Chapter II (3)

"Had the jolliest dreams," said Bannerman, coming out of his tent. "Dreamt I was Krishna among the milkmaids. Wish I could find one in this fish-forsaken place, I'd---- Hullo, what the mischief is that on my line?"

It was Sambo's land crab neatly impaled on a Stuart tackle. I began an explanation only to stop short at the--to me--absolutely incomprehensible intensity of both the faces before me. Dimly I seemed to recognise the situation and then it escaped me again.

"Tomfoolery! One might as well fish with that ridiculous fetish at once," came Bannerman's jeering voice. "What was it Chuckerbutty drivelled about? eight attributes--tall order for any god! Well! here they go. No, Sambo, you may keep one--the soul of a man, if there be such a thing----"

He had torn off five of the crab's legs, leaving three; two of them the nipping claws, which, with gaping jaws, swayed about seeking reprisals.

"There! take your offering, Siva! snakes, and souls, and all!" He flung the maimed creature full in the idol's face as we sculled past it. I shall never forget Sambo's look.

"You shouldn't do that sort of thing," I remonstrated in a low voice. "If the priests saw it;--then this man----"

"Bah! Nilkunta won't mind, and rupees will settle anything." I tried to make him understand they would not in these fastnesses of the Hindu faith, but almost immediately afterwards his attention wandered to a woman's figure which, as we rowed up the river, was outlined equally against earth and sky, while figure, earth, and sky shared equally the perfect reflection in the water.

"By George, a milkmaid!" he cried. She was not unlike one in dress, certainly, but her face, marked with the crescent of Siva on the forehead, was of a different type; beautiful too, and Bannerman simply couldn't take his eyes off her.

"Who is she? Who can she be? Sambo! Rudra! Nilkunta! whichever you are--do you know who she can be?" he queried in hot excitement.

"She is somebody's house, _Huzoor_." The voice was cold as an icicle.

"Somebody's house! What a way to mention a woman, beautiful--beautiful as--but it's the old Puritanical game! A house--a hearth mother--the British matron in Eastern disguise--Mrs. Grundy in a _sari_. I say, Nil-kunt, whose house do you think she is? I should like to buy the freehold."

"She is your slave's house," replied the man without a wink.

"The dickens she is," blurted out my companion, somewhat abashed for the time. Perhaps that was Sambo's intention. At any rate I have no means of knowing if he spoke the truth or not. Indeed, looking back on it all, I scarcely seem to know what really happened, and what must have been sheer fancy. Only this remains clear; a growing antagonism between these two, a growing disinclination on Bannerman's part to do anything but lounge away his days.

"Can't help it, my dear fellow," he would say, "it's the air, or something. If I had a shepherd's pipe I'd play it. And as for flowers! Do you know some one puts a bunch of them on my pillow every night. I believe it's the milkmaid!"

There were flowers, too, garlanded round his door, while just over the way those ominous splashes of red on Ishwara's feet seemed to grow deeper and deeper.

At last I put the case baldly and crudely before him. Something was going on which I didn't understand, which might get him into mischief at any moment, and I appealed to his good sense to put the Siwaliks between him and a temptation which seemed to have fascinated him. He laughed, admitted the fact, and yielded; the more readily because our time was almost up.

For the first two days he was rewarded by success in the lower reaches; possibly--since fish shy at novelty--because we used a native Noah's Ark, our own boat remaining in the backwater till we could send coolies to fetch it. On the third he left the river early on plea of a headache. As he had been in wild spirits all day, quoting the _Prem Sagar_ and singing French songs, I half thought he was going in for fever, the day being exceptionally hot. But on my return at dusk the servants asked if I would wait dinner for the sahib or not. Beset by immediate misgivings I rushed into his tent, where I found a slip of paper impaled like a bait on some tackle lying on the table.

"Off to the divine milkmaid! Don't wait. _Vogue la galere!_"

"How far?" I asked Sambo breathlessly.

"Twenty _kos_ by the road--the sahib borrowed the police inspector's mare--not half that over the hills. But the moon is late, and the snakes love the dark."

If it had been the darkness of Egypt I had no choice but to follow, and half an hour afterwards I was stumbling along after Sambo. Even by daylight the hills, heat-cracked, rain-seared, strewn with sharp rocks, were bad walking; on a dark, hot night, with the snakes' eyes gleaming from the stones, they were horrible--most horrible. The straight fingers of the stiff candelabra bushes pointing up and up, the gnarled stunted trees growing into strange shapes, reminding one involuntarily of those antediluvian animals whose bones lie buried all along the Siwaliks. A cold sweat of suspense lay upon my forehead despite the scorching blast tearing down the ravines; scorching yet laden with the scent of earth, as from a new-made grave.

"There has been rain in the hills beyond," said Sambo's voice out of the dark. I lost sight of him constantly, and at the best of times he was little more than another weird shape among the shadows. "Holy Maha-deo! Have a care, _Huzoor!_ Let the snake pass in peace!"

As he spoke something curved over my instep. Such things take the nerve out of a European; but I stumbled on, peering into the darkness, trying to think of Bannerman's danger, and not of that next step and what it might bring. But it came at last--just as we dipped into a cooler, moister glen, where I could hear the flying foxes hovering from tree to tree--a slither of the foot, and then a spiral coil up my leg gripping the muscles tight. My shriek echoed from the heat-hardened, resounding rocks until the whole hillside seemed peopled by my fear; and even when Sambo, stooping down, uncoiled the snake and threw it into the darkness, I could scarcely realise that I was none the worse for having put my heel on a viper's head. My nerve seemed gone, I could not move except at a snail's pace.

