The Hosts of the Lord Part 6

"Think of it, at least, Roshan," she said, "and remember that it is not as if the girl were a real _mem_. Pidar Narayan, for all he is so clever, was put to it to find a husband for the mother, the baptized baby! He took a poor creature from Martin's school at Lucknow, at last, who could not even speak English like a _Huzoor_--"

"Because he was Italian and a Catholic," put in Roshan, then shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "But thou canst not understand. 'Tis impossible! Dreams, grandmother, dreams!"

"Dreams come true even when forgotten, and torchbearers never see their own way," retorted the old lady, ending the discussion with proverbial wisdom as a clincher. "So think of it, since thoughts cost nothing, and tell no tales."

Roshan felt as if they did the former at any rate, as he strode back toward the fort, telling himself he would feel better when he had on his uniform once more. This was his _metier_, not marriage. The best soldiers, the really great soldiers--he paused, the knowledge that he could never rise to real greatness coming to make him clinch his right hand as if on his sword-hilt. The tempest of revolt which swept through him left him dazed, for he had reasoned the matter out with himself thoroughly, and thought he had accepted the situation, thought that he had realized that his dignity in the regiment under the present system went side by side, and not behind, that of the English officers. Yet here he was at the mercy of something too strong for acquired wisdom.

He walked on faster to escape into a more wholesome environment, and by sheer force of will succeeded in driving away all thought of the past interview save a triviality. That was the remembrance that her name was Laila, his Roshan. Light and Darkness, Day and Night. A fate indeed.

As he pa.s.sed into the courtyard, however, on his way to the door in the river bastion, a group in its centre, round the old gun, brought his attention back to realities, and he went towards it, his slipper-shod feet making no martial clank, this time, on the union-jack of raised paths. The group consisted of half a dozen or so of men listening to something which was being declaimed, with much gesticulation, by an ash-smeared _jogi_, whose wide-pierced ears, distended by conch-sh.e.l.l rings, and transverse bar of white on his forehead, showed him to belong to the sect which claims to have transcendental powers.

Apparently he had been making the claim, for a young man, whose costume smacked of Western culture, and whose face was acute, litigious, interrupted him impatiently.

"Yea, yea; possibly thou couldst come over the obstruction, Gorakh-nath-_jee_; but the question is whether the obstruction be legal. Is it not so, Lala Ramanund?"

Lala Ramanund, whose dress was even more Western, and who had a certain air of distinction, due, evidently, to position, a.s.sented; adding, as a rider, and with some contempt, that at present they had only _jogi_ Gorakh-nath's word that any interference was intended.

Gorakh-nath, a tall, muscular man, naked save for his gra.s.s-rope girdle, his wild hair twined and twisted to a tiara, his wild, half-insane eyes telling of drugs, shot a glance of absolute defiance at Ramanund. "Thy name, _pundit-jee_, is not likely to give friendly witness to mine," he began, alluding to the fact that they were respectively called after the founders of their absolutely antagonistic sects, "and yet methinks thou couldst, seeing--"

Here Dya Ram, the first speaker, alarmed in his lawyer's soul at the militant tone of the _jogi_, suggested hastily that they might inquire, say at the gate; or stay! there was the _risaldar_ coming; he must know.

Once more, as he listened to the question put to him, the expression of his race and creed came to Roshan's face, hiding its culture.

"Of a certainty!" he replied haughtily. "The gun belongs to the Fort.

It is not to be used as a shelter for--for saints!" His contempt was palpable.

"I deny your premise," put in Dya Ram eagerly. "The gun is the people's by prescriptive right. I can use it if I choose. The Government professes neutrality; therefore, no one has a right to interfere with my religion."

Roshan's face was a study. "Lo! Dya Ram, for thou art my old cla.s.s-fellow surely, hast gone back to the old beliefs since the days when thou didst sign thyself at the end of thy essays, and in thy books, 'Dya Ram, Agnostic'?"

