, low-browed and irritable, continued to strike the stone column with his cane. He was in a horrid quandary.
Mahommed Gunga was one of many men he did not want, for the present, to offend seriously. Given a fair cause for quarrel, that irascible ex-Risaldar was capable of going to any lengths, and was known, moreover, to be trusted by the British. Nobody seemed to know whether or not Mahommed Gunga reciprocated the British regard, and nobody had cared to ask him except his own intimates; and they, like he, were men of close counsel.
The Prince had given no orders for the capture of Ali Partab; that had been carried out by his men in a fit of ill-advised officiousness. But the Prince had to solve the serious problem caused by the presence of Ali Partab within a stone-walled cell.
Should he let the fellow go, a report would be certain to reach Mahommed Gunga by the speediest route. Vengeance would be instantly decided on, for a Rajput does not merely accept service; he repays it, feudal-wise, and smites hip and thigh for the honor of his men. The vengeance would be sure to follow purely Eastern lines, and would be complicated; it would no doubt take the form of siding in some way or other with his brother the Maharajah. There would be instant, active doings, for that was Mahommed Gunga’s style! The fat would be in the fire months, perhaps, before the proper time.
The prisoner’s presence was maddening in a million ways. It had been the Prince’s plan (for he knew well enough that Mahommed Gunga had left a man behind) to allow the escape to start; then it would have been an easy matter to arrange an ambush — to kill Ali Partab — and to pretend to ride to the rescue. Once rescued, Miss McClean and her father would be almost completely at his mercy, for they would not be able to accuse him of anything but friendliness, and would be obliged to return to whatever haven of safety he cared to offer them. Once in his palace of their own consent, they would have had to stay there until the rising of the whole of India put an end to any chance of interference from the British Government.
But now there was no Ali Partab outside to try to escort them to some place of safety; therefore, there was little chance that the missionaries would try to make a bolt. Instead of being in the position of a cat that watches silently and springs when the mouse breaks cover, he was in the unenviable condition now of being forced to make the first move. Over and over again he cursed the men who had made Ali Partab prisoner, and over and over again: he wondered how — by all the gods of all the multitudinous Hindoo mythology — how, when, and by what stroke of genius he could make use of the stiff-chinned Rangar and convert him from being a rankling thorn into a useful aid.
He dared not poison him — yet. For the same reason he dared not put him to the torture, to discover, or try to discover, what Mahommed Gunga’s real leanings were in the matter of loyalty to the Raj or otherwise. He dared not let the man go, for forgiveness is not one of the virtues held in high esteem by men of Ali Partab’s race, and wrongful arrest is considered ground enough for a feud to the death. It seemed he did not dare do anything!
He racked his opium-dulled brain for a suspicion of a plan that might help solve the difficulty, until his eye — wandering around the courtyard — fell on the black shape of a woman. She was old and bent and she was busied, with a handful of dry twigs, pretending to sweep around the stables.
“Who is that mother of corruption?” demanded Jaimihr; and a man came running to him.
“Who is that eyesore? I have never seen her, have I?”
“Highness, she is a beggar woman. She sat by the gate, and pretended to a power of telling fortunes — which it would seem she does possess in some degree. It was thought better that she should use her gift in here, for our advantage, than outside to our disadvantage. So she was brought in and set to sweeping.”
“By the curse of the sin of the sack of Chitor, is my palace, then, a midden for the crawling offal of all the Howrah streets? First this Rangar — next a sweeper hag — what follows? What bring you next? Go, fetch the street dogs in!”
“Highness, she is useful and costs nothing but the measure or two of meal she eats.”
“A horse eats little more!” the angry Prince retorted, perfectly accustomed to being argued with by his own servants. That is the time-honored custom of the East; obedience is one thing — argument another — both in their way are good, and both have their innings. “Bring her to me — nay! — keep her at a decent distance — so! — am I dirt for her broom?”
He sat and scowled at her, and the old woman tried to hide more of her protruding bones under the rag of clothing that she wore; she stood, wriggling in evident embarrassment, well out in the sun.
“What willst thou steal of mine?” the Prince demanded suddenly.
“I am no thief.” Bright, beady eyes gleamed back at him, and gave the lie direct to her shrinking attitude of fear. But he had taken too much opium overnight, and was in no mood to notice little distinctions. He was satisfied that she should seem properly afraid of him, and he sco
wled angrily when one of his retainers — in slovenly undress — crossed the courtyard to him. The man’s evident intention, made obvious by his manner and his leer at the old woman, was to say something against her; the Prince was in a mood to quarrel with any one, on any ground at all, who did not cower to him.
“Prince, she it is who ran ever with the white woman, as a dog runs in the dust.”
“What does she here, then?”
“Ask her!” grinned the trooper. “Unless she comes to look for Ali Partab, I know not.”
He made the last part of his remark in a hurried undertone, too low for the old woman to hear.
“Let her earn her meal around the stables,” said the Prince. A sudden light dawned on him. Here was a means, at least, of trying to make use of Ali Partab. “Go — do thy sweeping!” he commanded, and the hag slunk off.
For ten minutes longer, Jaimihr sat still and flicked at the stone column with his whip, — then he sent for his master of the horse, whose mistaken sense of loyalty had been the direct cause of Ali Partab’s capture. He had acted instantly when the fat Hindoo brought him word, and he had expected to be praised for quick decision and rewarded; he was plainly in high dudgeon as he swaggered out of a dark door near the stables and advanced sulkily toward his master.
“Remove the prisoner from that cell, taking great care that the hag yonder sees what you do — yes, that hag — the new one; she is a spy. Bring the prisoner in to me, where I will talk with him; afterward place him in a different cell — put him where we kept the bear that died — there is a dark comer beside it, where a man might hide; hide a man there when it grows dark. And give the hag access. Say nothing to her; let her come and go as she will; watch, and listen.”
Without another word, the Prince got up and shuffled in his decorated slippers to a door at one end of the cloister. Five minutes later Ali Partab — high-chinned, but looking miserable — was led between two men through the same door, while the old woman went on very ostentatiously with her sweeping about the yard. She even turned her back, to prove how little she was interested.