Читать книгу Caravans By Night - Harry Hervey - Страница 15

Table of Contents

Sunset was spreading a fan of flamingo plumes above Meera, a native village to the northward of Gaya, when Arnold Trent (unaware that Destiny had been hovering over him since Dana Charteris found the scrap of paper, in Delhi, three days before) clattered out of the jungle and along the nearly deserted main street. At the council-tree, where the headman of the village sat and chewed betel-leaf, he drew rein, listening to a low, eerie wailing that came from one of the whitewashed houses.

"It is Chatterjee," volunteered the headman. "His Ratanamma is dead, Dakktar Sahib."

Trent swung down from his saddle. "When did it happen, Ranjeet Singh?"

"Not an hour past, Dakktar Sahib."

Trent's eyes roved up and down the street. "Where's everybody? Meera looks as if a plague had struck it."

Ranjeet Singh, who was a Jain, spat contemptuously.

"Some vermin-ridden priests from Tibet are at the Sacred Bo-tree," he explained, "and the worshippers of Gaudama have swarmed thither, like flies to a dung-feast!"

Trent smiled slightly and moved toward one of the whitewashed houses, swinging along with the leisurely, easy stride of one poised on well-controlled muscles. At the door he paused. It was dark within, and a breath of offal and man-reek greeted him. After a moment he saw, against the darkness, the pale silhouette of a white-clad figure. From this figure came the eerie wails.

"Chatterjee!" Trent called.

The silhouette ceased wailing long enough to quaver: "Dakktar Sahib!"

The Englishman, his eyes now accustomed to the gloom, strode over to a thong-strung bed and peered down at the form stretched upon it. Unable to see clearly, he struck a match. The tiny flare flickered upon bare brown skin.... Trent swore.

"Stop that damned nonsense!" he commanded. "Chatterjee, you've had some infernal hakim here again—against my orders!"

"My little Ratanamma, dove of my bosom, is dead!" wailed the man.

"Did you give her the medicine I left?"

"Yes, Dakktar Sahib! It was your medicine that killed her. The hakim said so."

Trent swore again. "I've a notion to report you to the Karnal Sahib and have you taken up! You old murderer! Didn't you know better than to let some filthy, stinking hakim burn her stomach with a hot iron?"

The native was wailing again.

"Listen to me, Chatterjee," said Trent sternly, gripping the man's shoulder. "Who did this?"

"Your medicine, Dakktar Sahib!"

Trent shook him roughly. "Will you answer me—or...."

"Your medicine, Dakktar Sahib!" insisted the man.

Trent released him, realizing the futility of pressing the question.

"Very well. I'll report you to the Karnal Sahib and he'll have you strung up by your toes!"

He left the house abruptly—followed by feverish, glowing eyes.

Out of Meera he rode, past the temple on the river bank and along the jungle-lined road toward Gaya.

Trent was angry. But his face gave no indication of it. Twenty-three years under a tropical sun (add the ten years at school in Britain and you'll have his age) had baked his skin to a leather brown, and a third of that time spent in the army had taught him that impassivity is man's chief advantage—a citadel against the aggressive. He had, in the vernacular of the times, a "poker face"—the mask of those who share their secrets with few. In either mufti or khaki he was not particularly handsome, and this evening, after a day of work in viscid heat, he was almost ugly. Dust was ingrained into his skin, like an ocher pigment; his throat and brows were moist with perspiration. Yet there was about him something arresting and vital—a challenging strength that pronounced him a man's man. And he was. He talked with men; ate with men; lived with men; understood men. Scales that dip into earth-dust and swing again to regions of exquisite idealism—the eternal weight and counter-weight of Self. That was how he defined them. And his definitions were usually metaphors. An idiosyncrasy. Give him a chair in a dim room with one of Beethoven's sonatas swelling in throat-gripping chords, or a pipe and congenial darkness somewhere close to the stars, and he was in his prime element.

As for women.... That there had been one—one or more—at some time in his life, nobody who knew him doubted; but it was the general opinion at Gaya and thereabouts that he was as little concerned with women as with anything else that habited the planet. Envious subordinates hinted that at one time or other he had run afoul some feminine reef. When these remarks drifted to Trent (and such remarks always do) he only smiled, for he had a generous supply of humor packed away under his impassivity. It was never known that he deliberately avoided women; it appeared that he simply accepted them as a matter of form, inevitable as waves on a sea, and sometimes as disastrous.

Only Richard Manlove, also an army doctor, who shared his bungalow, had penetrated beyond the outer-rampart of his seeming seclusiveness—"Dicky" Manlove whom Trent first saw out in dead Mesopotamia. Their friendship was a popular topic of discussion on warm afternoons when feminine Gaya gathered to perspire under one common punkah. So different, you know.... Young "Dicky"—a delicious boy ... and the major—oh, rather a decent chap, a human manual of Hindustani and all those other perfectly impossible languages, but ... well, it's so disconcerting not to know what a man is thinking, isn't it?

Thus feminine Gaya catalogued him, and thus he appeared—immobile—this late afternoon as he rode out of Meera.

His anger died as he trotted on, and by the time he came within view of his bungalow, built on the flank of one of Gaya's hills, he was watching, in a whimsical, almost detached manner, the fireflies dance and reel in the dusk. When he drew nearer, he saw a figure in a white dress leave his compound, a figure that paused at the diverging roads not far from the bungalow, and, after a slight hesitation, chose the branch in his direction. Instantly he indexed her as a stranger; no female resident would think of using the isolated Meera road after dusk.

She wore a pith helmet with a veil. The veil was lifted, but as he approached, she lowered it—curiously enough, he thought. He was certain she had come from his compound; therefore, when she was within a few yards, he drew rein.

"Your pardon...." as he lifted his helmet. "Do you wish to see me? I'm Major Trent."

She halted, resting one hand upon a tree-trunk. He caught the glint of a bracelet on her white arm, and, being a man to notice details, observed a design worked in heavy relief upon it—a design that, in the half-tone of the early night, was almost indistinguishable.

"No," came the answer from under the veil, in a voice with a soft, thrilling timbre. "No."

He was still studying the bracelet out of the corner of his eye, and he perceived that the intricate workmanship represented a king-cobra; its hood was lifted in bizarre relief.... A barbaric ornament for a white woman to wear, he thought.

"But, really," he persisted, "it isn't quite safe for you to go along this road. Beasts, you know."

A pause. He saw the dark pools of her eyes upon him.

"Thank you," she murmured. "I thought I was going to the dâk bungalow."

With that she turned and moved away in the direction of the metalled main highway.

"Now, that's queer," he observed to himself, staring after her. "Anybody with even bad sight could see that this road...." Certainly she was at the compound gate. Why had she falsified?

He removed his helmet and furrowed his hair—a characteristic gesture; then, still watching the woman, he jerked the reins and trotted toward the bungalow.