Читать книгу On the Face of the Waters: A Tale of the Mutiny - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 20

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Mrs. Gissing had guessed right. The man in the Afghan cap was Jim Douglas, who found the disguise of a frontiersman the easiest to assume, when, as now, he wanted to mix in a crowd. And he would have said "Bravo" a dozen times over if he had thought the little lady would like to hear it; for her quick denial of the possibility of insult had roused his keenest admiration. Here had spoken a dignity he had not expected to find in one whom he only knew as a woman Major Erlton delighted to honor. A dignity lacking in the big brave boy beside her; lacking, alas! in many a big brave Englishman of greater importance. So he had risked detection by that sudden "Bravo!" Not that he dreaded it much. To begin with, he was used to it, even when he posed as an out-lander, for there was a trick in his gait, not to be Orientalized, which made policemen salute gravely as he passed disguised to the tent. Then there was ignorance of some one or another of the million shibboleths which divide men from each other in India; shibboleths too numerous for one lifetime's learning, which require to be born in the blood, bred in the bone. In this case, also, he had every intention of asserting his race by licking one at least of the offenders when the show was over. For he happened to know one of them; having indeed licked him a few days before over a certain piece of bone. So, as the crowd, accepting the finale of one amusement placidly, drifted away to see another, he walked over to the tent in which the discomforted caricaturists had found refuge. It was a tattered old military bell-tent, bought most likely at some auction with the tattered old staff uniform. As he lifted the flap the sound of escaping feet made him expect a stern chase; but he was mistaken. Two figures rose with a start of studied surprise and salaamed profoundly as he entered. They were both stark naked save for a waistcloth, and Jim Douglas could not resist a quick glance round for the discarded costumes. They were nowhere to be seen; being hidden, probably, under the litter of properties strewing the squalid green-room. Still of the identity of the man he knew Jim Douglas had no doubt, and as this one was also the nearest, he promptly seized him by the both shoulders and gave him a sound Western kick, which would have been followed by others if the recipient had not slipped from his hold like an eel. For Jhungi, Bunjârah, and general vagrant, habitually oiled himself from head to foot after the manner of his profession as a precaution against such possible attempts at capture.

His assailant, grasping this fact, at any rate, did not risk dignity by pursuit; though the man stood salaaming again within arm's length.

"You scoundrel!" said Jim Douglas with as much severity as he could command before the mixture of deference and defiance, innocence and iniquity, in the sharp, cunning face before him. "Wasn't the licking I gave you before enough?"

Jhungi superadded perplexity to his other show of emotions. "The Huzoor mistakes," he said, with sudden cheerful understanding. "It was the miscreant Bhungi, my brother, whom the Huzoor licked. The misbegotten idler who tells lies in the bazaar about bones and sacks. So his skin smarts, but my body is whole. Is it not so, Father Tiddu?"

The appeal to his companion was made with curious eagerness, and Jim Douglas, who had heard this tale of the ill-doing double before, looked at the witness to it with interest. That this man was or was not Jhungi's co-offender he could not say with certainty, for there was a remarkable lack of individuality about both face and figure when in repose. But the nickname of Tiddu, or cricket, was immediately explained by the jerky angularity of his actions. Save for the faint frostiness of sprouting gray hairs on a shaven cheek and skull he might have been any age.

"Of a truth it was Bhungi," he said in a well-modulated but creaky voice. "Time was when liars, such as he, fell dead. Now they don't even catch fevers, and if they do, the Huzoors give them a bitter powder and start them lying again. So, since one dead fish stinks a whole tank, virtuous Jhungi, being like as two peas in a pod, suffers an ill-name. But Bhungi will know what it means to tell lies when he stands before his Creator. Nevertheless in this world the master being enraged----"

"Not so, Father Tiddu," interrupted Jhungi glibly, "the Huzoor is but enraged with Bhungi. And rightly. Did not we hide our very faces with shame while he mimicked the noble people? Did we not try to hold him when he fled from punishment--as the Huzoor no doubt heard----"

Jim Douglas without a word slipped his hand down the man's back. The wales of a sound hiding were palpable; so was his wince as he dodged aside to salaam again.

