William The Conqueror
PART I
I have done one braver thing
Than all the worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is to keep that hid.
The Undertaking.
"Is it officially declared yet?"
They've gone as far as to admit 'extreme local scarcity,' and they've
started relief-works in one or two districts, the paper says."
"That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the
men and the rolling-stock. 'Shouldn't wonder if it were as bad as
the '78 Famine."
"'Can't be," said Scott, turning a little in the long cane chair.
"We've had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal
report more than they know what to do with. They'll be able to
check it before it gets out of hand. It will only be local."
Martyn picked the "Pioneer" from the table, read through the
telegrams once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests. It
was a hot, dark, breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the
newly watered Mall. The flowers in the Club gardens were dead and
black on their stalks, the little lotus-pond was a circle of caked
mud, and the tamarisk-trees were white with the dust of weeks.
Most of the men were at the band-stand in the public gardens - from
the Club verandah you could hear the native Police band hammering
stale waltzes - or on the polo-ground, or in the high-walled
fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms,
squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters' return.
>From time to time a man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club
compound, and listlessly loaf over to the whitewashed barracks
beside the main building. These were supposed to be chambers. Men
lived in them, meeting the same white faces night after night at
dinner, and drawing out their office-work till the latest possible
hour, that they might escape that doleful company.
"What are you going to do?." said Martyn, with a yawn. "Let's
have a swim before dinner."
"'Water's hot. I was at the bath to-day."
"Play you game o' billiards - fifty up."
"It's a hundred and five in the hall now. Sit still and don't be
so abominably energetic."
A grunting camel swung up to the porch, his badged and belted
rider fumbling a leather pouch.
"Kubber-kargaz-ki-yektraaa," the man whined, handing down the
newspaper extra - a slip printed on one side only, and damp from
the press. It was pinned up on the green-baize board, between
notices of ponies for sale and fox-terriers missing.
Martyn rose lazily, read it, and whistled. "It's declared!" he
cried. "One, two, three - eight districts go under the operations
of the Famine Code ek dum. They've put Jimmy Hawkins in charge."
"Good business!" said Scott, with the first sign of interest he
had shown. "When in doubt hire a Punjabi. I worked under Jimmy
when I first came out and he belonged to the Punjab. He has more
bundobust than most men."
"Jimmy's a Jubilee Knight now," said Martyn. "He's a good chap,
even though he is a thrice-born civilian and went to the
Benighted Presidency. What unholy names these Madras districts
rejoice in - all ungas or rungas or pillays or polliums!"
A dog-cart drove up in the dusk, and a man entered, mopping his
head. He was editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a
Province of twenty-five million natives and a few hundred white
men: as his staff was limited to himself and one assistant, his
office-hours ran variously from ten to twenty a day.
"Hi, Raines; you're supposed to know everything," said Martyn,
stopping him. "How's this Madras 'scarcity' going to turn out?"
"No one knows as yet. There's a message as long as your arm coming
in on the telephone. I've left my cub to fill it out. Madras has
owned she can't manage it alone, and Jimmy seems to have a free
hand in getting all the men he needs. Arbuthnot's warned to hold
himself in readiness."
"'Badger' Arbuthnot?"
"The Peshawur chap. Yes: and the Pi wires that Ellis and Clay
have been moved from the Northwest already, and they've taken
half a dozen Bombay men, too. It's pukka famine, by the looks
of it."
"They're nearer the scene of action than we are; but if it comes
to indenting on the Punjab this early, there's more in this than
meets the eye," said Martyn.
"Here to-day and gone to-morrow. 'Didn't come to stay for ever,"
said Scott, dropping one of Marryat's novels, and rising to his
feet. "Martyn, your sister's waiting for you."
A rough grey horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the
verandah, where the light of a kerosene lamp fell on a brown-calico
habit and a white face under a grey-felt hat.
"Right, O!" said Martyn. "I'm ready. Better come and dine with
us, if you've nothing to do, Scott. William, is there any dinner
in the house?"
"I'll go home and see," was the rider's answer. "You can drive
him over - at eight, remember."
Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress
of the season and the country: spotless white linen from head to
foot, with a broad silk cummerbund. Dinner at the Martyns' was a
decided improvement on the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and
tinned entrees of the Club. But it was a great pity that Martyn
could not afford to send his sister to the hills for the hot weather.
As an Acting District Superintendent of Police, Martyn drew the
magnificent pay of six hundred depreciated silver rupees a month,
and his little four-roomed bungalow said just as much. There were
the usual blue-and-white-striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor;
the usual glass-studded Amritsar phulkaris draped on nails driven
into the flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs
that did not match, picked up at sales of dead men's effects; and
the usual streaks of black grease where the leather punka-thong ran
through the wall. It was as though everything had been unpacked
the night before to be repacked next morning. Not a door in the
house was true on its hinges. The little windows, fifteen feet up,
were darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the
beams of the wood-ceiled roof. But all this was part of Scott's
life. Thus did people live who had such an income; and in a land
where each man's pay, age, and position are printed in a book, that
all may read, it is hardly worth while to play at pretence in word
or deed. Scott counted eight years' service in the Irrigation
Department, and drew eight hundred rupees a month, on the
understanding that if he served the State faithfully for another
twenty-two years he could retire on a pension of some four hundred
rupees a month. His working-life, which had been spent chiefly
under canvas or in temporary shelters where a man could sleep, eat,
and write letters, was bound up with the opening and guarding of
irrigation canals, the handling of two or three thousand workmen of
all castes and creeds, and the payment of vast sums of coined silver.
He had finished that spring, not without credit, the last section
of the great Mosuhl Canal, and - much against his will, for he
hated office-work - had been sent in to serve during the hot
weather on the accounts and supply side of the Department, with
sole charge of the sweltering sub-office at the capital of the
Province. Martyn knew this; William, his sister, knew it; and
everybody knew it. Scott knew, too, as well as the rest of the
world, that Miss Martyn had come out to India four years ago to
keep house for her brother, who, as every one knew, had borrowed
the money to pay for her passage, and that she ought, as all the
world said, to have married at once. In stead of this, she had
refused some half a dozen subalterns, a Civilian twenty years her
senior, one Major, and a man in the Indian Medical Department.
This, too, was common property. She had "stayed down three hot
weathers," as the saying is, because her brother was in debt and
could not afford the expense of her keep at even a cheap
hill-station. Therefore her face was white as bone, and in the
centre of her forehead was a big silvery scar about the size of a
shilling - the mark of a Delhi sore, which is the same as a
"Bagdad date." This comes from drinking bad water, and slowly
eats into the flesh till it is ripe enough to be burned out.
None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years.
Twice she had been nearly drowned while fording a river; once she
had been run away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack
of thieves on her brother's camp; had seen justice administered,
with long sticks, in the open under trees; could speak Urdu and
even rough Punjabi with a fluency that was envied by her seniors;
had entirely fallen out of the habit of writing to her aunts in
England, or cutting the pages of the English magazines; had been
through a very bad cholera year, seeing sights unfit to be told;
and had wound up her experiences by six weeks of typhoid fever,
during which her head had been shaved and hoped to keep her
twenty-third birthday that September. It is conceivable that the
aunts would not have approved of a girl who never set foot on the
ground if a horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl
thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all
over her head; who answered indifferently to the name of William
or Bill; whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the vernacular;
who could act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight
servants and two horses, their accounts and their diseases, and
look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes - even after they
had proposed to her and been rejected.
