THE "DEE-PUK-RÂG"

"You are tired to death as it is--why should you fuss any more over a pack--"

"Ssh! sir; don't talk rubbish. I am all right; and Eugene is so anxious everything should be a success that I must. Besides I--I like it."

Mrs. Walsall Smith sent the hostess' gathering smile round her long luncheon table, and rose. So did Vincent Dering, who had sat at her right hand--a position due to his rank as commandant of Eshwara--and, as he did, he drew his chair aside to let the girl on his left pass, with his usual somewhat voyant courtesy, though it was only Laila Bonaventura. He had met her several times during the past few days, and the effect which her singing had made on him had vanished before her general failure to interest him in the least. And to-day she actually wore a blue sash! In addition she had filled up the time between her monosyllables in methodically crumbling her bread and ranging the results in a pattern, until the inanity of it had got on his nerves, and he had felt inclined to beg her to desist.

And yet, as in passing her black eyes looked into his with one curious yet comprehensive flash, a memory of the extreme regularity of the curves and lines which had annoyed him, made him--quite irrelevantly--wonder hastily if he could have said anything to Muriel which--

He broke off in his own thought impatiently, and gave an apologetic glance after Mrs. Walsall Smith's fragile figure. There never was anything, never! Never a word said, never a deed done, which all the world--even Eugene Smith himself--might not hear and know. Vincent Dering felt a pulse of sheer virtue as he looked down the long table at his host, with the vague irritation which the possessors of women often arouse in those who are not their possessors. For Muriel Smith's half-playful, half-wistful rejection of sympathy had held that faint hint of dutiful martyrdom which seems so purely angelic to selfish man--unless he happens to be the wretch who inflicts it!

Curious, he thought; Eugene wasn't much of a gentleman, but he wasn't a bad sort, and he was fond of his wife, in a way. Yet he was blind to the fact that Muriel was not fit to go trapesing about his blessed old canal works with the pack of padrÉs and people he had got together to do honour to his skill. She would do it, of course, and get through with it, too! Here he helped himself to a glass of sherry, and felt incoherently that she was the dearest and best woman in the world,--the one woman in the world, so far as he was concerned.

As he sat between those two empty chairs where those two women, so absolutely unlike, had fenced him in on either side, a faint wonder tinged his virtue in comparing the last three years with the time before it.

If anyone had told him, then, that he would write every day to a woman and expect her to write to him without a word or a deed--

"Please, Dering-darlin'," said an imperious small voice, "mum wants 'oo, 'tos pup'll go off, she says, wis' all a gemplemen, an' she wants 'oo to go off wis' a ladies!"

"All right, little 'un," he laughed gladly, finishing his sherry at a gulp, and, ere catching the little mite in his arms, giving himself that smartening pull together which was so characteristic of the man.

He looked very handsome, very happy, as he came up, with Gladys shaking her curls at him in outrageous flirtation.

"How kind!" said Muriel. "I don't know what I should do without you."

That was all; but it sent him off in absolute content to tackle the stoutest lady in the room.

"If you make the move, Mrs. Campbell," he said diplomatically, "everyone will follow, and I know Mrs. Smith is anxious we should start, as it will take some time to go round."

"Ay! that it will!" assented the good lady in a mournful Scotch accent. "'Deed if it were not for Dr. James--" she glanced fearfully at a tall man in a black frock coat--a man whose patriarchal beard had once been red and was now the colour of a carpet whisk--who was buttonholing Father Ninian; the latter, with his straight slenderness, looking almost youthful beside the other's burly bulk.

"I wouldn't go if I didn't want to," put in a sharp-featured lady who belonged to another black frock coat--a small one. "You spoil the doctor, Mrs. Campbell. As I tell my husband, I yield to him in spiritual matters--the mission, you know, and all that; but when it comes to realities--the housekeeping, and what we are to eat, and do, and that sort of thing--that is my province."

Mrs. Campbell turned her fat good-natured face on her neighbour's placidly. "Ay, my dear; but ye didn't promise to be a wife to Dr. James, an' I did. So, Captain Dering, if you can find my niece--"

"Miss Shepherd is quite safe, Mrs. Campbell. Carlyon's looking after her," interrupted Vincent, feeling another spasm of sheer virtue. He had seen the two sitting together at lunch, apparently interested in each other, and he had noticed how Lance, on entering the drawing-room, had made his way straight to those coils of red-bronze hair which had a trick of being the most conspicuous point in any group of which they formed part. So Lance would enjoy himself simply; he would not have to gain pleasure in complex fashion by dragging about a posse of uninteresting old ladies, for the sake of a lady who was neither. Vincent's face had a bored look as he began his task by piloting his charge into the verandah, and so on into the open.

