Читать книгу In the Guardianship of God - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 4

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A flood of blistering, yellow sunshine was pouring down on to the prostrate body of Private George Afford as he lay on his back, drunk, in an odd little corner between two cook-room walls in the barrack square; and a stream of tepid water from a skin bag was falling on his head as Peroo the bhisti stood over him, directing the crystal curve now on his forehead, now scientifically on his ears. The only result, however, was that Private George Afford tried unavailingly to scratch them, then swore unintelligibly.

Peroo twisted the nozzle of the mussuck to dryness, and knelt down beside the slack strength in the dust. So kneeling, his glistening curved brown body got mixed up with the glistening curved brown water-bag he carried, until at first sight he seemed a monstrous spider preying on a victim, for his arms and legs were skinny.

"Sahib!" he said, touching his master on the sleeve. It was a very white sleeve, and the buttons and belts and buckles all glistened white or gold in the searching sunlight, for Peroo saw to them, as he saw to most things about Private Afford's body and soul; why God knows, except that George Afford had once--for his own amusement--whacked a man who, for his, was whacking Peroo. He happened to be one of the best bruisers in the regiment, and George Afford, who was in a sober bout, wanted to beat him; which he did.

There was no one in sight; nothing in fact save the walls, and an offensively cheerful castor-oil bush which grew, greener than any bay-tree, in one angle, sending splay fingers of shadow close to Private Afford's head as if it wished to aid in the cooling process. But despite the solitude, Peroo's touch on the white sleeve was decorous, his voice deference itself.

"Sahib!" he repeated. "If the Huzoor does not get up soon, the Captain will find the master on the ground when he passes to rations. And that is unnecessary."

He might as well have spoken to the dead. George Afford's face, relieved of the douche treatment, settled down to placid, contented sleep. It was not a bad face; and indeed, considering the habits of the man, it was singularly fine and clear cut; but then in youth it had evidently been a superlatively handsome one also.

Peroo waited a minute or two, then undid the nozzle of his skin bag once more, and drenched the slack body and the dust around it.

"What a tyranny is here!" he muttered to himself, the wrinkles on his forehead giving him the perplexed look of a baby monkey; "yet the master will die of sunstroke if he be not removed. Hai, Hai! What it is to eat forbidden fruit and find it a turnip."

With which remark he limped off methodically to the quarter guard and gave notice that Private George Afford was lying dead drunk between cook-rooms Nos. 7 and 8; after which he limped on as methodically about his regular duty of filling the regimental waterpots. What else was there to be done? The special master whom he had elected to serve between whiles would not want his services for a month or two at least, since that period would be spent in clink. For Private George Afford was a habitual offender.

Such a very habitual offender, indeed, that Evan Griffiths, the second major, had not a word to say when the Adjutant and the Colonel conferred over this last offence, though he had stood Afford's friend many a time; to the extent even of getting him re-enlisted in India--a most unusual favour--when, after an interval of discharge, he turned up at his ex-captain's bungalow begging to be taken on; averring, even, that he had served his way out to India before the mast in that hope, since enlistment at the Depôt might take him to the other battalion. The story, so the Adjutant had said, was palpably false; but the silent little Major had got the Colonel to consent; so Private George Afford--an ideal soldier to look at--had given the master tailor no end of trouble about the fit of his uniform, for he was a bit of a dandy when he was sober. But now even Major Griffiths felt the limit of forbearance was past; nor could a court-martial be expected to take into consideration the trivial fact which lay at the bottom of the observant little Major's mercy, namely, that though when he was sober George Afford was a dandy, when he was drunk--or rather in the stage which precedes actual drunkenness--he was a gentleman. Vulgarity of speech slipped from him then; and even when he was passing into the condition in which there is no speech he would excuse his own lapses from strict decorum with almost pathetic apologies. "It is no excuse, I know, sir," he would say with a charming, regretful dignity, "but I have had a very chequered career--a very chequered career indeed."

That was true; and one of the black squares of the chessboard of life was his now, for the court-martial which sentenced Private George Afford to but a short punishment added the rider that he was to be thereinafter dismissed from Her Majesty's Service.