"I like men who do things," she had confided to a man in the
Educational Department, who was teaching the sons of cloth-merchants
and dyers the beauty of Wordsworth's "Excursion" in annotated
cram-books; and when he grew poetical, William explained that she
"didn't understand poetry very much; it made her head ache," and
another broken heart took refuge at the Club. But it was all
William's fault. She delighted in hearing men talk of their own
work, and that is the most fatal way of bringing a man to your feet.
Scott had known her for some three years, meeting her, as a rule,
under canvass, when his camp and her brother's joined for a day
on the edge of the Indian Desert. He had danced with her several
times at the big Christmas gatherings, when as many as five hundred
white people came in to the station; and had always a great respect
for her housekeeping and her dinners.
She looked more like a boy than ever when, the meal ended, she
sat, rolling cigarettes, her low forehead puckered beneath the
dark curls as she twiddled the papers and stuck out her rounded
chin when the tobacco stayed in place, or, with a gesture as
true as a school-boy's throwing a stone, tossed the finished
article across the room to Martyn, who caught it with one hand,
and continued his talk with Scott. It was all "shop," - canals
and the policing of canals; the sins of villagers who stole more
water than they had paid for, and the grosser sin of native
constables who connived at the thefts; of the transplanting
bodily of villages to newly irrigated ground, and of the coming
fight with the desert in the south when the Provincial funds
should warrant the opening of the long-surveyed Luni Protective
Canal System. And Scott spoke openly of his great desire to be
put on one particular section of the work where he knew the land
and the people; and Martyn sighed for a billet in the Himalayan
foot-hills, and said his mind of his superiors, and William
rolled cigarettes and said nothing, but smiled gravely on her
brother because he was happy.
At ten Scott's horse came to the door, and the evening was ended.
The lights of the two low bungalows in which the daily paper was
printed showed bright across the road. It was too early to try
to find sleep, and Scott drifted over to the editor. Raines,
stripped to the waist like a sailor at a gun, lay half asleep in
a long chair, waiting for night telegrams. He had a theory that
if a man did not stay by his work all day and most of the night he
laid himself open to fever: so he ate and slept among his files.
"Can you do it?" be said drowsily. "I didn't mean to bring you
over."
"About what? I've been dining at the Martyns'."
"The Madras famine, of course. Martyn's warned, too. They're
taking men where they can find 'em. I sent a note to you at the
Club just now, asking if you could do us a letter once a week from
the south - between two and three columns, say. Nothing sensational,
of course, but just plain facts about who is doing what, and so
forth. Our regular rates - ten rupees a column."
"'Sorry, but it's out of my line," Scott answered, staring absently
at the map of India on the wall. "It's rough on Martyn - very.
'Wonder what he'll do with his sister? 'Wonder what the deuce
they'll do with me? I've no famine experience. This is the first
I've heard of it. Am I ordered?"
"Oh, yes. Here's the wire. They'll put you on to relief-works,"
Raines said, "with a horde of Madrassis dying like flies; one
native apothecary and half a pint of cholera-mixture among the
ten thousand of you. It comes of your being idle for the moment.
Every man who isn't doing two men's work seems to have been called
upon. Hawkins evidently believes in Punjabis. It's going to be
quite as bad as anything they have had in the last ten years."
"It's all in the day's work, worse luck. I suppose I shall get my
orders officially some time to-morrow. I'm awfully glad I happened
to drop in. Better go and pack my kit now. Who relieves me here
- do you know?"
Raines turned over a sheaf of telegrams. "McEuan," said he, "from
Murree."
Scott chuckled. "He thought he was going to be cool all summer.
He'll be very sick about this. Well, no good talking. 'Night."
Two hours later, Scott, with a clear conscience, laid himself
down to rest on a string cot in a bare room. Two worn bullock
trunks, a leather water-bottle, a tin ice-box, and his pet saddle
sewed up in sacking were piled at the door, and the Club secretary's
receipt for last month's bill was under his pillow. His orders
came next morning, and with them an unofficial telegram from Sir
James Hawkins; who was not in the habit of forgetting good men when
he had once met them, bidding him report himself with all speed at
some unpronounceable place fifteen hundred miles to the south, for
the famine was sore in the land, and white men were needed.
A pink and fattish youth arrived in the red-hot noonday, whimpering
a little at fate and famines, which never allowed any one three
months' peace. He was Scott's successor - another cog in the
machinery, moved forward behind his fellow whose services, as the
official announcement ran, "were placed at the disposal of the
Madras Government for famine duty until further orders." Scott
handed over the funds in his charge, showed him the coolest corner
in the office, warned him against excess of zeal, and, as twilight
fell, departed from the Club in a hired carriage, with his faithful
body-servant, Faiz Ullah, and a mound of disordered baggage atop,
to catch the southern mail at the loopholed and bastioned
railway-station. The heat from the thick brick walls struck him
across the face as if it had been a hot towel; and he reflected that
there were at least five nights and four days of this travel before
him. Faiz Ullah, used to the chances of service, plunged into the
crowd on the stone platform, while Scott, a black cheroot between
his teeth, waited till his compartment should be set away. A dozen
native policemen, with their rifles and bundles, shouldered into
the press of Punjabi farmers, Sikh craftsmen, and greasy-locked
Afreedee pedlars, escorting with all pomp Martyn's uniform-case,
water-bottles, ice-box, and bedding-roll. They saw Faiz Ullah's
lifted hand, and steered for it.
"My Sahib and your Sahib," said Faiz Ullah to Martyn's man, "will
travel together. Thou and I, O brother, will thus secure the
servants' places close by; and because of our masters' authority
none will dare to disturb us."
When Faiz Ullah reported all things ready, Scott settled down at
full length, coatless and bootless, on the broad leather-covered
bunk. The heat under the iron-arched roof of the station might
have been anything over a hundred degrees. At the last moment
Martyn entered, dripping.
"Don't swear," said Scott, lazily; "it's too late to change your
carriage; and we'll divide the ice."
"What are you doing here?" said the police-man.
"I'm lent to the Madras Government, same as you. By Jove, it's a
bender of a night! Are you taking any of your men down?"
"A dozen. I suppose I shall have to superintend relief
distributions. 'Didn't know you were under orders too."
"I didn't till after I left you last night. Raines had the news
first. My orders came this morning. McEuan relieved me at four,
and I got off at once. 'Shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't be a
good thing - this famine - if we come through it alive."
"Jimmy ought to put you and me to work together," said Martyn;
and then, after a pause: "My sister's here."
"Good business," said Scott, heartily. "Going to get off at Umballa,
I suppose, and go up to Simla. Who'll she stay with there?"
"No-o; that's just the trouble of it. She's going down with me."
Scott sat bolt upright under the oil-lamps as the train jolted
past Tarn-Taran. "What! You don't mean you couldn't afford -"
"'Tain't that. I'd have scraped up the money somehow."
"You might have come to me, to begin with," said Scott, stiffly;
"we aren't altogether strangers."