It was hot work crossing the stretch of sand which lay between the bungalow and the red brick abutments of the canal head; but once there, with the broad still basin of the united rivers before you, a cool breeze blew pleasantly from that blue barrier of hills with the gold-spiked temples of Eshwara enamelled against it, and a soft white mist hiding the feet of the far-distant snows; so hiding the "Cradle of the Gods! The floods had gone, however, and so had the robe of righteousness. The sandbanks lay bare, of the earth, earthy. The logs, too, were no longer dipping and dancing in the currents. Some were piled criss-cross on the spit, awaiting ransomers, and a few lay like straight shadows, half in, half out of the receding water.

"A log! not a bit of it!" said someone, stooping for a stone. "Look!"

The missile fell far short of the low streak of sand and shadow, but did its work. The shadow disappeared, as a bottle-nosed alligator slipped silently into the stream. Most eyes watched it, but Lance Carlyon's turned to Erda Shepherd. He had only met her once, casually, when he was out fishing on the spit, since the day when Father Ninian had introduced them, and they had seen something else in the river that was also not a log.

"Do you remember," he began impulsively, "the first time we met?"

A shadow slipped into her limpid bronze eyes also. "Certainly," she interrupted coldly. "It is not so very long ago--is it?"

She had fenced with his assumption of friendliness more than once already; feeling vexed with herself, the while, that she should do so. Since what did it matter? However much she might regret--and she had regretted with foolish unseen blushes as she had lain awake at night wondering what had possessed her--the almost indecent unveiling of realities in that first five minutes, she could not undo it. Besides, she had told herself, he had in all probability forgotten it in polo, and partridge-shooting, fishing, and such things.

But he had not, apparently; and he parried her fence with a still more friendly laugh.

"I didn't mean that, of course; but we won't talk of it, if you'd rather not. It isn't a very Mark Tapleyish subject, is it, for an afternoon party?"

The blush was to be seen this time. "So I have been thinking myself, Mr. Carlyon, ever since last Wednesday," she began, still more coldly, "and I am sorry--"

He interrupted her quite cavalierly. "I didn't mean that, either, and you know I didn't. However, we'll leave it alone. So you're not coming to the ball! Do you know, I think it's an awful pity; I'm sure you'd dance beautifully."

She felt outraged, in a way, and yet she smiled. He seemed so much younger than she was. Younger; but stronger and more vital. That calm assertion, too, that she knew she was playing feminine tricks with him, had been manly and dignified to quite a crushing degree. She could not help being at once meek and indulgent.

"I don't dance, Mr. Carlyon," she said quietly; adding, as a rider and salve to her conscience, "I--I think it wrong."

"I thought you might," he returned, evidently pleased at his own acumen, "but I don't see it that way. Of course if--if you go in for those ideas, you know, you can make it seem--well--awful low; but I--" he paused before even a possible sounding of his own trumpet--"you see I think it's awfully jolly; besides, it's such ripping good exercise, and I have to be careful, I tell you, not to put on flesh. I ride thirteen-four, as it is." His face grew grave over the confession.

"Is that much?" she said, her eyes caught and held by the splendid figure beside her. "You are very tall, surely." There was almost a pride in her tone, certainly a tenderness.

He shook his head. "Not so tall as my people are generally. We Carlyons run to size. My uncle, Sir Lancelot's, six-three, and his son is six-four; but he's a bit weedy. So when you're only six-one and a half you can't afford to wax fat; you've got to keep the body in subjection. That's right, isn't it?" His pride in his Scriptural knowledge made it impossible for her to be stern, though she felt she ought to be.

"Quite right, Mr. Carlyon," she assented, hurriedly, "but see! the others have gone on, and I don't want to miss--She stumbled, in her haste to end the tÊte-À-tÊte, on a loose brick, and for an instant was over-near the edge of the abutment.

"Take care!" he said, his hand on hers to give support; a cool, strong hand, with an insistence in its clasp which seemed to single her out from the world to stand so, hand fast in hand. "You were very nearly over that time," he said, smilingly, as he released her. "Now let's come on, or, as you say, we shall be too late for the fair. Smith's going to show off his electric light in the tents, you know."

