Chapter II (1)

"So, seest thou, Kabootri, thou wilt turn Christian and then I will marry thee." Aggie's outlook on the future went so far, and left the rest to Providence; the girl's went further.

"_Trra!_" she commented. "That is fool's talk. I am a bird-slayer: how could we live without the pigeons and the mosque? Thou hast no money."

They were sitting on the flight of steps once more, with a cage full of scarlet avitovats between them, so that the passers-by could not see the hands that were locked in each other behind the cage.

"Then I will marry thee, and become a heathen," amended Agamemnon, giving a squeeze to what he held. She smiled, and the soft curves of her chin seemed to melt into those of her long throat, as she hung her head and looked at him as if he were the most beautiful thing in her world. "That is wiser," she said, "and if thou dost not marry me I will kill myself. So that is settled." He gave another squeeze to her hand, and she smiled again. Then they sat gazing at each other across the avitovats, hand in hand like a couple of children; for there was guilelessness in his eyes and innocence in hers.

"Lo!" she said suddenly. "I know not now why I said 'hens.'" She paused, failing to find her own meaning, and so came back to more practical matters. "Thou hadst best be buying the birds, Aga-Meean[51] [for so, to suit her estimate of him, she had chosen to amend his name], or folk will wonder. And if thou wilt leave them in the old place in the Queen's Gardens I will fetch them away, and thou canst buy them of me again next Friday."

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[Footnote 51: _Aga_, noble; _Meean_, prince.]

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There was no cunning in her manner, only a solid grasp on the exigencies of the position. Had he not a mother living in a house with a verandah, and was not her father a bird-seller? Was he not at that moment betting on the Nawab's coming pigeon-race on the platform above them? Despite these exigencies, however, the past three weeks had been pleasant; if Aggie was still rather hazy as to the difference between young cocks and old hens, it was from no lack of experience in the buying of avitovats. Kabootri used to give him the money wherewith to buy them, and leave it again in the hiding-place where she found the birds; so it was not an expensive amusement to either of them. And if Agamemnon Menelaus had not grasped the determination which underlay the girl's threats of taking life it was from no lack of hearing them, ay, and of shivering at them. The savage, reckless young figure, startling the sunshine and shadow of the narrow lanes with its shrill cry, "I will kill, I will kill, yea, I will take life!" had filled him with a sort of proud bewilderment, a sacred admiration. And other things had brought the same dizzy content with them. That same figure, sidling along the rose-red copings like any pigeon, to gain the marble cupolas where the young birds were to be found,--those young birds which must be taught betimes to play her game of Life and Death, as all her world must be taught to play it,--was fascinating. It was disturbing when it sat close to him in the Queen's Gardens, eating rose comfits bought out of the blood-money, and cooing to him like any dove, while the pigeons in the trees above it called "_Ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri_," as if they were jealous.

The outcome of it all, however, was, as yet, no more than the discarding of boots in favour of native shoes, and the supplanting of the grey wide-awake by a white and gold saucer-cap which only cost four annas, and lay on the dark waves of the lad's small head as if it had been made for it. Kabootri clasped her hands tight in sheer admiration as she watched him go down the steps with the cage of scarlet avitovats; but Mrs. Gibbs, while admitting the superlative beauty of the combination, burst into floods of lamentation at the sight, for it was a symptom she had seen often in lads of Aggie's age. His elder brother had begun that way; that elder brother who was now a thorn in the side of every chaplain from Peshawur to Calcutta by reason of his disconcerting desire to live as a heathen and be saved as a Christian.

So, when Aggie, with a spark of unusual spirit, had refused to put on the boots which she had made the servant (for, of course, there had to be a servant in a house with a verandah) black with the greatest care; in other words, when he had refused to go to church, since native shoes and a Delhi cap are manifestly incompatible with a surplice, she went over to a bosom friend and wept again. But Mrs. Rosario was of a different type altogether. She seldom wept, taking life with a pure philosophy, and making her living out of her handsome daughters by marrying them off to the first comer on the chance of his doing well.

"There is no--need--to cry," she said comfortably, in the curious half-_staccato_, half-_legato_ intonation of her race. "Your boy is--no--worse than all boys. If they do not get--on--a place or get married they fall--into mischief. God made them--so, and we must bow to--His will, as we are Christians and not heathen. And girls are--like--that too. If they--do--not--get--married they will give trouble. So, if you ask my--advice, I say that if--you--cannot--get your poor boy on--a--place you had better get--him--a--wife, or the bad black woman in the bazaar will--lead--him--to bad ways; for he is a handsome boy, almost as handsome as my Lily. He is too young, perhaps, and she--is--too--young--too, but if you like he can beau my Lily. You can ask some--one--for--clothes, and then he can beau Lily to the choir. And give a little hop in your place, Mrs. Gibbs. When my girls try me I give hops. It makes them all--right, and your boy--will--be--all--right--too. You live too quiet, Mrs. Gibbs, for young folk; they will have some pleasure. So get your son nice new clothes, and I--will--give--a--hop at my place, and send my cook to help yours."