"Well, you needn't be stuffy about it. I might, but - you don't
know my sister. I've been explaining and exhorting and all the
rest of it all day - lost my temper since seven this morning,
and haven't got it back yet - but she wouldn't hear of any
compromise. A woman's entitled to travel with her husband if she
wants to; and William says she's on the same footing. You see,
we've been together all our lives, more or less, since my people
died. It isn't as if she were an ordinary sister."
"All the sisters I've ever heard of would have stayed where they
were well off."
She's as clever as a man, confound - Martyn went on. "She broke
up the bungalow over my head while I was talking at her. 'Settled
the whole thing in three hours - servants, horses, and all. I
didn't get my orders till nine."
"Jimmy Hawkins won't be pleased," said Scott "A famine's no place
for a woman."
"Mrs. Jim - I mean Lady Jim's in camp with him. At any rate, she
says she will look after my sister. William wired down to her on
her own responsibility, asking if she could come, and knocked the
ground from under me by showing me her answer."
Scott laughed aloud. "If she can do that she can take care of
herself, and Mrs. Jim won't let her run into any mischief. There
aren't many women, sisters or wives, who would walk into a famine
with their eyes open. It isn't as if she didn't know what these
things mean. She was through the Jalo cholera last year."
The train stopped at Amritsar, and Scott went back to the ladies'
compartment, immediately behind their carriage. William, with a
cloth riding-cap on her curls, nodded affably.
"Come in and have some tea," she said. "'Best thing in the world
for heat-apoplexy."
"Do I look as if I were going to have heat-apoplexy?"
"'Never can tell," said William, wisely. "It's always best to be
ready."
She had arranged her compartment with the knowledge of an old
campaigner. A felt-covered water-bottle hung in the draught of
one of the shuttered windows; a tea-set of Russian china, packed
in a wadded basket, stood on the seat; and a travelling
spirit-lamp was clamped against the woodwork above it.
William served them generously, in large cups, hot tea, which
saves the veins of the neck from swelling inopportunely on a hot
night. It was characteristic of the girl that, her plan of action
once settled, she asked for no comments on it. Life among men who
had a great deal of work to do, and very little time to do it in,
had taught her the wisdom of effacing, as well as of fending for,
herself. She did not by word or deed suggest that she would be
useful, comforting, or beautiful in their travels, but continued
about her business serenely: put the cups back without clatter when
tea was ended, and made cigarettes for her guests.
"This time last night," said Scott, "we didn't expect - er - this
kind of thing, did we?"
"I've learned to expect anything," said William. "You know, in
our service, we live at the end of the telegraph; but, of course,
this ought to be a good thing for us all, departmentally - if we
live."
"It knocks us out of the running in our own Province," Scott
replied, with equal gravity. "I hoped to be put on the Luni
Protective Works this cold weather, but there's no saying how
long the famine may keep us."
"Hardly beyond October, I should think," said Martyn. "It will be
ended, one way or the other, then."
"And we've nearly a week of this," said William. "Sha'n't we be
dusty when it's over?"
For a night and a day they knew their surroundings, and for a
night and a day, skirting the edge of the great Indian Desert on
a narrow-gauge railway, they remembered how in the days of their
apprenticeship they had come by that road from Bombay. Then the
languages in which the names of the stations were written changed,
and they launched south into a foreign land, where the very smells
were new. Many long and heavily laden grain-trains were in front
of them, and they could feel the hand of Jimmy Hawkins from far off.
They waited in extemporised sidings while processions of empty
trucks returned to the north, and were coupled on to slow, crawling
trains, and dropped at midnight, Heaven knew where; but it was
furiously hot, and they walked to and fro among sacks, and dogs
howled. Then they came to an India more strange to them than to
the untravelled Englishman - the flat, red India of palm-tree,
palmyra-palm, and rice - the India of the picture-books, of "Little
Harry and His Bearer" - all dead and dry in the baking heat. They
had left the incessant passenger-traffic of the north and west far
and far behind them. Here the people crawled to the side of the
train, holding their little ones in their arms; and a loaded truck
would be left behind, the men and women clustering round it like
ants by spilled honey. Once in the twilight they saw on a dusty
plain a regiment of little brown men, each bearing a body over his
shoulder; and when the train stopped to leave yet another truck,
they perceived that the burdens were not corpses, but only
foodless folk picked up beside dead oxen by a corps of Irregular
troops. Now they met more white men, here one and there two, whose
tents stood close to the line, and who came armed with written
authorities and angry words to cut off a truck. They were too busy
to do more than nod at Scott and Martyn, and stare curiously at
William, who could do nothing except make tea, and watch how her
men staved off the rush of wailing, walking skeletons, putting them
down three at a time in heaps, with their own hands uncoupling the
marked trucks, or taking receipts from the hollow-eyed, weary white
men, who spoke another argot than theirs. They ran out of ice, out
of soda-water, and out of tea; for they were six days and seven
nights on the road, and it seemed to them like seven times seven
years.
At last, in a dry, hot dawn, in a land of death, lit by long red
fires of railway-sleepers, where they were burning the dead, they
came to their destination, and were met by Jim Hawkins, the Head of
the Famine, unshaven, unwashed, but cheery, and entirely in command
of affairs.
Martyn, he decreed then and there, was to live on trains till
further orders; was to go back with empty trucks, filling them with
starving people as he found them, and dropping them at a famine-camp
on the edge of the Eight Districts. He would pick up supplies and
return, and his constables would guard the loaded grain-cars, also
picking up people, and would drop them at a camp a hundred miles
south. Scott - Hawkins was very glad to see Scott again - would
that same hour take charge of a convoy of bullock-carts, and would
go south, feeding as he went, to yet another famine-camp, where he
would leave his starving - there would he no lack of starving on the
route - and wait for orders by telegraph. Generally, Scott was in
all small things to act as he thought best.
William bit her under lip. There was no one in the wide world like
her one brother, but Martyn's orders gave him no discretion.
She came out on the platform, masked with dust from head to foot,
a horse-shoe wrinkle on her forehead, put here by much thinking
during the past week, but as self-possessed as ever. Mrs. Jim -
who should have been Lady Jim but that no one remembered the
title - took possession of her with a little gasp.
"Oh, I'm so glad you're here," she almost sobbed. "You oughtn't
to, of course, but there - there isn't another woman in the
place, and we must help each other, you know; and we've all the
wretched people and the little babies they are selling."
"I've seen some," said William.
"Isn't it ghastly? I've bought twenty; they're in our camp; but
won't you have something to eat first? We've more than ten people
can do here; and I've got a horse for you. Oh, I'm so glad you've
come, dear. You're a Punjabi, too, you know."
"Steady, Lizzie," said Hawkins, over his shoulder. "We'll look
after you, Miss Martyn. 'Sorry I can't ask you to breakfast,
Martyn. You'll have to eat as you go. Leave two of your men to
help Scott. These poor devils can't stand up to load carts.
Saunders" (this to the engine-driver, who was half asleep in the
cab), "back down and get those empties away. You've 'line clear'
to Anundrapillay; they'll give you orders north of that. Scott,
load up your carts from that B. P. P. truck, and be off as soon
as you can. The Eurasian in the pink shirt is your interpreter
and guide. You'll find an apothecary of sorts tied to the yoke of
the second wagon. He's been trying to bolt; you'll have to look
after him. Lizzie, drive Miss Martyn to camp, and tell them to
send the red horse down here for me."
