Voices in the Night Part 46

Chris, caught in the crowd, drifted on with it, wondering, as he had wondered as a child, which of the many claimants up aloft in the semi-darkness was the true one. It was a strangely absorbing wonder; but then the whole scene was absorbingly unlike anything else in the world. It was humanity herded by toys, limited by them, forced to go one way, and one way only, by them!

The rows of little flickering lamps between the two seemed as if they were shaking with silent laughter at the sight.

'The best in the fair! one farthing! One farthing for the best in the fair!'

The cry came this time with something that was hardly a toy, and yet hands were stretched out to buy it. Chris, tall enough to see over the heads of his neighbours, noticed that more trays, full of this something, were being hawked on all sides.

It was only a hank of the coa.r.s.e ring-streaked cotton thread used in betrothals as an amulet for the bridegroom's wrist, and for plaiting into the bride's hair. Attached to it was a thin bra.s.s medal, apparently cut out of a cartridge case, and shaped like the talisman a second wife wears as a safeguard against the machinations of the first.

It was stamped, Chris found on buying one, with what seemed, at first, a crescent and a cross; but a closer look showed him that the latter was a _swastika_, or death-mark. In other words, the equal-limbed cross with bent ends. Below that again was a sort of Broad Arrow.

'The best in the fair! Safety for females! Victoria Queen's mercifulness! Freedom from tyrannies for one farthing!'

These more elaborate cries came from farther down the serried band of humanity of which Chris was a unit, and so beyond his reach; but, after a while, the steady, glacier-like movement of the whole brought him opposite to what was evidently the home of the amulet; for such the something seemed to be. Here, behind the rows of lamps, thousands of these cotton hanks lay in tangled heaps. Behind them again sat the sellers, raking in money. Every one seemed to buy, even those who did not know what they were buying.

'What is't for?' answered one of the sellers--whom Chris fancied he had seen in some rather different position--to an old man who had bought a whole penny's worth. 'For the plague, of course! Wear it, and none dare come nigh thee. It gives the right to peace.'

'Dost pretend----?' began Chris hotly, when the seller, looking up, interrupted him audaciously--

'I pretend naught, _baboo-jee_,' he replied. 'I sell amulets for what they are worth, a farthing. The rest is G.o.d's will. Yet, have not all a right to peace, my masters? Have we not all the right to live as we have lived? Ay! and to quarrel with those who interfere; above all with those who make promises and break them? Who'll buy? Who'll buy the promise of peace, the freedom from tyranny, the female ruler's mercifulness to females?'

The hands were stretching out on all sides still, as the onward sweep of that human glacier carried Chris beyond the power of argument or denial.

He found the opportunity of both, however, when he joined a group beyond the crush in which he recognised several of his Shark Lane acquaintances. He had not meant to show himself in his present dress to them, but he was eager for sympathy. 'The police ought not to allow that sort of thing,' he said decisively; 'it might lead to-to--trouble.'

'I fail to see your point, sir,' replied a keen-faced lawyer. 'It appears to me to lead to the soothing of groundless terrors. Then the sale of amulets is not prohibited by law. Nor is there fraudulent statement over and above a general appeal to superst.i.tion and ignorance, which, alas! are but too common.

'I join issue with you, sir,' put in another keen face; 'nor, to my mind, is there even _suggestio falsi_. Is not our beloved Queen merciful to females, and has not the Government graciously a.s.serted that there _shall_ be no interference with the liberty of the subject?'

Some one behind laughed loudly, a trifle uncontrollably, and a voice, which Chris instantly recognised as Govind the editor's, said jeeringly in Hindustani, '_Ala! lala-jee!_ there is no lack of gracious words!

But as I have said ever, as I mean to prove when I choose, there is more than the words in the Lord-_sahib's_ office-box!'

