Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  But, being of the East Eastern, and at that Hindoo, he could not have brought himself to make overtures direct and go straight to the real issue. He had to feel his way gingerly. The thousand horses in his stables, he reflected, would mount a thousand of the Rangars and place at his disposal a regiment of cavalry which would be difficult to beat; but a thousand mounted Mohammedans might be a worse thorn in his side than even his brother or the priests. He decided to write to Alwa, but to open negotiations with a very thin and delicately inserted wedge.

  He could write. The priests had overlooked that opportunity, and had taught him in his boyhood; in that one thing he was their equal. But the other things that they had taught him, too, offset his penmanship. He was too proud to write — too lazy, too enamoured of his dignity. He called a court official, and the man sat very humbly at his feet — listened meekly to the stern command to secrecy — and took the letter from dictation.

  Alwa was informed, quite briefly, that in view of certain happenings in Howrah City His Highness the Maharajah had considered it expedient to set a guard over the Christian missionaries in the city, for their safety. The accompanying horse was a gift to the Alwa-sahib. The Alwa-sahib himself would be a welcome guest whenever he might care to come.

  The document was placed in a silver tube and scaled. Within the space of half an hour a horseman was kicking up the desert dust, riding as though he carried news of life-and-death importance, and with another man and a led horse galloping behind him. Five minutes after the man had started, in a cell below the temple, of Siva, the court official who had taken down the letter was repeating it word for word to a congeries of priests. And one hour later still, in a room up near the roof of Jaimihr’s palace, one of the priests — panting from having come so fast — was asking the Rajah’s brother what he thought about it.

  “Did he say nothing — ,” asked Jaimihr.

  “Nothing, sahib.”

  The priest watched him eagerly; he would have to bear back to the other priests an exact account of the Prince’s every word, and movement, and expression.

  “Then I, too, say nothing!” answered Jaimihr.

  “But to the priests of Siva, who are waiting, sahib?”

  “Tell them I said nothing.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  Eyes in the dark, awake and keen,

  See and may not themselves be seen;

  But — and this is the tale I tell —

  What if the dark have eyes as well?

  BESIDE the reeking bear’s cage in which Ali Partab stood and swore was a dark, low corner space in which at one time and another sacks and useless impedimenta had been tossed, to become rat-eaten and decayed. In among all the rubbish, cross-legged like the idol of the underworld, a nearly naked Hindoo sat, prick-eared. He was quite invisible long before the sun went down, for that was the dingiest corner of the yard; when twilight came, he could not have been seen from a dozen feet away.

  Joanna, sweeping, sweeping, sweeping, in the courtyard, with her back very nearly always turned toward the cage, appeared to take no notice of the falling darkness; unlike the other menials, who hurried to their rest and evening meal, she went on working, accomplishing very little but seeming to be very much in earnest about it all. Very, very gradually she drew nearer to the cage. When night fell, she was within ten feet of it. A few lamps were lit then, here and there over doorways, but nobody appeared to linger in the courtyard; no footfalls resounded; nothing but the neigh of stabled horses and the chatter around the big, flat supper pans broke on the evening quiet.

  Joanna drew nearer. Ali Partab came forward to the cage bars, but said nothing; it was very dark inside the cage, and even the sharp-eyed old woman could not possibly have seen his gestures; when he stood, tight-pressed, against the bars she might have made out his dark shape dimly, but unless he chose to speak no signal could possibly have passed from him to her. He said nothing, though, and she-still sweeping, with her back toward him — passed by the cage, and stooped to scratch at some hard-caked dirt or other close to the rubbish hole where the Hindoo waited. Still scratching, still working with her twig broom, still with her back toward the rubbish hole, she approached until the darkest shadow swallowed her.

