Chapter II (2)

Most, however, were between these two extremes, and one of them asked eagerly: "Any news of the brutes to-day, sir? It would be just my luck when I'm down with another bad turn."

"Bad turn go to blazes," retorted Dr. Tiernay, with a reassuring smile. "News of the varmint would have more therapeutic power than every drug I possess, an' a galvanic batthery wouldn't be in it wid the first shot. Faix even if I'd killed ye, ye'd do old Lazarus to spite me. Oh, Flanagan, there ye are. A bit white about the gills, me bhoy, but it's a foine thing to be in light inarching order. An' as for you, MacTartan, sure you've the illigantest protective pad evver a man wore above his heart. Is there any more of you would like wan?"

Yet as he made merry, the doctor's eye had wandered to where the tail end of the upward road had shown more than once for a second, between a rift in the wet blanket; for that only connection between mutiny and helplessness climbed the hill perilously along a steep funnel-shaped ravine, up which the draught, caused by the cool air above the hot air below, swept like a chimney driving the fog before it.

There was nothing to be seen, however, not even a rift or break; so he went on to dress the leg of a cripple on crutches. He was in the middle of bandaging it when an excited voice called him by name from the verandah, and he rushed out, bandage and all, so that his patient remained attached to him by a fluttering ribbon of linen.

He found the Brigade Major on his pony. There was news at last. The mutineers were coming, but not by the road. They had been seen on the old footpath to the north--they evidently meant to steal a march in the rear.

"What made ye come and tell?" asked the doctor suddenly in Hindustani to the naked figure which had brought the news. It was that of a Jain ascetic with a muslin cloth bound about his mouth, so as to prevent the destruction even of the unseen life around him.

The set brown sanctity of his face wavered. "They come to kill--and I kill nothing."

Dr. Tiernay turned on his heel and faced the man on crutches (who, after vainly begging to be told what was happening, had come crawling on all-fours like a dog to the verandah), and began as it were to haul him in by rolling up the bandage. "Who the divvle tould ye to move, Tompkins?" he said; "come in at wanst and let me finish me job."

"But, doctor," protested the Brigade Major.

The doctor swung round again at the appeal.

"Don't believe his saintship. Don't, for God's sake. If it's killing he objects to, sure isn't he helping us to kill them? That sort of thing doesn't work. See you--he says there are five hundred of them. Sainted Cecilia! if that's so, an' they mean to come and kill us, why come up the back stairs?"

"But he says,--and Koomar also, and even Hoshiari Mul--"

"Well, I'd rather trust the fat little banker if it comes to trustin'," interrupted the doctor, "for, see you, I owe him money, and if I'm killed he won't get it. But if I were you I'd trust none of them. Even Hoshiar, compound interest at a hundred and fifty per cent. to boot, does not know what he'll be at, so take my advice and sit tight where ye are."

The Brigade Major did, very tight and square on his pony.

"I'm sorry you don't agree with me, Dr. Tiernay," he said stiffly, "and, of course, being in independent medical charge of this convalescent depot, you can remain behind if you choose. Indeed I think it would, in a way, be wiser, since your fellows would be of little use."

Dr. Tiernay looked round on the contingent of crippledom which had crowded and crawled to the verandah to listen. "Faix," he said, "their hearts are whole, anyhow, an' that's half the battle. But what's your plan?"

"I have thought out this eventuality before, and am certain that our defence must be at the defile--you know--about four miles from here. I shall take every soul I can--it's better to give every one something to do."

The doctor nodded. "That's sound, anyhow. Satan finds--then I'll stay here."

"If--I fail--you will do what you can for the women and children--I shan't give the alarm now; so--so you might tell my wife by-and-by--if necessary."

Mike Tiernay walked back and patted the pony's neck.

"I'll tell her. And ye may be right--ye can't tell--it's just a fog. Anyhow, the cripples will do what they can for the ladies and the babies--though wanst those murderin' villains set foot on the summit, it's all up--so--so--I'll keep an eye on the road for ye. Well, good-by, me dear bhoy, and good luck to ye."

The sun, that was still shining brightly above the mists, shone on the men's clasped hands for a moment.

After that, Dr. Tiernay finished Tompkins' leg.

It was rather a long job, as it had to be done all over again. Then there were minor hurts to arms and hands, so that an hour must have passed before the doctor, wiping his hands with the curiously minute care of the surgeon who knows what risks he runs, suddenly dropped the towel and said--

"Sainted Sister Anne! they're coming."

Yes. The rift for which he had been watching with the carelessness which comes with custom, had showed that tail end of the road for a moment, and showed something on it--a trail of men and horses, a flashing of bayonets and spear-points.

Ten minutes after the man on crutches was the only one left in the hospital, and he was sitting on the edge of his cot sobbing like a child disappointed of his holiday; but Mike Tiernay had left him the horse-pistols by way of consolation, with instructions to hold the fort as long as he could, and prevent the damned rascals from touching even the drugs.

"Ye'll have the best of it after all, I tell ye," had been the doctor's farewell, "for sure ye'll be sitting at your ease shootin' straight long after we've been silenced; and a last shot is always a last shot." He was wondering what his would be as he led his company of cripples through the hollow of mist which lay between the hospital and the head of that road whose tail had shown the upward gleam of bayonets.

As yet, however, everything was peaceful. The lake, the temples, the isolated houses set on their knolls, even the lower cluster of the bazaar were all bathed in sunshine, with the curious, translucent brilliance which only Indian sunshine can give. Only between them, clinging to every hollow, lay the thick, luminous white fog.

