by Grant Allen
“Soon after, I went out to the parade ground, because I heard there was to be a dreadful sight. They were going to blow the rebels they had taken, from the guns. I went out and looked on. Then they took all the men, Brahmans and Chumars alike, and broke caste, and tied them each to a gun. I could not have done it, though I cut down the Feringhee ladies; but they did it, and made a light matter of it. Then they fired the guns, and in a whiff their bodies were all blown away utterly, so that there was nothing left of them. This they did so as utterly to destroy the rebels, leaving neither body nor soul, but annihilating them altogether, which is worse than death. They would have done it to me, if they had caught me. Do you wonder that I hate the Feringhees, Sahib? Why, they did it even to the twice-born Brahmans, let alone a Jat. The gods will avenge it on them.
“Then I went out to look at my plot of land. The Feringhees knew of me from many traitors, some of whom had given up my name to save themselves from being blown away — and no wonder. They had seized my plot, and sold it to another man, a zameendar, a Kayath in Cawnpore, who had made money by supplying them with food — the curse of all the gods upon him! And as for my wife and children, they had gone wandering out, and I have never seen them since. My wife was with child, and she went into Cawnpore, and thence elsewhere, I know not where, and starved to death, I suppose, or died in some other shameful way. But one of my daughters a missionary got, and sent her to Meerut to a school; and there they are teaching her to be a Christian, and to hate her own gods and her own people, and to love the Feringhees who suck the blood of India, and grind down the poor with taxes, and dispossess the Thakurs, who ought, of course, by right to own the land. This much I learned by inquiring at Cawnpore; but how my wife died, or whether they killed her, or what, that I have never been able to learn.
“So that was the end of it all. The Nana was hidden away somewhere up Nepaul way; and the Feringhees had got back Lucknow; and all over the Doab and the Punjab they were established again, and the hopes of the people were all broken. And I had lost my land, and my wife, and my children, and had nothing to live upon or to live for. And we had not driven out the accursed strangers, after all, but on the contrary they made themselves stronger than ever, and sent more soldiers, as the jemadar had prophesied, and put down the Company, who used to be their rajah, and sent up a Maharani instead, who is now Empress of India. And they made new taxes and a new census and all sorts of imposts. But since that time they have been more afraid of us, and are not so insolent to the temples, or the pilgrims, or to the sacred monkeys. And I came to Bithoor, and became a syce, and I have been a syce ever since. That is all I know about the Mutiny, Sahib.”
The old man stopped suddenly, having told all his story in a dull, monotonous voice, with little feeling and no dramatic display. I have tried to reproduce it just as he said it. There was no passion, no fierceness, no cruelty in his manner; but simply a deep, settled, uniform tone of hatred to the English. It was the only time I had ever heard the story of the Mutiny from a native point of view, and I give it as I heard it, without mitigating aught either of its horror or its truth.
“And you are not afraid of telling me all this?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The Sahib has a white face,” he answered, “but his heart is black.”
“And the Nana?” I inquired. “Do you know if he is living still?”
His eyes flashed fire for the first time since he had begun. “Ay,” he cried; “he is living. That I know from many trusty friends. And he will come again whenever there is trouble between the Feringhees and the other Christians: and then we shall have no quarrelling among ourselves; but Sindiah, and Holkar, and the Nizam, and the Oude people, and even the Bengalis will rise up together; and we will cut every Feringhee’s throat in all India, and the gods will give us the land for ever after.... Good night, Sahib: my salaam to you.” And he glided like a serpent from the room.
The Beckoning Hand, and Other Stories
CONTENTS
THE BECKONING HAND.
LUCRETIA.
THE THIRD TIME.
THE GOLD WULFRIC.
MY UNCLE’S WILL.
THE TWO CARNEGIES.
OLGA DAVIDOFF’S HUSBAND.
JOHN CANN’S TREASURE.
ISALINE AND I.
PROFESSOR MILLITER’S DILEMMA.
IN STRICT CONFIDENCE.
THE SEARCH PARTY’S FIND.
HARRY’S INHERITANCE.
