heard in it was a glad young voice repeating these words:
"Oh! God of the Battle! Have mercy! Have mercy! Have mercy!"
"Bravo! young Bertram!" said someone--even those who scarcely knew whether Bertram were his Christian or his surname called him that--"Easy to see you're fresh from the Higher Standard."
Young Bertram smiled down on us from the plinth of the marble steps leading up to the marble summer house which stood in the centre of this Garden-of-Dead-Kings.
Posed there on his pedestal, holding orb-like in his raised right hand the battered bronze cannon ball whose inscription--roughly lettered in snaky spirals--he had just translated, young Bertram reminded me of the young Apollo.
"You bet," he answered, gaily. "But what does it mean, here on this blessed ball? Who knows the story?--for there is one, of course."
The company looked at me, partly because as a civilian such knowledge was expected of me; mostly because I was responsible for the invasion of this peaceful Eastern spot by a restless, curious horde of Westerns; my only excuse for the desecration being, that as the most despicable product of our Indian rule, a grass widower bound to entertain, I had naturally clutched at the novelty of a picnic supper and dance some few miles out of the station.
Perhaps, had I seen the garden first, I might have relented, but I took it on trust from my orderly, who assured me it held all things necessary for my salvation, including a marble floor on which a drugget could be stretched.
It held much more. There was in it an atmosphere--not all orange blossom and roses, though these drugged the senses--which to my mind made a touch of tragedy lurk even in our laughter.
Though, in sooth, we brought part of the tragedy with us: for a frontier war was on, and all the men and half the women present, knew that the route might come any moment.
Some few--I, as chief district officer, the colonel and his adjutant--were aware that it probably would come before morning: but ours were not the sober faces. Our plans were laid; all things, even the arrangements for the women and the children and the unfit-for-service, were cut and dried: but the certainty that someone must--as the phrase runs--take over documents, and the uncertainty as to who the unlucky beggar would be, lent care to a young heart or two.
Not, however, to young Bertram. As he stood questioning me with his frank blue eyes, even the white garments he had donned (because, he said, "It might be a beastly time before he wore decent togs again") told the same tale as his glad voice--the tale of that boundless hope which holds ever the greatest tragedy of life.
"Who is that pretty boy?" said a low soft voice at my elbow.
I did not answer the spoken question of the voice, but as I replied to the unspoken question of many eyes I was conscious that of all the many incongruous elements I had imported into that Eastern garden this Western woman who had appraised young Bertram's beauty was the most incongruous. It was not the Paris frock and hat, purchased on the way out--she had only rejoined her husband the day before--which made her so. It was the woman inside them. I knew the type so well, and my soul rose in revolt that she should soil his youth with her approval.
"I've no doubt there are stories," I replied; "but I don't happen to know them. I'm as much a stranger here as you all are. So come! let us look round till it's dark enough to dance."
"Dark enough to sit out, he means," said someone to the Paris frock and hat, whereat there was a laugh, but not so general and not half so hearty as the one which greeted young Bertram's gravity as he replaced the cannon ball on the plinth with the profound remark:
"Something about a woman, you bet."
"Do introduce me!" pleaded the Paris frock and hat as the lad came down, bearing the brunt of chaff gallantly; but I pretended not to hear, though I knew such diplomacy was vain with women of her type--women whose refinement makes them shameless.
Yes! she was a strange anomaly in that garden, though, Heaven knows, it appealed frankly enough to the senses. So frankly that it absorbed even such meretricious Western additions as cosy corners and iced champagne--on tables laid for two--without encroaching a hair's--breadth on the inviolable spiritual kingdom of the ivory orange blossom, the silver jasmine stars, even the red hearts of the roses.
They were lighting up the lines of the cressets about the dancing floor when we began to reassemble, and as each star of light quivered into being, the misty unreal radiance grew around the fretted marble of the summer house until arch and pilaster seemed to lose solidity, and the whole building, leaving its body behind in shining sleep, found freedom ass a palace of dreams.
And there, as a foreground to its mystical beauty, was young Bertram dangling his long legs from the pedestal and nursing the battered old bronze ball on his lap as if it had been a baby.
"I've found out all about it," he said, cheerfully. "That chap"--he pointed to a figure below him--"told me a splendid yarn, and if you lite,"--he turned to me--"as they haven't done lighting up yet, and we can't dance till they finish, he could tell it again. I could translate, you know, for those who can't understand."
The innocent pride made me smile, until the Paris frock said, "I shall be so grateful if you will, Mr. Bertram," in a tone of soft friendliness which proclaimed her success and my failure. Both, however, I recognised were inevitable when I remembered that she was the wife of the lad's captain, a silent, bullet-headed Briton of whom he chose to make a hero--as boys will of older men who are not worthy to unlatch their shoes.
The figure rose and salaamed. It was that of a professional snake charmer, who had evidently come in hopes of being allowed to exhibit his skill: for his flat basket of snakes, slung to a bambu yoke, lay beside him.
"And it was about a woman, as I said," continued young Bertram, with the same innocent pride. "She was of his tribe--the snaky tribe, and so, of course, he knows about it all."
I had my doubts--the man looked a cunning scoundrel--but there was an awkward five minutes to fill up, so chairs and cushions were requisitioned, and on them and the marble steps we circled round to listen: the Paris dress, I noticed, choosing the latter, close to the translator.
He performed his task admirably, catching not only the meaning of the words but the rhythm of the snake charmer's voice, and so quickly, too, that the message for the East, and for the West, seemed one; yet it seemed to come from neither of the speakers.
"'Oh, God of the Battle! have mercy, have mercy, have mercy!' Such was her prayer to the Bright One, and this is the tale of it:
"Straight was her soul as the saraph who tempted Eve-mother, but crooked her body as snakes that deal death in the darkness--crookt in her childhood--crookt in the siege of the town by a spent shot which struck her, asleep in her cradle (the ball that you nurse on your knee, sahib--they found it beside her--her crushed limbs caressing the foe that destroyed her).
"She grew in this garden, a cripple, but fair still of face, and twice cursed in such gifts of beauty all barren and bitter--so bitter she veiled it away, hiding loveliness, hatefulness, both, from the eyes of the others: a soul stricken sore ere the battle began, yet insatiate of life, insatiate of blessing and cursing, insatiate of power. And, look you! she gained it! Most strangely, for fluttering through thickets like birds that are wounded and dragging herself like a snake to the blossoms, she threaded the jasmine to necklets and pressed out the roses to perfume, so giving to women uncrippled love-lures for the fathers of sons.
"Hid
