"Yea! she sleeps still, Huzoor. The breaking of the pot did not disturb her at all. She was weary, see you, after sixteen years of waking. So now when my fathers say, "Where is Azizan?" I can answer, "Hush! she sleeps! she will waken when she is refreshed." Lo! it is well the pot broke. It was accursed; bringing ill to all."
"There you see, Lewis!" began Rose eagerly----
"It did not bring it to me, dear," he replied, interrupting her, "and a man can but judge from his own experiences. And then, as I have often told you, we really know nothing for certain----"
"Except," put in Rose obstinately, "that poor George----"
"Don"t you think we ought to be moving?" he asked quietly. "Remember you promised Mrs. Dalel to have tea in the chalet and inspect the son and heir, and you are tired enough as it is."
"But you said you wanted to go and see some slope or another, and I"m not in the least tired," she insisted when they had left the yard and reached the road. "Lewis! you never used to fuss this way. I wish you wouldn"t."
"It is only another method of showing my real views on the mental and physical calibre of women. You must have read, my dear, of the wonderful recuperative power which the lower animals have of reproducing another tail when----ahem--by the way, this is not a safe spot! I remember saying something of the same sort on purpose to annoy when we were here before----"
He paused, and looked down the narrow alley of the village to where the palace was beginning to share the unreal beauty which the dust-cloud from the feet of the homing cattle gave to the whole scene, by hiding the dull plain in a golden mist that gave distance and height to the low sand-hillocks behind which the sun was setting cloudlessly. A glorious sight, the dignity and calm majesty of which lingers long in the memory of those who have seen it in India, day after day, month after month; lingers to claim a higher place in the imagination than the more varied and complex sunsets of the West with their stormy contrasts and pa.s.sionate beauty.
"Leave me here," she said suddenly. "I should like it. I"ll sit on that pile of old potsherds, and wait till you come back. It will rest me."
It was peaceful enough of a certainty, and silent too. Only every now and again the tinkle of a low-toned bell from some leader of the herds below chiming in on the musical moan of the potter"s wheel heard over the low wall.
"It was a woman seeking something."
The rhythm came back to her, stirring the old sense of curious unrest.
Stirring it in others of her s.e.x also, if one might judge by the eyes which, seeing the stranger alone, began to peer from the neighbouring hovels. Eyes followed by figures; deep-bosomed mothers most of them, with a slim girl or two doing nursemaid to other folks" babies.
Nearer and nearer they came, attracted by the great feminine quality, until in answer to Rose"s nod of welcome and encouragement they squatted near, yet far, gathered in as it were upon themselves, apart even from that other woman; even from her, with the cares of coming motherhood writ clear upon her, and causing her to look at those other mothers with kindly, friendly eyes.
"Ari bahin!" said one with a nudge to her neighbour. "Tis for sure she who played bat and ball last year like a boy. Wah! that is over; she knows her work now."
"I trow not," replied another shrilly. "She hath been sitting with the potter"s eyes upon her this half hour past. She is bad, caring but for her pleasure."
"Mayhap she knows not," said an older voice, "and they have no mothers, these ones, nor mothers-in-law. Yea! "tis true. My man went to dig for the sahibs the year there was no corn in the land, and he hath told me.
They marry of themselves and there is none to see to them that they fall not into ignorant mischief. It is fool"s work."
"No mothers-in-law?" t.i.ttered a bold-faced lump. "Ai teri! that is no fool"s work."
But the elder woman had risen, to stand a few steps nearer Rose, looking down at her with dignified wonder.
"May the Lord send a son," she began, going to the very root of the matter without preamble.
"I will take what He chooses to send me, mother," replied Rose, smiling.
"Tsi-si-si!" The matron"s pliant forefinger wagged _sideways_, in that most impressive gesture of denial never seen out of India.
"Mention not such things, my daughter," went on the grave voice, "lest He take thee at the word. Then what wouldst say? And see! Go no more to the potter"s yard. It is not safe. Wouldst have the son come to thee with his mark on the breast? I trow not."
They had come forward one by one to cl.u.s.ter round the speaker, their dark a.s.senting eyes on Rose.
""Tis not to be helped, though," put in another. "Do I not know? I, Jewun, whose son died of it this year; yet I remember the old ways and my mother"s counsel. Lo! it is Fate; naught else. And "tis better to crack and be done with it. Then folk know. Not like my new milk-jar this day. Sound to sight and touch, yet six good quarts of milk spilled on the ground, as it crumbled like sand ere a body could get a hand to it. The old man shall give me another in its place. It is not fair."
"Nay! Mai Jewun," put in a third, "a pot comes to pieces ever; if not one, then another way, when it is tired of going to the well for water.
Thou hast naught to complain about. Ai sisters! hither returns the sahib! He will be angry that we have spoken to his mem."
"He will not be angry," protested Rose; but the thought was beyond them. They were off swiftly, yet sedately, only the elder woman pausing to waggle her finger again, and say, "Go not to the potter"s. It is not well. I, Junto, mother of seven, say so."