"Time speeds," came Sambo's voice again. "The moon rises but the clouds gather. If the _Huzoor_ would only not mind----"

"I'd mind nothing if I could see--see as you seem to do," I muttered, ashamed yet aggrieved.

"That is it," he replied, "the _Huzoor_ cannot see, and the holy snakes do not know him as they know me. If the sahib will let me put the caste mark on his forehead as it is on mine he need not fear. It can do no harm, _Huzoor_."

True; besides the very idea by suggesting confidence might restore it.

"Lest the dust should fall into the _Huzoor's_ eyes," said the voice softly, and I felt long thin fingers on my eyelids; then something on my forehead, cold and hard, cold and hard like a ring---- The effect of such pressure when the eyes are closed is always confusing, and I felt as if I was dozing off when the same soft voice roused me.

"The _Huzoor_ can see now."

I opened my eyes with a start as if from sleep. Had the moon risen or whence came that pale light by which I saw--what did I not see? Everything, surely, that had been created since the world began; the tiny watersprites in the half-stagnant pools, the flying motes in the dim air. Or did I dream it? Did I only feel and know that they were there, part of those endless, endless aeons of life and death in which I was a unit.

"Sambo," I gasped feebly, but there was no answer. Where was I? By degrees memory returned. This must be the Gayatri glen, for there, at the further end, stood the great image of the dread Maha-deo where the pilgrims worshipped; and surely the odd light came from that gleaming cat'seye on its forehead? Surely, too, the snakes curled and swayed, the outstretched hands opened and shut? My own went up to my forehead in my bewilderment, when, suddenly, the light seemed to fade, till I could just see Nilkunta's blue throat as he stood beside me.

"The _Huzoor_ has scratched his forehead; the blood trickles from it. See, I have brought a _tulsi_ leaf. There! that is better." I felt the coolness between my eyes, and something of my bewilderment seemed to pass away.

"It is the Gayatri, _Huzoor_, and yonder is Maha-deo. He is but half-way, so we must press on. The sahib can see now; there is no fear."

None. Yet did I see them, or was I only conscious of that teeming life in the jungles? Of the tiger crouching by our path, the snakes slipping from it, the deer standing to watch us, and strangest of all, those shapes hiding in the dim shadows--undreamt-of monsters, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl? Was it a dream? or--the idea brought a faint hysterical laugh--was it the Zoological Gardens and the British Museum rolled into one?

"We must cross the river, _Huzoor_," said the dim form flitting before me; "Buniah-man sahib will have taken the boat."

I suppose it was the usual rope bridge swung across the narrowing chasm of the river, but it seemed to me that night as if I walked on air. Below me, not ten feet from the lowest curve of the loop, was the Ganges, wrinkled and seamed, slipping giddily eastwards: overhead, a stream of clouds speeding eastwards also.

"She rises fast," muttered Sambo. "_Mai_ Gunga is in a hurry to-night."

The whole world was in a hurry. I seemed to hear flying feet keeping time with our own. Not an instant's pause was there even for breath until we reached the last declivity above the little oasis of the valley. The moon had risen, but the clouds hurrying across her face gave greater uncertainty to the scene; still I could see a woman's figure standing with widespread arms by the edge of the rising river. I could see a man sending a boat across the shallows with mighty strokes. And above the growing rush of the water I could hear two murmuring voices, which seemed to fill the world with soft antagonism. "_Ooma! Ooma!_" from the hills; "_Radha! Radha!_" from the valley. These were calling to the woman, and, as in a dream, I seemed to remember and understand; Radha, the queen of pleasure; Ooma, the mother of the universe. Krishna's mistress, and Siva's wife!

I looked round for Sambo. He was gone; so I ran on alone feeling there was no time to be lost. My foot slipped and I fell heavily. But I was up again in a second unhurt, save, perhaps, for that scratch on my forehead, whence I could feel the blood flowing as I dashed into the shadow of the banyan tree. Merciful heaven! what was this? A glare as of noonday, and two radiant forms with a cowering woman between them! between the chaplets of skulls and the chaplets of flowers. And behind them was an empty plinth! Before I had time to realise what I saw, came shouts and cries, a _melee_ and a scuffle. Armed men ran out of the shadows, and then Sambo's voice was insistent, "Run, sahib, run! 'Tis your only chance. The boat--the boat!" Then some one hit me over the head from behind, and when I came to myself I was lying in the bottom of the boat. Bannerman was standing beside me shaking his fist impotently at the twinkling lights on the bank, and Sambo sat aft steering as best he could; for the oars had gone and we were racing with the flood towards the rapids. They had bound up my head with something, but I still felt stunned, and the rush of the rising river surged in my ears through the thin planks as I lay. So perhaps it was only my fancy that those two sat talking, talking, arguing, arguing, about the old, old problems.

Till suddenly I sat up to the clear sound of Sambo's voice.

"It is not to be done, _Huzoor_. We are in the hands of fate. If death comes, it will come, but it will end in birth."

The answer was that half-jeering laugh I knew so well. "I'll chance it, Nil-kunt; I don't believe you."

