"It has not emptied the purse of the great Queen after all," said Faizullah with a broad smile, as he stood beside the Deputy Commissioner on the crest of a hill, and pointed to a terraced village on the opposite side of the valley. "Nor hath the house of the poor suffered; for the dwelling of this slave will not burn."
The jewels were in a bundle under his arm, and he was taking leave of the expedition he had accompanied so far. He turned to go, then suddenly saluted in military fashion. "If this dust-like one might give freedom to his tongue for a s.p.a.ce, the wisdom of experience might reach the ear of those above it. Yea, of a surety the patience of the Presence is beyond praise! _Huzoor!_ if the reward writ in the police stations had been for me, alive or dead, peace would have been beyond my fate, for the great mind of the Protector of the Poor will perceive that a man hath no power against false oaths when once his own tongue is stilled by death; and that even the justice of kings avails little when the case has been decided already. Let this memory remain with the _sahibs_, "Peace bringeth Plenty, and Plenty bringeth Power." So it comes that false oaths are easy under the rule of the Presence."
That was his farewell.
The snow still lay low, but the orchards were ablaze with blossom as, next morning, the little force led by white faces straggled peacefully along the cobbled ledges of the steep village lane. On either side strips of garden ground, where the heart-shaped leaves of the sweet yam pushed from the brown soil, led up to the low houses, backed by peach and almond trees and festooned by withered gourds. On the steps leading to a high-perched dwelling overhanging the lane, stood Faizullah Khan with a st.u.r.dy youngster in his arms. The Deputy Commissioner happening to come last and alone, stopped to look at the child with kindly eyes.
As he did so a door above was set ajar, and through the c.h.i.n.k he caught a glimpse of a singularly beautiful pair of black eyes, and a flash of jewels.
"It is my house, _Huzoor_," said Faizullah with rather a sheepish grin.
"I gave her leave to peep this time."
THE FOOTSTEP OF DEATH.
G.o.dliness is great riches if a man be content with what he hath.
These words invariably carry me back in the spirit to a certain avenue of _shesham_ trees I knew in India; an avenue six miles long, leading through barren sandy levels to the river which divided civilisation from the frontier wilds; an avenue like the aisle of a great cathedral with tall straight trunks for columns, and ribbed branches sweeping up into a vaulted roof set with starry glints of sunshine among the green fret-work of the leaves. Many a time as I walked my horse over its chequered pavement of shade and shine I have looked out sideways on the yellow glare of noon beyond in grateful remembrance of the man who,--Heaven knows when!--planted this refuge for unborn generations of travellers. Not a bad monument to leave behind one among forgetful humanity.
The avenue itself, for all its contenting shade, had nothing to do with the text which brings it to memory--that co-ordination being due to an old _fakeer_ who sat at the river end, where, without even a warning brake, the aisle ended in a dazzling glare of sand-bank. This sudden change no doubt accounted for the fact that on emerging from the shade I always seemed to see a faint, half-hearted mirage of the still unseen river beyond. An elusive mirage, distinct in the first surprise of its discovery, vanishing when the attention sought for it. Altogether a disturbing phenomenon, refusing to be verified; for the only man who could have spoken positively on the subject was the old _fakeer_, and he was stone-blind. His face gave evidence of the cause in the curious puffiness and want of expression which confluent small-pox often leaves behind it. In this case it had played a sorrier jest with the human face divine than usual, by placing a fat bloated mask wearing a perpetual smirk of content on the top of a mere anatomy of a body. The result was odd. For the rest a very ordinary _fakeer_, cleaner than most by reason of the reed broom at his side, which proclaimed him a member of the sweeper, or lowest, caste; in other words, one of those who at least gain from their degradation the possibility of living cleanly without the aid of others. There are many striking points about our Indian Empire; none perhaps more so, and yet less considered, than the disabilities which caste brings in its train--the impossibility, for instance, of having your floor swept unless Providence provides a man made on purpose. My _fakeer_, however, was of those to whom cleanliness and not G.o.dliness is the reason of existence.
That was why his appeal for alms, while it took a religious turn as was necessary, displayed also a truly catholic toleration. It consisted of a single monotonous cry: "In the name of your own Saint,"--or, as it might be translated, "In the name of your own G.o.d." It thrilled me oddly every time I heard it by its contented acquiescence in the fact that the scavenger"s G.o.d was not a name wherewith to conjure charity.
What then? The pa.s.ser-by could give in the name of his particular deity and let the minor prophets go.
