ShÂhbÂsh, Bhaiyan, ShÂhbÂsh!

The words, signifying "Bravo, boys, bravo!" came in a despondent drawl from the coolie leaning against the ladder--one of those crazy bamboo ladders with its rungs tied on with grass twine at varying slants and distances, whereon the Indian house-decorator loves to spend long days in company with a pot of colour-wash and a grass brush made from the leavings of the twine.

There were two such ladders in the bare, oblong, lofty room, set round with open doors and windows, and on each was balanced a man, a pot, and a brush--all doing nothing. So was the coolie below.

He was a small, slight man, with a dejected expression. Stark naked, save for two yards or so of coarse muslin wisped about his short hair and a similar length knotted about his middle. What colour either had been originally could not be guessed, since both were completely covered with splashes of colour-wash--blue, green, yellow, and pink. So was his thin body, which, as he stood immovable at the bottom of the ladder, looked as if it was carved out of some rare scagiola.

For they were doing up the hospital in Fort Lawrence, and Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, of the 10th Sikh Pioneers--then engaged in making military roads over the Beloochistan frontier--had an eye for colour. Not so, however, Surgeon-Major Pringle, who that very morning had marched in with the detachment of young English recruits which had been sent to take possession of the newly enlarged fort. It was a queer mud building, looking as if it were a part of the mud promontory which blocked a sharp turn in the sun-dried, heat-baked mud valley, through which the dry bed of a watercourse twisted like the dry skin of a snake. Everything dry, everything mud, baked to hardness by the fierce sun. It was an ugly country in one way, picturesque in another, with its yawning fissures cracking the mud hills into miniature peaks and passes, its almost leafless flowering shrubs, aromatic, honeyful, and its clouds of painted butterflies. A country in which colour was lost in sheer excess of sunshine.

That, however, was not the reason why Surgeon-Captain O'Brien had painted his wards to match Joseph's coat. As he explained to Surgeon-Major Pringle, who, as senior officer, took over charge, it was wiser, in his opinion--especially with youngsters about--to call wards by the colour of their walls rather than by the diseases to be treated in them; since if a patient "wance found out what was really wrong with his insoide, he was sure to get it insthanter."

The Surgeon-Major, fresh from England and professional precisions--fresh also to India and its appeals to the imagination--had felt it impossible to combat such statements seriously. Besides, there was no use in doing so. The walls were past remedy for that year, and even the post-mortem house--that last refuge of all diseases--was being washed bright pink; a colour which, according to Terence O'Brien, was "a nice, cheerful tint, that could not give annyone, not even a corpse, the blues."

In the course of which piece of work the small man at the foot of the ladder was becoming more and more like a statue in rosso antico, as he repeated: "ShÂhbÂsh, bhaiyan, shÂhbÂsh!" at regular intervals.

His voice had no resonance, and not an atom of enthusiasm about it; but, like a breeze among rain-soaked trees, it always provoked a pitter-patter of falling drops--a patter of pink splashes like huge tears--upon the concrete floor and the scagiola figure. For the words set the brushes above moving slowly for a while; then the spasm of energy passed, all was still again, until a fresh "Bravo, boys, bravo!" was followed by a fresh shower of pink tears.

"Lazy brutes!" came a boy's voice from the group of young recruits who were enjoying a well-earned rest after having marched in fifteen miles, carrying their kits as if they had been born with them, and settling down into quarters as if they were veterans. For they were smart boys, belonging to a smart regiment, whose recruiting ground lay far from slums and scums; one whose officers were smart also, and kept up the tone of their men by teaching them a superior tolerance for the rest of the world. "Jest look at that feller--like an alley taw. He ain't done a blessed 'and's turn since I began to watch 'im." They were seated on some shady mud steps right over against the hospital compound, and the post-mortem house being separate from the wards, and having all its many windows and doors set wide, the inside of it was as plainly visible as the out.