Bannerman had stripped to the skin, and stood forward looking at the narrowing rush of the river. I could see the great logs of wood, swept from the hill-forests above, dancing along beside us on the curved surface of the stream--so curved by the very force of the current that as our boat, steered by Sambo's skill, kept the centre, the dim banks slid past below us. Across them, just ahead, a curved thread not four feet, now the flood had risen, above the water. The rope bridge! Then I understood.

"Don't!" I cried feebly. "No man--can--withstand the force--of the stream."

He crooked his knees beneath the thwarts and held up his arms.

"Don't----" I cried again.

The boat slackened for an instant; for an instant only. Then it shot on, leaving Bannerman clinging to the rope--shot on round the bend, leaving him hanging there between birth and death. But Sambo never took his watchful eyes off those merry, dancing logs, which meant destruction.

The horror of it all was too much. I fainted. When consciousness returned, Sambo, grave and composed, was bending over me. We were drifting fast into the backwater before my own bungalow, and behind us, looking spectral in the first glint of dawn, lay the great bridge, the flare of the watch-fires on its piers telling of the severity of the flood.

"The _Huzoor_ is at home," said the man quietly; "if Buniah-man sahib had taken my advice he would have been at home also."

We had been a whole day and night on the river; but he seemed no more fatigued than I, who had escaped all the suspense. For the rest, no trace remained of the adventure save an oval scratch on my forehead surrounding the faint vestiges of something like an eye.

"It is the mark of Siva," said my servant piously--he had come down with haste by rail to bring the news of my death--"doubtless he took the _Huzoor_ under his protection; for which I will offer a blood oblation without delay."

Bannerman's body was never found; but some months after, when I was inspecting foundations, I heard the kingfisher's cry, and the familiar cloop of a dive at the further side of the pier. Then Sambo, Rudra, Nilkunta--whatever you please to call him--showed his yellow-brown face above the yellow-brown flood bearing a ring in his mouth: a _Palais Royal_ affair--two diamond hearts transfixed by a ruby arrow.

I had seen Bannerman wear it a hundred times, but I had never seen the inscription engraved inside.

"Thy lips, oh! beloved Life, are nectar."

It was a quotation from the _Krishna_ or _Prem Sagar!_

A TOURIST TICKET[30]

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[Footnote 30: Copyright, 1895, by Macmillan & Co.]

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"Dost forget, brother, that it is the Fast?" said Raheem, as with gentle, determined hand he pushed the leaf-cup of sweets further from the board on which his tools lay. There were not many of them, though the inlaid work upon the sandal-wood comb he was making showed delicate as lace. It suited the delicate hands employed upon it; in a way also it suited the delicate brain behind the high narrow forehead, which had a look of ill-health about the temples, where the thick, coarse, black hair was also delicately streaked with silver; sure sign, in a land where grayness is long deferred, of a troubled body or mind. Raheem had barely touched middle age; in his case the trouble seemed to be in both body and mind, to judge by his hollow eyes and the expression in them as they rested on a younger man, who sat, as a visitor, on the plinth of the combmaker's shop. His feet were in the gutter, and his handsome head was nodding gaily to various acquaintances in the steady stream of passers-by; for the odd little shop was wedged into the outer angle of a sharp bend in the narrow bazaar, so that as Raheem sat working at his scented combs he could see both ways--could see all the world, coming and going, from dawn till dark.

Hoshyar laughed, nodding his handsome head once more: "Yea! I forgot that thou dost fast for both of us, and pray for both of us. Mayhap in the end, brother, thou mayest have to go to Paradise for both of us, despite all thy pains."

The busy hand ceased to work in a gesture of negation. "Say not such things, Hoshyar. We go together, or go not at all. Thou knowest that was my promise to the dead."

Hoshyar ate another comfit before replying with a shrug of the shoulders: "'Twas not on stamped paper, though, and promises are naught nowadays without it. 'Tis bad policy to be over-pious, brother. As all know, the saint's beard goes in relics, and to tell truth, I would be better pleased to leave Paradise to those who wish for it. The world suits me. I was not born to be religious, as thou wert."

The comb-maker looked at him with a sort of perplexed patience. "God knows His own work," he said in a low voice. "The Potter makes; the World fills. I remember when thou first wentest to school, Hoshyar, how thou didst weep because it prevented thee from prayer-time. And at the festivals,--dost remember, brother, thou hadst a little coat of brocade? Mother cut it from our father's old one she cherished so----"

"Old tales, old tales!" interrupted Hoshyar, rising with another shrug of his shoulders. "If thou hadst wished me to continue in them, why didst send me to school to learn new ones? Why didst not make me a comb-carver instead of a clerk? Then might I have saved money, as thou hast, gone on the great pilgrimage, as thou hast, and worn a green turban like thine to show it, as thou dost----"

A sharp spasm of pain swept over the older man's face, but there was anger also in his voice. "As thou wouldst have done also, clerk though thou art, if----"

"Yea, I know, I know!" interrupted Hoshyar impatiently; "if I had not emptied the bag so often. But 'tis a pity to let money lie idle. And that time when thou hadst the sum needed for the journey, I would have gone. I meant to have gone,--I swear it; but the leave failed, and thou wouldst not, surely, have had me give up my post? Then, ere the leave came, the money had gone instead. I can never keep it lying idle, and so----"

Raheem's anger faded, leaving nothing but the pain. What use was there in finishing the sentence, in reproaching the sinner with having done far worse than let good money lie idle? The fact only made the pilgrimage a greater necessity than ever, if Nakir and Munkir, the recording angels, were to be bribed to leniency. "Thou shalt have the green turban yet," he said quietly, "if thou wilt have patience. But my combs are not like Peera's over the way: he makes a dozen to my one; ay, and sells them, too, for folk buy ever the cheapest thing, nowadays, even for an Eed-offering."[31]

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[Footnote 31: Equivalent to our Easter.]

