Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  No doctrine alien to her instinctive views was needed to set her bandaging those boatmen’s wounds. The dog had torn the men badly and scared them worse, for to some imaginative folk a wound from a hound’s clean tooth is more to be feared than the filth of their habitual surroundings. Having no other antiseptic she used the arrack left in a bottle in the inner room, and that stung them enough to satisfy their craving for immediate medical treatment. Most missionary women are adepts at first-aid surgery.

  “Now go to the free dispensary,” she ordered. “And don’t tell anyone you saw me.”

  So they filed out, and were met by the rest of the crew, who added Ommony’s commands to hers.

  Then she sat down in the stifling room to consider her own case, first throwing all the covers off a string-cot for fear of the inevitable lice. She wondered why she did not feel ashamed of herself.

  She had left her husband in the lurch. He was a good, plain, loyal fellow, who would never have left her. She did not doubt he was already exploring all imaginable holes and corners in search of her.

  She smiled at that. It served him right, she reflected, for having presumed to agree to her arrest on any terms.

  She had never lost her native color-prejudice. Americans abroad, with few exceptions, carry along with enormous trunks the rockset traditions of their home; and those, for good and evil, are as changeless as the East’s conservatism, humans being human under whatever sky.

  Arrest for any sake by dark-skinned aliens, whose culture — or lack of it — and creed she equally despised, was more unwelcome to her than death would be. That was not affectation; it was inborn, inbred, ingrained; and there are worse states of mind possessed by bigots who would blame her.

  For another thing, though she hardly knew it, her whole being was in rebellion against the deadly sameness of the mission routine. Seven long years without vacation she had devoted half her energy to Craig’s work and the other half to “improving” Craig himself, who was as unimprovable as salt; for what he was, he would be, true to his convictions and afraid of sin if he should venture half a step beyond them.

  In total, she was playing hooky. She knew she should go back — considered that inevitable. There was neither profit, pride nor much amusement to be had from sitting in that stifling hut. But there was satisfaction in the thought of scaring Craig, a hope that by delay she might avoid the insolent protection of the Maharajah’s men and a great contentment in offending Ommony by keeping his beloved dog from him. Ommony had seen through her mask of zeal at first glance, so she hated him, as we all hate those who discern what shams we are.

  The behavior of the dog was unaccountable. After one penetrating howl Diana had followed her into the hut without objection and had lain in a corner, head on paws, as if listening and gathering news by means of an unhuman sense.

  Once when a heavy step drew near she had trembled, although apparently not with fear. Then when a low voice had said one word in the next room in an unknown tongue, the dog had yelped and whined. The sound of someone clucking with tongue in his teeth had stopped the whining instantly.

  Once after that she had whined, but the low voice of some young fellow crooning just under the window seemed to provide all the consolation necessary. Mrs. Craig tried to look out of the window and discover who the comforter might be, but he was too close to the wall for observation. The crooning continued at intervals, and the dog lay quiet but refused to come near her when she coaxed.

  Presently, what with the heat and dread of insects, she decided to move on — perhaps to look for Craig — she would decide that point presently. She tried the door, but could not move it; not all her strength and weight could make the least impression on it.

  She went to the window, but that was built into the wall and guarded on the outside by iron latticework. Only part of it was glazed, so she called through it in a low voice. The crooning that had comforted the dog ceased, but there was no other response.

  She laughed — at herself. So this was the outcome! Seeking to avoid arrest, she had simply walked into the trap set by the Maharajah’s men! She might have known Orientals would use underhanded means. No doubt whichever way she walked they would have simply closed a door or a gate on her. Her actual whereabouts was immaterial to them provided they had her trapped and under observation.

  But what brutes! What a cell to keep her locked in! She thought of the Black Hole of Calcutta, and that brought all the calmness of her inborn courage to the surface.

  No sense in beating like a bird against unyielding bars! She would rest and reserve her strength! She took the remainder of the arrack, wiped each stick and string of the bare cot, and lay down.

