Читать книгу On the Face of the Waters: A Tale of the Mutiny - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 9

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"Going! Going! Gone!"

The Western phrase echoed over the Eastern scene without a trace of doubt in its calm assumption of finality. It was followed by a pause, during which, despite the crowd thronging the wide plain, the only recognizable sound was the vexed yawning purr of a tiger impatient for its prey. It shuddered through the sunshine, strangely out of keeping with the multitude of men gathered together in silent security; but on that March evening of the year 1856, when the long shadows of the surrounding trees had begun to invade the sunlit levels of grass by the river, at Lucknow, the lately deposed King of Oude's menagerie was being auctioned. It had followed all his other property to the hammer, and a perfect Noah's Ark of wild beasts was waiting doubtfully for a change of masters.

"Going! Going! Gone!"

Those three cabalistic words, shibboleth of a whole hemisphere's greed of gain, had just transferred the proprietary rights in an old tusker elephant for the sum of eighteenpence. It is not a large price to pay for a leviathan, even if he be lame, as this one was. Yet the new owner looked at his purchase distastefully, and even the auctioneer sought support in a gulp of brandy and water.

"Fetch up them pollies, Tom," he said in a dejected whisper to a soldier, who, with others of the fatigue party on duty, was trying to hustle refractory lots into position. "They'll be a change after elephants--go off lighter like. Then there's some of them La Martiniery boys comin' down again as ran up the fightin' rams this mornin'. Wonder wot the 'ead master said! But boys is allowed birds, and Lord knows we want to be a bit brisker than we 'ave bin with guj-putti. But there! it's slave-drivin' to screw bids for beasts as eats hunder-weights out of poor devils as 'aven't enough for themselves, or a notion of business as business."

He shook his head resentfully yet compassionately over the impassive dark faces around. He spoke as an auctioneer; yet he gave expression to a very common feeling which in the early fifties, when the commercial instincts of the West met the uncommercial ones of the East in open market for the first time, sharpened the antagonism of race immensely; that inevitable antagonism when the creed of one people is that Time is Money, of the other that Time is Naught.

From either standpoint, however, the auction going on down by the river Goomtee was confusing; even to those who, knowing the causes which had led up to it--the unmentionable atrocities, the crass incapacity on the one hand, the unsanctioned treaties and craze for civilization on the other--were conscious of a distinct flavor of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Deluge all combined, as they watched the just and yet unjust retribution going on. But such spectators were few, even in the outer fringe of English onlookers pausing in their evening drive or ride to gratify their curiosity. The long reports and replies regarding the annexation of Oude which filled the office boxes of the elect were unknown to them, so they took the affair as they found it. The King, for some reason satisfactory to the authorities, had been exiled, majesty being thus vested in the representatives of the annexing race: that is, in themselves. A position which comes naturally to most Englishmen.

To the silent crowds closing round the auctioneer's table the affair was simple also. The King, for some unsatisfactory reason, had been ousted from his own. His goods and chattels were being sold. The valuable ones had been knocked down, for a mere song--just to keep up the farce of sale--to the Huzoors. The rubbish--lame elephants and such like--was being sold to them; more or less against their will, since who could forbear bidding sixpence for a whole leviathan? That this was in a measure inevitable, that these new-come sahibs were bound to supply their wants cheaply when a whole posse of carriages and horses, cattle and furniture was thrown on an otherwise supplied market, did not, of course, occur to those who watched the hammer fall to that strange new cry of the strange new master. When does such philosophy occur to crowds? So when the waning light closed each day's sale and the people drifted back cityward over the boat-bridge they were no longer silent. They had tales to tell of how much the barouche and pair, or the Arab charger, had cost the King when he bought it. But then Wajeed Ali, with all his faults, had never been a bargainer. He had spent his revenues right royally, thus giving ease to many. So one could tell of a purse of gold flung at a beggar, another a life pension granted to a tailor for inventing a new way of sewing spangles to a waistcoat; for there had been no lack of the insensate munificence in which lies the Oriental test of royalty, about the King of Oude's reign.

