Chapter II (2)

She was quite a slip of a girl, and, after a time, she came to herself; but she was so exhausted that it was past grey dawn when Alexander Blooker managed to get her back to the telegraph post in the corner of his compound. And to this she clung pertinaciously, much to his annoyance, for he wanted to get her out of the way, and find who she was, and what she wanted, before the native traders began to turn up.

His remonstrances, however, were in vain. Her only reply was a murmured incoherent repetition of her first appeal:

"Save me! Queen-of-the-handkerchiefs."

And every time she said it, Alexander Blooker experienced a patriotic thrill down his back. He felt that she must at all costs be saved--but from what?

The dawn grew from grey to gold.

"_Gott in Himmel!_" laughed Franz Braun, coming down very early because of something he had forgotten. "_Mein Alexander mit a Madchen! Ach!_ fie!"

"Stop your silly jaw and find out what she is wanting," cried Alexander Blooker fiercely, "or help me to get her into the shanty before the traders come."

"_Mein bruderlein_," replied Franz Braun solemnly, "when you have so long as me been in savage places you will-not-to-redress-women's-wrongs-learn."

Alexander Blooker swelled visibly. "That sentiment is made in Germany, sir. She has appealed to that"--he pointed to the flag pocket--handkerchief on the telegraph post which was waving in the breeze of dawn--"and, by George! she shall have protection!"

There was nothing more to be said, not even when some of the traders, coming on the scene, recognised the girl as the daughter of a powerful chief in the northern land, who would be certain to give trouble were she harboured by the Distant Depot. It would be better to send her back in their charge. How she had found her way so far was a mystery; she must have followed the telegraph posts day by day, have slept in their shadow night by night.

Some vague confused sense of the poetry of this--night after night sleeping, all unconsciously as it were, under the flag of England--day after day following the course of light to freedom, rose in Alexander's throat, and half-choked him.

"She shall stay," he said. "Let her father come to fetch her; if he is in the right, he shall have her."

"My dear sir," quavered old Pastor Schmidt, "he will not time for explanation give. I was in a to-be-compared position once. I will not be so again. I will take my daughter-ling away. I will go. There is no good in staying to be massacred when pension has become due."

It was all to no purpose. Alexander Blooker stood firm. The utmost he would do was to write a conciliatory letter for the traders to give on their return to the girl's father, saying that his daughter had been handed over to the charge of a suitable matron, and that he might have her again if adequate explanations were tendered to Her Gracious Britannic Majesty's representative at the Distant Depot. And here the great temptation of his life came to Alexander Blooker. He would have loved to sign himself "Consul C.M.G." No one would be the wiser. But the sense of duty was strong within him, and he refrained.

This being so, Pastor Schmidt incontinently determined not to brave the certainty, as he deemed it, of coming trouble. His Society in the West was prepared for his possible return. The details of how the work could be carried on by a native deacon during the six months before a new pastor could arrive were all settled. Nothing but a half-conscious feeling that to retire would be to sign his warrant of dismissal from what had been to him his life, had kept him hitherto from decision. Now, the river was falling fast; they must take their chance of escape while they could get it.

And Franz Braun? After two days of moody helping to pack his "_verlobte's_" belongings, he came to say, not without a certain tremble in his voice:

"_Bruderlein_, I also go--so far anyhow--my firm said so much a month ago--to-night thou wilt be alone."

There was not much time for Alexander Blooker to realise his position until, as the cool of the night came on, he stood by the last little landing-stage on the river, watching the Noah's-ark-boat as it punted its way slowly through the network of sandbanks.

Behind him as he stood, flared the red glories of the setting sun; in front of him, the long stretches of sand, the winding gleams of the shrinking river were fast losing each other in the purple-blue shadows of coming night. From the lessening speck of the boat as it drifted downwards on the current came half-regretful, half-joyful farewells. The native congregation, assembled in full force, sent after it wailing outcries; but Alexander Blooker was silent, save for one brief "Good-bye, Fraulein Anna! Good-bye, Pastor Schmidt! Good-bye, Franz Braun!"

The sliding shadow of the boat had disappeared into the oncoming night for his short-sighted eyes, long before the still savage congregation lost it, but he stood staring on where it had been long after they had gone home contentedly. Then he turned suddenly. The red had almost faded from the sky. Only low down on the horizon lay a band of what Ruskin held to be the highest light--pure vermilion--and against it he could see the telegraph post, with a black speck that must be the pocket-handkerchief of England flying at its peak.

He drew a long breath. For the first time in his life Alexander Blooker felt that he was not a slave.

* * * * *

Six months after, the first _doongah_ of the season punted and sailed up the river again. The Distant Depot was deserted; but there was no sign of disorder in it. The English flag still flew from the telegraph post. The Pastor's house, which Alexander Blooker had been implored to occupy and keep in order, looked, save for the dust which always gathered from the desert, as if he must have been there but a few days before. The garden was ablaze with flowers. The clusters of native huts had disappeared, and in their place neat streets of low wattle and dab dwellings converged outwards from quite an imposing edifice with "Church Hall" marked on it conspicuously. The liquor shop had disappeared. Franz Braun's dry goods store was closed and the British one removed to a portion of the central building.

