"HE SHALL FEED HIS FLOCK LIKE A SHEPHERD"The garden of the old palace at Eshwara had been rightly described by Roshan KhÂn as a pleasant place. Longer than it was broad, its shady walks and orange groves clung to the river, raised above it by a balconied wall against which the current ran dimpling. On two of the remaining sides, a twenty-feet high barrier of sheer masonry, buttressed and bastioned, blocked out all curious eyes. On the third, separating it from the courtyard where the big gun stood, rose the palace. Seen thus intimately from within, the latter had changed its character. No longer severe, stern, giving a blank stare at the world from the narrow slits of infrequent windows, it had grown fanciful, almost fantastic, full of canopied turrets and inconsequent little latticed retreats. At least in the two upper storeys; for the lower one was more solid, its chief feature being a wide, aisled passage leading right through it to a door which gave on the courtyard. Being exactly opposite the one in the corner of the Fort bastion on the other side, this door opened, as the latter did, on one of the slantwise limbs of the quaint union-jack of raised paths which centred in the cannon. It was not necessary, however, to go round by this in crossing from one door to the other, as by keeping to the river steps, you could do so on the same level. In old times the guardians of the frail beauties for whose delectation the garden had been made, had lived in the crypt-like vaulted rooms which opened out from this aisled passage; so keeping the gate against illegal wanderings. Since the only other exit from the garden, save by boat, was through the second storey of the women's apartments, and as this was by a door leading directly into the royal rooms (which were on the other side of the tunnel that gave access to the courtyard, and also divided the palace into two portions--male, and female), the butterfly prisoners had had no chance of fluttering to strange honey. In those days, therefore, the door had always been bolted and barred. It stood wide open, however, showing a vista of green at the farther end of the passage, when Captain Dering and Lance Carlyon came over to it in reply to the intimation that Miss Laila Bonaventura was "At Home for music on Wednesday afternoons," which had been brought to the Fort overnight by an old pantaloon. A very old pantaloon with a wizened face, a few sparse hairs--dyed flaming red--standing at right angles to his cheeks, and a marvellous livery, consisting for the most part of yards upon yards of tarnished tinsel cloth, twisted and twined about head and waist like Saturn's rings. The oldest of old pantaloons, with a back curved by a life-time of obeisances, a toothless mouth, still full of sonorous titles, and a wicked old eye, watchful for the least want of the master, be it good or evil. A pantaloon, with Heaven knows what history of unutterable things hidden in his old brain, such as is to be seen, even in these days, lingering round the ruins of a native court; a figure despicable enough, yet real; so in a way pathetic, by reason of its absolute lack of real interest in things as they are. And now as the two Englishmen paused,--partly because the swift change from the glare without to the gloom within was startling,--this same pantaloon, with a white muslin robe superadded to the livery as a badge of his dignity as door-keeper, precipitated himself upon them from the shadows, with ancient skips of alacrity and loop-like salaams; then with crab-like sidlings led the way, the young men following. "I must have that old chap on paper before I leave," said Vincent Dering; "he's too good to be lost." So, their steps echoing cheerfully with their laughter, they went on until, towards the middle of the passage, the aisle to their left widened, and through a maze of pillars and arches, a glimpse or two of air and sunlight showed sharply. Lance took a curious step towards them. "Opens on to the river, I expect; jolly cool it must be in the hot weather! By Jove! those old sinners knew how to be comfortable. Hullo!"