IN THE TOILS

On the evening after the ball, Chris Davenant sat in the pretty little drawing-room of which his wife was so proud, looking helplessly at Lala RÂm NÂth, who had come in on business. Yet the helplessness was not due, Chris felt, to anything in RÂm NÂth. It was due to himself, to his own actions. The feeling comes to most of us at times; for the story of the man-created monster which turns and rends its creator is as old as the world. It began with the serpent in Paradise, and will only end when humanity, by ceasing to desire that which it has not, ceases to put itself in the power of its own imaginings.

RÂm NÂth, however, had not reached this stage of development, and was still supremely satisfied with his creature. 'Surely it is out of the question,' he was saying in the fluent English which came from constant speechifying, 'that in the present crisis, when the eyes of all India are fixed on what we Nushaporites will tolerate, in the event of this plague epidemic supervening, and, alas! bringing in its train interferences with the liberty of the subjects beyond bearing even to the long-suffering races of India, that you should stand aloof from us, the recognised defenders of that liberty!'

Chris leant his head on his hand wearily. In truth he felt aloof from everything in God's round world, save that old man of the sea whom he had invited, under the name of civilisation, to sit on his shoulders.

'What have you decided on doing?' he asked indifferently.

'Doing?' echoed RÂm NÂth a trifle uneasily. 'So far as we ourselves--we, that is, who form the public opinion of India--are concerned, no definite action seems at present necessary; beyond, of course, the presenting of an unbroken front of opposition to the enemy. At the same time there is much to be done on the sly; I mean'--he interrupted himself hastily at the false idiom--'unostentatiously, in order to gain the mass of the people to our side.'

'Yes,' assented Chris, 'you and I can afford to admit the truth, can't we?--that we are not much nearer to the hearts of the people than the English whom we ape.'

He spoke with a concentrated personal bitterness which brought greater hope and confidence into RÂm NÂth's persuasions. 'Undoubtedly. Therefore our duty is palpable. We must seek every sympathy with them that we can legally find. For instance, their admirable desire for religious freedom, their touching devotion to the sanctity of home, their vehement defence of the modesty of their women. All these----'

'Are in the abstract,' put in Chris keenly. 'Let us deal with the concrete, please; it is safer.' He was roused now by pure love of argument; his intellect, to which he had sacrificed so much, had once more asserted itself; the battle of mere words had made him forget his heartache.

They settled down to it with zest, as if it had been a debate. And when Chris, by sheer force of argument, had made his opponent admit that--setting generalities aside--the expressing of sympathy in some details, though expedient, could not be held lawful, they arrived--so far as any conclusion went--at a regular impasse; since, even for RÂm NÂth, it was far easier to do what was logically indefensible, than to assert that it was defensible. So, after this incursion into the realms of pure reason, he had to descend from them with a certain petulance.

'But it is idle to wander beyond the pale of practical politics,' he said. 'Even English statesmen consult the wishes of their constituents; and so must we.'

'There is this flaw in the analogy,' interrupted Chris eagerly, with an evident pleasure in the making of a point, 'that, whereas an English constituency chooses its representative, we are self-elected.'

'True, true!' admitted RÂm NÂth a trifle loftily, 'though, as Mill points out in his admirable treatise, analogy does not consist in the identity of one thing with another. Still, to avoid further discussion, the question remains whether you will join our organisation.' He drew a paper from his pocket and laid it on the table.

It began: 'We, the undersigned, do solemnly pledge ourselves to uphold and to protect----'

The list of what was to be so upheld and protected was a long one. Indeed Chris, running his eye through it, recognised most of the first principles of sweetness and light.

'That is practically all,' put in RÂm NÂth rather hastily when, the end of the third page being reached, Chris seemed inclined to turn it. 'You have seen enough to grasp our meaning, and decide if you can support us.'

'So far,' began Chris thoughtfully, 'there seems little----' Then, quite mechanically, he did turn the page.

What was written overleaf was in the Sanskrit character, and ran as follows:--

'And to thee, daughter of Surabhi, framed of the five elements, auspicious, pure, holy, sprung from the sun, source of ambrosia, we vow obedience, reverence, protection. May he be accursed, O Sin Expeller! who curses thee. May all men know that they who kill them that kill thee, are purified.'

