Читать книгу Black Light - Talbot Mundy - Страница 7

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It felt like Sunday. From without there were only a few sounds; some one, probably a servant, moved about a courtyard. A crow cawed on a near-by roof. Annie Weems picked up her reading spectacles from beside the book on the table, tried them on, and put them down again.

"About the proof, Miss?" Hawkes suggested.

"Judas Iscariot once sold Jesus," she retorted.

Slapped down, as it were, Hawkes prodded his boot with his swagger-cane. Joe felt curiously pleased, but cautious.

"Hawkes," he said, "will be paid a stipulated sum if the girl is produced along with proof of her identity. That was the agreement. But it might not be wise to let her know who she is, unless she knows already; nor who is looking for her—you see, my mother has no actual obligation. Do you get my meaning?"

"No, sir." Annie Weems understood perfectly. Joe knew she did. However she was entitled to insist on clarity.

"I mean," he said, "she may be better off in India. Having been brought up in this country among colored people, she might be like a fish out of water in the United States. If she should happen to learn she is being looked for, she might jump to false conclusions. She has no legal claim on us— none whatever."

"You would like to look her over, so to speak, without her knowing why?"

"That's it," said Joe.

"You would need to be far more clever than I have any right to suppose you are," Annie Weems answered. "She is neither deaf, dumb, blind nor unintelligent. I have had her in this school, at intervals, for nearly sixteen years. I have not yet learned how to deceive her, or to keep her uninformed about anything that has stirred her interest. However, you can try."

"Does she talk English?" Joe asked nervously. "I mean—" "You are afraid of a chi-chi accent? If she has one I can't detect it. Of course, my ear may be ruined by long association with Indian children. But I taught her to sing at this piano. She has recited, and acted, most of the female parts from Shakespeare, in this room. She has also read such parts of the Bible as are fit for decent folk. I can't detect a trace of accent."

"How long have you known she was not an Indian child?" Joe asked her.

"From the beginning."

"Did no one else know?"

"Others did. Some temple priests, for instance. She has been partly brought up in the temple. The priests have been very kind to her."

"Couldn't you have saved her from that?" Joe asked. He kept the note of horror from his voice, but it found means to express itself— vibration, probably.

"You would have had me turn her over to the Government?"

"I suppose, something of that sort."

"They would have sent her to one of the Government schools, or to a mission orphanage," said Annie Weems.

"Are those so terrible!"

"Prisons." She pursed her lips. "They are sometimes sanitary. They are places where children are taught to be hypocrites—cowardly thinkers, thoroughly mistrusting anything that has spiritual value. I tried to save her from that fate—so have the priests."

"Is she a Christian?"

"I know no way of answering that. You must wait until you get an opportunity to ask God, that is to say, if it is any of your business."

Annie Weems was becoming belligerent; the blue eyes glistened with enjoyment of the pugnacity at the corners of her mouth. Joe declined combat. He had tact enough to retire gracefully, and sense of strategy enough to leave that kind of conversation to his mother.

"She sounds interesting," he said. "I don't doubt she is a credit to your care and teaching. I would like to see her at your convenience. Meanwhile, Hawkes said something about proofs of her identity."

Annie Weems glanced at Hawkes, who nodded and stood up, hesitated and then started for the front door.

"See that she cleans her feet, and don't admit that person with the cobras. I will not have them or him in my house."

"Yes, Miss."

Hawkes strode out. His clean white uniform looked somehow dirty in that spotless room. But that, perhaps, was produced by suggestion; if one could judge by his eye and the set of his mouth, the reference to Judas Iscariot had bitten more than skin-deep.

Joe thought swiftly. "You are sending for the ayah? Does this explain why she was spying on me? Does she know the girl? How does she know I am interested?"

"Sergeant Hawkes has told me that you saw the temple ceremony last night. There is a Yogi there—I think you had some conversation with him. It was he to whom the ayah took the child the moment it was weaned, and it was he who gave it to the temple priests. She suspects any white man who talks to that Yogi; she is afraid her priestess-princess may be taken from her."

"What is the girl's name, by the way?"

"Amrita."

Hawkes returned, the ayah following in time to hear the name Amrita. The yellowish whites of her eyes and her wrinkled face betrayed alarm, although she plainly did not fear Miss Weems, whom she salaamed with respectful familiarity. It was from Joe that she shrugged herself, wrapping her dingy black cotton stuff around her as if that might serve as shield against his iron-gray eyes. Joe noticed that she kept her fingers crossed and made curious furtive gestures with her right hand.

Hawkes sat down again. The ayah remained standing. There was silence for a moment, interrupted only by the parrot who appeared to know the ayah.

"Amal!" the bird cried. "Amal!—Polly want a cracker!"

The ayah smiled and fell again on the defensive, scared of Joe and none too confident of Hawkes whom she seemed to suspect of telling tales. With a gesture of her arms within the long black garment she enwrapped herself in silence.

Annie Weems knew how to manage her. "Amal, I want you to tell this sahib why you followed him."

The ayah seemed to understand, but she had the excuse as yet that English was not her language. Itching to answer, she sulked. Annie Weems translated into the vernacular, and waited. Suddenly the ayah's pent up misery escaped —first two tears, like drops of water seeping through cracks in weakening masonry—then floods of tears—and then the dam went down in a torrent of words that tumbled over one another, galloping and plunging, ends of sobbing sentences surging to swamp their beginnings and two streams of argument fighting for room in the gap of one muttering throat. She ceased at last for lack of tears and lack of breath to begin the tale over again.