Mike Tiernay took off his helmet, wiped his forehead, and looked around.

"It's no good in life making the poor things anxious," he muttered to himself, "an' if we can keep the divvles at bay _he_ will be back to tell his own story. But I'll just give a look round to hearten them up; there's plenty of time, for I can catch up the cripples in a jiffy." So, bidding his men march slowly down the road (saving themselves as much as possible, since their work would be cut out for them afterwards) until he rejoined them, he set off with swinging strides to the semi-fortified houses, in which, more for the name of safety than for the hope of it, the helpless women and children had been gathered during the last few days.

"Any news, doctor?" asked the Brigade Major's wife, coming out to meet him, her six months' baby in her arms. "Dick isn't back from office yet, and it's such weary work, waiting, waiting."

Dr. Tiernay bent rather abruptly to look at the fretful child, which was teething badly. One or two other women, pale-faced, anxious, their little ones clinging round them, had gathered to listen, and he spoke as it were to all.

"Well, it can't be long now, any more than it can't be long before Dick comes back, or before that troublesome eye-tooth comes through. If all goes well, me dear madam, all the worry will be over by tomorrow."

"And if it isn't you will come with your lancet, won't you?" asked the mother, pleadingly.

Dr. Tiernay frowned portentously. "It's against me principles, madam--but I'll use--well, some kind of lethal weapon, I promise you. An' tell your husband, when ye see him, that my cripples did as well as could be expected, considering the fog."

"Did as well?" she asked. "What have they done?"

"Gone for their first walk down the road," he replied, with a cheerful laugh, "an' I must be affther them to stop them from overtiring themselves. So good-by. Dick'll maybe bring good news."

"How cheerful he is always," said one pale-faced mother to another. "I always feel safer when I've seen him; and, you know, he can't really think there is any immediate danger or he wouldn't have talked of coming to lance the baby's gums, would he?"

Whatever Dr. Tiernay might have _thought_, he was by this time beginning to realise that in the fog it was impossible to _know_ anything--even the positions of his own cripples. "Are ye all there, wid as many legs an' arms as ye have whole?" he called, after he had given the order for them to fall in; "for, by the Lord that made me, I must take ye on trust; ye might be anybody." He paused; his eyes lit up suddenly; he gave a wild hooroosh.

"I have it, men; let's play the fog on the divvies, an' be damned to them. They can't see us, so let's take them in flank at the zig-zag. Smith, out wid yur engineer's eye an' tell me what's the length of the zig-zag--wan zig of it, I mane."

Smith, in the fog, thought a moment or two. "Close on a mile, sir, more or less, and there's four of them."

"Say three-quarters, and we are fifteen; no, it's fourteen, for we had to leave poor Tompkins wid his crutches an' the horse-pistols. Tompkins absent."

"Beg pardin', sir," came a voice from the fog; "Tompkins present. Come a all-fours down the short cut quite easy."

"Fifteen," corrected the doctor, calmly, "fifteen into twelve hundred yards. Faix, it'll have to be open order."--He paused for an odd catch in his breath, something between a laugh and a sob. "See here, ye gomerauns--English, Irish, Scotch, whatever ye are--that's our game. We're not fifteen; we're fifteen hundred."

The cripples out of the fog broke into a faint cheer.

"You've got it, Mick Tiernay!" they assented wildly. "You've got it, doctor dear! The fog's our game."

"We're fifteen hundred strong, an' we're each of us a hundred men an' two officers," called the doctor back. "Now, d'ye understand, men? open order it is--wan hundred yards or thereabouts, at the top zig-zag, and chargin' down on the divvies in flank--an' the gift of tongues--an' Donnybrook Fair--Hooroosh, Pat! come on, lads."

The next moment, hirpling, hobbling, unseen even of each other until sometimes a jostle would bring a low-toned witticism--"Now, then, Cap'n, keep your regiment orf mine, will ye?" or, "I'll throuble you, sorr, to respect me formation!"--the men were making their way, fast as crippledom would let them, towards their forlorn hope. And despite the witticisms, their haggard lean faces, hidden, like all else, in the fog, were stern and strained. Men's faces are so, when each man has to find place in his body for a hundred souls.

"Quiet's the word. Let them come on almost to the turn," was the doctor's last injunction as he posted his men; the strongest at the narrowest end of the zig-zag because they would the soonest come upon the enemy, and so on in varying gradations of convalescence, till the line of the supposed battalion stopped at the widest end with Tompkins, who was given as much ammunition as they could spare, and told to fire freely, regardlessly.

The doctor himself, with MacTartan close beside him ("so as," he said, "to increase the illushion"), were at the extreme angle. The unseen road lay below them, not fifty yards off, and below that again, the doctor knew, was an almost precipitous grass slope down to the next zig.

"We must start them on that short cut, if we can," he said to his supporter, "an' if we do, they'll rowl and rowl and rowl to perdition, please the Lord!" So they waited, the jest forgotten in earnest.

Then suddenly through the fog came a jingle.

"Tenshion, B Company," whispered the man who had had a bad turn (his name was Brown) to himself, and steadied his shaking hands on his musket as he listened. Another jingle. A sound of voices first; then, as suddenly as the jingle had come, came a thud of many feet.

_Thud, thud, thud_.

Then all along the hillside, all along that three-quarters of a mile or more, a volley--not of rifles, but orders--orders familiar to those below, and suggestive of colonels and majors, regiments and wings, and companies. Finally, at the narrowest end, a call to fire and charge; a reckless volley into the fog, and then two reckless figures flinging themselves into the uttermost void, God knows how, God knows where, save that it was downwards on that climbing foe.