--he paused in a sort of horror--"I say, Dering! I believe it's a chapel. Yes! it is!" He took off his cap instinctively, and moved another step forward to see better. But Captain Dering called impatiently, "Oh, come along, do, Carlyon! I didn't promise to go to church! Hymns are bad enough in all conscience." Lance, however, stood rooted to the spot, cap in hand. "Hush!" he said in a low voice, "I believe they are having service." As he spoke a robed figure showed between the arches against the sunlight beyond them; showed with something in its lifted hands, then passed to some unseen altar. "Oh, come along, do! there's a good chap, and let's get out of the way," repeated Captain Dering, sharply. "It's Father NarÂyan, I suppose,--he's as mad as a hatter, and boshes the whole business--at least, so Delamere said. I told you we were a bit early, but you would start; still it's too bad of the old man to have his chapel in the front hall! Come along! and let us wait in the garden--it looks an awfully jolly one--awfully--" He paused, perhaps at the change, this time, from gloom to glare, perhaps at the sudden sense of anticipation, the sudden quickening of the pulse of life, which made him draw a long breath involuntarily. It was not unfamiliar to him, that sudden stir of vitality, of expectation; and with a curious smile on his face he crossed to the edge of the marble plinth on which the passage opened, and leaning over the balustrade, looked down to a terrace below, and so on to the garden itself. A perfect wilderness of common flowers, sown broadcast, lay at his feet, hemming in a shallow marble tank, which was nearly covered with the dewy leaf-cups of the lotus, and set round with mosaic arabesques. From this tank two aqueducts led to the edge of the terrace, and ended in steep slopes of fretted marble, where cascades had once wimpled and dimpled down to the water-maze which lay below--a shiny lake, cobwebbed over by narrow marble paths just wide enough for the bare, flying feet of a laughing girl. Beyond was scented shade, with glints of water-courses gleaming here and there; while here and there came a peep of a latticed balcony overhanging the river; a balcony just large enough for a laughing girl and her lover. Yet there was not even a butterfly to be seen hovering over the flowers. All was still, all was silent, until Vincent Dering's careless laugh echoed through the stillness, the silence. "Can't you imagine it--all lit up--they used to put coloured lamps behind the cascades, I'm told, and play 'Catch who can' up and down and all around the place! On the whole I expect they enjoyed themselves--better than the type-writing girls of to-day do, for instance." "Got beastly sick of enjoying themselves before they had done with it, I expect," replied Lance, succinctly, "especially if there was always such a confounded strong smell of orange blossoms. Bah! I'd prefer a polecat; but," he gave a distasteful glance at his companion, "I believe you like strong scents." "Why not?" laughed Vincent Dering, drawing out a handkerchief deluged with white-rose, and sniffing at it, "it's a harmless taste," here his jest passed to earnest, and his eyes took a half soft, half cynical expression,--"so's the other, in a way. It isn't altogether despicable to let yourself loose in Paradise without an arriÈre pensÉe of flaming swords. Especially if you can give pleasure to someone else thereby. One could act Romeo and Juliet nicely in this garden. And have your choice of balconies, too," he continued, returning to jest, "even if the young woman--" He glanced back as if to verify his remark from the faÇade of the palace, but what he saw behind him brought a sudden straightening of his lounge, and rather an elaborate doffing of his sailor hat; for he was always a trifle ornate in his courtesy towards women, and the girl who stood within a pace or two of him was distinctly attractive, if--even at the first glance--a little too bread-and-buttery for his taste; too young, too clumsy as to waist, too massive in the contours of face and figure. For Captain Vincent Dering's taste had remained constant for the last three years to a different type of beauty; a type which, for the first time in his life, had made him sentimental, romantic, more or less unselfish. Still the girl was handsome, even in that babyish frock of starched white muslin, girt about with a yellow silk sash. The dress, he told himself,--for he was a connoisseur in chiffons, and had a pretty turn for painting in addition--would have been better soft, and creamy; but thank heaven! the sash was not blue, like the marker of the missal she carried in her hand. It might have been; for it was impossible to fathom the lack of all sense of fitness in some women. Yet the result would have been to take all the ivory tints from this girl's complexion, and leave it jaundiced. And the ivory was charming. "I am Miss Bonaventura," she began in a set way, which convinced Captain Dering that she had been sent to say those very words, and none other; "my guardian, Father Ninian Bruce, will be here directly. Won't you come upstairs to the drawing-room? I am sorry we did not know it was so late." "It is our fault; we are disgracefully early," put in Captain Dering. "I told Carlyon--" then he paused, feeling curiously at a loss before the girl's look of stolid gravity. "Perhaps your watch is too fast," she suggested, "and then my guardian likes to go by the sun. He says it never needs winding up. But I