by Talbot Mundy
“What would life be without our illusions? And who knows that the illusions are not more genuine than what we think is real?”
Then the voice of Cummings: “Stark reality — stark reality — sordid grim reality — that is the life of a Government official, Mrs. Beddington. If I had one illusion left, I would not know what to do with it.”
His mother: “When I was a little girl my dolls provided the illusion. I had a boy-doll that was the inspiration for most of my dreams. I have that doll even to-day, tucked away in a drawer. Sawdust, I suppose you will say — a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit — a yellow wig — a wax face, with the paint gone where I kissed it — diamond buckles made of cheap glass — one eye missing. But around that doll I built my dreams of a prince charming who should come into my life and make it romantic.”
“Did he?”
“Not yet. I am like Queen Elizabeth, still hoping. Money, yes. Mr. Beddington possessed the gift of making money. He could think of nothing else. We were not romantic.”
“Money, to me,” said Cummings, “is the most romantic theme on earth. Money — the blood of nations — the key to independence — the essence of power. They tell you money can’t buy happiness. I say it can.”
Sharply: “Is that you, Joe?”
Joe mounted the steps. He merely nodded to Cummings — understood him, and lacked enough hypocrisy to pretend to feel more than tolerantly civil. But he stared at his mother. She was full in moonlight, all two hundred pounds of her, in a dress that he knew had made a modiste nearly frantic; she invariably wore out any one who waited on her; her gowns were trophies wrung from defeated artistes whose profit was gone in time and overtime, and whose bills were paid when Mrs. Beddington saw fit. Such ingrates sometimes even sued her.
She looked magnificent. Joe knew she had saved that dress for an “occasion.” Her conversation, too, was the sort that she reserved for disarming strangers when she had drastic ends in view. He wondered what design she had on Cummings. He could see at a glance that she had pumped him to a point where she knew the exact limits of his imagination and could foresee to a fraction how he would react to any given impulse. She would presently provide the impulse — not that that made any difference, or was of the slightest interest to her son; but he could not help wondering why she should waste her arts on such a futile person.
“Ready to go to the hotel, Mother? Shall I call for the rickshaw?”
“Not yet. I was telling Mr. Cummings—” “Sit down, Beddington. Sit down and have a whisky with us. What’s your hurry? You Americans are always on the run, and what on earth do you gain by it? I understand you even hurry to your funerals in a motor-hearse. I think that comical. If you hurried off to bed now, you would probably only lie awake inventing a way of doing twice as much in half the time to-morrow.”
“Probably,” said Joe. “The mistake, of course, that we made was to insist on independence. We ought to have kissed King George on both cheeks. Then we’d have been taught, like India, how to behave.”
He was sorry at once that he had said it. Cummings was too futile to be worth snubbing and too dull to enjoy an argument with, but an argument now was inevitable; he had invited one; and, what made it worse, he could see that he had played into his mother’s hand in some way. Desperately he sought to switch the conversation to another subject:
“Tell me about the nautch-girls at that temple.”
Cummings jumped at that. He was the type that loves to display familiarity with subjects on which he can’t be checked up every easily. It opened the way too, for a retort:
“Don’t try making love to them. Be advised by me and control your curiosity and instincts, both, as long as you stay here.”
Joe let that pass.
Cummings looked pleased with himself and exchanged a glance with Joe’s mother. Middle-aged, fat bachelor he might be, but he knew how to give a younger man the right cue at the proper moment. He desired her to appreciate it, and apparently she did; she could disguise her feelings from almost any one except her son, who looked the other way. Joe yawned and Cummings cleared his throat:
“Those are very unusual nautch-girls. There are none other like them in India. Generally speaking, I regret to say, the Indian nautch-girls are a blot on the country’s reputation. They’re a problem very difficult for us to deal with. They’re a social evil so protected by religious custom and priestly privilege that no government can do anything about it. They belong to the temple. They’re married to trees or to graven images. Their morals generally speaking — judged, that is, by our standards — are — well — they haven’t any.”
“How are they recruited?” Joe asked.
“All sorts of ways. Many of them are the daughters of nautch-girls. Some are the daughters of well-to-do, high-caste Indians who dedicate them to the temple, usually along with an endowment. Some of them — the less privileged ones — are child-widows, who are given that means of escape from the otherwise deadly existence of the Hindu widow, who becomes the slave of her husband’s parents. A few of them are the daughters of wealthy public prostitutes. As a rule they are all intensively trained, extremely highly educated in the legendary mysticism of the cult to which they are attached, good-looking — and more wicked than you could readily make yourself believe.”
“Those girls I saw to-night,” said Joe, “were marvelous. I’ve seen convent children in the States who looked much less spiritual. Loose women don’t look as they did — at least, not any that I ever saw.”