The little Mission Chapel also was utterly changed. The seats removed to make room for clean matting on which the native congregation could squat. Everything western or of western symbolism swept away, and in their place, ingeniously adapted to their present purpose, were things held sacred by the natives. Here an English school had evidently had its quarters, for copybooks, headed in a neat hand "If you take an inch, you may as well take an ell," were found there. Also a few chapters of the New Testament written out in the same handwriting.

The tiny cemetery behind the chapel, surrounded on three sides by banana thickets, remained unaltered, save that, just under the east window, three of the heraldic pocket-handkerchiefs were pegged to the ground in an oblong.

What had happened?

The yearly market day brought vague, inconsistent rumours from the mouths of many merchants.

Nothing was known for certain. The "Lord-of-Handkerchiefs" had remained, of course. It was said that the chief had come for his daughter. Nothing had happened. Only the Handkerchief-Lord had, as they might see, built palaces.

He was a Great Chief. The people simply would not live without him when he died. So, at least, they had said as they came through the villages beyond the desert on their way north. How long ago? Ah! not long; they were afraid, see you, of the new gentlemen. They preferred to begin afresh elsewhere. That would doubtless be his grave at the back of the chapel. He was a great loss to the country. No one gave handkerchiefs away as he did.

So the Distant Depot had to go on its way without further details. Only the traces of Alexander Blooker's short rule remained, and the new inhabitants who soon gathered to fill the trim walls and dab houses benefited by them.

One day, however, when almost a year had gone by, the new pastor found that the oblong of handkerchiefs in the cemetery, instead of being worn and faded by sun and rain was, apparently, brand new.

Someone must have renewed it in the night. And on the top of it, written out in wobbly round hand, was the last copy Alexander Blooker had set:

"If you take an inch you may as well take an ell."

From which the Distant Depot inferred that it was his death-day.

THE REGENERATION OF DAISY
BELL

"It is quite out of the question," said the Adjutant, severely. "Major Primmer has formerly complained, and the C.O. has desired me to--to--to see that the nuisance is abated----"

So far, regimental discipline kept the Adjutant's risible muscles under control; then he smiled, for he was more human than adjutants are wont to be in orderly room. "And, upon my soul, youngster," he went on, picking up a letter which lay beside him, "it is a bit hard on Primmer. I can imagine his disgust! H'm, h'm--'_have to report_'--Ah! here--'_As usual, I woke with the entry of my body-servant bringing my early tea. As usual, also, I lay for a few moments to collect my thoughts; but when I turned to pour out the beverage_'--good old Primmer--'_my disgust was great to find Lieutenant Graham's so-called tame monkey--I may interpolate that it is a specimen of the Presbytis schistaceus, a bold and predatory tribe, and not the Presbytis entellus, a much milder race_'--good old Primmer again; he's nothing if not exact--'_in full possession of my tea-table. The brute had consumed all the toast, save one crust, which I regret to say it threw at me when I attempted remonstrance_.'"

We both laughed.

"Can't you see Major Primmer, V.C., sitting up in bed with his eye-glasses on, in a mortal funk," I began, trying to brazen it out. But official decorum had resumed its sway over the Adjutant, and he read on:

"'_It then proceeded, with an accuracy which I cannot believe to be entirely self-taught_'--H'm, Graham, that is serious; remember he is your superior officer--'_to imitate closely my method of pouring out tea. This is peculiar, as I invariably put the milk in first. My efforts at checking the lawless brute were again quite unavailing; and resulted only in the deliberate emptying of the scalding hot tea over my nether garments_.'"

"Why couldn't he say his pyjamas," I groaned, captiously; for I recognised that things had gone a bit too far. I had had no idea Jennie had such a fund of humour.

But once more official decorum failed to respond.

"'_This, I may add, it did again and again, until the teapot was exhausted. It then pouched the whole contents of the sugar-basin, drank the milk, and smeared its head with the butter. The latter action appeared to arouse reminiscence. It repaired to my dressing-table, brushed its hair with my brushes, used my pommade hongroise, and then proceeding to the wash-hand-stand, nefariously laid hold of my tooth-brush. This, however, was too much. I rose. At the same moment my body-servant providently appeared with my hot water, and the brute, jabbering at me in unseemly fashion, made for the window, which I always keep open winter and summer. I have already requested Lieutenant Graham to remove this savage animal; and now have no option_ ...'"

The Adjutant laid down the letter. "It's hard on Primmer," he said, with almost superhuman solemnity; "the tooth-brush incident was----" he resumed speech after a brief pause, "and he is a good sort is old Primmer."

I was perfectly aware of the fact. Only the week before, when we were out in the jungle, he had dosed me with quinine and taken my temperature every two hours during an attack of fever and ague.

So Jennie the monkey must give way; but what the deuce was I to do with her? I did not want to have to shoot her.

"Give her to Tootsie," suggested the Adjutant, sympathetically; "I heard her say not long ago she would give anything for a monkey."

It was a brilliant idea. Miss d'Aguilar, familiarly known as Tootsie, performed the arduous duties of spinster to our little frontier station; so that afternoon, before going on duty, I rode round by "The Forest," so called, I presume, because there was not a bit of vegetation larger than a caper bush between it and the Beluchistan Hills.