"The Huzoor is a male judge," he said admiringly. "No black man could deceive him. This slave has certainly been whipped. He fell among liars who robbed him of his reputation. Will the Huzoor do likewise? On the honor of a Bunjârah 'tis Bhungi whom the Huzoor beats. He gives Jhungi bitter powders when he gets the fever. And even Bhungi but tries to earn a stomachful as he can when the Huzoors take his trade from him."

"The world grows hollow, to match a man's swallow," quoted Tiddu affably.

The familiar by-word of poverty, the quiet mingling of truth and falsehood, daring and humility in Jhungi's plea, roused both Jim Douglas' sense of humor, and the sympathy--which with him was always present--for the hardness and squalidness of so many of the lives around him.

"But you can surely earn the stomachful honestly," he said, anger passing into irritation. "What made you take to this trade?" He kicked at a pile of properties, and in so doing disclosed the skeleton of a crinoline. Jhungi with a shocked expression stooped down and covered it up decorously.

"But it is my trade," he replied; "the Huzoor must surely have heard of the Many-Faced tribe of Bunjârahs? I am of them.'

"Lie not, Jhungi!" interrupted Tiddu calmly, "he is but my apprentice, Huzoor, but I----" he paused, caught up a cloth, gave it one dexterous twirl round him, squatted down, and there he was, to the life, a veiled woman watching the stranger with furtive, modest eye. "But I," came a round feminine voice full of feminine inflections, "am of the thousand-faced people who wander to a thousand places. A new place, a new face. It makes a large world, Huzoor, a strange world." There was a melancholy cadence in his voice, which added interest to the sheer amaze which Jim Douglas was feeling. He had heard the legend of the Many-Faced Tribe, had even seen clever actors claiming to belong to it, and knew how the Stranglers deceived their victims, but anything like this he had never credited, much less seen. He himself, though he knew to the contrary, could scarcely combat the conviction, which seemed to come to him from that one furtive eye, that a woman sat within those folds.

"But how?" he begun in perplexity. "I thought the Baharupas [Lit. many-faced] never went in caravans."

Tiddu resumed the cracked voice and let the smile become visible, and, as if by magic, the illusion disappeared. "The Huzoor is right. We are wanderers. But in my youth a woman tied me to one place, one face; women have the trick, Huzoor, even if they are wanderers themselves. This one was, but I loved her; so after we had burned her and her fellow-wanderer together hand-in-hand, according to the custom, so that they might wander elsewhere but not in the tribe, I lingered on. He was the father of Jhungi, and the boy being left destitute I taught him to play; for it needs two in the play as in life. The man and the woman, or folks care not for it. So I taught Jhungi----"

"And brother Bhungi?" suggested his hearer dryly.

A faint chuckle came from the veil. "And Bhungi. He plays well, and hath beguiled an old rascal with thin legs and a fat face like mine into playing with him. Some, even the Huzoor himself, might be beguiled into mistaking Siddu for Tiddu. But it is a tom-cat to a tiger. So being warned, the Huzoor will give no unearned blows. Yet if he did, are not two kicks bearable from the mulch-cow?" As he spoke he angled out a hand impudently for an alms with the beggars' cry of "Alakh," to point his meaning.

It was echoed by Jhungi, who, envious of Tiddu's holding the boards, as it were, had in sheer devilry and desire not to be outdone, taken up the disguise of a mendicant. It was a most creditable performance, but Tiddu dismissed it with a waive of the hand.

"Bullah!" he said contemptuously, "'tis the refuge of fools. There is not one true beggar in fifty, so the forty-and-nine false ones go free of detention as the potter's donkey. Even the Huzoor could do better--had I the teaching of him."