MacTartan first; remembering his Highland corries and half bursting his lungs in his effort to give the Highland yell of a whole regiment. Yet beneath the grim joke a grimmer earnest lay, as in the fog he and his bayonet found something.

"Hech, now! Is that you?" he said grimly, and the something was a man no more!

"Steady, men. Follow me!" shouted Dr. Tiernay. Once more the mist produced something, and two men in deadly earnest hacked at each other with swords.

"Go on, brothers! run! they are behind us! run! Go back, brothers! they are ahead!" came the cry. And above it rose those orders. From close at hand a dropping fire; and from the far end--Tompkins' end-- quite a respectable volley.

"Come on! come on! and let them have the bayonet!" shouted the doctor again; and with the shout one or two more men grew to sight from the mist upon one side of the climbing road. But the men who had been on the road first were disappearing into the fog on the other side; disappearing down the grass slope to the next zag. Only at the turn where the doctor and MacTartan fought side by side, the difficulty of escape made resistance fierce from a knot of troopers, till, with a curse, MacTartan caught one horse by the bridle, and deliberately backed it over the edge; but not before, in his desperate effort to be strong as he once had been, he had stumbled and fallen before the flash of a sabre that passed in mad flight downwards. "Gorsh me, I've spoilt myself," he murmured sadly, as he rose with difficulty.

"What is it, man? Are you wounded?" cried the doctor, rushing up.

"Bruk me blister, sir," replied MacTartan, stolidly, reaching for his bayonet and going on.

That upper zig-zag was clear now; but below in the fog lay another, and another, and another, where the fugitives might be caught. So the battalion charged again and again, while Tompkins coming down quite easily, "a all-fours," fired volleys steadily.

The jest and the earnest of it, what pen can tell?

Till through the fog rang a faint hurrah. The last of the zig-zags had blindly been reached, and neither far nor near upon the hillside down which the battalion had charged in open order, was foe--not to be seen, but felt! The uttermost void was void indeed.

"We've got no dooleys, men," said Dr. Tiernay, wiping his forehead once more, "so the wounded must crawl back to hospital as best they can."

So they crawled. All but Tompkins; the doctor insisted upon carrying him pick-a-back, on the ground that he, the doctor, was the only whole man in the battalion, and was bound to do double work.

And the next morning, when he went his rounds, he stood for a minute or two beside a fretful baby, and then took out his lancet.

"It's against me principles, me dear madam," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders; "for there's a toime for everything, and everything in its toime; and no one, not even a tooth, knows what it would be at till that toime comes. But as I said the throuble would be over, and the rest of it is;--why, I'll keep my word!"

And it was over; for a message saying he was close on the heels of his messenger came from the general in command of relief.

The fog had lifted by this time, lifted for steady rain; so the English troops coming up found the foes more easily than the battalion had done. But the foes were dead. Those random shots, those reckless charges from nothingness to nothingness had done some work.

And part of it was on the naked body of a Jain ascetic, with a bit of muslin swathed about his mouth, lest, inadvertently, he should bring death to the smallest of God's creatures.

GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND
MYRRH

"Oh! Mummy," said the Boy, as his mother slipped a sort of nightgown over his trim little khaki uniform, "I think it'sh shkittles!"

Boy's invariable dissent--picked up about the barracks of an Indian cantonment--was applied in this instance both to the angelic robe represented by the nightgown, and the angelic part the child was to play in it.

For it was Christmas Eve, and the vague desire for peace and goodwill which, even in these latter days, comes with Christmas-tide, had made the English aliens in the station devise a Tree for those still greater aliens--the Boer prisoners--who lived among them in the strange spider's web of barbed wire, which to the casual eye seemed so inefficient a prison for enemies who had defied capture so long, so bravely.

It was Boy's mother who had started the idea. She was one of those women, lovable utterly, not always reasonable, who find solace in dramatising their own sorrows. So when, two years before, her husband, commanding a native cavalry regiment still quartered in the station, had been ordered to Africa on Staff duty, she had remained on in the big house, sharing it with a friend, and continuing religiously to care for all things for which her absent soldier had cared--even for the regiment which was still so proud of its Colonel at the front.

It was a heartrending solace, indeed, to see the native officers and men, when they inquired for the latest news, salute Boy as solemnly as they would have saluted his father; and it pleased her to perceive that the only regard these warriors had for _her_ was as guardian of their Sahib's honour and of his only son; for the wellbeing of which things they were fiercely jealous.

To this woman, militant to the heart's core yet sentimentally pitiful, it had seemed appropriate that Boy--son of the only fighting father in the station--should play the part of the "_Christ-kind_," the Bringer of good gifts at the Christmas-tree. There was no geographical or ethnological reason why this German custom should obtain among the Boers, but Boy's mother had recollections of school-days abroad, and thought that her little son, with his aureole of red hair and grave baby face, so like the absent hero, would look sweet in the part.

"It isn't skittles at all, Boy," she said softly. "Remember what I told you about loving your enemies."

"I'd wather fight 'em, like Daddy," replied Boy, drawing from its scabbard the miniature sword of strict regimental pattern which--it being a new toy--he had refused to lay aside even for angelic robings.

"But it is Christmas," persisted his mother. "Remember what I told you about it--about the angels, and the peace, and goodwill."

"I shink Chrishmus shkittles, too."