Perhaps it was the slip which had made her dizzy, but she walked beside him feeling as if she were in a dream. And, in truth, the scene which grew upon them as they went on had a strange unearthliness and unreality. She paused, and gave a little gasp of pleasure and surprise. "It seems impossible!" she said. "A week ago, when I was here, it was all sand, sand; and now--"

Her eyes met the wide, flower-set walks, the stately white palaces of the Vice-regal camp with absolute incredulity. "Did you do all this?" she asked, doubtfully. "Why, you've made a new world!" She felt inwardly as if he had, somehow, for her.

"Oh! Vincent did a lot of the decorations, you know. He's that sort. We--my fellows, I mean, and Dillon's gaol-birds--dug, and did the dirty work. But it looks all right, doesn't it?"

It did, indeed,--absolutely and entirely all right. So white, so straight, so disciplined; even to the very twist on the tent ropes.

"That peg's out of line," said Lance, pausing suddenly. "Here, sergeant!"

A following had gathered in their rear, bringing up the little procession of Englishmen and women, with a knot of dark faces, and from it a man in dust-coloured drill stepped, and saluted.

"Two inches, or, say, an inch and a half." Erda caught so much in the order given as she walked on.

Two inches, or, say, an inch and a half! No more than that wrong in this dream city; and over yonder? Her eyes travelled past the snowdrift of the camp, rising against the blue background of wide water, to Eshwara, rising against its background of blue hill.

"I thought so; a good inch and a half," said Lance exultantly, coming up with measured strides. "It makes a lot of difference though."

She looked at him critically. Older by some months than he, full of strong character, almost overfull of strong convictions, she was yet--as women must be until experience of work-a-day life teaches them, as it has taught men, the value of subordination--curiously undisciplined, curiously lawless. And this striving after uniformity impressed her.

"I suppose you learn that sort of thing in the army," she said, with a new respect.

He laughed. "I should think so; buttons and bootlaces all to pattern. It's an awful bore, but it keeps things going. Now, here we are! Now, you can see properly."

They stood in the centre of the camp, in front of the huge durbar tent, that wandering throne of an empire fixed and immovable as the stars. In front of them, rising out of a wilderness of roses, blossoming where nothing but sand had shown since the primeval sea receded from the hills, was the flag of that empire, its folds drooping round the mast. And beyond it, past the two brass guns pointing down the long vista, was an avenue of palms, bordered by green grass and beds of flowers, and intersected by broad paths leading back to the solid white squares of the tents. At the farther end, a quarter of a mile or more from the flagstaff, a triumphal arch at the entrance showed, until the palm-leaves cut it short, a legend:

"WELCOME TO THE LORD----"

and above it, far at the feet of those distant snows, lay that wreath of white mist hiding the "Cradle of the Gods."

Erda's eyes travelled to it, and from it to the other vistas, similar yet smaller, stretching to the right and left of her. Then to the orderly rows on rows of tents, looking like solid blocks of marble behind her. The whole shut in from the world by a high white wall; still, silent, empty, waiting for the Hosts of the Lord. A snow-drift facing that mist-drift on the hills. And between them? Eshwara, and all that Eshwara held of evil and of good.

The dreaminess left her eyes, startled at a band of dark figures which at this moment appeared rounding the corner of a tent--figures in scanty striped clothing with a broad arrow on it; figures with shaven, close-capped heads and leg irons clanking, as their bare feet threaded through the flowers. And behind them, half-hidden, as ever, under his mushroom of a hat, came George Dillon. He had noticed, as he passed with the others, that the roses were flagging a bit under the hot sun, and had gone back to summon a fatigue party of his criminals to water them.

"Bring another go, mate," he ordered, as the gang, filing past the flagstaff, emptied their earthen pots; "then go back to the road. And be quick. There's no time to lose. The Lord-sahib comes to-morrow."

They obeyed with grins; and Dr. Dillon, as he paused beside Lance and Erda, looked after them approvingly. "They like this better than picking oakum, and I've had to set some of 'em to do that, now the digging's done. I shall be glad when this show's over, and we move on."

"Move! where?" asked Erda.