  There were two in the dark then — she and the man who listened. He, motionless as stone, had watched her; peering outward at the lesser darkness, he lost sight of her for a second as she backed into the deepest shadow unexpectedly. Before he could become accustomed to the altered focus and the deeper black, her beady eyes picked out the whites of his. Before he could move she was on him — at his throat, tearing it with thin, steel fingers. Before he could utter a sound, or move, she had drawn a short knife from her clothing and had driven it to the hilt below his ear. He dropped without a gurgle, and without a sound she gathered up her broom again and swept her way back past the cage-bars, where Ali Partab waited.

  “Was any there?” he whispered.

  “There was one.”

  “And — ?”

  “He was.”

  “Good! Now will the reward be three mohurs instead of two!”

  “Where are they?”

  “These pigs have taken all the money from me. Now we must wait until Mahommed Gunga-sahib comes. His word is pledged.”

  “He said two mohurs.”

  “I — Ali Partab — pledge his word for three.”

  “And who art thou? The bear in the cage said: ‘I will eat thee if I get outside!”’

  “Mother of corruption! Listen! Alwa must know! Canst thou escape from here? Canst thou reach the Alwa-sahib?”

  “If the price were four mohurs, there might be many things that I could do.”

  “The price is three! I have spoken!”

  “‘I would eat honey were I outside!’ said the bear.”

  “Hag! The bear died in the cage, and they sold his pelt for how much? Alive, he had been worth three mohurs, but he died while they bargained for him! — Quick!”

  “I am black, sahib, and the night is black. I am old, and none would believe me active. They watch the gates, but the bats fly in and out.”

  “Find out, then, what has happened to my horses, left at the caravansary; give that information to the Alwa-sahib. Tell the Miss-sahib at the mission where I am. Tell her whither I have sent thee. Tell the Alwa-sahib that a Rangar — by name Ali Partab — sworn follower of the prophet, and servant of the Risaldar Mahommed Gunga — is in need and asks his instant aid. Say also to the Alwa-sahib that it may be well to rescue the Miss-sahib first, before he looks for me, but of that matter I am no judge, being imprisoned and unable to ascertain the truth. Hast thou understood?”

  “And all that for three mohurs?”

  “Nay. The price is now two mohurs again. It will be one unless—”

  “Three, sahib! It was three!”

  “Then run! Hasten!”

  The shadows swallowed her again. She crept where they were darkest — lay still once, breathless, while a man walked almost over her — reached the outer wall, and felt her way along it until she reached low eaves that reached down like a jagged saw from utter blackness. Less than a minute later she was crawling monkeywise along a roof; before another five had passed she had dropped on all fours in the dust of the outer road and was running like a black ghost — head down — an end of her loin-cloth between her teeth — one arm held tight to her side and the other crooked outward, swinging — striding, panting, boring through the blackness.

  She wasted little time at the caravansary. The gate was shut and a sleepy watchman cursed her for breaking into his revery.

  “Horses? Belonging to a Rangar? Fool! Does not the Maharajah-sahib impound all horses left ownerless? Ask them back of him that took them! Go, night-owl! Go ask him!”

  Almost as quickly as a native pony could have eaten up the distance, she dropped panting on the door-step of the little mission house. She was panting now from fright as well as sheer exhaustion. There were watchers — two sets of them. One man stood, wit
h his back turned within ten paces of her, and another — less than two yards away from him — stood, turned half sideways, looking up the street and whistling to himself. There was not a corner or an angle of the little place that was not guarded.

  She had tried the back door first, but that was locked, and she had rapped on it gently until she remembered that of evenings the missionary and his daughter occupied the front room always and that they would not have heard her had she hammered. She tapped now, very gently, with her fingers on the lower panel of the door, quaking and trembling in every limb, but taking care to make her little noise unevenly, in a way that would be certain to attract attention inside. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap. The door opened suddenly. Both watchers turned and gazed straight into the lamplight that streamed out past the tall form of Duncan McClean. He stared at them and they stared back again. Joanna slunk into the deep shadow at one side of the steps.

  “Is it necessary for you to annoy me by rapping on my door as well as by spying on me?” asked the missionary in a tone of weary remonstrance.