This solid sense caused Mrs. Gibbs to lie in wait for the chaplain in his verandah, armed with a coarse cotton handkerchief soaked in patchouli, and an assertion that Aggie's absence from the choir was due to unsuitable clothes. And both tears and scent being unbearable, she went back with quite a large bundle of garments which had belonged to a merry English boy who had come out to join his parents, only to die of enteric fever. "Give them away in charity, my dear," the father had said in a hard voice, "the boy would have liked it so best himself." So the mother, with hopeless tears over the scarce-worn things, had sent them over to the chaplain for his poor.

Thus it happened that before Kabootri had recovered from her intense delight at the cap, Mrs. Gibbs was laying out a beautiful suit, cut to the latest fashion, to await Aggie's return from one of those absences which had become so alarmingly frequent. There was a brand-new red tie, also a pair of lavender gloves, striped socks, and patent-leather pumps. To crown all, there was a note on highly scented paper with an L on it in lilies of the valley, in which Mrs. Rosario and her daughters requested the pleasure of Mr. Agamemnon Menelaus Gibbs' company at a hop that evening. What more could a young man like Aggie want for his regeneration? Nothing apparently: it was impossible, for instance, to think of sitting on the steps with Kabootri in a suit made by an English tailor, a tall hat, and a pair of lavender kid gloves. Yet the fine feathers had to be worn when, in obedience to the R.S.V.P. in the corner of the scented note, he had to take over a reply in which Mr. Agamemnon Menelaus Gibbs accepted with pleasure, etc., etc.

"Oh, mamma!" said Miss Lily, who received the note in person with a giggle of admiration, "I do like him; he is quite the gentleman." The remark, being made before its object had left the tiny courtyard, which the Rosarios dignified by the name of compound, was quite audible, and a shy smile of conscious vanity overspread the lad's handsome face.

About the same time, that is to say when the sinking sun, still gloriously bright, had hidden itself behind the vast pile of the mosque so that it stood out in pale purple shadow against a background of sheer sunlight, Kabootri was curled up on a cornice with her back to one of the carven pilasters of a cupola, dreaming idly of Aga-Meean in his white and gold cap. He had not been to the steps that day, so from her airy perch she was keeping a watch for him; and as she watched, her clasp on the pigeon she was caressing tightened unconsciously, till with a croon and a flutter it struggled for freedom. The sound brought other wings to wheel round the girl expectantly, for it was near the time for the birds' evening meal. Sharafat-Nissa, the old canoness who lived on the roof below the marble cupolas, had charge of the store of grain set apart for the purpose by the guardians of the mosque; but as a rule Kabootri fed the pigeons. She did many such an odd job for the queer little cripple, half pensioner, half saint, who kept a Koran class for poor girls and combined it with a sort of matrimonial agency; for the due providing of suitable husbands to girls who have no relations to see after such things is a meritorious act of piety; a lucrative one also, when, as in Sharafat-Nissa's case you belong to a good family, and have a large connection in houses where a good-looking maiden is always in request as an extra wife. So, as she taught the Holy Book, her keen little eyes were always on the alert for a possible bride. They had been on Kabootri for a long time; hitherto, however, that idle, disreputable father downstairs had managed to evade the old canoness. But now that the great pigeon-race of the year was being decided on the grassy plain between the mosque and the Fort, his last excuse would be gone; for he had all but promised that, if he lost, Sharafat-Nissa should arrange the sale of the girl into some rich house, while if he won he had promised himself to give Kabootri, who in his way he really liked, a strapping young husband fit to please any girl; one who, being of her own caste, would allow her the freedom which she loved even as the birds loved it.

She, however, knew nothing of this compact. So when the great shout telling of victory went up from the packed multitude on the plain, she only wondered with a smile if her father would be swaggering about with money to jingle in his pocket, or if she would have to cry, "I will kill, I will kill," a little oftener than usual. Sharafat-Nissa heard the shout also, and, as she rocked backwards and forwards over her evening chant of the Holy Book, gave a covetous upward glance at the slender figure she could just see among the wings of the doves. Downstairs among the packed multitudes, the shout which told him of defeat made the bird-catcher also, reprobate as he was, look up swiftly to the great gateway which was fast deepening to purple as the sun behind it dipped closer to the horizon; for one could always tell where Kabootri was by the wheeling wings.

"Have a care!" he said fiercely to the discreetly-veiled figure that evening as it sat behind the narrow slit of a door blocking the narrow stair, which Kabootri trod so often on her way to and from the roof. "Have a care, sister! She is not easily limed or netted." A sort of giggle came from the veil. "Yea, brother! Girls are all so, but if the cage is gilt----"

It was just a week after this, and the sunlight behind the shadow of the mosque was revelling in sheeny iridescence of her tattered silk bodice, that Kabootri's figure showed clear and defiant against the sky, as she stood on the uppermost, outermost coping of the gateway. There was a sheer fall beneath her to the platform below. She had just escaped from the room where she had been caged like any bird for three whole days, and the canoness on the roof below was looking up at her prisoner helplessly.

"Listen, my pigeon, my beloved!" she wheedled breathlessly. "Come down, and let us talk it over together."

"Open the door, I say," came the shrill young voice. "Open, or I kill myself! Open, or I kill!"

"Heart's blood! Listen! He shall be a young man, a handsome man."