Despite this talk, however, the talkers returned day after day to watch the auction; and on this, the last one, the grassy plain down by the Goomtee was peaceful and silent as ever save for the occasional cry of an affrighted hungry beast. The sun sent golden gleams over the short turf worn to dustiness by crowding feet, and the long curves of the river, losing themselves on either side among green fields and mango trees, shone like a burnished shield. On the opposite bank, its minarets showing fragile as cut paper against the sky, rose the Chutter Munzil--the deposed King's favorite palace. Behind it, above the belt of trees dividing the high Residency gardens from the maze of houses and hovels still occupied by the hangers-on to the late Court, the English flag drooped lazily in the calm floods of yellow light. For the rest, were dense dark groves following the glistening curve of the river, and gardens gravely gay in pillars of white chum-baeli creeper and cypress, long prim lines of latticed walls, and hedges of scarlet hibiscus. Here and there above the trees, the dome of a mosque or the minaret of a mausoleum told that the town of Lucknow, scattered yet coherent, lay among the groves. The most profligate town in India which by one stroke of an English pen had just been deprived of the raison-d'être of its profligacy, and been bidden to live as best it could in cleanly, courtless poverty.

So, already, there were thousands of workmen in it, innocent enough panderers in the past to luxurious vice, who were feeling the pinch of hunger from lack of employment; and there were those past employers also, deprived now of pensions and offices, with a bankrupt future before them. But Lucknow had a keener grievance than these in the new tax on opium, the drug which helps men to bear hunger and bankruptcy; so, as the auctioneer said, it was not a place in which to expect brisk bidding for wild beasts with large appetites. But the parrots roused a faint interest, and the crowd laughed suddenly at the fluttering screams of a red and blue macaw, as it was tossed from hand to hand, on its way to the surprised and reluctant purchaser who had bid a farthing for it out of sheer idleness.

"Another mouth to feed, Shumshu!" jeered a fellow butcher, as he literally flung the bird at a neighbor's head. "Rather he than I," laughed the recipient, continuing the fling. "Ari! Shumshu, take thy baby. Well caught, brother! but what will thy house say?"

"That I have made a fat bargain," retorted the big, coarse owner coolly, as he wrung the bird's neck, and twirled it, a quivering tuft of bright feathers and choking cries, above his head. "Thou'lt buy no meat at a farthing a pound, even from my shop, I'll swear, and this bird weighs two, and is delicate as chicken."

The laugh which answered the sally held a faint scream, not wholly genuine in its ring. It came from the edge of the crowd, where two English riders had paused to see what the fun was about.

"Cruel devils, aren't they, Allie?" said one, a tall, fair man whose good looks were at once made and marred by heaviness of feature. "Why! you've turned pale despite the rouge!" His tone was full of not over-respectful raillery; his bold, bloodshot eyes met his companion's innocent looking ones with careless admiration.

"Don't be a fool, Erlton," she replied promptly; and the even, somewhat hard pitch of her voice did not match the extreme softness of her small, childish face. "You know I don't rouge; or you ought to. And it was horrible, in its way."

"Only what your ladyship's cook does to your ladyship's fowls," retorted Major Erlton. "You don't see it done, that's all the difference. It is a cruel world, Mrs. Gissing, the sex is the cruelest thing in it, and you, as I'm always telling you, are the cruelest of your sex."

His manner was detestable, but little Mrs. Gissing laughed again. She had not a fine taste in such matters; perhaps because she had no taste for them at all. So, in the middle of the laugh, her attention shifted to the big white cockatoo which formed the next lot. It had a most rumpled and dejected appearance as it tried to keep its balance on the ring which the soldier assistant swung backward and forward boisterously.

"Do look at that ridiculous bird!" she exclaimed, "Did you ever see any creature look so foolish?"