"He is quite incorrigible," said the Colonel, "and as we are pretty certain of going up to punish those scoundrels on the frontier as soon as the weather cools, we had better get rid of him. The regiment mustn't have a speck anywhere, and his sort spoils the youngsters."

The Major nodded.

So Private George Afford got his dismissal, also the bad-character suit of mufti which is the Queen's last gift even to such as he.

* * * * *

It was full six weeks after he had stood beside that prostrate figure between cook-rooms Nos. 7 and 8 that Peroo was once more engaged in the same task, though not in the same place.

And this time the thin stream of water falling on George Afford's face found it grimed and dirty, and left it showing all too clearly the traces of a fortnight's debauch. For Peroo, being of a philosophic mind, had told himself, as he had limped away from the quarter guard after his report, that now, while his self-constituted master would have no need of his services, was the time for him to take that leave home which he had deferred so long. Therefore, two or three days after this event, he had turned up at the Quartermaster's office with the curious Indian institution, "the changeling," and preferred his request for a holiday. It was granted, of course; there is no reason why leave should not be granted when a double, willing even to answer to the same name, stands ready to step into the original's shoes, without payment; that remaining a bargain between the doubles.

"Here," said Peroo, "is my brother. He is even as myself. His character is mine. We are all water-carriers, and he has done the work for two days. I will also leave him my skin bag, so that the Presence may be sure it is clean. He is a Peroo also."

He might have been the Peroo so far as the Quartermaster's requirements went. So the original went home and the copy took his place; but not for the two months. The order for active service of which the Colonel had spoken came sooner than was expected, and Peroo, hearing of it, started back at once for the regiment. A "changeling" could pass muster in peace, but war required the reality; besides, the master would, no doubt, be released. He was surely too good fighting material to be left behind, Peroo told himself; yet there his hero was, lying in the dust of a bye-alley in the bazaar in a ragged bad-character suit, while the barrack squares were alive with men, not half so good to look at, talking, as the mules were laden, of the deeds they were to do!

The wrinkles on Peroo's forehead grew more like those of a monkey in arms than ever. This was indeed a tyranny! but at least the Presence could be moved out of the burning sun this time without, of necessity, getting him into more trouble. So a few friends were called, and together they carried George Afford into the windowless slip of a room which Peroo locked at four o'clock in the morning and unlocked at ten at night, but which, nevertheless, served him as a home. There was nothing in it save a string bed and a drinking vessel; for Peroo, after his kind, ate his food in the bazaar; but that for the present was all the Englishman required either. So there Peroo left him in the darkness and the cool, safe for the day.

But after that? The problem went with Peroo as he limped about filling the cook-room waterpots, for on the morrow he must be filling them on the first camping-ground, fifteen miles away from that slip of a room where the master lay. What would become of him then?

The sandy stretches in which the barracks stood were full of mules, camels, carts, and men of all arms belonging to the small picked force which was to march with the one solid regiment at dawn on their mission of punishment.

"Pâni (water)," shouted a perspiring artilleryman, grappling with a peculiarly obstinate mule, as Peroo went past with his skin bag. "Pâni, and bring a real jildi (quickness) along with it. W'ot! you ain't the drinkin'-water, ain't yer? W'ot's that to me? I ain't one o' yer bloomin' Brahmins; but I'll take it outside instead o' in, because of them black-silly's o' the doctor's. So turn on the hose, Johnnie; I'll show you how."

"'E knows all about it, you bet," put in one of the regiment cheerfully. "Wy, 'e's bin hydraulic engineer and waterworks combined to that pore chap as got the sack the other day--George Afford--"

"Sure it was a thriflin' mistake wid the prepositions his godfathers made when they named him; for it was on and not off-erd he was six days out of sivin," remarked a tall Irishman.

"You hold your jaw, Pat," interrupted another voice. "'E was a better chap nor most, w'en 'e wasn't on the lap; and, Lordy! 'e could fight when he 'ad the chanst--couldn't 'e, Waterworks? Just turn that hose o' yours my way a bit, will yer?"