Scott, with Faiz Ullah and two policemen, was already busied with
the carts, backing them up to the truck and unbolting the sideboards
quietly, while the others pitched in the bags of millet and wheat.
Hawkins watched him for as long as it took to fill one cart.
"That's a good man," he said. "If all goes well I shall work him
hard." This was Jim Hawkins's notion of the highest compliment one
human being could pay another.
An hour later Scott was under way; the apothecary threatening him
with the penalties of the law for that he, a member of the
Subordinate Medical Department, had been coerced and bound against
his will and all laws governing the liberty of the subject; the
pink-shirted Eurasian begging leave to see his mother, who happened
to be dying some three miles away: "Only verree, verree short leave
of absence, and will presently return, sar -"; the two constables,
armed with staves, bringing up the rear; and Faiz Ullah, a
Mohammedan's contempt for all Hindoos and foreigners in every line
of his face, explaining to the drivers that though Scott Sahib was
a man to be feared on all fours, he, Faiz Ullah, was Authority
Itself.
The procession creaked past Hawkins's camp - three stained tents
under a clump of dead trees, behind them the famine-shed, where
a crowd of hopeless ones tossed their arms around the cooking-kettles.
"'Wish to Heaven William had kept out of it," said Scott to himself,
after a glance. "We'll have cholera, sure as a gun, when the Rains
break."
But William seemed to have taken kindly to the operations of the
Famine Code, which, when famine is declared, supersede the workings
of the ordinary law. Scott saw her, the centre of a mob of weeping
women, in a calico riding-habit, and a blue-grey felt hat with a
gold puggaree.
"I want fifty rupees, please. I forgot to ask Jack before he went
away. Can you lend it me? It's for condensed-milk for the babies,"
said she.
Scott took the money from his belt, and handed it over without a
word. "For goodness sake, take care of yourself," he said.
"Oh, I shall be all right. We ought to get the milk in two days.
By the way, the orders are, I was to tell you, that you're to take
one of Sir Jim's horses. There's a grey Cabuli here that I thought
would be just your style, so I've said you'd take him. Was that
right?"
"That's awfully good of you. We can't either of us talk much about
style, I am afraid."
Scott was in a weather-stained drill shooting-kit, very white at
the seams and a little frayed at the wrists. William regarded him
thoughtfully, from his pith helmet to his greased ankle-boots.
"You look very nice, I think. Are you sure you've everything
you'll need - quinine, chlorodyne, and so on?"
"'Think so," said Scott, patting three or four of his
shooting-pockets as he mounted and rode alongside his convoy.
"Good-bye," he cried.
"Good-bye, and good luck," said William. "I'm awfully obliged for
the money." She turned on a spurred heel and disappeared into the
tent, while the carts pushed on past the famine-sheds, past the
roaring lines of the thick, fat fires, down to the baked Gehenna
of the South.
PART II
So let us melt and make no noise,
No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the Laity our love.
A Valediction.
It was punishing work, even though he travelled by night and camped
by day; but within the limits of his vision there was no man whom
Scott could call master. He was as free as Jimmy Hawkins - freer,
in fact, for the Government held the Head of the Famine tied neatly
to a telegraph-wire, and if Jimmy had ever regarded telegrams
seriously, the death-rate of that famine would have been much higher
than it was.
At the end of a few days' crawling Scott learned something of the
size of the India which he served, and it astonished him. His
carts, as you know, were loaded with wheat, millet, and barley,
good food-grains needing only a little grinding. But the people
to whom he brought the life-giving stuffs were rice-eaters. They
could hull rice in their mortars, but they knew nothing of the
heavy stone querns of the North, and less of the material that
the white man convoyed so laboriously. They clamoured for rice -
unhusked paddy, such as they were accustomed to - and, when they
found that there was none, broke away weeping from the sides of
the cart. What was the use of these strange hard grains that
choked their throats? They would die. And then and there very
many of them kept their word. Others took their allowance, and
bartered enough millet to feed a man through a week for a few
handfuls of rotten rice saved by some less unfortunate. A few put
their share into the rice-mortars, pounded it, and made a paste
with foul water; but they were very few. Scott understood dimly
that many people in the India of the South ate rice, as a rule,
but he had spent his service in a grain Province, had seldom seen
rice in the blade or ear, and least of all would have believed
that in time of deadly need men could die at arm's length of
plenty, sooner than touch food they did not know. In vain the
interpreters interpreted; in vain his two policemen showed in
vigorous pantomime what should be done. The starving crept away
to their bark and weeds, grubs, leaves, and clay, and left the
open sacks untouched. But sometimes the women laid their phantoms
of children at Scott's feet, looking back as they staggered away.
Faiz Ullah opined it was the will of God that these foreigners
should die, and it remained only to give orders to burn the dead.
None the less there was no reason why the Sahib should lack his
comforts, and Faiz Ullah, a campaigner of experience, had picked
up a few lean goats and had added them to the procession. That
they might give milk for the morning meal, he was feeding them on
the good grain that these imbeciles rejected. "Yes," said Faiz
Ullah; "if the Sahib thought fit, a little milk might be given to
some of the babies"; but, as the Sahib well knew, babies were cheap,
and, for his own part, Faiz Ullah held that there was no Government
order as to babies. Scott spoke forcefully to Faiz Ullah and the
two policemen, and bade them capture goats where they could find
them. This they most joyfully did, for it was a recreation, and
many ownerless goats were driven in. Once fed, the poor brutes
were willing enough to follow the carts, and a few days' good food
- food such as human beings died for lack of - set them in milk
again.
"But I am no goatherd," said Faiz Ullah. "It is against my izzat
[my honour]."
"When we cross the Bias River again we will talk of izzat," Scott
replied. "Till that day thou and the policemen shall be sweepers
to the camp, if I give the order."
"Thus, then, it is done," grunted Faiz Ullah, "if the Sahib will
have it so"; and he showed how a goat should be milked, while
Scott stood over him.
"Now we will feed them," said Scott; "twice a day we will feed
them"; and he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible
cramp.
When you have to keep connection unbroken between a restless
mother of kids and a baby who is at the point of death, you
suffer in all your system. But the babies were fed. Each morning
and evening Scott would solemnly lift them out one by one from
their nest of gunny-bags under the cart-tilts. There were always
many who could do no more than breathe, and the milk was dropped
into their toothless mouths drop by drop, with due pauses when
they choked. Each morning, too, the goats were fed; and since
they would straggle without a leader, and since the natives were
hirelings, Scott was forced to give up riding, and pace slowly at
the head of his flocks, accommodating his step to their weaknesses.
All this was sufficiently absurd, and he felt the absurdity keenly;
but at least he was saving life, and when the women saw that their
children did not die, they made shift to eat a little of the
strange foods, and crawled after the carts, blessing the master
of the goats.
"Give the women something to live for," said Scott to himself, as
he sneezed in the dust of a hundred little feet, "and they'll
hang on somehow. This beats William's condensed-milk trick all to
pieces. I shall never live it down, though."