Cummings suppressed the interruption with a fatly important hand:
“I was coming to that. This temple is unique. It is very ancient and was formerly Buddhist. A century or so ago its Hindu priests were partly reconverted to the Buddhist teaching. Blending one traditional philosophy with another, as I understand it, they were able to discard the grosser forms of superstition and retain the essence of both teachings, with the result that something new and very remarkably good grew out of it. They retained the secrecy, but not the exclusiveness — to some extent the theory of caste, but not its system. I am told they sent some very highly educated priests to Europe to study the better known types of Christianity, from which they learned a great deal. To this day they are astonishingly tolerant of Christian missionaries. They own all the land hereabouts and could have made it next to impossible for Christian missionaries to obtain a foothold; but what they actually did was to let them have land for schools and so on at a rent so nominal that it amounted to a gift. They’re funny. I believe they’re trying to convert the missionaries. But they won’t let any outsider inside their temple, and they’re rather touchy about strangers witnessing their temple rites. They’re on very good terms, by the way, with the Catholic priest, who has established a hospital, to which they contribute very liberally from the temple funds.”
Mrs. Beddington purred. She almost looked like a well fed cat when there was a mouse to be coaxed within reach of her paws. Her bulk seemed all softly luxurious comfort. She exuded invitation and appreciation. Her son might recognize, even by lamplight, a certain hard glint in her eyes; but a mouse, such as Cummings, saw nothing but generous instincts oozing from a rather handsome widow.
“Oh, how fascinating, Mr. Cummings! What a wonderful life you must lead, with all this opportunity to study life’s drama! Most of us waste our lives, don’t we? You should write a book — truly you should.”
“Ah!” remarked Cummings, but he deceived no one, not even himself. He was much too lazy mentally to write anything except a cut-and-dried report. However, he enjoyed the flattery. Joe wondered again why his mother possibly could wish to ensnare such a futile person — and again, from habit, not from sympathy, he straightway played into her hand.
“My mother loves to look into the guts of things,” he volunteered.
Cummings blinked; he thought the expression coarse; he was already unconsciously taking the side of the mother against the son. “Your mother strikes me as a very able woman, if I may say so without o
ffense. It’s rare to find intelligence and great wealth under the same hat, so to speak. If I had had such a mother as yours, I think I would have had more of a career.” The imputation that Joe Beddington was a loafer in his estimation was only vaguely veiled.
Joe glanced at his mother and smiled to himself. He changed the subject, abruptly:
“I’d like to see the inside of that temple.”
“Impossible, my dear man, so it’s no use wishing. But why see it? Gloom — dirt — images of gods on ancient walls — obscene — monstrous — stupid. There are lots of other places where you can see it all, price two rupees, and a picture post-card thrown in.”
“You know, I suppose.”
“I can guess. One doesn’t live in India for twenty-five years without knowing what temples are like. Archeology, in my humble opinion, is an over-rated subject. It’s like art in general, which got the Greeks nowhere — got China, Egypt, India nowhere. Art, I take it, is a sign of decadence. As soon as a nation takes up art it goes to pieces and gets conquered.”
It was aimed, of course, at Joe. Joe’s mother understood, and relished it.
“Joe, I think, would rather be an artist than a business man,” she remarked. “He paints really quite beautifully when he has the time.”
It was a favorite trick of hers to tempt confidence and sympathy by hinting that her only son was a disappointing person. She was equally ready at any moment to advertise him as the greatest genius alive. It all depended on the circumstances and the view-point of her victim. Joe wondered again what she could see worth conquering in Cummings; he knew that her perception was uncanny and her sense for intrigue and strategy Bismarckian; but why pick such a specimen as Cummings? Why waste genius? He gave it up.
“Let’s go home to bed,” he suggested, yawning. “Shall I shout for the rickshaw?”
Mrs. Beddington decided she would walk. Perhaps she wished to intimate to Cummings that she could walk in spite of her weight. Joe knew that she hated to have dust invade her shoes. However, it was only a short way to the hotel; if she should turn bad-tempered he could endure it during those few minutes. He nodded to Cummings — shook hands, since Cummings seemed to wish that — and waited at the foot of the verandah steps, signing to the sleepy rickshaw coolies to go along home. His mother was in no haste:
“A delightful evening. What a time we two had until that gloomy person interrupted us! Imagine my telling you all about my dolls! It must have been the magic of the moonlight and your hospitality. Some day you must tell me all about the princess you have cherished in your dreams — I believe you’re as romantic as I am under that proconsular mask of yours.”
Cummings almost writhed with pleasure at being likened to a grim proconsul. He had missed promotion. He was a little lucky if the truth were known, not to have been sent home last year on his half-pay.
“Romantic?” he answered. He would be anything to please her, but it was hard to think of phrases on the spur of the moment. “Ah, but I have never dared to speak of it.”
“You shall tell me,” said Mrs. Beddington. “Confess — you owe me that revenge. Besides, it will do you good to talk of it. Romance dies, if it is not shared with some one. And romance is good for all of us. Good night.”
On the way home Joe kept silence until his mother paused to kick the dust out of her shoes, holding his shoulder to balance herself. “Joe,” she remarked suddenly, “I wish you could be more polite to people. You were positively rude to that man. It was disgraceful. Why, you couldn’t even shake hands without scowling.”
“He’s such an ass,” Joe answered.
“He is nothing of the kind. I like him.”