The plan seemed successful, for the wooden bowl, placed within the clean-swept ring bordered by its edging of dust or mud, wherein he sat winter and summer, was never empty, and his cry, if monotonous, was cheerful. Not ten yards from his station beneath the last tree, the road ended in a deep cutting, through which a low-level bed of water flowed to irrigate a basin of alluvial land to the south; but a track, made pa.s.sable for carts by tiger-gra.s.s laid athwart the yielding sand, skirted the cut to reach a ford higher up. A stiff bit for the straining bullocks, so all save the drivers took the short cut by the plank serving as a footbridge. It served also as a warning to the blind _fakeer_, without which many a possible contributor to the bowl might have pa.s.sed unheard and unsolicited over the soft sand. As it was, the first creak of the plank provoked his cry.
It was not, however, till I had pa.s.sed the old man many times in my frequent journeyings across the river that I noticed two peculiarities in his method. He never begged of me or any other European who chanced that way, nor of those coming from the city to the river. The latter might be partly set down to the fact that from his position he could not hear their footsteps on the bridge till after they had pa.s.sed; but the former seemed unaccountable; and one day when the red-funnelled steam ferry-boat, which set its surroundings so utterly at defiance, was late, I questioned him on the subject.
"You lose custom, surely, by seeking the shade?" I began. "If you were at the other side of the cut you would catch those who come from the city. They are the richest."
As he turned his closed eyes towards me with a grave obeisance which did not match the jaunty content of his mask, he looked--sitting in the centre of his swept circle--ludicrously like one of those penwipers young ladies make for charity bazaars.
"The Presence mistakes," he replied. "Those who come from the town have empty wallets. "Tis those who come from the wilderness who give."
"But you never beg of me, whether I go or come. Why is that?"
"I take no money, _Huzoor_; it is of no use to me. The _sahibs_ carry no food with them; not even tobacco, only cheroots."
The evident regret in the latter half of his sentence amused me. ""Tis you who mistake, _fakeer-ji_," I replied, taking out my pouch. "I am of those who smoke pipes. And now tell me why you refuse money; most of your kind are not so self-denying."
"That is easy to explain. Some cannot eat what is given; with me it is the other way. As my lord knows, we dust-like ones eat most things your G.o.d has made. But we cannot eat money, perhaps because He did not make it--so the _padres_ say."
"Ah! you are learned; but you can always buy."
"Begging is easier. See! my bowl is full, and the munificent offering of the Presence is enough for two pipes. What more do I want?"
Viewed from his standpoint the question was a hard one to answer. The sun warmed him, the leaves sheltered him, the pa.s.sers-by nourished him, all apparently to his utmost satisfaction. I felt instinctively that the state of his mind was the only refuge for the upholders of civilisation and a high standard of comfort. So I asked him what he thought about all day long. His reply brought total eclipse to all my lights.
"_Huzoor!_" he said gravely, "I meditate on the Beauty of Holiness."
It was then that the text already quoted became indissolubly mixed up with the spreading _shesham_ branches, the glare beyond, and that life-sized penwiper in the foreground. I whistled the refrain of a music-hall song and pretended to light my pipe. "How long have you been here?" I asked, after a time, during which he sat still as a graven image with his closed eyes towards the uncertain mirage of the river.
""Tis nigh on thirty years, my lord, since I have been waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"For the Footstep of Death--hark!" he paused suddenly, and a tremor came to his closed eyelids as he gave the cry: "In the name of your G.o.d!"
The next instant a faint creak told me that the first pa.s.senger from the newly-arrived ferry-boat had set foot on the bridge. "You have quick ears, _fakeer-ji_," I remarked.
"I live on footsteps, my lord."
"And when the Footstep of Death comes, you will die of one, I presume!"
He turned his face towards me quickly; it gave me quite a shock to find a pair of clear, light-brown eyes looking at, or rather beyond, me.
From his constantly closed lids I had imagined that--as is so often the case in small-pox--the organs of sight were hopelessly diseased or altogether destroyed; indeed I had been grateful for the concealment of a defect out of which many beggars would have made capital. But these eyes were apparently as perfect as my own, and extraordinarily clear and bright--so clear that it seemed to me as if they did not even hold a shadow of the world around them. The surprise made me forget my first question in another.
"_Huzoor!_" he replied, "I am quite blind. The Light came from the sky one day and removed the Light I had before. It was a bad thunder-storm, _Huzoor_; at least, being the last this slave saw, he deems it bad. But it is time the Great Judge took his exalted presence to yonder snorting demon of a boat, for it is ill-mannered, waiting for none. G.o.d knows wherefore it should hurry so. The river remains always, and sooner or later the screeching thing sticks on a sand-bank."
"True enough," I replied, laughing. "Well, _salaam, fakeer-ji_."
"_Salaam_, Shelter of the World. May the G.o.d of G.o.ds elevate your honour to the post of Lieutenant-Governor without delay."
