ADRIFT

Erda Shepherd stood in her bedroom, under the wood-shingled house at Herrnhut, looking at a heap of white muslin and delicate embroideries which lay upon her bed.

It was the wedding dress. She had just unpacked it; partly because she felt dÉcoeuvrÉ, partly in the hope that the sight of it, ready to be worn so soon, would still the vague disquiet of which she was conscious. Yet if anyone had ventured to suggest, when she had said good-by to Lance Carlyon the evening before,--said good-by almost carelessly, by reason of the fervid enthusiasm which absorbed her,--that within twenty-four hours the wisdom of the farewell should seem logically doubtful, she would have been desperately angry.

But she was too honest to deny that the doubt had come. Come in a moment, wildly, passionately, when they had thwarted her desire of joining in the crusade over the other side of the river along the pilgrims' road. She had meant to go with David, who was to take up his position at a camping-ground some six miles off, and she had fought hard for the privilege. But they had quoted Scripture at her to prove that a wife, or a wife to be, must needs hamper a man more than any other woman, even his sister. David had been kind about it, almost too kind. She flushed a little at the recollection of his words, his look; for that sort of thing had scarcely come into her calculations. But Dr. Campbell had pompously reminded her that her future profession would be wife, caretaker, sympathizer, and general bolsterer--up to a worker. Nor need she think the task small; it was the noblest one a woman could have. He had gone on to comfort her with instances of such general support from his own life and those of his friends, until, with a flash, that unexpected questioning had come to the girl's mind. She had asked herself what difference there was in the nobility of being one man's wife or another's--provided the man was worthy and his work in the world good?

Father Ninian's words, "I can wish no better wish for you and for the world," had come back to her then, as if in answer to her questioning.

And, even now, they echoed in her heart. The house was very quiet, very shadowy, for the sun left the little oasis of valley set in its circling wilderness of hill, long before a fraction of light faded from the sky above it. She could hear Mrs. Campbell's voice down the little ladder-like stairs, conferring with the cook over the wedding cake, and, in a side-issue, exhorting him to be sure and have the soup hot in case the workers might return exhausted, and require something to eat the moment they arrived.

Erda sat down on the bed beside the white muslin, and fingered the quaint little cap idly, as she told herself that such things would be a part of her duties in the future.

But only a part. Life was no unknown country to this girl, who had spent years in a medical mission. She was no ignorant baby, standing, in a fashion happily past, on the verge of she knew not what. She looked ahead calmly, taking the world as the Creator made it. She thought, without a flush, as good women do, of the children she hoped might come; and as she thought, she frowned, not from any revolt of her spiritual or physical nature, but because, once more, the question arose: "Was not Lance right? Was not this the essence? Was it not everything to be sure of the inheritance?"

She started up at the sound of her aunt calling her, glad of the interruption.

Had she not better, the good lady suggested, try on the dress, now she was about it, since if there was anything amiss, the sooner the tailor set to work to rectify it the better.

Undoubtedly. Besides, she told herself, the mere putting on of this, the sign of her new profession, would be healthful. It would give her the feeling of being set apart for the life which she had chosen deliberately, chosen with her eyes open, though, maybe, focussed too much on that mental companionship. Too much? Impossible! Lance was wrong. That was the crowning glory of marriage; and even if it seemed hard to have to stand aside from actually fighting the good fight, the victory would be hers--hers almost more than her husband's, since the effort would be greater, the work more against the grain.

Yes, she would try on the dress; and if it did not fit perfectly, what matter?

Was anything in the world perfect? Yet it should be as perfect as she could compass; even the little cap should not lack its bunch of orange blossoms! As she told herself this she was for the time womanhood incarnate; womanhood playing, with dainty little tendernesses and conceits, about the abyss for which it is responsible. So, with the smile of an angel, she passed into the garden, the old militant feeling at her heart. Her feet were on the golden stairs. She was going to regain the lost Paradise hand in hand with one of those whom she had driven from it. They were going to forget all the consequences of that mistake. They were going to be--what?...

The vague confusion did not prevent her feeling that she was absolutely certain she was on the right path. Indeed, the only regret of which she was conscious was one that she was not on the other side of the river, on the pilgrims' road, with the rest of the mission.

She stood looking over to the frowning cliffs from the little wooden landing-stage, built out at the bottom of the garden into the wide shallows of the river, which here showed scarcely a streak or dimple of current. She could see the mission boat lying moored on the other side, against the fighters' return.

