Selected Stories (44 page)

Then she died. Holden sat still, and all thought was taken from him – till he heard Ameera's mother lift the curtain.

‘Is she dead,
sahib?
'

‘She is dead.'

‘Then I will mourn, and afterwards take an inventory of the furniture in this house. For that will be mine. The
sahib
does not mean to resume it? It is so little, so very little,
sahib
, and I am an old woman. I would like to lie softly.'

‘For the mercy of God be silent a while. Go out and mourn where I cannot hear.'

‘
Sahib
, she will be buried in four hours.'

‘I know the custom. I shall go ere she is taken away. That matter is in thy hands. Look to it, that the bed on which – on which she lies –'

‘Aha! That beautiful red-lacquered bed. I have long desired –'

‘That the bed is left here untouched for my disposal. All else in the house is thine. Hire a cart, take everything, go hence, and before sunrise let there be nothing in this house but that which I have ordered thee to respect.'

‘I am an old woman. I would stay at least for the days of mourning, and the rains have just broken. Whither shall I go?'

‘What is that to me? My order is that there is a going. The house-gear is worth a thousand rupees and my orderly shall bring thee a hundred rupees tonight.'

‘That is very little. Think of the cart-hire.'

‘It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with speed. O woman, get hence and leave me with my dead!'

The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in her anxiety to take stock of the house-fittings forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by Ameera's side and the rain roared on the roof. He could not think connectedly by reason of the noise, though he made many attempts to do so. Then four sheeted ghosts glided dripping into the room and stared at him through their veils. They were the washers of the dead. Holden left the room and went out to his horse. He had come in a dead, stifling calm through ankle-deep dust. He found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with frogs; a torrent of yellow water ran under the gate, and a roaring wind drove the bolts of the rain like buckshot against the mud-walls. Pir Khan was shivering in his little hut by the gate, and the horse was stamping uneasily in the water.

‘I have been told the
sahib's
order,' said Pir Khan. ‘It is well. This house is now desolate. I go also, for my monkey-face would be a reminder of that which has been. Concerning the bed, I will bring that to thy house yonder in the morning; but remember,
sahib
, it will be to thee a knife turning in a green wound. I go upon a pilgrimage, and I will take no money. I have grown fat in the protection of the Presence whose sorrow is my sorrow. For the last time I hold his stirrup.'

He touched Holden's foot with both hands and the horse sprang out into the road, where the creaking bamboos were whipping the sky and all the frogs were chuckling. Holden could not see for the rain in his face. He put his hands before his eyes and muttered –

‘Oh you brute! You utter brute!'

The news of his trouble was already in his bungalow. He read the knowledge in his butler's eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food, and for the first and last time in his life laid a hand upon his master's shoulder, saying, ‘Eat,
sahib
, eat. Meat is good against sorrow. I also have known. Moreover the shadows come and go,
sahib;
the shadows come and go. These be curried eggs.'

Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The heavens sent down eight inches of rain in that night and washed the earth clean. The waters tore down walls, broke roads, and scoured open the shallow graves on the Mahomedan burying-ground. All next day it rained, and Holden sat still in his house considering his sorrow. On the morning of the third day he received a telegram which said only, ‘Ricketts, Myndonie. Dying. Holden relieve. Immediate.' Then he thought that before he departed he would look at the house wherein he had been master and lord. There was a break in the weather, and the rank earth steamed with vapour.

He found that the rains had torn down the mud pillars of the gateway, and the heavy wooden gate that had guarded his life hung lazily from one hinge. There was grass three inches high in the courtyard; Pir Khan's lodge was empty, and the sodden thatch sagged between the beams. A grey squirrel was in possession of the verandah, as if the house had been untenanted for thirty years instead of three days. Ameera's mother had removed everything except some mildewed matting. The
tick-tick
of the little scorpions as they hurried across the floor was the only sound in the house. Ameera's room and the other one where Tota had lived were heavy with mildew; and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was streaked and stained with rain-borne mud. Holden saw all these things, and came out again to meet in the road Durga Dass, his landlord – portly, affable, clothed in white muslin, and driving a Cee-spring buggy. He was overlooking his property to see how the roofs stood the stress of the first rains.

‘I have heard,' said he, ‘you will not take this place any more,
sahib?
'

‘What are you going to do with it?'

‘Perhaps I shall let it again.'

‘Then I will keep it on while I am away.'

Durga Dass was silent for some time. ‘You shall not take it on,
sahib
,' he said. ‘When I was a young man I also – but today I am a member of the Municipality. Ho! Ho! No. When the birds have gone what need to keep the nest? I will have it pulled down – the timber will sell for something always. It shall be pulled down, and the Municipality shall make a road across, as they desire, from the burning-ghaut
¹⁰
to the city wall, so that no man may say where this house stood.'