"She says," said Annie Weems, "that that Yogi is her Yogi and she will not have you asking him questions and learning her business. She says she, not you, has fed and combed the Yogi all these years, and cleaned his cell, and cared for him, and asked for nothing in return except a little comfort now and then. Amrita, she says, is her child, not yours. And she says she knows what the Yogi told you yesterday: he said you are a man from Jupiter, and Jupiter is a royal planet, so she does not doubt you are a king. She says you are to go away and be a king where you belong, wherever that is. You are not to come into Amrita's life and cause war inside her, which is what she heard the Yogi say you will do."

"Why does she call Amrita her child?" Joe asked.

No need to interpret. Amal caught the meaning of that question instantly. She burst into another torrent of invective in her own tongue, flinging aside her sari now and going through the motions of nursing a baby, shielding it, loving it—suddenly denouncing Joe with out-flung arm and calling Annie Weems to witness—down on her knees then and surrendering the child to some one—hugging at her heart as if it tortured her and beating at her old dry breasts with knotted fists. On her feet again— glaring—breathless.

"Perfect pantomime," said Joe. "I'm sorry for her. What's it all about?"

"Her answer to your question. She says the baby's parents died of cholera, and bad men came—she means dacoits. So she took the child and hid it —she was its wet-nurse—who else should have taken it? But she was young in those days and desirable; she was afraid that the dacoits would catch her and carry her off. And she had no money, so she hid by day and ran by night. And then some one accused her of stealing the child and threatened blackmail; she became afraid that if she took the child to any one in authority she would be thrown in prison on a false charge. She was not so afraid of the prison, but she knew they would take the child away from her, and she loved it—could not bear to part with it. So she hid, starving, stealing scraps of food and fearful that her flow of milk would cease—as it began to do. At last, in despair, she took the baby to that Yogi. And he gave it to the temple priests, who have never allowed Amal within the temple precincts but have been kind about letting her see the child from time to time, outside the temple. So Amal borrowed a little money from the priests, and paid it back. She bought a loom, and lived near by, and made a living for herself. And she has watched that child grow. She has sat with her at the Yogi's feet by night and listened to the lessons that he gave her. And it was Amal who told me about Amrita, in secret, exacting my promise to keep the secret—as indeed I have done, on condition that the child should come here daily to be taught in my school. It was a little difficult at first to get the priests to agree to that, but the Yogi helped us. He cast her horoscope." Annie Weems chuckled. "I am told he understands that nonsense. Certainly they think he does. I have my own opinion. I know if I wanted to have my way, I could cast a thoroughly convincing horoscope for any one who puts faith in such fancies though I don't say, mind you, that there's nothing in it—I have seen some strange coincidences, of whom you are one. At any rate, they let the child come here to my school, and they have even let me visit her within the temple, so I have no personal quarrel with astrology."

"It's like politics—the bunk, with brass tacks here and there," Joe answered. "Did the ayah ever mention the name of the child's parents?"

"Wilburforce."

"Any birth certificate available?"

"No. The birth had been registered in the office of the Collector of the district, but the office and all the records were burned by the dacoits."

"Pretty hard to prove then?" Joe glanced at Hawkes for amusement's sake. Hawkes shifted his feet; he had no notion of the pitfalls hidden in a partly proven title, but he began to feel uneasy. That thousand pounds seemed less material—more like an unkind dream of affluence with only disappointment in its wake.

"Maybe, sir, you might recognize the family likeness if you saw her," he suggested.

"Mother might."

"She is the child you are looking for," said Annie Weems.

"Not a doubt of it." Hawkes nodded eagerly.

"And it might even be possible to prove her identity legally," Miss Weems went on. "If there were money coming to her—" "Not a cent," Joe interrupted.

"I was about to say: if there were money coming to her, even so I don't think she would wish to give up the life she is leading. She is one of the happiest girls I have ever known—I think the happiest."

"I've heard it said one can be happy in the U. S. A.," Joe answered.

"Ship me somewheres west of Ireland, where the money grows on trees!" said Hawkes. "I'm with you there, sir. Me for Hollywood. My name goes on the quota on the same day I get my discharge. I've heard they make you swear an oath to fight King George the Third. They may throw in Henry the Eighth and Cardinal Wolsey—I'll fight all three of 'em."

"Can I see her?" Joe asked.

"Why not?"

"When?"

"She will be here the day after to-morrow."

Miss Weems effect on Joe was just the opposite of that of Hawkes. Hawkes' eagerness had made him hang back. Her coolness urged him forward. He felt genuine interest—almost excitement. He began to think of reasons other than his boredom why a wait of two days might be inadvisable.

"Hawkes said something about a Maharajah sending some of his gang to waylay her and carry her off," he remembered. "Is there any danger?"

"There is always danger in the world," said Annie Weems. "I have been facing danger here for more than twenty years. It is good for us. When danger gets too dangerous, we die and render our account; it will look better to God without cowardice stamped all over it."

"But there are risks a decent girl should not run," Joe objected.

"There is a risk that none of us should run the risk of being false to our ideal," said Annie Weems. "Amrita is a sort of Joan of Arc. That girl has character. And she has good friends, who protect her. I suppose she is the only woman that ever lived who upset all the customs and traditions of a Hindu temple from the inside—mind you, from the inside. Nevertheless, I sometimes think the priests would die for her if necessary; and I know that a number of Indian soldiers would. Of course she is in danger. She has beauty, talent, intellect—dangerous gifts, Mr. Beddington. She has also courage."

"You've 'sold' me. I can't wait to see her," said Joe.

Hawkes leaned forward. "Mr. Beddington, if you should care to come with me to-night, I'll show her to you. I know her goings and comings—some of 'em—I know some. Shall I call for you?"

"You're on. What time?"

"About a half-hour after dinner."

"I'll be ready for you. Can you get two decent horses? Bring 'em."

Joe offered the ayah ten rupees. She refused the money, biting her lip, turning her head the other way, with both hands clenched and her bare toes kneading at the clean New England rug.