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There was almost an incredulous wonder in his voice as he went on working, while Hoshyar stood kicking one patent-leather shoe viciously against a loose brick in the pavement. "And in the meantime the future pilgrim must live," he remarked jestingly, as if, even to his effrontery, it was easier to treat what he had to say thus, than in earnest. "So if thou couldst spare a rupee or two from the bag, Raheem----"

His brother's eyes looked up, full of reproach. "I know what thou wouldst say," he went on pettishly. "I have had more than my share this month; but I need it sorely. The skinflints at the office have cut my pay for being late,--as if I could help the tram car passing full five minutes before its time,--so I had to walk. And then the mixed train, which is ever an hour late, chose to be punctual; so there was none to receive the waybills." He paused, and seeing the doubt on Raheem's face, continued: "As for the combs, if thou hast difficulty in selling, I might try. That one thou madest last with jasmine flowers in ivory,--'tis a deft piece of work, and I know one who might buy it."

"Not Yasmeena?" asked Raheem, his face hardening, despite the girl-like flush which came to it.

Hoshyar laughed uneasily. "Thou hast Yasmeena on thy brain, brother. She is no worse than others of her trade, and that will last till all men are of thy way of thinking. Yasmeena! Nay, thou knowest she hath not the money to pay for such costly gew-gaws, for she is not as the others, _now_; she is not to be bought or sold herself."

A man more of the world than Raheem, noting the change of tone in the last words, would have augured much of Yasmeena's power over the speaker; but the comb-maker was too simple for such wisdom. "If _she_ buys it not, well and good," he replied, relaxing his frown; "but I will lend myself to no truck between thee and her. And as for the rupees----" He sighed, yet there was no hesitation in the hands which began to unlock a brass-bound box lying beside his board. "Thou wouldst rise earlier, brother," he continued, almost tenderly, as he counted three rupees from a little bag into the outstretched palm awaiting the gift, "if thou wouldst sleep a little earlier also. Lo! I sleep and wake with the birds, since my work must be of the light."

It streamed full upon him and his tools as he spoke, a pale gold flame of sunshine, searching for each flaw, each failure.

"Couldst not make it five, Raheem?" came the sordid voice. "That is bare bread."

The flame of the sunshine had found a resting-place in Raheem's eyes as he looked at the beggar from head to foot. "And this is salvation," he replied, dropping the bag back into the box with a chink, and turning the key upon it.

Salvation! Yes; that is what it really meant to Raheem. It meant salvation for one soul; but for which? After his brother had gone he asked himself this question for the hundredth time, asked it almost feverishly. Ought he to trust to the chance? Was it likely that he would have time ere his life ended--that life which had always been so uncertain--to make provision for both himself and Hoshyar in death? It would not do to trust Hoshyar with the money. He, Raheem, must make the pilgrimage for him; and was it likely when the rupees came so slowly and went so fast that the hoard in the bag would be complete for years? Ought he not then to make over--as according to the canon, he could do if he chose--the virtue of that past pilgrimage to his brother, and take the risk of the coming one upon himself? Hoshyar needed virtue sorely, and yet the very thought of going forth to the Judgment-Seat without the panoply in which for long years he had found peace and shelter was a terror to Raheem. Could he do it? Nay, it was too much; and yet,--if that promise to the dead were broken wilfully,--what good would imputed righteousness be before the Throne?

And meanwhile Hoshyar his brother, a clerk in the railway, sat smoking a vile cigar at the feet of Yasmeena, who, lounging on a string bed, was drawing the scented sandal-wood comb, inlaid with the flowers whose name she bore, through her sleek hair. "Give it me, beloved," she said scornfully; "then thy promise to the saint will be secure. I must have it; 'tis the prettiest in the bazaar; even Gulanari, with all her airs, has not its marrow. See, I will sell it to her when I tire of it, and then thou canst give back his three rupees to the miser. Three rupees! I shall spend that in a day. And Monday is the Eed. I must have a new gown for it, or----"

She did not finish her sentence, but her look was eloquent; and Hoshyar, as he lay awake that night, her meaning driven home by hints of coming coldness, racked his brains for some means of procuring the dress. Raheem meanwhile lay awake also, thinking of a very different costume; of a robe of righteousness, a wedding-garment. Those three rupees given to Hoshyar had been meant for an Eed-offering, the Eed which drew so near. There was no time to earn more. Should he go empty-handed to give thanks for the added virtue of having been granted life to keep the Great Fast, or should he offer up his pilgrimage by making it over once and for all to his brother?

Hoshyar had been asleep for hours, and the sparrows were astir ere Raheem found any answer. He would wait another day, he told himself, before deciding; so he sat in the sunlight seeking perfection in his delicate curves and lines, while the pale gold rays peeped and pryed for flaws and failures.

"Have you a comb like that, finished?" asked a foreign voice, making him raise his head and _salaam_ hopefully.