Yet the very idea of fight seemed impossible, she thought, in that utter peacefulness and stillness. The rim of dark hills circled the jewel of the sun-bright sky tenderly, as if it sought to keep in the heavy, sweet perfume of the orange blossoms which starred every tree in the wide, fruitful garden. They were famous oranges, those in the Herrnhut garden; grafts brought by a missionary from Malta. Mrs. Campbell, notable woman as she was, made a steady income for good works out of the sale of the great red-skinned, red-hearted fruit, and prided herself in keeping them later on her trees than anyone in India. Indeed, in the shadier, colder alleys some were still hanging side by side with the new blossoms. A sort of example to these novices, showing them what their real work in the world ought to be! Erda, smiling at her own conceit, stroked one of the warm yet stainless petals in the bunch she held as if it were a sentient thing. Perhaps it was. Who knows!

As she turned to go back, warned by a softening of the sky that the time was later than she thought, something showed rounding the smooth, silver bend of the river above; and she paused, shading her eyes with her hand, to see what it was.

A raft. The first of the rafts of wood which at certain seasons were floated down the river to Eshwara. Am-ma's raft, most likely, which he had told her he had to pilot.

Yes! There he was on the quaint contrivance which the river folk used for journeys down stream. A common string bed, no more, no less, supported between inflated bladders of skin. The sight of it gave her a pang to think that she would never more go bobbing, sidling, dipping, racing on one of them, as the mission folk always did when they wanted to stay the last possible minute of holiday at Herrnhut, and get back to Eshwara as quickly as they could. For it took half the time of the winding road, when the river, as now, was quiet and manageable. And Am-ma was the most dexterous manager of the singular craft. There he was, paddling for dear life; now leaping to his great pile of timber, steering it with his paddle round a bend, then back to his string bed with the tow rope, to haul the rudderless mass to a straight line again.

If she had time, she thought, she would have asked him to take her, just once more, as far as the ferry, two miles below. Then she might have walked back through the fields. She had often taken the pleasant little trip with Am-ma. There was no danger so far; but after that, when the river began to slip and slide, even he had sometimes to cut a raft adrift and trust to catching it again in smoother water; since it was not pleasant to have such a crushing neighbour in the eddies and swirls of a lasher.

As she stood watching him, she saw him pause, looking towards her, then leap from the raft and come paddling down stream. He had evidently seen her waiting on the landing-stage, and thought she wanted him; so she shook her head and began to walk back to the house. As she did so an orange caught her eye under a tree, whence it had fallen from sheer red-gold ripeness, and, knowing how Mrs. Campbell mourned a single loss, she gathered it up and took it with her.

Back in her own room, she began to pin her bunch of blossoms in her cap hurriedly, for she had lingered longer in the garden than she had intended, and there was a chance, only a chance, that those much to be envied Church-militants might return and claim her attention.

Still, hurried as she was, she knelt down beside the bed for a moment or two, and, with her clasped hands laid almost caressingly among the soft muslin, prayed that she might wear this symbol of her entry into a new profession worthily.

So, scarcely looking at herself in the glass which, indeed, was too small to show her more than a rather pale face smiling under a quaint little cap, she dressed hastily. Her aunt would be able to tell her if there was anything wrong in the lighter rooms below; here, under the roof, it was already a little dark. Then catching up the orange, she ran downstairs, wondering if the bridal blossoms always smelt so overpoweringly strong, and thinking that, if it was so, they must make the trying ceremony still more trying to one who disliked to have strong scents about them, as she did.

Her aunt was not to be seen in the dining room, so Erda parted the heavy curtains which, in Indian fashion, divided it from the drawing-room, and looked in to see if she were there.

It was at all times a dark room, especially in late afternoon, as now; but the light from behind her sent a shaft straight to the pier glass which stood--the joy of Mrs. Campbell's heart--just opposite the curtains; so making--as the good lady used fondly to say--the room look much larger than it really was to those entering it.

But what the girl saw in it to-day was no illusory enlargement of actualities, no idealization of fact. It was something real, something not to be explained away, exaggerated, or minimized. It was a woman, tall, slender, robed in white; a woman with red-gold hair, edged by the light behind her; a woman with a red-gold apple in her hand.

She stood arrested before herself; helpless before the memory of a voice--

"All straight folds--the sunshine on your hair, and a red-gold apple in your hand--the World's Desire!"

And she had refused him his. She stood for a second, not thinking at all; simply, with a rush, feeling the truth, feeling herself.