think it is inconvenient, when everybody else has a watch. It is always better to do as other people do." Her voice was very sweet and full; but a country-bred accent spoilt its beauty, and brought a grimace to Captain Dering's face, as he and his companion dutifully followed the speaker up one of the curved flights of steps, which led from the plinth to a wide loggia on the second storey. Like the room seen through its arches, this was lavishly decorated with fragments of looking-glass fashioned into flowing designs with gilt stucco. The afternoon sun, at this height shining full into the loggia, made it a veritable star chamber. "What a charming place," went on Captain Dering in his best manner. "Doesn't it remind you of the Arabian Nights, Carlyon?" A sudden vague surprise and interest came to the girl's face, lightening it infinitely. "Have you read the Alif Laila?" she asked. "My moonshi brought it--I have to learn Urdu, you know, because my guardian thinks I ought to be able to speak to the people, as he does--and I wanted to read it, because it is my name, you see--Laila--it means 'night,' I believe--but my guardian did not wish it. He gave me the 'Mirror of Virtue' instead. It is a very, very long--" Her almost childish garrulity ceased in a faint flush over the ivory of her face, and she reverted to her lesson, and her indifference--"The other people will be here directly; but they will come from the city, across the tunnel, and go straight into the drawing-room. Would you like to come in there, or stay here?" "Oh! stay here, please!" said Vincent, desperately. The young woman was getting on his nerves. "Then perhaps you would like to try the piano?" persisted Miss Bonaventura. "My guardian has it brought out here on Wednesday afternoons, because it sounds well among the arches. Will you try it?" Her hand--it was ivory also, Vincent observed, and had long filbert-shaped nails--held the cover of the keyboard open stolidly; and Lance Carlyon, feeling a bit desperate also, said appealingly:-- "Do, Dering. He is a nailer at the piano, I assure you, Miss Bonaventura, and he sings too." "So my guardian--" she began, when Vincent's patience gave way and, with a perfect devil of exasperation roused in him, he sat down on the music-stool and with a crash burst into a naughty little love song he had picked up at Brindisi on the way out. He did it simply to soothe himself; so, to do him justice, he nearly fell off the music-stool in horror when, at the refrain of the second verse, a very full round mezzo-soprano joined in it with a verve and abandon far exceeding his own. He scarcely knew whether to apologize, or go on; but Miss Bonaventura apparently had no doubts. She finished with a gay little staccato note which would have made her fortune at a music hall, and then turned to the accompanist with a smile which showed an absolutely flawless set of teeth. "What funny words; but I like them, and the tune too. What is it called? I should like to get it and sing it to my guardian." Vincent, who had begun a stammering regret that he had not remembered her nationality, altered his phrase, with a sense of relief, to "You know Italian very well, I suppose, Miss Bonaventura?" She returned to her indifference immediately. "My guardian and I speak it. He loves Italy and the Italians. He knew my grandmother there. She was a princess; but he never speaks of her, so I don't know very much about it. Only Mother at the convent said that my guardian--" She was off, gaily, on the childishly confidential tack again, when the sight of someone coming up the stairs made her veer towards dignity once more. "There is my guardian," she said; "he is very sorry to have kept you waiting." Evidently this was the last bit of her lesson, for she closed the piano with great decision. The figure which came slowly towards them was that of a very old man, yet one older, by many years, than his looks. For he was still straight, save for a slight stoop in the neck; but this, by the backward poise of the head thus made necessary to enable his brown eyes to meet all things, after their habit, squarely, if softly, gave him an air of alertness. He was dressed in an ordinary black soutane, but wore a fine white embroidered muslin skull-cap, such as natives wear, instead of a black one. His grey hair showed, still luxuriant, beneath it; and the wide sash of faded lilac silk, with tasselled ends, which was tied in a bow about his waist, set off his still slim and still graceful figure. "I hope my little girl has been doing the honours properly," he began, pausing a pace or two from the young men, and not offering to shake hands; but his voice was a welcome in itself, and had that nameless cachet of absolute good breeding which makes offence impossible. There was a slight hesitancy in it too, now and again, which was overcome by a look that took the listener into its confidence, and appealed for friendly forbearance--"but she is only just back from school at Calcutta, and the good nuns did not see much company, did they, Laila?" Then in an undertone of solicitude he added, in Italian, "Didst tell them, cara mia?