by Talbot Mundy
“Ask her if she wants him.”
Hawkes asked. Joe could feel the ayah’s laughter; it was soundless but there was plenty of it. She spoke, though, with what sounded like anger.
“She says he’s none o’ her business.”
“Let’s go.”
They began to trot, Chandri Lal following with the end of a cloth in his teeth and one hand balancing the big flat basket on his turban. Ten minutes later, when they passed a pool of light that flowed from the open door of a Eurasian’s bungalow, he was still following, his bare feet padding silently in deep dust and the basket bobbing up and down like a piece of machinery.
The warmth of the ayah’s body against Joe’s back excited him in a way that his brain could not analyze. She kept that left hand on his heart and her right hand on his shoulder. It was as if a current flowed between them — not of electricity — a current of thought. Partly, perhaps, because his mother, not he, possessed all the family wealth, he had often told himself that possessions do not constitute importance; and as the arbiter of the destiny of hundreds of employees from vice-president downward he had very often in his own mind minimized his own importance, in order to avoid the stings of conscience on account of arbitrary cruelties that his mother had compelled him to inflict. He was only a cog in a huge machine. In theory he could readily agree with the doctrine that no individual is more important than another. Nevertheless, if he had occasion to pass judgment and act on it, he would have considered himself as a matter of fact a great deal more important than the ayah. He was now uncomfortably conscious of importance which, apparently, she had and he had not. He could not have explained it. He was merely aware of a condition.
Small groups of Eurasian loafers and Hindus gathered in doorways or around flickering firelight; their mocking, obscene laughter yelped at the sight of a sahib carrying a native woman up behind him. It was much too dark for any one to guess that she was old and undesirable; her figure was young; as a silhouette observed against crimson bonfire-light, her bare legs dimly outlined on the horse’s flank and her right arm on his shoulder, she probably looked bacchanalian — beautiful — suggestive. However, he was defiant; he rather hoped he might be seen by some one of his own race, on whom his scorn would not be wasted. All the same, the ayah’s vibrant warmth and the pressure of her hand on his heart made him feel disturbed and unpleasantly creepy; and for that reason, not because of onlookers, he wished he had told her to mount behind Hawkes.
They skirted the small city, passing a slaughter-house where foul birds roosted restlessly along the ridge of a near-by roof. Then they turned to the right through mean streets, where men and women slept in sheeted rows on pallets on the sidewalk to avoid the infernal heat of the unventilated rooms. Just as the moon was rising a street widened, became near-respectable and flowed like a spreading estuary into a paved square that had flower-beds in the midst, and a fountain, and a few well-tended trees. Along the far side was a high stone wall and a sentry-box to one side of an iron-bossed wooden gate that had spikes at the top. There was a roof behind the wall — a neat, plug-ugly thing of corrugated iron, painted white. In moonlight it looked like the corpse of a roof.
“What’s that place?”
“The jail,” Hawkes answered. He slowed to a walking pace, and the ayah vaulted to the ground, as active as an ape; Joe tried to see which way she went, but she vanished into shadow; it was several seconds before he saw her running toward a group of people who appeared to be holding an argument within the shadow of the wall, beside the sentry-box. A small door in the wide gate opened and a man stepped out who seemed to be an officer. He shut the gate behind him.
CHAPTER VII. “So you sing to them, eh?”
Now, by quite imperceptible stages, Joe changed — as a chrysalis does, only much more swiftly. He emerged out of a state of consciousness into another one, in which values were not the same, and he was not the same Joe Beddington. The strangest part of that was, that he could not tell how it happened.
It began by the moon coming over the wall of the jail. Then Hawkes took both the horses and tied their bridles to a god’s leg on the fountain in the center of the square, so that they could drink all they pleased and make confession afterward, if they should happen to feel sinful. Hawkes made a more or less obvious and rather bawdy joke about that. The joke hardly penetrated Joe’s thought; however, he laughed politely and set foot across the square in something of a hurry, trying to conceal his haste. He felt curious and queerly excited.