"None so good, _Huzoor_; but I have others." He took them from the brass-bound box and waited; then noting the Englishman's look, said wistfully: "I had one yesterday, but it,--it is gone. I could finish this one quickly for the _Huzoor_ if,--if he pleased." There was a catch in his breath. If he could sell something, surely he might keep salvation a little longer.

"Can you finish it by Monday evening?"

It would mean working extra hours, mean working through the Festival when all the world rested; but what was that in comparison with the reward? Ten minutes afterwards Raheem was putting three rupees into the bag. He had sold out his stock, and, still more wonderful, had a promise of twenty rupees more on account for future work if he brought the comb punctually on the Monday evening. He had not done such a business for years. The Eed-offering was secure, and the chances of his hoard reaching the necessary amount for a speedy pilgrimage doubled.

The sun shone brighter and purer than ever on the crowds assembled in the Eedgah,--a huge enclosure, set with trees and with a mere facade of a mosque upon its western front, which lay beyond the city walls. It shone on no more brilliant figure than Yasmeena's, who, in the gayest of new dresses, was saying her prayers effusively; for if the daily life be doubtful, there is all the more need to have the full advantage of festivals; a theory which obtains all over the world. But Raheem, despite his green turban of the Passed Pilgrim, despite the three rupees given scrupulously in charity to his neighbour, felt glad to escape, when prayers were over, to his work. And yet the sight was one to stir most hearts: the long lines of men, women, and children,--thousands and thousands and thousands of them,--half-seen amid the shading trees; the boom of the firework-signal from the eastern gate echoing like a cannon from the wide walls, and ending in a silence like the grave; fifty thousand living, breathing beings shoulder to shoulder, and not a sound, not a quiver; only the swish of a bird's wings, only the hush of a breeze among the leaves. Then suddenly came a great shout as from one throat, and the long lines bent like a field of corn before a mighty wind. "God is great; there is no god but God!"

And afterwards he had been used, wifeless, childless himself, to wander with kindly eyes among the merry family parties picnicking beneath the trees, watching the little ones' delight over their new toys, the old men's delight over their grandchildren. Then, often, he would hear folk say in a whisper: "Look at his turban! He is a Hajji; he has been to Mecca. Look, children, he has found salvation. God grant you to follow in his steps!" But on this Eed he took off the sign of saintship ere he began work; yet as he worked he shivered as if he were cold without it.

The weight of the twenty rupees, however, which, when the comb was finished and taken to the sahib at the hotel, were duly paid into his hand, seemed to make his heart feel lighter. It meant two months' work, and that meant two months' food. Then Hoshyar must have at least five rupees. Still enough would remain to bring the hoard in the brass-bound box within measurable distance of salvation, to make it possible perhaps for him to wear his green turban without a heart-ache. His present lack of the distinguishing mark seemed to strike even the Englishman's eye, making him say kindly: "I thought you wore the green, and you look the sort certainly; if not I have something which may interest you. Here, Baboo, one of those leaflets, please. If you want to hear more, go to the address of the Agency. I'm off to-night."

Raheem, with a _salaam_, tucked the little printed page into his common-place white headgear and trudged homewards, tired and dispirited. It was too dark to begin work again as a distraction, and he had not had the heart, somehow, to prepare himself a feast as on other Eeds; so, bethinking him of the leaflet in his turban, he took it out and began to read. It was in the Arabic lettering of the Holy Book he knew so well, and his eyes were keen; still the wording puzzled him. A pilgrimage to Mecca,--exceptional opportunity,--specially chartered vessel,--_Firman_,--absolute orthodoxy guaranteed,--to start in a month's time,--a limited number of tickets available at Moulvie Futtehdeen's, near the mosque, Imambarah bazaar! Briefly, it was the prospectus of a pilgrimage, which was being organised as a speculation by a well-known firm, whose travelling agent combined the business with a private venture of his own in all the artistic productions he could pick up by the way; whence came the purchase of Raheem's combs.

"Thou hast the waybill, I see, Hajji," came a cracked, wistful voice, as an old man who was passing paused at the plinth; an older man even than his looks, for the sparse beard was palpably dyed, and his dress still had a youthful jauntiness about it. His face, however, betrayed him by its wrinkles. He carried a huge _dhol_ (a kind of drum) slung by a cord about his neck, and as he spoke his lissom fingers slid and curved over the stretched goat-skin making a muffled, trembling boom. "Not that it means aught to thee," he went on in a grumble to match. "Thou hast the ticket to Paradise already. Would I had it also! I go no nearer it, yet, than damning myself by playing to profligates, and so putting by a nest-egg against my desire. How else, since drum-banging is my trade, and drums ever keep bad company? But I grow old, I grow old. Thus the sin is greater to a soul which should have learned wisdom; but the pay is less by reason of fingers growing stiff. So I am wicked both ways, and ere next year's pilgrimage this empty maw of a thing may have swallowed me up, body and soul." He gave a more vicious knuckling to the drum, which hummed and boomed in response.

"Next year's?" echoed Raheem.

"Ay; it comes every year, they say. There was a man at Gulanari's,--God knows, neighbour, I must burn if I die in such company, and I so old! 'Tis the drum drags me to it--seest thou! it will play naught but dance-tunes, though I swear I am weary of them as a lame squirrel with her nest in the sky. I would play hymns, but that I am hindered; and a man's belly, Hajji Raheem, will not stay empty as a drum and not shrink; so----"

"About the pilgrimage," suggested Raheem, knowing the drum-player's talk of old.