It did, undoubtedly, with its wrinkled gray eyelids closed in agonized effort, its clattering gray beak bobbing rhythmically toward its scaly gray legs. It roused the auctioneer from his depression into beginning in grand style. "Now, then, gentlemen! This is a real treat, indeed! A cockatoo, old as Methusalem and twice as wise. It speaks, I'll be bound. Says 'is prayers--look at 'im gemyflexing! and maybe he swears a bit like the rest of us. Any gentleman bid a rupee!--a eight annas?--a four annas? Come, gentlemen!"

"One anna," called Mrs. Gissing, with a coquettish nod to the big Major, and a loud aside: "Cruel I may be to you, sir, but I'll give that to save the poor brute from having its neck wrung."

"Two annas!" There was a stress of eagerness in the new voice which made many in the crowd look whence it came. The speaker was a lean old man wearing a faded green turban, who had edged himself close to the auctioneer's table and stood with upturned eyes watching the bird anxiously. He had the face of an enthusiast, keen, remorseless, despite its look of ascetic patience.

"Three annas!" Alice Gissing's advance came with another nod at her big admirer.

"Four annas!" The reply was quick as an echo.

A vexed surprise showed on the pretty babyish face. "What an impertinent wretch! Eight annas--do you hear?--eight annas!"

The auctioneer bowed effusively. "Eight annas bid for a cockatoo as says----" he paused cautiously, for the bidding was brisk enough without exaggeration. "Eight annas once--twice--Going! going----"

"One rupee!"

Mrs. Gissing gave a petulant jag to her rein. "Oh! come away, Erlton, my charity doesn't run to rupees."

But her companion's face, never a very amiable one, had darkened with temper. "D----n the impudent devil," he muttered savagely, before raising his voice to call: "Two rupees!"

"Five!" There was no hesitation still; only an almost clamorous anxiety in the worn old voice.

"Ten!" Major Erlton's had lost its first heat, and settled into a dull decision which made the auctioneer turn to him, hammer in hand. Yet the echo was not wanting.

"Fifteen!"

The Englishman's horse backed as if its master's hand lay heavy on the bit. There was a pause, during which that shuddering cough of the hungry tiger quavered through the calm flood of sunshine, in which the crowd stood silently, patiently.

"Fifteen rupees," began the auctioneer reluctantly, his sympathies outraged, "Fifteen once, twice----"

Then Alice Gissing laughed. The woman's laugh of derision which is responsible for so much.

"Fifty rupees," said Major Erlton at once.

The old man in the green turban turned swiftly; turned for the first time to look at his adversary, and in his face was intolerant hatred mingled with self-pity; the look of one who, knowing that he has justice on his side, knows also that he is defeated.

"Thank you, sir," caught up the auctioneer. "Fifty once, twice, thrice! Hand the bird over, Tom. Put it down, sir, I suppose, with the other things?"

Major Erlton nodded sulkily. He was already beginning to wonder why he had bought the brute. Meanwhile Tom, still swinging the cockatoo derisively, had jumped from the table into the crowd round it as if the sea of heads was non-existent; being justified of his rashness by its prompt yielding of foothold as he elbowed his way outward, shouting for room good-naturedly, and answered by swift smiles and swifter obedience. Yet both were curiously silent; so that Mrs. Gissing's voice, wondering what on earth Herbert was going to do with the creature now that he had bought it, was distinctly audible.

"Give it to you, of course," he replied moodily. "You can wring its neck if you choose, Allie. You are cruel enough for that, I dare say." The thought of the fifty rupees wasted was rankling fiercely; fifty rupees! when he would be hard put to it for a penny if he didn't pull off the next race. Fifty rupees! because a woman laughed!

But Mrs. Gissing was laughing again. "I shan't do anything of the kind. I shall give it to your wife, Major Erlton. I'm sure she must be dull all alone; and then she loves prayers!" the absolute effrontery of the speech was toned down by her indifferent expression. "Here, sergeant!" she went on, "hold the bird up a bit higher, please, I want to see if it is worth all that money. Gracious! what a hideous brute!"