I found the young lady and her mother--a frankly black-and-tan lady who looked as if she would have been more comfortable with a veil to roll round her fat person--engaged, after their wont, in entertaining some of the junior subalterns at tea. As I entered, Tootsie--a sparkling brunette with gloriously startling Titian brown hair, due to cunning applications of henna dye (there were traces of it on Mamma's hands)--was, in a high-pitched staccato voice, recounting with arch gaiety, her impressions of Calcutta, whence she had but lately returned. "Yes! I do declare the men are just sillies. Why! do not believe me, but I asked a young fellow in a Europe shop to bring me flesh-coloured stockings, and he brought me tan! Was he not a silly boy?"

The pause which inevitably followed this anecdote seemed a fitting opportunity for somewhat sentimentally offering Jennie. Had I offered a bomb the effect could not have been more disastrous. Miss grew crimson; Mamma, purple and plethoric, wondered how any gentleman could keep such a nasty brute, still less offer it as a fit companion to an innocent young girl.

Evidently Jennie had again got herself disliked; how, the junior sub. told me succinctly as we rode home.

"You see, Tootsie dyes her hair--and henna's a bit of a lengthy business. They don't mind me, I'm only a boy; but she has to have it plastered over her head for hours. So she has a big hat with a false bun and fringe for these occasions. And Jennie got hold of it somehow last week. I happened to be there; and, by George, I chevied the beast half over cantonments before she would give it up--she's a regular devil."

I sighed. Evidently the culprit must be shot. She had no friends.

As I came up to the guardroom, however, I heard a song being lilted out by a tenor voice into the hot dusty air. The refrain of London sounded odd here in the desert on the confines of civilisation:

"Dy'sy, Dy'sy, give me yer answer dew,
I'm half cry'sy, all for the love o' yew."

"Yes, sir," reported the sergeant. "It's Dy'sy, sure enough. He's in agin; more often in nor out."

"What for?" I asked, a trifle regretfully, for the man, nicknamed by his comrades Dy'sy from his habit of perpetually warbling that aggravating ditty, was rather a favourite of mine. He was a perfectly reckless rolling stone, a bad shilling of about five-and-thirty, who from the way he had, when not on his guard, of assimilating drill, must have been through it several times. But over his past he drew a veil; and, indeed, his present was sufficient for character. He had come out with a draft in the cold weather, and already his evil influence with the recruits was notorious. Yet I liked the fellow; he was a first-class light-weight bruiser, out and away the best in the regiment. I had taken lessons of his, and his devil-may-care defiance had been attractive.

"Same as before, sir," replied the sergeant. "Shindy in Number Three. 'Tain't no manner o' use shiftin' 'is room. He'd purwurt a Sunday School."

Solid truth in every word! Yet the light blue eyes which met mine had a twinkle in them that softened my heart.

"If you are such a cursed fool," I said, as sternly as I could, "you'll come to grief."

His face took on sublime innocence. "Beg pardin, sir; but it ralely ain't fair w'en a party is trying to do 'is dooty to 'is parsters an' marsters. Them young chaps was makin' fun hover your monkey usin' the major's py-jammas has a slopper; an' I only tole 'm it was kind o' disrespekful like, as she meant it hall in k'yindness, an' bid 'm hold their jaw. That's how the tin dishes got hinjured, for," he added, with great dignity, "I won't 'ave no slanderin' o' dumb animals as can't speak up for thesselves."

A gleam of hope shot through me. "You're fond of animals, are you?" I asked.

For once candid confidence came to him. "Well! I don' know, sir," he replied, "but 'twas the loss o' a dorg as fust set me wrong." He gave a glance towards the sergeant, who was discreetly retiring, and then went on. "I was but a young chap, just gone twenty, and the dorg was a bull tarrier, sir, as good as they make 'm. S'yme n'yme as your monkey, sir--Jennie. We was chums. Then I got a gel, one o' the yaller-haired kind, sir, an' I was a fool about her, as young chaps is apt ter be. Well, sir, I 'adn't bin just steddy--no real 'arm, you know, but sort o' light like. But I settles down an' begins ter screw against gettin' married. The yaller-haired gel was livin' with me, sir, so as to save time like, but we was sure to get married in church an' go hoff emigrating so soon as I'd got the 'oof. An' Jennie was to go, too, for she an' me was chums. Well, sir, there was a big, black chap, coster he was, I licked him more nor once for 'angin' round; but there! females are built that way. So it 'appened when I come 'ome one hevening that I found 'er gone, an' the 'oof too. An' Jennie----" he drew his hand slowly over his mouth--"Jennie had died game, sir. She 'ad a bit of the big black brute's corduroys betwixt 'er teeth, but 'e'd bashed 'er 'ead open with 'is boot."

There was silence. Then he went on with a reckless laugh, "'Tweren't the gel, sir; there's plenty o' them ter be got, yaller hair an' all. But Jennie an' me had been chums."

Five minutes later the monkey had changed masters. To oblige me and save Jennie from being shot Dy'sy Bell had promised to take care of her.

"I'u'd rather 'ave no money, sir," he said, when he appeared to fetch her away and I offered him something towards her keep, "'twould only go to the canteen, and if I get into trouble, oo'd look after 'er?"

'"Er," I may mention, had just bitten his finger through to the bone, an action which he dismissed with the remark that "females was built that way."