There were seven or eight native Indian soldiers — tall bearded shadows, standing around some sort of Eurasian official, who was insisting on talking English to establish his importance; further to establish it, he was wearing his white sun-helmet in the moonlight. The man who belonged in the sentry-box was standing, looking nervous, with his back to the small open door in the big shut gate, through which the undersized Eurasian had come.
Joe’s first thought was that he was witnessing a jailbreak or perhaps an abortive attempt at one. But before he had come close enough to hear what any one was saying — even the annoyed Eurasian was speaking in undertones — he heard a girl’s voice. She was singing. She was somewhere in the jail yard, out of sight. Joe had heard all the imported voices and knew enough music to confess to himself that he might be fooled a little by the mellow moonlight and by the weird state of his nerves, but he knew that what he heard had quality. He had to stand still and listen — so intently that he did not notice whether the Indian soldiers and the Eurasian went on arguing or not; and he became oblivious of Hawkes.
The song was in some Indian language, of which he knew no word. But he could recognize tone when he heard it. He himself had perfect pitch. He might have followed music, if his mother had not had too much money. He told himself that he had never heard quite such quality in any other woman’s voice in all his life. He stood still, spellbound, something happening within him that he could neither analyze nor measure.
It was a mystic moment — the sort when bankers make their big mistakes and men of destiny march toward Waterloo. There was a winelike inspiration of the kind that goes to Kaisers’ heads and makes nursemaids yield themselves to soldiers in psychic ecstasy that the soldier mistakes for worship of himself. The mellow moonlight and the pastel-shaded shadows were the sort that make a Swinburne write odes to Revolution, or a Tennyson write idylls to the King. Joe felt, for the first time in his whole experience, a mood that some men can only attain by getting drunk — a mood that drink destroys in other men. To use his own phrase, he felt like old-man Abraham on camel-back, aloof from earth, conscious of incomprehensible destiny, borne forward, he knew not whither.
Meanwhile, his feet rang solidly on paving stones. Seven soldiers and a scared Eurasian, mistaking him for a British officer on a tour of inspection, faced him, saluted and stood at attention. Even when he drew near and it was seen he was not in uniform the tenseness was not relaxed, there being no accounting in the native mind for the peculiarities of British method, that seems to consist so often in having no method at all; he might be a new arrival with mysterious authority, snooping like Haroun-al-Raschid in mufti in quest of embarrassing facts for the morning’s session of the court. He might be that most awful of enormities, an officer on secret service. The man with his back to the open door presented arms with a rattle of carbine swivels.
Joe waited for revelation. And it came, of course, from the Eurasian, who saw Hawkes’ uniform approaching and was sure now that Joe was an official personage.
“She sings, sir.”
“So I notice.”
“Sir, Mr. Cummings gave strict orders there should be no visitors at night. Nevertheless, she comes. She sings. What can I do?”
“Why does she sing, and about what?” Joe asked.
“Sir, she makes song to the prisoners. Mr. Cummings gave such strict orders I am afraid now there will be an inquiry and we shall all be punished. Sir, will you not speak to her and—” “Hello!”
It wa
s hardly a startling voice. It was too exactly in the middle of F-major and too bell-like to have anything unpleasant about it, but it produced silence in the way the backstage gong does when the curtain goes up on the drama. Joe only had to turn his head a little to the left and he did it almost stealthily, as if he were trespassing and hoped to see unseen. He was not scared. He could not have explained his attitude. He saw the black-robed ayah, like a shadow, glide past him and be swallowed in the darkness by the corner of the sentry-box.