"Where there is work to be done, Miss Shepherd. Satan finds mischief, you know, especially with his own hands." He paused and smiled. "They're a queer lot. Do you know some of them are in a blind funk because they think a percentage of them have to be sacrificed before the water will run." He grew grave again. "Poor devils!" he added, in a softer tone--"as if they hadn't paid tribute already. I lost over a hundred last year, what with pneumonia and malaria, but they don't seem to count that--that is the will of the gods. But I say, hadn't you better be going into the tent if you want to see the light-up? Smith went off to his plant five minutes ago with his gang, so it's about time."

It was almost pitch dark in the huge tent, and as they slipped in through the closed portieres, Vincent Dering's voice called to them.

"Be quick, please; and, Carlyon, tell them to shut down the outer screens. We want to have a real flash-up, and I believe we are all here now."

Whether that was so or not Erda could not tell. The brief ray of light caused by their entrance had only shown her Captain Dering's figure beside his hostess, and given her a glimpse of Laila Bonaventura's white dress close by. So it was eerie, in a way, to wait in the darkness, knowing it to be full of people she knew; yet to have consciousness of nothing save their voices, since age, sex, position, even race, were alike awaiting this new light which was to make them manifest. Perhaps the eeriness struck her companions also, for the voices came clearly; not in a babel, but answering each other in the listening, waiting silence.

"We are all full of sparks, I assure you, Mrs. Campbell."

"I am weel aware o' it, Doctor Dillon; but it's too much like a brand snatched frae the burning to my taste; for Doctor James will have it--"

"Undoubtedly, my dear Ann. It appears to me, sir, and I trust it will to you, as a most interesting scientific fact, calculated to confound those who scoff at the possibility of eternal punishment in a fire that is not quenched--"

"Or to comfort those who believe in a cleansing one--who seek a place in the crown of stars about their Mother's head--who feel the flame of immortality." Its faint hesitancy betrayed this voice, as the dryness did the next.

"If I've got to generate my own heaven or hell, I prefer to pass; but if one could turn on a fifty-candlepower reflecting lamp during a post mortem or a bacillus hunt, it would be useful."

"Yes! Fancy being able to get up at night and see, at once, in all corners of the room if there were snakes!"

This brought a laugh till a fragile voice said plaintively, "That's just the worst of it. When one begins to see things too clearly, they are so apt to be nasty."

"That, my dear Madam, has always appeared to me as an additional argument against those who contend that Perfect Wisdom could not wisely have produced so imperfect a being as Man."

"Surely, Dr. Campbell," interrupted a tart voice, "the necessity for something on which to exercise our faith proves that; but then I am only a woman. I confine myself to realities."

"Then what a bore it would be if there were no delusions! By Jove! it would be dull. Who is it says the soul of man lies in his imagination?" Captain Dering's voice could not be mistaken.

"Just so--and nowhere else."

This came in an aside, and was followed in the same tone by the eager, hesitating voice. "Scoffer! When you men of Science spend your lives in listening--to the things which cannot be heard--looking for the things that cannot be seen-- Ah! doctor!--you can't impose on me. I know you--I have seen you."

The very darkness seemed abashed, and there was silence; till a new voice, young, full-throated, broke it. "But how can you tell if things are nasty till you have seen them--they may be nice. Ah-h-h!"

It had come like a creation, flooding all things with irresistible light.

A sort of sigh made itself heard; a sigh of vague relief. "By Jove!" said Captain Dering, "it will make a difference to the durbar. As a rule you can't see the diamonds and jewels; and they are half the show."

Palpably there could be no fear of that. To the uttermost corner of the vast tent, the pattern of its lining of shawls was visible; each boss on the parcel-gilt poles glittered and shone; the very legend round the arms of England above the Vice-regal chair stood out clear "Dieu et mon droit." And the expression on the two groups of dark faces, the one which had come by invitation to see, the other which had crept in at the further end, could not be mistaken. In the one, indifference struggled with curiosity; in the other assent was mingled with awe.

"What are they saying?" asked Lance, who, having come late, stood close to the latter group. "Something about Dee-puk-rÂg. What's that?"

Erda shook her head. "Father Ninian will know--he knows all these things--that is why they call him Pidar NarÂyan, and let him do anything. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't the best way." The last, spoken to herself, was interrupted by Father Ninian's echo.