"Rum lot," assented another voice with the same ring of wholesome self-complacency in it. "I arst one of the Sickees, as seems a decent chap for a nigger and knows a little decent lingo, wot the spotted pig was at with his everlastin' shabbashes, an' 'e says it's to put courage to the Johnnies up top. Not that I don't say I shouldn't cotton myself much to them ladders, that's more like caterpillars than a decent pair o' 'ouse-steps. A poor lot--that's wot they are, as doesn't know the differ in holt between a nail and a bit o' twine."

"Well, mates," said a third voice, "all I can say is that if they ain't got no more courage than shÂhbÂsh can put to them, it's no wonder we licks the blooming lot of them--as we does constant."

There was a faint laugh first, and then the group sucked at their pipes decisively as they watched the doings in the post-mortem. Though they would have scouted the suggestion, the shÂhbÂsh wallah had justified his calling; for patriotism brings courage with it.

He did not trouble his head about justification, however. Some one, in his experience, always did the shouting, and it suited him better than more active occupation, for he was lame; stiff, too, in his back. Surgeon-Major Pringle, coming in later to find the post-mortem very much as it had been hours before, looked at him distastefully, and began a remark about what two English workmen could have done, which Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien interrupted with his charming smile: "Sure, sir, the sun rises a considerable trifle airlier East than West, an' that's enough energy for wan hemisphere. Besides, ye can't get on in India without a shÂhbÂsh wallah. Or elsewhere, for that matter. Ye always require 'the something not ourselves which makes for righteousness'--"

"Makes for fiddlesticks!" muttered the senior under his breath, adding aloud, "Who the dickens is the shÂhbÂsh wallah when he is at home, and what's his work?" He asked the question almost reluctantly, for his junior's extremely varied information had, since the morning, imparted a vague uncertainty to a round world which had hitherto, in Dr. Pringle's estimation of it, been absolutely sure--cocksure!

"What is he? Oh! he's a variety of names. He's objective reality, moral sanction, antecedent experience, unconditioned good. Ye can take yer choice of the lot, sir; and if ye can't win the thrick with metaphysics--I can't, and that's the thruth--play thrumps. Sentiment!--sympathy! Ye can't go wrong there. Ye can't leave them out of life's equation, East or West. Just some one--a fool, maybe--to say ye're a fine fellow, an' no misthake, at the very moment whin ye know ye're not. Biogenesis, sir, is the Law of Life. As Schopenhauer says, the secret that two is wan, is the--"

His senior gave an exasperated sigh, and preferred changing the subject. So at the appointed time, no sooner, no later, the last patter of pink tears fell from the brushes upon the floor of the post-mortem and upon the still figure, which might have been a corpse save for its drowsy applause--"Bravo, boys, bravo!" Then the caterpillar ladders, with the decorators and the pots of colour-wash and the brushes still attached to them, crawled away, and the shÂhbÂsh wallah followed in their wake, his skin bearing mute evidence to the amount of work he had provoked.

His turban and waistcloth testified to it for days--in lessening variety of tint as the layers of pink, green, blue, and yellow splashes wore off--for at least a fortnight, during which time Surgeon-Major Pringle, busy in making all things conform to his ideal, constantly came across the shÂhbÂsh wallah bestowing praise where, in the doctor's opinion, none was deserved. What right, for instance, had the water-carriers filling their pots, the sweepers removing the refuse, to senseless commendation for the performance of their daily round, their common task?

Especially when it was so ill performed; even in the matter of punkah-pulling, a subject on which the native might be credited with some knowledge. Surgeon-Major Pringle seethed with repressed resentment for days over the intermittent pulse of the office punkah, and finally, in a white heat of discomfort and indignation, burst out into the verandah, harangued the coolie at length, and in the fulness of Western energy went so far as to show him how to keep up a regular, even swing. His masterly grasp of a till then untouched occupation not only satisfied himself but also the shÂhbÂsh wallah, who, as usual, was lounging about in the verandah doing nothing. So, of course, his "ShÂhbÂsh, jee, shÂhbÂsh," preceded Surgeon-Major Pringle's hasty return to the office and prepared Terence O'Brien for the dictum that the offender must be sent about his business; for if he was a camp-follower he must have some business, some regular work.