"Quite right, youngster! It _is_ skittles in India," put in a tall man, who, farther down the verandah, was watching a woman's fingers busy themselves over church decorations.

His rather reckless expression changed as, stooping to select a brilliant branch of scarlet-fingered poinsettia from the confused heap of flowers and greenery at their feet, he handed it to his companion, and she looked up to thank him with her eyes.

Boy's mother, who had glanced towards them at the interrupting voice, paused over the angelic robe, uneasily silent.

"I wish I had something white, beside the roses," remarked the cross-maker a trifle hurriedly. "They don't look a bit Christmassy."

"Lilies?" suggested the man.

She shook her head. "Lilies don't suit the climate; there aren't any--_here_."

He stooped and spoke lower. "Yes! it's a God-forsaken spot all round--for _you_. But, look here! I saw a _dhatura_ actually in blossom to-day--close to my bungalow. It's not unlike a lily--as white, anyhow--and sweeter. They use it in their temples--so why not in church? It doesn't do to be too particular--when you want anything."

She shook her head again. "It's poisonous--besides, it doesn't do--to leave the beaten path."

"Try!"

There was a pause; for the undercurrent, which had seemed to sweep each trivial word to another meaning, seemed suddenly to sweep this man and woman within touch--dangerous touch--of each other.

"What _are_ you two talking about?" asked Boy's mother, coming towards them. "What a lovely cross, Muriel! And why, please, should Christmas in India be skittles, Colonel Gould?"

He laughed. "How stern you look! I wish I could get that righteous indignation up for orderly room. I need it!"

"My husband never found the regiment difficult to manage," interrupted the wife of its absent commander jealously.

"Nor do I," retorted its present head, "but--" he paused, not caring to explain that he, an outsider sent but lately to drill a corps back to the discipline it had lost after her husband's departure, had naturally a very different task.

"Hullo, Boy!" he said, to change the subject, "that is a jolly little sword! Who gave it you?"

"Hirabul Khan gaved it me," replied the child. "When I'm Colonel, he'sh going to be my risshildar, 'cos you shee he was my Daddy's orderly first, an' then Daddy made him--oh, lotsh of fings."

"He'll have to look out if he doesn't want to lose some things," said Colonel Gould, sharply; then answering a vexed look of Boy's mother, continued: "He was a _protege_ of your husband's, I know--but he really has wind in his head. For his own sake it must be got out. I put him under arrest to-day, and told him squarely I'd have to block his promotion."

"What had he done?" She spoke quite fiercely.

"Cheek, as usual. It was over that escape from the camp. Haven't you heard? Viljeon, that cantankerous brute who gives so much trouble, managed to get out again last night. I wish it had been any one else--for he's half mad and dangerous. I'm glad the General has ordered the search-party to shoot at sight if he offers resistance."

Boy, in his white robe, his toy sword in his hand still, nodded his red aureole sagely.

"The Tommies down at the camp told _me_. He'sh just an awful brute, Vile John is. He is goin' to kill all the little English children he meets, 'cos--'cos they killed his: but that's a damned lie."

The calm deliberation of the last was so evidently imitative that Boy's mother smiled, despite a sudden pain at her heart.

"They died, dear, and so you must be very sorry for him. Think how sad I should be if--" The thought produced a sudden caress, a sudden glisten in her grey eyes. "Now, Boy of mine, let me take that thing off. Then you must go and lie down and sleep, for you'll have to keep wide awake half the night."

"Take care of my shword, Mummy, please!" said Boy, superbly, as, in unrobing, he shifted it from one hand to the other; "it's most dweadful sharp!"

"By George, it is," remarked Colonel Gould; "a trifle too sharp for safety."

"Is it?" said Boy's mother, anxiously. "Hirabul ought not--"

"It wasn't Hira," interrupted Boy. "It was Kunder sharped it, so as I could kill Vile John if I met him, like as my Daddy done over in Africa. Didn't you, Kunder?"

A figure squatting in a far corner rose and salaamed.

"The _Huzoor_ speaks truth."

The speaker was an old man, slender, upright, unusually dark-skinned; this latter fact made his bare limbs look curiously youthful and lissom.

"Done it uncommonly well, too," assented Colonel Gould, feeling the edge. "Where did you learn the trick?"

"Your slave was once sword-sharpener by trade," was the submissive reply.

"Kunder'sh an awful clever chap," said Boy, loquaciously. "He can make--oh! all sorts of fings as deads people--bows and stwangles, you know--can't you, Kunder?"

The man salaamed, with a watchful look at his other hearers.

"And," continued Boy, in vicarious boasting, "he can do all sorts of dweadful fings, too! He can steal people's purses when they'se sleepin', an' make dicky-birds tumble off bwanches, an' little boys like me wake never no more--can't you, Kunder?"

Submissiveness grew crafty. "This slave has certainly told such tales to the children-people."

"Looks scoundrel enough," remarked Colonel Gould, carelessly. "Where did you pick him up?"

"Oh! he isn't _my_ servant," replied Boy's mother. "He is Muriel's. I can't think why she keeps him."

The cross-maker rose and held her work at arm's length. "Does any one really know why they do anything?" she asked. "Perhaps, as you say, he will steal my jewels some day--or murder me. But, as Boy says, he's awful clever, and one must be amused! Now I must go and put this up. Will you drive me to the church, Colonel Gould?"

"Better come in the victoria with me," said Boy's mother, hastily; "it is going to rain." This other woman, this childless wife with an unspeakable husband, must be guarded from herself.