Handsome, young! Was not Aga-Meean young? Was he not handsome? The thought made her voice shriller, clearer. "Open the door, or I kill! Open, or I take life!" The words were the words of the young tiger-cat that had been wont to startle the sunshine and the shadow, making Sri Parasnath seek his cash-box incontinently; but there was a new note of appeal in their determination; for if it was but three days since she had been caged, it was six since she had seen Aga-Meean. What had become of him? Had he sought and missed her? Had he not?

"Listen, my bird," came the wheedling voice; "come down and listen. Kabootri! I swear that if thou likest not this one I will let thee go and seek another. I swear it, child."

The sidling feet edged nearer along the coping, for this respite would at least give time. "Swear it on the Holy Book. So--in thy right hand and in thy left. Let me see it." She stretched her own hands out over the depths, and at the sight the expectant pigeons came wheeling round her.

"I swear by God and His prophet," began the old canoness, gabbling as fast as she could over the oath; but above her breathless mumble came a little shriek, a little giggle, and a girl's voice from below. "Ah, Mr. Gibbs! You are so naughty, so very naughty!"

Kabootri could not understand the words, but the giggle belongs to all tongues, and it jarred upon her passion, her despair. She looked down, and saw a well-known figure, changed utterly by a familiar, yet unfamiliar, dress. She saw two girls about her own age, with tiny waists, huge sleeves, and hats. It was Aga-Meean, escorting the two Miss Rosarios, who had expressed a desire to see the mosque. And she saw something else; she saw the look which the prettiest of the two girls gave to Aga-Meean; she saw the look he gave in return. Her sidling feet paused; she swayed giddily.

"Kabootri! Kabootri!" called the woman on the roof, eagerly, anxiously, "I have sworn it. Come down, my pigeon, come down, my dove! It makes me dizzy."

So that was Aga-Meean! The mistress said sooth; the wings made one dizzy, the wings,--the wings of a dove!

She had them! For the wind caught the wide folds of her veil, and claimed a place in the wide, fluttering sheen of her bodice, as she fell, and fell, and fell, down from the marble cupolas, past the purple shadow of the great gateway, to the wide platform where the doves are bought and sold. And some of the pigeons followed her, and some sat sidling on the coping, calling "_Ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri_." But those of them who knew her best fled affrighted into the golden halo of sunshine behind the rose-red pile.

THE SWIMMERS[52]

"Miriam, Miriam, what is it? Canst thou not tell a body, bound to a millstone as I? Thy tongue goes fast enough when I wish thee silent!" It was a woman's voice that was beginning to lose its fulness and sweetness, in other words, its womanliness, which called up from the courtyard, where the hum of the quern grinding the yellow Indian corn deadened all other sounds.

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[Footnote 52: Copyright, 1895, by Macmillan & Co.]

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"It is naught, mother! Only Hussan and Husayn once more." It was a woman's voice also from the roof where the Indian corn was drying to a richer gold in the sunlight; but it was a voice which had hardly come as yet to its full roundness, in other words, to its perfect womanliness.

"Hussan and Husayn! What makes them be for ever fighting like young cocks?"

There was an instant's pause; then the voice from the roof came piously, "God knows!"

Probably He did, but Miriam herself might have been less modest as to her knowledge. For the case stood thus. It was a corner house between two sequestered alleys which intersected each other at right angles, and there had been a lingering lover, expectant of some recognition, in each alley. Now, if half-a-handful of golden corn be thrown as a guerdon over the parapet just at the angle, and if the lovers, hot-blooded young sparks, spring forward incontinently to pick up the precious grains and meet, then----

"Indeed, mother, they were very like cocks," remarked Miriam gravely, as she stepped daintily down the narrow mud-stairs again to resume her spinning in the courtyard. Once more she spoke truth, but hardly the whole truth; since when featherless bipeds are picking up grains of corn out of a gutter, they can hardly avoid a resemblance to feathered ones.

So the whir of the wheel joined the hum of the quern, and both formed a background to her sudden girlish laugh at the recollection of what she had seen through the peep-hole in the parapet.

The whole thing was a play to this Osmanzai girl, who, for all her seclusion, knew perfectly well that she was the beauty of the village, and that many another spark besides Hussan and Husayn would be only too glad of half-a-handful of Indian corn to pick up out of the gutter. But these two being the most expert swimmers in that quaint bare colony of huts set on a loose shale slope with the wild wicked rush of the Indus at its foot, were, perhaps, the most interesting. That is to say, if you excepted Khasia, the big soft shepherd who came down sometimes from the grassy, fir-crowned slopes higher up the gorge; the Maha-ban or Great Forest Hills, beyond which lay the Black Mountain.