"Worrk, is it?" echoed Terence with his charming smile of pure sympathy. "Be jabers! yes. Worrk--plenty, but not regular, as a rule. The man's a torch-bearer. If it happens to be a dark night, and annybody wants a dhooli, he carries the torch for it."

Dr. Pringle's resentful surprise made him stutter: "Do you mean to say that--that--that--that--the public money--the ratepayers' money--is wasted in entertaining a whole man for so trivial a task?"

"Trivial, is it? When he's a pillar of fire by night an' a cloud of witnesses by day? And then he isn't a whole man, sir, at all at all. Wan of his legs is shorter than the other. I had to break it twice, sir, to get it as straight as it is. Thin, I've grave doubts about his spinal column; and as I trepanned him myself, I know his head isn't sound. It was two ton of earth fell on him, sir, last rains, when he was givin' a drink to wan of the Sikhs that got hurt blasting. It's nasty, shifty stuff, sir, is the mud in these low hills--nasty silted alluvial stuff, with a bias in it. So, poor divvle! seeing he wasn't fit for much but the hospital, I put him to the staff of it. And he kapes things going. Indeed, I wouldn't take it upon myself to say that he doesn't do the native patients as much good as half the drugs I exhibit to the unfortunate craythurs, since for sheer mystherious dispensations of Providence commend me to the British pharmacopoeia."

Once again Surgeon-Major Pringle felt that professional dignity could best be served by silent contempt, and orders that the offender was, at least, not to loaf about the verandahs.

But the fates were against the fiat. In the moonless half of May, driest of all months, a Hindu returning from Hurdwar fell sick, and half-an-hour after the report, Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, going out of the ward with his senior, paused in his cheerful whistling of "Belave me, if all those endearing young charms," to say under his breath, "Cholera, mild type." Now cholera, no matter of what type, has an ugly face when seen for the first time, especially when the face which looks into it, wondering if it means life or death, has youth in its eyes. So in the dark nights the dhooli came into requisition, and with it the torch-bearer, until the green and the blue and yellow wards overflowed into the verandahs, and even the pink post-mortem claimed its final share of boys. Not a large one, however, since, as Terence O'Brien said, "It was wan of those epidemics when ye couldn't rightly say a man had cholera till he died of it."

It was bad enough, however, to make the Surgeon-Major, who had never seen one before, set to work when it passed, suddenly as it had come, to cipher out averages, and tabulate treatments, with a view to what is called future guidance. And so, as he confided to his assistant with great complacency, it became clear as daylight that the largest percentage of recoveries, their rapidity, and as a natural corollary the incidence of mildness in the attack itself, seemed in connection with the position of the cots. Those close to the doors, or actually on the verandahs, were the most fortunate, and so he was inclined to believe in the value of currents of fresh air.

"Fresh air, is it?" echoed Terence, with an encouraging smile. "Maybe; maybe not. God knows, it may be anything in the wide wurrld, since there's but wan thing you can bet your bottom dollar on in cholera, sir, and that is that ye can't tell anything about it for certain, and that your experience of wan epidemic won't be that of the next."

"Neither does your experience, Mr. O'Brien," retorted his senior, sarcastically, "militate against mine being more fortunate. I mean to leave no stone unturned to arrive at reliable data on points which appear to me to have been overlooked. For instance, I shall begin by asking those cases of recovery if they remember anything which seemed at the time to bring them relief, to stimulate in them that vitality which it is so essential to preserve."

In pursuance of which plan he went out then and there to the verandah, where a dozen or more lank boys were lounging about listlessly, just beginning to feel that life might soon mean more than a grey duffle dressing-gown and a long chair.

"No, sir," said the first, firmly. "I disremember anythin' that done me good. I jest lay with a sickenin' pain in my inside, an' a don't-care-if-I-do feelin' outside." He paused, and another boy took up the tale sympathetically.

"So it was. A reg'lar, don't-care except w'en that little 'eathen--'im that's always saying shÂhbÂsh, sir, come along; an' that seem to me most times. 'E made me feel a blamed sight--beggin' pardon, sir--worse. For I kep' thinkin' of where I see 'im first, like a alley taw in the dead 'ouse; and the dead 'ouse isn't a cheerful sorter think w'en you ain't sure but wot you're going there. It made me--" he paused in his turn.