Chris Davenant's finger remained pointed accusingly at the black-lettering, his clear intelligent eyes sought those other eyes, equally intelligent.

'Oh, that!' said RÂm NÂth in instant petulant excuse. 'That does not concern you or me. We--I mean our class, the educated class--understand that it does not, and so--so we ignore it. You know, as well as I do, that if we were to avow our real belief on the cow question--if we did not insist on what is virtually, as you very well know, the test point between the orthodox many and the heterodox few, we, the latter, might as well give up our aim of benefiting India, our hope of influencing its masses. It is for this reason that the Arya Somaj, though officered by men like myself, has always professed----' He paused, doubtful of committing himself, even so far; then went on, evasively: 'One has to forfeit some independence of thought in the effort to gain a great end. Is not the whole system of party government--in which, admittedly, individuality must be lost--a proof----'

Chris stood up suddenly; yet, despite the suddenness, doubtfully. 'Party government!' he echoed. 'Let us find out party first, RÂm NÂth, and as for that'--his voice and face softened as he pointed again to the Sanskrit lettering--'that cannot be for me--as yet. It may come back also. God knows! It may become real again like--like other things. Then I will follow gladly. But not now. I will not be driven, as--in time of stress--that might drive me; as it will surely drive you and yours!'

RÂm NÂth rose too, vexedly, and put the paper in his pocket. 'We will not be driven. It is knowledge that drives ignorance, not ignorance knowledge. Our harness is ready. We will put it on the right horse, and saddle the ass when the proper time comes, never fear.'

Deadly in earnest as he was, Chris could not forbear a smile; but his despondent gravity was back in a second. 'Not if your hands are tied as they will be,' he answered slowly; 'not if you are in the toils!

He had felt in them, himself, ever since the night before, and the feeling grew stronger when RÂm NÂth left him to his solitary dinner. For his wife, after spending the best part of the day in bed recovering from the fatigues of the ball, had gone out to dine with some friends and go on with them to the dress rehearsal of a burlesque in which she was singing and dancing. She had not taken any notice of last night's quarrel; had, indeed, practically ignored it and said good-night to him--as she passed out to the carriage in her short skirts--with absolute good humour.

So, baffled, helpless, miserable, he sate down conscientiously to the long, set meal, which his wife prided herself was served with as much ceremony as any in Nushapore. He said 'No thank you' in polite English fashion to half-a-dozen dishes, and still the solemn exchange of one clean plate for another went on and on, till he felt inclined to order the servants, with their ill-concealed tolerance of him as the husband of their mem, out of the room.

They left him alone, at last, in company with the dessert; but even this was not to his taste. Yet, in a way, he felt hungry. So he rose and went to the sideboard, cut himself a slice of bread, helped himself to some mango pickle, and ate it with relish.

Then the mere fact of this revival of a childish taste, with its bathos, its hopeless triviality, reduced him almost to tears, and he came back to sit before the chocolate pralines and French dragÉes, and leaning his head on his crossed arms, give himself up to a dreary amaze.

The house was absolutely quiet. The servants had closed the verandah doors and gone off to their own quarters. Through the looped portiÈres which--as in so many Indian bungalows--hung in the wide arch between the dining and drawing rooms, he could see the latter lit up decorously with a superfluity of pink paper shades. One of the windows opening on to the garden was ajar, and the light from the lamps made the thin split bamboo screen, hung beyond it to keep out the flies, look like solid wood.

But as, after a time, impelled--even in his blank uncertainty regarding all things--to think of going into the drawing-room decently and in order, Chris looked up from his dreary meditations, the solidity of this screen wavered. And he saw the cause. A thin delicate hand was pulling the screen aside so as to see into the room.

'Who is it?' he called at once. 'What do you want?'

'Krishn Davenund,' came a voice. It was a woman's.

'Krishn Davenund,' he echoed stupidly, his heart beginning to throb. 'Well! I am Krishn Davenund. Who wants me?'

The next instant he was standing as if turned to stone beside the table; for the white-clad figure which showed itself, and then came swiftly towards him, was his mother's.

'Mother!' he faltered. 'Why?--what----?'