Then with a queer little cry which might have been his name had it been articulate, she broke adrift. Broke, for the time, from all moorings, and possessed with but the one idea that she could not do one thing, that she must do another, she turned to the garden, and,--the red-gold fruit still in her hand,--hurried breathlessly through the waning light, through the dead-sweet perfume of the blossoms, till she found herself, she knew not why--save that she must have air, have space--upon the edge of the river.

There was something now swaying idly against the landing-stage; a rude craft buoyed up by air! And there was a rude sort of man in it,--comprehending, yet uncomprehending,--primitive, simple, expectant. "Huzoor!" he said, with broad smiles and outstretched hand. "I have been waiting the Huzoor's pleasure. The Presence will go whither?"

Whither?

Even in her excitement the quaint coincidence struck her as absurd, and yet it seemed to sweep her further still from her moorings.

Whither?

She gave that queer little cry again, and this time it was "Lance! Lance!"

"Whither did the Miss-sahiba say?" asked Am-ma gravely.

The cry turned to a strange laugh. "To Eshwara--where else does the river go--where else?"

The strange, frail boat was sidling against the landing-stage in the pulse of the river; her stranger, frailer self was adrift on the greater river of life. And a hand, heedless, seeing nothing strange in either, careless of all the fine-drawn niceties of culture, had hold of hers.

"So, straight to the centre, Huzoor! I have placed the seat correctly. That is right! The Miss-sahiba recollects the old rules; we shall be in Eshwara before dawn!"

She sat down mechanically, feeling only that she was adrift--adrift on the river that went to Eshwara--where else--and that she was glad; glad because she could not stay, because she could not face--

And then the thought came of facing something else--his glad delight when she came floating down the river--not dead, like the Lily Maid to Lancelot--but alive--a woman with a red-gold apple in her hand--

She sat staring at what she held, as if hypnotized by its colour, absolutely unconscious of anything else till Am-ma's voice came stolidly.

"We must pick up the raft first, Huzoor. This slave let it drift while he waited for the Miss; but we shall find it at the ferry."

At the ferry! The familiar idea startled her from dreams to the reality.

How came she there? What had she done? What did this mean? A flush of intolerable shame swept to her face; she rose to escape. But Am-ma's warning hand was on hers in an instant; that hand, so heedless of so many limitations, so certain here that there was no escape from these limitations.

"The Miss-sahiba forgets," he said deferentially. "When one is in the stream there is no change possible; but if the place is not right we can alter it at the ferry."

She sat down again, telling herself this was true. She could alter it at the ferry. She could walk home through the fields. No one need know (the quaint craft, rocking itself back to balance, made her feel giddy), her dress was only muslin, she could remove the cap; if necessary, borrow a shawl from the bible-woman near the ferry, saying she had not thought it would be so chilly.

She buried her face in both her hands in a sort of despairing revolt at the duplicity, so, with the red-gold fruit in her lap, sat trying to think. But she could not. The scent of the orange blossoms seemed to cloud her senses. So she raised her face again, and stared at the river. Why had she done this? Why had she put this thing, that she must always conceal, into her life? There would always, now, be something she could not say straight out; and yet if she lived to be a hundred the memory of it would never fade; it would be as fresh as it was now when she died, with David's hand in hers!

The intolerable humiliation of it stung deep; the instinct to escape rose fiercely.

"Be quick!" she cried, seeing Am-ma idle, letting the current do the work. "I want to get there as soon as possible. I must, or something worse may happen. There isn't a moment to spare!"

Am-ma bent towards her from his seat astride a skin air-bag. "Did they kill anyone?" he asked, in sudden interest. "Did the prisoners escape as it was arranged? And was it Carlone-sahib they killed?--they swore it should be he, because he laughed at the miracle."

"The prisoners--Carlone-sahib--killed!" she echoed stupidly. Then with a great throb of the heart she realized that here might be something of more importance than her self-humiliation. Had Father Ninian been right? Had there really been some conspiracy afoot, and had Am-ma heard?

"I have had no news from Eshwara, Am-ma," she said boldly, "what is this about prisoners escaping, and the sahib-logue being killed? Who was going to do that?"

Am-ma looked crestfallen. "I thought the Huzoor had heard--that that was why she was going. It is nothing. Idle talk. It is always talk. And the Huzoors have the Dee-puk-rÂg. They must still be kings."