"Huzoor," assented Peroo, deferentially; he understood enough to make the thought pass through his brain that it was a pity the master had not the chance. Perhaps the curve of water conveyed this to that other brain beneath the close, fair curls, whence the drops flew sparkling in the sunlight. At any rate, their owner went on in a softer tone--

"Yes, 'e fit--like fits. Looked, too, as if 'e was born ter die on the field o' glory, and not in a bad-character suit; but, as the parson says: 'Beauty is vain. I will repay, saith the Lord.'"

The confused morality of this passed Peroo by; and yet something not altogether dissimilar lay behind his wrinkled forehead when, work over, he returned to the slip of a room and found Afford vaguely roused by his entrance.

"I--I am aware it is no possible excuse, sir," came his voice, curiously refined, curiously pathetic, "but I really have had a very chequered life, I have indeed."

"Huzoor," acquiesced Peroo, briefly; but even that was sufficient to bring the hearer closer to realities. He sat up on the string bed, looked about him stupidly, then sank back again.

"Get away! you d----d black devil," he muttered, with a sort of listless anger. "Can't you let me die in peace, you fool? Can't you let me die in the gutter, die in a bad-character suit? It's all I'm fit for--all I'm fit for." Voice, anger, listlessness, all tailed away to silence. He turned away with a sort of sob, and straightway fell asleep, for he was still far from sober.

Peroo lit a cresset lamp and stood looking at him. Beauty was certainly vain here, and if the Lord was going to repay, it was time He began. Time some one began, at any rate, if the man who had fought for him, Peroo, was not to carry out his desire of dying in the gutter--dying in a bad-character suit! The latter misfortune could, however, be avoided. Things were going cheap in the bazaar that evening, as was only natural when it was to be deserted for six months at least, so it ought not to be hard to get the master an exchange for something more suitable to his beauty, if not to his death.

Five minutes afterwards George Afford, too much accustomed to such ministrations to be disturbed by the process of undressing, was still asleep, his chin resting peacefully on Peroo's best white cotton shawl, and the bad-character suit was on its way to the pawnshop round the corner. It was nigh on an hour, however, before Peroo, having concluded his bargain, came back with it, and by the light of the cresset set to work appraising his success or failure. A success certainly. The uniform was old, no doubt, but it was a corporal's; and what is more, it had three good-conduct stripes on the arm. That ought to give dignity, even to a death in the gutter.

Peroo brought out some pipeclay and pumice-stone from a crevice, and set to work cheerfully on the buttons and belts, thinking as he worked that he had indeed made a good bargain. With a judicious smear of cinnabar here and there, the tunic would be almost as good as the master's old one--plus the good-conduct stripes, of course, which he could never have gained in the regiment.

But out of it? If, for instance, the Lord were really to repay Private George Afford for that good deed in defending a poor lame man?--a good deed which no bad one could alter for the worse! Peroo on this point would have been a match for a whole college of Jesuits in casuistry, as he laid on the pipeclay with lavish hand, and burnished the buttons till they shone like gold.

It was grey dawn when George Afford woke, feeling a deferential touch on his shoulder.

"Huzoor!" came a familiar voice, "the first bugle has gone. The Huzoor will find his uniform--a corporal's, with three good-conduct stripes--is ready. The absence of a rifle is to be regretted; but that shall be amended if the Huzoor will lend a gracious ear to the plan of his slave. In the meantime a gifting of the Huzoor's feet for the putting on of stockings might be ordered."

George Afford thrust out a foot mechanically, and sate on the edge of the string bed staring stupidly at the three good-conduct stripes on the tunic, which was neatly folded beside him.

"It is quite simple," went on the deferential voice. "The Huzoor is going to march with the colours, but he will be twelve hours behind them; that is all. He will get the fighting, and by-and-by, when the killing comes and men are wanted, the Colonel-sahib may give a place; but, in any case, there will always be the fighting. For the rest, I, the Huzoor's slave, will manage; and as there will, of necessity, be no canteen, there can be no tyranny. Besides, since there is not a cowrie in the master's jacket, what else is he to do?"