A strange wild country, is this of the Indus gorge, just as the great river begins to think of the level plains in front of it. A strange wild people are those who live in that close-packed, flat-roofed village upon the shale slope, where a footfall sends the thin leaves of mica-schist slithering away into the rushing river. There is no stranger country, no wilder people. For this is Sitana, the place of refuge for every Mohammedan fanatic who finds the more civilised plains too hot even for his fiery faith; Sitana, the dwelling-place of the Syyuds who, since the days of their great leader Ahmad, have spent their lives in killing every hell-doomed infidel they can get hold of in cold blood. And as the pigs of Hindus live on the other side of the rushing river, it follows that those who kill must also swim, since there is no bridge far or near. That was why Hussan and Husayn, and many another of their sort, with carefully oiled thews and sinews of bronze, would go down the shale slope on dark nights and slip softly into the ice-cold stream. Then, if there was a glint of moon, you could see them caught in the great upward curve of the mad current inshore, the two skin-bladders that were slung under their armpits making it look as if six dark heads, not two, were drifting down and down; yet somehow drifting nearer and nearer to the other side where the pigs of Hindus were to be found. But even a glint of moon kept them, as a rule, talking of future nights--unless there was some cause to raise their recklessness to fever-height; for even that glint was enough to make the police watchers on the other, the English, side slip softly also into the stream, and give chase. A strange, wild chase indeed it was; down and down in the dark till the blockade was run, or the venture abandoned for another night. Or stranger, wilder still, two men with knives met on the crest of the current and fought a strange, bloodless fight, hacking at the bladders because they were larger than the head, and the loss of them meant equally certain disablement. For there was nothing to be done in that wild stream if they were pricked but to cast them free and dive--to dive down and down past the current, to come up, please God! nearer home.

So, because of those watchers on the other side, the Sitana swimmers could not start openly, nor from the same place. They went singly, silently, but the next morning ere the light came fully they would all be resting together on the steps of the little mosque; unless, indeed, some of them had not returned; were, in fact, to return no more. And the worshippers would be crowding round one or two, perhaps, while the others looked on enviously to hear how some traveller had been happened upon and done to death in the dark upon the undulating tract of low jungle on the other side. Then the worshippers going home would say casually in their houses: "Hussan killed his man last night; that makes him two ahead of Husayn. And Ahmad, the new one, hath another, so that brings him next to Husayn, who will need to work hard." And the women would gossip about it among themselves, and say that, of course, Miriam, the village-beauty, would choose the best swimmer when the time came for the curious choice which is allowed the Pathan girl among lovers whom she is supposed never to have seen. As yet, however, Miriam had only laughed, and thrown handfuls of yellow corn into the gutter, and said things to the aspirants' female relations which were sure to be repeated, and make the rivalry run fiercer than ever. She did all this partly because of the big shepherd, partly because it was good for the faith to stimulate the young men's courage, but mostly because it amused her.

It was far, however, from having that effect on the Englishman who was responsible for the reputation of the district over the water. The more so because his name happened to be John Nicholson, and John Nicholson was not a man to allow any increase of crime within his borders without knowing the reason why, and meting out punishment for the offence.

"What the deuce does it mean?" he said to the trembling native official in charge of that particular portion of the country which lay over against Sitana. "There have been twenty murders this quarter against ten in the last. And I told you that for every man killed on our side there were to be two in Sitana. What on earth are your swimmers about? If they are not so good as theirs, get others. Get something! There must be some fault on your part, or they wouldn't cock their tails up in this way. Remedy it; that is what you have got to do, so don't ask questions as to how it is to be done. I'll back you up, never fear."

And then he took his telescope out, as he sat on his horse among the low bushes down by the rushing river, and prospected before he galloped off, neck or nothing, as his fashion was, to regain his camp thirty miles away, and write an urgent letter to Government detailing fully the measures which he intended to adopt for the repression of these scandalous crimes. But even a telescope did not show him Miriam's face as she sat spinning in the courtyard. And the rest of the long, low, flat-roofed village clinging to the shaly slope seemed very much at its usual; that is to say, the commonplace nest of as uncommon a set of religious scoundrels as could be found north or south. So he told himself that they must have been strengthened lately by a new contingent of fanatics from the plains, or that the approaching Mohurrum-tide had raised their religious fervour to boiling-point. He allowed these reasons to himself, though he permitted none to his subordinate; but neither he nor the scared police inspector dreamed of that laughing girl's face over the water which was the cause of Hussan and Husayn's unusual activity. Still as he gathered his reins into his left hand he paused to give a more kindly look from under his dark eyebrows at the inspector's knock-knees.

"Why don't you get some of their swimmers?" he asked curtly. "I could." Doubtless he could; he was a man who got most things which he set himself to get. Yet even he might have failed here but for that girl's face, that handful of yellow Indian corn, and the fierce fight which followed for both between those two, Hussan and Husayn, who, as they were finally held back from each other by soothing, friendly hands, felt that the end was nigh if it had not already come. Brothers of the same belief,--fellow-workers in that stream of Death,--first and second alternately in the great race for men's lives, they knew that the time had come when they must be at each other's throat and settle which was to be best once and for all--which was to be best in Miriam's eyes. And then to their blind wrath came an authoritative voice, the voice of the holiest man there, the Syyud Ahmad, whom to disobey was to be accursed. "There is too much of this brawling," came the fiat. "'Tis a disgrace. Lo! Hussan, Husayn, here among the elders, swear before the Lord to have done with it. Swear that neither will raise hand again against a hand that fights for the same cause. Swear, both of you." A chorus of approval came from the bystanders as those two, thus checked, stood glaring at each other. There were a few grains of the yellow Indian corn still in the gutter at their feet; and they looked at them as they swore never again to raise a hand against one fighting the good fight.

That same day, at dusk, Hussan and Husayn sat on the edge of the stream, their feet almost touching the water, their skin-bladders beside them, their sharp knives hung in a sheath round their necks. Their bronze muscles shone even in the growing gloom; from head to foot they were lithe, strong, graceful in their very strength. They sat close to each other as they had often sat before, looking out over the tumbling rush of the wild current, to the other side of the river.