He paused, feeling there was no reason here, no reason at all in the clinging hands about his knees, in the passionate kisses rained on them regardless of dress trousers, regardless of everything save that here was the son that had been lost, and was found again!

Not so Chris Davenant. With a certain rage he realised, even as he bent over her with tears in his eyes stirred to his innermost soul, that above all this emotion lay a doubt to what he ought to do next; whether he should raise his mother to the chair beside his, raise her to the unaccustomed, or crouch down on the floor beside her, himself, in forgotten fashion. Horrible, hateful thought; yet there it was!

She solved the question herself unconsciously with the dignified humility of Eastern womanhood. 'Sit thou there, son of thy father, master of my widowed house,' she said, 'so at thy feet shall I find son and husband once more!'

Then, in a perfect ecstasy of joy, she lifted her worn, refined face to his. 'Yea! I shall find Krishn, my Bala-Krishna once more! Lo! canst thou forgive thy mother, child; thy mother who denounced thee, not knowing that thou hadst returned--that thou hadst come back?'

'Come back?' he echoed.

Her face was as the face of an angel over the sinner that repenteth. She reached her thin arm from her shroud, and laid her finger on his lip.

'Hush, child! Let it be forgotten. Let it be as if it had never been. Thou canst tell me, after, why thou saidst no word. Yet Krishn, how could I tell? But for the old pujÂri who laid the caste mark on thy forehead again, I might never have known.'

He understood then; understood why she had come to him; why that clinging mother's touch was his own once more. Poor mother!

'Lo! Krishn!' she went on, interrupting herself hastily at the look on his face, 'be not angry with me. If thou didst know the tears I have shed since he told me but yesterday! How could I know? And to think I might have killed thee. Say thou dost forgive me!'

'Speak not of forgiveness, mother,' he said huskily, bending to kiss her.

What else could he do? he asked himself. Could he tell her the truth--that he had not come back? Or had he? Or even if he had not, did he not mean to do so? He could not say. He only felt himself in the toils once more.

'Leave the past alone, mother,' he said fondly; 'the present is enough.'

She smiled rapturously for a moment, and then she looked round anxiously. 'Nay, child, not yet. There is thy wife. I must gain her forgiveness too, if mortal woman can forgive one who might have made her widow! But I will lie at her feet, Krishn. I will plead with her. That is why I came hither--to see her--to call her daughter.'

Chris, with those clinging arms about him, Chris, in the luxury of being loved, gave a faint sob.

'She is not here to-night, mother,' he said; 'but fret not: she would forgive thee--even hadst thou made her widow!'

The worn old face looked rebuked, perhaps a trifle disappointed. 'Lo! I have heard ever,' she said, with a regret in her voice also, 'that they are as angels, without jealousy; not as we----'

Here the sight of the dark intelligent face above hers seemed to come upon her as if it had been her lover's and she a girl. She laid her head suddenly on his knee and laughed, a laugh that held a sob. 'Then I have thee to myself for now, heart's darling!' she murmured--'thou and thy house!'

She looked around her, full of childish curiosity and amazement. 'Thou art Ameer, indeed!' she went on with awe, touching the tablecloth gingerly with her fingers, 'and all those dishes!' She shook her head dismally. 'Lo! Krishn! how shall I ever feed thee when thou comest to our poor house? Yet wilt thou not mind,' she added; 'thou wert never a greedy one!'

Then the curiosity prevailed even over her thoughts of him, and clinging to his arm still, she raised herself to peer over the table at the drawing-room through which she had hurried.

'Thou dost eat here, and sleep there,' she suggested. 'Nay! Krishn, think not thy mother a fool; but she is so glad--so glad--and all is so new--it is a spectacle!'

Her familiar face, so austere now in its lines, yet still so full of life, furrowed by late tears, yet smoothed by present smiles, seemed to him the most charming thing of his very own he had seen for years. He rose like the boy he was in reality, and raised her with him. 'Come, little mother,' he said in banter. 'Come, feminine one, and see it all; there will be no peace for talk till that is over.'

It came naturally to him, that tone of superior affection which he had not dared to use for so long. So, hand in hand, he showed her things strange and new; and as he did so, saying that Viva had made this or arranged that, a certain content in the fact grew up in him.

'Doth she play this?' asked the widow in her shroud, as she touched the keys of the piano with an awed finger.

