Flora Annie Webster Steel

THE PIVOTS OF LIFE

Lance Carlyon was not, as a rule, given either to loss of spirits or temper, yet both were at vanishing-point as he flung off the garb of his namesake of the lake; swearing as he did so that he would never wear the blessed thing again. It cramped him all over; body and soul. And then--for he knew his Tennyson well, as one of his name could hardly fail to do--his memory raced swiftly over the love-loyal knight's career; until suddenly he laughed at a phrase which had always tickled him. "So groaned Sir Lancelot--not knowing he should die a holy man."

If he had?--what would have been the result? Would he simply have refrained from remorseful pain, or from the honour rooted in dishonour which caused it?

With a mighty stretch of his sound young muscles at the relief, Lance caught up his Indian clubs, and went elaborately, conscientiously, through his daily series of exercises before putting on his dust-coloured shooting-suit, and swathing himself with the necessary plentitude of belts, cartridge-boxes, and gaiters. The latter--being, after Indian fashion, simply a couple of bandages neatly twined--were, as a matter of fact, much tighter than his discarded greaves; but the clip of them about his calves was familiarly reminiscent of many a day spent out in the jungle alone, or at most with some companion of Am-ma's type. A man whose only claim to be called one in these later days was his undoubted dominion over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the beasts of the field. How jolly it had been! And how the deuce could a fellow like Vincent Dering--

Lance, sorting cartridges systematically with an eye to a possible snipe, whistled a tune which Vincent was always asked to sing at the Smiths', "Sweet is true love--and sweet is Death."

Well, he preferred the Death. So, catching up his gun, he made his way to the crypt-like flight of steps which, half way down the straight river-edged wall of the Fort--between its northern bastion where the stream turned hillwards at a sharp angle, and the southern one beside the bathing-steps--led to a tiny landing-stage. Here the canoe, which he had hired for such excursions from Ramanund (whose last experience of boating had rather sickened him of its pleasures), lay moored.

Keeping the paddle ready for steering, he let the stream, which here clung swift and smooth to the wall, take him with it; partly because he had no wish to be seen by any revellers in the palace. But the sight of the latter made him slip the paddle-blade into the sliding water, and send the canoe swerving out for a better view.

It was wondrously beautiful, seen from the river, with every line and curve of light reflected almost as clear as the reality. The sight held his attention, so that he was abreast of the bathing-steps ere he remembered his desire for secrecy, and, in his haste, the canoe--answering to his swift stroke--almost spun round, bringing him, in an instant, within an ace of collision with the hard brick. As it was, he heard a faint grating sound.

"By Jove! that was a near shave," he muttered to himself.

Out of the darkness of the courtyard, for the unilluminated block of the palace rose between it and the white radiance, came a voice:--

"Is't thou? Hast brought the tool--we must get the job done ere dawn and--"

The rest was inaudible as the river slid him on. What were they up to? he wondered idly; taking advantage, doubtless, of the absolute desertion of the courtyard, the entry to which had been blocked for the night, the main entrance to the palace having been prepared for the reception of the guests. Were they meddling with the padlock Dering had put on the tampion which stopped the muzzle of the old gun? Time to see to that in the morning.

He was now steering his way just on the edge of the shadow cast by the wall on the water, and in front of him jutted out a balcony smaller than the rest, and nearer the river. Those upper ones, he knew, were part of the chapel; but this--

He looked at it narrowly, wondering if he had ever noticed it before, then let the paddle sink idly across the boat, and sat staring at what he saw. Dering, of course! But the woman! Who on earth was she? A native? Hardly; and yet he did not remember seeing anyone at the ball whose dress was in the least like this; even in the dark it glittered.

"Do you call that love?" came a voice echoing softly over the water. "I don't. When I love, I mean to give, not to take; and the more I give, the more I'll have to give; because, you see, love will come back--it must."

