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Title: Black Light (1930)
Author: Talbot Mundy
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0609211.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: Feb 2006
Date most recently updated: December 2007

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Title: Black Light (1930)
Author: Talbot Mundy




CONTENTS

I      "Shall I sin, to satisfy your itch for what you have no right to?"
II     "You are an egg that is about to hatch."
III    "Cut me off and set me free. I'll be so grateful..."
IV     "You wish to question me?"
V      "Amrita is a sort of Joan of Arc."
VI     "What's the odds? She's harmless."
VII    "So you sing to them, eh?"
VIII   "Do I get my money?"
IX     "Read thou thine own book."
X      "India would be all right if it weren't for rajahs."
XI     "Are you drunk, Joe?"
XII    "Taters a la Kaiser Bill."
XIII   "I am not in the world to learn cowardice, but courage."
XIV    "Better watch my step!"
XV     "Walls have ears in India."
XVI    "Funny--I don't feel scared a dam' bit."
XVII   "A fool is a person who lives in his senses and likes it."
XVIII  "Ram-Chittra Gunga, come at once; I need you."
XIX    "Cradled in the destinies of thousands lies the future of your soul
        and mine."
XX     "Imagination is the window through which the soul looks at reality."
XXI    "There's dirty work--dam' black dirty work!"
XXII   "You will keep still."
XXIII  "There's rather more in this than meets the eye."
XXIV   "Let judgments answer!"
XV     "It is the wrong time of the year for storms."
XXVI   "I have demanded judgment. If it falls on my head, let it."
XXVII  "Shall not justice justify itself without your mouthings?"
XXVIII "No place for a woman of refinement."
XXIX   "I have delivered judgment."





CHAPTER ONE


"Shall I sin, to satisfy your itch for what you have no right to?"


There was no moon yet. The ponderous temple wall loomed behind
Hawkes, a huge tree breathing near him, full of the restlessness
of parakeets that made the silence audible and darkness visible;
its branches, high above the wall, were a formless shadow, too
dense for the starlight. Hawkes' white uniform absorbed the hue
of smoke, a trifle reddened by the glow of embers.

"Come and try!" he remarked to himself, and retired again into
the shadow, muttering: "I'd like to have some one try to buy me--just
once."

No purchasers appeared, and he did not appear to expect any among
the bearers of lanterns, like fireflies, who came unhurrying from
the city--decent enough citizens--silversmiths and sandal makers,
weavers, tradesmen not so virtuous, nor yet so mean that they
might not glean a little comfort at a day's end, from the same
hymn men have sung for centuries, until its words mean less than
the mood it makes. They took no notice, or appeared to take none,
of Joe Beddington, who left his horse amid the trees three hundred
yards away and strode by himself, so to speak, in the stream.

The citizens of Adana gathered in the clearing amid the trees,
filled it and spread outward along the temple wall, extinguishing
their lanterns because the priests, who are obstinate people,
object to imported kerosene; and anyhow, there would be a full
moon presently, so why waste oil? Joe Beddington, staring about
him, strode through their midst and presently stood where Hawkes
had been. Chandri Lal, a small lean cobra-charmer eased himself
out of a shadow and laid his circular basket near Beddington's
feet, studying the dying fire, speculating whether to blow that
into flame or wait until the moon should rise above the temple
wall. Hymn or no hymn, business is business; Chandri Lal had
heard that all Americans shed money as clouds shed rain. He hoped
Hawkes would not see him. He knew, to half an ounce, the weight
of Hawkes' boot and the heft behind it.

Sergeant Hawkes came out of the shadow and saluted Joe, or rather
he saluted about a hundred million dollars:

"Your mother decided not to come, sir? Just as well. She'd have
got tired standing here."

"No," Joe answered, "mother would have tired us."

Hawkes changed the subject: "Let me tell you about this temple."

"You did. It dates back to a million B.C. Never been entered by
any one not directly descended from somebody named in the
Mahabharata. That's nothing. You should see our American D.A.R.s.
They're going to censor the telephone book. Mother, you know, is
a D. A. R. My father was more like yours--quite human--no rating,
except in Bradstreet. Mother's folk came over on the Hesperus and
did the red men dirt."

"They're going to start the hymn," said Hawkes.

"What are the words of it?"

"Quiet now. Tell you later. You know, sir, we're not supposed to
be here; but the high priest is a decent fellow in his own way.
When I sent him word there'd be a foreign visitor to watch to-night's
ceremony he merely asked me to be here too."