"Yea! Then I will go forth to-night as thou sayest, Hussan; and when I return equal, we will draw lots which is to take service on the other side."

"So be it, Husayn; I will wait for thee. And see, if thou couldst kill one of their swimmers, 'twere better. Then will it be easier to get his place. Hit up, brother, from the water; 'tis more deadly than the downward stroke."

And as they sat side by side, speaking quietly, almost indifferently, the evening call to prayer rang out over the wild wicked stream, and without another word they faced round from the river to the western hills. The parapet of Miriam's house stood out higher than the rest of the village. Perhaps they made it the Kaaba of their prayers, though they were orthodox enough in their genuflexions.

"Hussan and Husayn have been made by the _Pir sahib_, to swear they will not fight any more," said a girl, who giggled as she spoke, to Miriam when they were coming back with their water-pots from the river.

"_Loh!_ there be plenty others who will," answered the round sweet voice that had not yet come to its full sweetness and roundness. "They are all like fighting-cocks, except the shepherds. Belike 'tis the sheep which make them peaceful, so they have time to laugh. Hussan and Husayn are ever breathless from some struggle. I would not be as they."

"Lazybones!" retorted the giggler. "Thy mother-in-law will need her tongue. Thy water-pot is but half-full even now."

"Still, it is heavy enough for my arms," replied the sweet voice indifferently, yet sharply, "and the river is far." Then it added inconsequently: "But there are streams up in the hills that folk can guide to their doors. And the grass grows soft too. Here is nothing but stones; I hate them, they are so hard."

"And the big shepherd's mother is dead," put in another girl pertly; whereat the rest giggled louder than ever.

Was it Hussan or Husayn who, three days afterwards, appeared suddenly before the District-officer in camp with a nicely written petition on a regulation sheet of English-made paper, requesting that he might be put on as a swimming patrol on the river opposite Sitana in place of one who was supposed to have been killed or drowned? There is no need to know. No need to know which it was who won the toss when Husayn came back with a smile to say that, so far, they were quits, and might begin a new game. Whichever it was, John Nicholson looked at the lean bronze thews and sinews approvingly, and then asked the one crucial question, "Can you?"

The man smiled, a quick, broad smile. "None better, _Huzoor_, on the Indus. There is one, over the water, who deems himself my match. God knows if he is."

John Nicholson, who had bent over his writing again, glanced up hastily. "So that is it. Here, _Moonshee_, write an order to the man at Khanpur to put this man on at once." He was back at his writing almost before the order was ended, and in the silence which followed under the white wings of the tent set wide to all the winds of heaven, the sound of two pens could be heard. One was the Englishman's, writing a report to headquarters saying that the increase of crime must be checked by reprisals, the other the native's, bidding the inspector put on the bearer as a Government swimmer.

"For signature, _Huzoor_," came a deferential voice, and the still-busy pen shifted itself to the shiny paper laid beside it, and the dark, keen, kindly eyes looked up once more for half a second. "Well, good luck to you! I hope you'll kill him, whoever he is."

"By the help of God, _Huzoor_, by the help of God!"

Which was it, Hussan or Husayn, who in the growing dusk walked up and down the shaly glacis below the long cluster of Sitana, watching the opposite bank with the eyes of a lynx for each stone of vantage, each shallow whence a few yards' start might be gained? Which was it, Husayn or Hussan, who in the same dusk paced up and down the low bank on the other side watching in his turn, with untiring eyes, for the quicker curve of the current where a bold swimmer might by one swift venture drift down faster to the calmer water, and so have a second or two in which to regain breath ere the fight began? What matters it whether the panther was on the western bank and the leopard on the eastern? They were two wild beasts pacing up and down, up and down, with their feet upon the water's edge; up and down, up and down, even when the moon rose and their shadows showed more distinctly than they did themselves; for the oil upon their limbs caught the light keenly like the glistening shale and the glistening wet sand at their feet. Up and down, up and down, they paced, in the stillness and the peace, with only the noise of the rushing river, slumberously, monotonously, insistent; up and down, up and down till the cry of the _muazzim_ at dawn came echoing over the water.

_Prayer is more than sleep! Prayer is more than sleep!_

Ay! more even than sleeplessness with sheer murder in heart and brain. So peace fell between those two while they turned towards Mecca and prayed; for what, God knows. Perhaps once more the real spiritual Kaaba was what they saw with the eyes of the flesh; that flat-roofed house just beginning to blush rosy in the earliest rays of the rising sun; more probably it was not, since they had passed through love to hatred. And then, prayers over, murder was over also for the time, since they could not court detection by daylight.

"They are wondrous keen on the other side, despite the moon," said the elders of the village and the officials over the way, alike; "but there is no fear _our_ watchman will be taken at a disadvantage. He is there from dusk till dawn."

"Ay!" replied wiseacres on either side; "but when the moon wanes, what then?"

It came even before that, came with a great purple mass of thunder-clouds making the Black Mountain beyond the Mahaban deserve its name, and drawing two pair of eyes, one on either side of the stream, into giving hopeful glances at the slow majestic march of gloom across the sky. It was dusk an hour sooner, dawn an hour later than usual that night and day, so there was plenty of time for sheer murder before prayer-time. And as there was no storm, no thunder after all, but only the heavy clouds hanging like a curtain over the moon, a faint splash into the rushing river might have been heard some time in the night, followed by another. Then after a while a cry broke the brooding silence above the hurrying whisper below; the cry of faith, and fate, and fight.