By all that was incomprehensible, Laila Bonaventura! And, if there was any certainty in these shadows, Dering's arm--

Phew! Lance knew his Shakespeare also; had, in fact, a curiously ingenuous and human acquaintance with even the exact words of the great master. So as he drifted on, leaving those two in the balcony, a line drifted with him:--

"She whom I love now

Doth grace for grace and love for love allow.
The other did not so."

He felt a righteous relief at the idea, for he was eminently virtuous. Poor old Vincent! This was better than the other--he paused doubtfully--Well! different people had different tastes. He, for instance, had never admired Mrs. Smith. And then Dering, good chap as he was, had, everybody knew, a touch of the tar-brush himself. Only a touch, still it made a difference; for one had to consider the children. For instance, when he married--Why a vision of a child's head he had once seen, far away in the north, covered with soft, waving curls of sun-bright red-gold hair, chestnut--yes, chestnut hair, the very colour of that beast of a pony who boshed him at polo--should have come to him at that moment he did not know; but he fled from it, bashful as any girl over her first fancy, and, bending forward, sent the canoe racing the foam-bubbles on the swifter current with all the strength of his young arms.

That was the mission house, ending the long curve of the city. The mission house, where she slept--the boat raced harder here--where she lived in the thick of it--God bless her! Here the boat slackened, partly because the spit was reached, and in the darkness, made visible by that soft white radiance behind him, he must not miss Am-ma's hut. Am-ma, who had dominion over wild duck, among other things in that munificent gift of the Creator to His own image. Am-ma, who must come out and show those who had fallen from their high estate through civilization how to lure the birds to their death.

The refrain came back in this connection, and Lance's voice, as he sang it, if not musical, held a hint of something beyond the mere maudlin expression-stop of the ordinary song-singer.

He need not, he told himself, have feared to overlook Am-ma's wigwam; for there, not far from the point of the spit it stood, all lit up; circled round closely with a row of little lights like those at the palace. Were the primitive folk down here aping their masters and having a ball of their own? Smiling at the thought, he ran the canoe on shore and walked up to the reed hut. Then he saw that the circle of lights was broken by a dark patch. It was Am-ma himself, squatting on his heels. To one side of him, firmly fixed in the sand, was a freshly-killed crocodile's head, its jaws ingeniously distended by a thin cane to which a string was attached. By pulling this the dead mouth seemed to open and shut, as the pliant rattan bent under the strain and sprang back again. In his other hand he held a bloody spear. Despite these fearful preparations, however, the first glimpse of an approaching figure set him visibly trembling with fright; until, on its coming nearer the lights, he sprang to his feet with a sudden blubbering shout of relief.

"I thought--this fool, this atom of dust, thought--the Huzoor was the devil!" he explained, capering and chuckling to make much of the joke, now that the fear of its being a reality was over.

"The devil!" echoed Lance. "What the dickens should the devil come here for?"

Am-ma looked half-grave, half-important. Did not the Huzoor know, he explained, that when life was coming into the world, all the demons in it wanted to get hold of the new-born thing? Hence the lights, hence the crocodile's head and the spear; also his own valiance. Hence, also, the impossibility of his accompanying the Presence after duck. If he, the father of the thing to be born, was not there to fight the demons, what hope could there be for the son?--and here this quaint, broad, ugly face grew wistful--for it must be a son, surely, this time. No! he had no children; the demons had taken them all, every one; though he had left nothing undone, though he had sought out one medicine-man after another. What did it matter? he asked pathetically, if the charm were of one faith or another, if it brought a child. He had tried all. His own and everybody else's. But they all died, the children, girls and boys; died when they were born. The demon somehow slipped through the lights; the charm was not strong enough; that was all. So this time, when he had seen that the Huzoors had the Dee-puk-rÂg, the sign of kings, that they were, indeed, light-bringers, as his people had been of old, he had sent for the Miss-sahiba, and she had come. She was there in the hut, even now, fighting the demons.