It was, in truth; save for the large gold-circled eyes, like strange gems, which opened suddenly as the swinging ceased. They seemed to look at the dainty little figure taking it in; and then, in an instant, the dejected feathers were afluff, the wings outspread, the flame-colored crest, unseen before, raised like a fiery flag as the bird gave an ear-piercing scream.

"Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed." (For the Faith! For the Faith! Victory to Mohammed.)

The war cry of the fiercest of all faiths was unmistakable; the first two syllables cutting the air, keen as a knife, the last with the blare as of a trumpet in them. And following close on their heels came an indescribable sound, like the answering vibration of a church to the last deep organ-note. It was a faint murmur from the crowd till then so silent.

"D----n the bird! Hold it back, man! Loosen the curb, Allie, for God's sake, or the brute will be over with you!"

Herbert Erlton's voice was sharp with anxiety as he reined his own horse savagely out of the way of his companion's, which, frightened at the unexpected commotion, was rearing badly.

"All right," she called; there was a little more color on her child-like face, a firmer set of her smiling mouth: that was all. But the hunting crop she carried fell in one savage cut after another on the startled horse's quarters. It plunged madly, only to meet the bit and a dig of the spur. So, after two or three unavailing attempts to unseat her, it stood still with pricked ears and protesting snorts.

"Well sat, Allie! By George, you can ride! I do like to see pluck in a woman; especially in a pretty one." The Major's temper and his fears had vanished alike in his admiration. Mrs. Gissing looked at him curiously.

"Did you think I was a coward?" she asked lightly; and then she laughed. "I'm not so bad as all that. But look! There is your wife coming along in the new victoria--it's an awfully stylish turn-out, Herbert; I wish Gissing would give me one like it. I suppose she has been to church. It's Lent or something, isn't it? Anyhow, she can take that screaming beast home."

"You're not----" began the Major, but Mrs. Gissing had already ridden up to the carriage, making it impossible for the solitary occupant to avoid giving the order to stop. She was rather a pale woman, who leaned listlessly among the cushions.

"Good evening, Mrs. Erlton," said the little lady, "been, as you see, for a ride. But we were thinking of you and hoping you would pray for us in church."

Kate Erlton's eyebrows went up, as they had a trick of doing when she was scornful. "I am only on my way thither as yet," she replied; "so that now I am aware of your wishes I can attend to them."

The obvious implication roused the aggressor to greater recklessness. "Thanks! but we really deserve something, for we have been buying a parrot for you. Erlton paid a whole fifty rupees for it because it said its prayers and he thought you would like it!"

"That was very kind of Major Erlton,"--there was a fine irony in the title,--"but, as he knows, I'm not fond of things with gay feathers and loud voices."

The man, listening, moved his feet restlessly in his stirrups. It was too bad of Allie to provoke these sparring matches. Foolish, too, since Kate's tongue was sharp when she chose to rouse herself. None sharper, in his opinion.

"If you don't want the bird," he interrupted shortly, "tell the groom to wring its neck."

Mrs. Gissing looked at him, her reproachful blue eyes perfect wells of simplicity. "Wring its neck! How can you, when you paid all that money to save it from being killed! That is the real story, Mrs. Erlton; it is indeed----"

He interrupted his wife's quick glance of interest impatiently. "The main point being that I had, or shall have to pay fifty rupees--which I must get. So I must be off to the racecourse if I don't want to be posted. I ought to have been there a quarter of an hour ago; should have been but for that confounded bird. Are you coming, Mrs. Gissing, or not?"

"Now, Erlton!" she replied, "don't be stupid. As if he didn't know, Mrs. Erlton, that I am every bit as much interested as he is in the match with that trainer man!--what's his name, Erlton? Greyman--isn't it? I have endless gloves on it, sir, so of course I'm coming to see fair play."

Major Erlton shot a rapid glance at her, as if to see what she really meant; then muttered something angrily about chaff as, with a dig of his heels, he swung his horse round to the side of hers.