Joe Beddington believed that no more than Hawkes did.

"You don't say."

Hawkes evoked some truth to justify prevarication:

"Yes, sir, even natives who aren't Hindus aren't supposed to
witness this. Mohammedans, for instance--"

"I get you. Like the accounts of a corporation--keep 'em
esoteric. That's a dandy hymn. Hello--who's the man in vestments?
Oh, my God!"

The edge of an enormous moon rose over the top of the wall and
framed a robed priest in an aureole of mellow light; a platform
high above the wall on which his bare feet rested had become a
pool of liquid amber. An incredible star, in a purple sky,
appeared to draw nearer and pause exactly over the crown of his
head; subtly liquid highlights glistened on his robes and the
shadows beneath him deepened into velvet mystery in which every
dark hue in the spectrum brooded waiting to be born. It was
exactly what the Norman stained-glass makers aimed at and almost
achieved.

The confidingly plaintive minor chanting of the hymn ceased.
Silence fell. One pure golden gong note--absolute A-major--stole
on the night as if it were the voice of a ray of the rising moon.
And then the priest's voice. In a chant that rose and fell like
the cool wet melody of tumbling streams, unhurried, flowing
because Law insists, he asserted what all Night knows and Man
should seek to understand. There was no argument, no vehemence,
no question. He propounded no problem--pleaded with neither
violable principle nor erring ignorance. Whatever he had to say,
it was so absolute that Beddington, to whom the words meant
nothing, recognized the beauty and interpreted the essence, so
that every fiber in him thrilled to the mystic meaning. It
embarrassed him, like the sight of a naked woman.

Then another gong note. Caught into a shadow as if night had
reabsorbed him, the priest vanished. The enormous moon wetted the
temple roof with liquid light that overflowed until the clearing
amid the trees lay luminous and filled with the kneeling forms of
humans sketched, as it were, with violet pastel on the amber
floor. They sang their Nunc Dimittis. Dark trees stirred to a
faint wind, scented with the breath of ripened grain and cows in
the smoke-dimmed villages. Leaves whispered the obbligato for the
hymn. A little whirl of dust arose and walked away along a
moonlit path. Hawkes' voice fell flat and out of harmony:

"They don't come out from the temple until the moonlight reaches
a mark in the central quadrangle. They're performing a ceremony
in some way connected with astrology or so I'm told."

"I'd give my boots to go inside and see," said Joe.

"Can't be done, sir. Nobody's allowed in--never. Do you see that
Yogi?"

The ascending moon had bathed another section of the temple wall
in soft light. Now a gate in the wall was visible and--to the
right, beyond cavernous darkness where the wall turned outward
sharply and a high dome cast its shadow--there was an outcrop of
the curiously layered and twisted green-gray rock on which the
temple foundations rested. It formed vague Titan-steps and a
platform backed against the masonry. There was what looked like a
giant beehive on the platform. A man sat beside it, naked except
for a rag on his loins. He had gray hair falling to his shoulders
and a white beard that spread on his breast.

"That man used to be the high priest of the temple. He is famous
all over India for his astrology, and that's strange, because he
won't tell fortunes; or perhaps he will, perhaps he won't, I
don't know; he refused to tell mine."

"How much did you offer him?"

"He won't take money."

"How does he live?"

"Temple people feed him. Pilgrims, all sorts of pious people,
bring him little offerings of food. He gives away most of it.
That Yogi would surprise you, sir. Talks good English. Traveled--
France, England, the United States. Some say he can talk French
and German. But there he sits day after day, and says nothing.
I'll bet you he'd say less than nothing if he knew how. Maybe he
does. How old do you suppose he is? There's records--actual
official records."

"He doesn't look so specially old," said Joe.

"The moonlight is a bit deceptive. The natives say he is more
than two centuries old.* I'm a Christian myself. I believe the
Bible all right. But I can't persuade myself that in these days
people live to be as long in the tooth as Abraham."

---

* Instances of extreme longevity are not unknown among Indian
ascetics. See Mukerji's account in the Atlantic Monthly of the
Holy Man of Benares whom authentic official records certify to
have been more than two centuries old. He died quite recently.
---

The moon grew less dramatic--smaller in appearance but more searching,
as it rose above the temple; its mellow amber faded; masonry and men's
garments took on a grayish hue; the Yogi-astrologer sat motionless--a
graven image posturing against the wall, not moving even when a woman,
whose black sari was hardly darker than her skin, came forth from a
shadow and bowed in the dust at his feet.