He reached his destination very slowly, found that a rice-ship
had come in from Burmah, and that stores of paddy were available;
found also an overworked Englishman in charge of the shed, and,
loading the carts, set back to cover the ground he had already
passed. He left some of the children and half his goats at the
famine-shed. For this he was not thanked by the Englishman, who
had already more stray babies than he knew what to do with.
Scott's back was suppled to stooping now, and he went on with his
wayside ministrations in addition to distributing the paddy. More
babies and more goats were added unto him; but now some of the
babies wore rags, and beads round their wrists or necks. "That"
said the interpreter, as though Scott did not know, "signifies
that their mothers hope in eventual contingency to resume them
offeecially."
The sooner, the better," said Scott; but at the same time he
marked, with the pride of ownership, how this or that little
Ramasawmy was putting on flesh like a bantam. As the paddy-carts
were emptied he headed for Hawkins's camp by the railway, timing
his arrival to fit in with the dinner-hour, for it was long since
he had eaten at a cloth. He had no desire to make any dramatic
entry, but an accident of the sunset ordered it that when he had
taken off his helmet to get the evening breeze, the low light
should fall across his forehead, and he could not see what was
before him; while one waiting at the tent door beheld with new
eyes a young man, beautiful as Paris, a god in a halo of golden
dust, walking slowly at the head of his flocks, while at his knee
ran small naked Cupids. But she laughed - William, in a
slate-coloured blouse, laughed consumedly till Scott, putting the
best face he could upon the matter, halted his armies and bade her
admire the kindergarten. It was an unseemly sight, but the
proprieties had been left ages ago, with the tea-party at Amritsar
Station, fifteen hundred miles to the north.
"They are coming on nicely," said William. "We've only
five-and-twenty here now. The women are beginning to take them
away again."
"Are you in charge of the babies, then?"
"Yes - Mrs. Jim and I. We didn't think of goats, though. We've
been trying condensed-milk and water."
"Any losses?"
More than I care to think of;" said William, with a shudder.
"And you?"
Scott said nothing. There had been many little burials along his
route - one cannot burn a dead baby - many mothers who had wept
when they did not find again the children they had trusted to the
care of the Government.
Then Hawkins came out carrying a razor, at which Scott looked
hungrily, for he had a beard that he did not love. And when they
sat down to dinner in the tent he told his tale in few words, as
it might have been an official report. Mrs. Jim snuffled from
time to time, and Jim bowed his head judicially; but William's
grey eyes were on the clean-shaven face, and it was to her that
Scott seemed to appeal.
"Good for the Pauper Province!" said William, her chin on her hand,
as she leaned forward among the wine~glasses. Her cheeks had
fallen in, and the scar on her forehead was more prominent than
ever, but the well-turned neck rose roundly as a column from the
ruffle of the blouse which was the accepted evening-dress in camp.
"It was awfully absurd at times," said Scott. "You see, I didn't
know much about milking or babies. They'll chaff my head off, if
the tale goes up North."
"Let 'em," said William, haughtily. "We've all done coolie-work
since we came. I know Jack has." This was to Hawkins's address,
and the big man smiled blandly.
"Your brother's a highly efficient officer, William," said he,
"and I've done him the honour of treating him as he deserves.
Remember, I write the confidential reports."
"Then you must say that William's worth her weight in gold," said
Mrs. Jim. "I don't know what we should have done without her. She
has been everything to us." She dropped her hand upon William's,
which was rough with much handling of reins, and William patted
it softly. Jim beamed on the company. Things were going well with
his world. Three of his more grossly incompetent men had died,
and their places had been filled by their betters. Every day
brought the Rains nearer. They had put out the famine in five of
the Eight Districts, and, after all, the death-rate had not been
too heavy - things considered. He looked Scott over carefully, as
an ogre looks over a man, and rejoiced in his thews and iron-hard
condition.
"He's just the least bit in the world tucked up," said Jim to
himself, "but he can do two men's work yet." Then he was aware
that Mrs. Jim was telegraphing to him, and according to the
domestic code the message ran: "A clear case. Look at them!"
He looked and listened. All that William was saying was: "What
can you expect of a country where they call a bhistee [a
water-carrier] a tunni-cutch?" and all that Scott answered was:
"I shall be glad to get back to the Club. Save me a dance at the
Christmas Ball, won't you?"
"It's a far cry from here to the Lawrence Hall," said Jim. "Better
turn in early, Scott. It's paddy-carts to-morrow; you'll begin
loading at five."
"Aren't you going to give Mr. Scott a single day's rest?"
"'Wish I could, Lizzie, but I'm afraid I can't. As long as he can
stand up we must use him."
"Well, I've had one Europe evening, at least. By Jove, I'd nearly
forgotten! What do I do about those babies of mine?"
"Leave them here," said William -" we are in charge of that - and
as many goats as you can spare. I must learn how to milk now."
"If you care to get up early enough to-morrow I'll show you. I
have to milk, you see. Half of 'em have beads and things round
their necks. You must be careful not to take 'em off; in case the
mothers turn up."
"You forget I've had some experience here."
"I hope to goodness you won't overdo." Scott's voice was
unguarded.
"I'll take care of her," said Mrs. Jim, telegraphing hundred-word
messages as she carried William off; while Jim gave Scott his
orders for the coming campaign. It was very late - nearly nine
o'clock.
"Jim, you're a brute," said his wife, that night; and the Head of
the Famine chuckled.
"Not a bit of it, dear. I remember doing the first Jandiala
Settlement for the sake of a girl in a crinoline, and she was
slender, Lizzie. I've never done as good a piece of work since.
He'll work like a demon."
"But you might have given him one day."
"And let things come to a head now? No, dear; it's their happiest
time."
"I don't believe either of the darlings know what's the matter with
them. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it lovely?"
"Getting up at three to learn to milk, bless her heart! Oh, ye
Gods, why must we grow old and fat?"
"She's a darling. She has done more work under me -"
"Under you? The day after she came she was in charge and you were
her subordinate. You've stayed there ever since; she manages you
almost as well as you manage me."
"She doesn't, and that's why I love her. She's as direct as a
man - as her brother."
"Her brother's weaker than she is. He's always to me for orders;
but he's honest, and a glutton for work. I confess I'm rather
fond of William, and if I had a daughter -"
The talk ended. Far away in the Derajat was a child's grave more
than twenty years old, and neither Jim nor his wife spoke of it
any more.
All the same, you're responsible," Jim added, a moment's silence.
"Bless 'em!" said Mrs. Jim, sleepily.
Before the stars paled, Scott, who slept in an empty cart, waked
and went about his work in silence; it seemed at that hour unkind
to rouse Faiz Ullah and the interpreter. His head being close to
the ground, he did not hear William till she stood over him in the
dingy old riding-habit, her eyes still heavy with sleep, a cup of
tea and a piece of toast in her hands. There was a baby on the
ground, squirming on a piece of blanket, and a six-year-old child
peered over Scott's shoulder.
"Hai, you little rip," said Scott, "how the deuce do you expect to
get your rations if you aren't quiet?"
A cool white hand steadied the brat, who forthwith choked as the
milk gurgled into his mouth.
"'Mornin'," said the milker. "You've no notion how these little
fellows can wriggle."
"Oh, yes, I have." She whispered, because the world was asleep.
"Only I feed them with a spoon or a rag. Yours are fatter than
mine. And you've been doing this day after day?" The voice was
almost lost.