After this I often stopped to say a few words to the old man and give him a pipeful of tobacco. For the ferry-boat fulfilled his prophecy of its future to a nicety, by acquiring intimate acquaintance with every shallow in the river--a habit fatal to punctuality. It was an odd sight lying out, so trim and smart, in the wastes of sand and water. Red funnels standing up from among Beloochees and their camels, bullocks scarred by the plough, _zenana_-women huddled in helpless white heaps, wild frontiersmen squatted on the saddle-bags with which a sham orientalism has filled our London drawing-rooms. Here and there a dejected half-caste or a specimen of young India brimful of _The Spectator_. Over all, on the bridge, Captain Ram Baksh struggling with a double nature, represented on the one side by his nautical pea-coat, on the other by his baggy native trousers. "Ease her! stop her! hard astern! full speed ahead!" All the shibboleths, even to the monotonous "_ba-la-mar-do_" (by the mark two) of the leadsman forr"ards. Then, suddenly, overboard goes science and with it a score of lascars and pa.s.sengers, who, knee-deep in the ruddy stream, set their backs lazily against the side, and the steam ferry-boat _Pioneer_, built at Barrow-in-Furness with all the latest improvements, sidles off her sand-bank in the good old legitimate way sanctioned by centuries of river usage. To return, however, to _fakeer-ji_. I found him as full of trite piety as a copy-book, and yet, for all that, the fragments of his history, with which he interlarded these common-places, seemed to me well worth consideration. Imagine a man born of a long line of those who have swept the way for princes--who have, as it were, prepared G.o.d"s earth for over-refined footsteps. That, briefly, had been _fakeer-ji"s_ inheritance before he began to wait for the Footstep of Death. Whatever it may do to the imagination of others, the position appealed to mine strongly, the more so because, while speaking freely enough about the family of decayed kings to whom he and his forebears had belonged, and of the ruined palace they still possessed in the oldest part of the city, he was singularly reticent as to the cause which had turned him into a religious beggar. For the rest he waited in G.o.dliness and contentment (or so he a.s.sured me) for the Footstep of Death.
The phrase grew to be quite a catch-word between us. "Not come yet, _fakeer-ji?_" I would call as I trotted past after a few days" absence.
"_Huzoor!_ I am still waiting. It will come some time."
One night in the rains word came from a contractor over the water that a new ca.n.a.l-dam of mine showed signs of giving, and, anxious to be on the spot, I set off at once to catch the midnight ferryboat. I shall not soon forget that ride through the _shesham_ aisle. The floods were out, and for the best part of the way a level sheet of water gleaming in the moonlight lay close up to the embankment of the avenue, which seemed more than ever like a dim colonnade leading to an unseen Holy of Holies. Not a breath of wind, not a sound save the rustle of birds in the branches overhead, and suddenly, causelessly, a s.n.a.t.c.h of song hushed in its first notes, as if the singer found it too light for sleep, too dark for song. The beat of my horse"s feet seemed to keep time with the stars twinkling through the leaves.
I was met at the road"s end by the unwelcome news that at least two hours must elapse ere the _Pioneer_ could be got off a newly-invented mudbank which the river had maliciously, placed in a totally unexpected place. Still more unwelcome was the discovery that, in my hurry, I had left my tobacco-pouch behind me. Nothing could be done save to send my groom back with the pony and instructions for immediate return with the forgotten luxury. After which I strolled over towards my friend the _fakeer_, who sat ghostlike in the moonlight with his bowl full to the brim in front of him. "That snorting devil behaves worse every day," he said fervently; "but if the Shelter of the Poor will tarry a twinkling I will sweep him a spot suitable for his exalted presence."
Blind as he was, his dexterous broom had traced another circle of cleanliness in a trice, a new reed-mat, no bigger than a handkerchief, was placed in the centre, and I was being invited to ornament just such another penwiper as the _fakeer_ occupied himself. "Mercy," he continued, as I took my seat, shifting the mat so as to be able to lean my back against the tree, "blesses both him who gives, and those who take," (even Shakespeare, it will be observed, yields at times to plat.i.tude). "For see," he added solemnly, producing something from a hollow in the root, "the Presence"s own tobacco returns to the Presence"s pipe."
Sure enough it was genuine Golden Cloud, and the relief overpowered me.
There I was after a s.p.a.ce, half-lying, half-sitting in the clean warm sand, my hands clasped at the back of my head as I looked up into the shimmering light and shade of the leaves.
"Upon my soul I envy you, _fakeer-ji_. We who go to bed at set times and seasons don"t know the world we live in."
"Religion is its own reward," remarked the graven image beside me, for he had gone back to his penwiper by this time. But I was talking more to myself than to him, in the half-drowsy excitement of physical pleasure, so I went on unheeding.
"Was there ever such a night since the one Jessica looked upon! and what a scent there is in the air,--orange blossoms or something!"
"It is a tree farther up the water-cut, _Huzoor_, a hill tree. The river may have brought the seed; it happens so sometimes. Or the birds may have brought it from the city. There was a tree of the kind in a garden there. A big tree with large white flowers; so large that you can hear them fall."