"I don't think so," put in the Colonel, firmly. "Kunder! call my dogcart, and we can go round by my bungalow and pick the _dhatura_."

Kunder, passing on his errand, looked up curiously at the last word.

Colonel Gould gave back the look. "Queer customer! Shouldn't wonder if he's a Thug--they use _dhatura_ poison to stupefy their victims, you know."

He spoke carelessly as they stood looking out at the bare patch of parched ground called by courtesy a garden. The lowering sky, of an even purplish grey, was so dark that the level lines of dust-laden _sirus_ trees along the road showed light against it.

"I wish some one would stupefy me," said Muriel, with a sudden passion in her voice; to cover which she went on recklessly: "How I hate Christmas in India!--the sham of it--sham decorations--sham church, for it isn't real! The reality is outside among the poor folk in the fields and the towns, to whom Christmas is a day when _we_ guzzle and _they_ pay the piper!"

"My dear Muriel!"

"It's true! Think of it! Peace and goodwill? Isn't the whole station at daggers-drawing because one lady said another wasn't the best-dressed woman in India? Isn't your regiment, Colonel, ready to murder you? Then that camp, right in the middle of us Christians, with how many prisoners eating their hearts out? And Vile John--as Boy has been taught to call him--half mad in thinking of his children who have died. Oh, I know it is all inevitable--but think, just think of him wandering about this Christmas Eve, liable to be shot at sight. There's a Santa Claus for you!"

Her voice had risen, her fingers had closed tremblingly on the sprig of poinsettia she had fastened in her breast. It showed against the white laces of her dress like a clutching scarlet hand.

Colonel Gould shrugged his shoulders uneasily. "Don't forget Kunder in the picture of peace and goodwill!--Kunder with his 'fings as kills'; for the matter of that don't forget _you_ and _me_, and the rest of us! The Decalogue is in danger on Christmas Eve as always--perhaps more so."

"I don't believe it," exclaimed Boy's mother in sudden pitiful emotion. "Don't believe him, Muriel! Wait and see! Why, even that storm brewing"--as she spoke a shivering seam of lightning shot slanting across the purple pall behind the dusty trees--"only means the Christmas rains. How welcome they will be after this endless drought! They will perhaps save millions of lives--"

"A doubtful message of peace," put in the Colonel, drily. "But hadn't we better start? or we shan't have time for the _dhatura_."

"You haven't time," said Boy's mother, sharply. "You must be back by eight, Muriel, for we have to be at the camp by nine. Ayah will bring Boy down ready dressed when we want him--so please don't be late."

This thing which she saw looming as plainly as she saw that storm in the sky, should not be if she could help it. They were too good, both the man and the woman, for that sort of ruin.

She shivered as she watched the dogcart drive off. Truly there were storms ahead! And that thought of Viljeon--childless, half-distraught--wandering about, liable to be shot like a wild beast, made her fear for what might happen ere Christmas dawned.

The verandah darkened silently after she left it. Every now and again a puff of wind rattled the dry pods of the _sirus_ trees, making them give out a faint crackle like that of a scaled viper coiled watchfully in a corner.

Kunder, in _his_ corner, sate up keenly as a snake does. There was a louder crackle of a stealthy footstep.

"Is it well?" came a stealthy voice.

"If Fate wills," replied Kunder, sinking back again to sloth.

A stealthy hand reached out a tiny paper packet wound with unspun silk.

"The sleep-giver--from the Master--it is fresh and good."

"There is no need for sleep-giving," replied Kunder, passively. "The _mem_ is drunk with the love-philtre women crave. I know their ways"--he gave a little soft laugh. "She will not return to-night. So, at dawn, I and the jewels will be--with the Master--if Fate so wills."

"Why should She _not_ will?"

Kunder laughed again. "Who knows what Fate _may_ will?"

He looked out, when the stealthy footstep had gone, at the dusty trees that were growing ghostly in the twilight, and told himself again that none knew. Had _he_ known when, as a lad, he fought against the Sahibs, that one day the death of a Sahib's five-year-old son would be to him as the death of his own child? Had _he_ known when that nursling's red-gold curls--so like Boy's curls--lay confidingly on his breast, that one day he would be thief--perhaps murderer?

No! it was as Fate willed. He was, as ever, in Her hands to-night.

Another footstep! not stealthy this time, but hurried even in its measured military rhythm.

It was Hirabul Khan, the disgraced native officer, seeking an appeal to Colonel Gould before the limitations of an open arrest made it necessary for him to return to his quarters.

"Yea, he was here!" replied Kunder, cynically. "He is ever here--after the _mem!_ Where hides the doe thither comes the buck!"

Hirabul twirled his moustache fiercely. "Keep thy tongue off thy betters, scum of the bazaars, or I break thy every bone. I give thee womenkind in general--but _this_ one is different. Whither hath he gone? for I must see him."

"No need," retorted Kunder, spitefully. "Thy pottage is cooked already. He told the _mem_ so but now. 'No promotion,' said he--I know their speech. And she--"

"Base-born!--and she?"

"She laughed, as I do--scum of the bazaars! Ha, ha!" A devilish malignity had seized on him; he chuckled even while Hirabul shook him like a rat.

"Liar! Cur! Whither hath he gone?"

"To the church--with the _mem!_ Thou wilt see! 'No promotion,' said he; and she--"

With a curse Hirabul flung the chuckler from him, and strode away into the growing darkness.

The church stood--after the manner of Indian churches--in a garden, and on the wide sweep of gravel round it carriages were awaiting the owners, who were busy within. The Colonel's dogcart was among them. So he was there, sure enough.

