Son of Power Part 14

"It is the perfect thought, but you must not go back there alone," he said. "I had not meant to tell you now, but it was that--made me steady--a tiger back there. He gave me nerve for your coming--a good turn it was, the most needful turn! . . . Yes, a tiger lying down on the river margin, as we talked--do not go in deeper, when I am away. . . . And on the day I come, meet _me here_ at the edge of the jungle and we will go in there to our place--together."

CHAPTER VI

_Jungle Laughter_

It was while Skag was waiting near Poona, for Carlin's eldest brother Roderick Deal, that he became toiled in the snare of his own interest in jungle laughter. It is a strange tale; lying over against the mud wall of the English caste system in India. It is to be understood that a civil officer of high rank in that country is a man whose word is law. His least suggestion is imperative. The usages of his household may not be questioned by a thought, if one is wise.

Police Commissioner Hichens was such a man. He was stationed in Bombay and there is nothing better in appointment in all India. His responsibilities were heavy like those of an empire. Personally he was austere--entirely unapproachable. Of his home life no one knew anything whatever, outside the very few of equal rank. It was understood that the mother of his two small children had died more than a year ago. Some indiscreet person had mooted that she was not sent Home in time. Still, European women do not live long in that climate anyway; and it is common knowledge that to maintain a family requires several successive mothers.

The present Mrs. Hichens was but recently a bride; a mere girl and lovely; but within a few weeks of her landing, Bombay fever had begun to destroy the more tangible qualities of her beauty--which could not be permitted.

It does not take long for the most exalted official to discover that Bombay fever resembles the Supreme Being in that it is no respecter of persons. Yet it was not even so nearly convenient to send this Mrs.

Hichens Home, as it had been to send that Mrs. Hichens Home; and that had been quite out of the question. But the Western Ghat mountains furnish a very good barricade against Bombay fever. (Devoutly inclined persons have even intimated that they were specially placed there for the convenience of men who are much attached to their homes.)

Extending a thousand miles parallel with the coast, from five to forty miles inland, built mostly of pinnacles and peaks rising a few hundred or a few thousand feet from near sea level, more rugged than any mountains of their size in the world, the Western Ghats are like a section of Himalaya in miniature. The railway line up has a reversing-station proclaimed far and wide to be the most splendid piece of railway engineering on earth. (That there are several more splendid in the Rocky Mountains is unimportant.)

Just over the top, about seventy miles from Bombay, is Khandalla and Lanowli and further on, Poona. Poona is a military station, sometimes too far. Lanowli is a railway station--which means that no one lives there who is fit to a.s.sociate with a police commissioner's wife. But Khandalla is no station at all, being only a small mountain village with three or four abandoned bungalows far apart from each other.

Heaven knows who built them in the beginning, but whoever it was, they must have done it too late, because there is a neglected grave or two near each one.

The native agents got in every good argument for the bungalows, but Police Commissioner Hichens was not persuaded. He seemed to have a const.i.tutional antipathy to those bungalows.

No, the bungalows might be safer and dryer and warmer at night; they might be cleaner and healthier and more comfortable all the time; but he wanted a tent and he meant to put it where he wanted it. So, at great expense of time and labour on the part of natives, but very little expenditure of money on his part, he succeeded in hoisting a tent from Bombay to the top of the Western Ghat mountains, of a size and of an age and of a strength which suggested a military mess-camp.

The tent was set up in the Jungle at the edge of Khandalla. The servants would find quarters in Khandalla village; a cook, a cook's servant-boy and a butler for the entire household; a boy for the small son, an ayah for the wee girl and a very expensive ayah for the lady herself.

If an ayah is expensive enough, she is usually a very intelligent person, thoroughly informed on most general subjects pertaining to her own country and entirely competent to impart that information. It is understood she will always interpret the native standpoint relative to any matter under discussion. Her value as a servant may be great, but her value as an instructor will be greater. It was necessary that each of the ayahs should be wife to one of the men servants, but it is always possible to make a temporary arrangement of that sort to accommodate the customs of a high official.

So the present Mrs. Hichens was to be established in the tent, very comfortably matted as to the floor and furnished with all necessary appointments of a satisfying quality and wealthy appearance. Men of high rank must do all things with a certain pomp and circ.u.mstance, otherwise the ignorant might sometimes forget their rank. And rank must never be allowed to be forgotten.

Police Commissioner Hichens would spend all week-ends with her; that is to say, he would leave Bombay by the first train going up after Court closed on Sat.u.r.day and would be obliged to take the Sunday evening train down. The two children so recently come into the care of a second mother, would be occupied and entertained by their servants; and the little girl, not quite three years old, would be under the additional guardians.h.i.+p of a Great Dane dog who had once belonged to her own mother.

It will be observed that the Great Dane dog is spoken of as a personality. He was so. He seemed to have quite fixed conclusions about the family. He ignored the servants (excepting Bhanah the cook, who was a servant as far out of the ordinary as the lady's own ayah).

He tolerated the small boy. He approved of the new lady. He never ceased to mourn for his dead mistress; especially in the presence of the man.

