Part 15 (1/2)
”The future?” echoed a graybeard who had been drinking cinnamon tea calmly. ”G.o.d knows there will be wars enough in it. Didst hear, _Meean_ sahib? I have it on authority--that Jarn Larnce is to give Peshawur to Dost Mohammed and take Rajpootana instead. Take it as Oude was taken and Sambalpore, and Jhansi, and all the others.”
”Even so,” a.s.sented a quiet looking man in spectacles. ”When the last _Lat_-sahib went, he got much praise for having taken five kingdoms and given them to the Queen. The new one was told he must give more.
This begins it.”
”Let us see what we Rajpoots say first,” cried the corporal fiercely.
”'Tis we have fought the _Sirkar's_ battles, and we are not sheep to be driven against our own.”
Gul-anari leered admiringly at her new lover. ”Nay! the Rajpoots are men! and 'twas his regiment, my masters, who refused to fight over the sea, saying it was not in the bond. Ay! and gained their point.”
”That drop has gone over the sea itself,” sneered a third soldier.
”The bond is altered now. Go we must, or be dismissed. The Thakoor-_jee_ would not be so bold now, I warrant.”
The Rajpoot twirled his mustache to his very eyes and c.o.c.ked his turban awry.
”Ay, would I! and more, if they dare touch our privilege.”
Gul-anari leered again, rousing the Pathan sergeant to mutter curses, and--as if to change the subject--cross over to the man in the corner, lay insolent hands on his shoulder, and shout a question in his ear.
The man turned, met the arrogant eyes bent on him calmly, and with both hands salaamed profusely but slowly with a sort of measured rhythm. Apparently he had not caught the words and was deprecating impatience. His hands were fine hands, slender, well-shaped, and he wore a metal ring on the seal-finger. It caught the light as he salaamed.
”Louder, man, louder!” gibed the corporal. But the sergeant did not repeat the question; he stood looking at the upturned face awaiting an answer.
”Maybe he is Belooch, his speech not mine,” he said suddenly, yet with a strange lack of curiosity in his tone. There was a faint quiver, as if some strain were over in the face below, and the silence was broken by a rapid sentence.
”Yea! Belooch!” he went on in a still more satisfied tone, ”I know it by the tw.a.n.g. So there is small use in bursting my lungs.”
Here Prince Abool-Bukr, who had been dozing tipsily, his head against his fiddle, woke, and caught the last words. ”Ay, burst! burst like the royal kettle-drums of mine ancestors. Yet will I do my poor best to amuse the company and--and instruct them in virtue.” Whereupon, with much maudlin emotion, he thrummed and thrilled through a lament on the fallen fortunes of the Moghuls written by that King of Poets his Grandpapa. Being diffuse and didactic, it was met with acclamations, and Abool, being beyond the stage of discrimination, was going on to give an encore of a very different nature, when a wild clas.h.i.+ng of cymbals and hooting of conches in the bazaar below sent everyone to the balcony. Everyone save Abool, who, deprived of his audience, dozed off against his fiddle again, and the man from the corner who, as he took advantage of the diversion to escape, looked down at the handsome drunken face as he pa.s.sed it and muttered, ”Poor devil! He rode honest enough always.” Then the Rajpoot's arrogant voice rising from the crush on the balcony, he paused a second in order to listen--that being his trade.
”'Tis the holy Hindu widow to whom G.o.d sent fire on her way to the festival. A saint indeed! I know her brother, one Soma, a Yadubansi Rajpoot in the 11th, new-come to Meerut.”