Hirabul Khan, hesitating at the open door he dared not enter, could see straight along the aisle to the altar; could see the cross of poinsettia and white roses upon the latter, the text above it--

"Unto us a Child is Born."

Unmeaning as it all was to him, he stood looking at it dreamily, until suddenly from the unseen transept the Christmas hymn began, and those of the decorators who were not remaining for choir practice came trooping down the aisle. Then he retreated hastily to where the Colonel's dogcart stood, that being his best chance of the interview which, if humble apology might avail, would mean much to his pride.

So he waited, watching with uncomprehending eyes, listening with uncomprehensive ears--

"Oh! come all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant,
Oh! come ye, oh! come ye to Bethlehem."

Suddenly, on those distant voices, the sound of nearer ones became audible. He stepped back a pace or two, and peered through the thicket of rose and pomegranate.

The scum of the bazaars had spoken truth, then! That man and woman standing so close to each other in the scented twilight were the new Colonel, the real Colonel's wife! What infamy! He set his teeth and listened--though this was to him as incomprehensible as the call to peace and goodwill had been.

"For God's sake, have pity on her!" Boy's mother's voice was full of tears. "I heard you settle it. But if you two pick that _dhatura_ tonight--'the last thing after the Tree, so that it may not wither!' Oh, yes, I heard, Colonel Gould--"

"You _did_ hear. I don't deny it. My dear, kind lady--think! If it is not to-night--it _must_ be soon. This life is killing her--it is wiser, kinder, to end the struggle now--"

"No! no! give her time. It is in your power to do this, for she loves you. Remember it is Christmas; you might, at least--"

"The better the day! No; Christmas must take care of itself--if _it_ can! I mean to take her away and care for her--if _I_ can. But thanks, all the same. I shall never forget your kindness."

In the semi-darkness the listener could see the man stoop and kiss the hand laid on his arm.

The next instant Colonel Gould was turning savagely on the figure which had thrust itself on to the path.

"What the devil are you doing here, sir? You are under arrest, and should be in quarters."

"It was only open arrest, sir, and the time--" Hirabul's tone matched the mutiny in his heart, and the Colonel broke in on it roughly--

"Consider it close arrest now. Go back and report yourself at once--and, by Heaven! if you say another word, I'll have you court-martialled. Go!"

A wild surge of impotent rage kept Hirabul Khan speechless, and ere he recovered himself the Colonel was driving off--the Colonel and a woman!

"Sing, choirs of angels,
Sing in exultation."

He turned and shook his fist at the church; then plunging recklessly through the garden, sought silence and solitude. He needed calm before he could even begin his revenge.

There was no doubt about the coming of the rains now. More than one heavy, curiously round drop fell on the dust through which he strode; but all was still--very still as yet.

By-and-by twinkling carriage-lights, like fireflies, began to sparkle among the straight row of trees leading to the prison camp.

Yet the rain kept off, and it had not even begun to fall when the _ayah's_ twinkling light roused Boy for his robing. But half awake, the child grew fractious, calling all things "shkittles," save the killing of Viljeon, who, he asserted, was hiding in the garden. To all of which _Ayah_, awaiting the carriage, agreed, until her charge, seated on his little bed, grew drowsy once more, and she stole off for a last pull at her forbidden pipe.

But Kunder's light went on twinkling in the farther room, where he was conscientiously finishing his old domestic duties, and preparing for new ones.

So after a time the carriage arrived, bringing with it a smell of damp dust.

"Hurry up, woman!" called the coachman. "It has begun down the road like the storm of God. Bring the child; it were best he was soon in safety."

Bring the child! How? When Boy, with his little pretence wings sewn on to his nightgown behind, his little sword that was not all pretence, was not to be found!

The twinkling lights--Kunder's among them--were all over the garden, accompanied by endearments, threats, promises.

"_Shiv-jee_ save him!" muttered Kunder, as suddenly the rain began to fall in torrents, quenching his light, and washing him from head to foot. The child with the red-gold curls of his race might well drown on a night like this!

The Colonel felt the same fear, as, waiting at the camp-gate to pass the child in, he heard the news first; then, with a brief order that the boy's mother was only to be told that the carriage had been unable to return, owing to the violent storm, and that therefore the gift-giving must go on without the little giver, started to join the search.

Hirabul also, who, waiting his opportunity for revenge, had dogged the Colonel's footsteps all that evening, heard the tale as he skulked in the crowd, put up his revolver, and with a sob at the thought of his far-away _sahib_, unconscious of his wife's treachery or his son's danger, set himself another task.

So the rain fell, and the wayfarers, keeping by the flare of incessant lightning to the raised roads, said to each other: "This is the deluge of God! Repent, while there is time!"

* * * * *

"What a terrific noise it makes on this iron roof," said Boy's mother, when the gift-giving was nearly over. "I'm glad Boy didn't come--he might have been frightened."

* * * * *

Was he frightened out in the dark alone? He had been. Not at first, however, when, half asleep, it had been almost a game to slip into the garden to find and kill Viljeon, and so, cunningly, when he found no one, into the belt of jungle adjoining it. He was not even frightened when, stumbling over the rough ground and his long white robe, he began to tire of his quest and tried to go back. It was not until the lightning which heralded the bursting of the rain-cloud turned the wilderness round him into black and white shadows that his courage left him, and he started to run blindly, too terrified to think, still too brave to scream.