On Greenhow Hill
¹

To Love's low voice she lent a careless ear;
Her hand within his rosy fingers lay,
A chilling weight. She would not turn or hear;
But with averted face went on her way.
But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,
Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning
Held out his cypress-wreath, she followed him,
And Love was left forlorn and wondering,
That she who for his bidding would not stay,
At Death's first whisper rose and went away.

Rivals
.
²

‘
Ohé, Ahmed Din! Shafiz Ullah ahoo
! Bahadur Khan, where are you? Come out of the tents, as I have done, and fight against the English. Don't kill your own kin! Come out to me!'

The deserter from a native corps was crawling round the outskirts of the camp, firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to his old comrades. Misled by the rain and the darkness, he came to the English wing of the camp, and with his yelping and rifle-practice disturbed the men. They had been making roads all day, and were tired.

Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd's feet. ‘Wot's all that?' he said thickly. Learoyd snored, and a Snider bullet ripped its way through the tent wall. The men swore. ‘It's that bloomin' deserter from the Aurangabadis,'
³
said Ortheris. ‘Git up, someone, an' tell 'im ‘e's come to the wrong shop.'

‘Go to sleep, little man,' said Mulvaney, who was steaming nearest the door. ‘I can't arise an' expaytiate with him. 'Tis rainin' entrenchin' tools outside.'

‘'Tain't because you bloomin' can't. It's 'cause you bloomin' won't, ye long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar, you. ‘Ark to 'im ‘owlin'!'

‘Wot's the good of argifying? Put a bullet into the swine! ‘E's keepin' us awake!' said another voice.

A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the darkness –

‘'Tain't no good, sir. I can't see 'im. ‘E's ‘idin' somewhere down ‘ill.' Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. ‘Shall I try to get 'im, sir?' said he.

‘No,' was the answer. ‘Lie down. I won't have the whole camp shooting all round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his friends.'

Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, putting his head under the tent wall, he called, as a bus conductor calls in a block, ‘'Igher up, there! 'Igher up!'

The men laughed, and the laughter was carried down wind to the deserter, who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own regiment half a mile away. He was received with shots; the Aurangabadis were very angry with him for disgracing their colours.

‘An' that's all right,' said Ortheris, withdrawing his head as he heard the hiccough of the Sniders in the distance. ‘S'elp me Gawd, tho', that man's not fit to live – messin' with my beauty-sleep this way.'

‘Go out and shoot him in the morning, then,' said the subaltern incautiously. ‘Silence in the tents now. Get your rest, men.'

Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there was no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental snoring of Learoyd.

The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas, and for a week had been waiting for a flying column to make connection. The nightly rounds of the deserter and his friends had become a nuisance.

In the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned their grimy accoutrements. The native regiment was to take its turn of road-making that day while the Old Regiment loafed.

‘I'm goin' to lay for a shot at that man,' said Ortheris, when he had finished washing out his rifle. ‘'E comes up the watercourse every evenin' about five o'clock. If we go and lie out on the north ‘ill a bit this afternoon we'll get 'im.'

‘You're a bloodthirsty little mosquito,' said Mulvaney, blowing blue clouds into the air. ‘But I suppose I will have to come wid you. Fwhere's Jock?'

‘Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, ‘cause 'e thinks ‘isself a bloomin' marksman,' said Ortheris with scorn.

The ‘Mixed Pickles' were a detachment of picked shots, generally employed in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too impertinent. This taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the enemy much harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed the Aurangabadis going to their road-making.

‘You've got to sweat today,' said Ortheris genially. ‘We're going to get your man. You didn't knock 'im out last night by any chance, any of you?'

‘No. The pig went away mocking us. I had one shot at him,' said a private. ‘He's my cousin and
I
ought to have cleared our dishonour. But good luck to you.'

They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris leading, because, as he explained, ‘this is a long-range show, an' I've got to do it.' His was an almost passionate devotion to his rifle, whom, by barrack-room report, he was supposed to kiss every night before turning in. Charges and scuffles he held in contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped between Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well as their own. They never failed him. He trotted along, questing like a hound on a broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. At last he was satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needled slope that commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a brown, bare hillside beyond it. The trees made a scented darkness in which an army corps could have hidden from the sun-glare without.

‘'Ere's the tail o' the wood,' said Ortheris. ‘'E's got to come up the watercourse, 'cause it gives 'im cover. We'll lay ‘ere. ‘Tain't not arf so bloomin' dusty neither.'

He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines.

‘This is something like,' he said luxuriously. ‘Wot a ‘evinly clear drop for a bullet acrost. How much d'you make it, Mulvaney?'

‘Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekaze the air's so thin.'

Wop! wop! wop
! went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north hill.