The original frontispiece
PREFACE.
Of the thirteen stories included in this volume, “The Gold Wulfric,” “The Two Carnegies,” and “John Cann’s Treasure” originally appeared in the pages of the Cornhill; “The Third Time” and “The Search Party’s Find” are from Longman’s Magazine; “Harry’s Inheritance” first saw the light in the English Illustrated; and “Lucretia,” “My Uncle’s Will,” “Olga Davidoff’s Husband,” “Isaline and I,” “Professor Milliter’s Dilemma,” and “In Strict Confidence,” obtained hospitable shelter between the friendly covers of Belgravia. My title-piece, “The Beckoning Hand,” is practically new, having only been published before as the Christmas supplement of a provincial newspaper. My thanks are due to Messrs. Smith and Elder, Longmans, Macmillan, and Chatto and Windus for kind permission to reprint most of the stories here. If anybody reads them and likes them, let me take this opportunity (as an unprejudiced person) of recommending to him my other volume of “Strange Stories,” which I consider every bit as gruesome as this one. Should I succeed in attaining the pious ambition of the Fat Boy, and “making your flesh creep,” then, as somebody once remarked before, “this work will not have been written in vain.”
G. A.
The Nook, Dorking,
Christmas Day, 1886.
THE BECKONING HAND.
I.
I first met Césarine Vivian in the stalls at the Ambiguities Theatre.
I had promised to take Mrs. Latham and Irene to see the French plays which were then being acted by Marie Leroux’s celebrated Palais Royal company. I wasn’t at the time exactly engaged to poor Irene: it has always been a comfort to me that I wasn’t engaged to her, though I knew Irene herself considered it practically equivalent to an understood engagement. We had known one another intimately from childhood upward, for the Lathams were a sort of second cousins of ours, three times removed: and we had always called one another by our Christian names, and been very fond of one another in a simple girlish and boyish fashion as long as we could either of us remember. Still, I maintain, there was no definite understanding between us; and if Mrs. Latham thought I had been paying Irene attentions, she must have known that a young man of two and twenty, with a decent fortune and a nice estate down in Devonshire, was likely to look about him for a while before he thought of settling down and marrying quietly.
I had brought the yacht up to London Bridge, and was living on board in picnic style, and running about town casually, when I took Irene and her mother to see “Faustine,” at the Ambiguities. As soon as we had got in and taken our places, Irene whispered to me, touching my hand lightly with her fan, “Just look at the very dark girl on the other side of you, Harry! Did you ever in your life see anybody so perfectly beautiful?”
It has always been a great comfort to me, too, that Irene herself was the first person to call my attention to Césarine Vivian’s extraordinary beauty.
I turned round, as if by accident, and gave a passing glance, where Irene waved her fan, at the girl beside me. She was beautiful, certainly, in a terrible, grand, statuesque style of beauty; and I saw at a glimpse that she had Southern blood in her veins, perhaps Negro, perhaps Moorish, perhaps only Spanish, or Italian, or Provençal. Her features were proud and somewhat Jewish-looking; her eyes large, dark, and haughty; her black hair waved slightly in sinuous undulations as it passed across her high, broad forehead; her complexion, though a dusky olive in tone, was clear and rich, and daintily transparent; and her lips were thin and very slightly curled at the delicate
corners, with a peculiarly imperious and almost scornful expression of fixed disdain. I had never before beheld anywhere such a magnificently repellent specimen of womanhood. For a second or so, as I looked, her eyes met mine with a defiant inquiry, and I was conscious that moment of some strange and weird fascination in her glance that seemed to draw me irresistibly towards her, at the same time that I hardly dared to fix my gaze steadily upon the piercing eyes that looked through and through me with their keen penetration.
“She’s very beautiful, no doubt,” I whispered back to Irene in a low undertone, “though I must confess I don’t exactly like the look of her. She’s a trifle too much of a tragedy queen for my taste: a Lady Macbeth, or a Beatrice Cenci, or a Clytemnestra. I prefer our simple little English prettiness to this southern splendour. It’s more to our English liking than these tall and stately Italian enchantresses. Besides, I fancy the girl looks as if she had a drop or two of black blood somewhere about her.”