  The guards laughed and turned their backs with added insolence. In that second Joanna shot like a black spirit of the night straight past the missionary’s legs and collapsed in a bundle on the floor behind him.

  “Shut the door, sahib!” she hissed at him. “Quick! Shut the door!”

  He shut it and bolted it, half recognizing something in the voice or else guided by instinct.

  “Joanna!” he exclaimed, holding up a lamp above her. “You, Joanna!”

  At the name, Rosemary McClean came running out — looked for an instant — and then knelt by the old woman.

  “Father, bring some water, please, quickly!”

  The missionary went in search of a water-jar, and Rosemary McClean bent down above the ancient, shrivelled, sorry-looking mummy of a woman — drew the wrinkled head into her lap — stroked the drawn face — and wept over her. The spent, age-weakened, dried-out widow had fainted; there was no wakened self-consciousness of black and white to interfere. This was a friend — one lone friend of her own sex amid all the waste of smouldering hate — some one surely to be wept over and made much of and caressed. The poor old hag recovered consciousness with her head pillowed on a European lap, and Duncan McClean — no stickler for convention and no believer in a line too tightly drawn — saw fit to remonstrate as he laid the jar of water down beside them.

  “Why,” she answered, looking up at him, “father, I’d have kissed a dog that got lost and came back again like this!”

  They picked her up between them, after they had let her drink, and carried her between them to the long, low sitting-room, where she told them — after considerable make-believe of being more spent than she really was — after about a tenth “sip” at the brandy flask and when another had been laughingly refused — all about Ali Partab and what his orders to her were.

  “I wonder what it all can mean?” McClean sat back and tried to summarize his experiences of months and fit them into what Joanna said.

  “What does that mean?” asked his daughter, leaning forward. She was staring at Joanna’s forearm and from that to a dull-red patch on the woman’s loin-cloth. Joanna answered nothing.

  “Are you wounded, Joanna? Are you sure? That’s blood! Look here, father!”

  He agreed that it was blood. It was dry and it came off her forearm in little flakes when he rubbed it. But not a word could they coax out of Joanna to explain it, until Rosemary — drawing the old woman to her — espied the handle of her knife projecting by an inch above the waist-fold of her cloth. Too late Joanna tried to hide it. Rosemary held her and drew it out. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, there was blood on the blade still, and on the wooden hilt, and caked in the clumsy joint between the hilt and blade.

  “‘Joanna — have you killed any one?”

  Joanna shook her head.

  “Tell me the truth, Joanna. Whose blood is that?”

  “A dog’s, Miss-sahib. A street dog attacked me as I ran hither.”

  “I wish I could believe it!”

  “I too!” said her father, and he took Joanna to one side and cross-examined her. But he could get no admission from her — nothing but the same statement, with added details each time he made her tell it, that she had killed a dog.

  They fed her, and she ate like a hyena. No caste prejudices or forbidden foods troubled her; she ate whatever came her way, Hindoo food, or Mohammedan, or Christian, — and reached for more — and finished, as hyenas finish, by breaking bones to get the marrow out. At midnight they left her, curled dogwise on a mat in the hall, to sleep; and at dawn, when they came to wake her, she was gone again — gone utterly, without a trace or sign of explanation. The doors, both front and back, were locked.

  It was two days later when they found a hole torn through the thatch, through which she had escaped; and though they searched the house from cellar up to roof, and turned all their small possessions over, they could not find (and they were utterly glad of it) that she had stolen anything.

  “Thank God for that!” said the missionary.

  “I’ve finished disbelieving in Joanna!” said his daughter with a grimace that went always with irrevocable decision.

  “I’ve come to the conclusion,” said McClean, “that there are more than just Joanna to be trusted. There is Ali Partab, and — who knows how many?”