But he was not frightened now. He was fast asleep, cuddled warmly on a big, broad breast against a big brown beard.

For that quaint little figure, sword in hand and with its ridiculous fluttering wings, had, almost in its first flight, run full tilt against a man who was crouching to leeward of a big tuft of tiger-grass--a man whose head was buried in his crossed arms, but who sprang to his feet with a curse at the unmistakable touch of humanity; then, as a flash of lightning showed him the white robe, the wings, the golden aureole of hair, fell back faltering.

"God in heaven!" he muttered in a foreign tongue. "What dost Thou here?"

Boy needed no question as to his wants. "Oh, please!" he panted, "take me home. I wanted to kill Vile John with the sword as Kunder sharped; but now I'd wather, please, give the Chrishmus fings--the peace, you know, an' all that--please, sir. I weally would wather--"

A sudden smile, half bitter, came to the man's bewildered face. "You wanted to kill Vile John," he said in English. "Why?"

"Oh, I don't know--but I don't want to now. I'd wather bring the peace."

And then silently the rain had begun--not rain such as Christmas usually brings in India, but the downpour as from a bucket which comes at times after long drought; rain before which nothing can stand, which seems to wash the world and the men in it from all things save a desire for shelter.

"God in heaven!" exclaimed the man, reverting to his own tongue. "We shall be drowned if we stop here. Come, little rat! Let us find a spot where we can keep dry."

A difficult job even for this man--Viljeon, prince of veldt roamers--to whom this country with its rapidly filling watercourses, its wide stretches of flood-land, was almost familiar. Seen, indeed, by the rapid shimmer of the lightning as he steered his way, the instinct of a pioneer waking in him at every step, he could scarce believe he was not mastering an African drift.

And the child cuddled close to his breast, wrapped for shelter in his coat? Who was this child which he held as if it had been his own--the child with its travesty of wings, its travesty of a sword?

Half bewildered as he was, the humour, the pathos of the strange chance made his heart softer, and his eyes grew keener, not only for himself but for his charge, as the danger increased minute by minute.

At first, mixed with his desire for present shelter had been that of future escape for himself. But by degrees the thought of the child came uppermost. Safety for it lay on different lines from safety to a strong man untrammelled; and the instinct of the veldtsman told him that the former was on the higher ground near the cantonment--near the prison he had left!

So, through the incessant rain, he threaded his way wading waist-deep at times, till on a rising bit of land the lightning showed him a ruined mud hovel. It might serve for shelter and rest for the time: if the flood rose to it he could but go on.

It was a sort of cattle-shed he found; a rude trough of mud ran round it, and in one corner was a pile of straw. He drew the driest of this from beneath the leaking roof, and, placing it in the trough, laid the still sleeping child upon it. It was better so than in his damp coat. Then, creeping to the doorway, he sate down to think and watch--alone.

Not quite so much alone, however, as the darkness of the night which followed on the sudden cessation of rain led him to believe; for not two hundred yards away, in another cattle-shed on this Government grazing-ground, three other refugees were also awaiting the dawn.

For Kunder, who had abandoned jewels in the search for gold curls, had happened in the dark upon Hirabul Khan, who in his turn was desperately seeking aid for a disabled man whose shouts for help he had answered, unwitting who gave them.

And if it _was_ the Colonel, explained Hirabul, half apologetically, as they made their way back together to give the help--well! a man might be disloyal over women--who were the devil--yea! even to a real hero like the absent _sahib_, and yet not deserve to drown like a rat in a drain; and as for the other question, _that_ stood over for settlement.

Whereupon Kunder had asked what treacherous woman had an absent hero, and had thereupon fallen into jeers over Hirabul's mistake. Was he a fool not to know it was the other _mem_ who lived in the house? As for Boy's mother, was she not palpably a _pudmuni_, with no thought save for husband and son?

In consequence of which explanation a new and remorseful respect had come to Hirabul's helping of the Colonel, so that when the latter was at last in comparative safety in the cattle-shed, he, too, found food for thought as he also sate waiting for daylight, hoping against hope for Boy and Boy's mother.

So the grey dawn found him dozing at the door. But he started to his feet at an exclamation from Kunder, who was standing outside; and then across a stretch of shallowing water he saw another ruined cattle-shed, and at the doorway a tall, broad man, with a big brown beard.

"Viljeon!" he exclaimed under his breath.

"To be shot at sight," mumbled Hirabul, but half awake, as he reached round aimlessly for a rifle.

"Fool!" cavilled Kunder, all unwitting of the revolver in Hirabul's belt, "thou art not safe with things that kill, so 'tis well thou hast none. See! he beckons to us. Let us go to him. The rain hath washed evil from us all!"

They helped the Colonel, who could scarce believe his senses, to hobble across, while Viljeon stood guarding the door with a still, stern look on his face.

"You will find the Child lying in the manger," he said; "bring your offerings--I have brought mine."

* * * * *

But only three wise men went down to cantonments that Christmas morning, bringing the child with them; for Kunder, wiser perhaps, or less wise, felt that his new virtue was better away from the proximity of the jewels he had left tied up ready in a bundle; so, seizing his opportunity, he slipped like a water-snake into the tangle of floods and was seen no more.

* * * * *

"And after all," said Boy's mother, softly, "Christmas _did_ take care of itself!"

"Yes!" answered the Colonel, quietly. "We all brought our offerings--gold and frankincense and myrrh."

SURABHI

A FAMINE TALE

She was only a cow, but she was all things, wife and child, earth and heaven, to old Gopal, the Brahmin who owned her.

