"There is a little spot by the Light-giver"s feet also," remarked Shivdeo quietly. "I noticed it yesterday just after the Presence cut his hand with the soda-water bottle." And sure enough there was one.
"I can"t think how I came to fall asleep," I said to him after the doctor had gone; "just at the critical time, too, when I was most wanted."
The man smiled. "We do not always guess aright when we are wanted, _Huzoor_. You slept and the Light-giver got better. It is G.o.d"s way; He has refreshed you both."
"Refreshed!" I retorted crossly. "I feel as if I had been pounded in a mortar. I had the most frightful dreams, but I can"t recall what they were."
"It is not well to try," replied Shivdeo, with rather an odd look. "If I were the Presence I would forget them. There is enough evil to come without recalling what is past and over for ever."
Perhaps involuntarily I followed his suggestion, for, though I chased the fleeting memory more than once through my brain, I never overtook it.
Terence O"Reilly made a quick recovery; but in view of the fast approaching hot weather, the doctors put him on board ship as soon as it could be done with safety. Hurry was the order of the day, so it was not until my return from seeing him to Bombay that I found time for outside affairs. Then it was that Shivdeo informed me of poor little Boots" death in the interval. As the Presence was aware, he said, it had been thought advisable when perfect quiet was necessary to the Light-bringer to send the child away from the compound, because of the difficulty experienced in keeping it out of the house. So it had gone with its nurse to the cantonment-sweeper"s hut, where it had caught fresh cold and died. By the advice of the native doctor who had seen it, he had kept the death secret at first, from fear of the news delaying his master"s recovery. I made every inquiry, but found nothing of any kind to give rise to suspicion of foul play. The native doctor had sent medicine three days running as for bronchitis, and on the fourth he had seen the child"s dead body. It had died, he thought, of croup.
"You will write and tell the Light-bringer?" asked Shivdeo, when the inquiry was over. "And you will say that I did my best, my very best, for my lord"s interest?"
"Certainly," I replied; "but he will be sorry, the child was so fond of him."
"When people are beautiful as Krishna, like the Lord of Light, it is easy to be fond of them."
I did not see Shivdeo again for over three months; and the bungalow in the Civil Lines, which he kept swept and garnished against his master"s return, gradually a.s.sumed the soulless, empty appearance peculiar to the dwelling-places of those who make holiday at the other side of the world. Then a message came to say that he was ill, and wished to see me on business. I found him, a mere wreck and shadow of his former self, propped up against his old pillar in the verandah. He shook his head over my suggestions of remedies. "I have taken many," he replied quietly, "for the native doctor is my caste-brother. The hand of Shiva is not to be turned aside, and am I not his sworn servant? What ails me? Nay, who can say what ails the heart when it ceases to beat? Men cannot live without the light, and it is night for me now. Perhaps that is it, who knows? Yonder old man is my father come to see me die; yet ere the last "Ram-Ram" sounds in mine ears I want the Presence to understand something, else would I not have vexed his quiet. It will be hard for the _Huzoor_ to understand, because he is not of our race."
He paused so long that I asked what he wished me to understand, thinking that in his weakness he had drifted away from his desire.
"Something new and strange," he answered, "yet old and true. See! I sit here in the old place, and the Presence shall sit there as he used to do, because old memories return in the old places, making us see and remember things that are past or forgotten. Is it not so?"
Truly enough, as I humoured him by occupying the familiar chair, ready placed half-way between the bed and the window, it seemed to me as if I were once more watching Terence pa.s.s through the valley of the shadow.
"The Presence once slept in that chair," continued the weak voice, "and he dreamed a dream. Let him recall it now, if he can."
How or wherefore I know not, but as he spoke a sudden certainty as to what he wished me to know rushed in on me. "Great G.o.d," I cried, starting up and seizing him roughly by the shoulder, "you killed poor little Boots! You brought the child here! You killed it before his very eyes and mine! I know it! I think--I think I saw it done!"
He set my hand aside with unexpected force and a strange dignity. "I am the prisoner of Death, _Huzoor!_ There is no need to hold me; I cannot escape him. For the rest, if I killed the child, what then? The Lord of Light lives, and that is enough for me. What is a Sudra or two more or less to the Brahman? But what if it was a devil sucking his heart"s blood because of his beauty? Shall I not have honour for saving him?