  CHAPTER XVII

  Against all fear; against the weight of what,

  For lack of worse name, men miscall the Law;

  Against the Tyranny of Creed; against the hot,

  Foul Greed of Priest, and Superstition’s Maw;

  Against all man-made Shackles, and a man-made Hell —

  Alone — At last — Unaided —

  I REBEL!

  No single, individual circumstance, but a chain of happenings in very quick succession, brought about a climax, forcing the hand of Howrah and his brother and for the moment drawing the McCleans, father and daughter, into the toothed wheel of Indian action. As usual in India, the usual brought about the unexpected, and the unexpected fitted strangely into the complex, mysteriously worked-out whole.

  Two days after Joanna left the mission house, through a hole made in the thatch, the spirit of revolt took hold of Rosemary McClean again. The stuffy, narrow quarters — the insolent, doubled, unexplained, but very obvious, guard that lounged outside — the sense of rank injustice and helplessness — the weird feeling of impending horror added onto stale-grown ghastliness — youth, chafing at the lack of liberty — stirred her to action.

  Without a word to her father, who was writing reports that seemed endless at the little desk by the shaded window, she left the house — drew with a physical effort on all her reserve of strength and health — faced the scorching afternoon wind, as though it were a foe that could shrink away before her courage, and walked, since she had no pony now, in any direction in which chance or her momentary whim might care to lead her.

  “I won’t cry again — and I won’t submit — and I’ll see what happens!” she told herself; and the four who followed her at a none-too-respectful distance — two of the Maharajah’s men in uniform and two shabby-looking ruffians of Jaimihr’s — grinned as they scented action. Like their masters they bore no love for one another; they were there now, in fact, as much to watch one another as the missionaries; they detected the possibility of an excuse to be at one another’s throats, and gloated as they saw two messengers, one of either side, run off in a hurry to inform the rival camps.

  It was neither plan nor conscious selection that led Rosemary McClean toward the far end of the maidan, where the sluggish, narrow, winding Howrah River sucked slimily beside the burning ghats. When she realized where her footsteps were leading her she would have turned in horror and retreated, for even a legitimately roasting corpse that died before the Hindoo priests had opportunity to introduce it to the flames is no sight for eyes that are civilized.

  Bu
t, when she turned her head, the sight of her hurrying escort perspiring in her wake — (few natives like the heat and wind one whit better than their conquerors) — filled her with an unexpected, probably unjustifiable, determination not to let them see her flinch at any kind of horror. That was the spirit of sahibdom that is not always quite commendable; it is the spirit that takes Anglo-Saxon women to the seething, stenching plains and holds them there high-chinned to stiffen their men-folk by courageous example, but it leads, too, to things not quite so womanly and good.

  “I’ll show them!” muttered Rosemary McClean, wiping the blown dust from her eyes and facing the wind again that now began to carry with it the unspread taint — the awful, sickening, soul-revolting smell inseparable from Hindoo funeral rites. There were three pyres, low-smouldering, close by the river-bank, and men stirred with long poles among the ashes to make sure that the incineration started the evening before should be complete; there was one pyre that looked as though it had been lit long after dawn — another newly lit — and there were two pyres building.

  It was those two new ones that held her attention, and finally decided her to hold her course. She wanted to make sure. The smell of burning — the unoutlined, only guessed-at ghastliness — would probably have killed her courage yet, before she came close enough to really see; but the suspicion of a greater horror drew her on, as snakes are said to draw birds on, by merely being snakes, and with red-rimmed eyes smarting from smoke as well as wind she pressed forward.

  The ghats were deserted-looking, for the funeral rites of those who burned were practically over until the time should come to scatter ashes on the river-surface; only a few attendants hovered close to the fires to prod them and occasionally throw on extra logs. Only round the two new pyres not yet quite finished was anything approaching a crowd assembled, and there a priest was officiously directing the laying of the logs. It was the manner of their laying and the careful building of a scaffold on each side of either pyre that held Rosemary McClean’s attention — called all the rebellious womanhood within her to interfere — and drew her nearer.