Lance gave a quick catch of his breath, and stood silent. Right over the miserable reed hut, clear against the violet of the moonless sky, rose those palaces of stars lit up for pleasure. It almost seemed to him that the slight breeze, which was beginning to whisper of the dawn, held in it the faint rhythm of a distant waltz.

And here, at his feet, was this hut, lit up for pain. He heard that also, in a faint moan, which sent a shiver through him; the shiver of one who finds himself bare of accustomed covering, out in the open, far from any shelter from the cold sky.

"Of course you can't come, Am-ma," he said, moving off. "Well! I hope the Miss-sahiba will--will keep the devil away. I--I--expect she will!"

As he floated a little further down stream, vaguely obeying the instructions which Am-ma, regretful for all his anxiety, had shouted after him, he told himself that if anybody could, she would. If a fellow married her, for instance--

He drew the canoe on to the sand-bank, Am-ma had spoken of, somewhat sooner than his directions warranted, in order to stifle thought by action. And it needed every sense on the alert to tell in the darkness if one was keeping a fairly straight path. That scarcely audible "lip, lip" on the right meant that the water was close by, running an inch or two below a sheer yet crumbling edge of earth. That yielding softness on the left meant the ridge of dry sand. His way was between the two. Every now and again a watchful quack, a distant flutter, told him that the ducks were not far off. And in the east the faintest lightening of the purple warned him he was none too soon, since the dawn in India comes quickly.

But this must be the place; a sort of bunker right at the end of the bank. Here, cuddling down almost luxuriously into loose dry sand, still warm from yesterday's sun, he waited for that hint of light in the far east to grow strong enough for him to see.

It is always an experience to sit and wait for daylight, ignorant, helpless till it comes, of what lies close at hand. Lance Carlyon, crouching in that still warm sand, felt a sudden forlornness, a sense of having parted with something.

But, almost on the heels of this, came a sense of having found something; of strange, quick, new, yet familiar companionship. It seemed to him as he watched that faint grey lightening in the far east, that he did so, not as Lance Carlyon, but as an atom in the great, round, spinning world whose curved edge grew darker against the coming light.

He laid his gun beside him, and, kneeling in the soft, still warm sand, rested his arms on the edge of the bunker, ears and eyes alert as any wild creature's. He could hear the soft rustle of feathers in the dark, the soft swish of the water as something stirred in it, the soft sob with which an inch or two of that tiny, unseen sand-cliff gave way to the stream, the softer gurgle, as of laughter, with which the water took its toll of earth.

So, thinking not at all, simply as a sand grain in the sand around him, the mystery, the certainty of dawn held him, as it held all things.

The curved line of the world darkened, the shadow of it deepened, as the grey of the sky grew tender as the eye of a mother watching her child asleep. But only for a space. Then the grey hardened, and a trumpet call from a whistling teal told that the great fight of dawn had come.

So, for another space, the Dark and the Light faced each other, waiting for that second trumpet call.

It came, borne on a faint rustle of wind which crept over the edge of the world from the footsteps of the coming day. The shiver of it swept through the shadows; they broke into battalions to face the foe. So into companies, till, as the red spear-points of the sun showed over the horizon, they rallied darkly, desperately, behind each hint of rising ground, in each hint of sheltering hollow. Rallied in vain, for below the spear-points a glittering curve, as of a golden helmet, came resistless.

Then Lance Carlyon stood up, hastily, gun in hand. But he was too late. The mystery of Dawn had held him helpless, as it had held the birds; and now they, too, were freemen of the conquering day.

He fired a couple of shots after them, more as a salute to the victor than in any hope of slaughter; so, with a laugh, turned homeward.

The canoe shot against the stream gaily, but, as he neared the spit, a sudden desire to go home by land assailed him. Am-ma could take the boat back; there might be a chance of a snipe, in that low-lying bit below the mission house, and--

He blushed, even in solitude, at his own moral turpitude. Why not tell the truth; to himself, at least?

