"It is for the child-people," he said, in his cracked old voice. "This dust-like one has nothing else, but a doll is always a doll to them, as a child is a child to the man and the woman."
Then for an instant the rag doll lay, as it were, in state, surrounded by offerings. But not for long. Some one laughed, then another, till even old Premoo joined doubtfully in the general mirth.
"The devil is in it," chuckled the fat butler, apologetically; "but the twelve _Imams_ themselves would not keep grave over it during the requiem!"
"By Jove, Laura," cried George Langford, "we must really send that home to the kids. It"s too absurd!"
"Yes," she a.s.sented, a trifle absently, "we must indeed." She stopped to take the quaint travesty from its basket, and as she did so one of the red hands of the poinsettias clung to its sausage legs. She brushed the flower aside with a smile which broadened to a laugh; for in truth the thing was more ludicrously comical than ever seen thus, held in mid-air. George Langford found it so, anyhow, and exploded into a fresh guffaw.
She flushed suddenly, and gathered the unshapen thing in her arms as if to hide it from his laughter.
"Don"t, George," she said, "it--it seems unkind. Thank you, Premoo, very much. We will certainly send it home to the little masters; and they, I am sure--" Here her eyes fell upon the doll again, and mirth got the better of her gravity once more.
Half-an-hour afterwards, however, as she stood alone in the drawing-room, ready dressed for her drive, the gravity had returned as she looked down on the quaint monstrosity spread out on the table, where on the evening before the rose-shaded lamp had been. It was ridiculous, certainly, but beneath that there was something else. What was it? What had the old man said: "A doll is always a doll...." He had said that and something more: "As the child is always a child to the man and the woman." It ought to be--but was it? Was not that tie forgotten, lost sight of in others ... sometimes?
Half mechanically she took the rag doll, and sitting down on a rocking-chair laid the caricature on her lap among the dainty frills and laces of her pretty gown. And this was Christmas Day--the children"s day--she thought vaguely, dreamily, as she rocked herself backwards and forwards slowly. But the house was empty save for this--this idea, like nothing really in heaven or earth; yet for all that giving the Christmas message, the message of peace and goodwill which the birth of a child into the world should give to the man and the woman:--
"Unto us a child is born."
She smiled faintly--the thing on her lap seemed so far from such a memory--and then, with that sudden half-remorseful pity, she once more gathered the rag doll closer in her arms, as if to shield it from her own laughter.
And as she sate so, her face soft and kind, her husband coming into the room behind her, paused at what he saw. And something that was not laughter surged up in him; for he understood in a flash, understood once and for all, how empty his house had been to her, how empty her arms, how empty her life.
He crossed to her quickly, but she was on her feet almost defiantly at the first sight of him. "Ridiculous monster!" she exclaimed, gaily tossing the doll back on the table. "But it has an uncanny look about it which fascinates one. Gracious! Where are my gloves? I must have left them in my room, and I promised to be ready at eleven!"
When she had gone to look for them, George Langford took up the rag doll in his turn--took it up gingerly, as men take their babies--and stared at it almost fiercely. And he stood there, stern, square, silent, staring at it until his wife came back. Then he walked up to her deliberately and laid his hands on hers.
"I"m going to pack this thing up at once, my dear," he said, "and take it over this morning to little Mrs. Greville. She starts this afternoon, you know, to catch the Messageries steamer. She"ll take it home for us; and so the boys could have it by the Christmas mail, which I forgot."
The words were commonplace, but there was a world of meaning in the tone.
"I--I thought you were busy," she said indistinctly, after a pause in which the one thing in the world seemed to her that tightening hold upon her hand. "If you are--I--I could go...."
There was another pause--a longer one.
"I thought you were going out," he said at last, and his voice, though distinct, was not quite steady; "but if you aren"t, we might go together. My work can easily stand over, and--and Campbell can drive you out some other day when I can"t."
She gave an odd little sound between a laugh and a sob.
"That would be best, perhaps," she said. "I"d like the boys to have this"--she laid her other hand tenderly on the rag doll--"by the Christmas mail I had forgotten."
Old Premoo was sweeping up the withered leaves and flowers from the poinsettia and oleander hedge, when first one and then another high dogcart drove past him. And when the second one had disappeared, he turned to the general audience on the other side of the hedge, and said with great pride and pomp--
"Look you! The scoffers mocked at my doll, but the _Huzoors_ understand. The _sahib_ himself has taken it to send to the little _sahibs_, and the _mem_ packed it up herself and went with him, instead of going in the Captain _sahib"s_ dogcart. That is because a doll is always a doll; as for gla.s.s eyes and such like, they perish."
And with that he crushed a handful of withered red poinsettias into the rubbish basket triumphantly.