  Then the crooning began again, and she was sure a spy had been set beneath the window, who perhaps could see her through some undiscoverable cranny in the wall. All that puzzled her after that was why the dog should like the crooning so and should decline her own proffered caresses.

  She lay so long that she almost fell asleep, and had no idea what time it was when someone knocked and the great hound, with every hair bristling, sprang at the door ready to do battle the minute it opened. Elsa struggled with all her might, tugging at scruff and collar, but she could not drag the dog away. Nor had she any kind of rope, nor anything to fasten a rope to that would have held for an instant.

  But the crooning resumed under the window, interspersed with unintelligible speech. Diana went back to her corner and lay down, head on paws as formerly, still growling like a volcano making ready to erupt, but offering no more fight. More mystery!

  “Come! But you must take your own chance with the dog. I can’t hold her!” she called in English.

  She expected the Hindu officer who had always been at pains to show such guarded insolence. But in came two men whose ivory skin showed between the folds of garments more like Brahman priests’ than soldiers’. She was not sure of it, not having mastered all the intricacies of caste and costume, but she was nearly sure they were priests or temple acolytes. She could see six more behind them waiting in the other room.

  They smiled, saluted her, made gestures that invited her to come with them; in fact, were not uncivil in the least; and, strangest of all, they took no notice of the dog, who growled as if thunder quickened in her lungs. Undoubtedly the crooning outside the window kept the dog from attacking them; but how did they know they were safe? They had no weapons she could see — no means to defend themselves against flashing teeth; yet they were so supremely confident they did not even turn heads to look. Mystery again!

  She decided to follow without protest. The dog submitted to be led by the collar, and she signed to the two to lead the way. But they stood aside for her and looked to make sure there was nothing of hers they should carry. The six in the outer room, with evident respect, but no trace of hesitancy, formed up around her, two ahead, one on either hand, two behind, and marched out into the open.

  She saw the boatmen, some now wearing the unbleached calico bandages of the free dispensary. They all salaamed sheepishly in a group under the wayside trees, but made no other comment. The two men who had first entered the room brought up the rear of the strange procession, and at a little distance behind them a young man followed whom she suspected of being the author of the crooning.

  She knew then by the declining sun that it was nearly five o’clock, and discovered, too, that she was hungry. She thought of Joan of Arc being led to the stake by priests, and smiled, by no means afraid of laughing at herself.

  Romanticism, though it forever made appeal, was an element she had turned her back on long ago. She mocked it, for like the U.S. Senator it was part of the might-have-been. She assured herself there was no romance in her existence.

  She tried to feel matter-of-fact. There were crows on the wall that cawed impudently. Overhead the kites wheeled ceaselessly against a pure blue sky. A pariah-dog glimpsed Diana’s shape between her escort’s legs and fled incontinently. The wheels of a bullock-cart were creaking, and the driv
er’s agonized invective grated on her ear. All was as usual except that she, Elsa Maconochie Craig, was walking a prisoner in the midst of Brahman priests, perhaps within a stone’s throw of her husband!

  She decided to scream at the first profitable opportunity, and conserved her breath meanwhile.

  But humdrum opportunities had ceased. It was a day of baffling unexpectedness. Out of the boatmen’s sight, behind a godown that projected into the alley, one of her escort threw a sheet over her head, another wrapped it deftly, and a third, using English, offered sharp advice, with his mouth two inches from her muffled ear.

  “Make no outcry! Obey us! We will gag you if you scream! Be wise!”

  They had not hurt her. They had not touched her more than necessary. They did not seize her hands, which were free beneath the colored cotton sheet. And it was a clean sheet; it did not even smell offensive! They had hardly frightened her, but that may have been because of her iron courage.

  Knowing they were eight to one, she decided not to try to resist them, just then at any rate. But she wondered why the dog did not offer fight; she had let go the collar in the first instinctive struggle with the sheet, and did not even know where the dog had gone.

