Part 10

The doctor felt himself flush up to the very roots of his hair, and his first instinct was to fall upon the evident eavesdropper. Consideration natheless condemning this course, he tried cool indifference.

"You have been here some time, I perceive," he said calmly.

"I have been all the time behind the _shivala_," acquiesced the other, with beautiful frankness, as he pointed to a large black upright stone set on end by the water. "The Huzoor was--was too much occupied to observe this slave."

"So that is a _shivala_, is it?" interpolated the Englishman hurriedly; "it doesn't look much like a temple."

"We pilgrims call it so, Huzoor, and we worship it."

"Then you are a pilgrim--whither?"

"To the Lake of High Hope, Huzoor," came the answer, and there was a tinge of sadness in the tone. "I have been going thither these twenty years past, but my feet are against me. God made them crooked."

He drew them out of the water as he spoke, and the doctor's professional eye recognised a rare deformity; recognised also that they were unconceivably blistered and worn.

"You will not get to M[=a]nasa Sarovara on those," he said kindly; "they need rest, not travel."

The old man shook his head, and a trace of hurry crept into his voice. "I give them such rest as I can, Huzoor. That is why I sat with them in heaven's healing water; but I must get to M[=a]nasa Sarovara, or my pilgrimage will be lost--and it is not for my own soul, see you." Then he smiled brilliantly. "And this slave will reach it, Huzoor. Shiv's angels tell me so."

"Shiv's angels?" queried the doctor.

"The birds yonder, Huzoor," replied the old man gravely, pointing to the flock of fishing egrets. "Some call them rice birds, and others egrets, but they come from Shiv's Paradise--one can tell that by their plumes--perhaps that is why the _mems_ are so fond of wearing them."

A sudden memory of her face as he had first seen it beneath a snowy aigrette of such plumes assailed the doctor's mind; but it brought a vague dissatisfaction. "_Herodias alba_," he muttered to himself, giving the Latin name of the bird, "more likely to have something to do with dancing away a man's head!" Then a vague remorse at the harshness of his thought made him say curiously: "And why must I leave the _mem_ behind if I want to reach the Lake of High Hope?"

"Because she is a mother, Huzoor," came the unexpected reply, followed by deprecating explanation. "This slave has good eyes--he saw the childs' faces on her breast."

Once again the doctor felt that unaccustomed thrill along the roots of his hair. What right had this old man to see--everything?--and to preach at him? A sudden antagonism leapt up in him against all rules, all limitations.

"Well! I don't mean to leave her behind, I can tell you," he said almost petulantly. "When a man has found Paradise----"

"Shiv's Paradise is close to the Lake of High Hope," interrupted the suave old voice.

"D--n Shiv's Paradise!" cried the doctor; then he laughed. "It's no use, br[=a]hman-_jee_, for I suppose you are a br[=a]hman. I'm not going to be stopped by snow or ice. Look here,"--his mood changed abruptly to quick masterful protest--"that would be to give up happiness. Now! what makes you happy? Holiness, I expect, being a pilgrim! high caste! one of the elect! Give that all up, br[=a]hman-_jee_--and--and I'll think about it. And if you'll come over there," he pointed to the low sandhills as he spoke, "this evening. I'll give you an ointment for those blistered feet of yours--you'll never get to M[=a]nasa Sarovara otherwise, you know."

"I shall get there some time, Huzoor," came the confident reply.

Perhaps the old man came; perhaps he did not. The doctor was far too busy to care, since before daylight failed he found himself face to face with the tightest corner of his life. The promise of the primrose dawn passed before noon. Heavy rain clouds massed themselves into a purple pall, dull, lowering, silent, until, with the close of day, the courage of the coming storm rose in low mutterings.

And then, at last, the rain fell--fell in torrents. It found the regiment--seeking safety from the scourge of cholera,--on the march, and disorganised it utterly. With baggage waggons bogged, soldiers already discouraged by dread, all drenched and disordered, there was nothing to be done but keep cool and trust that chance might avert disaster, since no man could hurry up tents that were miles behind.

"There's another man in G company down, sir," said the hospital sergeant, "and the apothecary reports no more room in his ward."