"Ay, ay, for sure! The man--a saint for all his company--there, seest thou, is the pull of it---- Had _I_ but the green turban, this devil of a drum might take me where it would. But as I was saying, this man said it was true, every word. He had been and returned comfortably for the money."

"For so little," murmured Raheem, looking once more at the price named. It was far less than what his previous experience told him would be required.

"Little!" echoed the drum-banger, reproachfully. "That comes of making decent combs. Didst thou try to wheedle salvation from a thing that hath neither heart nor bowels of compassion, that is naught but a devil of a noise that grows worse instead of better when 'tis whacked, thou wouldst tell a different tale. Well, the cat, says the proverb, killed seventy rats and went on a pilgrimage, so I must wait my turn, though if I have not more than seventy sins, may I never play a measure again. I swarm with them, neighbour, as flies on sugar." He tucked the tempter further under his arm, and moved on, muttering to himself: "And I have but half the money saved, so I am lost if I get not virtue on a reduction."

Raheem sat looking at the paper stupidly, as the mingled growl of the drum and its beater died away. Then suddenly those delicate hands of his reached out swiftly to the brass-bound box. Surely he had so much, or would have so much when those twenty rupees were earned!

So it came to pass in the following days that every minute of the light found him at work on the scented combs, and whenever he finished one, he spent some of his scanty rest in toiling over to the Imambarah bazaar, and paying over its fairly earned price to swell the deposit which secured to him one of the limited supply of tickets. Finally on one night, the very night before the day of starting, he packed up the combs complete, took the price of the last one over to the Moulvie, and received in return a neat little booklet full of incomprehensible printed papers. He felt almost afraid of his new possession, with its gay tie to keep everything in its place within the cover. Supposing he lost something and found himself stranded? He broke out at the thought into a cold sweat, and hunted hurriedly for the extra ticket which the Moulvie had told him was to be used to the junction, since the railway which passed through the town was not on the direct line. He found it, an ordinary third-class ticket, tucked away safely; but the fright made him resolve on keeping it separate and hanging the precious remainder in a bag round his neck. The empty money-bag would do; or better still, there were some bits left yet of Hoshyar's little coat of brocade, and the ticket deserved a fine holder.

As he sat stitching away at the familiar fragments, however, by the flicker of the cresset, a certain remorse assailed him at having seen so little of his brother during the past month. True, Hoshyar, for various reasons, preferred coming to see him; but ever since the Eed, Raheem had been dimly conscious that something seemed to have come between him and the soul he meant to save. Was it that he knew in his heart it ought to be already saved? There was no longer any need, however, for such questions. So soon as the bag was finished he would go over and find Hoshyar; would find and tell him the great secret, the secret which even Raheem's small store of worldly wisdom had kept jealously.

A sound at the plinth made him look up, and there was Hoshyar himself. Something in his face made the sewer say quickly: "I set aside the money for thee, Hoshyar, though thou camest not. It is here, five rupees."

Hoshyar looked at the little pile with a queer expression, and leaving the plinth came within the reach of a whisper. "That will not serve me to-night," he said quietly. "I must have thirty."

"Thirty!" echoed Raheem. "I have it not."

"Thou hast it in the box. See here, brother, thou hast told me always that the money was mine--for my salvation. Well, I need it; I must have it." He spoke almost carelessly as one who has a certainty of succeeding; and in truth he thought so. Once before Raheem had almost emptied the bag to save him from ruin, and he had calculated deliberately on its being emptied again when he had bought Yasmeena her new dress out of office-funds which would have to be replaced at the end of the month. Raheem would not have given a _pice_ for such a purpose, of course; but with detection and disgrace staring his brother in the face it would be different. Besides, the money was his, for his salvation. "Listen, Raheem," he went on, summoning up a penitential tone; but his brother interrupted him swiftly, a sort of dread in his dark, hollow eyes. "There is naught in the box now, brother," he said, with a catch of fear in his voice. "I have naught but this;" he laid his hand lightly upon the booklet, and its very touch seemed to bring comfort, for he smiled. "'Tis my salvation, Hoshyar, for I have given thee my pilgrimage. See, I am making a holder for it. Dost recognise the stuff? 'Tis a bit of the little brocade coat, brother."

Hoshyar had caught up the booklet, glanced at it, and now flung it down with a passionate oath. "Salvation,--fool, 'tis perdition!" Then he laughed suddenly, a loud, bitter laugh. "That is an end," he said, rising to go. "I only waste time here. Good-bye, Raheem; 'tis well thou hast a keepsake of me; thou art not likely to see much of me these seven years to come."

"What dost mean, brother?" began the comb-maker, fearfully; but Hoshyar, without another word, turned back to the bazaar.

"'Tis thou that art the fool," said Yasmeena, with a yawn, after Hoshyar had raged for a quarter of an hour of his ill-luck, of his brother's foolery, of her extravagance. "Why didst not take the ticket? It must be worth something, surely?" Then a sudden interest came to her languid eyes, where vice itself seemed weary. "Seest thou, beloved, I have an idea! Old Deena the drum-player is for ever talking of second-hand salvation. He hath forty rupees saved for it; that would leave me ten as commission. He need not know; I can say I got it; we of the bazaar get most things at times in our profession. And the money was thine,--for thy salvation, remember."

