And, after all, the introduction of the dimpled brown child in a little white night-shift, who leant shyly against Elflida"s blue beads, seemed to help the conversation. So much so that after coffee and cigarettes had been served in the verandah, old Iman felt as if success must crown his efforts--if only there were time! But how could there be time when the possible husband had arranged, since the motor bicycle refused to be mended with the appliances at his disposal, to have it conveyed by country cart overnight to the nearest railway station, five miles off, whither he must tramp it, he supposed? next morning, to catch the mail train.
It was when, pleasantly, yet still carelessly, Alec Alexander was saying good-bye to the blue eyes and the blue beads, with the brown baby cuddled up comfortably in the girl"s slender arms, that Iman, with a sinking heart, played his last card by saying that there was no need for the Huzoor to tramp. The Miss-_Sahiba_ and Lily-_baba_ invariably took a carriage airing before breakfast, and could quite easily drop the Huzoor at the railway station.
"Yes! I could drop you quite easily at that place. It would be more better than the walk," a.s.sented Elflida Norma, with a Sphinx-like smile. Her heart was beating faster than usual. She was beginning to be amused with the tinsel glitter and the general pretence.
It was like playing a game. Still she slept soundly; and so did the young engineer, and Lily-_baba_, and the boys gorged with as-a-rule-prohibited native dainties. Even the smith slept, and the anatomy had already reverted to reality, his transient dignity vanishing into thin air. So that in that wide ruined serai, built by dead kings, all were at rest save the Great Artificer, Iman, who sate among the ruins of his dinner, satisfied, yet still conscious of failure. Something was lacking, which once more only G.o.d could create--only a miraculous car could bring.
In truth, if any vehicle might from outward appearance claim miraculous powers, it was the extraordinary sort of four-wheeled dogcart which, in the cool morning air, appeared as Iman"s last card. He had, indeed, not wandered from the truth in telling Alec Alexander that carriages were not to be hired in that sahib-forsaken spot, and it had been only with extreme difficulty that he had raised these four wheels of varying colours and a body painted with festoons of grapes, all tied together with ropes.
Still, it held the party. Iman, with Lily-_baba_ in his arms, on the box by the driver, Elflida and the young engineer disposed on the back seat. The horse, it is true, showed signs of never having been in harness before, but this was not so evident to those behind, and Iman held tight and set his teeth, knowing that success has sometimes to be bought dearly.
Still, it was with no small measure of relief when they were close on their destination, and the beast settled down to the two hundred yards of collar work leading up to the small station level with the high embankment of the permanent way, that he turned round to peep at progress on the back seat.
Had anything happened? His heart sank at the cool, collected air with which the possible husband took his ticket; but it rose again, when, after saying good-bye to Lily-_baba_ and tipping the coachman, the young man went off to the platform with Elflida, as if it were a matter of course she should see him off. In truth, that is exactly what he did feel concerning this distinctly pretty and rather jolly little girl with a bad temper.
And Elflida? Her world seemed to have had a fresh start in growth, it held greater possibilities than before, that was all.
So everything had been in vain, even Iman"s sense of duty towards the white blood he had served so long.
"Good-bye!" He could not hear the words, but he saw the young hands meet to unclasp again, as with a whistle the mail train rushed out from behind a dense mango clump, and the Westinghouse brakes brought a sudden grinding rattle to the quiet morning air.
"All was over!" thought Iman sadly, as still sitting on the box with Lily-_baba_, he watched. Surely it had not been his fault. He had done all--only the cheese _soufflee_ had failed, and that happened sometimes even in the house of Lat-Sahibs. Yet it was over.
It was, indeed. Almost including the miraculous car, as deprived of its driver, who was spending part of his tip in the sweet stall, the horse, frightened at the train, reared, bounded forward, and then, finding its progress barred in front by a railing, swerved on its track, and came past the station again, heading for that downward incline with the steep banks falling away on either side.
Elflida grasped the position first, and with a cry of "Lily! Lily!" was at the horse"s head as it pa.s.sed. The possible husband was not far behind--just far enough to make the off rein as convenient to his pursuing feet as the near one, to which she clung, half dragged, helpless, half in wild determination to keep pace with the terrified beast.
"Let go!" he shouted. "He"ll get you down, and then--let go, I say!"
She did not answer. In truth, she had no breath for words. And, besides, her mind was not clear enough to grasp his order, though it grasped something else--namely, that relief from her dead weight on one side must bring a swerve to the other. And that must not be till the embankment was pa.s.sed, or the man holding to the off rein must go under.
"Let go!" he shouted, again and again, as he, in his turn, grasped her purpose; but he might as well have shouted to the dead.
"I believe--I hope--she has fainted," said Alec Alexander, with a catch in his voice not all due to breathlessness, as, the runaway safe held by other captors, he stooped over the girl who lay in the dust, her hands still clenched over a broken rein. Then he lifted her tenderly and carried her back to the station whence the mail train, careless of such trivialities as miraculous cart, had departed.
And if on his way he kissed the closed blue eyes and the blue beads round the childish throat, who shall blame him?
Anyhow, the hot dry nights of May were not over before old Iman"s voice rose once more in declamation over the unforgettable story of the white blood.