"There's room here," replied the doctor, setting his teeth. "Orderly! put a blanket in that corner and lift Smith to it--he's getting better--he'll do all right."

So yet one more man found a cot and such comfort as skill and strength of purpose could give him, while the thunder crashed overhead and the pitiless rain hammered at the taut tent roof like a drum. One had to shout to make oneself heard.

"Lights! I say, lights! I've been calling for them these ten minutes. Why the devil doesn't someone bring them? I can't see to do anything."

The doctor's voice rang resonantly; but the lights did not come. The waggon with the petroleum tins was hopelessly bogged miles away, and in the confusion no one had thought of lights.

"Thank God for the lightning," muttered the doctor with unwonted piety, as with awful blinding suddenness the whole hospital tent blazed into blue brilliance, putting out the miserable glimmer of the oil lantern that had been raised from somewhere. In that brief luminous second he could at least see his patients--thirty of them or more. It was not an encouraging sight. The livid look on many faces might be discounted by the lightning, but there was an ominous stillness in some that told its tale.

"Gone! Bring in another man from outside," came the swift verdict and order after a moment's inspection with the oil lantern.

"Beg pardin', sir," almost whined a hospital orderly "but Apothecary Jones has sent to say he's took himself, an' can't go on no more; an' beggin' your pardin, sir, I'm feeling awful bad myself."

The doctor held up the lantern, and its bull's eye showed a face as livid as any in the tent; a face distorted by justifiable horror and fear.

"Go into the quarantine tent, it's up by now, and tell them to give you a stiff-un of rum with chlorodyne in it. You'll be better by-and-by. I've no use for you here."

And he had no use for him--that was true. Shaking hands and trembling nerves were only in the way in a tight corner like this. So, one by one, men fell away, leaving the one strong soul and body to wrestle with a perfect hell.

For the rain never ceased, the thunder went on crashing, the lightning was almost incessant. Thank God for that! Thank God for the inches of running water on the floor of the tent that swept away its unspeakable uncleanlinesses, for the thunder's voice that drowned all other sounds, for the blessed light which made it possible to work.

The very sweepers disappeared at last. No one was left save that one strong soul and body, and even he stood for a second, dazed, irresolute.

"How can this slave help the Protector of the Poor," came a courteous voice beside him, and he turned to see a smile at once familiar and kindly.

"How?" echoed the doctor, stupidly; then he recovered himself. "You can't. You're a br[=a]hman--high caste--all that----"

"This slave has come to help the Huzoor, so that he may be able to reach M[=a]nasa Sarovara," was the quiet insistent reply. "Where shall he begin?"

A sudden spasm almost of anger shot through the strong soul and body as it realised and recollected, vaguely, dimly, as rudely, roughly, it gave no choice save the most menial work. But instant obedience followed, and the doctor, dismissing all other thoughts, plunged once more into the immediate present. The rain pelted, the thunder roared, but every time that blue brilliance filled the tent, it showed two men at work, both doing their duty nobly.

A born nurse! thought the doctor almost remorsefully, as he saw the old man moving about swiftly and remembered those blistered and bleeding feet. "They must hurt you--awfully," he said at last.

"God's healing water cools them, Huzoor," replied the old man, with a radiant smile, "I shall not be delayed in reaching the Lake of High Hope."

So the long night drew down to dawn once more, and dawn brought peace again, even to the cholera camp. An hour and a half passed without a fresh case, and the doctor, realising that the crisis was over, found time to notice the grey glimmer of light stealing through each crack and cranny of the tent. He set the flap aside and looked out. The primrose east was all barred with purple clouds, the distant _jheel_ lay in still shiny shadow, but there was no concerted dawn cry of the wild birds, and the flights of whirring wings were isolated, errant.

"The call has come to them, Huzoor," said the suave old voice beside him. "They have gone to M[=a]nasa Sarovara, leaving all things behind them."

The Englishman turned abruptly, almost with an oath, and began to count the costs of the night. Thirty-six dead bodies awaiting burial; but no more--no more!