"The Dee-puk-rÂg! Why, yes--of course!" He turned to the dark faces in sheer delight. "Yea! brothers!" he said in Hindustani, "ye are right! It is the Dee-puk-rÂg--the sign of kingship. Have I not told ye always that the Lord is with us--and with you?" Then he turned back to his other hearers: "It means the Song of Light--a charm--a spell which the great men of old knew. Is it not so, Ramanund?"

A half-reluctant voice from the invited replied, "The ignorant say so, sir."

A faintly sarcastic smile came to the fine old face. "And they believe its possession marks the born ruler of men--the God-sent guide; since, when it is sung, the light comes from the stars to help the world on its way--to dispel the darkness! Ah-h-h!"

It had gone! and in the black night which settled blankly on speaker and audience, a faint, far cry came from outside. More than one woman's voice echoed it with a little startled gasp of suspense.

"It is all right!" called Vincent Dering, "the thing is always popping in and out--I've seen it at Euston--it will come back directly." And then, in response to something he alone had heard, he whispered, "Don't be alarmed; Eugene will set it right in a moment--really--"

As he bent his head a scent of violets--the scent she always used--assailed him; and that half-heard appeal--"Oh, what is it, Vincent?" seemed still in his ears. Even in the darkness he knew she must be close to him. He felt the soft ruffle of the lace about her hand upon his wrist. It trembled, surely. Did it? Or was it only his own bounding pulse. A sudden imperious desire to know--to be certain--swept through him.

Then, with a sort of suffocating rush to heart and brain, came the knowledge that his clasp was answered by that small hand--so small, so clinging, so trustful--so dear--so absolutely dear--so dear!--so very dear!!

As he stood in the darkness, he knew that every mooring was gone, knew that this--this thing--would change--must change--the whole position. It was a light, indeed; a light showing the way--a different way! A sort of fierce exultation took possession of him. He knew, now, that he had been dreaming till then; that he had been blind.

"Ah! what a relief! That dreadful darkness was getting on my nerves," said a calm voice coming to him from out of the flood of white light which seemed to have rent their hands asunder.

Their hands--when she stood yonder? He turned, bewildered, to find a pair of grave black eyes fixed critically on him.

"I--I--he began.

"It doesn't matter," said Laila Bonaventura, with stolid indifference. "You thought it was her hand, of course. I quite understand."

Did she? Did--could--anyone? even he himself?

God! How content--how happy he had been--how certain--

"Dillon! Dillon! For God's sake, where's Dillon?" came an excited voice, as Eugene Smith burst into the tent, bringing the afternoon sunshine to war with that unearthly light. "Come along, man! There's been an accident in the workshop! I warned them not to touch--one--a mere boy--did. Got startled, I suppose, and fell over--onto the circular saw--it was going. His leg--I've tried a tourniquet, but I can't stop--"

The remainder was inaudible; the caller and the called, followed by Vincent, glad of any interruption to the intolerableness of his confusion, were already running as for dear life down the palm-set avenue towards the canal workshop outside the walls.

That it was for death, however, not life, Dr. Dillon saw at a glance; though, without a pause, he knelt down in the fateful, irresistible tide of life blood which was ebbing and flowing with such awful insistency, and set his teeth in fight.

Yet once he gave an upward glance to the long, low roof so full of driving bands and wheels and levers, so full of men's power, so empty of men's passion; and then a straight one to the circle of ignorant, awe-stricken, dark faces closing in round him. And as he did so, he muttered to himself:--

"I wouldn't have had this happen for a thousand pounds--and a high-caste man, too!"

Undoubtedly; the sacred thread showed on the shoulder under the broad arrow--for the twice-born are twice-born even in gaol.

"Lay him on Mother Earth to die, ye of his caste!" said a voice from behind. It was Father Ninian's. His haste had driven the colour from his face; he stood breathless, yet calm, his right hand raised. In the awestricken circle none stirred; there was no sacred thread upon their shoulders.

"Give me a hand, please, Dr. Dillon," said the old man quietly; "he will not die easy there." So, between them, they shifted the slight figure from the wooden platform on which it had fallen, to the ground all sodden and stained with that tide of blood. A faint content seemed to come to the half-conscious face; the head nestled itself into the soft earth as if to rest.

The circle of dark and white faces fell back alike, leaving the doctor and the priest alone with death,--the doctor with both hands detaining that ebbing tide of life, the priest with the viaticum of another faith on his lips speeding it on its way.

"Lo!" whispered some of the circle. "Hark to his 'Ram Ram!' He knows--Pidar NarÂyan knows."