Three days later, as I rode past Number Three barrack, I saw Jennie cracking nuts on a brand-new perch. Dy'sy, it now appeared, was quite a smart carpenter, and had made it himself in the workshop. Three days after that again, the perch was embellished by a brass chain, and Dy'sy admitted shamefacedly that he had once been in a foundry. So time passed on, until it occurred to me that Dy'sy had ceased to come into prominence before me as company officer, and I questioned the sergeant concerning him.

The official did not move a muscle. "Number Three's has quiet has a orphin asylum now, sir. As I lies in my bunk I don't 'ear no whisper. But it was Bedlam broke loose the fust night after Jennie come, sir. I lay low, seeing as there never was no use in tryin' to get at the bottom o' that sort o' row in the dark, sir. An' next morning 'arf the room complained of 'avin' a hunbaptised brute put to bed with 'em. The monkey slep' with Dy'sy, sir, so I spoke to 'im, an' told 'im I c'u'dn't 'ave no more complaints, an' he replied, quite civil-like, as there sh'u'dn't be none. An' there wasn't; but 'arf the men 'ad black eyes that week, sir, though 'ow they came by 'm they didn't say."

I did not enquire. It was sufficient for me that Number Three barrack was rapidly becoming regenerate. As I passed one day I heard a voice say, "Now, boys! I won't 'ave no cuss words; they ain't fit for a lydy to hear."

"You don't go so often to the canteen as you used to, Bell," I said to him one day when I found him sitting alone in the verandah nursing Jennie, who jibbered at me.

"Ain't got the money, sir," he replied cheerfully. "_Neringis_ and sich--like is a horful price in this Gordforsaken spot, an' Jennie's been a bit ailin'; won't eat nothing else."

"Well, you'll be getting your stripes soon, I expect, if you go on as you are doing," I remarked.

He flushed up. "I 'opes so, sir," he said modestly. "Jennie 'u'd set store by a striped sleeve, females being built that way."

My prophecy proved correct. Dy'sy was made a corporal, and before long, in the Border campaign which the cold weather brought us, found himself a sergeant, and so eventually in charge of a telegraph station on the top of one of the passes to our rear.

It was an important post to keep open, since on the integrity of the wire through a mile or so of singularly difficult country hung the certainty of speedy relief, should any kind of disaster overtake our little force, which was intimidating the tribes in the valleys beyond.

And disaster did overtake it, chiefly by reason of a terrific snowstorm which swept over it early in February--a snowstorm which paralysed progress, and made all thoughts turn to the probability of that mile of telegraph wire remaining intact.

No supplies could, of course, be sent up, so the men in the station must either starve or return, if, indeed, they had not been overwhelmed already. The latter seemed the most likely, since, though the through wire remained open, not a signal came from the station.

"An avalanche most likely," said the Adjutant. "The station was built, I always said, in the wrong place. What luck the wire isn't damaged as yet. It won't be long before it is, I'm afraid."

It was, however, still going strong when four men, one badly frost-bitten, made their way into camp. They had started five, they said, by Sergeant Bell's orders, after they had with difficulty extricated themselves from the ruins of the house, which had been completely smashed up by a tremendous avalanche. It was impossible, Dy'sy had said, to keep the post and six men also, so he had given them what supplies he could spare--the store was luckily uninjured--and bidden them take their best chance of safety at once.

As for his, it seemed but slender, as I felt when, a fortnight later, we managed to cut our way through the drifts that lay round the hollow where the station had stood. Across this hollow the through wire still stretched, and quite recently someone had evidently been at work upon it, for tools lay on fresh frosted snow. But all was still as the dead, quiet as the grave. We found Dy'sy lying on his face in the store many feet below the snow surface. The steps cut down to it were worn with the passing of his feet, but he did not move when we bent over him; something, however, cuddled close in his arms, woke and jibbered at us angrily. It was Jennie, dressed for warmth in every rag of blanketing available. She was as fat as a pig, and the charcoal embers in the tin can hung round her neck were not yet quite cold. But Dy'sy was skin and bone; yet the Irish doctor, as he bent hastily to examine him, said, cheerfully: "Annyhow, his love for the baste may have saved his life; she's kept his heart warm whatever."

And she had.

Six weeks afterwards I sat beside him in hospital. He showed thin and gaunt still in his grey flannel dressing-gown, and two fingers were missing on his left hand.

"Well!" I said, "so they've given you the D.S.M., and a special pension if you want to go."

He smiled brilliantly.

"Don't want to, sir. Jennie she likes the H'army; females is built that way. And as for t'other, 'twas really Jennie done it. I couldn't take her through the snow--she'd 'a' died for sure. An' I couldn't leave her, so there wasn't no choice."

A SONG WITHOUT WORDS

It was in the club that the telegram came, and as I sat watching my partner make pie of one of the best bridge hands ever ruined, I read it over once or twice, and, finally, when our adversaries had run out, handed it over to the culprit as a means of turning my wrath to another subject.

"Transferred!" he commented, calmly. "H'm! We shall have to get Beveridge to join our game instead!" (My self-pity flew for a moment to poor Beveridge, and I wondered what sort of a temper he had.) "Still, it isn't a bad place, though rather out of the way. Splendid buck-shooting--only, of course, this isn't the time. And a very decent house." Here he giggled. "Well, decent isn't, perhaps, the word to use, is it? And, by Jove, I'm sorry for you. There will be a devil of a mess to set right, I expect; and, anyhow, it isn't pleasant to step into another fellow's shoes after that sort of thing."