--didst remember it all?" Laila Bonaventura looked at him with a faint resentment. "I think so, guardian," she replied, in English. "Didn't I?" The last came with such swift, almost savage, challenge of voice and eyes, that Vincent Dering, the recipient, felt glad of the diversion caused by the arrival, through the drawing-room, of some more guests to claim the attention of the host and hostess, and so leave him in peace. "I say, that girl has got splendid hair, hasn't she?" he said in an undertone to Lance, as they stood a little apart, watching the new comers. "That tall one, you mean--don't admire it. Puts me in mind of that devil of a chestnut who nearly killed me at polo; a chestnut with white stockings; awfully handy, but--" He paused as Father Ninian came up to them. "You can scarcely know any of your neighbours as yet, Captain Dering," began the old man with the ceremony of a past age, "so perhaps you will give me the privilege of presenting you to some of our good mission ladies." "Thanks," replied Vincent, hastily. "But I see my old friend, Mrs. Walsall Smith, coming in. I must just go and shake hands. But I'm sure Carlyon--" Lance shot a perfectly pathetic glance after his Captain, who moved off to meet a delicate-looking fair woman who at that moment came in with Dr. Dillon; the latter taken possession of and monopolized by an exceedingly pretty child of five, who had evidently inherited her mother's fragility. "Delighted, I'm sure," murmured Lance, following his leader dejectedly. "Miss Erda Shepherd, Mr. Lancelot--I am right, am I not--Carlyon?" It was the tall girl with the red-brown hair, of course. She had bronze eyebrows, too, and bronze eyes--nice ones. He saw so much as he made his bow, while Father Ninian stood looking first at the girl, then at the young man; and as he looked his fine old hands were clasped as if they held something very precious. It was a habit of his. "I hope you will like each other," he said in his kind old voice; and then, ere he moved away, his hands fell apart for an instant as if giving something. "Peace go with you, my children," he said with a smile. Lance felt a queer, unaccustomed thrill travel from the nape of his neck to his boots, pausing by the way at his heart. It was an unusual method of introduction, certainly; yet somehow it relieved the shyness which generally beset him at such functions. He found himself looking frankly into the bronze eyes, and something in them made him say, almost involuntarily:-- "That was rather a jolly way of beginning to be friends. I mean--" The shyness came back with a rush; he blundered horribly. "Very," put in the girl, interrupting him quite simply. "I hope it will be peace. I always hope that. You know I am a missionary." "Oh," he replied, blankly. "Yes, there are a lot of you--I mean--of them, in Eshwara, aren't there?" Her face set suddenly, her mouth grew almost stern. "Not enough, Mr. Carlyon; not half enough," she replied. And the militant ring of her voice, belying the peaceful professions of the previous moment, made him look at her curiously, recognizing that he had touched some quivering nerve of mind. "If you knew Eshwara as I know it," she went on, passionately, "you would say so too; I'm sure you would." The bronze eyes, meeting his blue ones, though they gave nothing back but kindly, almost boyish, surprise, seemed satisfied. She turned suddenly and stretched her right hand over the river which slipped oilily past the wall below, as they stood beside the balustrade of the loggia. "Look!" she said, impulsively. "Do you see that straight white thing floating down the curve of the current yonder? It isn't a log; those others are; plenty of logs come down the rivers from the forests in the hills, for they don't catch all, you know, at the government wood-station. And so the people here catch the runaways in the backwater, and get paid for them. But that--" She paused and her other hand gripped the balustrade hard; then she turned back to him with a faint apology. "Why should I bother you? Let us talk of something else. There is no reason why I should talk of these things to you so soon, or, indeed, at all." "I'd rather you did," he put in quickly. It was the truth. A sudden curiosity had come to him, a sudden desire to know more, to think more. He was less of a boy than he had been five minutes before. "I--I hope you will," he added; "really I do--I--I--" He felt his manhood as he had never felt it