He found Am-ma, worn out by his night's anxiety, with his head between his knees, fast asleep; leaving the crocodile, at the agony point of an unending yawn, in sole charge of the little circle of flickering lights. Some of them had gone out, the rest looked trumpery in the growing blaze of day. But what matter? Since, half an hour before, Erda Shepherd had come out of the wigwam with a living child, wrapped quite daintily in an orthodox square of new flannel.

"It is a son, Am-ma, and I think it is very like you," she had said, with a laugh at the wrinkled, wizened old face peering out at its new world.

But Am-ma had grovelled on the ground with tears and cries of blubbering joy. He had been right. The Huzoors were kings. They knew the Dee-puk-rÂg. They were the light-bringers, the life-bringers.

He had never asked after his wife, but when Erda had gone inside again, he sat, and in his anxiety to keep the devil from those inside, had twitched away at his string so fiercely that the crocodile's head lost its ferocity in what appeared to be a fit of laughter, until sleep, from sheer relief, overtaking the puller, the laugh had ended in that steady yawn.

Am-ma was on his feet, alert in a second, however, at Lance's touch, like a wild beast.

"'Tis all right, Huzoor" he grinned broadly. "'Tis a son." Then once again the exuberance of his delight made him grovel in the sand at the feet of the Master.

"And the Miss-sahiba? Hath she gone?" asked Lance, blushing once more, now that his own self-deception became impossible.

"Nay, she remains inside," asserted Am-ma. But a look which he gave in the hut proved him wrong. She must have gone out the other way while he slept, he confessed, sheepishly; but there was nothing wrong. The devil had not won a way in; both mother and son were dozing peacefully.

Lance, his hope of walking back with Erda gone, felt inclined to take to the canoe again. Then a savage desire to kill something, at least, suggested the possibility of a snipe in the little swampy bit below the city wall, not far from the mission house; so bidding Am-ma take the canoe up at his leisure, he walked off, feeling, for him, in a very bad temper.

He forgot his quarrel with fate, however, in a second, when, the bit of swamp reached, something buzzed up to fall slantwise like a stone; something which, on picking it up, he found to be the rare Sabine snipe, painted, absolutely beautiful, in its delicate harmony of colour. And the luck did not come singly, for from behind a clump of tiger-grass came Erda Shepherd, a trifle alarmed at the possibility of being shot if she did not show herself.

Lance walked up to her, swiftly, the dead bird in his hand. "You must be awfully tired, being up all night," he began--

He had a way of rushing things, Erda thought, which was disconcerting when one was anxious to keep on the surface. "And you too, Mr. Carlyon," she interrupted; "did you enjoy the ball?" She felt pleased at this able evasion.

"Who--I--Oh! dear me, no," he replied, absently; then he smiled. "I say, wasn't Am-ma pleased. He slobbered and blubbered with joy all over my boots, and yet--" he paused reflectively, "I don't think a little Am-ma could be a very pleasing object."

For the life of her she could not help a smile. "It was not," she confessed frankly; "in fact I think it was the ugliest baby I ever saw. Poor little thing," she added in quick self-reproach. "Anyhow it seemed beautiful to them--it is the first--the first that has lived, I mean." She pulled up short, wondering what possessed her to be so confidential with this strange young man.

"So Am-ma told me," said Lance. "He called you the Life-bringer. It is a nice name."

She fought against the tenderness in his tone. "And you are the Death-bringer," she retorted lightly, pointing to the painted beauty in his hand. "So you and I are at opposite poles, Mr. Carlyon."

He stood looking at her for a moment with a smile. "I don't know, Miss Shepherd. 'Death and Birth are the pivots of the Wheel of Life.' I remember reading that, in Sanskrit, when I went up for my higher; for I've passed it, you know. I'm really not bad at languages when I try."

It was the first time she had ever heard him claim credit for anything, and the fact touched her more than she cared to own. Touched her so closely that she sought instantly for cover.

"I wish I were," she said, moving on, though, as she had known he would, he moved on also. "I'm afraid I shall find it a great trouble having to learn a new one."

