Part 29 (2/2)

As the two men turned back toward their camp Jemla chuckled: ”Captain Sahib, thou seest now the weapon of the Brahmin; his loot of silver pieces was acquired with little effort and no strife; as to the rice-b.a.l.l.s the first jackal that catches their wind will have a filled stomach. It is something to be thought of in the way of regard for a long abiding in heaven that such foolish ones will not attain to it.

The setting up of false G.o.ds, carved images, I was once told by a priest of thy faith, is sufficient to exclude such. It makes one's _tulwar_ clatter in its scabbard to see such profanation in an approach to G.o.d.”

Then Jemla spoke of the matter that had engendered the troubled look Barlow had observed: ”The Captain Sahib has intimated that the One”--and he tipped his head toward the girl--”would proceed to the temple of Omkar to make offerings at the shrine?”

”Yes, she goes there.”

”There will be a hundred thousand of these infidels at Mandhatta, and when they see fifty Pindaris, _tulwar_ and spear and match-lock, there will be unrest; perhaps there will be altercation--they will fear that we ride in pillage.”

”I was thinking of that,” Barlow replied; ”and it would be as well that you turned your faces homeward.”

”We have received an order from our Chief that our lives are at the disposal of the Captain Sahib, and we will drive into the heart of a Mahratta force if needs be, but if it is the Sahib's command we will ride back from here,” Jemla said.

”Yes; there is no need of a guard for the Gulab now--just that the _tonga_ carries her as far as she wishes it,” Barlow concurred.

”Indeed we are not needed; those infidels come to wors.h.i.+p their heathen G.o.ds, not to combat men, and Mandhatta is but a matter of twelve _kos_ now,” Jemla affirmed.

When Captain Barlow, and Bootea in the _tonga_, drew out from the encampment to proceed on their way the Pindaris rode on in front, and then, at a command from Jemla, wheeled their horses into a continuous line facing the road, stirrup to stirrup, the hors.e.m.e.n sitting erect with their _tulwars_ at the salute. As Barlow pa.s.sed a cry of, ”Salaam, aleik.u.m! the protection of Allah be upon you,” rippled down the line. Then the hors.e.m.e.n wheeled with their faces to the north.

Jemla swept a hand to his forehead and from his deep throat welled a farewell, ”Salaam, bhai! (brother).”

CHAPTER XXVIII

The Jamadar's tribute from man to man, one encased in a dark skin and one in a white, was akin to the tribulation that would not be driven from Barlow's mind over the Gulab, that in their case made the matter of a skin colourisation the bar sinister. He rode in a brooding silence. And now the way was one of ascent toward the pa.s.s through the Vindhya mountains; a red gravelly undulating formation had given place to basaltic rocks. They pa.s.sed from groups of _mhowa_ trees and left behind a wide shallow stream, its bed dotted with pools fringed by great _kowa_ trees, and its banks lined by a thick green cover of _jamun_ and _karonda_. Th.o.r.n.y _babul_ thrust their spiked branches out over the roadway, white with tufts of cotton torn by its thorns from bales, loose pressed, on their way to market in buffalo carts; ”Babul the thief,” the natives called this acacia. Higher up a torch-wood tree gleamed as if sprayed with gold, its limbs, lean and bare of foliage, holding at their extremities in wisp-like fingers bright, yellow, solitary blooms. From a _tendu_ tree a pair of droll little brown monkeys chattered and grimaced at the clattering cart.

A spotted owlet, disturbed by the driver's encouraging, ”Pop-pop!

Dih-dih-dih! Ho-ho-ho! children of jungle swine; brothers to buffalo!”

addressed to the horses lagging in the climb, fluttered away with his silly little cackle.

These incidents of travel were almost unnoticed of Barlow. All up the climb the retrospect was with him, claiming his thoughts. Just that--all that was in evidence, a pigment in the skin, _caste_; and yet reacting away back to G.o.d's mandate against the union of the white and black. And verily a sin to be visited even unto the third and fourth generation, for the bar sinister would be upon his children; they would be half-castes with all of the opprobrium the name carried. Even the son of a king, the offspring of such a union would be spoken of in mess and drawing-room as a half-caste: the indelible sign would be upon him, the blue tint to the white moons in his finger nails. Barlow shuddered. Why contemplate the matter at all--it was impossible. Nana Sahib had named the barrier when he had spoken of _varna_, meaning colour, as _caste_, a s.h.i.+rt-of-mail that protected from disaster.

Sometimes as he dropped back past the _tonga_, the face of Bootea would appear beneath the lifted curtain, and though on the lips would be a sweet ravis.h.i.+ng smile, the eyes were pathetic, full of heart hunger.

Sometimes he vowed that he would put off the parting--dream on; carry her on to her people at Chunda. Then he would realise that this was cowardice, a desire flooding his sense of n.o.bility into a chasm of possible disaster; not fair to the girl; the animal mastery of male over female, the domination of s.e.x. Beyond doubt, wrapped in his arms, not even the omnipotence of the G.o.ds would take her away from him. If there were less innate n.o.bility in his avatar, if he were like men that were called red-blooded men, yet lacking the finer sensibility, this might be; not a villainous rush, just drifting. That was it, the superlative excellence of the Gulab; the very quality that attracted, was the s.h.i.+eld, the immaculate robe that clothed her and preserved her like a vestal virgin from such violation. Barlow could not word all these things; subconsciously they swayed him--like the magnetic needle, always toward the pole of right.

When they had topped the pa.s.s and descended into the valley of the Narbudda, clothed in arboreal beauty, pa.s.sed from a forest of evergreen _sal_ to giant teak trees with huge umbrella-like leaves that formed a canopy over the straight column-like boles of eighty feet, and on amidst topes of wild mango and wild date, down, down, to the lower levels where the _dhak_ jungles gave way to feathery bamboo and plantain and waving gra.s.s, the sun, like a great ball of molten gold, was splas.h.i.+ng its yellow sheen upon the waters of a stream that hurried south to Mother Narbudda.

There was a small village of Gonds, or Korkus, like a toy thing, the houses woven from split bamboo, nestling against the billowing hills.

”Here we will rest and eat,” Barlow said to the Gulab.

”As the Sahib wishes,” she answered, and smiled at him like a child.

The huge medallion of gold had slid down in the west from the dome through which were shot great streamers of red and mauve, and a peac.o.c.k perched high in a sal tree far up on the mountainside sent forth his strident cry of ”Miaou! miaou! miaou!” his evening salute to the G.o.d of warmth.

As the harsh call, like an evening _muezzin_, died out, the sweet song of a shama, in tones as pure as those of a nightingale, broke the solemn hush of eventide.

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