There were tears in Rose"s eyes when Lewis came up and in consequence he did look angrily at the retreating figures. She was pale and tired, he said, and must send an excuse to Mrs. Dalel. He would not have her knocking herself up with other folks" infants. So they went back quietly to the two white tents standing beyond the Mori gate, where the pigeons, as of old, circled iridescent round the dark niches. As of old, too, the clash of silver anklets came from the shadows, since Chandni was back again in her old haunts; but with a recognised position, for her Highness Beatrice Elflida Norma was a shrewd little person, and knew that she would need help to hold her own amid the intrigues of that surely-coming long minority which lay in the future.
It is a recurring fraction that long minority, in the problem of our dealings with petty princ.i.p.alities and powers; for civilisation does not conduce to longevity with the native n.o.bleman, and Dalel, with the income from the stud farm, was diligently burning his feeble little const.i.tution at both ends. On the sly, however, for virtue, to all outward appearance, reigned at Hodinuggur. Only that morning Rose had inspected a female school with rows of nice little girls with very clean primers and brand-new slates. A brand-new visitors" book, too, in which Rose had, with some misgivings, inscribed her name at the end of a trite little remark on the blessings of education; for she was only just beginning to make up her bundle of opinions, and was not quite sure of them.
But that night, as he was carefully guiding her steps through the maze of ropes and pegs to the door of the sleeping-tent, she paused suddenly to say to her husband--
"Lewis! I"m glad we came here. I thought it would be so painful seeing George"s deserted grave and reviving the old memories; but it has only seemed to make it all more natural, to make everything, somehow, more simple."
This, then, was what the years were bringing to Rose. She and Lewis were very happy; though sometimes, especially when they were out in camp together, alone, he would enter a feeble protest against her lack of sentiment. When, after work and dinner were over, they sat beside the roaring stove--the mingled lamplight and firelight making the tent cosy beyond belief--and he, laying down the volume of Thackeray from which he was reading aloud, would remark, for the hundredth time, that Rose was like one of his favourite heroines.
"If you say those stupid things, Lewis," she would reply, "I will make you read shilling shockers, and then you can"t--or I hope you won"t."
"Oh! it is all very well to scoff," he would continue in injured tones, "but I am the victim of an unrequited attachment. You are the heroine of my romance always, and you never had a romance at all."
"Well, dear! that is better than having one with some one else, isn"t it?" she would reply placidly, and Lewis"s hand would reach out to touch the one which was so busy with needles, and thimbles, and threads--just to touch it for an instant, in a certain shamefast, deprecatory acknowledgment of her wisdom. For he knew quite well that he, like most men, had had several romances in his life, and that the possibility of several more remained in him. Whether the climax of Rose"s dream of the future ever came about, and the boys got into sc.r.a.pes, cannot be told; for the simple reason that Lewis himself is still within the torrid zone of life. But he does his best to prepare for the crisis, and he follows his wife"s lead in this; that he finds life more simple and less sad as time goes on and he faces its facts less egotistically.
Gwen Boynton, however, found it quite the reverse. She married Colonel Tweedie two years after Dan"s death, having, she said, buried all thoughts of personal happiness in the grave of the only man she had ever loved. This, as usual with Gwen"s remarks, was true in itself, and yet left her free to marry for position without remorse; or rather, accurately speaking, to utilise her regrets as a motive for doing what she wanted to do without remorse. So she made Colonel Tweedie an excellent wife, much to his delight and comfort, for as Rose acknowledged, he sorely needed some one to keep him from fussing when she had gone to perform the same kind office to Lewis. Nevertheless, Gwen Boynton, when she came back to society after the shock of Dan"s death, had lost some of her charm, and, from being a fascinating woman, had become elegant and interesting, as befitted one with a history.
Life, she said, was so mysterious. Humanity a mere shuttlec.o.c.k in the hand of Fate beaten backwards and forwards by devastating pa.s.sions!
Altogether the world was a sad sojourning in which a vague mysticism was the only anodyne for the sensitive.
She became a half-hearted disciple of Madame Blavatsky"s, and reached what may be called the climax of her kindly, absolutely untrustworthy nature, when with tears in her eyes and much gentle mournful resignation to the mysterious inevitable, she would tell the story which she had heard from Rose, of how Dan Fitzgerald and George Keene had been measured for heroes in the potter"s yard, and of their sad deaths within the year. Of course it was incredible; and yet----?
Thus, none of the actors in the little drama ever knew the whole truth about it. Gwen had the best chance so far as facts went, but she, being handicapped by her method of vision, failed to see her real part in the tragedy; for she resolutely set aside the possibilities of that hour during which her _dandy_ waited outside the dressmaker"s.
Besides, she knew no more than the rest of the other key to the position which lay in Azizan"s love for George. And this was hidden even from him, though every night, winter and summer, an odd little light--like a lost star--twinkled on the summit of the shadowy Mound of Hodinuggur. It was the oil-cresset which the old potter put nightly on the girl"s grave to prevent her from having bad dreams. The branded brick bungalow was empty and deserted now that the sluice-gate required no guarding, so there was no one to see its feeble yet persistent light; still it could be seen distinctly from the little enclosure where, on a white marble slab, the legend ran--
"St. George Keene, aged 21, Who died alone at his post."
And between the two graves the gleaming streak of the big ca.n.a.l lay like a sword splitting the world into East and West.
THE END.