"Yes; it was absurd. Now you try," he said, giving place to the
girl. "Look out! A goat's not a cow."
The goat protested against the amateur, and there was a scuffle,
in which Scott snatched up the baby. Then it was all to do over
again, and William laughed softly and merrily. She managed,
however, to feed two babies, and a third.
"Don't the little beggars take it well?" said Scott. "I trained
'em."
They were very busy and interested, when lo! it was broad daylight,
and before they knew, the camp was awake, and they kneeled among
the goats, surprised by the day, both flushed to the temples. Yet
all the round world rolling up out of the darkness might have heard
and seen all that had passed between them.
"Oh," said William, unsteadily, snatching up the tea and toast, "I
had this made for you. It's stone-cold now. I thought you mightn't
have anything ready so early. 'Better not drink it. It's - it's
stone-cold."
"That's awfully kind of you. It's just right. It's awfully good
of you, really. I'll leave my kids and goats with you and Mrs.
Jim, and, of course, any one in camp can show you about the
milking."
"Of course," said William; and she grew pinker and pinker and
statelier and more stately, as she strode back to her tent,
fanning herself with the saucer.
There were shrill lamentations through the camp when the elder
children saw their nurse move off without them. Faiz Ullah unbent
so far as to jest with the policemen, and Scott turned purple with
shame because Hawkins, already in the saddle, roared.
A child escaped from the care of Mrs. Jim, and, running like a
rabbit, clung to Scott's boot, William pursuing with long, easy
strides.
"I will not go - I will not go!" shrieked the child, twining his
feet round Scott's ankle. They will kill me here. I do not know
these people."
"I say," said Scott, in broken Tamil, "I say, she will do you no
harm. Go with her and be well fed."
"Come!" said William, panting, with a wrathful glance at Scott,
who stood helpless and, as it were, hamstrung.
"Go back," said Scott quickly to William. I'll send the little
chap over in a minute."
The tone of authority had its effect, but in a way Scott did not
exactly intend. The boy loosened his grasp, and said with
gravity: "I did not know the woman was thine. I will go." Then
he cried to his companions, a mob of three-, four-, and
five-year-olds waiting on the success of his venture ere they
stampeded: "Go back and eat. It is our man's woman. She will
obey his orders."
Jim collapsed where he sat; Faiz Ullah and the two policemen
grinned; and Scott's orders to the cartmen flew like hail.
"That is the custom of the Sahibs when truth is told in their
presence," said Faiz Ullah. "The time comes that I must seek new
service. Young wives, especially such as speak our language and
have knowledge of the ways of the Police, make great trouble for
honest butlers in the matter of weekly accounts."
What William thought of it all she did not say, but when her
brother, ten days later, came to camp for orders, and heard of
Scott's performances, he said, laughing: "Well, that settles it.
He'll be Bakri Scott to the end of his days." (Bakri in the
Northern vernacular, means a goat.) "What a lark! I'd have given
a month's pay to have seen him nursing famine babies. I fed some
with conjee [rice-water], but that was all right."
"It's perfectly disgusting," said his sister, with blazing eyes.
"A man does something like - like that - and all you other men
think of is to give him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh
and think it's funny."
"Ah," said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.
"Well, you can't talk, William. You christened little Miss Demby
the Button-quail, last cold weather; you know you did. India's
the land of nicknames."
"That's different," William replied. "She was only a girl, and
she hadn't done anything except walk like a quail, and she does.
But it isn't fair to make fun of a man."
"Scott won't care," said Martyn. "You can't get a rise out of old
Scotty. I've been trying for eight years, and you've only known
him for three. How does he look?"
"He looks very well," said William, and went away with a flushed
cheek. "Bakri Scott, indeed!" Then she laughed to herself, for
she knew her country. "But it will he Bakri all the same"; and
she repeated it under her breath several times slowly,
whispering it into favour.
When he returned to his duties on the railway, Martyn spread the
name far and wide among his associates, so that Scott met it as
he led his paddy-carts to war. The natives believed it to be
some English title of honour, and the cart-drivers used it in
all simplicity till Faiz Ullah, who did not approve of foreign
japes, broke their heads. There was very little time for milking
now, except at the big camps, where Jim had extended Scott's
idea and was feeding large flocks on the useless northern grains.
Sufficient paddy had come now into the Eight Districts to hold
the people safe, if it were only distributed quickly, and for that
purpose no one was better than the big Canal officer, who never
lost his temper, never gave an unnecessary order, and never
questioned an order given. Scott pressed on, saving his cattle,
washing their galled necks daily, so that no time should be lost
on the road; reported himself with his rice at the minor
famine-sheds, unloaded, and went back light by forced night-march
to the next distributing centre, to find Hawkins's unvarying
telegram: "Do it again." And he did it again and again, and yet
again, while Jim Hawkins, fifty miles away, marked off on a big
map the tracks of his wheels gridironing the stricken lands.
Others did well - Hawkins reported at the end they all did well
- but Scott was the most excellent, for he kept good coined
rupees by him, settled for his own cart-repairs on the spot, and
ran to meet all sorts of unconsidered extras, trusting to be
recouped later on. Theoretically, the Government should have
paid for every shoe and linchpin, for every hand employed in the
loading; but Government vouchers cash themselves slowly, and
intelligent and efficient clerks write at great length, contesting
unauthorised expenditures of eight annas. The man who wants to
make his work a success must draw on his own bank-account of money
or other things as he goes.
"I told you he'd work," said Jimmy to his wife, at the end of six
weeks. "He's been in sole charge of a couple of thousand men up
north, on the Mosuhl Canal, for a year; but he gives less trouble
than young Martyn with his ten constables; and I'm morally certain
- only Government doesn't recognise moral obligations - he's spent
about half his pay to grease his wheels. Look at this, Lizzie, for
one week's work! Forty miles in two days with twelve carts; two
days' halt building a famine-shed for young Rogers. (Rogers ought
to have built it himself, the idiot!) Then forty miles back again,
loading six carts on the way, and distributing all Sunday. Then in
the evening he pitches in a twenty-page Demi-Official to me, saying
the people where he is might be 'advantageously employed on
relief-work,' and suggesting that he put 'em to work on some
broken-down old reservoir he's discovered, so as to have a good
water-supply when the Rains break. 'Thinks he can cauk the dam
in a fortnight. Look at his marginal sketches - aren't they
clear and good? I knew he was pukka, but I didn't know he was
as pukka as this."
"I must show these to William," said Mrs. Jim. "The child's
wearing herself out among the babies."
"Not more than you are, dear. Well, another two months ought to
see us out of the wood. I'm sorry it's not in my power to
recommend you for a V. C."
William sat late in her tent that night, reading through page
after page of the square handwriting, patting the sketches of
proposed repairs to the reservoir, and wrinkling her eyebrows
over the columns of figures of estimated water-supply. "And he
finds time to do all this," she cried to herself, "and - well, I
also was present. I've saved one or two babies.
She dreamed for the twentieth time of the god in the golden dust,
and woke refreshed to feed loathsome black children, scores of them,
wastrels picked up by the wayside, their bones almost breaking their
skin, terrible and covered with sores.