before, and yet, in a way, he was more forgetful of it. The girl opposite him was womanhood incarnate to him, and yet, in some mysterious way, beyond it, above it. "You and I must be about the same age, I expect," he said, with a half-perplexed frown, "but you have seen a lot more than I have. I wish you'd tell me, please!" The straight white glint in the water was just disappearing behind one of those balconies overhanging the river, where there was only room for a pair of lovers. "It is a dead girl, Mr. Carlyon," she said in a low voice. "She was in my school. Her people were very bigoted--Brahmins in a temple--but they let her be taught to read, because she was betrothed to an educated man. Last year she was married--she was but a child still--and I have only seen her once or twice since. Then"--the voice paused a second. "She was very frightened, poor little Premi, at what was coming. 'I shall die, Miss-sahib, I shall surely die,' she said to me the very last time I saw her; so I promised--I am a medical missionary, Mr. Carlyon. But when the time came, they would not let me in. I--I went to the husband--he is an educated man--you may have heard of him--Rama-nund, a great speaker,--he writes, too, and all that--but he said he was helpless with the women; and I am not sure either if he wished it himself--they don't know their own minds. So poor little Premi and her baby--Oh!" she broke off with an infinite pain in her voice--"it is so hard--so hard for both." Her face, set riverwards, was soft, yet stern; full of fight, yet full of pity, and Lance thought of a virgin martyr in the illustrated 'Lives of the Saints' with which his grandmother, Lady Carewe, had been wont to still his boyish unrest on Sunday afternoons. Yet there was something beyond that self-concentrated devotion in this face; something that took him back further still to the days when he had sobbed out his childish hurts in his mother's arms. "She was ill all yesterday and the day before--they told me there was no hope of either--they just let them die. And they always put them in the river--they have iron rings round their wrists and ankles to prevent them coming back to harm the men--" She paused and turned to Lance swiftly. "Isn't it true that there are not enough of us--that we want more women to teach them what--" "But I does!" came a high childish treble, forcing itself irresistibly even on the attention of these two; "I 'ikes 'oo twenty 'fowsand times better than dad, an' I 'ikes Captain Dering ten 'fowsand times better too; an' so does 'mum--don't 'oo mummie?" It was little Gladys Smith, who, clasping both Dr. Dillon's hands in hers, had swung herself back from him so as to toss her fair curls from her laughing face, as she looked up at him mutinously. There was an instant's awkward pause, during which the eyes of a man and woman met for a second. Met and parted hastily; but not before the girl with the yellow silk sash, who stood between them, had looked from one to the other with a dim surprise unclosing her red lips, and showing the gleam of her white teeth between them. Then Dr. Dillon said, carelessly, "And you like Akbar KhÂn better than any of us, you young sinner, because he gives you sweeties! Here! Akbar KhÂn, bring the Missy-baba some cream toffee!" The old pantaloon, who, with his loose coatee removed and a white duster tucked into Saturn's waist-ring was now helping to hand round coffee and cake, capered up with a voluble, but toothless,-- "Ger-reeb--pun-wÂz!" (Protector of the Poor.) Gladys helped herself discriminately, staring at the old servitor the while. "But I don't 'ike Akbar KhÂn. Do I, son of an owl?" she continued superbly, in the accurate Urdu which comes so daintily from lisping English babies. "Did I not say I would hate thee because thou wouldst not tell me why thou didst prostrate thyself before the soldier in the courtyard? And the ayah laughed, the base-born! She knew also, and would not say, and so did the soldier; so I hate you all!" She stamped her little foot, and shook her curls defiantly. "Gladys!" cried her mother, reproachfully. "Hullo! What's all this about?" laughed Captain Dering, catching the child up in his arms. "One of my soldiers insulting you? Who was it?" He turned, with the absolute command of his race, to the be-ringed one, who stood, full of deprecatory mumblings and salaamings, his hands, holding the tray of sweets, trembling visibly. "Who was it, KhÂn-jee?" asked Father Ninian, in a curiously even tone; one which, nevertheless, seemed a compelling one, for a murmured name came rapidly, followed by eager explanations. Father Ninian frowned, and deliberately put on the gold pince-nez which always hung around his neck. He seldom used it, however, being, he would say playfully, in his native Scotch, too "well