Framed in the gap in the gate, with moonlight on the white wall of the jail behind her causing a sort of luminescent aura, stood a girl with a chaplet of flower-buds, binding dark-brown hair. Beneath some sort of silken cloak that was thrown back carelessly she wore a low-necked garment of cloth-of-gold. There was a girdle at her waist that appeared to be made of gold wire woven into the form of a serpent with jeweled eyes. She had bracelets that clashed, and something gleamed on her ankle. Her bare feet looked like living marble. One hand resting on the edge of the doorway, she stood with the grace of a water-carrier, one foot on the door-sill.
“Hello, Hawkesey.”
The Eurasian interrupted: “Miss, please tell this gentleman I did my utmost — yes, indeed, my utmost to prevent your going in.”
“Should he know? Do you wish him to think you cruel?”
“Miss, my job to me is not a joke, it is my daily bread. And my honor—” Hawkes interrupted. “Miss Amrita, this is Mr. Beddington.”
She bowed, almost imperceptibly, the motion making the moonlight on her hair wave slightly as it does on water. She seemed able to leap to swift conclusions. She walked straight up to Joe and shook hands with him. Her hand was the most magnetic thing he had ever touched and she seemed in no haste to withdraw it. The sensation was of being touched by some one in a dream. She moved like some one in a dream. She was gentle, faintly scented with some mysterious eastern stuff that smelled dew o’ the morning clean. Joe let her lead him out into moonlight, where he really saw her for the first time as she turned her head to speak abruptly to the ayah. She had the marvelous rhythmic movement of an animal, such as even the most perfect dancers have only rarely, and as she turned her head the moonlight made a silver line along her neck that was almost maddening, it was so beautiful. The ayah slunk again into a shadow.
“You are not here by accident. Why did you come to see me?” she asked.
“How do you know I am not here by accident?”
“Hawkesey brought you. And you are pleased to see me. Why?”
He answered lamely. “Why were you singing in there?”
“Why not?”
“If I heard correctly, it’s against the rules.”
“Whose rules? Yours? God’s?” Indignation, whether it was true or simulated made her lovelier than ever. Joe’s impulse was to sketch her, with her shadow willowing beyond her on the mouse-gray paving-stone; but his left fist, obeying instinct, remained clenched behind his back, expressing disbelief in beauty as a mark of virtue, viewed from the banker’s angle. He was conscious of Hawkes. He had a business man’s distaste for being compromised by a woman before witnesses. Habit, instinct, training told him to go away before trouble began.
“Why should you sing at night?” he asked her.
Her voice changed to the soft, persuasive, reasonable note one uses to a child who can’t grasp principles:
“Were you ever in prison? Were you ever in hospital? Do you know what the sleepless hours are like to men born in the open, who have lived with sky-room for their thoughts? They wall them in. They roof them in. They shut out the wonderful wind of the night that whispers of friendly familiar scenes. They shut out moonlight, starlight — and they say to them, ‘Be honest men, such as we are, who have stolen all God’s goodness from you because you stole some devil’s trash from Us!’”
“So you sing to reduce their agony?”
She nodded. “And a spiritless official who, I dare say, thinks that toothache is worse than a broken spirit, says I may not sing!”
“And you defy him? I can sympathize. But aren’t you defying Bumbledom in general? The man is backed up by society. He has to be obeyed.”
“Has he? If he forbade me to give alms — or to smile — or to bless all earth with every breath I breathe, should I obey him then?”
“But he’s responsible for the prisoners.”
“True! And the Lords of Life will hold the fool responsible! They will demand of him those prisoners’ hearts that he is breaking. But they shall not accuse me of neglecting to sing. In that prison are thieves, murderers, quarrelsome men, debtors, weaklings who have taken others’ blame, and some who are in no way guilty of the charge against them. By day they have a little work to do that keeps their hearts from bursting. But at night, in the dark, and no stars? I come and I let the starlight melt me, I flow along my voice into their poor dumb hearts, so that for at least a little while they think of love instead of hatred. Do you think I would dare to obey that fool when he says I shall not? Will he dare to attempt to prevent me? If he does dare, let him answer for it to the Lords of Life, who have less patience with stupidity than with sin.”