I acquiesced. "That sort of thing" was, briefly, the suicide of a fellow civil servant, whom I had known vaguely as the most brilliant man in my year.

A tall, handsome, light-hearted fellow, full of life, full of everything, apparently, likely to make him go up; instead of which he had gone down steadily--so steadily that at last even a Government which prides itself on ignoring breaches of social law, had been driven into first banishing him to the charge of a solitary jungle district, where there was no world to be scandalised, and then with warning him that he must either pull up or send in his papers.

He chose the latter course decisively, sending in his checks to another tribunal.

"He wasn't a bad sort when he first came out," continued my partner; "had, in fact, distinct glimmerings of sense, and to the last he wasn't, so to speak, a bad officer. But the wine and the women--well, there you are--and--make the best of it."

This last might have been meant for the nice hand which he displayed. We had cut for partners again, with the only result of shifting the deal. I took it that way, anyhow, and said no more.

There was, in fact, nothing to be said, so when I got home, I told the bearer of my transfer, and, sitting down, wrote an effusively-cheerful letter to my wife, who was in the hills with the babies, enlarging on the manifold advantages of my transfer, and making much of the fact that, though it brought no extra pay, it was, in a measure, promotion.

Then I smoked a pipe, feeling virtuous, for those two estimable creatures--my bearer and my wife--invariably do my duty for me. In fact, I am the happiest man in existence. I have told my wife so a hundred times, and she believes it firmly. The faculty, by the way, which good women have of believing things that ought to be true, is occasionally appalling, but is always immensely convenient to their husbands.

I always wrote her cheerful letters, and in return I used to get delightful daily budgets, giving me all the wonderful ways and works of the chicks, and imploring me to let her know regularly what the cook gave me for dinner, and if I ate it. Also if I were morally sure that the water was boiling for my tea every afternoon, as, if I was not, she would infallibly hand the babies over to hirelings, and come down to her ill-used hubby.

Such delightful, tender, womanly budgets were her replies that I swear and declare that, had I been asked to read them aloud, a lump in my throat would have interfered with my elocution.

Yet I swear and declare, also, that I would far rather the kettle were not boiling than that any one I cared for should fuss over it and a charcoal brazier on a hot verandah on a sweltering August day. But, then, as my wife is always telling me, I have no real sense of duty.

I wrote her, therefore, as cheerfully as I could, telling her, which was true, that solitude would be better than bad bridge. Also that it really was a move nearer to her, since, in case of emergency, I could cut across country by dhoolie to the foot of the hills. Finally, I enlarged on the fact that my successor would take over our house as it stood until her return, so that she need not fuss about moving anything, as I should do well in my new house, which was to remain as it was until my predecessor's unfortunate affairs had gone through the Administrator-General's office--a business, as a rule, of months.

I even mentioned the existence of a Bechstein grand piano, with a hint that if I could get rid of our cottage, I might buy it when the sale came on--an additional craftiness, since my wife loves to think I am allowed to have my own way in everything. It makes her more certain that we have won the Dunmow flitch of bacon--which we undoubtedly have.

Having done my best to set her wifely anxiety at rest, I advanced fifty rupees to my bearer.

In consequence of which we started next day for my new district, bag and baggage. Though the most part of the journey was by train, the bearer insisted on buckling a big sword he had picked up somewhere round his capacious middle. It decidedly had an effect on the railway coolies.

About three a.m. we turned out at a roadside station, where, thanks to that fifty rupees, a dak gharri was waiting to convey me the remaining twenty miles. I was very sleepy, and as I tumbled into my new conveyance I got a vague impression of a howling wilderness of sand, tufted with tiger grass, desolate utterly; so falling asleep again, and not waking until, in the darkness, I tumbled out--this time into a large empty room, with a tiny camp bed set in its midst--I carried on, as it were, the impression of desert surrounding me. But not for long. The next day would, I suspected, be a trifle trying, since my unfortunate predecessor's methods of business would scarcely be conducive to a mechanical taking over charge of his office. So I was soon asleep, without even realising that probably I was sleeping where he had lain dead but a day or two before.

When I opened my eyes next morning I felt a curious content and surprise. The room was bare in the extreme. The camp bed on which I lay, a deck chair, the cover of a travelling chest-of-drawers doing duty as a wardrobe, the top of a travelling bath doing ditto as a table, a bit of looking-glass hung above it by a string--these were its furniture. The furniture of the light-hearted boy who had come out in the same year as I had. With an odd, guilty remorse, I remembered that I had long since exchanged these simple satisfactions of youth for more luxurious methods. An unpaid bill of Maple's, indeed, flashed to my mind, as, looking round the walls, which were hung with full-sized photographs and copies of the great masters, I realised that my predecessor had spent his spare cash in a different fashion to what I had.

Very different, indeed. My remorse vanished in contempt, as, opening one of the drawers, a very strong scent of sandal wood made itself perceptible, and in one corner I saw a trumpery piece of native jewellery.

A certain anger took possession of me then, as I looked up into the eyes of the Sistine Madonna, which hung in a conspicuous place, and I felt virtuous in realising that, after all, it was a natural refinement and pure love of order and beauty which lay at the bottom of our civilised cult of comfortableness.