Scott was not allowed to leave his cart-work, but his letter was
duly forwarded to the Government, and he had the consolation,
not rare in India, of knowing that another man was reaping where
he had sown. That also was discipline profitable to the soul.
"He's much too good to waste on canals," said Jimmy. "Any one can
oversee coolies. You needn't be angry, William; he can - but I
need my pearl among bullock-drivers, and I've transferred him to
the Khanda district, where he'll have it all to do over again. He
should be marching now.
"He's not a coolie," said William, furiously. "He ought to be
doing his regulation work."
"He's the best man in his service, and that's saying a good deal;
but if you must use razors to cut grindstones, why, I prefer the
best cutlery."
"Isn't it almost time we saw him again?" said Mrs. Jim. "I'm sure
the poor boy hasn't had a respectable meal for a month. He probably
sits on a cart and eats sardines with his fingers."
"All in good time, dear. Duty before decency - wasn't it Mr.
Chucks said that?"
"No; it was Midshipman Easy," William laughed. "I sometimes
wonder how it will feel to dance or listen to a band again, or
sit under a roof. I can't believe I ever wore a ball-frock in my
life."
"One minute," said Mrs. Jim, who was thinking. "If he goes to
Khanda, he passes within five miles of us. Of course he'll ride
in."
"Oh, no, he won't," said William.
"How do you know, dear?"
"It will take him off his work. He won't have time."
"He'll make it," said Mrs. Jim, with a twinkle.
"It depends on his own judgment. There's absolutely no reason
why he shouldn't, if he thinks fit," said Jim.
"He won't see fit," William replied, without sorrow or emotion.
"It wouldn't be him if he did."
"One certainly gets to know people rather well in times like these,"
said Jim, drily; but William's face was serene as ever, and even
as she prophesied, Scott did not appear.
The Rains fell at last, late, but heavily; and the dry, gashed
earth was red mud, and servants killed snakes in the camp, where
every one was weather-bound for a fortnight - all except Hawkins,
who took horse and plashed about in the wet, rejoicing. Now the
Government decreed that seed-grain should be distributed to the
people, as well as advances of money for the purchase of new oxen;
and the white men were doubly worked for this new duty, while
William skipped from brick to brick laid down on the trampled mud,
and dosed her charges with warming medicines that made them rub
their little round stomachs; and the milch goats throve on the
rank grass. There was never a word from Scott in the Khanda
district, away to the southeast, except the regular telegraphic
report to Hawkins. The rude country roads had disappeared; his
drivers were half mutinous; one of Martyn's loaned policemen had
died of cholera; and Scott was taking thirty grains of quinine a
day to fight the fever that comes with the rain: but those were
things Scott did not consider necessary to report. He was, as
usual, working from a base of supplies on a railway line, to cover
a circle of fifteen miles radius, and since full loads were
impossible, he took quarter-loads, and toiled four times as hard
by consequence; for he did not choose to risk an epidemic which
might have grown uncontrollable by assembling villagers in
thousands at the relief-sheds. It was cheaper to take Government
bullocks, work them to death, and leave them to the crows in the
wayside sloughs.
That was the time when eight years of clean living and hard condition
told, though a man's head were ringing like a bell from the cinchona,
and the earth swayed under his feet when he stood and under his bed
when he slept. If Hawkins had seen fit to make him a bullock-driver,
that, he thought, was entirely Hawkins's own affair. There were men
in the North who would know what he had done; men of thirty years'
service in his own department who would say that it was "not half
bad"; and above, immeasurably above, all men of all grades, there
was William in the thick of the fight, who would approve because she
understood. He had so trained his mind that it would hold fast to
the mechanical routine of the day, though his own voice sounded
strange in his own ears, and his hands, when he wrote, grew large
as pillows or small as peas at the end of his wrists. That
steadfastness bore his body to the telegraph-office at the
railway-station, and dictated a telegram to Hawkins saying that
the Khanda district was, in his judgment, now safe, and he "waited
further orders."
The Madrassee telegraph-clerk did not approve of a large, gaunt
man falling over him in a dead faint, not so much because of the
weight as because of the names and blows that Faiz Ullah dealt
him when he found the body rolled under a bench. Then Faiz Ullah
took blankets, quilts, and coverlets where he found them, and lay
down under them at his master's side, and bound his arms with a
tent-rope, and filled him with a horrible stew of herbs, and set
the policeman to fight him when he wished to escape from the
intolerable heat of his coverings, and shut the door of the
telegraph-office to keep out the curious for two nights and one
day; and when a light engine came down the line, and Hawkins
kicked in the door, Scott hailed him weakly but in a natural
voice, and Faiz Ullah stood back and took all the credit.
"For two nights, Heaven-born, he was pagal" said Faiz Ullah. "Look
at my nose, and consider the eye of the policeman. He beat us with
his bound hands; but we sat upon him, Heaven-born, and though his
words were tez, we sweated him. Heaven-born, never has been such
a sweat! He is weaker now than a child; but the fever has gone out
of him, by the grace of God. There remains only my nose and the eye
of the constabeel. Sahib, shall I ask for my dismissal because my
Sahib has beaten me?" And Faiz Ullah laid his long thin hand
carefully on Scott's chest to be sure that the fever was all gone,
ere he went out to open tinned soups and discourage such as laughed
at his swelled nose.
"The district's all right," Scott whispered. "It doesn't make any
difference. You got my wire?" I shall be fit in a week. 'Can't
understand how it happened. I shall be fit in a few days."
"You're coming into camp with us," said Hawkins.
"But look here - but -"
"It's all over except the shouting. We sha'n't need you Punjabis
any more. On my honour, we sha'n't. Martyn goes back in a few
weeks; Arbuthnot's returned already; Ellis and Clay are putting
the last touches to a new feeder-line the Government's built as
relief-work. Morten's dead - he was a Bengal man, though; you
wouldn't know him. 'Pon my word, you and Will - Miss Martyn -
seem to have come through it as well as anybody."
"Oh, how is she, by-the-way"." The voice went up and down as he
spoke.
"Going strong when I left her. The Roman Catholic Missions are
adopting the unclaimed babies to turn them into little priests;
the Basil Mission is taking some, and the mothers are taking the
rest. You should hear the little beggars howl when they're sent
away from William. She's pulled down a bit, but so are we all.
Now, when do you suppose you'll be able to move?"
"I can't come into camp in this state. I won't," he replied
pettishly.
"Well, you are rather a sight, but from what I gathered there it
seemed to me they'd be glad to see you under any conditions. I'll
look over your work here, if you like, for a couple of days, and
you can pull yourself together while Faiz Ullah feeds you up."
Scott could walk dizzily by the time Hawkins's inspection was
ended, and he flushed all over when Jim said of his work that it
was "not half bad," and volunteered, further, that he had considered
Scott his right-hand man through the famine, and would feel it his
duty to say as much officially.
So they came back by rail to the old camp; but there were no crowds
near it; the long fires in the trenches were dead and black, and
the famine-sheds were almost empty.
"You see!" said Jim. "There isn't much more to do. 'Better ride
up and see the wife. They've pitched a tent for you. Dinner's at
seven. I've some work here."
Riding at a foot-pace, Faiz Ullah by his stirrup, Scott came to
William in the brown-calico riding-habit, sitting at the
dining-tent door, her hands in her lap, white as ashes, thin and
worn, with no lustre in her hair. There did not seem to be any
Mrs. Jim on the horizon, and all that William could say was: "My
word, how pulled down you look!"