  Naturally, now she could not be aware of Ommony’s dog-boy with both arms around Diana’s neck engaging the hound’s whole attention.

  She heard a door open, remembered she had noticed it in the midst of a short, otherwise blind wall between two locked godowns, was led through, heard it slam and lock behind her, and felt herself pushed against the tail-end of a wheeled conveyance of some kind.

  “Get in, please!” said the same voice that had cautioned her previously.

  Again no violence was offered — no unwelcome aid. They let her grope her own way. Two men followed; then a third. She heard Diana leap in and felt the hound’s head on her lap.

  She guessed she was in an old-fashioned covered ox-cart with her back to the corner by the curtained front end. In a moment more she knew it, for the driver cried aloud and the wheels creaked.

  Then interminable bumpings at a snail’s pace over cobbled streets and unpaved roads that wound to right and left, leaving behind at last the noises that told of town life and fording narrow streams occasionally, where men seized hold of the wheels to help the oxen.

  “Where am I being taken?” she asked once through the all-concealing yellow sheet. But the only answer came from the same man who had spoken twice before.

  “Silence, memsahib, please!”

  If they had treated her disrespectfully she might have made their business troublesome — might have obliged them to play their hand to the utmost and commit themselves to violent handling of a missionary’s wife, for which there would be stern accounting afterward. But they did not.

  The three men sat apart from her. She thought she could feel their eyes, but never a hand approached. So she sat still, listening to the wheels, the soft thud of the oxen’s feet, and the tramp of the remainder of her escort marching alongside and behind.

  She felt the gloom within the car grow darker and guessed the hour of sunset; but the cries of the driver continued, and the wheels bumped on, it seemed forever, until she could have wept from very weariness. But she was not of the weeping kind — took pride in that, and comfort from the pride.

  It was probably after nine o’clock when she reached her destination. There at last they took the sheet away when the ox-cart halted before a gate under an arch, whose outlines were almost indeterminable in the gloom.

  Again the men’s politeness disarmed her. They appeared no whit ashamed of having carried her off, but bent on showing her all deference, and their salaams were manly, not the cringing sort she was accustomed to. They stood on the brick steps of a porch, four on either hand, saluting as if she were a captured empress. Iron in her character insisted on her going forward up the steps with no fuss and no questions asked.

  She was a prisoner after their own hearts. They brag of her, those stalwarts, to this day.

  The bronze-barred door swung open, and she passed in, hearing it clang behind, but never turning. So imperially, looking straight before her, Elsa Craig entered her prison, staring up beyond the arch, between sentinel trees, at stardust swimming in a purple sky.

  She was in fairyland!

  And she was glad to be alone! Craig, had he been there, would have spoken bitterly of images of gods that smiled benignly amid shrubbery, as if they were hiding to play games. She didn’t care if they were idols. She loved them. They were beautiful.

  There were fountains that tinkled and splashed music, even at that hour. The air was moist and cool. An old, old servitor advanced and, beckoning, walked down a brick path between verdure trained to grow in sequences as rhythmed as string symphonies. The scent of flowers and shrubbery arose and waned in obbligato to a melody of form. They skirted a lotus pond in which, between the lordly, lazy fronds reflections of stars reshone like jewels buried in the pool, and in their dim, calm light the meditative image of Jinendra sat.

  They came to a house of marble as appealing to the eyes as are those ancient little temples that stand aloof wherever mystic worshipers have dwelt — all pure — each true line drawn by one who knew his life was neither this nor that thing but eternity. Candlelight within made peace, so prisoned in the stone, appear alive and welcoming.

  The rays of a rising full moon touched the edges of the roof, redrawing man’s concrete masterpiece in liquid silver. Elsa gasped. The old manservant, saying not one word, but beckoning as if he, too, felt the inspiration of the place, led on.