And, apart from his estimation, she had value. Connoisseurs in the village, as they looked over the low mud wall which separated the slip of open courtyard, ten feet by six, where there was just room for a crazy four-legged string bed between Surabhi's manger and the door, would nod and say she must have been a good cow when young; but when that was only God knew!

Whereupon Gopal would raise his shaven head with its faint frosting of silver hair from Surabhi's silver flank, as he squatted holding a brass _lotah_ in one hand, milking with the other, and smile scornfully.

"Old or young, she is the best milker in the village, and the best looking one, and the best bred," he would say. "And wherefore not? Is she not Surabhi the Great Milk-Mother, whom even the gods worship? Since without her where would the little godlings be?" And then he would pop down the _lotah_ and cease milking for a moment, so that both hands might be free for a reverential _salaam_ to the old cow who, at the cessation, would turn her mild white face--the real Brahmini zebu face with its wide dewy black nostril, wide dewy black eyes, and long lopping ears--to see what had come to old Gopi; and as often as not, would give his round frosted black poll a lick round with her black frosted tongue, by way of encouragement to go on, as if he had been a calf!

But the connoisseurs over the wall would snigger, and touch their foreheads, and say that Gopal Das was getting quite childish and mixed up things. Though, no doubt, the great Surabhi must have been just such another cow, since the old man said right. There was not her like in the village. No! not even now that Govinda had brought home the brown cow with five teats, which had taken the prize at the _Huzoor's_ big show. It was younger, of course, but Surabhi would outlast the old man, and what more could _he_ want? Then who, before these latter days, had ever heard tell of a brown cow? And as for the five teats, they might portend more milk, but were they lawful?

So long-limbed, whole-hearted, dull-headed, the villagers went doubtfully about their business scarcely less confused than old Gopi between facts and fancies, realities and unrealities; tied and bound, as their like are in hamlet and village, by the allegories of a faith whose inner teaching has been forgotten.

But old Gopal stayed with Surabhi. His life was bounded by her. How he lived was one of the many mysteries of Indian village life. He did nothing but look after his cow, but he must have inherited some fractional share of the village land from his fathers, or been entitled, by reason of his race, to some ancestral dues, for twice a year at harvest time he would come back to the courtyard, like a squirrel to its nest, with so many handfuls of this grain and so many handfuls of that, so many bundles of wheat straw, millet stalks, or pea stems. And on these, and the milk she gave, he and Surabhi lived contentedly. He was very old; if he had had wife and children in the past he had quite forgotten them. Yet it was typical of village life that no one forgot old Gopi or his rights. Whatever was due to him from well or unwatered land, even if it were only so many leaves of tobacco or chili pods, came to the courtyard as regularly as the sunshine.

And, regularly as the sunshine, too, the old man, after he had milked Surabhi in the early dawn, would go with his solitary blanket and a little spud, and spend the whole day till sunset in gathering succulent weeds for the Great Milk-Mother's supper. It was his religion. And under the broad blue sky, edging a plantigrade path over the parched plain, leaving, like a locust, not a green leaf behind him, old Gopi's mind would be full of confused piety and mystical meanings.

This was the highest service of man, this was Faith, and Hope, and Charity all combined; since every one knew that Surabhi was the World-Mother, and without her--

Here the old Brahmin's memory of words would fail him, and he would fall back on deeds, by digging at the biggest weed within reach.

From year's end to year's end he seldom fingered a coin, and if he did, it was Surabhi who brought it to him. Her last calf had long since become an ox, and drifted away from the village to fill a gap in the great company of the ploughers and martyrs who give the coffer of the Empire all its gold and die in thousands--long before famine touches humanity--without a penny piece from that coffer being spent to save them from starvation. Yet she still, after the fashion of her race, gave milk and to spare. The latter went, as a rule, to folk poorer still than the old Brahmin, especially to children; but when he sold it, part of the money was always spent on a new charm for Surabhi's neck. And it might be noted that whenever, by looking over the old mud walls which separated the village courtyards one from the other, he found that Govinda's brown cow had a fresh bell or disposition of cowries round her neck, there was always enough milk over and above Gopi's wants next day to procure a similar adornment for the white one with its heavy dewlap.

The rivalry grew, by degrees, into a definite challenge between their owners, so that when, after a time, Govinda's beast fell off in her milk, Gopi's delight was palpable, and he scouted all reasonable explanations of the fact.

The cow, he said, was underbred. You could see by her hoofs that she had been accustomed to wander about and pick up her own living like low-caste folk; while Surabhi bore token of her lifelong seclusion in every polished ring of her long-pointed black toes.

But before the question at issue could be decided, that came about which dried up every cow in the village, and made even old Gopi's brass _lotah_ cease to brim.

There was no rain. Even in December and January, though the skies were dappled as the partridge's breast, the clouds carried their moisture elsewhere. Where, did not affect the villagers. It was not here, and that was all they knew. The autumn crop, which means fodder, had been a scant one, the cattle were thrown entirely on the still scantier growth of grass in the waste land; and when that failed, custom did not fail. The herds were driven forth from the thorn enclosures every morning to the wilderness and taken back from it at eve, just as if that wilderness were still a grazing-ground. What else could be done, seeing that when cattle starve it is not a famine? _That_ is a time when help is given by the new master. God knows why, since the old masters never gave any.

Such time of help must come, of course, ere long, if the clouds remained dry; but meanwhile the flocks and herds went out to graze on mud, and if some failed to return in the evening, what else was to be expected?