The Mercy of the Lord.
by Flora Annie Steel.
THE MERCY OF THE LORD
"G.o.d movesn--a--mystere"ras way Iswon--derstuper--form."
Craddock was polishing the bra.s.s of his safety valve and singing the while at high pressure between set teeth: his choice of a ditty determined by one of his transitory lapses into conventional righteousness. The cause of which in the present instance being an equally transient admiration for a good little Eurasian girl fresh from her convent.
As the sun--which shines equally on the just and the unjust--flamed on his red face and glowed from his corn-coloured beard it seemed to me--waiting in the comparative coolth of the pointsman"s mud-oven shelter till the one mail train of the day should appear and disappear, leaving the ribbon of rail which spanned the desert world to its horizon free for our pa.s.saging--that both he and his engine radiated heat: that they gave out--as the burning bush or the flaming swords of the paradise-protectors must have given out--a message of fiery warning that suited the words he sang:
"Eplants "isfootsteps--inthesea."
Craddock punctuated the rhythm with an appropriate stop of shrill steam which ought to have startled me: but it did not, because my outward senses had suddenly become slaves to my memory. The desert was a garden full of cool fragrance which comes with the close of an Indian day, and the only sound to be heard in it was a glad young voice repeating these words:
"Oh! G.o.d of the Battle! Have mercy! Have mercy! Have mercy!"
"Bravo! young Bertram!" said someone--even those who scarcely knew whether Bertram were his Christian or his surname called him that--"Easy to see you"re fresh from the Higher Standard."
Young Bertram smiled down on us from the plinth of the marble steps leading up to the marble summer house which stood in the centre of this Garden-of-Dead-Kings.
Posed there on his pedestal, holding orb-like in his raised right hand the battered bronze cannon ball whose inscription--roughly lettered in snaky spirals--he had just translated, young Bertram reminded me of the young Apollo.
"You bet," he answered, gaily. "But what does it mean, here on this blessed ball? Who knows the story?--for there is one, of course."
The company looked at me, partly because as a civilian such knowledge was expected of me; mostly because I was responsible for the invasion of this peaceful Eastern spot by a restless, curious horde of Westerns; my only excuse for the desecration being, that as the most despicable product of our Indian rule, a gra.s.s widower bound to entertain, I had naturally clutched at the novelty of a picnic supper and dance some few miles out of the station.
Perhaps, had I seen the garden first, I might have relented, but I took it on trust from my orderly, who a.s.sured me it held all things necessary for my salvation, including a marble floor on which a drugget could be stretched.
It held much more. There was in it an atmosphere--not all orange blossom and roses, though these drugged the senses--which to my mind made a touch of tragedy lurk even in our laughter.
Though, in sooth, we brought part of the tragedy with us: for a frontier war was on, and all the men and half the women present, knew that the route might come any moment.
Some few--I, as chief district officer, the colonel and his adjutant--were aware that it probably would come before morning: but ours were not the sober faces. Our plans were laid; all things, even the arrangements for the women and the children and the unfit-for-service, were cut and dried: but the certainty that someone must--as the phrase runs--take over doc.u.ments, and the uncertainty as to who the unlucky beggar would be, lent care to a young heart or two.
Not, however, to young Bertram. As he stood questioning me with his frank blue eyes, even the white garments he had donned (because, he said, "It might be a beastly time before he wore decent togs again") told the same tale as his glad voice--the tale of that boundless hope which holds ever the greatest tragedy of life.
"Who is that pretty boy?" said a low soft voice at my elbow.
I did not answer the spoken question of the voice, but as I replied to the unspoken question of many eyes I was conscious that of all the many incongruous elements I had imported into that Eastern garden this Western woman who had appraised young Bertram"s beauty was the most incongruous. It was not the Paris frock and hat, purchased on the way out--she had only rejoined her husband the day before--which made her so. It was the woman inside them. I knew the type so well, and my soul rose in revolt that she should soil his youth with her approval.
"I"ve no doubt there are stories," I replied; "but I don"t happen to know them. I"m as much a stranger here as you all are. So come! let us look round till it"s dark enough to dance."
"Dark enough to sit out, he means," said someone to the Paris frock and hat, whereat there was a laugh, but not so general and not half so hearty as the one which greeted young Bertram"s gravity as he replaced the cannon ball on the plinth with the profound remark:
"Something about a woman, you bet."
"Do introduce me!" pleaded the Paris frock and hat as the lad came down, bearing the brunt of chaff gallantly; but I pretended not to hear, though I knew such diplomacy was vain with women of her type--women whose refinement makes them shameless.
Yes! she was a strange anomaly in that garden, though, Heaven knows, it appealed frankly enough to the senses. So frankly that it absorbed even such meretricious Western additions as cosy corners and iced champagne--on tables laid for two--without encroaching a hair"s--breadth on the inviolable spiritual kingdom of the ivory orange blossom, the silver jasmine stars, even the red hearts of the roses.