He leaned forward, dropping his voice slightly, and Jim Douglas narrowed his eyes as men do when some unbidden idea claims admittance to the brain.

"You?" he echoed; "what could you teach me?"

Tiddu rose, let fall the veil to decent dignified drapery, and fixed his eyes full on the questioner. They were luminous eyes, differing from Jhungi's beady ones as the fire-opal differs from the diamond.

"What could I teach?" he re-echoed, and his tone, monotonously distinct to Jim Douglas, was inaudible to others, judging by Jhungi's impassive face. "Many things. For one, that the Baharupas are not mimics only. They have the Great Art. What is it? God knows. But what they will folk to see, that is seen. That and no more."

Jim Douglas laughed derisively. Animal magnetism and mesmerism were one thing: this was another.

"The Huzoor thinks I lie; but he must have heard of the doctor sahib in Calcutta who made suffering forget to suffer."

"You mean Dr. Easdale. Did you know him? Was he a pupil of yours?" came the cynical question.

Tiddu's face became expressionless. "Perhaps; but this slave forgets names. Yet the Huzoors have the gift sometimes. The Baharupas have it not always; though the father's hoard goes oftenest to the son. Now, if, by chance, the Huzoor had the gift and could use it, there would be no need for policemen to salute as he passes; no need for the drug-smokers to cease babbling when he enters. So the Huzoor could find out what he wants to find out; what he is paid to find out."

His eyes met Jim Douglas' surprise boldly.

"How do you know I want to find out anything?" said the latter, after a pause.

Tiddu laughed. "The Huzoor must find a turban heavy, and there is no room for English toes in a native shoe; folk seek not such discomfort for naught."

Jim Douglas paused again; the fellow was a charlatan, but he was consummately clever; and if there was anything certain in this world it was the wisdom of forgetting Western prejudices occasionally in dealing with the East.

"Send that man away," he said curtly, "I want to talk to you alone."

But the request seemed lost on Tiddu. He folded up the veil impudently, and resumed the thread of the former topic. "Yet Jhungi plays the beggar well, for which Fate be praised, since he must ask alms elsewhere if the Huzoor refuses them. For the purse is empty"--here he took a leathern bag from his waistband and turned it inside out--"by reason of the Huzoor's dislike to good mimics. So thou must to the temples, Jhungi, and if thou meetest Bhungi give him the sahib's generous gift; for blows should not be taken on loan."

Jhungi, who all this time had been telling his beads like the best of beggars, looked up with some perplexity; whether real or assumed Jim Douglas felt it was impossible to say, in that hotbed of deception.

"Bhungi?" echoed the former, rising to his feet. "Ay! that will I, if I meet him. But God knows as to that. God knows of Bhungi----"

"The purse is empty," repeated Tiddu in a warning voice, and Jhungi, with a laugh, pulled himself and his disguise together, as it were, and passed out of the tent; his beggar's cry, "Alakh! Alakh!" growing fainter and fainter while Tiddu and Jim Douglas looked at each other.

"Jhungi-Bhungi--Bhungi-Jhungi," jeered the Baharupa, suddenly, jingling the names together. "Which be which, as he said, God knows, not man. That is the best of lies. They last a body's lifetime, so the Huzoor may as well learn old Tiddu's----"

"Or Siddu's?"

"Or Siddu's," assented the mountebank calmly. "But the Huzoor cannot learn to use his gift from that old rascal. He must come to the many-faced one, who is ready to teach it."

"Why?"

Tiddu abandoned mystery at once.

"For fifty rupees, Huzoor; not a pice less. Now, in my hand."