Joe Beddington strolled toward the Yogi. Chandri Lal, captain of
emasculated cobras, stirred himself to seize an opportunity; he
followed at a half-run, leaning forward, with his basket in both
hands ready to be laid before Joe's feet. Joe scorned him:

"Nothing doing. I've seen scores of snake acts." Suddenly a foot leaped
forth from darkness. The basket went in one direction, cobras in
another. Hawkes' swagger-cane descended sharply, semi-officially, as it
were, without personal malice, on Chandri Lal's naked shoulders.

"Git, you heathen! Git the hell from here! Use judgment! Showing
off snakes in this place is as bad as a Punch-and-Judy show in
church. Now mind, I've warned you! One more breach of blooming
etiquette, and---"

Chandri Lal picked up his basket and followed the trail of his
snakes in the dust. The woman at the Yogi's feet implored some
favor from him, elbows, forehead, belly in the dust, beseeching
mercy. Joe watched. The Yogi made no response. Joe spoke at last,
producing money:

"Old man, will you tell my fortune?"

The Yogi met his gaze. There was almost a minute's silence,
broken at last by a passionate outburst from the woman. Then the
Yogi's voice, calm as eternity--only startling because he used
such perfect English:

"That is what she--this ayah also wants."

"Why not tell her?"

"If it were good for her to know, she _would_ know; there would
be no need to tell her."

"Tell mine. How much shall I pay you?"

"Do as you will with your money."

Joe held out twenty rupees. Chandri Lal drew nearer; he could
smell money as well as see it through perplexing shadow.

"Give it to that ayah," said the Yogi.

"Why? Oh, all right--here you are, mother, your lucky evening--
take 'em." Joe dropped the rupees in the dust before her nose and
Chandri Lal pounced, but Hawkes' boot served for a danger signal,
so he backed away again. Blubbering, the ayah stowed the money in
her bosom.

"Come on, tell," said Joe. "I'm waiting."

"You have paid the ayah," said the Yogi. "Let her tell you."

Joe grinned uneasily. "Stung, eh? Serves me right. I should have
known you can't tell fortunes any more than I can."

The Yogi seemed indifferent, but in a sense Hawkes' honor was
concerned since he was acting showman:

"Hell, he can tell 'em. They all come to him--high priest--
pilgrims--bunnias--he tells some--some he doesn't. If he tells,
it comes true."

"Bunk!" said Joe.

"Why should I tell you?" asked the Yogi suddenly. "Should I sin
to satisfy your itch for what you have no right to?"

"How about the ayah, then? You told me to ask her. How if _she_
sins?"

"Who shall say she sins? If she tells what she neither knows nor
not-knows, what harm can happen? Nothing to strain Karma's
entrails. Knowledge is one thing--speech another. There is a time
for speaking, and a time for silence. That which brings forth
action at the wrong time is not wisdom, though it may have
knowledge."

"Half a mo', sir, half a mo'--excuse me," Hawkes remarked and
stepped aside into a shadow. Suddenly his fist struck like a
poleax and a man went reeling backward on his heels--fell--
struggled to his feet, and ran, leaving his turban behind him.
Hawkes pointed to the turban. "Hey, you--there's a present for
you."

Chandri Lal pounced on the turban and thrust it into the basket
with the snakes, then changed his mind and tried to sell it to
the ayah.

"Bastards!" Hawkes informed the wide world, chafing his right
knuckles.

"Possibly--even probably," remarked the Yogi. "But did the blow
correct the accident of birth?"

"It weren't intended to," Hawkes answered. "It was meant to cure
that swine of sneaking in the dark where he ain't invited. Do you
call that sinful?"

"Not a big sin," said the Yogi. "But you shall measure it at the
time of payment. Who knows? It may have been a good sin--one of
those by which we are instructed. Few learn, save by sinning. He
--that man you struck--he may learn also."

"I'll learn him," Hawkes muttered.

"You pack quite a wallop," said Joe. "What had he done to you?"

"Nothing, sir." Hawkes took him by the arm and led him to where
the temple cast the darkest shadow. It felt like being led by a
policeman across Trafalgar Square; in spite of silence and the
peculiar vacancy of moonlight there was a remarkable feeling of
crowds in motion--unexplainable unless as a trick of the nervous
system. On the way, jerkily through the corner of his mouth,
Hawkes hinted at a sort of half-embarrassment:

"The Book says turn the other cheek. But that was Jerusalem. This
is India."