But this time sleep did not come to the black-and-tan tribe gathered in the light of the floating oil wick. For the boys were watching something they had never seen before--the icing of a wedding cake.
And so the long-deferred personal climax came at last.
"The trouble being over, the masters were masters again, and I took Sonny-_baba_ back to his people. And wherefore not? Seeing I had eaten of their salt all my life and they of mine. Yea! even unto wedding cakes. Look, my sons! That is done, and I, Iman, the faithful one by name and nature made it."
There was but one flaw in the old man"s content on the great day; for he had managed to get a ham cheap for the "suffer," and Mrs. Hastings, only too glad of greater freedom in the future, had consented to his turning his attention to the education of the young couple and Lily-_baba_, who was to live with them. That flaw was a slight irregularity in what he was pleased to call a "too-liver-ot" on the said cake. Not that it really mattered. The true lover"s knot itself was there, though the hands which fashioned it were not so young and steady as they had been when they caught up Sonny-_baba_ and carried him to the safe shadows.
Yet, old as they were, those hands had forgotten no duty. _E-stink Sahib"s_ widow, absorbed with a friend in the recipe of a mango pickle she meant to make on the morrow--a pickle full of forbidden turmeric and mustard oil--had to be reminded of her _role_ as bride"s mother over and over again, but it was Iman who hung a horseshoe for luck on the miraculous car--drawn this time by an old stager--Iman, who was ready with rice, Iman, who finally ran after the departing lovers to fling the old white shoe, in which Elflida had danced the hee-haw polka, into their laps as they sate on the back seat, and then, overbalancing himself in the final effort, to tumble into the dust, where he remained blissfully uncertain as to praise or blame, murmuring blandly, "What a custom is here!"
THE WISDOM OF OUR LORD GANESH
"The wisdom of Sri Ganesh--the wisdom of our Lord Ganesh."[1]
Through and through my fever-drugged brain the words came, compelling, insistent; forcing me away from reality, forcing me back into the past.
Yet I knew perfectly where I was; I remembered distinctly that having felt unusually tired after rather a hot day"s march I had pitched the little _tente d"abri_--which was my home during a sketching tour in Wales--rather closer to the main road than I generally did, and had thereinafter promptly succ.u.mbed to an unmistakable go of fever and ague, a half-forgotten legacy left behind by many years of Indian life.
Yes, I could remember distinctly the bramble-and-nut-hidden quarry hole, with its little inner sward of sweet sheep-bitten gra.s.s where I had pitched the tent. I knew that if I were to call, someone of the rumbling cart wheels, which came at intervals along the road, might stop and seek for the caller; but I lay still. I was hard-happed round and round with the curious content which comes as the chills and the aches are pa.s.sing into the fire flood of fever that thrills the finger-tips and sets the brain fizzling like champagne.
"The wisdom of Sri Ganesh--the wisdom of our Lord Ganesh."
Why on earth should that haunt me here in Wales? on a piece, no doubt, of Nat Gwynne"s property.
Nat Gwynne! Then I knew. It was because I had seen him in the distance that day, driving a pair of grey ponies, tandem, with a pretty young girl beside his coa.r.s.e, heavy, good looks; heavier than they had been, though, heaven knows! refinement had never stood much in his way. And they were to be married to-morrow! Married to Gwynne of Garthgwynne!
Couldn"t anyone tell her what she was doing? Couldn"t anyone save her, as the wisdom of Sri Ganesh had saved that other one?...
And then in a second I was gone. I was under the bra.s.sy blue sky of India, and from the twisted tufts of marsh-gra.s.ses by the elephant"s feet came a native beater"s lament--"As G.o.d sees me it is invisible--what a tyranny is here."
"Bid Ganesh seek," said Nat Gwynne"s voice, imperatively from the howdah from which we were both shooting. He was in a Lancer regiment cantooned in the native State where for many years I had been consulting engineer.
The _mahout_, seated on the big brute"s neck, turned calmly. "It is against the orders that Sri Ganesh, King of Elephants and Lord of Wisdom, should touch carrion even of the Huzoor"s."
I looked at my old friend Mahadeo with astonishment. He and I had been out on Ganesh, the Rajah"s finest elephant, scores of times, and again and again the cunning old rogue"s inquisitive trunk had nosed out and up a partridge or snipe which the coolies had failed to find.
"He hath a scent like a bed of roses," old Mahadeo would say proudly, "and as for wisdom! Doth he not hold the Huzoor even as his own _mahout?_"
Which delicate piece of flattery was true, for old Ganesh, pad elephant to the bankrupt young scoundrel of a Rajah, had taken a fancy to me, as elephants do take fancies.
So, seeing at a glance that something lay beneath the surface of the bitter hatred in the dark face, and the wild, wicked rage of the white one, I said, quickly. "Seek! my brother!"
Ganesh swayed forward, his trunk curling like a snake, his wicked little eyes alert, a faint _frou-frou_ of a blowing sound seeming to quiver the gra.s.ses; and there, grasped softly in the prehensile end was a dead jack snipe! As he put it deferentially and politely into my outstretched hand I seemed to catch a contemptuous flicker in his eye, as who would say, "What an amount of fuss about such a very little piece of pork," as the Jew said when a thunderstorm found him eating sausage.
But that it was _not_ a little piece of pork between those two, still glaring at each other, was evident.