That was over Joe’s head. He had sent cigarettes to an ex-vice-president of a bank in prison for defalcation, and had thought rather well of himself for doing it, but he had never even pondered whether Shakespeare meant what he was saying about music having charm. When be had thought of it at all, which was hardly ever, he thought that a prison should be as nearly hell as human ingenuity could make it — short, of course, of actual savagery or neglect. People should keep out of prison.
“How did you come by your name?” he asked her.
“I took it. Out of all the names there are, in all the languages I know, I liked that name best. So I took it — just the way a crow steals anything it wants. It probably belonged to some one else, but there it was. I took it.”
“What does the name mean?”
“Daybreak.”
“Dawn?”
“Daybreak — break — break — breaking through — until it bursts my heart unless I become — do — act — instead of sitting still.”
“I like that.”
“Do you? You won’t like it when your own break through begins! I mean, when it really begins. You have been incubating quite a long time. Which hen sat on you?”
Joe smiled. “Do I seem such a desperate chicken as that?”
“Eaglet,” she answered.
“Flatterer!”
“You don’t know me. And you won’t like it when you feel your feathers quilling out. Ask Hawkesey. He got incubated, and he didn’t like it either. Hawkesey got drunk and then tried to get sent to a war where Hillmen rub the ends off bullets to make sure of killing. You may talk of killing yourself, to yourself; but you will think like dynamite; and when you go off, some one — who is it, I wonder? — will have to get out of the way. I should say you have Jupiter, Mars and Saturn all in Gemini.”
“You’re right. But isn’t astrology rather piffle?”
“Yes, but so would mathematics be if they taught you twice five are eleven. Calling things piffle won’t take the Jupiter influence out of your life.”
Joe did not care to argue about astrology. “Who taught you such good English?” he asked.
“I never learned any bad English until I talked to an Englishman. There was almost a war between Hawkesey and me to see which could corrupt the other. It was funny. I liked the swear words, and that shocked him, because Hawkesey is a Puritan underneath the surface. He began to try to talk like an officer with a hot potato in his mouth and half his syllables missing. So I swore each time he mispronounced a word, and I had to swear so often that he went away all alone and practised how to speak, in order to save my soul from hell. Hawkesey should have been a bishop.”
“Do you consider yourself an Indian?”
“Funny. Hawkesey asked that question the first day he met me. Is a bird in an oven a cake? Because I am caged in India, am I Indian?
My friends are Indian, if you mean by that that they were born here. But so was I. I have the kindest friends that were ever patient with a strange bird in their high nest. It was so high in the treetops that I used to be afraid of falling out, particularly when the wind blew. But they taught me to fly. And I have flown. And I have brought back food for them.”
“Do you know who your father and mother were?”
“Yes. Amal told me. It was sweet of them to bring me to be born in India. They must have been lovely people; so I suppose the Lords of Life let them go as soon as I was born. They may have had trouble enough, and perhaps they weren’t yet wise enough to have let destiny take its course. They might have tried to struggle against destiny; and I think they weren’t the kind of people who deserve such torture. So they were let die very swiftly. And I dare say the darlings thought dying was dreadful, until they found themselves out of their bodies.”
“Do you believe in an after-life?”
She chuckled. “Who wants to believe in anything? I insist on knowing. Don’t you?”
“Don’t let’s talk philosophy.”
“You couldn’t. You don’t know any — yet. That shocks you, doesn’t it! You have read Bergson, I suppose, and Kant, and Spencer, and William James — a little Aristotle — babies, all of them!”
“How do you know?”
“I too have read them. How else should I know? They are babies arguing in three dimensions, although if they would stop for a minute to think, they would know that of all the infinite number of dimensions they are pretty conscious of at least five. However, philosophers don’t think; it is not respectable. Some day one of the Gods will throw an apple at them, as was done at Newton. Then they will wake up, one by one.”
“Where are you going?” Joe asked.