With the mysterious inconsequence of cholera, the scourge had come, and gone. Seen in the first level rays of the sun, the camp looked almost cheerful, almost bright. A couple of doctors had ridden out from headquarters--there was no more to be done.

"I'll go out for a bit, and shake off the hell I've been in all night," said the doctor to the chief apothecary, who was recounting his past symptoms with suspicious accuracy. So he went out and wandered round the _jheel_, watching a flock of egrets--_Herodias alba_--that still lingered in its level waters. Were they really Shiv's angels?--or did they dance away men's brains----?

The sun was already high when he returned to camp, looking worn and tired. The hospital orderly whom he had sent to bed with rum and chlorodyne was standing, spruce and alert, at the canteen.

"Feeling better, eh, Green?" he said kindly, as he passed, then added: "All right, I suppose. No more cases or deaths?"

"No, sir," replied the orderly, saluting somewhat shamefacedly. "Leastways, not to count. There's a h'ole man as they found dead outside the camp about quarter of an hour agone, but not being on the strength of the regiment, 'e don't count."

Five minutes afterwards the doctor, his face still more tired and worn, was looking down on the body of his helper. It must have been one of those sudden cases in which collapse comes on from the very first, for no one had seen the old man ill. They had simply found him lying peacefully dead with his blistered deformed feet in a pool of water.

* * * * *

The doctor wrote a letter; it was rather a wild letter about plumes and egrets and the difficulty of distinguishing _Herodias alba_ from the stork which brought babies. For the strain of that night in hell, and the subsequent fever brought on by wandering about the _jheel_ land when he was outwearied had told even upon his body and soul.

So they sent him to the hills when he began to recover, and being a keen sportsman he did not stop in the Capuas of smart society, but made straight for the solitudes, seeking for something to slay; for he felt a bit savage sometimes. And ever, though he did not acknowledge the fact, his route brought him nearer and nearer to that high Tibetan land where ice and snow reign eternal. Through Garhw[=a]l and up by Kidarn[=a]th where the new born Ganges issues from a frost-bound cave, until one day he pitched his little six-foot hunter's tent on the other side of the Holy Himalaya and looked down into the wide upland valleys of Naki-khorsum and up beyond them to the great white cone of Kail[=a]sa, the Paradise of Shiva.

A mere iceberg cutting the clear blue sky. How cold, how distant, how utterly unsatisfactory! He stood looking at it in the chill moonlight after his two servants were snoring round the juniper fire on their beds of juniper boughs--looking, and smoking, and thinking.

He had thought much during his three months of solitary wandering, and now the time was coming when thoughts must be translated into action, for his leave was nearly up. Should he go backwards or forwards? Go on to M[=a]nasa Sarovara, or set his face towards lower levels? Should Hope of the mind take the place of Hope of the body? Bah! he was a fool! He would be a sensible man and return. That was his last thought as he rolled himself in his hunter's blanket and lay down to sleep.

But the dawn found him plodding on in front of his two coolies towards that compelling cone of snow. He left the tent at the foot of the next ridge, and that night the last thing he saw was Orion's Sword resting upon the summit of Mount Kail[=a]sa.

Yes! he would go on. He would see if it were true that _Herodias alba_ disported its plumes on the waters of the Lake of High Hope.

During the latter part of his wanderings he had, partly owing to the unsettled and hesitating state of his mind, diverged from the pilgrim track; but here, on this last day, he rejoined it, and in more than one place the bones of someone who had fallen by the way, showed amongst the flowers which carpeted every rent in the world's white shroud of snow; showed like streaks of snow itself, so bleached were they by long months of frost.

But the flowers! what countless thousands of them--low, almost leafless, hurrying in hot haste to blossom while they yet had time. And yet how pure, how cold, how colourless had not this mountain-side looked from afar. Almost as cold as Kail[=a]sa, which, viewed from the height of the pass, seemed barely more significant.

But every foot of descent made a difference, and soon over the rocky ravine it rose stupendous, its great glacier shiny cold, inaccessible. Before long it would overtop the sky and reach High Heaven. No wonder men thought of Paradise!

Down and down, through a mere cleft in the rocks that closed in, shutting out all view....