The last argument was unanswerable. George Afford thrust out his other foot to be shod for this new path, and stared harder than ever at the good-conduct stripes.

That night, despite the fatigues of a first day in camp, Peroo trudged back along the hard white road to meet some one whom he expected; for this was the first step, and he had, perforce, been obliged to leave his charge to his own devices for twelve hours amid the distractions of the bazaar. Still, without a cowrie in his pocket--Peroo had carefully extracted the few annas he had found in one--a man was more or less helpless, even for evil.

Despite this fact, there was a lilt in the lagging step which, just as Peroo had begun to give up hope of playing Providence, came slowly down the road. It belonged to George Afford, in the gentlemanly stage of drink. He had had a chequered life, he said almost tearfully, but there were some things a man of honour could not do. He could not break his promise to an inferior--a superior was another matter. In that case he paid for it honestly. But he had promised Peroo--his inferior--to come. So here he was; and that was an end of it.

It seemed more than once during the next few hours as if the end had, indeed, come. But somehow Peroo's deferential hand and voice extricated those tired uncertain feet, the weary sodden brain, from ditches and despair; still it was a very sorry figure which Peroo's own hasty footsteps left behind, safely quartered for the day in a shady bit of jungle, while he ran on to overtake the rear-guard if he could. The start, however, had been too much for his lameness, and he was a full hour late at his work; which, of course, necessitated his putting in an excuse. He chose drunkenness, as being nearest the truth, was fined a day's wages, and paid it cheerfully, thinking with more certainty of the sleeping figure he had left in the jungles.

The afternoon sun was slanting through the trees before it stirred, and George Afford woke from the sleep of fatigue superadded to his usual sedative. He felt strangely refreshed, and lay on his back staring at the little squirrels yawning after their midday snooze in the branches above him. And then he laughed suddenly, sate up and looked about him half confusedly. Not a trace of humanity was to be seen; nothing but the squirrels, a few green pigeons, and down in the mirror-like pool behind the trees--a pool edged by the percolating moisture from the water with faint spikes of sprouting grass--a couple of egrets were fishing lazily. Beyond lay a bare sandy plain, backed by faint blue hills--the hills where fighting was to be had. Close at hand were those three good-conduct stripes.

That night Peroo had not nearly so far to go back along the broad white road; yet the step which came echoing down it, if steadier, lagged more. Nor was Peroo's task much easier, for George Afford--in the abject depression which comes to the tippler from total abstinence--sate down in the dust more than once, and swore he would not go another step without a dram. Still, about an hour after dawn, he was once more dozing in a shady retreat with a pot of water and some dough cakes beside him, while Peroo, in luck, was getting a lift to the third camping-ground.

But even at the second, where the sleeping figure remained, the country was wilder, almost touching the "skirts of the hills," and so, when George Afford roused himself--as the animals rouse themselves to meet the coming cool of evening--a ravine deer was standing within easy shot, looking at him with head thrown back and wide, startled nostrils, scenting the unknown.

The sight stirred something in the man which had slept the sleep of the dead for years; that keen delight of the natural man, not so much in the kill as in the chase; not so much in the mere chase itself as in its efforts--its freedom. He rose, stretching his long arms in what was half a yawn, half a vague inclination to shake himself free of some unseen burden.

But that night he swore at Peroo for leading him a fool's dance; he threatened to go back. He was not so helpless as all that. He was not a slave; he would have his tot of rum like any other soldier as--

"Huzoor," interrupted Peroo, deferentially, "this slave is aware that many things necessary to the Huzoor's outfit as a soldier remain to be produced. But with patience all may be attained. Here, by God's grace, is the rifle. One of us--Smith-sahib of G Company, Huzoor--found freedom to-day. He was reconnoitring with Griffiths, Major-sahib, when one of these hell-doomed Sheeahs--whom Heaven destroy--shot him from behind a rock--"

Private George Afford seemed to find his feet suddenly. "Smith of G Company?" he echoed in a different voice.