'Prove!' echoed another of the same type who had paused, in pa.s.sing, to join the group; 'thou art behind the times, Govind! It is proved already. But this morning two Englishmen, on excuse of plague visitation, offered such insult to three virtuous females that with one accord they threw themselves down the well!'

'Impossible!' cried Chris; and not he only, for nearly every man present voiced doubt, if not denial.

'There is no doubt,' reiterated the news-bringer complacently; 'I had it from a man whose uncle was outside. They closed the doors, and none could enter, despite the women's screams. It was in the Badshahzai quarter, and the folk have closed their gates and sit in terror.'

'Small wonder!' put in Govind, eager to have his say in horrors; 'it was thence that the girl was abducted the other day. Lo! 'tis a good beginning! What wonder if folk lay hold of amulets and fair promises!'

'I tell you,' a.s.serted Chris pa.s.sionately, 'it cannot be true. And as for the other story, was it not told on the word of Jehan Aziz, and which of us would trust him? None. Shall we believe him in this, against what we see, and know, of our own senses?'

'We do not believe these stories, sir,' remarked the lawyer pompously.

'False evidence is, alas! a hobby of our ignorant countrymen. There is no doubt a substratum of truth in these stories----'

'No! pleader-_jee_,' interrupted Chris vehemently--the conversation s.h.i.+fted between English and Hindustani in the strangest fas.h.i.+on--'there is no foundation for such stories, and we all know it. There is foundation for mistakes, for wrong enough, G.o.d knows--but for such as that, no!'

'Your contention is true,' put in a temperate voice; 'but the difficulty of sifting wheat from chaff is proverbial.'

Once again Chris broke from his like in absolute discouragement. And yet what could he do to dissociate himself from their policy of non-interference? Absolutely nothing. Here, in this world mapped out by toys, with that soft unsteady brilliance rising from about men's feet, he could not even hope to rouse dissent. That onward glacierlike sweep, full of outstretched hands buying a piceworth of promises, would pa.s.s by him and his words, unheeding of either.

And, after all, the lawyer was right so far. That miserable strand of the wedding-skein which links man and woman--that trumpery bra.s.s cartridge-case medal, rudely stamped with the Hindoo death-mark, the Mohammedan faith-mark, and the English possession-mark--would carry comfort and calm to many a hearth.

And yet the promise that could not be kept was dangerous. He must write of that to Mr. Raymond. And then the question came, Why should he? Why should he, who had no voice at all in his own country's welfare, help those who thought they could dispense with the services of such as he?

The clock, striking nine from the tall Italian campanile on which some past bureaucrat had spent money that might have been better used, warned him that if he was to write that evening he must do it at once; but it warned him also that it was time he went to his mother's.

Should he, should he not?

It was no sense of duty which decided him. It was the remembrance that if he went back to his lodging, he could kill two birds with one stone.

He could not only write the warning, but also put a certain small rose-scented, rose-satin-covered boxlet and a paper of corn in his pocket, in case Naraini, poor little soul, needed comforting.

Something that was not Eastern or Western, but simply human, surged up in him as he thought of what her face would be when he proved to her that, so far from being angry at her throwing the corn into the gutter, he had gathered it up--every grain!

He had not told his mother that he had done so; that is not the sort of information sons give their mothers, East or West.

But he meant to tell Naraini!

He ran up the brick stairs which led from outside to the upper story lightly as a boy, feeling a sort of exultation in his new freedom of circ.u.mstance. He had purposely brought no servant with him, for _they_, he knew, would have brought Shark Lane with _them_, and he wished to forget its ways and works for a time. So he had determined to engage a new and uncontaminated attendant on the morrow. One consequence of this, however, was that his room was dark to-day!

He stood on its threshold feeling, of a sudden, strangely forlorn and lost. Then he pulled himself together sharply. What a trivial thing is man, that even the lack of a bedroom candle should discourage him! On the threshold, too, of a new life! Especially when he had not so far forsaken civilisation as to be without wax vestas!