"I've had a touch of fever. You don't look very well yourself."
"Oh, I'm fit enough. We've stamped it out. I suppose you know?"
Scott nodded. "We shall all be returned in a few weeks. Hawkins
told me."
"Before Christmas, Mrs. Jim says. Sha'n't you be glad to go back?
I can smell the wood-smoke already"; William sniffed. "We shall
be in time for all the Christmas doings. I don't suppose even the
Punjab Government would be base enough to transfer Jack till the
new year?"
"It seems hundreds of years ago - the Punjab and all that - doesn't
it? Are you glad you came?"
"Now it's all over, yes. It has been ghastly here, though. You
know we had to sit still and do nothing, and Sir Jim was away so
much."
"Do nothing! How did you get on with the milking?"
"I managed it somehow - after you taught me. 'Remember?"
Then the talk stopped with an almost audible jar. Still no Mrs.
Jim.
"That reminds me, I owe you fifty rupees for the condensed-milk.
I thought perhaps you'd be coming here when you were transferred
to the Khanda district, and I could pay you then; but you
didn't."
"I passed within five miles of the camp, but it was in the middle
of a march, you see, and the carts were breaking down every few
minutes, and I couldn't get 'em over the ground till ten o'clock
that night. I wanted to come awfully. You knew I did, didn't you?"
"I - believe - I - did," said William, facing him with level eyes.
She was no longer white."
"Did you understand?"
"Why you didn't ride in? Of course I did."
"Why?"
"Because you couldn't, of course. I knew that."
"Did you care?"
"If you had come in - but I knew you wouldn't - but if you had, I
should have cared a great deal. You know I should."
"Thank God I didn't! Oh, but I wanted to! I couldn't trust myself
to ride in front of the carts, because I kept edging 'em over
here, don't you know?"
"I knew you wouldn't," said William, contentedly. "Here's your
fifty."
Scott bent forward and kissed the hand that held the greasy
notes. Its fellow patted him awkwardly but very tenderly on the
head.
"And you knew, too, didn't you?" said William, in a new voice.
"No, on my honour, I didn't. I hadn't the - the cheek to expect
anything of the kind, except ... I say, were you out riding
anywhere the day I passed by to Khanda?"
William nodded, and smiled after the manner of an angel surprised
in a good deed.
"Then it was just a speck I saw of your habit in the -"
"Palm-grove on the Southern cart-road. I saw your helmet when you
came up from the mullah by the temple - just enough to be sure
that you were all right. D' you care?"
This time Scott did not kiss her hand, for they were in the dusk
of the dining-tent, and, because William's knees were trembling
under her, she had to sit down in the nearest chair, where she wept
long and happily, her head on her arms; and when Scott imagined
that it would be well to comfort her, she needing nothing of the
kind, she ran to her own tent; and Scott went out into the world,
and smiled upon it largely and idiotically. But when Faiz Ullah
brought him a drink, he found it necessary to support one hand
with the other, or the good whisky and soda would have been spilled
abroad. There are fevers and fevers.
But it was worse - much worse - the strained, eye-shirking talk at
dinner till the servants had withdrawn, and worst of all when Mrs.
Jim, who had been on the edge of weeping from the soup down, kissed
Scott and William, and they drank one whole bottle of champagne,
hot, because there was no ice, and Scott and William sat outside the
tent in the starlight till Mrs. Jim drove them in for fear of more
fever.
Apropos of these things and some others William said: "Being engaged
is abominable, because, you see, one has no official position. We
must be thankful we've lots of things to do."
"Things to do!" said Jim, when that was reported to him. "They're
neither of them any good any more. I can't get five hours' work a
day out of Scott. He's in the clouds half the time."
"Oh, but they're so beautiful to watch, Jimmy. It will break my
heart when they go. Can't you do anything for him?"
"I've given the Government the impression - at least, I hope I have
- that he personally conducted the entire famine. But all he wants
is to get on to the Luni Canal Works, and William's just as bad.
Have you ever heard 'em talking of barrage and aprons and
waste-water? It's their style of spooning, I suppose."
Mrs. Jim smiled tenderly. "Ah, that's in the intervals - bless
'em."
And so Love ran about the camp unrebuked in broad daylight, while
men picked up the pieces and put them neatly away of the Famine in
the Eight Districts.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Morning brought the penetrating chill of the Northern December, the
layers of wood-smoke, the dusty grey-blue of the tamarisks, the
domes of ruined tombs, and all the smell of the white Northern
plains, as the mail-train ran on to the mile-long Sutlej Bridge.
William, wrapped in a poshteen - a silk-embroidered sheepskin jacket
trimmed with rough astrakhan - looked out with moist eyes and
nostrils that dilated joyously. The South of pagodas and palm-trees,
the overpopulated Hindu South, was done with. Here was the land she
knew and loved, and before her lay the good life she understood,
among folk of her own caste and mind.
They were picking them up at almost every station now - men and
women coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles
of polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers
and saddles. The greater part of them wore jackets like William's,
for the Northern cold is as little to be trifled with as the Northern
heat. And William was among them and of them, her hands deep in her
pockets, her collar turned up over her ears, stamping her feet on
the platforms as she walked up and down to get warm, visiting from
carriage to carriage and everywhere being congratulated. Scott was
with the bachelors at the far end of the train, where they chaffed
him mercilessly about feeding babies and milking goats; but from
time to time he would stroll up to William's window, and murmur:
"Good enough, isn't it?" and William would answer with sighs of pure
delight: "Good enough, indeed." The large open names of the home
towns were good to listen to. Umballa, Ludianah, Phillour, Jullundur,
they rang like the coming marriage-bells in her ears, and William
felt deeply and truly sorry for all strangers and outsiders -
visitors, tourists, and those fresh-caught for the service of the
country.
It was a glorious return, and when the bachelors gave the Christmas
Ball, William was, unofficially, you might say, the chief and
honoured guest among the Stewards, who could make things very
pleasant for their friends. She and Scott danced nearly all the
dances together, and sat out the rest in the big dark gallery
overlooking the superb teak floor, where the uniforms blazed, and
the spurs clinked, and the new frocks and four hundred dancers went
round and round till the draped flags on the pillars flapped and
bellied to the whirl of it.
About midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came
over from the Club to play "Waits," and that was a surprise the
Stewards had arranged - before any one knew what had happened,
the band stopped, and hidden voices broke into "Good King
Wenceslaus," and William in the gallery hummed and beat time with
her foot:
"Mark my footsteps well, my page,
Tread thou in them boldly.
Thou shalt feel the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly!"
"Oh, I hope they are going to give us another! Isn't it pretty,
coming out of the dark in that way? Look - look down. There's
Mrs. Gregory wiping her eyes!"
"It's like Home, rather," said Scott. "I remember -"
"Hsh! Listen! - dear." And it began again:
"When shepherds watched their flocks by night -"
"A-h-h!" said William, drawing closer to Scott.
"All seated on the ground,
The Angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around.
'Fear not,' said he (for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind);
'Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind.'"
This time it was William that wiped her eyes.
-THE END-
Rudyard Kipling's short story: William The Conqueror
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