THE SKELETON TREE
The engine was conscientiously climbing to the level plateau which stretches between Bhopal and Bandakui, when I heard this story.
Ten minutes before, apparently for no other purpose save to supply the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers with their early cup of tea, the mail train had stopped at a desolate little station which consisted of a concrete-arched, oven-like shed, made still more obtrusively unfitted for the wilderness in which it stood by a dejected bottle-gourd striving to climb up it.
Here a wistful-faced old man in spotless white raiment had appeared in the dawn with a tray of tea and toast. There were four cups of tea and only two pa.s.sengers; myself and a man who had already been asleep on one side of the carriage when I took possession of the other at Bhopal. So we saw each other for the first time as we sate up in our sleeping suits among our blankets and pillows. As the train moved on, in a series of dislocations which sent half my tea into my saucer, we left the wistful old face looking at the two unsold cups of tea regretfully, and I wished I had bought the lot. It seemed such a pathetic group to leave there in the wilderness, backed by a European oven and a climbing gourd.
And it was a wilderness. Miles and miles of it all the same. Piles of red rocks, blackened on the upper surface, scattered, as if they had been shot from a cart, among dry bents and stunted bushes; curious bushes with a plenitude of twig and a paucity of leaf. Here and there was a still more stunted tree with a paucity of both: a rudimentary tree, splay, gouty, with half-a-dozen or so of kidney-shaped lobes in place of foliage, parched, dusty, unwholesome.
Not a level country, but one dented into causeless dells, raised into irrelevant hillocks; both, however, trending almost imperceptibly upwards, so that the eye, deceived by this, imagined greater things on the horizon.
But there was nothing. Only here and there a bigger patch of charred and blackened bents, telling where a spark from a pa.s.sing train had found a wider field for fire than usual, unchecked by the piles of red rocks. That, then, was the secret of their blackened surface.
It was too still in that hot windless dawn for flame, but as we sped on, we added to the dull trails of smoke creeping slowly among the stones and bushes, each with a faint touch of fire showing like an eye to the snaky curves behind. A sinister-looking landscape, indeed, to unaccustomed eyes like mine. I sate watching those stealthy, fire-tipped fingers in the gra.s.s, till at a curve in the line, due to a steeper rise, I saw something. "What on earth"s that?" I cried involuntarily.
"What"s what?" returned my unknown companion, in such a curious tone of voice that, involuntarily, I turned to him for a moment.
"That--that tree I suppose it is," I began; "but look for yourself."
I turned back to the sight which had startled me, and gave a low gasp.
It was gone. On more level ground we were steaming quickly past a very ordinary dent of a dell, where, as usual, one of these stunted rudimentary trees stood on an open patch of dry bents, seamed and seared by fire trails.
I looked at my companion incredulously. "What an extraordinary thing!"
I exclaimed. "I could have sworn that I saw--" I paused from sheer astonishment.
"What?" asked the other pa.s.senger, curiously.
"What?" I echoed. "That is just the question. It looked like a tree--a skeleton tree. Absolutely white, with curved ribs of branches--and there were tongues of flame." I paused again, looking out on what we were pa.s.sing. "It must, of course," I continued, "have been some curious effect of light on that stunted tree yonder. Its branches _are_ curved like ribs, and, if you notice, the bark _is_ lighter."
"Exactly," a.s.sented my companion. Then he told me a long botanical name, and pointed out that there were many such trees or bushes in the low jungle, all distinctly to be seen against the darker kinds, distinctly but not blindingly like that curious effect of dawn-light I had seen.
I had, however, almost forgotten my vision, as, thus started, we talked over our tea, when he suddenly said, "Going on to Agra, I suppose?"
"No," I replied, "I"m globe-trotting for sport. I"m going to spend all I can of my return-ticket in these jungles after leopard and tiger. I hear it"s first-cla.s.s if you don"t mind letting yourself go--getting right away from the beaten track and all that. I mean to get hold of a jungle tribe if I can--money"s no object, and--"
I ran on, glad to detail plans for what had been a long-cherished dream of mine, when my companion arrested me by the single word--
"Don"t."
It was in consequence of my surprise that he told me the following story:--
"I surveyed this railway ten years ago. The country was very much the same as it is now, except that it was all, naturally, off the beaten track. There were two of us in camp together, Graham and myself. He was a splendid chap; keen as mustard on everything. It did not matter what it was. So that one day, when he and I were working out levels after late breakfast, he jumped up like a shot--just as if he had not been tramping over these cursed rubbish shoots of red rocks for six hours--at the sound of a feeble whimpering near the cook-room tent.
""That devil of yours is at it again," he said, "and I won"t have it, that"s all!"
"As he went off I followed, for I did not relish Graham"s justice when it disabled the cook.