"Huzoor!--the sahib whom the Huzoor thrashed for thrashing this slave--"

"Poor chap!" went on George Afford, as if he had not heard. "So they've nicked him--but we'll pay 'em out--we--" His fingers closed mechanically on the rifle Peroo was holding out to him.

* * * * *

It was a fortnight after this, and the camp lay clustered closely in the mouth of a narrow defile down which rushed a torrent swollen from the snows above; a defile which meant decisive victory or defeat to the little force which had to push their way through it to the heights above. Yet, though death, maybe, lay close to each man, the whole camp was in an uproar because Major Griffiths' second pair of putties had gone astray. The other officers had been content with one set of these woollen bandages which in hill-marching serve as gaiters, and help so much to lessen fatigue; but the Major, being methodical, had provided against emergencies. And now, when, with that possibility of death before him, his soul craved an extreme order in all things, his clean pair had disappeared. Now the Major, though silent, always managed to say what he meant. So it ran through the camp that they had been stolen, and men compared notes over the fact in the mess-tent and in the canteen.

In the former, the Adjutant with a frown admitted that of late there had been a series of inexplicable petty thefts in camp, which had begun with the disappearance of Private Smith's rifle. That might perhaps be explained in an enemy's country, but what the deuce anybody could want with a pair of bone shirt-studs--

"And a shirt," put in a mournful voice.

"Item a cake of scented soap," said another.

"And a comb," began a third.

The Colonel, who had till then preserved a discreet silence, here broke in with great heat to the Adjutant.

"Upon my soul, sir, it's a disgrace to the staff, and I must insist on a stringent inquiry the instant we've licked these hill-men. I--I didn't mean to say anything about it--but I haven't been able to find my tooth-brush for a week."

Whereupon there was a general exodus into the crisp, cold air outside, where the darkness would hide inconvenient smiles, for the Colonel was one of those men who have a different towel for their face and hands.

The stars were shining in the cleft between the tall, shadowy cliffs which rose up on either side, vague masses of shadow on which--seen like stars upon a darker sky--the watchfires of the enemy sparkled here and there. The enemy powerful, vigilant; and yet beside the camp-fires close at hand the men had forgotten the danger of the morrow in the trivial loss of the moment, and were discussing the Major's putties.

"It's w'ot I say all along," reiterated the romancer of G Company. "It begun ever since Joey Smith was took from us at Number Two camp. It's 'is ghost--that's w'ot it is. 'Is ghost layin' in a trew-so. Jest you look 'ere! They bury 'im, didn't they? as 'e was--decent like in coat and pants--no more. Well! since then 'e's took 'is rifle off us, an' a greatcoat off D Company, and a knapsack off A."

"Don't be lavin' out thim blankets he tuk from the store, man," interrupted the tall Irishman. "Sure it's a testhimony to the pore bhoy's character annyhow that he shud be wantin' thim where he is."

"It is not laughing at all at such things I would be, whatever," put in another voice seriously, "for it is knowing of such things we are in the Highlands--"

"Hold your second sight, Mac," broke in a third; "we don't want none o' your shivers tonight. You're as bad as they blamed niggers, and they swear they seen Joey more nor once in a red coat dodging about our rear."

"Well! they won't see 'im no more, then," remarked a fourth philosophically, "for 'e change 'is tailor. Leastways, 'e got a service khakee off Sergeant Jones the night afore last; the Sergeant took his Bible oath to 'ave it off Joey Smith's ghost, w'en 'e got time to tackle 'im, if 'e 'ave ter go to 'ell for it."

Major Griffiths meantime was having a similar say as he stood, eye-glass in eye, at the door of the mess-tent. "Whoever the thief is," he admitted, with the justice common to him, "he appears to have the instincts of a gentleman; but, by Gad, sir, if I find him he shall know what it is to take a field officer's gaiters."

Whereupon he gave a dissatisfied look at his own legs, a more contented one at the glimmering stars of the enemy's watchfires, and then turned in to get a few hours' rest before the dawn.