_Allah-ho-Akhbar! Allah-ho-hukk!_

Perhaps it was the _muazzim_ again, proclaiming out of due time that "God is Might and Right"; or maybe it was those two swimmers in the river as they caught sight of each other in the whirling water. If so, Hussan struck upwards from the water, no doubt, and Husayn, mindful of advice, followed suit; and so the six black heads must have gone drifting down stream peacefully, save for the hatred in the two faces glaring at each other, since the river hid their blows decorously. But there was no trace of them on it far or near when the sun rose over the eastern hills, and the big shepherd, singing a guttural love-song, came leaping down the stony path towards Sitana with a bunch of red rhododendrons behind his ear.

Some days afterwards, however, the native official at the Police Station rode over to see his superior, and reported with a smirk that he had seen through the telescope a great weeping and wailing at Sitana. Two of their swimmers had apparently been killed in fair fight, for their bodies had been brought up for burial from the backwater further down the river; and as the new man, whom the _Huzoor_ had appointed, had either absconded or been killed also that just made the proportion what his Honour had laid down for future guidance, two to one.

"H'm!" said John Nicholson half to himself, "I wonder which of the two was really the better man."

THE FAKEER'S DRUM

"_O! most almighty wictoria, V.R., reg. britannicorum (V.I., Kaiser-i-Hind), please admit bearer to privileges of praising God on the little drum as occasion befitteth, and your petitioner will ever pray," etc_.

It was written on a scrap of foreign paper duly stamped as a petition, and it did not need the interpolation of imperial titles to prove that this was not by any means its first appearance in court. To be plain, it had an "ancient and a fishlike smell," suggestive of many years' acquaintance with dirty humanity. I looked at the man who had presented it--a very ordinary _fakeer_, standing with hands folded humbly--and was struck by the wistful expectancy in his face. It was at once hopeful yet hopeless. Turning to the court-reader for explanation, I found a decorous smile flowing round the circle of squatting clerks. It was evidently an old-established joke.

"He is damnably noiseful man, Sir," remarked my _sarishtidar_, cheerfully, "and his place of sitting close to Deputy-Commissioner's bungalow. Thus European officers object; so it is always _na-munzoor_" (refused).

The sound of the familiar formula drove the hope from the old man's face; his thin shoulders seemed to droop, but he said nothing.

"How long has this been going on?" I asked.

"Fourteen years, Sir. Always on transference of officers, and it is always _na-munzoor_." He dipped his pen in the ink, gave it the premonitory flick.

"_Munzoor_" (granted), said I, in a sudden decision. "_Munzoor_ during the term of my office."

That was but a month. I was only a _locum tenens_ during leave. Only a month, and the poor old beggar had waited fourteen years to praise God on the little drum! The pathos and bathos of it hit _me_ hard; but a stare of infinite surprise had replaced the circumambient smile. The _fakeer_ himself seemed flabbergasted. I think he felt lost without his petition, for I saw him fumbling in his pocket as the janissaries hustled him out of court, as janissaries love to do, east or west.

That night, as I was wondering if I had smoked enough and yawned enough to make sleep possible in a hundred degrees of heat, and a hundred million mosquitoes, I was suddenly reminded of the proverb "Charity begins at home." It had, with a vengeance. I had thought my _sarishtidar's_ language a trifle too picturesque; now I recognised its supreme accuracy. The _fakeer_ was "a damnably noiseful man." It is useless trying to add one iota to this description, especially to those unacquainted with the torture of an Indian drum. By dawn I was in the saddle, glad to escape from my own house and the ceaseless "_Rumpa-tum-tum_," which was driving me crazy.

When I returned, the old man was awaiting me in the verandah, his face full of a great content; and the desire to murder him, which rose up in me with the thought of the twenty-nine nights yet to come, faded before it. Perfect happiness is not the lot of many, but apparently it was his. He salaamed down to the ground. "_Huzoor_," he said, "the great joy in me created a disturbance last night. It will not occur again. The Protector of the Poor shall sleep in peace, even though his slave praises God for him all night long. The Almighty does not require a loud drum."

I said I was glad to hear it, and my self-complacency grew until I laid my head on the pillow somewhat earlier than usual. Then I became aware of a faint throbbing in the air, like that which follows a deep organ note--a throbbing which found its way into the drum of my ear and remained there--so faint that it kept me on the rack to know if it had stopped or was still going on. "_Rumpa-tum-tum-tum, rumpa-tum-tum-tum, rumpa_----" Even now the impulse to make the hateful rhythm interminable seizes on me. I have to lay aside my pen and take a new one before going on.

I draw a veil over the mental struggle which followed. It would have been quite easy to rescind my permission, but the thought of one month versus fourteen years roused my pride. As representative of the "_almighty wictoria, reg. britannicorum_," etc., I had admitted this man to the privileges of praising God on the little drum, and there was an end of it. But the effort left my nerves shattered with the strain put on them. It was the middle of the hot weather--that awful fortnight before the rains break--I was young--absolutely alone. Every morning as I rode, a perfect wreck, past the _fakeer's_ hovel by the gate, he used to ask me if I had slept well, and I lied to him. What was the use of suffering if no one was the happier for it?