He would extend his great length on the floor in a low couchant position, not too close to where the man sat--and search the strong human face with eyes more strong. Without the twitch of a muscle anywhere in his whole body, he would endure the man's gaze as long as the man chose, with a level look of cold, untiring rebuke. There was no anger in it, no flash of light, no flame of pa.s.sion--but it had a way of eating in.

The servants bear common witness that it is the only thing they have ever known to drive the Sahib away from the delightful relaxations of his own home, which he claimed as sanctuary from the stress and grind of his official days. But the Great Dane Nels had done it more than once. Afterward the Sahib would sometimes take Nels on a hunting-furlough.

It was the first Mrs. Hichens who took the puppy with her, when she went to India with Police Commissioner Hichens; and before she died he was made to promise her on his honour, that he would care for and protect Nels as if Nels were his own son, so long as Nels should live.

There was no help for it.

Especially as it was quite well known among the servants, that on the very day of her death she had made the Sahib with his own hands lay the sleeping child over on the bed underneath Nels' out-stretched paws; because this was done in the presence of Baby's ayah and of her own ayah also, and therefore two witnesses had heard her say:

"Nels, I am giving my baby to you. The Sahib her father is not able to be with her, much. But you are to care for my baby for me. Do you understand, my dear?" She often called Nels "my dear" with a peculiar inflection on the _dear_ and an upward lilt of tone.

And Nels had agreed, because he pressed the little body hard and lifted up his big grey head and cried a long, low cry. And the lady had laughed a little and wiped glistening tears from her death-misted face, for her baby would be--not _quite_ alone.

So all the servants knew that Nels had owned the child from that day.

Now it is not a wise thing to antagonise a body of East Indian servants in matters which they consider sacred; and Police Commissioner Hichens was a lawyer and a judge and a wise man. He might fear Nels as he feared death itself, the two being equivalent in his mind, but he might not destroy Nels with his own hand, nor let it be known that he had caused the great dog's death. Still, if he took Nels with him on hunting-furloughs, as often as possible setting him to charge most deadly game, there was always the possibility of an accident.

To many it seemed strange that the present Mrs. Hichens, a regal young English thing, was made to live in a lonely tent, well back among dense jungle growths, quite out of sight or call away from any human habitation, with her husband's little son and littler daughter and the Great Dane dog. Certainly the servants were about during the daytime; as much out of sight as possible, according to their good teaching.

But at night there were no servants about; they were all far away at the other end of the village, because the natives who lived at this side were low caste.

And it was at night the thing developed. A slow-driving inquisition, night after night. It drove her through and beyond the deadly fever la.s.situde. She was not building up out of it; she was beaten down below it. She was beaten through all the successive stages of breaking nerves. She used all the known arguments, all the intellectual methods to sustain pure courage, to hold herself immune. She used them all up.

At first, when her husband came up for his weekends, he was quite evidently pleased with his arrangement. And it would take a self-confidence which had long since gone a-glimmering out of her, to break in on his enthusiasm with any criticism of his provisions for her comfort; certainly no criticism on any basis of noise. It has been said that Police Commissioner Hichens was an unapproachable man; and some things are impossible. One can die, you know, any death. But some things are entirely impossible.

The day came when she dragged her weary weight up from the couch and drove her unsteady frame along the new pathway through jungle thickets toward the village. The idea had been gnawing in her consciousness for days; to find the nearest house or hut or any kind of place where human beings lived, so as to have it in her mind where to run when the time came. It had come to that. It went in circles through her brain; when the time came to run, she positively must know where to run.

Her progress was slow and painful. When her limbs shook so she could not stand alone, she leaned against a tree. She must not lie down on the ground on account of the centipedes and scorpions.

"h.e.l.lo--"

Startled a little, she turned toward the voice. A man's voice, very low. It came from somewhere behind her. She broke away from her support and the fever-surge caught her and whipped her from head to foot. Her balance was going--

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you."

She was kept from falling by the arm of the stranger.

"No. It's the fever. I a.s.sure you it's the fever."

Now he just steadied her with one hand. The fever was filling her brain with a dull haze. . . . He was slender and not tall. He was much bronzed. She could see only his eyes and his mouth. He spoke again:

"Why are you alone in this jungle--with such a fever?"

The words dropped into her consciousness; even, smooth, like pebbles gently released into water.

Then the blackness of outer darkness came up between.

. . . That was how the present Mrs. Hichens began to know Skag.

He carried her back along the path, fresh-marked by her own footsteps, to the tent.

Next afternoon he called to learn how she was. He had a sheaf of wild mountain lilac-blooms in his hand.

"Oh, lovely! I haven't seen lilacs since England."

"They make me think of my mother," he said, giving the flowers into her hands.

"I would so much like to hear about your mother."

Skag had not the habit of much speaking, but he found it easy to tell this English girl about the mother who had died when he was a child.

She leaned against banked pillows and watched the changes flow across his face. They were almost startling and yet so clean, so wholesome, that she felt inwardly refreshed, as by a breath from mountain heights.