  They approached the house, he ever turning to be sure she understood, up marble steps in which tree-shadows in irregular design lay as if each touch of purple had been drawn in place by Him who rules the symphonies.

  As in a dream one passes disconnectedly from phase to phase, she found herself in a chamber where moonlight through the open window shone on a table spread for her — rice, bread, milk, honey — things that men may eat without accepting the role of executioner — not interfering with the karma of the beasts.

  In a chamber next to it were clean clothes laid on a spotless bed of hand- wrought sandalwood. A woman older than the man made signs to her to change into the comfortable dress of a Hindu lady of rank — loose, lovely stuff embroidered richly, yet as simple in design as all true art.

  She laughed. She needed that. Hitherto she was intruding. Now, bathed and rearrayed, she was no harsh discord but a new, strong note in harmony. The mirror, held by the old woman, told her that.

  How Craig would have scorned!

  The meal, with the old attendant silent behind her chair, was like supper before sailing into new dimensions. It dawned on her intelligence how mean and narrow is the Western view that mentions heathen in the same breath with ancient culture. She could doubt Christianity in that hour, along with all her educated notions, excepting one — she was still white, and American.

  “Who built this place?” she asked in the dialect.

  And as she spoke a bulbul piped his anthem to the rising moon.

  “It was always here,” said the old attendant.

  “Who owns it?”

  “The diwan sahib — now.”

  “Who formerly?”

  “The diwan sahib’s wife.”

  “But she has been dead for twenty years. Who lives here now?”

  “None, save caretakers.”

  “Does the diwan sahib never use it?”

  “Seldom. At times his honor comes to observe that all is as it was when she lived, for she loved the place. He planted and adorned it for her summer- house, building the high wall about it for her greater peace. She was a holy woman, and he loved her more than all else. Here she would come to meditate; and here she died.

  “The diwan sahib gave orders to us to preserve all things as they were when she enjoyed them. And we also loved her. Therefore the command is easy of fulfilment, and the diwan sahib finds no fault.

  “The fish in the pond
are fed. None harms the birds. The gardeners pull weeds. None enters, save the diwan rarely. The memsahib is the first since she died.”

  “Why am I here?”

  The question came to her lips unbidden, and was out before she could restrain it.

  “None knows. The order came this afternoon. The diwan sahib sent word over his seal that your honor is to be treated in all things as she, the diwan sahib’s wife, was, save only that your honor may not pass beyond the wall, nor may you receive guests.”

  “Then I am your prisoner?”

  “The diwan sahib said you are his guest.”

  “I wasn’t a willing guest.”

  “Whatever the memsahib wishes is an order, saving only the key of the gate.”

  She went out and walked in moonlight — watched and marveled at her own reflection in the lotus-pond — heard the liquid bulbul note that is Nature’s effort to explain the gist of hope; and a great contentment grew on her. She began to wish Craig were there, believing it would move him too, to a mood more mixed with tolerance.

  That set her thinking about Craig, and her own new tolerance shed kinder light on him. She saw the manliness of his erect and incorruptible pugnacity — the boy’s heart that had borne him storming to the Maharajah in the face of what would have discouraged most men — the conviction, too rock-hewn to be altered by even her seven-year siege.

  She found she could excuse a deal of narrowness for sake of that steadfast honesty, mistaken often, but, unlike her own, uncompromising. There, where she stood in moonlight, at a distance, she condoned his passionate regard for bricks and straw — discovered that, even if he thought otherwise, they were only landmarks he had set up on a hard trail. And now they were all to be reset. She would help him!

  Suppressed intelligence awoke in Elsa Craig that night and mellowed her — until she thought of Ommony. She hated him! Which led to a belated recollection of the dog. She wondered what had happened to Diana, and who had fed her. Had she gone away again with those men? If so, the men must be Ommony’s, or otherwise Diana would have rebelled. Yet — supposing they were Ommony’s, why had the hound shown fight when they first appeared, only to be calmed astonishingly by the crooning and gibberish of somebody under the window?