"Am-ma," she interrupted sternly, "you must tell me about this. If you do not, I will take my hand off your son's head--I will never--"

He almost dropped his paddle in absolute terror. "Huzoor" he said helplessly, "it is talk, idle talk. It is always so. All day long, and all night long in the bazaars, and the Masters have the Dee-puk-rÂg. There is no fear; but this slave will tell."

They were almost opposite the ferry before he had finished his tale, and she had grasped the whole tissue of trivialities which yet went to make up so formidable a possibility.

The discontent and dread regarding the canal, the strange lights, the deaths in gaol, the return of the cursed corpse, Gopi--the ticket-of-leave man's--talk of revenge if the cleansing water should fail.

Much of this was new to her, but it hung together with what she already knew; and yet it seemed incredible! What could be the object? What could they expect to do? Here Am-ma had smiled inscrutably, and said the Miss did not know bazaar talk. Everything was possible to it. Had they not even spoken of making a new Nawab out of Roshan KhÂn, the risaldar? indeed, had not the jemedar at the palace already treated him as one?

And the Pool of Immortality? Had it risen or not? Am-ma could not say. They had asked him with bribes and threats to do the job--that was only the priest's revenge, but it would serve other purposes too--but he had refused, partly because he had to come away, and partly because he was the servant of the Light-bringers. As to when the prisoners were to escape he could not say. To-day, perhaps to-morrow, most likely never; unless something really happened. It was talk. The Miss need have no fear. The Huzoors, having the Dee-puk-rÂg, must needs be safe, and Carlone-sahib was a real hero; none braver, none stronger.

That decided her. She had been counting costs as she listened. An hour, say, back to Herrnhut. Even if anyone were there, which was uncertain, half an hour at least to start a messenger. Then the boat might be at the other side of the river. Then all those miles, on a rough road at night!

"When shall we get to Eshwara?" she asked.

"At the turn of the night and day if the river is kind," said Am-ma, but he looked doubtfully into a copper tint that remained in the sky, though the sun must have set behind the mountains. It had a curious effect, that copper-coloured dome above the rim of almost black hills, with the river, dark, mysterious, already beginning to slide towards the narrowing ravine. It did not strike her that she herself, adrift on that river in what was to be her wedding dress, with prehistoric, aboriginal Am-ma as pilot to her and a lumber raft, would have had a still more curious effect to a spectator's eyes. But there were none, and it was already almost dark.

"Am-ma," she said, "I will give you fifty rupees, and keep my hand on the son's head, if you will leave the raft here, and take me as quick as you can to Eshwara--to the little steps below the fort--fifty whole rupees!"

He shook his head and grinned, partly at his own superlative honesty. "We should not go so fast, Huzoor, now the slide is near," he said; "for, see you, the raft is the wood-sahib's new shape. It is a good shape; it came down the rapids above the valley like a boat, faster than this, when the paddle cannot be used. It will take us with it. I will fasten this behind, and steer. Then in the slacker water when the paddle is possible, we will leave it; if the Miss-sahiba is in a hurry. But there is none. The Huzoors are Light-bringers." He had already paddled alongside the raft,--a boat-shaped mass of huge logs rising towards the back--and, leaping to it, came back, after a moment, with the tow-rope.

"It shall do the work," he said, with another grin, as he fastened the air-buoyed bed to a ring placed for the purpose in one of the logs. Then he clucked emphatically. "Lo! who would grudge men's brains to the Masters when they are clever as the Gods themselves? The Miss will see how fast this goes. We shall be at Eshwara before the night turns to day."

Something in his tone warned her that the recurrence of the phrase was not pure chance.

"That is when the prisoners were to escape?" she said quickly.

He did not affirm or deny it. "So many things happen in the fight of Dawn," he said affably. That was all; but she thought rapidly. The rising, or whatever the conspiracy aimed at, could scarcely have happened just after they left Eshwara the night before. In that case the news must have followed them on the road. Therefore, if it was to happen at all, if this were not all talk--and Father Ninian's words came to make her doubt its being so--it would happen in a few hours. So she must be there in time to give warning.

As she thought this, a sudden strain at the tow-rope, a quick dip of the boat-shaped prow of the raft, a louder swish of the water as it curved out from its rising stern, told her she was adrift, indeed, on the way to Eshwara! It seemed almost more incredible than what had gone before. But there was nothing to be ashamed of here. It was the only possible thing to do under the circumstances. Her journey might prove unnecessary, but it might not; and supposing anything should really happen--to--to anybody--she would never be able to forgive herself if, knowing this chance of danger, she had not done her best to avert it.