But some one a few miles farther down the valley looked both at his legs and at the stars with equal satisfaction. Some one, tall, square, straight, smoking a pipe--some one else's pipe, no doubt--beside the hole in the ground where, on the preceding night, the camp flagstaff had stood. That fortnight had done more for George Afford than give his outward man a trousseau; it had clothed him with a certain righteousness, despite the inward conviction that Peroo must be a magnificent liar in protesting that the Huzoor's outfit had either been gifted to him or bought honestly.

In fact, as he stood looking down at his legs complacently, he murmured to himself, "I believe they're the Major's, poor chap; look like him somehow." Then he glanced at the Sergeant's coatee he wore and walked up and down thoughtfully--up and down beside the hole in the ground where the flagstaff had stood.

So to him from the dim shadows came a limping figure.

"Well?" he called sharply.

"The orders are for dawn, Huzoor, and here are some more cartridges."

George Afford laughed; an odd, low little laugh of sheer satisfaction.

* * * * *

It was past dawn by an hour or two, but the heights were still unwon.

"Send some one--any one!" gasped the Colonel, breathlessly, as he pressed on with a forlorn hope of veterans to take a knoll of rocks whence a galling fire had been decimating every attack. "Griffiths! for God's sake, go or get some one ahead of those youngsters on the right or they'll break--and then--"

Break! What more likely? A weak company, full of recruits, a company with its officers shot down, and before them a task for veterans--for that indifference to whizzing bullets which only custom brings. Major Griffiths, as he ran forward, saw all this, saw also the ominous waver. God! would he be in time to check it--to get ahead? that was what was wanted, some one ahead--no more than that--some one ahead!

There was some one. A tall figure ahead of the wavering boys.

"Come on! come on, my lads! follow me!" rang out a confident voice, and the Major, as he ran, half-blinded by the mists of his own haste, felt it was as a voice from heaven.

"Come on! come on!--give it 'em straight. Hip, hip, hurray!"

An answering cheer broke from the boys behind, and with a rush the weakest company in the regiment followed some one to victory.

* * * * *

"I don't understand what the dickens it means," said the Colonel almost fretfully that same evening, when, safe over the pass, the little force was bivouacking in a willow-set valley on the other side of the hills. Before it lay what it had come to gain, behind it danger past. "Some one in my regiment," he went on, "does a deuced plucky thing--between ourselves, saves the position: I want naturally to find out who it was, and am met by a cock and bull story about some one's ghost. What the devil does it mean, Major?"

The Major shook his head. "I couldn't swear to the figure, sir, though it reminded me a bit--but that's impossible. However, as I have by your orders to ride back to the top, sir, and see what can be done to hold it, I'll dip over a bit to where the rush was made, and see if there is any clue."

He had not to go so far. For in one of those tiny hollows in the level plateau of pass, whence the snow melts early, leaving a carpet of blue forget-me-nots and alpine primroses behind it, he, Sergeant Jones, and the small party going to make security still more secure, came upon Peroo, the water-carrier, trying to perform a tearful travesty of the burial service over the body of George Afford.

It was dressed in Sergeant Jones' tunic and Major Griffiths' putties, but the Sergeant knelt down beside it, and smoothed the stripes upon the cuff with a half-mechanical, half-caressing touch, and the Major interrupted Peroo's protestations with an odd tremor in his voice.

"What the devil does it matter," he said sharply, "what he took besides the pass? Stand aside, man; this is my work, not yours. Sergeant! form up your men for the salute--ball cartridge."

The Major's recollection of the service for the burial of the dead was not accurate, but it was comprehensive. So he committed the mortal remains of his brother soldier to the dust, confessing confusedly that there is a natural body and a spiritual body--a man that is of the earth earthy, and one that is the Lord from heaven. So following on a petition to be saved from temptation and delivered from evil, the salute startled the echoes, and they left George Afford in the keeping of the pass, and the pass in his keeping. And as the Major rode campwards, he wondered vaguely if some one before the great white throne wore a bad-character suit, or whether wisdom understood the plea, "I've had a very chequered life, I have indeed."

But Peroo had no such thoughts; needed no such excuse. It was sufficient for him that the Huzoor had once been the protector of the poor.