So thinking, I passed out on to the verandah, still with last night's impression on me that I was in a howling desert.

What I saw, therefore, gave me a shock. For here was a garden such as I had never seen. Neither English nor Indian, yet reminiscent of both in its wide sweeps of well-kept lawns, its dense thickets of flowering shrubs, both, at this break in the rainy season, looking their best. It took me a moment, however, to realise what it was which gave this garden its curious distinction from other gardens. There was no path in it. Though where I stood must once have been the front door, since a huge pillared porch jutted beyond the verandah, the grass swept right up to the very house. It had a curious untrodden look. A huge-leaved, waxen-flowered Beaumontia almost covered the porch with its cold, white scentless blossoms, and between the pillars Eucharis lilies rose above a marvellous mass of maidenhair.

The delicate greenery, the chill whiteness made me think involuntarily of the newly dead, and had I had on my hat I felt as if I should have removed it.

As it was, I stepped, with a slight shiver, beyond the porch into the sunlight.

The chilliness was gone in a moment, though the cloistered air remained, due to the great tamarind trees, which on all sides shut out the world, shut in the flowers. The birds, too. I never saw so many. A golden oriole was challenging the sun with its full-throated call from the bronze rain-shoots of the huge banyan tree, which filled up one corner, and there were at least a dozen ruby-throated humming-birds among the hibiscus flowers--those strangely mutable flowers, white in the dawn, which blush into a crimson death before sunset.

The banyan tree, promising a well in its shade, and the well promising the possibility of a gardener whom I could question--for I was beset by curiosity--I strolled over to it, and found what I wanted--a very old, wizened man, pretending to weed an offensive patch of yellow African marigolds, which was carefully hidden away behind a henna hedge.

"Yes!" he replied, with the tearless regret one often hears in native voices, the dead Huzoor had been very fond of his garden--in a way. (Here the regret became personal and aggrieved.) He had never sent for European seeds, so, of course, it had been impossible even for the most skilful of malas to make it into a real garden. But if the new Huzoor would employ this slave--who had many certificates--here the usual bundle was drawn out from some mysterious hiding-place--mysterious because he was more than half-naked--he would make proper paths and "rippin' beds," and set them ablaze with "floccus" and "soot-ullians" and "gerabians and----"

He was beginning to reel off a seedsman's catalogue when I pulled him up by pointing to the marigolds. He pursed up his lips in pious horror. Oh, no, there would be no more "gooljafari" or "genda" grown in that garden. They had been for the other folk, who, of course, would no longer---- The mixture of cunning question and scandalised propriety on the old humbug's face made me mentally resolve that he should "no longer" either. In fact, before my wife and the bairns came down I must have the whole place cleared and fumigated. But the garden? No, it must not be touched.

I had my breakfast in a huge dark, central room, which was absolutely bare save for a ricketty table and two chairs. There were not even any photographs on the walls. It was so dark that they could not have been seen.

"They found the Huzoor lying there, at the door," said my bearer calmly, after apologising profusely for an oversight in the matter of marmalade, which, he trusted, might be forgotten, and not reported to the memsahib. "He had been dead a long time, for he had paid off all the servants and sent away the other people and the children on the evening before, saying he was going on a journey. His bearer waited for him at the station with his baggage, only he never came, nor his horse, either.

"It was the office which found him, when it came for signature of papers next day, and there was nothing disturbed, only the Huzoor lying where they could see him easily from the front door, and the horse comfortable in its stall, with plenty of grass. He was always thoughtful to the poor was the sahib, and never gave trouble to others. At least, so his servants say--but what can they know--poor, mean creatures, who do not even know when a kettle boils!"

I let him talk, for somehow I did not wish to think. In much the same mood I went doggedly through my day's work in taking over charge and reducing chaos to order--or, rather, conventional order, for through all the disgraceful neglect of ordinary routine ran the unmistakable thread of one man's control, and of a strong man at that, even in its favouritism, its flagrant derelictions from the ordinary conception of a magistrate's duty.

As I got into my dogcart to come home, an orderly came forward, with a doubtful air, carrying a small bag, such as natives use as a purse.

"It was the custom," he began; but by this time I felt that I must return to a right judgment of things, so I purposely lost my temper, and let it be known that all old customs were to be abolished. "It was only the pennies for the children on Fridays," stuttered the orderly. "The Huzoor used always to give them----"

I drove off, thinking that, perhaps, my predecessor might have been wise in choosing a higher tribunal.

My bearer, however, who, as usual, stood in the verandah to receive my hat, had no doubts in the totality of his blame. He was full of virtuous activities. Order, in some measure, had been restored. Certain screens of grass, which had been removed against a time when the mem might find them useful in the poultry yard, and the outhouses having been finally cleared--by the aid of the police--of various pensioners and idle folk, who wept profusely, had been duly distributed among the servants, he himself having taken one with a women's enclosure, which would be the cause of great comfort.

I bid him take what he liked, and for the first time went into the drawing-room, where he said my tea awaited me.

I shall never forget my first look at that room, with its five straight, undraped windows, set in a row round one slightly curved wall. The others bare, save for the shadows, which were fast creeping to obliterate even the bareness. The windows were mere oblongs of dim light, stretching up into the lofty roof, and that shadow looming in one shadowy corner, across a vast expanse of shadowy matting, must be the Bechstein piano. I made a move towards it, and stumbled against my own tea-table, a highly ornate, sham Oriental, carved thing, which the bearer, by my wife's orders, carried about with him religiously, and at the same time the bearer himself entered with the reading lamp, without which, so I am told, I cannot exist.