Was it worth it? Jim Douglas decided instantly that it might be. Not for the gift's sake; of that he was incredulous. But Tiddu was a consummate actor and could teach many tricks worth knowing. Then in this roving commission to report on anything he saw and heard to the military magnate, it would suit him for the time to have the service of an arrant scoundrel. Besides, the pay promised him being but small, the wisdom of having a second string to the bow of ambition had already decided him on combining inquiry with judicious horse-dealing; since he could thus wander through villages buying, through towns selling, without arousing suspicion; and this life in a caravan would start him on these lines effectively. Finally, this offer of Tiddu's was unsought, unexpected, and, ever since Kate Erlton's appeal, Jim Douglas had felt a strange attraction toward pure chance. So he took out a note from his pocket-book and laid it in the Baharupa's hand.

"You asked fifty," he said, "I give a hundred; but with the branch of the neem-tree between us two."

Tiddu gave him an admiring look. "With the sacred 'Lim ke dagla' between us, and Mighty Murri-am herself to see it grow," he echoed. "Is the Huzoor satisfied?"

The Englishman knew enough of Bunjârah oaths to be sure that he had, at least, the cream of them; besides, a hundred rupees went far in the purchase of good faith. So that matter was settled, and he felt it to be a distinct relief; for during the last day or two he had been casting about for a fair start rather aimlessly. In truth, he had underrated the gap little Zora's death would make in his life, and had been in a way bewildered to find himself haunting the empty nest on the terraced roof in forlorn, sentimental fashion. The sooner, therefore, that he left Lucknow the better. So, as the Bunjârah had told him the caravan was starting the very next morning, he hastily completed his few preparations, and having sent Tara word of his intention, went, after the moon had risen, to lock the doors on the past idyl and take the key of the garden-house back to its owner; for he himself had always lodged, in European fashion, near the Palace.

The garden, as he entered it, lay peaceful as ever; so utterly unchanged from what he remembered it on many balmy moonlit nights, that he could not help looking up once more, as if expectant of that tinsel flutter, that soft welcome, "Khush-âmud-und Huzrut." Strange! So far as he was concerned the idyl might be beginning; but for her? All unconsciously, as he paused, his thought found answer in one spoken word--the Persian equivalent for "it is finished," which has such a finality in its short syllables:

"Khutm."

"Khutm." The echo came from Tara's voice, but it had a ring in it which made him turn, anticipating some surprise. She was standing not far off, below the plinth, as he was, having stepped out from the shadow of the trees at his approach, and she was swathed from head to foot in the white veil of orthodox widowhood, which encircled her face like a cere-cloth. Even in the moonlight he could see the excitement in her face, the glitter in the large, wild eyes.

"Tara!" he exclaimed sharply, his experience warning him of danger, "what does this mean?"

"That the end has come; the end at last!" she cried theatrically; every fold of her drapery, though she stood stiff as a corpse, seeming to be instinct with fierce vitality.

He changed his tone at once, perceiving that the danger might be serious. "You mean that your service is at an end," he said quietly. "I told you that some days ago. Also that your pay would be continued because of your goodness to her--to the dead. I advised your returning north, nearer your own people, but you are free to go or stay. Do you want anything more? If you do, be quick, please, for I am in a hurry."

His coolness, his failure to remark on the evident meaning of her changed dress, calmed her somewhat.

"I want nothing," she replied sullenly. "A suttee wants nothing in this world, and I am suttee. I have been the master's servant for gratitude's sake--now I am the servant of God for righteousness' sake." So far she had, spoken as if the dignified words had been pre-arranged; now she paused in a sort of wistful anger at the indifference on his face. The words meant so much to her, and, as she ceased from them, their controlling power seemed to pass also, and she flung out her arms wildly, then brought them down in stinging blows upon her breasts.

"I am suttee. Yes! I am suttee! Reject me not again, ye Shining Ones! reject me not again."

The cry was full of exalted resolve and despair. It made Jim Douglas step up to her, and seizing both hands, hold them fast.

"Don't be a fool, Tara!" he said sternly. "Tell me, sensibly, what all this means. Tell me what you are going to do."