Dya Ram gave an uneasy cough. "It is a question of legality--" he began.

"And of money also," put in a new voice cringingly. "The pilgrims come hither to see the saint, and then bathe. But if there is no saint, many will not come, and I, who have my right on the steps as marker of the caste marks--"

"Right!" echoed the Mahomedan curtly. "Have a care, caste-marker, lest we do not claim the courtyard also."

Here Ramanund, who had hitherto listened indifferently, took up the cudgels. "That can scarcely be, _risaldar-sahib_," he said; "our pious folk have come hither to perform their offices since time began."

Gorakh-nath turned on him at once. "Not so, _Vaishnava!_" he said.

"Thou and thine know naught of the Beginning of Things. Come to us and Holy s.h.i.+v-_jee_ for that! Thou art as far from the great wisdom as he"--here he pointed wildly to Roshan--"yea! further, despite thy pretence of purity! Despite thy hunger yesterday when, returning to thy lost faith, thou didst come here to eat as the twice-born should, and a shadow fell upon thy food! Despite thy deafness to this world just now,"--here he laughed jeeringly,--"which kept thee back from bearing witness to my truth, to the truth of s.h.i.+v-_jee's_ servant!"

Dya Ram looked at him, then at Ramanund perplexedly. "What means he?"

he said aside. "Didst thou really come hither?"

"My wife was dying," replied Ramanund in a low, rapid undertone, "and I--you understand--there--there is nothing certain, you see--and any chance--one goes back at such times--" he broke off almost desperately in his confession.

Dya Ram, who had signed himself Agnostic, nodded. He understood what it was to be rudderless in a familiar current, and came to the rescue of his friend's consistency by a.s.serting that any such decision regarding the gun, if one had been made, would certainly be disputed. That he and his--though they demurred to its being counted against them for faith in the wors.h.i.+pping of mere matter--would, if necessary, carry the case to the High Court.

"Carry it to the Court of thy G.o.d Indra, if need be, Dya Ram," retorted Roshan, and as he strode off he spat deliberately in the dust. That also surprised him faintly, for he had thought he had learnt tolerance of the _Huzoors_. So, with a frown and yet with relief, he put his hand on the latch which would open the way back to a less disturbing environment. As he did so, another hand was on it also. The door opened from within, and Father Ninian stood on the threshold barring it; but barring it with smiles.

"Ah! my pupil," he said in English. "I have been listening to your praises from Captain Dering, and from Mr. Carlyon too. He says you are the best fencer in the army. You and I must cross foils again sometime, eh, my pupil?"

Roshan, as he stepped aside elaborately to let the old man pa.s.s, drew himself up and saluted.

"If you please, sir; but I have learnt new things since--since those days."

His tone made Father Ninian pause to look at him for an instant; then he replied, "And I have not forgotten the old; that makes us equal."

Roshan gave a little hard laugh as he went in; if the old man liked to think so, let him.

But Father Ninian's face as he pa.s.sed--a black shadow in the suns.h.i.+ne--across the level steps leading down to the river wore a wistful smile. Old and new, he thought. New and old. Senseless, useless words, fit only for humanity to juggle dreams from, since no man knew the unseen beginning, knew the unseen end; knew even his own birth and death. In the endless band of life, naught came first, naught last, and the things of to-day might be old, the things of yesterday might be new.

"_Margherita!_"

The name came soundless to the priest's lips, and a quick flush of youth, and hope, and joy seemed to smooth away the wrinkles of his face. A faint laugh, a happy laugh, went further towards a hearing than the name. It was sixty years ago, nearly, since he had left her. An old story indeed, and yet how new. The new wine of it ran in his old veins, thrilled to his old brain, and took him back absolutely to a palazzo on the outskirts of Rome, with the pale flood of the Tiber flowing beneath a marble loggia. He had never looked on running water since without remembrance, and now--his feet having led him unconsciously to the river's edge--he stood smiling at the pale flood of the Hari. For he knew that he had fought a good fight, that he had kept the promise he had made in order to still her soul; that he had kept her boy, Pietro Bonaventura, so far as he could, from harm, and his child, and his child's child, gathering them as lambs into the arms of Holy Church.