"Made you what?" asked Terence O'Brien, who had followed to listen.

"Give me the 'orrors, sir, till I'd 'ave swopped all I knew to kick 'im quiet; but not bein' able, I jest lay and kep' it for 'im against I could, till it seemed like as I must; an' so I will."

"In cases of extreme nervous depression, sir," began the junior, mischievously, "a counter irritant--"

"Pshaw!" interrupted Dr. Pringle, angrily, and walked back with great dignity to the office.

But the conversation thus started lingered among the grey dressing-gowns, the result of comparing notes being a general verdict that "Alley taw" deserved that kicking. He did not actually get it, however; the boys were too big, and he too small for that. But he sank into still greater disrepute, becoming, in truth, that most unenviable of all things not made nor created, but begotten of idle wit--a garrison butt. Not that he seemed to care much. He grew more furtive in his lounging, but nothing seemed to disturb the divine calm of his commendation for the world which he had created for himself with his "Bravo, boys, bravo!" Behold, all things in it were very good! That, at least, was Terence O'Brien's fanciful way of looking at the position. As he went about his work whistling "Belave me, if all those endearing young charms"--a tune which, he said, cheered the boys--he would often pause to smile at the shÂhbÂsh wallah. After a time, however, the smile would change to a quick narrowing of the eyes, as if something in the bearing of the man was puzzling. Finally, one day, coming upon the man sidling along a bit of brick wall, which had been built to strengthen a crack in the mud one overhanging the dry watercourse, he pulled up, asked a few rapid questions, and then lifted the man's eyelids and peered into the soft brown eyes, as if he wanted to see through them to a crack he knew of in the back of the man's skull.

"And you are sure you see as well as ever?" he asked again.

"Quite as well, Huzoor," came the answer, with a faint tremor in it. "I can see to carry the torch on the darkest of nights if it is wanted, Huzoor!"

"Hm!" said Dr. O'Brien, doubtfully, promising himself to test the truth of this statement. But the fates again decreed otherwise. The next day's mail brought orders for him to go and act elsewhere for a senior on two months' leave.

Dr. Pringle was not sorry. How could you collaborate properly with a man who calmly admitted that at a pinch he had used a bullet-mould to extract a tooth?

The monsoon had long since broken in the plains ere the young doctor returned; but in the arid tract in which Fort Lawrence lay rain came seldom at any time. And that was a year of abnormal drought. The fissures in the mud seemed to widen with the heat, and the fringe of green oleanders which followed every turn of the dry watercourse, mutely witnessing to unseen moisture below, wilted and drooped. In the new-built fort itself a crack or two showed in the level platform jutting out across the low valley on which the building stood, and in more than one place portions of the low mud-cliffs crumbled and broke away. The whole earth, indeed, seemed agape with thirst.

But water in plenty came at last. On the very day, in fact, when Terence O'Brien returned to the fort, which he reached on foot, having had to leave his dhooli behind, owing to a small slip on the road; nevertheless, as he crossed over from the mess to his quarters close to the hospital that evening, he told himself that he had the devil's own luck to be there at all. For the rain was then hitting the hard ground with a distinct thud, and spurting up from it in spray, showing white against the black mirk of the night. And the rush of the stream filling up the dry bed of the watercourse, and playing marbles with the boulders, was like a lion's roar.

It did not keep him awake, however, for he was dead tired. So he slept the sleep of the just. For how long he did not know. It was darker than ever when he woke suddenly--why he knew not, and with the same blind instinct was out into the open, quick as he could grope his way.

Not an instant too soon, either. A deafening crash told him that, though he could not see his own hand. The rain had ceased, but the rush of the river dulled hearing to all lesser sounds. As he stood dazed, he staggered, slipped, almost fell. Was that an earthquake, or was the solid ground parting somewhere close at hand? And if his house was down, how about the hospital and the sick folk?

He turned at the thought and ran till, in the dark and the silence of that overwhelming roar, he came full tilt upon some one else running in the dark also. It was the Surgeon-Major.