Hoshyar looked at her as a man looks at a venomous snake he has no power to kill.

"Lo, Baboo-_ji!_" said a trollop of a girl, lounging in with a giggle. "Thy brother Raheem asks for thee below. 'Tis the first time, methinks, he hath entered such a house, for he stands like a child, clasping a brocaded bag as if there were pests about, and it held camphor."

Yasmeena sat up among her quilts and looked at Hoshyar. "Bid the good creature to the courtyard at the back," she said in a level voice. "Thou wilt like to see him alone, doubtless, Hoshyar. And, Merun, bid some man take him a sherbet; he would be affrighted of a _houri_. Make it of sandal-essence, girl, and bring it to me to see that it is rightly flavoured. Thou likest not sandal-essence, Hoshyar, 'tis true, but 'tis most refreshing to those who have walked, and thou needst not touch it."

Hoshyar's look changed. It was the look now which a bird gives to the snake.

Raheem was at the station next day in plenty of time, though, rather to his surprise, he had slept later than usual that morning, and slept heavily also; perhaps because he seemed not to have a care left in the world after Hoshyar had retracted all his reproaches and bidden him go in peace. Peace,--what else could remain in a man's heart after that renunciation in the dark deserted mosque upon the homeward way, which had left Raheem's conscience clear at last, left him without a wedding-garment and yet content? And now, with his ticket to the junction duly snipped, his bundle in one hand and the other assuring itself of the booklet's safety in the brocade bag, he passed down the platform in the rear of the rush from the waiting-shed, looking diffidently for a seat in the close-packed carriages, which with their iron bars and struggling occupants looked like cages of wild beasts.

"Here, neighbour Hajji, here!" cried a cracked, familiar voice full of elation, full of importance. "Now that demon of a drum hath gone there is room for a saint or two. He is Hajji already, my masters, and will be a good companion. But 'tis done cheaper nowadays, and I, I swear, have it cheaper than ye all. How much, is a secret; but the Lord kept his eye on old Deena." So he went on boastfully, till even his voice was drowned in the great shout which went up as the train moved on. He was back on his own good fortune, however, when the hundred and fifty and odd passengers in their carriage, separated into scores by iron bars, had subsided into a mere babel of speaking voices. "No cover, say you?" he replied resentfully to a captious criticism on his ticket. "What good is a cover? Dew is pretty, but it don't quench thirst; so I, being a pilgrim, drink plain water. My ticket will take me as far as thine."

Raheem, crouched up between the drum-player and a fat butcher, heard vaguely, and fingered the outline of his treasure in its bag of brocade, feeling glad he had so honoured it; for it took him further than Mecca, further than this world. The Gates of Pearl were set ajar for him, and he could see through them to the glory and glitter of Paradise. And so, after a rush through a long stretch of desert sand, the train slackened, rousing him from a dream. This must be the junction, and he must take out the other ticket; but not while a score of folk were struggling over him in their rush to be out first. He was out last, of course, and had barely time to snatch the booklet from its bag, ere an official warned him to hurry up. So panting, confused, his bundle in one hand, his treasure in the other, he sped over the bridge to the next platform.

"Tickets, tickets, all tickets!" came another alien voice, and he paused to obey, setting his bundle on the ground in order to have both hands for his task. But the opening of the cover was to him as the closing of the Book of Life; for it was empty.

"Pass on, pass on!" came the not unkindly voice of command once more. "Out of the way, you there, and don't stand like a fool. You've dropped it likely; run back and see; there's time yet."

So over the bridge again went Raheem, in frantic hope, back on his steps again in frantic despair. "I had it, _Huzoor_, indeed I had it! Here is the cover!"

The ticket-collector shook his head, and Raheem, with a dazed look, turned away quietly.

"Trra!" came the voice of the drum-player sententiously and safely from the window of a carriage. "He hath lost the inside; that comes of a cover. Well, well, prayers are over; up with the carpet! But he is Hajji already, my masters, so 'tis not as though it were one of us sinners."

"Keep thy sins to thyself, chatterer," retorted his next neighbour tartly, as the train moved on. "We be virtuous men enough."

"If you haven't money to go on, you must go back. The booking-office is over there, and the up-mail will be in in a few hours."

This official view of the question, given by the authorities as they gathered round the disappointed pilgrim, was simplicity itself, even to Raheem. He never thought of connecting his ticketless cover with Deena's coverless ticket. The fact that his chance was gone absorbed him utterly; he had lost salvation, for the very thought of taking back his gift to Hoshyar was impossible to him. That was the outcome of it all. So he sat patiently waiting for his train to come in; sat patiently, after he had found a place in it, waiting for it to go on, so absolutely absorbed in his loss, that he did not even hear his neighbours' comments on the delay.

"Line clear at last!" said the guard joyfully to the driver as he came out of the telegraph-office, where but one instant before the welcome signal had echoed. "Steam away all you know, sonny, and make up lost time. I promised my girl to be punctual; there's a hop on at her house."

So, with a shriek, they were off for a twenty-mile scamper across the desert; out with a bump over the points, out with a whistle past the last signal, out with a flash by the telegraph-posts. But something else was flashing by the posts also; for a message came clicking into the station they had left not a minute ago, "_Mistake--line blocked--down-mail_."