acquaint" with Eshwara and all in it to need such help after fifty years experience. So it had come to be an unfailing sign that he was face to face with something unexpected, something new. Naturally, therefore, it changed the character of his face, bringing back to it a strange look of youth; of hope and energy--the look of choice which age has not. "Roshan KhÂn," he echoed, "why comes he here?" Then in sudden recollection he turned to Vincent Dering. "Of course, he comes with you. I knew he was in your regiment, but I did not think." Captain Dering put down the child gently. "Is there any reason, sir," he asked decisively, "why he should not be here? If so--" Father Ninian took off his eye-glasses slowly. He was back on familiar ground. "No!" he said, with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders; "none. He is welcome to come if he likes. He is a fine soldier, Captain Dering, and a good fencer." "The best I have ever come across," put in Lance Carlyon. Father Ninian laughed, a satisfied, vainglorious little laugh, and bowed, with his hand on his heart, in foreign fashion. It seemed almost as if something had brought back the manners of a different life. "His master thanks you," he said gaily. "I taught him; but as Esmond said of the botte de Jesuit--not all. We craftsmen keep something up our sleeve for our own use!" Lance Carlyon's face grew eager. He had heard of Father Ninian's art with the foils, and took his opportunity. "That's what Roshan does to me. I took lessons from him, but he licks my head off with tricks. Perhaps some day, sir--" Father Ninian's right hand and wrist, despite their age, flourished themselves with marvellous suppleness. "Of a surety! Of a surety," he interrupted, still in that gay, almost reckless voice, "and I will teach you 'L'Addio del Marito.' I never taught that to Roshan--it does not do for savage natures." "The husband's good-by! What a funny name," echoed Laila, curiously. "Why is it called that, guardian?" The gaiety left the old man's face. "Because the thrust is used, cara mia," he replied in Italian, and his answer came dreamily, half to himself, "when even those who have that greatest tie to life prefer to say good-by to it." He paused, then went on cheerfully: "But come! Music! Music! We lose time horribly. Laila, 'tis your part to begin." The girl walked stolidly to the piano. "What shall I sing, guardian?" she asked. "Sing?" he repeated, reverting once more to Italian, and his voice had the dreamy tone in it again; "sing my favourite, child. Something hath taken me back to the old days--and sing it well." Something in the pose of the girl, something in the faint defiance of her face as she stood turning over the leaves of the music, attracted Vincent Dering's fancy. He moved over to her, and asked if he should play her accompaniment. "If you can," she said, ungraciously. He smiled. "What is it? Oh!--Handel." He shrugged his shoulders. "Yes! I fancy I can play him--he is not very complex." The next instant he had embarked, with a certain sense of pique lending perfection to his phrasing, on the prelude; but perfect as his tone was, it seemed to fall dull and dead before the voice which rose and echoed into the arches. "He shall feed His flock like a Shepherd." Pure, peaceful, free from every touch of passion; absolutely, utterly, beyond this world and its works, it rose and filled the garden; the orange-scented garden with its fretted marble cascades and water-maze, where the feet of laughing girls had chased each other, the latticed balconies where lovers had sat. "And He shall gather the lambs in His arms." It floated out over the river where the dead girl had drifted, making a light come to a pair of bronze eyes. "Come unto Him all ye that labor." Out beyond the garden, into the city, a faint far echo of the call made men and women pause in the struggle for life, and say, "They are singing in the palace." "And ye shall find rest unto your souls." The promise of all religions, the cry which makes all creeds one, rose and fell, as the afternoon sun, shining into the loggia, put a canopy of stars above the head of the singer. Some of the audience said "Thank you," politely when she ended. Vincent Dering did not. He stood on one side, and, being musical to the heart's core, gave himself the luxury of silence. Only when Father Ninian, ever mindful of ceremonies and courtesies, crossed to acknowledge the services of the accompanist, he said briefly,-- "Who taught her that?" The old man looked at him almost wistfully: "I heard her grandmother sing it, nearly sixty years ago. I have never forgotten it." "I do not wonder," said Vincent Dering, and his eyes, forgetful of others, followed the girl whose dress ought to have been creamy and soft, instead of white and starched. |