Then, suddenly, he gave a little gasp and stood still.

So that was the Lake of the Soul's Hope--M[=a]nasa Sarovara! The pure beauty of it sank into him, its rest and peace filled him with content.

A wilderness--a perfect wilderness of bright-hued flowers between the snow slopes and the lake whose blue waters gleamed like sapphires between the diamond icebergs that drifted hither and thither on its breeze-kissed waves.

But not one sign of life; no movement, no noise, save every now and again a far-distant thunderous roar, and a puff of distant white smoke upon some mountain-side telling of a falling avalanche.

Cradled in snow, yet wreathed in flowers; solemn, secure, unchangeable!

It was a marvellous sight. He was glad he had come, for it was a place where one could think--_really_ think.

So he stood and thought--really--for a while; and then he took out his watch. Time was waning, for he had to re-climb the pass and rejoin his tent ere sundown. Still there was enough left for him to reach that jutting flower-set promontory, whence, surely the best view of the whole would be obtained.

Yes! decidedly the best! Shiv's Paradise, rising from the water's edge, showed from hence, equal-sided, serene, unassailable, a pure pyramid of ice.

Truly a sight never to be forgotten; a sight well worth a pilgrimage.

And then some swift remembrance made him glance downwards, and he saw before him the bleached skeleton of a man. Something in the attitude of it, the feet hidden in the lake made him stoop curiously to see what its sapphire surface covered.

What was it?

He stood looking down into the rippling water that whispered and whispered to the flowers ceaselessly, for some time; then he turned and climbed the hill again.

But, even if he had taken anything with him to M[=a]nasa Sarovara, he left it behind him there beside the skeleton of a man with curiously deformed feet. But the blisters had gone.

RETAINING FEES

It is not always on rocks and rapids that the cockle shell of human happiness meets with the direst shipwreck. Often in the quietest backwaters, where no current is, where not a ripple disturbs the still surface, disaster so absolute, so overwhelming comes, that the very tragedy of it sinks out of sight also, unrecognised, unrecorded.

Such a backwater was a little square of roof four pair back, in a tall tenement house in Lucknow, where one blazing hot day in June a buxom woman, with a yellow-skinned baby hitched to her hip outside the voluminous veil of dirty crushed calico, which for the present was mostly in folds about her feet, was haranguing three other women who sat working as for dear life in the hard unyielding shadow of the high walls, which were deemed necessary even here to shut out the possibility of prying eyes.

"What you need, honourable ladies," finished Mussumet Jewuni decisively, "is a 'bannister.'"

"A 'bannister!'" echoed the eldest of the three listeners. "And what new-fangled thing is that?"

She did not slacken a second in her deft twirling of her distaff, neither did the others, despite their questioning eyes, relax their swift business. Indeed, as they sat in the shadows, the three might have served as a model for the Fates, since Khulâsa Khânum span ceaselessly. Aftâba Khânum wound yarn on a circling bamboo frame, and Lateefa Khânum snipped with a very large pair of scissors at the shirt she was making; for, being many years younger than the others, her eyes were still fit for fine back-stitching. Beautiful hazel eyes they were, too: large, soft, full of sunshine and shadow.

Jewuni dismissed one mouthful of betel nut and began on another ere she replied.

"A 'bannister' is a pleader, who, having been across the black water to London, knows new tricks wherewith to confound the old ones. 'Tis the only chance for justice, ladies. I know of such an one, and could bring him here to receive instruction, and mayhap there would be no need for the honourable ladies to answer in Court."

Khulâsa Khânum's hands froze in horror; she glanced anxiously towards Lateefa. "Talk not like that before the child, woman!" she interrupted, almost fiercely. "No strange man, as thou knowest, comes to this virtuous house, and no woman goes out of it."

Both statements were absolutely true; these women, distant relations, yet bound to each other by the tie of a common poverty, a common wrong, had not set foot beyond that square of roof for years and no men--save those whose interest it was to keep them poor--had ever climbed the steep stair hole which showed like a cavernous shadow in the high back wall.