'Yea, and sings too,' he replied proudly. 'She shall sing for thee next time'--he had quite forgotten realities in this present--'and now,' he added, 'thou must see the rest, for we sleep not here. This is but for sitting.'

He took one of the pink-shaded lamps and led the way. 'This is my room,' he said with (considering the circumstances) a perfectly childish pomp and delight in his task.

His mother looked into the slip of a room with approval, until she came to the little camp-bed set in a corner.

'Are there no flowers?' she asked quickly: 'the wedding is not so old yet----'

The pink-shaded lamp trembled suddenly in his hands. He had remembered realities. 'And this--this is--the other,' he continued, passing on.

The old woman gave a cry of pure delight; for there were flowers here. Roses on the walls, the hangings, the floor; roses fastening up the lace curtains of the glittering bed, with its quilt of satin; roses even on the dressing-table, trimmed like a rose itself, where Chris, with a still unsteady hand, set down the rosy light to sparkle on the silver brushes and combs, the silver-topped Heaven-knows-what, that lay upon it. For Mrs. Chris had been dressing for a burlesque, and had required plenty of paints and pots!

The old woman, in her widow's shroud, stole over towards it, walking softly as if afraid of crushing the roses. But there was no awe in her face now; only a vast curiosity, as one by one she lifted the lids and looked in. For this she knew, this was common to all women.

Suddenly she glanced round at her son, and nodded archly ere proceeding with her inspection.

'Yea! She is good, and thou art blessed in one who careth for thy love,' she said softly.

Poor Chris!

He stood staring at his mother, staring at the paints and patches, staring at everything feminine in this world and the next, without a word, without almost a thought.

Only with a sort of vague wonder if this--this inconceivable position--was the common ground between those things feminine?

A sniff at a silver-topped bottle of White-Rose scent ended the inspection by bringing a sudden recollection, a sudden new interest to his mother's face.

'Lo! I had nigh forgotten,' she said, searching in the folds of her shroud with some trepidation, then relieved, coming towards him. 'Naraini--thou dost remember thy cousin Naraini, Krishn, though she was but a child when thou didst leave?'--

'Yea, I remember,' he said, his bewilderment passing into something tangible, something that sent him hot and cold, that made him clinch his hands and try to bring the dull surprise back again. 'What then?'

'The girl hath a fancy--Didst thou, by chance, seek our house that morning, Krishn? I tell her it could not be, that thou wouldst not have gone away, but girls' fancies are ill to soothe; and she hath wept all night lest by her petulance she had driven thee forth. She did penance for it, poor child, within the hour, for having shown evil temper to a holy one; but since the pujÂri's tale, she will have it that it was thou--So I gave my word I would ask thee, just to comfort her, though it is idle----'

Chris stood quite still.

'It is not idle,' he replied in a set voice, 'I--I begged of her----'

His mother gave a horrified exclamation. 'And she did fling the corn in the gutter! The Gods are good that worse did not come of it! The wicked one! For this I might have killed my son; for hadst thou come in, I would have known----'

'I was not coming in,' said Chris, reverting to a Western quickness of speech, 'tell her that, please, Amma.'

His mother pursed up her lips. 'I have a mind not; as I have a mind not to give thee what she sent.'

'What she sent?' echoed Chris hotly. 'Give it me, mother, give it at once!'

One corner of the shroud came out from the folds obediently. It was knotted round something small and scented; and--even through that shroud--the perfume of roses drifted from it into the rosy room.

'Lo! there it is--that, and her sense of sin. She hath done penance, as I said, but she shall do ten more or ever I return!'

It was only a little round cardboard box she put into his hand; a box with a quaint domed lid such as girls keep their trinkets in, but it was covered and lined with brocaded silk that must have been soaked in attar from the scent it held, and that somehow suggested the scented fingers which had sewed on the silver and gold twists, the little pearls and crystals, with which it was so cunningly adorned. Chris had seen such caskets often in the days when he had gone to weddings with his mother; they were part of the bride's trousseau, made always by the bride herself.

And this one Naraini had made. He opened it with a strange mixture of fear and hope: fear lest it might contain something to spoil that picture of the girl his memory held, and that held his fancy; hope that it might hold something to enhance it.

