must have stayed on after the others had gone, probably to think things out--the legend of appeal must have drawn him back to the very spot where the snake charmer's basket had been upset--like it had to me, the fragrant peace must have brought to his weariness sleep.
For the rest. Had there really been a fourth snake? Was it true that serpents always revenged themselves for wrong charming? Or were those two faint blood spots on the rose leaves of young Bertram's lips. …
* * * * *
"An 'E' willmakeit--plain."
Craddock's rolling baritone mingled with a shriek of steam welcoming a swift speck on the horizon.
With a roar and a rush it was on us, past us.
"Ef that 'ymn 'ad bin wrote these times, sir," remarked Craddock blandly, as he turned on steam, "the h'author might 'ave put in a H'engin. There ain't anythin' more mysterious in its goin's on--except per'aps wimmen. I'd ruther trust for grace to the mercy o' the Lord than to them any day."
SALT DUTY
I
"Lo! nigh on fifty years have passed since that dark night; just such a night as this, O! Children-of-the-Master! and yet remembering the sudden yell of death which rose upon the still air--just such an air as this, hot and still. … Nay! fear not, Children-of-the-Master! since I, Imân (the faithful one so named and natured), watch, as I watched then … and yet, I say, the hair upon my head which then grew thick and now is bald, the down upon my skin which then was bloom and now is stubble, starts up even as I started to my feet at that dread cry, and catching Sonny-baba in my arms fled to the safer shadows of the garden. And the child slept. … "
The voice, declamatory yet monotonous, paused as if the speaker listened.
"It is always so with the Master-Children," it went on, tentatively, "they sleep. … "
The second and longer pause which ensued allowed soft breathings to be heard from the darkness, even, unmistakable, and when the voice continued something of the vainglorious tone of the raconteur had been replaced by a note of resignation.
"And wherefore not, my friends, seeing that as masters they know no fear?"
Wherefore, indeed?
Imân Khân, whilom major-domo to many sahibs of high degree, now in his old age factotum to the Eurasian widow and children of a conservancy overseer, asked himself the question boldly. Yet the heart which beat beneath the coarse white muslin coatee starched to crackle-point in the effort to conceal the poorness of its quality, felt a vague dissatisfaction.
In God's truth the memory of the great Mutiny still sent his old blood shivering through his veins, and some of the tribe of black-and-tan boys who slept around him in the darkness were surely now old enough to thrill, helplessly responsive, to the triumphal threnody of their race?
Yet it was not so. The tale, on the contrary, was a sure sleep-compeller; indeed, he was never able to reach his own particular contribution to the sum total of heroism before sleep came--except in his own dreams! There he remembered, as he remembered so many things. How to decorate a ham, for instance--though it was an abomination to the Lord!--how to ice champagne--though that also was damnable!--when to say "Not at home," or dismiss a guest by announcing the carriage-- though these were foreign to him, soul and body.
Out there, beyond the skimp verandah, amid the native cots set in the dusky darkness in hopes of a breath of fresher air, old Imân's imagination ran riot in etiquette.
And yet the faint white glimmer of the Grand Trunk Road which showed beyond the cots was not straighter, more unswerving than the khânsâman's creed as to the correct card to play in each and every circumstance of domestic life.
His present mistress, a worthy soul of the most doubtful Portuguese descent, knew this to her cost. It was a relief, in fact, for her to get away at times from his determination, for instance, to have what he called "sikkens" for dinner. But then she did not divide her world into the sheep who always had a savoury second course in their menu, and the goats who did not. To him it was the crux of social position.
So, an opportunity of escape having arisen in the mortal illness of a distant relation, she had gone off for a weeks holiday full of tears and determination, while away, to eat as much sweet stuff as she chose, leaving Imân Khân in charge of the quaint little bastion of the half-ruined caravanserai in which she was allowed free quarters in addition to her pension.
He was relieved also. He had, in truth, a profound contempt for her; but as this was palpably the wrong game, he covered his disapproval with an inflexible respect which allowed no deviation from duty on either side. Yet it was a hard task to keep the household straight. Sometimes even Imân's solid belief in custom as all-sufficing wavered, and he half regretted having refused the offers of easier services made him by rich natives anxious to ape the manner of the alien. But it was only for a moment. The claims of the white blood he had served all his life, as his forbears had before him, were paramount, and whatever his faults, the late E-stink Sahib, conservancy overseer, had been white--or nearly so! Did not his name prove it? Had not Warm E-stink Sahib (Warren Hastings) left a reputation behind him in India for all time? Yea! he had been a real master. The name was without equal in the land--save, perhaps, that which came from the great conqueror, Jullunder (Alexander).
Undoubtedly, E-stink Sahib had been white; so it was a pity the children took so much after their mother; more and more so, indeed, since the baby girl born after her father's death was the darkest of the batch. It was as if the white blood had run out in consequence of the constant calls upon it. For Elflida Norma, the eldest girl--they all had fine names except the black baby, whom that incompetent widow had called Lily--was. …
Ah! what was not Elflida Norma? The old man, drowsing in the darkness after a hard day of decorum, wandered off still more dreamily at the thought of his darling. She did not sleep out on the edge of the high road. Her sixteen years demanded other things. Ah! so many things. Yet the Incompetent one could perceive no difference between the claims of the real Miss-Sahiba--that is, E-stink Sahib's own daughter by a previous wife--and those of the girl-brat she herself had brought to him by a previous husband, and whom she had cheerfully married off to a black man with a sahib's hat! For this was Imân Khân's contemptuous classification of Xavier Castello, one of those unnecessarily dark Eurasians who even in the middle of the night are never to be seen without the huge pith hats, which they wear, apparently, as an effort at race distinction.
The Incompetent one was quite capable of carrying through a similar marriage for the Miss-Sahiba. Horrible thought to Imân; all the more horrible because he was powerless to provide a proper husband. He could insist on savouries for dinner; he could say "the door is shut" to undesirable young men; he could go so far in weddings as to provide a suffer (supper) and a wedding cake (here his wrinkles set into a smile), but only God could produce the husband, especially here in this mere black-man's town where sahibs lived not. Where sahibs did not even seek a meal or a night's rest in these evil days when they were whisked hither and thither by rail trains instead of going decently by road.
Through