He lit one after another, laboriously, and managed by their light to scrawl a short note to Jack Raymond. Then he rummaged in his portmanteau for the rose-scented box, trusting more to touch and smell than sight, until, having found it, he laid it beside him on the floor in order to relock the portmanteau, ere leaving the room to take care of itself. And then? Then a travelling-inkstand and the little casket got mixed up in the darkness, and he became conscious of something wet on his hands.

He swore--in English--and lit another match. The rose-coloured box was uninjured, but his fingers were hopeless. He turned naturally to soap, water, towels; and found none.

There was the well in the compound, of course, but--he swore again.

Then, half inclined to laugh half to frown, at the annoyance he felt, he began to feel his way towards the stairs. As he did so, a c.h.i.n.k of light at the bottom of a door, farther down the wider roof of the lower story from which the upper rooms rose, arrested him. He might beg for a wash there. A voice answered his knock. He opened the door and went in; then stood petrified.

Seated on a chair facing him, his legs very wide apart, a bit of looking-gla.s.s in one hand, a brush in the other, Jan-Ali-shan was putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to an elaborate parting. He was otherwise got up to the nines in an old dress-suit, which he had picked up for the half of nothing at an officer's sale. His white tie and s.h.i.+rt-front were irreproachable; he had a flower in his b.u.t.tonhole. The only discordant note was a reminiscent odour of patchouli.

He paused, awestruck--hair-brush and looking-gla.s.s severed from each other by the width of his arm-stretch--at the sight of his superior officer in native costume.

'Well! I--am--eternally'--his present and future state was evidently an uncertainty, but he finally said, a trifle doubtfully--'blessed!'

Then he rose, and accepted the situation with his usual confidential cheerfulness.

'Beg pardin, sir,' he explained, 't.i.tivatin' for a 'op. The girls like it, an' you likes yourself; so it's all round my 'at for the lot o' us, an' a straight tip to "England expec's every man to do 'is dooty." An'

wot was you please to want, sir?'

Chris paused in his turn for a second; then followed suit in confidential explanation. 'I want to wash my hands, please. You are wondering how I got here--in--in this dress. I came to the room over there this afternoon, because--my mother is sick, Ellison, and I want to be near her, and see her.'

Jan-Ali-shan's face expressed unqualified approval. 'Right you are, sir!' he said. 'I disremember mine, seein' she went out as I come in; but I know this, sir--I've missed 'er all my life--an' shall do, please G.o.d, till I die.' He had gone to the washhand-stand and was making elaborate preparations with soap and a clean towel. 'Lor' bless you, sir!' he went on, 'I'd 'ave 'ad cleaner 'ands myself to-day if she'd bin there to smack 'em w'en I was a hinfant. She's powerful for horderin' a man's ways, sir, is a mother.'

And as he resumed his interrupted occupation, thus leaving Chris un.o.bserved, he hummed 'My mother bids me bind my hair' with a superfluity of grace-notes.

'And I want also,' went on Chris, recovering his lost sense of dignity under the effects of a nail-brush and a piece of pumice-stone--he had often noticed Jan-Ali-shan's hands and wondered at their tidiness for a working man's--'to find out the state of feeling in the city. From what I hear people are saying--and you must hear a lot too----'

Jan-Ali-shan laid down the brush and the looking-gla.s.s. 'Hear?' he echoed, 'Lor' love you, they don't tell me them tales. I'm a _sahib_, I am. An' I wouldn't listen if they did. 'Tisn't as if we 'ad to do with words ourselves; but we ain't. "By their works shall ye know them," as it say in 'Oly Writ; an' if it come to that, sir, why, they shall know 'oo 's 'oo in John Ellison. An' now, sir, if you've done, I'll light you down them stairs, for of all the inconsiderate, on-Christian stairs a 'eathen ever built, them's the most disconcertin' in the "stilly night."' There was pure pathos in the voice that wandered off into the song.