And it did. For it was full of golden corn, such corn as she had thrown in the gutter at his feet.

He sat looking at it long after he had returned from seeing his mother safe back to the city. He sat looking at it until the rumbling of carriages outside told him his wife would soon be coming from the burlesque. Then he took the pink-shaded lamp again, and put the little box away in his room, in a drawer where there was already a little packet of yellow corn. And, as he did so, he felt that he was in the toils indeed.

The sound of his wife and Mr. Lucanaster's voices as they bade good-night to each other in the garden did not tend to lessen that sense.

But, in truth, that feeling of being enmeshed was not peculiar to Chris Davenant, even in Shark Lane.

RÂm NÂth himself, as he finished an article which was to appear in the Voice of India--an article which he wrote coolly, calmly, with a certain pride in its even balance of thought, and then deliberately interspersed with glowing periods of pure passion for the sake of his audience--felt as an engineer might feel who knows that the pressure on a throttle valve is getting beyond the escape he can give it, and knows also that he cannot stop the stokers from putting on more coal. He comforted himself, however, by thinking, what was indeed the truth, that he was actually doing no more than many a party politician does in England. The difference lay in the environment: the difference of throwing matches into a fire which burns rubbish, and the throwing of them into rubbish which turns to fire.

Then Mr. Lucanaster, even as he told Mrs. Chris tenderly that he had had what he called 'ripplin' time' in her company, and that he meant to dream of it, knew that before he granted himself the luxury of sleep, he must think over more important matters than his relations with her, and find out how far he had committed himself in regard to them.

For he had been taken by surprise that day. Without a word of warning, the detectives had consulted him, as an expert in pearls, regarding the four found in Miss Leezie's house. As usual when taken aback--for he was not a villain of the first water--he had temporised with the question. Second thoughts, however, had shown him that by failing at once to admit that he held the remainder of the string for JehÂn, he had tied his own hands from doing so in the future. Therefore, if the latter was called upon to produce them, he had only two alternatives. He must either deny possession, or yield it before that possession was publicly asserted at all. In either case he lost his hold on the emerald. So, partly for this reason, partly because he was not prepared to go to the extremes of villainy, he felt that he regretted having touched the business at all.

JehÂn himself, however, had no conception that his position in regard to Mr. Lucanaster had altered, except by his own possession of the ring. The presence of that on his finger, indeed, would have given him perfect confidence, but for the fact that it brought with it a strange recrudescence of responsibility. JehÂn with the ring and JehÂn without it were two different men. He found himself, even as he wept--and he did weep copiously and openly over little Sa'adut's loss--thinking of another heir, of vague possibilities and powers. His very determination to mete out proper punishment to Sobrai grew in dignity; the necessity for it became more of a duty, less of a revenge. And all this made him defer, till the last minute, any communication with Mr. Lucanaster. Time enough to let him know that the ring was really within reach, when the police should ask for the production of the pearls. That might be never; and then, indeed, JehÂn felt he would be free to make bargains. Meanwhile, the safest place in which to keep the treasure, seeing that for all he knew Noormahal might have discovered its abstraction, and set her agents to recover it, was his own finger. So there it remained day and night.

But Noormahal had not discovered her loss. KhÔjee had told her lie all too well for any doubt in the poor bewildered brain, which had more than it could compass in the hopeless effort to realise that Sa'adut was dead and buried. For the memory of that first day, when they had roused her at the last, and she had sate clutching at the little swathed bundle of white and gold till they took it from her, had happily gone from her also. She still lay, for the most part, in a stupor. Lateefa saw her so, when--the etiquette of a mourning house making it inconvenient for him to continue his trade of kite-making in the wide outer courtyard--he had gone to take away his materials. But KhÔjee had told him it was not always so; that sometimes the NawÂbin had paroxysms of grief, for which there could be, there never, had been, but one remedy. And that was a most precious essence compounded out of the sweetest flowers in a King's garden. In the old days it had always been ready in the palace; but now whence was a poor old woman to get 'khush-itr'? that' essence of happiness' which cost God knows how many times its weight in gold! As it was, she had gone the length of pawning KhÂdjee's best pink satin trousers on the sly, in order to get cheaper specifics; and somehow or another, those precious garments must be redeemed before the mourning-parties began, or KhÂdjee would die of chagrin also. Then there would be no one left, since even he, Lateefa, was going. She spoke, as ever, without a suspicion of blame, and when she hoped he had not forgotten his promise regarding the ring, her voice was an apology in itself.