Thus both ways I am absolved; but not from my oath, the false oath which I swore to my lord for my own sake. When I wander through the shades waiting for Vishnu"s decree, it will lead my blind steps to the body of a foul thing. So I speak that the Presence may judge and say if I were not justified, and confess that we people of the old knowledge are not always wrong. _Huzoor!_ you have seen its eyes glisten, as its body clung to his beauty; you know he sickened after it had lain night and day in his arms; you know how it crept and crawled to get at him while he lay helpless. Now listen! One day he was better, brighter in all things, and bid you refresh yourself in the air. I sat here, and like you I fell asleep; and when I woke the thing was at him, close to his heart, its arms round his neck, its devilish lips at his throat, crooning away like an accursed cat! And he was in the death-sleep that lasted till the dawn came that you and I remember so well. Then I knew it must be, and that my oath was as a reed in the flood. Yet would I not be hasty. I took counsel with holy men, men of mighty wisdom, men with such tenderness for life that they bid G.o.d speed to the flea which keeps them wakeful; but they all said, "Yea! one of the two must die."
Did I stop to ask which? Not I. So I fasted, and prayed, and made clean my heart, and waited patiently for the moment of fate; for so they bid me. Even then, _Huzoor_, the holy men would do naught by chance or without proof. It was a bright moonlight night, and the Presence slept by reason of our arts and drugs; and so we put the accursed creature we had brought from the sweeper"s hut down at the gate, yonder by the flowering oleanders, and hiding ourselves among them, watched it.
Straight, straight as a hawk or a bustard, until we found it there in the old place! Devil of h.e.l.l! we made it vomit back the blood, we--"
My hand was on his mouth, my one thought to stop the horrible words that somehow conjured up the still more horrible sight before my eyes.
"I know,--there is no need for more,--I cannot bear it."
And indeed, the vision of poor dumb little Boots in their relentless hold froze my blood. As my hands fell away from him in sudden, shrinking horror, he looked at me compa.s.sionately. "The Presence does not understand aright. Let him remember the strange doctor"s face when he came in the dawn, thinking to find hope had fled. One of the two had to die. If the Presence had thought as I did, as I _knew_, what would he have done?"
I was silent.
His face, which had remained calm enough so far, a.s.sumed a look of agonised entreaty, as with an effort painful to see he dragged himself to my feet and clung to them. "What would you have done, _Huzoor_, in my place? What would you have done?"
Then a fearful fit of coughing seized him, and his lips were tinged with blood. Water lay close at hand, yet I knew that this murderer would sooner have died than accept it from my defiling hand; so I called the old man who all this time had sat like a carven image in the next archway. He came, and wiped the dews of death from his son"s face without a word; and as he did so, Shivdeo, looking at the faint stains on the cloth, smiled an unearthly smile, and whispered, "I did not suck my lord"s blood, for all that. It comes from my own heart."
I am not ashamed to say that my brain was in such a whirl that I turned to escape from a situation where I felt utterly lost. As I did so, I heard Shivdeo"s voice for the last time. The old man was holding a little bra.s.s cup of water to the parched lips; but it was arrested by the dying hand, and the dying eyes looked wistfully up into his father"s.
"Did I do well, O my father?" he asked.
"You did well, my son; drink in peace."
When I reached home, the English mail was in. It brought a letter from Terence. He was in Dublin and engaged to be married; considering that he was an Irishman, no more need be said. He wrote the kindest letter, saying that the great happiness which had come into his life made him all the more grateful to me, seeing that but for my care he would have gone down to the grave without knowing how the love of a good woman can make existence seem a sacred trust. He ended by these words: "And sure, old man, if it be true that all happiness is bought, some one must have paid dear for mine!"
I could not sleep that night--the war of conflicting thoughts waged too fiercely; but it was nearly dawn before I found it impossible to withstand the memory of Shivdeo"s cry: "If the Presence had thought as I did, what would he have done?"
He was dead before I reached the house, but surely if he knows anything, he must know that I, for one, cast no stone.
RaMCHUNDERJI.
"But the tenth _avatar_ of the Lord Vishnu is yet to come."