"The hospital's down. Have you a light--anything--a match?" panted Dr. Pringle. "We must have a light to see--"

"Oh, masÂl! Oh, masÂl-jee!" (Oh, the torch! Oh, the torch-bearer!) shouted Terence at the top of his voice as he ran on till stopped by something blocking the way. Ruins! And that was the sound of voices.

"What's up?" he cried.

"Don' know, sir," came from unseen hearers. "Part o' the 'orspital's down, but we can't see. It's a slide o' some sort, for there's a crack right across nigh under our feet. If we could get a light!"

"Oh, masÂl! Oh, masÂl-jee!" The doctor's voice rang out again towards the camp-followers' lines, but the roar was deafening. And in the night, when all men are asleep, the news of disaster travels slowly. Yet without a light it was impossible even to realise what had happened, still less to help the sick who might lie crushed.

"Oh, masÂl! Oh, masÂl-jee!--thank God! there's a light at last."

There was, in the far distance across the quadrangle. But it was not a torch; it was only an officer in a gorgeous sleeping-suit running with a bedroom candle. Still it was a light!

"Come on, man!" shouted Terence O'Brien, as it slackened speed, paused, stopped dead. His was the only voice that seemed to carry through the roar.

But the gay sleeping-suit stood still, waving its candle.

"It's the crack, sir," called some one in Terence O'Brien's ear. "It goes right across, I expect--we'd best find out first."

It did. A yawning fissure, twenty feet wide, had cut the hospital compound in two, and isolated one angle of the fort--that nearest the river--from the rest. Twenty feet wide, at least, judged by the glimmer of light! And how deep? Had the river cut it? Was it only a matter of time when the mud island on which they stood should be swept away? And what were the means of escape? There was more light now; more bedroom candles and sleeping-suits; a lamp or two, and others behind, as the boys--last to wake--came running, to pause like the first-comers, at the unpassable gulf; for the more it could be seen, the more difficult seemed the task of crossing it at once. By-and-by, perhaps, with ladders and ropes it would be possible--but now? Terence O'Brien, feeling the "now" imperative, skirted the crumbling edge almost too near for safety in his eagerness to find some foothold for a daring man; but there was none. True, the brick wall, built to strengthen the cracked mud one, still bridged the extreme end of the fissure, looking as if the mud had deliberately shrunk from its intrusion. It hung there half seen, on God knows what slender foundation--perhaps on none. But it could give no help. To trust it would be madness; a touch might send it down into the river below. No! Since none could cross the gap there must be more light on the farther side; torches, a bonfire, anything to pierce the dark and let men see how to help themselves and other men!

"Oh, masÂl! Oh, masÂl-jee-Ân!" The cry went out with all the force of his lungs. Surely the camp-followers must be awake by now.

One was, at any rate; for, surrounded by a halo from the faggot of blazing pitch-pine it carried, a figure showed upon the path worn, close to the mud walls of the native quarters, by the foot-tracks of those whose duty took them to the hospital. It was the shÂhbÂsh wallah, coming slowly, almost indifferently, in answer to the call; coming as if to his ordinary duty towards the growing fringe of ineffectual candles and eager men bordering the impossible. That was better! Given half-a-dozen more such haloes--and there were plenty if they would only come--and eager men on the other side would see how to help themselves and their comrades!

But no other halo appeared behind the one which followed the foot-track of others so closely; and so once again the call was given--

"Oh, masÂl! Oh, masÂl-jee-Ân! Oh, masÂl! Oh, masÂl-jee!"

"HÂzr, Huzoor!" (Present, sir).

The nearness of the voice made Terence O'Brien look up, for it was the first voice he had heard clearly from the other side against that roar of the river. But as he looked another voice beside him said hurriedly--

"My God! he's coming across!"

He was. Surrounded by the halo of his own light, and keeping religiously to the beaten path, the shÂhbÂsh wallah, leaving the mud wall of the quarters, had struck the outer brick one as it stood, supported for a few yards by a spit of earth upon which the foot-track showed as the light passed. A spit narrowing to nothing--no! not to nothing, but to a mere ledge of earth and mortar clinging like a swallow's nest to the brick--wider here, narrower there, yet still able to give faint foothold upon the traces of those feet which had passed and repassed so often to their trivial round, their common task. Foothold! Ay! But what of the brain guiding the feet? What of the courage guiding the brain?