His touch seemed to scorch her, for she tore herself away from it vehemently; yet it seemed also to quiet her, and she watched him with somber eyes for a minute ere replying: "I am going to Holy Gunga. Where else should a suttee go? The Water will not reject me as the Fire did, since, before God! I am suttee. As the master knows,"--her voice held a passionate appeal,--"I have been suttee all these long years. Yet now I have given up all--all!"

With a swift gesture, full of womanly grace, but with a sort of protest against such grace in its utter abandonment and self-forgetfulness, she flung out her arms once more. This time to raise the shrouding veil from her head and shoulders. Against this background of white gleaming in the moonlight, her new-shaven skull showed death-like, ghastly. Jim Douglas recoiled a step, not from the sight itself, but because he knew its true meaning; knew that it meant self-immolation if she were left to follow her present bent. She would simply go down to the Ganges and drown herself. An inconceivable state of affairs, beyond all rational understanding; but to be reckoned with, nevertheless, as real, inevitable.

"What a pity!" he said, after a moment's pause had told him that it would be well to try and take the starch out of her resolution by fair means or foul, leaving its cause for future inquiry. "You had such nice hair. I used to admire it very much."

Her hands fell slowly, a vague terror and remorse came to her eyes; and he pursued the advantage remorselessly. "Why did you cut it off?" He knew, of course, but his affected ignorance took the color, the intensity from the situation, by making her feel her coup de theatre had failed.

"The Huzoor must know," she faltered, anger and disappointment and vague doubt in her tone, while her right hand drew itself over the shaven skull as if to make sure there was no mistake. "I am suttee--" The familiar word seemed to bring certainty with it, and she went on more confidentially. "So I cut it all off and it lies there, ready, as I am, for purification."

She pointed to the upper step leading to the plinth, where, as on an altar, lay all her worldly treasures, arranged carefully with a view to effect. The crimson scarf she had always worn was folded--with due regard to the display of its embroidered edge--as a cloth, and at either end of it lay a pile of trumpery personal adornments, each topped and redeemed from triviality by a gold wristlet and anklet. In the center, set round by fallen orange-blossoms, rose a great heap of black hair, snakelike in glistening coils. The simple pomposity of the arrangement was provocative of smiles, the wistful eagerness of the face watching its effect on the master was provocative of tears. Jim Douglas, feeling inclined for both, chose the former deliberately; he even managed a derisive laugh as he stepped up to the altar and laid sacrilegious hands on the hair. Tara gave a cry of dismay, but he was too quick for her, and dangled a long lock before her very eyes, in jesting, but stern decision.

"That settles it, Tara. You can go to Gunga now if you like, and bathe and be as holy as you like. But there will be no Fire or Water. Do you understand?"

She looked at the hand holding the hair with the oddest expression, though she said obstinately, "I shall drown if I choose."

"Why should you choose?" he asked. "You know as well as I that it is too late for any good to you or others. The Fire and Water should have come twelve years ago. The priests won't say so of course. They want fools to help them in this fuss about the new law. Ah! I thought so! They have been at you, have they? Well, be a fool if you like, and bring them pennies at Benares as a show. You cannot do anything else. You can't even sacrifice your hair really, so long as I have this bit." He began to roll the lock round his finger, neatly.

"What is the Huzoor going to do with it?" she asked, and the oddness had invaded her voice.

"Keep it," he retorted. "And by all, these thirty thousand and odd gods of yours, I'll say it was a love-token if I choose. And I will if you are a fool." He drew out a small gold locket attached to the Brahminical thread he always wore, and began methodically to fit the curl into it, wondering if this cantrip of his--for it was nothing more--would impress Tara. Possibly. He had found such suggestions of ritual had an immense effect, especially with the womenkind who were for ever inventing new shackles for themselves; but her next remark startled him considerably.

"Is the bibi's hair in there too?" she asked. There was a real anxiety in her tone, and he looked at her sharply, wondering what she would be at.