At last, one evening--it was the twenty-first, I remember, for I ticked them off on a calendar like any schoolboy--I sat out among the oleanders, knowing that sleep was mine. The rains had broken, a cool wind stirred the dripping trees, the fever of unrest was over. Clouds of winged white ants besieged the lamp: what wonder, when the rafters of the old bungalow were riddled almost beyond the limits of safety by their galleries? But what did I care? I was going to sleep. And so I did, like a child, until close on the dawn. And then--by heavens, it was too bad! In the verandah surely, not faint, but loudly imperative: "RUMPA-TUM-TUM-TUM!"

I was out of bed in an instant full of fury. The fiend incarnate must be walking round the house. I was after him in the moonlight. Not a sign; the white oleanders were shining in the dark foliage; a firefly or two--nothing more.

"_Rumpa-tum-tum-tum!_" Fainter this time round the corner.

Not there!

"_Rumpa-tum-tum-tum!_" A mere whisper now, but loud enough to be traced. So on the track, I was round the house to the verandah whence I had started.

No sign--no sound!

Gracious! what was that? A crash, a thud, a roar and rattle of earth! The house! the roof!

When by the growing light of dawn we inspected the damage, we found the biggest rafter of all lying right across the pillow where my head had been two minutes before. The first sunbeams were on the still sparkling trees when, full of curiosity, I strolled over to the _fakeer's_ hut. It also was a heap of ruins, and when we dug the old man out from among the ant-riddled rafters the doctor said he had been dead for many hours.

This story may seem strange to some; others will agree with my _sarishtidar_, who, after spending the morning over a Johnson's dictionary and a revenue report, informed me that "such catastrophes are but too common in this unhappy land after heavy rain following on long-continued drought."

AT HER BECK AND CALL

"What is your name?" I asked.

"Phooli-jan, _Huzoor_," she answered, with a brilliant, dazzling smile.

I sat looking at her, wondering if a more appropriate name could have been found for that figure among the anemones and celandines, the primulas, pansies, and pinks--the thousand-and-one blossoms which, glowing against their groundwork of forget-me-not, formed a jewel-mosaic right to the foot of the snows above us. _Flowerful life!_ Truly that was hers. She had a great bunch of scarlet rhododendron stuck behind her ear, matching the cloth cap perched jauntily on her head, and as she sat herding her buffaloes on the upland she had threaded chaplet on chaplet of ox-eyed daisies, and hung them about her wherever they could be hung. The result was distinctly flowerful; her face also was distinctly pretty, distinctly clean for a Kashmiri girl's. But coquette, flirt, minx, was written in every line of it, and accounted for a most unusual neatness and brightness.

She caught my eye and smiled again, broadly, innocently.

"The _Huzoor_ would like to paint my picture, wouldn't he?" she went on, in a tone of certainty. "The Sahib who came last year gave me five rupees. I will take six this year. Food is dear, and those base-born contractors of the Maharajah seize everything--one walnut in ten, one chicken in ten."

But I was not going to be beguiled into the old complaints I could hear any and every day from the hags of the village. Up here on the _murg_, within a stone's-throw of the first patch of snow picketing the outskirts of the great glacier of Gwashbrari, I liked, if possible, to forget how vile man could be in the little shingle huts clustering below by the river. I will not describe the place. To begin with it defies description, and next, could I even hint at its surpassing beauty, the globetrotter would come and defile it. It is sufficient to say that a _murg_ is an upland meadow or alp, and that this one, with its forget-me-nots and sparkling glaciers, was like a turquoise set in diamonds. I had seated myself on a projecting spur, whence I could sketch a frowning defile northwards, down which the emerald-green river was dashing madly among huge rocks crowned by pine-trees.

"I will give five rupees also; that is plenty," I remarked suavely, and Phooli-jan smiled again.

"It must do, for I like being painted. Only a few Sahibs come, very few; but whenever they see me they want to paint me and the flowers, and it makes the other girls in the village angry. Then Goloo and Chuchchu----" Here she went off into a perfect cascade of smiles, and began to pull the eyelashes off the daisies deliberately. There seems a peculiar temptation in girlhood for cruelty towards flowers all over the world, and Phooli-jan was pre-eminently girlish. She looked eighteen, but I doubt if she was really more than sixteen. Even so, it was odd to find her unappropriated, so I inquired if Goloo or Chuchchu was the happy man.

"My mother is a widow," she replied without the least hesitation. "It depends which will pay the most, for we are poor. There are others, too, so there is no hurry. They are at my beck and call."

She crooked her forefinger and nodded her head as if beckoning to some one. For sheer lighthearted, innocent enjoyment of her own attraction I never saw the equal of that face. I should have made my fortune if I could have painted it there in the blazing sunlight, framed in flowers; but it was too much for me. Therefore, I asked her to move to the right, further along the promontory, so that I could put her in the foreground of the picture I had already begun.

"There, by that first clump of iris," I said, pointing to a patch of green sword-leaves, where the white and lilac blossoms were beginning to show.

She gave a perceptible shudder.

"What? Sit on a grave! Not I. Does not the _Huzoor_ know that those are graves? It is true. All our people are buried here. We plant the iris over them always. If you ask why, I know not. It is the flower of death."