"So you don't believe in theories from books?"

"Theories, sir? They're funny. Any of 'em might be all right if
we all believed 'em. But a one-man theory is like a one-man army
--only good if you can keep it quiet. I'm a one-man army. There's
a theory I'm a fusileer, belonging to a battalion at Nusserabad.
But I'm no theorizer. So I'm here on special duty, drawing double
pay and doing nothing except enjoy life."

"Doing nothing?"

"A bit of everything. I'm supposed to be learning languages. I'm
instructor in fencing and fancy needlework to British officers of
native regiments. That's to say, I pick out gravel from their
faces and forearms when they skin 'emselves riding to pig. They
half of 'em can't ride, but they've all got gizzards; so they
fall off frequent. Gravel leaves a bad scar unless it's cleaned
out careful. Scars spoil luck with women. So instead of sweating
in a barracks I stay here--and to hell with the King's Regulations."

"Don't you do any regular work?"

"Not me, sir. Now and then I'm loaned to teach a Maharajah's
butler how to mix drinks--I'm a genius at that. And on the quiet,
now and then I do a little propaganda."

"Secret service, eh?"

"No, sir. Not a secret in my system. Quite the contrary. Officers
wish for promotion. I'm an expert in promotion. Have to be,
since I'm paid by results. I invent ways for making 'em famous--
famous, that is, in the proper quarter; it's useless to try to
sell a black pig in a white pig market. That's a stool, sir--care
to sit down--nautch procession won't be here for half an hour
yet."

Beddington sat on the stool and suddenly became aware, by means
of other senses than he knew he had, of people near him. The
darkness seemed alive with living shadows that he could neither
hear nor see--an uncanny sensation that made the hair rise on his
neck. However, he controlled himself.

"Who are they?" he demanded in a normal voice.

"Troopers from the native Lancer regiment. And I'll bet they're
jealous. Didn't they see me give that bloke from Poonch a bloody
nose? They're laying for him. I step in and wipe their eye. You
can't beat that for competition. Come here, Khilji--meet a
gentleman from the United States."

One after another, seven shadows emerged into the semi-darkness,
took shape and saluted--big men--white teeth gleaming in the
midst of black beards. He addressed as Khilji, grinning, imitated
Hawkes' use of his right fist; then, out of sheer politeness,
because Beddington might not otherwise understand, he added a
remark in English:

"Hah-hah! Saucy bastards are the men from Poonch! You Hawkes, you
taught him something."

"Yes," said Hawkes, "I poonched him. He was lucky. You men would
ha' killed him. That would have cost you about six months� pay
apiece to hire a substitute to take the blame. You ought to pay
me a commission for saving you all that money."

"Eh-eh, you Hawkes!"

Men became shadows. Shadows melted into darkness. Silence.

"You seem well acquainted here," said Beddington.

"By nature, sir, I'm like a terrier. I snoot and sniff around and
pass the time o' day with all and sundry. Time I'm through, I
know the news--and which dog I can lick if I have to--and where
the likely pickings are in back yards. Yes, sir, I believe I know
these parts as thoroughly as some folk."

"Care for a drink?"

Beddington produced a flask, a self-defensive habit that he had
adopted since prohibition. It enabled him to pose as normal,
which he was not. It relieved him of the burden of making
conversation. One drink--then straight to the point although he
had noticed that it did not work so well in foreign lands. For
instance, Hawkes stared, straining his eyes in the dark as he
drank.

"Hot stuff, sir."

"Yes, I've no ice."

"Sir, I meant wonderful stuff."

"Have another. Do you drink much?"

"No, sir. Can't afford it. Three or four drinks and I'd lose if I
bet to-morrow was Friday. I like drink, but I like prosperity
more. When I've time on my hands, I snoot around and see things."

"Could you undertake a private investigation for me?"

Hawkes struck a match to light his pipe; he used the match
adroitly. Beddington understood:

"It's on the level. But it's personal and private."

"Money in it?

"Yes. Whatever's fair." It was Beddington's turn to watch Hawkes�
face. The first match had failed; Hawkes struck another and
cupped it in his hands. But a face is a mask if a man is a rogue.
Beddington judged better by the tone of voice and phrasing of the
answer.

"All right, sir, I'll be frank too. If it's unlawful, the
answer's no. If it's dirty, it's no. If it's merely risky--yes,
provided the pay fits the risk. If it's difficult, so much the
better."