Lateefa, as he went out under the gateway with its plaster peacocks, told himself that he almost wished he could forget. As it was, the green gleam on JehÂn's finger kept him on the strain in a quite unexpected way. He never saw it but KhÔjee's kind wrinkled face, and her appeal for old KhÔjee, ugly KhÔjee, came back to his mind with a curious compelling force.

As he sat, afterwards, in one corner of the tiny square of courtyard that was set round, like a well, with high brick walls, where JehÂn and Burkut were playing ÉcartÉ with an intolerably dirty pack of cards, each crouched on the same string bed (which also served as a table), he could not help watching that gleam, and thereby imperilling the perfect balance of some kites he was fitting with their tails. For there was a notable series of matches to be flown that evening, and the side-way sweep of a real kite overhead warned him that there would be wind. Wind sufficient to warrant a trifle of ballast, perhaps, to these light creatures of his. He had one afloat already, on trial, just above the top of the houses, where, gay in the sunlight, it hung tilted to leeward almost motionless. Lateefa tested the strain on the cord with a finger, as if it had been a violin string, and as he did so his high trilling voice warbled over one of those ingenious versicles that are more of a puzzle than of poetry--seeing that almost every letter in them has a mathematical value--which the idle in India love to turn and twist.

JehÂn swore under his breath; the cards were against him. The stakes laid on the bed between him and his adversary had taken his last available rupee; and, of late, even Burkut had refused to play without money down. He looked round sullenly, then turned again to shuffle the pack.

'My nakedness against thine,' he said gruffly; 'the clothes are worth a gold mohur, I'll warrant.'

That was about it, since they were both dressed in the ordinary white garments of nobility at its ease.

Burkut shrugged his shoulders. 'If it please thee--as we sit, then. 'Tis thy turn to deal!'

Lateefa looked up quickly from his work. 'The NawÂb will deal better without the signet of royalty,' he said significantly, and as JehÂn paused, Burkut frowned and laughed at the same time.

'Yea!' he said airily, 'that would fetch more than a gold mohur if 'twere sold. Take it off, my lord.'

'I will do what I choose without thy bidding,' retorted JehÂn haughtily, as he drew the ring from his finger and laid it for safety just behind him on the string bed.

Lateefa could see it plainly as the cards fell from JehÂn's hand; cards that were in his favour; so much so that he could not avoid a triumphant smile.

The game seemed his, but he played a false card and lost a point.

He dashed the tricks down with such force that the springy plaited twine recoiled from the blow; recoiled and sprang up again.

Lateefa could see the green gleam more clearly than ever now, for the ring lay in the dust within reach of his hand. It had jumped from the bed, like a clay pigeon from a trap, under that petulant blow. But the players had not noticed it, they were going on with their game unconcernedly.

Only Lateefa's eyes were on that gold and green, half hidden in the dust!

'If thou hast the chance.' He heard the words as plainly as if KhÔjee had been beside him.

But this was no chance. The loss would be discovered in a minute or two. And then it would be a mere question of search; for there could be no suspicion of any one else, since the bed on which those two were playing was set right across the only entrance to that well of wall in which there was no place of concealment--none!

No! it was not a chance!

Yet he heard his reply now--

'On my kites I promise; since they be my creatures, to fly or fail as I make them.'

On his kites!...

A sort of dazzle came to the sunshine, a dazzle to his brain. He gave a sudden reckless laugh, his hand went out to the ring swiftly, and busied itself still more swiftly as he sang, in the varying measure to which such versicles lend themselves, a new version of the old words--

The kite which--as he sang--twisted and twirled upwards from his dexterous throw, seemed at first as if it was uncertain what to choose.

'I mark the king!' said Burkut with an oily smile, and once more JehÂn with an oath flung down the cards.

But by this time both kites were tilting steadily to leeward, and only Lateefa's skilful finger could, in striking the strings that held them captive, have told that one had a trifle more ballast to carry than the other.