The clas.h.i.+ngs and brayings were luckily loud enough to hide an irrepressible exclamation from the man behind. The next instant he was halfway down the dark stairs, tearing off cap, turban, beard, and pausing at the darkest corner to roll his baggy northern drawers out of sight, and turn his woolen green shawl inside out, thus disclosing a cotton lining of ascetic ochre tint. It was the work of a second, for Jim Douglas had been an apt pupil. So, with a smear of ashes from one pocket, a dab of turmeric and vermilion from another--put on as he finished the stairs--he emerged into the street disguised as a mendicant; the refuge of fools, as Tiddu had called it. The easiest, however, to a.s.sume at an instant's notice; and in this case the best for the procession Jim Douglas meant to join. Careless and hurried though his get-up was, he set the very thought of detection from him as he edged his way among the streaming crowd. For in that, so he told himself, lay the Mysterious Gift. To be, even in your inmost thoughts, the personality you a.s.sumed was the secret. Somehow or another it impressed those around you, and even if a challenge came there was no danger if the challenger could be isolated--brought close, as it were, to your own certainty. To this, so it seemed to him--the many-faced one vehemently protesting--came all Tiddu's mysterious instructions, which nevertheless he followed religiously. For, be they what they might, they had never failed him during the six months, save once, when, watching a horse-race, he had lost or rather recovered himself in the keen interest it awakened. Then his neighbors had edged from him and stared, and he had been forced into slipping away and changing his personality; for it was one of Tiddu's maxims that you should always carry that with you which made such change possible. To be many-faced, he said, made all faces more secure by taking from any the right of permanence. Jim Douglas therefore joined the procession and forced his way to the very front of it, where the red-splashed figure of Durga Devi was being carried shoulders high. It was garlanded with flowers and censed by swinging censers, and behind it with widespread arms to show her sacred scars walked Tara. She was naked to the waist, and the scanty ochre-tinted cloth folded about her middle was raised so as to show the scars upon her lower limbs. The sunlight gleaming on the magnificent bronze curves showed a seam or two upon her breast also. No more. As Abool-Bukr had prophesied, her face, full of wild spiritual exaltation, was unmarred and, with the shaven head, stood out bold and clear as a cameo.
_Jai! Jai! Durga mai ke jai_ (Victory to Mother Durga).
The cry came incessantly from her lips, and was echoed not only by the procession, but by the spectators. So from many a fierce throat besides the corporal's, who from Gul-anari's balcony shouted it frantically, that appeal to the Great Death Mother--implacable, athirst for blood--came to light the sordid life of the bazaar with a savage fire for something unknown--horribly unknown, that lay beyond life. Even the Mohammedans, though they spat in the gutter at the idol, felt their hearts stir; felt that if miracles were indeed abroad their G.o.d, the only true One, would not shorten His Hand either.
_Jai! Jai! Durga mai ke jai_.
The cry met with a sudden increase of volume as, the procession pa.s.sing into the wider s.p.a.ce before the big mosque, it was joined by a band of widows, who in rapturous adoration flung themselves before Tara's feet so that she might walk over them if need be, yet somehow touch them.
”Pigs of idolators!” muttered one of a group standing on the mosque steps; a group of men unmistakable in their flowing robes and beards.
”Peace, _Kazi_-sahib!” came a mellow voice. ”Let G.o.d judge when the work is done. 'The clay is base, and the potter mean, yet the pot helps man to wash and be clean.'”
The speaker, a tall, gaunt man, rose a full head above the others, and Jim Douglas' keen eyes, taking in everything as they pa.s.sed, recognized him instantly. It was the Moulvie of Fyzabad. It was partly to hear what he had to say when he was preaching, partly to find out how the people viewed the question of the heirs.h.i.+p, which had brought Jim Douglas to Delhi, so he was not surprised.
And now the procession, reaching the Dareeba, that narrowest of lanes hedged by high houses, received a momentary check. For down it, preceded by grooms with waving yak tails, came the Resident's buggy.
He was taking a lady to see the picturesque sights of the city. This was one, with a vengeance, as the red-splashed figure of the Death-G.o.ddess jammed itself in the gutter to let the aliens pa.s.s, so getting mixed up with a Mohammedan sign-board. And the crowd following it,--an ignorant crowd agape for wonders,--stood for a minute, hemmed in, as it were, between the buggy in front and the mosque behind, with that group of Moulvies on its steps.