"It probably is difficult. I want to find some one whose name I
don't know, and whose age I can only guess approximately. She may
be dead, but if she is I want to see proof. She may know who she
is; she may not."

"Woman, eh? White?"

"United States American of Scotch, Welsh and Irish ancestry."

"Age?

"Roughly, twenty-one."

"Present information?"

"None whatever--except that her parents died in this district, of
cholera, about twenty-one years ago."

Hawkes whistled--sharp--flat--then natural. There was a distinct
pause. Then, in a normal voice:

"Sounds vague enough. I can try, sir."

"The parents of this child had a Goanese butler--a man named
Xavier Braganza--who also died of cholera. But before he died he
told a Catholic missionary and several other people that the
native wet-nurse--the ayah as he called her--had carried the
child away and vanished. But--and this is about all the clue we
have--he added that the ayah was an idolatrous heathen without a
trace in her of any sort of virtue, who would probably keep the
child in hiding until old enough for sale."

"About twenty-one years ago, sir, this district was almost wiped
out by cholera. Nearly all the white officials died. Records got
lost and stolen--some o' them got burned--the dacoits came down
from the hills and plundered right and left, taking the cholera
back with 'em, so that it spread into Nepaul. Almost anything a
man can think of might have happened."

"There's one reason why I want this search kept quiet. Possibly
the child was sold into a harem or something worse. If so, and we
find her, it might be a lot too late to help her. Do you
understand me? There might be legal difficulties, even if her
character weren't rotted to the core. It might be useless or even
cruel to give her a hint of who she is."

A quarter-tone change in Hawkes' voice suggested alertness and a
vague suspicion: "Any money coming to her?"

"Of her own? No. Her mother, though, was my mother's youngest
bridesmaid. There was a very strong friendship between them. If
this girl should be found, and should prove to be not too far
socially and morally sunk my mother would see to it that she
should never lack for money."

"Hell's bells! Fairy godmothers are always other people's luck,"
said Hawkes. "Myself, I was an orphan once, and butter wouldn't
have melted in my mouth, I was that sweet and guileless. Any one
who'd claimed me might ha' raised me for a duke and done a proud
job. I could ha' rolled in millions and done credit to the
money. However, they raised me in a London County Council
Institute, and it weren't a bad place either. When I was old
enough I was sent to sea on a training-ship, to the tune of a
heap o' blarney about Nelson o' the Nile--and Admiral Sir Francis
Drake--and Britain needs no bulwarks. I served three years
apprenticeship, and I'm still wondering what Nelson found
that made life tolerable. So I quit the sea and joined the
army--and here I am, what might have been a millionaire, if only
millionaires had sense and knew a promising orphan when they see
one. Hide up now, sir.--Nautch is coming."

"Why hide?"

"Well, sir, it's like some husbands with their wives. The husband
knows--you bet he knows, but all he asks is not to catch her at
it; he's conventional, but he's tolerant; so, if she'll give him
half a chance, he'll look the other way. Same here; there are
about as many eyes in this here dark as there are mosquitoes;
they know we're here, and it's against their law and custom; but
they're good, kind-hearted folks, so if we act half respectful o'
their prejudices they'll take care to seem to look the other way.
Get right down in the ditch, sir--no, no snakes, I saw to that--
if you should lie on that piece o' sacking and set your elbows on
the bank you'll get a good view."

A gong sounded and Hawkes knocked his pipe against his boot to
empty it. There came a surging of excitement from the trees,
where probably a thousand Hindus shuffled for position. They
seemed to try to make-believe they were in hiding, as if
tradition had made that a part of the ritual; they resembled a
stage ambush. The moon had risen until shadow of dome and wall
were short enough to leave a dusty road uncovered, pale, with
undetermined edges. The temple wall where the Yogi sat beside his
beehive hut was already bathed in light and the Yogi no longer
looked like a bas-relief, nor even like a statue; he sat
motionless, but he looked human, although indifferent to the
woman who lay flat on the earth in front of him still sobbing her
petition:

"Speak, thou holy one, thou man of wisdom!"

In a side-mouth whisper Hawkes interpreted her words to Joe.