Kate Erlton watched their figures disappear behind the trees, then turned indifferently to the groom who was waiting for orders with the cockatoo. But she started visibly in finding herself face to face with a semi-circle of spectators which had gathered about the figure of an old man in a faded green turban who stood close beside the groom, and who, seeing her turn, salaamed, and with clasped hands began an appeal of some sort. So much she gathered from his bright eyes, his tone; but no more, and all unconsciously she drew back to the furthest corner of the carriage, as if to escape from what she did not understand, and therefore did not like. That, indeed, was her attitude toward all things native. Yet at times, as now, she felt a dim regret at her own ignorance. What did he want? What were they thinking of, those dark, incomprehensible faces closing closer and closer round her? What could they be thinking of, uncivilized, heathen, as they were? tied to hateful, horrible beliefs and customs, unmentionable thoughts; so the innate repulsion of the alien overpowered her dim desire to be kind.

"Drive on!" she called in her clear, soft voice, "drive on to the church."

The grooms, new taken from royal employ,--for the victoria had been one of the spoils of the auction,--began their arrogant shouting to the crowd; the coachman, treating it also in royal fashion, cut at his horses regardless of their plunging. So after an instant's scurry and flurry, a space was cleared, and the carriage rolled off. The old man, left standing alone, looked after it silently for a moment, then flung his arms skyward.

"O God, reward them! reward them to the uttermost!" The appeal, however, seemed too indefinite for solace, and he turned for closer sympathy to the crowd. "The bird is mine, brothers! I lent it to the King, to teach his the Cry-of-Faith that I had taught it. But the Huzoors would not listen, or they would not understand. It was a little thing to them! So I brought all I had, thinking to buy mine own again. But yonder hell-doomed infidel hath it for nothing--for he paid nothing; and here--here is my money!" He drew a little bag from his breast and held it up with shaking hand.

"For nothing!" echoed the crowd, seizing on what interested it most. "For sure he paid nothing."

The murmur, spreading from man to man in doubt, wonder, assertion, was interrupted by a voice with the resonance and calm in it of one accustomed to listeners. "Nay! not for nothing. Have patience. The bird may yet give the Great Cry in the house of the thief. I, Ahmed-oolah, the dust of the feet of the Most High, say it. Have patience. God settles the accounts of men."

"It is the Moulvie," whispered some, as the gaunt, hollow-eyed speaker moved out of the crowd, a good head and shoulders taller than most there. "The Moulvie from Fyzabad. He preaches in the big Mosque to-night, and half the city goes to hear him." The whispering voices formed a background to the recurring cry of the auctioneer, "Going! Going! Gone!" as lot after lot fell to the hammer, while the crowd listened to both, or drifted cityward with the memory of them lingering insistently.

"Going! Going! Gone!" What was going? Everything, if tales were true; and there were so many tales nowadays. Of news flashed faster by wires than any, even the gods themselves, could flash it; of carriages, fire-fed, bringing God knows what grain from God knows where! Could a body eat of it and not be polluted? Could the children read the school books and not be apostate? Burning questions these, not to be answered lightly. And as the people, drifting homeward in the sunset, asked them, other sounds assailed their ears. The long-drawn chant of the call to prayer from the Mohammedan mosques, the clashing of gongs from the Hindoo temples, the solitary clang of the Christian church bell. Diverse, yet similar in this, that each called Life to face Death, not as an end, but as a beginning; called with more insistence than usual in the church, where a special missionary service was being held, at which a well-known worker in the vineyard was to give an address on the duty of a faithful soldier of Christ in a heathen land. With greater authority in the mosque also, where the Moulvie was to lay down the law for each soldier of the faith in an age of unbelief and change. Only in the Hindoo temples the circling lights flickered as ever, and there was neither waxing nor waning of worship as mortality drifted in, and drifted out, hiding the rude stone symbol of regeneration with their chaplets of flowers; the symbol of Life-in-Death, of Death-in-Life. The cult of the Inevitable.