And then something in the last thought drove the tender human smile from his face. He murmured a "_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_," bent to the stream, and dipping his fingers in it, crossed himself.

"May s.h.i.+v-_jee's_ blessing go with his holy water, _Baba-jee_," said a voice behind him. It was Gorakh-nath the _jogi_, who, his sympathizers having departed, had come to fill his gourd.

Father Ninian turned; so for a s.p.a.ce they stood face to face; representatives of the two great supernaturalisms of the world; the one which has held the West, the one which has held the East.

The old man's face, at first, returned to kindly human tolerance; for his fifty years of Eshwara had widened his sympathies. But, as he stood before the _jogi_ it hardened, and the priestly arrogance of the naked ash-smeared figure, stretching a right hand in claim over the sanctifying power of the river, was reflected in Father Ninian's as he spread his left hand upwards, and turned on his heel with the words, "_Vade retro Satanas!_"

CHAPTER V

THE "DEE-PUK-RaG"

"You are tired to death as it is--why should you fuss any more over a pack--"

"Ss.h.!.+ sir; don't talk rubbish. I am all right; and Eugene is so anxious everything should be a success that I must. Besides I--I like it."

Mrs. Walsall Smith sent the hostess' gathering smile round her long luncheon table, and rose. So did Vincent Dering, who had sat at her right hand--a position due to his rank as commandant of Eshwara--and, as he did, he drew his chair aside to let the girl on his left pa.s.s, with his usual somewhat _voyant_ courtesy, though it was only Laila Bonaventura. He had met her several times during the past few days, and the effect which her singing had made on him had vanished before her general failure to interest him in the least. And to-day she actually wore a blue sas.h.!.+ In addition she had filled up the time between her monosyllables in methodically crumbling her bread and ranging the results in a pattern, until the inanity of it had got on his nerves, and he had felt inclined to beg her to desist.

And yet, as in pa.s.sing her black eyes looked into his with one curious yet comprehensive flash, a memory of the extreme regularity of the curves and lines which had annoyed him, made him--quite irrelevantly--wonder hastily if he could have said anything to Muriel which--

He broke off in his own thought impatiently, and gave an apologetic glance after Mrs. Walsall Smith's fragile figure. There never was anything, never! Never a word said, never a deed done, which all the world--even Eugene Smith himself--might not hear and know. Vincent Dering felt a pulse of sheer virtue as he looked down the long table at his host, with the vague irritation which the possessors of women often arouse in those who are not their possessors. For Muriel Smith's half-playful, half-wistful rejection of sympathy had held that faint hint of dutiful martyrdom which seems so purely angelic to selfish man--unless he happens to be the wretch who inflicts it!

Curious, he thought; Eugene wasn't much of a gentleman, but he wasn't a bad sort, and he was fond of his wife, in a way. Yet he was blind to the fact that Muriel was not fit to go trapesing about his blessed old ca.n.a.l works with the pack of _padres_ and people he had got together to do honour to his skill. She would do it, of course, and get through with it, too! Here he helped himself to a gla.s.s of sherry, and felt incoherently that she was the dearest and best woman in the world,--the one woman in the world, so far as he was concerned.

As he sat between those two empty chairs where those two women, so absolutely unlike, had fenced him in on either side, a faint wonder tinged his virtue in comparing the last three years with the time before it.

If anyone had told him, then, that he would write every day to a woman and expect her to write to him without a word or a deed--

"Please, Dering-darlin'," said an imperious small voice, "mum wants 'oo, 'tos pup'll go off, she says, wis' all a gemplemen, an' she wants 'oo to go off wis' a ladies!"