They were lighting up the lines of the cressets about the dancing floor when we began to rea.s.semble, and as each star of light quivered into being, the misty unreal radiance grew around the fretted marble of the summer house until arch and pilaster seemed to lose solidity, and the whole building, leaving its body behind in shining sleep, found freedom a.s.s a palace of dreams.
And there, as a foreground to its mystical beauty, was young Bertram dangling his long legs from the pedestal and nursing the battered old bronze ball on his lap as if it had been a baby.
"I"ve found out all about it," he said, cheerfully. "That chap"--he pointed to a figure below him--"told me a splendid yarn, and if you lite,"--he turned to me--"as they haven"t done lighting up yet, and we can"t dance till they finish, he could tell it again. I could translate, you know, for those who can"t understand."
The innocent pride made me smile, until the Paris frock said, "_I_ shall be so grateful if you will, Mr. Bertram," in a tone of soft friendliness which proclaimed her success and my failure. Both, however, I recognised were inevitable when I remembered that she was the wife of the lad"s captain, a silent, bullet-headed Briton of whom he chose to make a hero--as boys will of older men who are not worthy to unlatch their shoes.
The figure rose and salaamed. It was that of a professional snake charmer, who had evidently come in hopes of being allowed to exhibit his skill: for his flat basket of snakes, slung to a bambu yoke, lay beside him.
"And it _was_ about a woman, as I said," continued young Bertram, with the same innocent pride. "She was of his tribe--the snaky tribe, and so, of course, he knows about it all."
I had my doubts--the man looked a cunning scoundrel--but there was an awkward five minutes to fill up, so chairs and cushions were requisitioned, and on them and the marble steps we circled round to listen: the Paris dress, I noticed, choosing the latter, close to the translator.
He performed his task admirably, catching not only the meaning of the words but the rhythm of the snake charmer"s voice, and so quickly, too, that the message for the East, and for the West, seemed one; yet it seemed to come from neither of the speakers.
""Oh, G.o.d of the Battle! have mercy, have mercy, have mercy!" Such was her prayer to the Bright One, and this is the tale of it:
"Straight was her soul as the saraph who tempted Eve-mother, but crooked her body as snakes that deal death in the darkness--crookt in her childhood--crookt in the siege of the town by a spent shot which struck her, asleep in her cradle (the ball that you nurse on your knee, sahib--they found it beside her--her crushed limbs caressing the foe that destroyed her).
"She grew in this garden, a cripple, but fair still of face, and twice cursed in such gifts of beauty all barren and bitter--so bitter she veiled it away, hiding loveliness, hatefulness, both, from the eyes of the others: a soul stricken sore ere the battle began, yet insatiate of life, insatiate of blessing and cursing, insatiate of power. And, look you! she gained it! Most strangely, for fluttering through thickets like birds that are wounded and dragging herself like a snake to the blossoms, she threaded the jasmine to necklets and pressed out the roses to perfume, so giving to women uncrippled love-lures for the fathers of sons.
"Hid in the jasmine and screened by the trails of the roses, here, on this spot stood her chamber of charm for the secret distilling of _itr_, the silent repeating of ritual, the murmur of musical _mantras_.
"And none dare to enter since Death lurked unseen in the thickets, and serpents, her kinsmen, slid swift to the threshold to guard it, and watched with still eyes her command.
""It was witchcraft," they said, with a shudder, those fortunate women, yet came in the dusk for her charms!
"But she gave them not always, for years brought her wisdom. She learnt the love lore of the flowers, the close starry heart of the jasmine, the open red heart of the rose, told their dream of fair death through the ripening of seed, and her voice would grow bitter with scorn....
""Go! find your own lures for your lovers--I work for the seed--for the harvest of men."
"High perched on the wall of the city the balcony women waxed wroth. It was money to them till the cripple who fought them with flowers prevailed in the battle for life to the world.
"And Narghiza, the chief of them all, felt her youth on the wane....
"So, one night in the darkness, ere dawning, men crept to the garden where only the women might enter. Men, heated by wine and by l.u.s.t, inflamed by the balcony lies--yea! the witch who wrought evil to all--who had killed Gulanar in her prime by a wasting--whose frown was a curse, must be reckoned with, killed, and her devilish chamber destroyed.
"But the sound of the rustling leaves as the snakes slid soft in the darkness made even the wine bibbers think, so that secret and soft as the snakes in the thickets they crept back to safety; till there--in the darkness, the fragrance of flowers, but one man remained, a man who grew old! Beautiful, tired of the life he had squandered, and reckless, yet angered because of the girl who had wasted to death--a girl he had paid for.
""Cowards!" he said with a smile, and crept on in the dark. A rustle, but not of a snake! In the leaves a faint glimmer of white, and a voice--such a beautiful voice!