“Oh, no,” Irene cried warmly. “Impossible, Harry. She’s exquisite: exquisite. Italian, you know, or something of that sort. Italian girls have always got that peculiar gipsy-like type of beauty.”
Low as we spoke, the girl seemed to know by instinct we were talking about her; for she drew away the ends of her light wrap coldly, in a significant fashion, and turned with her opera-glass in the opposite direction, as if on purpose to avoid looking towards us.
A minute later the curtain rose, and the first act of Halévy’s “Faustine” distracted my attention for the moment from the beautiful stranger.
Marie Leroux took the part of the great empress. She was grand, stately, imposing, no doubt, but somehow it seemed to me she didn’t come up quite so well as usual that evening to one’s ideal picture of the terrible, audacious, superb Roman woman. I leant over and murmured so to Irene. “Don’t you know why?” Irene whispered back to me with a faint movement of the play-bill toward the beautiful stranger.
“No,” I answered; “I haven’t really the slightest conception.”
“Why,” she whispered, smiling; “just look beside you. Could anybody bear comparison for a moment as a Faustine with that splendid creature in the stall next to you?”
I stole a glance sideways as she spoke. It was quite true. The girl by my side was the real Faustine, the exact embodiment of the dramatist’s creation; and Marie Leroux, with her stagey effects and her actress’s pretences, could not in any way stand the contrast with the genuine empress who sat there eagerly watching her.
The girl saw me glance quickly from her towards the actress and from the actress back to her, and shrank aside, not with coquettish timidity, but half angrily and half as if flattered and pleased at the implied compliment. “Papa,” she said to the very English-looking gentleman who sat beyond her, “ce monsieur-ci....” I couldn’t catch the end of the sentence.
She was French, then, not Italian or Spanish; yet a more perfect Englishman than the man she called “papa” it would be difficult to discover on a long summer’s day in all London.
“My dear,” her father whispered back in English, “if I were you....” and the rest of that sentence also was quite inaudible to me.
My interest was now fully roused in the beautiful stranger, who sat evidently with her father and sister, and drank in every word of the play as it proceeded with the intensest interest. As for me, I hardly cared to look at the actors, so absorbed was I in my queenly neighbour. I made a bare pretence of watching the stage every five minutes, and saying a few words now and again to Irene or her mother; but my real attention was all the time furtively directed to the girl beside me. Not that I was taken with her; quite the contrary; she distinctly repelled me; but she seemed to exercise over me for all that the same strange and indescribable fascination which is often possessed by some horrible sight that you would give worlds to avoid, and yet cannot for your life help intently gazing upon.
Between the third and fourth acts Irene whispered to me again, “I can’t keep my eyes off her, Harry. She’s wonderfully beautiful. Confess now: aren’t you over head and ears in love with her?”
I looked at Irene’s sweet little peaceful English face, and I answered truthfully, “No, Irene. If I wanted to fall in love, I should find somebody — —”
“Nonsense, Harry,” Irene cried, blushing a little, and holding up her fan before her nervously. “She’s a thousand times prettier and handsomer in every way — —”
“Prettier?”
“Than I am.”
At that moment the curtain rose, and Marie Leroux came forward once more with her imperial diadem, in the very act of defying and bearding the enraged emperor.
It was a great scene. The whole theatre hung upon her words for twenty minutes. The effect was sublime. Even I myself felt my interest aroused at last in the consummate spectacle. I glanced round to observe my neighbour. She sat there, straining her gaze upon the stage, and heaving her bosom with suppressed emotion. In a second, the spell was broken again. Beside that tall, dark southern girl, in her queenly beauty, with her flashing eyes and quivering nostrils, intensely moved by the passion of the play, the mere actress who mouthed and gesticulated before us by the footlights was as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. My companion in the stalls was the genuine Faustine: the player on the stage was but a false pretender.