"Exactly so, pundit-_ji_," I replied, looking at my watch. "It is yet to come, seeing that time"s up. Half-past eight; so not another stroke of work to-day. No, not for twice a thousand rupees!"
A thousand rupees being the sum with which the Government of India rewards what they are pleased to call "high proficiency" in languages, I, having regard to its literature, had chosen Sanskrit as a means of paying certain just debts. To which end the head-master of the district school came to me for two hours every morning, and prosed away over the doings of the Hindoo pantheon until I came to the conclusion that my Lord Vishnu had been rather extravagant in the matter of incarnations.
The pundit, however, to whom would be due a hundred rupees of the thousand if I succeeded, smiled blandly. "The tenth _avatar_ will doubtless await his Honour"s leisure; the tenth, and last."
"Last!" I echoed with scorn. "How do you know? Some authorities hold there are twenty-four, and upon my soul I don"t see why there should not be twenty-four thousand. "Tis the same old story all through; devils and demiG.o.ds, _rakshas_ and _rishies_, Noah"s ark and Excalibur.
That sort of thing might go on for ever."
Now, Pundit Narayan Das was a very learned man. He had taken a Calcutta degree, and was accustomed to educate the rising generation on a mixture of the _Rig-Veda_ and _The Spectator_. So he smiled again, saying in English, ""History repeats itself.""
Thereupon he left me, and I, going into the verandah with my cigar, came straight upon Ramchunderji and his wife Seeta. At least I think so.
They were the oddest little couple. He, at a stretch, might have touched a decade of life, she, something more than half such distance of time. That is, taking them by size: in mind and manners, and in their grave, careworn faces, they were centuries old. His sole garment consisted of a large yellow turban twined high into a sort of mitre, with just a tip of burnished silver fringe sprouting from the top; and, as he sat cross-legged against the verandah pillar, a hand resting on each knee, his figure awoke a fleeting memory which, at the time, I failed to catch. Afterwards I remembered the effigies in Indra"s celestial court as represented by some Pa.r.s.ee actors I had once seen.
Seeta was simply a bundle, owing to her being huddled and cuddled up in a veil ample enough for an ample woman.
"I am Ramchunderji, and this is my wife Seeta," said the boy gravely.
"If the Presence pleases, I will beguile time by singing."
"What will you sing?" I asked, preparing to idle away ten minutes comfortably in a lounge-chair which lay convenient.
"I sing what I sing. Give me the _vina_, woman."
The veil gave up such a very large instrument that the smallness of the remaining wife became oppressive. So large indeed was it, that one gourd over-filled the boy"s lap, while the other acted as a prop to the high twined turban. Even the connecting bamboo, slender though it was, seemed all too wide for those small fingers on the frets.
"Is the permission of the Presence bestowed?" suggested Ramchunderji, with the utmost solemnity.
Tw.a.n.g, tw.a.n.g, tw.a.n.gle! Heavens, what a _vina_ and what a voice! I nearly stopped both at the first bar; then patience prevailing, I lay back and closed my eyes. Tw.a.n.g, tw.a.n.gle! A sudden difference in the tone made me open them again, only to find the same little bronze image busy in making a perfectly purgatorial noise; so I resigned myself once more. Palm-trees waving, odorous thickets starred with jasmin, forms, half-mortal, half-divine, stealing through the shadows, the flash of shining swords, the tw.a.n.g of golden bows bent on ten-headed many-handed monsters. Bah! Pundit Narayan Das, prosing over those epic poems of his, had made me drowsy. "What have you been singing?" I asked, rousing myself.
Ramchunderji spread his hands thumbs outwards, and the three wrinkles on his high forehead deepened: "G.o.d knows! It is what they sang before the great flood came. The _vina_ was theirs, and my turban, and my wife"s veil; the rest was too big altogether, so I gave it away for some bread. When the belly is full of greed the heart hath none left, and the nine-_lakh_ necklace is worth no more than a mouthful. If the Presence could see into my heart now, he would find no greed there."
This delicate allusion to an inward craving produced a four-anna bit from my pocket, and sent Ramchunderji away to the sweet-meat sellers in order to appease his hunger; for sweet-stuff is cheap in the East, especially when it is stale. Seeta and the _vina_, mysteriously intertwined beneath the veil, followed duteously behind.