I gave up the Bechstein, therefore, for a time, and had caviare sandwiches with my tea instead.

I do not know why--my wife would have said because the water was not boiling--but I did not enjoy my tea. The pity of all things in this incomprehensible world struck me with a vague anger. I sat wondering if, after all, a higher tribunal----

Good heavens! What was that? Someone was playing on the Bechstein. I did not turn. I sat staring at those five solemn oblongs of the glimmering windows, showing lighter and lighter as the shadows deepened in the big bare room.

It was Walther's song out of "Tannhauser"--the song of divine love....

The bearer said I was asleep when he came to tell me it was time to dress for dinner. Perhaps I was, for sound sleep brings perfect peace and rest, and that had come to me with the music which had come out of the windows.

I have a dim recollection that the khansaman apologised because the soup was not clear, and that the bearer explained that a wire mattress had not arrived owing to the breaking down of a bullock cart. But I know that I sat up till all hours of the night in the dark, hoping to hear the Bechstein again, but it was silent as the grave.

Perhaps at dusk I might hear it once more. I raced off to the office early, in order to be home in time, and was almost glad of a few flagrant derelictions of duty cropping up to keep my moral nature from too much sympathy.

Yet even so, as I drove home, I put my hand in my pocket and drew out a handful of coppers for a group of children I passed on the road. I could not help it when I remembered a certain paper I had sent up to the Administrator-General that day, showing the way in which a certain sinner had spent his last pay.

"Tea is ready in the drawing-room," said the bearer; and even in my preoccupation I thought there was something odd in his voice.

But a look into the big bare room was sufficient. I shouldn't have known it, women have such a way of altering the whole character of a house by a yellow silk bow. She had taken the little camp bed and made a couch out of it with cushions and phulkarees. The five fateful windows, like the five senses looking out on the garden of the soul, were tucked and festooned, and through one of them came the familiar sound of a pair of bellows, and then a still more familiar exclamation:

"There! That's really boiling at last."

The next instant my wife was in my arms, tearful, tender, triumphant.

Cheerful letters were all very well, but she knew; so she had just left the babies in charge of some super-excellent creature, and run away down to see I was really comfortable.

"And, after all," she said, nodding her head as she poured out the tea, "it is as well I did come, for really there seems to be nothing in the house except the Bechstein."

I looked over to it dully, and noticed that it was now ornamented by my photograph in a filigree frame.

"Yes," I said--I hope I kept some of the regret out of my voice--"only the Bechstein."

And as we sat and talked of the children, and our own happiness, and the seeds we were going to sow in the garden, the five windows grew lighter as the shadows deepened.

But the spirit of the room was silent.

SEGREGATION

"I've got the plague, sir, upon my sam, I 'ave. I'll show yer the spot, sir, same as they 'ad in 1666 w'en the Tower o' London was burnt down, an' Sir Christopher Wren built St. Paul's--so 'elp me Gawd."

The speaker was a plausible loafer of the usual type. He was dressed in white, or what had once been white raiment. A gilt button or two hung round the coat; mute testimony to its having once belonged to a man who did some work of some kind for the Government. He was not a Eurasian, that you could see by the line of white on his forehead above the tan, as he stood apologetically in the court room holding his helmet before him with both hands as if he meant to offer it up as a bribe. It was certainly the most valuable thing about him, for it had a wadded quilted cover and looked, what the rest of him did not--respectable.

"The plague!" echoed the magistrate (I am the magistrate). "Nonsense, man! you're drunk--that's what's the matter with you. Inspector, remove that man: put him into the lock-up if he gives trouble."

The inspector approached, but the loafer stood his ground, not without quiet dignity; the dignity that comes to some people in the first stage of intoxication. "Excuse of me, sir," he said, "but I ain't going to make myself a noosance to nobody. That's w'y I came 'ere. That's w'y I spent my last bloomin' _hart hanner_ (eight annas) in takin' a _ticca ghari_ (hired carriage) to the 'orspitals, every one of 'em, so as there might be no infections. Bless your 'art, I don't want to do no 'arm to anyone. I wants to be seggergated, that's all, afore I does any."

The magistrate smiled faintly: there was something likeable in the man's face.

"So you've been to the hospitals, have you? What did the doctors say!"

"Same as you, sir," he replied cheerfully, "as I was drunk; but if I am, Job Charnock--that's me, sir--never got real on afore with one glass o' _harrack_--an' beastly bad stuff it was, too--smelt like a dead dorg an' tasted like a tannery."

Perhaps the name, Job Charnock, awoke memories of the founder of Calcutta, who, before his fortunes were made, must have been more or less of a friendless wanderer in an eastern land; perhaps it was because the magistrate was waiting for a file to be brought from the record office; but the spirit of cross-examination entered into him. "One glass of arrak--is that all you've had?"

The loafer paused, an expression of the utmost candour came to his face. "All I've 'ad to-day, sir, s'elp me, 'cos I 'adn't a pice more left ter buy a bit o' food with. Only the _hart hanner_ I spent Christian-like on a _ticca ghari_ ter try an' get seggergated afore it was too late. An' they said I was drunk!"