"No," he answered. In truth it was empty; and had been empty ever since he had taken a fair curl from it many years before; a curl which had ruined his life. The memory making him impatient of all feminine subtleties, he added roughly, "It will stay there for the present; but if you try suttee nonsense I swear I'll tie it up in a cowskin bag, and give it to a sweeper to make broth of."

The grotesque threat, which suggested itself to his sardonic humor as one suitable to the occasion, and which in sober earnest was terrible to one of her race, involving as it did eternal damnation, seemed to pass her by. There was even, he fancied, a certain relief in the face watching him complete his task; almost a smile quivering about her lips. But when he closed the locket with a snap, and was about to slip it back to its place, the full meaning of the threat, of the loss--or of something beyond these--seemed to overtake her; an unmistakable terror, horror, and despair swept through her. She flung herself at his feet, clasping them with both hands.

"Give it me back, master," she pleaded wildly. "Hinder me not again! Before God I am suttee! I am suttee!"

But this same Eastern clutch of appeal is disconcerting to the average Englishman. It fetters the understanding in another sense, and smothers sympathy in a desire to be left alone. Even Jim Douglas stepped back from it with something like a bad word. She remained crouching for a moment with empty hands, then rose in scornful dignity.

"There was no need to thrust this slave away," she said proudly. "Tara, the Rajputni, will go without that. She will go to Holy Gunga and be purged of inmost sin. Then she will return and claim her right of suttee at the master's hand. Till then he may keep what he stole."

"He means to keep it," retorted the master savagely, for he had come to the end of his patience. "Though what this fuss about suttee means I don't know. You used to be sensible enough. What has come to you?"

Tara looked at him helplessly, then, wrapping her widow's veil round her, prepared to go in silence. She could not answer that question even to herself. She would not even admit the truth of the old tradition, that the only method for a woman to preserve constancy to the dead was to seek death itself. That would be to admit too much. Yet that was the truth, to which her despair at parting pointed even to herself. Truth? No! it was a lie! She would disprove it even in life if she was prevented from doing so by death. So, without a word, she gathered up the crimson drapery and what lay on it. Then, with these pathetic sacrifices of all the womanhood she knew tight clasped in her widow's veil, she paused for a last salaam.

The incomprehensible tragedy of her face irritated him into greater insistence.

"But what is it all about?" he reiterated. "Who has been putting these ideas into your head? Who has been telling you to do this? Is it Soma, or some devil of a priest?"

As he waited for an answer the floods of moonlight threw their shadows together to join the perfumed darkness of the orange trees. The city, half asleep already, sent no sound to invade the silence.

"No! master. It was God."

Then the shadow left him and disappeared with her among the trees. He did not try to call her back. That answer left him helpless.

But as, after climbing the stairs, he passed slowly from one to another of the old familiar places in the pleasant pavilions, the mystery of such womanhood as Tara Devi's and little Zora's oppressed him. Their eternal cult of purely physical passion, their eternal struggle for perfect purity and constancy, not of the soul, but the body; their worship alike of sex and He who made it seemed incomprehensible. And as he turned the key in the lock for the last time, he felt glad to think that it was not likely the problem would come into his life again; even though he carried a long lock of black hair with him. It was an odd keepsake, but if he was any judge of faces his cantrip had served his purpose; Tara would not commit suicide while he held that hostage.

So, having scant leisure left, he hurried through the alleys to return the key. They were almost deserted; the children at this hour being asleep, the men away lounging in the bazaars. But every now and again a formless white figure clung to a corner shadow to let him pass. A white shadow itself, recalling the mystery he had been glad to leave unsolved; for he knew them to be women taking this only opportunity for a neighborly visit. Old or young, pretty or ugly? What did it matter? They were women, born temptresses of virtuous men; and they were proud of the fact, even the poor old things long past their youth. There was a chink in a door he was about to pass. A chink an inch wide with a white shadow behind it. A woman was looking out. What sort of a woman, he wondered idly? Suddenly the chink widened, a hand crept through it, beckoning. He could see it clearly in the moonlight. An old wrinkled hand, delicately old, delicately wrinkled, inconceivably thin, but with the pink henna stain of the temptress still on palms and fingers. A hand with the whole history of seclusion written on it. He crossed over to it, and heard a hurried breathless whisper.