And even then, what of the foundation?

A sort of murmur rose above the roar. "He can't do it--impossible--tell him. Call to him, O'Brien. Tell him not to try."

The doctor stood for one second watching the figure centring its circle of light against the background of wall; then, even though there was no need for it, his voice fell to a whisper. "Hush!" he said. "Don't hustle him. By the Lord who made me, he doesn't know; he's feeling his way every inch by the wall! He's blind, and by God! if anybody can do it, he will."

He did. Step by step, slowly, confidently, in the footsteps of others.

And the great cry of "Bravo, brother, bravo!" which went up from both sides of the gap as he and his torch stepped on to firm ground, brought him as much surprise as a voice from heaven might have done.

* * * * *

"Pressure on the brain!" said Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, about three weeks after this, when he and Dr. Pringle had had a consultation over the shÂhbÂsh wallah. He was not only blind now, but there was a drag in the good leg as he limped about, over which both doctors shook their heads. "And there's nothing to be done that I can see. The bhoys will miss him!"

That was true. Alley Taw had come into favour since the night when, as Terence phrased it, "he had done a brave deed without doing it," and by failing to see the evil, had enabled other men to do good. For the torch had not disclosed irretrievable disaster, and by timely rescue not a life had been lost.

Surgeon-Major Pringle frowned. He was beginning to understand his India a little, but the idea of the shÂhbÂsh wallah being a useful member of society was still as a red rag to a bull. And so, out of sheer contrariety, he began to talk doctor's talk as to the possibility of this or that.

"It's life or death, annyhow," said the junior, shaking his head, "but I don't see it. I wouldn't thry it myself--not now at any rate."

Perhaps not then. But after a month or two more he said, "It's your suggestion; I don't belave it can be done; but you may as well thry."

For the shÂhbÂsh wallah, half paralysed, had even given up his cry. So, part of the hospital being still under repair, they took him to the pink post-mortem house and set all the doors and windows wide for more light. He was quite unconscious by that time, so Terence O'Brien only had the chloroform handy, and kept his finger on the pulse. Half-a-dozen or more of the boys were on the mud steps over against the hospital compound waiting to hear the shÂhbÂsh wallah's fate. But you might have heard a pin drop in the post-mortem, save for the occasional quick request for this or that as the Surgeon-Major, with the Surgeon-Captain's eyes watching him, set his whole soul and heart and brain on doing something that had never been done before.

So the minutes passed. Was it to be failure or success? The Surgeon-Major's fingers were deft--none defter.

The minutes passed to hours. That which had to be done had to be done with one touch light as a feather, steady as a rock, perfect in its performance, or not at all.

And still the minutes passed. Terence O'Brien's face was losing some of its eagerness in sympathy, Dr. Pringle's gaining it in anxiety; for clear, insistent, not-to-be-silenced doubt was making itself heard. Only the shÂhbÂsh wallah cared not at all as he lay like a corpse.

It had come to the last chance. The last; and Dr. Pringle, with a pulse of wild resentment at his own weakness, realised that his nerve was going, his hand shaking. Still, it had to be done. The splinter of bone raised--the whole process he had thought out as the last chance gone through. He steadied himself and began. Failure or success? Failure--failure--failure! The word beat in on his heart and brain, bringing unsteadiness to both.

"Dresser, the chloroform," said Terence O'Brien, sharply; for there was a quiver in the man's eyelids.

But ere the deadening drug did its work, the shÂhbÂsh wallah's brain, set free to work along familiar lines by the raising of that splintered bone, had sent its old message to his lips--

"ShÂhbÂsh, bhaiyan, shÂhbÂsh!"

In telling the story Dr. Pringle says no more; generally because he cannot.

But after a time, if you are a brother craftsman, he will give you all details of the biggest and most successful operation he ever did.

And though he is slow to allow the corollary, he never denies that the shÂhbÂsh wallah's verdict put courage into him.