As I looked a cry arose from the wings: a hushed cry at first, a buzz or hum; rising louder and ever louder still, as a red glare burst upon the scene from the background. Then a voice from the side boxes rang out suddenly above the confused murmur and the ranting of the actors “Fire! Fire!”
Almost before I knew what had happened, the mob in the stalls, like the mob in the gallery, was surging and swaying wildly towards the exits, in a general struggle for life of the fierce old selfish barbaric pattern. Dense clouds of smoke rolled from the stage and filled the length and breadth of the auditorium; tongues of flame licked up the pasteboard scenes and hangings, like so much paper; women screamed, and fought, and fainted; men pushed one another aside and hustled and elbowed, in one wild effort to make for the doors at all hazards to the lives of their neighbours. Never before had I so vividly realized how near the savage lies to the surface in our best and highest civilized society. I had to realize it still more vividly and more terribly afterwards.
One person alone I observed calm and erect, resisting quietly all pushes and thrusts, and moving with slow deliberateness to the door, as if wholly unconcerned at the universal noise and hubbub and tumult around her. It was the dark girl from the stalls beside me.
For myself, my one thought of course was for poor Irene and Mrs. Latham. Fortunately, I am a strong and well-built man, and by keeping the two women in front of me, and thrusting hard with my elbows on either side to keep off the crush, I managed to make a tolerably clear road for them down the central row of stalls and out on to the big external staircase. The dark girl, now separated from her father and sister by the rush, was close in front of me. By a careful side movement, I managed to include her also in our party. She looked up to me gratefully with her big eyes, and her mouth broke into a charming smile as she turned and said in perfect English, “I am much obliged to you for your kind assistance.” Irene’s cheek was pale as death; but through the strange young lady’s olive skin the bright blood still burned and glowed amid that frantic panic as calmly as ever.
We had reached the bottom of the steps, and were out into the front, when suddenly the strange lady turned around and gave a little cry of disappointment. “Mes lorgnettes! Mes lorgnettes!” she said. Then glancing round carelessly to me she went on in English: “I have left my opera-glasses inside on the vacant seat. I think, if you will excuse me, I’ll go back and fetch them.”
“It’s impossible,” I cried, “my dear madam. Utterly impossible. They’ll crush you underfoot. They’ll tear you to pieces.”
She smiled a strange haughty smile, as if amused at the idea, but merely answered, “I think not,” and tried to pass lightly by
me.
I held her arm. I didn’t know then she was as strong as I was. “Don’t go,” I said imploringly. “They will certainly kill you. It would be impossible to stem a mob like this one.”
She smiled again, and darted back in silence before I could stop her.
Irene and Mrs. Latham were now fairly out of all danger. “Go on, Irene,” I said loosing her arm. “Policeman, get these ladies safely out. I must go back and take care of that mad woman.”
“Go, go quick,” Irene cried. “If you don’t go, she’ll be killed, Harry.”
I rushed back wildly after her, battling as well as I was able against the frantic rush of panic-stricken fugitives, and found my companion struggling still upon the main staircase. I helped her to make her way back into the burning theatre, and she ran lightly through the dense smoke to the stall she had occupied, and took the opera-glasses from the vacant place. Then she turned to me once more with a smile of triumph. “People lose their heads so,” she said, “in all these crushes. I came back on purpose to show papa I wasn’t going to be frightened into leaving my opera-glasses. I should have been eternally ashamed of myself if I had come away and left them in the theatre.”
“Quick,” I answered, gasping for breath. “If you don’t make haste, we shall be choked to death, or the roof itself will fall in upon us and crush us!”
She looked up where I pointed with a hasty glance, and then made her way back again quickly to the staircase. As we hurried out, the timbers of the stage were beginning to fall in, and the engines were already playing fiercely upon the raging flames. I took her hand and almost dragged her out into the open. When we reached the Strand, we were both wet through, and terribly blackened with smoke and ashes. Pushing our way through the dense crowd, I called a hansom. She jumped in lightly. “Thank you so much,” she said, quite carelessly. “Will you kindly tell him where to drive? Twenty-seven, Seymour Crescent.”