"My God!" said the station-master in a thick voice, standing up blindly. He was an old Mutiny man, but he was white as a sheet.

"It isn't our fault, father," began his son, a slim young fellow, showing mixed blood.

"D----n it all, sir," shouted the other furiously, "what does it matter whose fault it is? What's to be done?"

Nothing could be done, save to telegraph back quick as kind nature could carry it: "_Line blocked--up-mail also_." Fateful words! The line blocked both ways, and not a signal for twenty miles! Half an hour of warning at the least, and nothing to be done; nothing save to accept the disaster!

"Bring up the relief-engine sharp, Smith," said the Traffic Superintendent at the terminus when, ere a minute was past, the hopeless news reached him. "Graham, run over for Dr. Westlake, for Harrison, too, if he's there; splints, bandages, dressers, and all that. Davies, wire back to the other end to send what they can from their reserve."

And so, swiftly as hands and brains could compass it, two more engines fled shrieking into the growing dusk of evening behind those two, the down-mail and the up-mail, coming nearer and nearer to each other on the single line.

"Twenty minutes since they started, about," said one man, who was standing with a watch in his hand, in curiously quiet tones. "It must be soon now; and there is a curve about the middle. I hope to God there is no friend of mine in either!"

"Royston's in the down," replied another studiously even voice. "He was going to see his wife. But the firsts are well back; it's the thirds, poor devils----" He paused, and the others nodded.

The thirds, doubtless! And in one of them, far forward, crouched Raheem, staring out into the calm dusk, absorbed in the horror of going back, going back to die before he had saved his own soul!

So, suddenly, through and above the rush and the roar and the rattle that he scarcely heard, came a new sound forcing him to listen. It was a quivering, clamorous, insistent whistle. It brought no recognition to his ignorance, or to the ignorance of those around him, but far back in the first-class carriages white faces peered out into the gloom, and foreign voices called to each other: "Danger whistle--what's up?" Still, it was a strange, disturbing sound with a strange echo. And was that an echo of the rush, and the roar, and the rattle? Raheem sat up quickly. Was it the end of all things? Why had they struck him--Who--Hoshyar! Then thought ended in a scream of pain.

"There is a man caught by the feet under that wheel," said Dr. Westlake not many minutes after, as he came out of the hideous pile of wreckage all grimed and smirched. "He is breathing yet, so have him out sharp. We may save him, but these others----" He passed on to seek work significantly.

And so Raheem, stunned and with both feet crushed to a jelly, was dug out; the only man left alive in the forward third-class carriage of the up-mail. He was still unconscious when it came to be his turn for the doctors in the crowded hospital. "Badly nourished," said Dr. Westlake, "but it is his only chance. Harrison, the eucalyptus sawdust, please; it is a good case for it, and we shall be short of dressings."

So two days afterwards Raheem, recovering from a slight concussion of the brain, found himself in a strangely comfortable bed with a curious hump of a thing over his feet under the coverlet. He did not know that there were no feet there; that they had both been amputated at the ankle, and that he was a cripple for life. And there was no reason why he should find it out, since the sawdust did its work without more ado, much to the doctor's delight, who, as he took Raheem's temperature, talked of first intents and septic dressings to his assistant. In fact, they were both so pleased that it came upon them by surprise one day, when Raheem, with clasped hands, asked when he was to die.

"Die? Rubbish!" said Dr. Westlake, cheerfully. "Not from this, at any rate, and we will do what we can for the lungs afterwards."

Raheem's face did not lose its anxiety. "And when, if the _Huzoor_ will say, shall I be able to walk again?" As he lay in the comfortable bed he had been making up his mind to sacrifice all comfort, to leave life behind him, and start on foot for death, with his face towards Mecca.

"Walk?" echoed the doctor, with a significant look at his assistant. Then he sat down on the edge of the cot, and told the truth.

Raheem heard it, looking incredulously at the cradle; and then suddenly he interrupted a platitude about its being better to be a cripple than to die, with an eager question: "Then the _Huzoor_ means that I shall never be able to walk again?"

The doctor nodded.

"May God reward the _Huzoor_ for ever and ever," said Raheem in a whisper, raising both hands in a salute; and his face was one radiant smile.

Dr. Westlake looked at his assistant as they passed on to the next cot. "They are an incomprehensible people," he said in rather an injured tone. "I never expected to hear a man thank me rapturously for cutting off both his feet."

He did not know that cripples are especially exempted from the duty of pilgrimage, and that the patient was repeating his version of the text: "It is better to enter halt into life, than, having two feet, to be cast into hell."

THE KING'S WELL

This is one of poor Craddock's many stories which he told me when we were in the wilderness together, engaged--like another Moses and Aaron--in preparing a way for a Western people across the desert, and dividing its sand waves by a pathway of red-brick ballast edged with steel. In other words, in making the railway on which he afterwards met his death in trying to prevent a survival of past ages from being in the permanent way of civilisation.

We used to sit at the door of my little tent--two Englishmen adrift on a sand sea--and I used to listen while he talked; for the life he had led made him the best of company, and his combined ignorance and knowledge of the East was a perpetual surprise. Some of his stories were grossly, frankly impossible, but this one, despite its strangeness, I believed unhesitatingly; as any one would have done who had seen, as I saw, the indescribable world-tarnish which long years of loose living brings to the kindliest face, leave it clear, bright, and eager to a rejuvenescence of love, and pity, and pain.