"A new one," he echoed quickly, in response to something in her voice. "Are you going to leave Eshwara--soon?"

She paused for a moment ere replying. "Sooner than I expected, Mr. Carlyon; most likely in a day or two. I don't know whether you have heard," she continued, looking him in the face, "but I am engaged to be married to my cousin--Dr. Campbell's son--David Campbell. He is a missionary--as I am--and--" she hesitated. "He is at home,--or was. We did not expect him back for two months, but he has had a good offer of a splendid place where there is any amount of work to be done. The letter telling us this came yesterday--by the same mail as--as he did. He is travelling up country now; and then--"

"And then?" said Lance, quietly. With his gun over his shoulder, he looked what he was, a soldier; and since she began to speak, he had, insensibly, pulled himself together and fallen into a disciplined ordered tread.

"My aunt wants the wedding to be from the mission station in the low hills where they go every summer," went on the girl. She was trying not to look at her companion, not out of pity, but from dread of her own admiration. "So as David"--she felt better after the semi-appropriation of the Christian name--"is in a hurry to start, she thought of going there as soon as the camp leaves--in a day or two. So--so--we shall not see very much more of each other, Mr. Carlyon; shall we?"

He gave her his first look of reproach, being unable, in his absolutely honest humility, to conceive of the vague regret which forced her to the useless appeal.

"I--I hope you will be very happy," he said, quite simply. "Take care, please; that bit is boggier than you think." For the second time in their short acquaintance she felt his hand, not as a friend's, but as a helper, a protector. This time the blood left her face pale.

"I hope so, Mr. Carlyon," she replied, and her hands clasped themselves tightly as if to hold some resolve. "It is what I have always hoped for, thought of." Then suddenly she smiled at him almost appealingly. "I am a bit of a soldier too, you know--I love the fighting."

"You are in the thick of it here, anyhow," he interrupted, pausing.

They had climbed by a flight of steps through the city wall into the small courtyard on which the mission house, which had once been an outpost of the Fort, opened on its inner side. The outer, with its wide overhanging verandah, forming part of the actual city wall. But the remainder of the courtyard was set round by a perfect congeries of small temples, each rearing its upright stone spire--the stone of Baal worship--about the central tank which occupied the middle of the square. It was quite a small tank, and absolutely dry; so that you could see the four or five worn stone steps which led down to the patch of earth, not six feet square, at the bottom. A dozen or more children, boys and girls of the streets, were playing a sort of hop-scotch on these steps, and as Lance looked, one of them slipped and fell into that patch of earth. In a second the others had quitted their game, and fallen pell-mell, too, struggling, kicking, shouting, screaming with laughter.

"Is it a game?" he asked, looking at his companion, amused.

"Yes!" she said, suddenly, her face stern as he had seen it that first time he met her. "It is the game of Life and Death! That is the 'Pool of Immortality,' Mr. Carlyon! The pilgrims come here to bathe--there must be a secret siphon somewhere, for the water only comes when it is wanted. Three years ago the barriers put up to prevent accidents gave way--it was no one's fault. The crowd got in--a man slipped--and--and when the police managed to clear the crush--the--the tank was full up with dead bodies! The children play at it now!"

But they had spied more amusement, and in another second were hanging round Erda's skirts.

"Sing to us, Miss-sahiba,--sing to us before you go in."

She looked apologetically at Lance. "I generally do," she began.

He raised his cap, almost obediently, with a brief "Certainly," and passed on; but as he left the court on his way to the Fort, the first note of her voice made him turn, for a second, to look.

She was seated on the top step of the tank, the children grouped inquisitively round her, and she held her head high-almost defiantly.

The words were distinctly audible, following him as he passed on, the gun on his shoulder, the dead bird in his hand, and something between blessing and cursing in his heart. But above and through all, he seemed to hear a never-ceasing voice that said, "The pivots of Life are Birth and Death. Death and Birth."