"If the Huzoor would listen for the sake of any woman he loves."

It was an old voice, but it sent a thrill to his heart. "I am listening, mother," he replied, "for the sake of the dead."

"God send her grave peace, my son!" came the voice less hurriedly. "It is not much for listening. I am pensioner, Huzoor. The King gave me three rupees, but now he is gone and the money comes not. If the Huzoor would tell those who send it that Ashrâf-un-Nissa-Zainub-i-Mahal--the Huzoor may know my name, being as my father and mother--wants it. That is all, Huzoor."

It was not much, but Jim Douglas could supplement the rest. Here was evidently a woman who had lived on bounty, and who was starving for the lack of it. There were hundreds in her position, he knew, even among those whose pensions had been guaranteed; for they had not been paid as yet. The papers were not ready, the tape not tied, the sealing-wax not sealed.

"It will not be for long, Huzoor, and it is only three rupees. I was watching for a neighbor to borrow corn, if I could, and seeing the Huzoor----"

"It is all right, mother," he interrupted reassuringly. "I was coming to pay it. Hold the hand straight and I will count it in. Three rupees for three months; that is nine."

The chink of the silver had a background of blessings, and Jim Douglas walked on, thinking what a quaint commentary this little incident was on his puzzle. "Ashrâf-un-Nissa-Zainub-i-Mahal." "Honor-of-women and Ornament-of-Palaces." If the King's paymaster had thought twice about such things, the poor old lady might not have been starving. He was the real culprit. And three months' delay was not long for sanctions, references, for all the paraphernalia and complex machinery of our Government. But a case like this? He looked up into the star-sprinkled riband of sky between the narrowing housetops, and wondered from how many unseen hearths and unheard voices the cry, "How long, O Lord! How long!" was rising. But even to his listening ear there was no sign, no sound. And as he went on through the bazaars, the crowds were passing and repassing contentedly upon the trivial errands of life, and the twinkling cressets in the shops showed faces eager only after a trivial loss or gain.

And the world of Lucknow was apparently awakening contentedly to a new day, when, before dawn, he passed out of it disguised by Tiddu as a deaf-and-dumb driver to the bullock which carried the tattered bell-tent and the tattered staff uniform. It was still dark, but there was a sense of coming light in the sky, and the hum of the housewives' querns, early at work over the coming day's bread, filled the air like swarming bees. The spectral white shadows of widow-drudges were already at work on the creaking well-gear, and the swish of their reed brooms could be heard behind screening walls.

But on the broad white road beyond the bazaars the fresh perfume of the dew-steeped gardens drifted with the faint breeze which heralds the dawn. And down the road, heard first, then dimly seen against its whiteness, came a band of chanting pilgrims to the Holy River.

"Hurri Gunga! Hurri Gunga! Hurri Gunga!"

Jim Douglas, swerving his bullock to give them room, wondered if Tara were among them. What if she were? That lock of hair went with him. So, with a smile, he swerved the bullock back again. There was a hint of a gleaming river-curve through the lessening trees now, and that big black mass to his left must be the Bailey-guard gate. He could see a faint white streak like a sentry beside it; so it must be close on gunfire. Even as the thought came, a sudden rolling boom filled the silence, and seemed to vibrate against the archway. And hark! From within the Residency, and from far Dilkhusha, the clear glad notes of the reveille answered the challenge; while close at hand the clash of arms told they were changing guards. Then, though he could not see it, the English flag must be rising beyond the trees to float over the city during the coming day.

For one day more, at least.