There was no light in these dark shrines, save the circling cresset; none, save the dim reflection of dusk from white marble, in the mosque where the Moulvie's sonorous voice sent the broad Arabic vowels rebounding from dome to dome. But in the church there was a blaze of lamps, and the soldierly figure at the reading desk showed clear to the men and women listening leisurely in the cushioned pews. Yet the words were stirring enough; there was no lack of directness in them. Kate Erlton, resting her chin on her hand, kept her eyes on the speaker closely as his voice rose in a final confession of the faith that was in him.

"I conceive it is ever the hope and aim of a true Christian that his Lord should make him the happy instrument of rescuing his neighbor from eternal damnation. In this belief I find it my duty to be instant in season and out of season, speaking to all, sepoys as well as civilians, making no distinction of persons or place, since with the Lord there are no such distinctions. In the temporal matters I act under the orders of my earthly superior, but in spiritual matters I own no allegiance save to Christ. So, in trying to convert my sepoys, I act as a Christian soldier under Christ, and thus, by keeping the temporal and spiritual capacities in which I have to act clearly under their respective heads, I render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, to God the things that are God's."^[1]

There was a little rustle of satisfaction and relief from the pews, the hymn closing the service went with a swing, and the congregation, trooping out into the scented evening air, fell to admiring the address.

"And he looked so handsome and soldierly, didn't he?" said one voice with a cadence of sheer comfortableness in it as the owner nestled back in the barouche.

"Quite charming!" assented another. "And to think of a man like that, brave as a lion, submitting to be hustled off his own parade ground because his sepoys objected to his preaching. It is an example to us all!"

"I wouldn't give much for the discipline of his regiment," began Kate Erlton impulsively, then paused, certain of her hearers, uncertain of herself; for she was of those women who use religion chiefly as an anodyne for the heartache, leaving her intellect to take care of itself. With the result that it revenged itself, as now, by sudden flashes of reason which left her helpless before her own common sense.

"My dear Mrs. Erlton!" came a shocked coo, "discipline or no discipline, we are surely bound to fight the good---- Gracious heavens! what is that?"

It was the cockatoo. Roused from a doze by the movement of Kate's carriage toward the church-door, it had dashed at once into the war-cry--"Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!"

The appositeness of the interruption, however, was quite lost on the ladies, who were too ignorant to recognize it; so their alarm ended in a laugh, and the suggestion that the bird would be a noisy pet.

Thus, with worldly gossip coming to fill the widening spaces in their complacent piety, they drove homeward together where the curving river shimmered faintly in the dark, or through scented gardens where the orange-blossom showed as faintly among the leaves, like star-dust on a dark sky.

But Kate Erlton drove alone, as she generally did. She was one of those women whose refinement stands in their way; who are gourmets of life, failing to see that the very fastidiousness of their palate argues a keener delight in its pleasures than that of those who take them more simply, perhaps more coarsely. And as she drove, her mind diverted listlessly to the semicircle of dark faces she had left unanswered. What had they wanted? Nothing worth hearing, no doubt! Nothing was worth much in this weary land of exile where the heart-hunger for one little face and voice gnawed at your vitality day and night. For Kate Erlton set down all her discontent to the fact that she was separated from her boy. Yet she had sent him home of her own free will to keep him from growing up in the least like his father. And she had stayed with that father simply to keep him within the pale of respectability for the boy's sake. That was what she told herself. She allowed nothing for her own disappointment; nothing for the keen craving for sentiment which lay behind her refinement. All she asked from fate was that the future might be no worse than the past; so that she could keep up the fiction to the end.

And as she drove, a sudden sound made her start, for--soldier's wife though she was--the report of a rifle always set her heart a-beating. Then from the darkness came a long-drawn howl; for over on the other side of the river they were beginning to shoot down the hungry beasts which all through the long sunny day had found no master.

The barter of their lives was complete. The last "Going! Going! Gone!" had come, and they had passed to settle the account elsewhere. So, amid this dropping fire of kindly meant destruction, the night fell soft and warm over the shimmering river and the scented gardens with the town hidden in their midst.