“Mother, you know he’s an ass. What are you planning? To make him find that purely hypothetical cholera baby? I’ll bet he bungles it. Probably he’ll foist a sweeper’s daughter on you — or perhaps a half-caste brat with rickets and a chi-chi accent. Then what?”
Mrs. Beddington removed her other shoe, shook out its contents, replaced it and then waited for her son to kneel and fasten up the strap.
“I have all along intended you should find that child,” she answered. “It will give you a chance to use those wits you are so proud of. When I have a hunch I am never far wrong. I know the child lives. I know it, I know it. So you look for her, and use all your ingenuity. Meanwhile, I will cultivate Mr. Cummings, so that in case you have to overstep the boundaries a bit there will be some one to stand between you and the lawyers.”
That was one of her pet expressions. It made Joe shudder, since it always meant that she was contemplating treachery of some kind that she would not even hint at until it would be too late to prevent her. He answered grimly:
“I have taken steps already.”
“You speak as if I had asked you to cut your throat. Listen, Joe. I won’t have you being sulky with me. I won’t stand it for a minute. If there’s one thing I will not endure, it’s disloyalty. Your father knew you all right when he had that deed drawn. He knew what he was doing when he put that clause in giving me the right to cut you off by a stroke of a pen without a nickel. One would think, to see your long face, that you were jealous of a child you’d never seen.”
Joe laughed. “Come on, Mother,” he said, “there’s pen and ink at the hotel. Cut me off and set me free. I’ll be so grateful that—” She interrupted him. “Joe, I’m nervous. Can’t you see I need comforting? Are you so mean you won’t oblige me during the few years I have to live? Isn’t it soon enough to be independent when I’m dead and gone? Do you wish me dead?”
He yielded — put his arm around her. She was as well as he was, and he knew it. She was insincere; he knew that also. But whenever she ceased threatening and coaxed him, there always stole over him that feeling of helplessness that was so like the effect of a drug that it made him feel worthless — even wicked. He had to take an antidote for it; when his mother had gone to bed he carried out a chair into the compound and made charcoal sketches of servants sleeping in the shadows under gaunt wind-twisted trees.
CHAPTER IV. “You wish to question me?”
Joe sat at breakfast on the hotel verandah, prodding export bacon with an import fork and wondering why God had gone to all the trouble to create a universe. His mother had sent for him to her bedroom and had made him sign some documents of no particular importance except to nine unfortunates in New York, whose jobs had now ceased to exist. “Just like her. It’s murder, as I sit here — long-distance murder by mail. They weren’t rowing their weight. But is she? And am I? Are dividends the one criterion? If one of those poor devils — Weismuller — doesn’t commit suicide I’ll take my hat off to him — sick wife — seven kids — a mortgage — probably car and piano half paid for. Dad never did that kind of dirt. He flogged old horses, but he didn’t turn them out to starve. It was the last nail in the old man’s coffin when he learned about her firing all the old-timers. She has more than quadrupled the money Dad left. He never gave a cent to charity, and she has given away more than he earned in his whole lifetime. Nevertheless, he was human. And she isn’t. Damn! I hate her.”
Gone was last night’s resolution. He looked around him at the white-clad servants standing along the verandah rail in abject adoration of his mother’s millions. There were far too many of them; she had insisted on traveling like a circus, as he phrased it, with a private car on the railway and a private crew of rickshaw coolies, to say nothing of interpreters, bearers, a cook, two cook’s assistants and a boy.
Beyond them, beneath the compound trees were unnumbered job-hunters, cheek by jowl with beggars, conjurers, acrobats and “guides.” Among them he noticed Chandri Lal with his basket of cobras; and, not very far from Chandri Lal, the ayah. They added in some vague way to his annoyance. It was ridiculous to think they might be spying on him. For whom could they be spying? But why else were they here? Why did they keep on staring at him?
On the verandah was a horde of peddlers, opening their boxes if he as much as glanced in their direction
, meanwhile arranging trash for his inspection — arranging the stuff so that he could hardly step off the verandah without treading on some of it. Pariah dogs were sniffing around the compound. Nine unpleasant-looking crows, with bright eyes on the breakfast food and obscene voices making probably appropriate remarks, were perched on the rail at the far end. The proprietor, smugly subservient, stood with his back to the doorway where he could watch the merchants and keep account of his rake-off from the price of anything they might succeed in selling. There were no other guests in the hotel; there was that much relief.
However, presently came Hawkes, slapping his leg with a swagger-cane and much too perky to harmonize with Joe’s mood.
“I suppose he wants more money.”
Joe decided not to give him any. He turned his back — resumed dissection of the embalmed remains of a Chicago pig, fried to a boracic cinder — prodding at it. But he could not carry on; two pale eggs, like the eyes of indigestion, stared up from the plate and put him out of countenance. The grease had grown cold; a fat fly struggled in it. Toast, weak marmalade and strong tea. Hawkes invaded the verandah, perfectly aware of the annoyance he was causing; soldiering equips a man with a brass face for irritability to grind itself against. No snubbing Hawkes.
“Good morning, sir. I’ve news.”
“Sit down then. Light your pipe. Tea’s rotten. Have some.”