Yet Jewuni Begum laughed. She was a very different stamp of woman. Her oil-beplastered hair narrowing her forehead beyond even Nature's intention, and the soap curls at her silver and gold tasselled ears were of a fashion which left little doubt as to her moral character; but, being a bottomless receptacle for the gossip of the whole town, owing to her husband's position as a paid tout at the Law Courts, the neighbourhood in general, and even that virtuous roof in particular, had left inquiry and condemnation alone for the present.

"Lo! Khânum!" she giggled, "that is true enough, God knows; yet what avails it for reputation? None. 'Tis a rare joke, and I meant not to tell it thee; still, 'tis too good to be lost. In the Mirza's reply to the last petition sent from this house for direct payment of the pension due to honourable ladies, it is written--my man saw it, and there was laughter among the writers, I will go bail--that the petitioners, being giddy young things, given to wanton ways, it is necessary for the honour of a princely family that they be held under restraint; such money as is due being expended lavishly, aye! and more, in securing the luxury due to gentlewomen of your estate."

Here she herself went off into such chuckles that the yellow baby had to be shifted higher on her shaking side.

The three women ceased working, and looked at each other helplessly, while underneath their curiously fair skins a flush showed distinctly.

"Did they say that--of us?" asked Aftâba Khânum at last, in a faltering voice. Perhaps it was her occupation of winding hanks without tangle which made her always so keen to have all things clear.

"And of me?" echoed Khulâsa faintly. Her old face had grown very grey, her hands, though they had ceased working, were no longer frozen; they trembled visibly.

Only Lateefa sat silent, a swift yet sullen anger on her still young face.

Jewuni giggled again. "There was no distinction of decency, Khânum. But 'tis too bad, and that is why I spoke of a 'bannister' to confound such old tricks with new ones. However, 'tis no business of mine, only," she paused in her conversation, and, going beside Lateefa, she lowered her voice, "there is no need for stitching shirts till shroud-time comes. There be other ways, as I have told thee before, of earning money, aye! enough even to pay a 'bannister's' fee, and get the truth made known. So, if thou preferest to be as a hooded falcon, seeing nothing of the sport in life, sit and stitch. If not, come to me and claim freedom--in all things."

When she and the yellow baby had gone, silence fell on the desecrated little square of virtuous roof.

Truly it was hard! After a life-time of patient propriety, long years of self-denial involving silence and seclusion even from scant justice, to have all these virtues reft from them in order that wantonness and giddiness and youth might serve as an excuse for withholding their rights! That these rights should be traversed was to their experience no new thing, though to Western ears it may seem inconceivable that even under British rule it is the easiest thing in the world to treat secluded women as these three had been treated. Briefly, for the male head of the family, as guardian, to leave them to starve, while he made merry over their poor pittances of pensions granted to them by Government in consideration of their race, or its good services. No wonder, then, that Khulâsa sat helpless, resorting for comfort to the little rosary she always carried, that Aftâba's tears ran silently down her withered cheeks, or that Lateefa's sullen anger gave a dangerous look to her still handsome face. So dangerous that fear pierced Aftâba's soft self-pity at last, making her ask anxiously:

"What was it she said to thee privately, Lateefa? Naught worse, surely?"

The darkening of the handsome face was not all anger now. Lateefa rose with a bitter laugh.

"Nay! she but spoke of 'fees' for justice, as if we had aught to pay. Yet something must be done."

"We have done too much already," came Khulâsa's shaking voice. "If we had trusted in the Lord instead of sending petitions there would have been no need for them to tell the lie. If we had waited----"

"Lo! we had waited," put in Aftâba, "and petitions are no new thing. Our fathers made them. They are not like 'bannisters' and strange men. These----"

There was no need for her to explain what these were to that virtuous roof, for at the moment a tentative cough from the stair-hole accompanied by the rhythmic squelching of water in a skin-bag announced the daily visitation of old Shamira, the _bhisti_, who had filled their earthen pots for them for years and years; and in an instant veils were hastily drawn close, faces turned to the wall.

"_Bismillah!_" came the orthodox greeting, for old Shamira knew all about the honourable ladies, and in a way loved them, though he had never once seen them in all the long years.