The mournful cadence of his voice was irresistible.

"Chaprassi, take that man to the serai, and tell the _darogah_ to give him some breakfast. I'll pay for it. Now you go quietly, my man, and sleep it off. You'll have got rid of the plague by morning."

The file had come in from the record office, I was immersed in the endless, hopeless attempt to drag truth from the bottom of the well in a land suit; so I thought no more of Job Charnock until I met the civil surgeon at tennis in the evening.

"Yes," he replied to my query, "Segregation was on his rounds again this morning. You're new, but he is a regular institution here. He gets the funks on board, generally about a month after a bout, and comes to every one of us in turn to be segregated. I think he is a bit looney on the plague--has a real _phoby_ about it. He'll get it, I expect, some day, from sheer fright--but there's none about at present."

The something likeable in the man's face, however, returned to memory with the obvious fact that he had appeared chiefly concerned to "do no 'arm to anyone." So the next morning, having ten minutes to spare on my way from the city, I called in at the _serai_. It was like all other _serais_: a dreary cloistered square, deserted absolutely between five a.m. until eight p.m.; that is to say, the hours during which travellers are on the road. Now, close on nine o'clock, only the muck of last night's bivouac remained. A sweeper, with a broom and a basket, was busy removing some of the more salient rubbishes. Otherwise all was still as the grave. But, seated on a rush stool in one of the little octagonal turret rooms, which, built on either side of the gateway, are reserved for European wayfarers, I found Job Charnock. He had evidently paid a visit to the well, for he looked cleaner and was distinctly sober, but he was more voluble than ever.

"I give 'arf the breakfast you stood me away to the sweeper, sir," he said, "an' 'e brought me some _omum_ water as cured me in a jiffy. That's all I was wantin', sir, an' none o' them doctors could spare me 'arf a pint. It seems strange, don't it, sir? And ter think the 'arm as I might do going about with the plague spot under my harm, as it's all writ truthful in that book by Mr. 'Arrison Hainsworth, Esquire. 'Ave you read it, sir?" he asked blandly.

I assured him I had, told him he was a fool, advised him to go north to the new railway to find work, gave him five rupees to find his way there. It was indiscreet and quite contrary to the rules of the Charity Organisation Society, but as I have said, something in the man's face appealed to me.

Thereafter he passed from my memory under the usual pressure of work and worry which is the lot of an Indian official.

It was in the middle of the hot weather, when the civil surgeon rushed into me at my office with a telegram in his hand.

"Will you arrange with Spiller for my work," he said excitedly, "I must be off at once. Read that--you see, I gave the assistant surgeon at the Bimariwallah dispensary a few days' leave off my own bat, and there's only a dresser in charge; so there will be the devil of a row if anything goes wrong."

The telegram read as follows: "Outbreaks of much plague amongst European gentlemen here. Please arrange for supplies of sufficient brandy."

"But there are no Europeans at Bimariwallah," I began.

"I know that," broke in the doctor, "and, of course, brandy isn't the right treatment; but that's just where it is. The fool of a dresser doesn't know English, doesn't know anything, so I'm bound to go."

"Well, if you'll curb your impatience for two hours, till I've finished this case, I'll motor you so far down the Trunk road, and _dak_ you on. I have an Executive Municipal Council to-morrow morning at Raipur, and it's all on the way."

There had been a shower of rain--an advance scout of the coming monsoon to spy out the dryness of the land--so our spin of thirty miles down the road was pleasant enough, though the great wains of corn and straw that still defy the network of railways which has immeshed India, had possession of a large portion of the highway. But, to my mind, there is always something "satisfactory" in finding that no amount of preliminary hooting changes the path of the slow-moving wheels, and that, in the end, even a Siddeley-Wolsey car must either hold up until comprehension comes to the carter who moves as slowly as the wheels, or else pass by on a side-walking. It seems to presage safety; to give assurance that India will not, after all, run off the rails.

The buggy and horse were waiting at the cross roads, and it only needed a _detour_ of three miles to drop the doctor at the very door of the dispensary.

Feeling some curiosity as to what was really the matter, I withstood his prayer to be set down and allowed to make his way on foot. I was glad I did; for the first glimpse I had of the dispensary compound assured me that something very unusual was taking place. To begin with, a long low reed shed, such as is used in cholera epidemics, had been hastily run up on the opposite side of the road, and in it were to be seen patients lying in their beds or out of them. Posts, each carrying a yellow streamer, were set up every ten yards around the compound itself, and at each gate stood a village watchman complete with speared staff and bells.

As we drove up, the dresser--pallid of face, but full of a vast importance--rushed out from a small hut which had been erected inside.

"Many, many thanks to Supreme Almighty," he ejaculated; then added, with distinct complacency, "you will find all things necessarily in order, sir. Segregationalism is being much carried out. Patient having passed through p--neumonic deliriums is now comatic and in _articulo mortis_."

I followed the doctor, who looked, as well he might, completely bewildered.

The dispensary was cleared out: saucers of disinfectants positively littered the ground. White sheets saturated with the same hung at every door; the smell of them stank in the nostrils, and, as I followed, a dank disagreeable wet flap from one of them on my cheek made me shiver; but the sight which met my eyes in the central room set me literally shaking with laughter. It was so inexpressibly comic.