A sudden determination to paint her, the Flowerful Life against the Flowerful Death, completely obliterated the knowledge of my own incompetence; but I urged and bribed in vain. Phooli-jan would not stir. She would not even let me pick a handful of the flowers for her to hold. It was unlucky; besides, one never knew what one might find in the thickets of leaves--bones and horrid things. Had I never heard that dead people got tired of their graves and tried to get out? Even if they only wanted something in their graves they would stretch forth a hand to get it. That was one reason why people covered them up with flowers--just to make them more contented.

The idea of stooping to cull a flower and shaking hands with a corpse was distinctly unpleasant, even in the sunlight; so I gave up the point and began to sketch the girl as she sat. Rather a difficult task, for she chattered incessantly. Did I see that thin blue thread of smoke in the dark pall of pine-trees covering the bottom of the valley? That was Goloo's fire. He was drying orris root for the Maharajah. There, on the opposite _murg_, where the buffaloes showed dark among the flowers, was Chuchchu's hut. Undoubtedly, Chuchchu was the richer, but Goloo could climb like an ibex. It was he whom the _Huzoor_ was going to take as a guide to the peak. He could dance, too. The _Huzoor_ should see him dance the circle dance round the fire--no one turned so slowly as Goloo. He would not frighten a young lamb, except when he was angry--well, jealous, if the _Huzoor_ thought that a better word.

By the time she had done chattering there was not a petal left on the ox-eyed daisies, and I was divided between pity and envy towards Goloo and Chuchchu.

That evening, as usual, I set my painting to dry on the easel at the door of the tent. As I lounged by the camp fire, smoking my pipe, a big young man, coming in with a jar of buffalo milk on his shoulder and a big bunch of red rhododendron behind his ear, stopped and grinned at my caricature of Phooli-jan. Five minutes after, down by the servants' encampment, I heard a free fight going on, and strolled over to see what was the matter. After the manner of Kashmiri quarrels, it had ended almost as it began; for the race love peace. That it had so ended was not, however, I saw at a glance, the fault of the smaller of the antagonists, who was being forcibly held back by my _shikari_.

"Chuchchu, that man there, wanted to charge Goloo, this man here, the same price for milk as he does your honour," explained the _shikari_ elaborately. "That was extortionate, even though Goloo, being the _Huzoor's_ guide for to-morrow, may be said to be your honour's servant for the time. I have settled the matter justly. The _Huzoor_ need not give thought to it."

I looked at the two recipients of Phooli-jan's favour with interest--for that the bunches of red rhododendron they both wore were her gift I did not doubt. They were both fine young men, but Goloo was distinctly the better-looking of the two, if a trifle sinister.

Despite the recommendation of my _shikari_ to cast thought aside, the incident lingered in my memory, and I mentioned it to Phooli-jan when, on returning to finish my sketch, I found her waiting for me among the flowers. Her smile was more brilliant than ever.

"They will not hurt each other," she said. "Chuchchu knows that Goloo is more active, and Goloo knows that Chuchchu is stronger. It is like the dogs in our village."

"I was not thinking of them," I replied; "I was thinking of you. Supposing they were to quarrel with you?"

She laughed. "They will not quarrel. In summer time there are plenty of flowers for everybody."

I thought of those red rhododendrons, and could not repress a smile at her barefaced wisdom of the serpent.

"And in the winter time?"

"Then I will marry one of them, or some one. I have only to choose. That is all. They are at my beck and call."

Three years passed before recurring leave enabled me to pay another visit to the _murg_. The rhododendrons were once more on the uplands, and as I turned the last corner of the pine-set path which threaded its way through the defile I saw the meadow before me, with its mosaic of flowers bright as ever. The memory of Phooli-jan came back to me as she had sat in the sunshine nodding and beckoning.

"Phooli-jan?" echoed the old patriarch who came out to welcome me as I crossed the plank bridge to the village, "Phooli-jan, the herd-girl? _Huzoor_, she is dead; she died from picking flowers. A vain thing. It was at the turn beyond the _murg_, _Huzoor_, half-way between Chuchchu's hut and Goloo's drying stage. There is a big rhododendron tree hanging over the cliff, and she must have fallen down. It is three years gone."

Three years; then it must have happened almost immediately after I left the valley. The idea upset me; I knew not why. The _murg_ without that Flowerful Life nodding and beckoning felt empty, and I found myself wondering if indeed the girl had fallen down, or if she had played with flowers too recklessly and one of her lovers, perhaps both---- It was an idea which dimmed the sunshine and I was glad that I had arranged not to remain for the night, but to push on to another meadow, some six miles farther up the river. To do so, however, I required a fresh relay of coolies, and while my _shikari_ was arranging for this in the village I made my way by a cross-cut to the promontory, with its patches of iris.

Deaths are rare in these small communities, and there were but two or three new graves--all but one too recent to be poor Phooli-jan's. That, then, must be hers, with its still clearly denned oblong of iris, already a mass of pale purple and white.

I sat down on a rock and began, unromantically, to eat my lunch, finishing up with a pull at my flask, and thus providentially fortified, I stooped, ere leaving, to pick one or two of the blossoms from the grave, intending to paint them round the sketch of the girl's head which I had with me.

Great heavens! what was that?