Part 11 (2/2)
The only life possible for the girl would be that of a prost.i.tute. She might be married by the temple priests to the G.o.d Khandoka, as thousands of widows had been, and thus become a nun of the temple, a prost.i.tute to the celibate priests. Knowing all this, and that Bootea was what she was, her face and eyes holding all that sweetness and cleanness, that she lived in the guardians.h.i.+p of Ajeet Singh, very much a man, Barlow admired her the more in that she had escaped moral destruction. Her face was the face of one of high caste; she was not like the ordinary _nautch_ girl of the fourth caste. Everything about Bootea suggested breeding, quality.
The iron bracelet, indicated why she had socially pa.s.sed down the scale--there was no doubt about it.
”I understand, Gulab,” he said; ”the Sahibs all understand, and know that widowhood is not a reproach.”
”But the Sahib questioned of love; and how can one such know of love?
The heart starves and does not grow for it feeds upon love--what we of Hind call the sweet pain in the heart.”
”But have none been kind, Gulab--pleased by your flower face, has no one warmed your heart?”
The slim arms that gripped Barlow in a new tightening trembled, the face that fled from the betraying moonlight was buried against his tunic, and the warm body quivered from sobs.
Barlow turned her face up, and the moonlight showed vagrant pearls that lay against the olive cheeks, now tinted like the petals of a rose. Then from a service point of view, and as a matter of caste, Barlow went _ghazi_. He drooped his head and let his lips linger against the girl's eyes, and uttered a superb common-place: ”Don't cry, little girl,” he said; ”I am seven kinds of a brute to bother you!”
And Bootea thought it would have been better if he had driven a knife into her heart, and sobbed with increased bitterness. Once her fingers wandered up searchingly and touched his throat.
Barlow casting about for the wherefore of his madness, discovered the moonlight, and heard the soft night-air whispering through the harp chords of trees that threw a tracery of black lines across the white road; and from a grove of mango trees came the gentle scent of their blossoms; and he remembered that statistics had it that there was but one memsahib to so many square miles in that land of expatriation; and he knew that he was young and full of the joy of life; that a British soldier was not like a man of Hind who looked upon women as cattle.
There did not obtrude into his mental retrospect as an accusation against this unwarrantable tenderness the vision of the Resident's daughter--almost his fiancee. Indeed Elizabeth was the ant.i.thesis in physical appeal of the gentle Gulab; the drawing-room perhaps; repartee of Damascus steel fineness; tutored polish, cla.s.s, cold integrity--these things a.s.sociated admirably with the unsensuous Elizabeth. Thoughts of her, remembrances, had no place in glamorous perfumed moonlight.
So he set his teeth and admonished the grey Turcoman, called him the decrepit son of a donkey, being without speed; and to punish him stroked his neck gently: even this forced diversion bringing him closer to the torturing sweetness of the girl.
But now he was aware of a throbbing on the night wind, and a faint shrill note that lay deep in the shadows beyond. It was a curious rumbling noise, as though ghosts of the hills on the right were playing bowls with rounded rocks. And the shrilling skirl grew louder as if men marched behind bagpipes.
The Gulab heard it, too, and her body stiffened, her head thrust from the enveloping cloak, and her eyes showed like darkened sapphires.
”Carts carrying cotton perhaps,” he said. But presently he knew that small cotton carts but rattled, the volume of rumbling was as if an army moved.
From up the road floated the staccato note of a staff beating its surface, and the clanking tinkle of an iron ring against the wooden staff.
”A mail-carrier,” Barlow said.
And then to the monotonous pat-pat-pat of trotting feet the mail-carrier emerged from the grey wall of night.
”Here, you, what comes?” the Captain queried, checking the grey.
The postie stopped in terror at the English voice.
”Salaam, Bahadur Sahib; it is war.”
”Thou art a tree owl,” and Barlow laughed. ”A war does not spring up like a drift of driven dust. Is it some raja's elephants and carts with his harem going to a _durbar_?”
”Sahib, it is, as I have said, war. The big bra.s.s cannon that is called 'The Humbler of Cities,' goes forth to speak its order, and with it are sepoys to feed it the food of destruction. Beyond that I know not, Sahib, for I am a man of peace, being but a runner of the post.”
Then he salaamed and sifted into the night gloom like a thrown handful of white sand, echoing back the clamp-clamp-clamp of his staff's iron ring, which was a signal to all cobras to move from the path of him who ran, slip their chilled folds from the warm dust of the road.
And on in front what had been sounds of mystery was now a turmoil of noises. The hissing screech, the wails, were the expostulations of tortured axles; the rumbling boom was unexplainable; but the jungle of the hillside was possessed of screaming devils. Black-faced, white-whiskered monkeys roused by the din, screamed cries of hate and alarm as they scurried in volplaning leaps from tree to tree. And peac.o.c.ks, awakened when they should have slept, called with their harsh voices from lofty perches.
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