Music--strange stuff that made Joe Beddington's spine tingle--
music with a rhythm no more obvious at first than that of wind in
the trees or water flowing amid the boulders of a ford. It was
several minutes before the musicians appeared from around the
curve of the high wall--a group of about twenty men in long
loin-cloths, naked from the waist up, not even marching in step
but nevertheless appearing to obey one impulse. On either side of
them, in single file, walked a line of lantern bearers with the
lanterns hung on long sticks. There were only two small drums;
the remainder were weird wind instruments, creating a timeless
tune that seemed to have no connection with another system of
sounds from an unseen source, which nevertheless insisted on the
ear's attention and in some way emphasized the melody.

Then came priests--not less than fifty of them, draped in saffron
colored linen but each man's naked belly gleaming in the
moonlight. They bore all sorts of mysteries of many shapes,
including some that resembled chalices of jeweled gold. There
were censers, too, and a reek of incense made from pungent gums
whose smell stirred imagination more commandingly than ever
pictured symbols did. More lantern bearers in a group--and then
the sistra and some things like castanets, creating that sea of
sound which underlay and permeated the music. It was pleasing but
not satisfying; it stirred an unfamiliar emotion and awakened
nerves not normally self-assertive. Beddington spared one swift
glance along the lane of moon-white dust and saw that the music
had stirred the waiting Hindus to the verge of hysteria; they
were leaping like shadows of flames on a wall; he himself felt an
impulse to do something of the sort. Only a habit restrained him.
His will urged. He wanted to do it.

"Ever hear of magic?" Hawkes asked in a whisper. "That's it. But
that's not half of it. Watch what's coming."

In one sense it was utterly impossible to watch what came; the
eye refused obedience; it was hypnotic motion controlled with
such consummate skill that it stirred more psychic senses than
the onlooker ever knew he had. Instead of seeing about a hundred
dancing women draped in filmy pale-blue stuff like jeweled
incense smoke, and chanting as they danced, their bare feet
silent in the dust, their ankles clashing with golden bracelets,
Beddington's imagination leaped to grapple with those mysteries
the dance was meant to symbolize. It was no dance in the ordinary
meaning of the word, and yet it made all other dancing seem like
stupid repetition of a common catch-phrase. This was as exciting
and elusive as the flow of life into the veins of nature. It was
as maddening as a fight between strong men or as the sea-surf
pounding on a moonlit reef. It was as difficult to watch as one
wave in a welter with the wind across the tide. Its movement
seemed inevitable--timed--yet so much more than three-dimensional
that no one pattern could include it and no eye could define its
rhythm. Something in the fashion of the firefly dance, it seemed
to link the finite with the infinite.

Beddington forced himself to speak. He was afraid of his own
emotions and aware of impulse to obey them. Down the lane of
moonlight he could see the Hindus making, as he phrased it, asses
of themselves. He did not propose to let hysteria swallow him
too.

"My God, Hawkes, I've seen a temple nautch or two, and durbar
nautches by the dozen. They were all the bunk. I'd heard of
things like this but--this is beyond reason. It's---"

"Impossible, ain't it?" said Hawkes. "But it's true all the same.
And it's nothing to what goes on _inside_ the temple."

"How do _you_ know?"

"Oh, I've heard tell."

Hawkes was lying, and Joe knew it, but he let that pass. He had
an eye for line and color and an ear for music; vaguely he had
always thought the three were varying aspects of one supersensual
phenomenon, but now he understood it--though he could not have
told how he did. He was in the grip of excitement that made him
want to laugh and cry and swear, all in one meaningless spasm.
There was more beauty visible at one time, forced on his
attention, than his untrained senses and his prisoned intellect
could endure without reeling. He could hear a voice that might,
or might not be his own--he did not know, chanting in Greek
elegiacs, lines from Homer's Iliad that he had not looked at
since he left the university. And then climax--perfect and beyond
words incomparable.

Borne on a litter by four white bulls, on a throne beneath a peacock
canopy formed by the spread of the bird's tail, sat the high priest in
his vestments, bearing in his hands a globe of carved crystal containing
a light like a jewel. At each corner of the four-square platform of the
litter stood a young girl as if supporting the canopy. One breast of
each was showing. They were draped in crimson filmy stuff that dimmed
while it revealed their outlines. The four bulls and their burden were
surrounded and followed by a waving mystery of peacock-feather fans and
colored lights that inter-blended in the smoke of incense and the rising
dust. They appeared to be towed, bulls and all, by the stream-like
motion of the nautch-girls, as if magic had harnessed poetry by unseen
traces, guiding it with reins invisible. Then, like a guard of nature
forces, four by four, a hundred priests came marching, each disguised in
mask and robe suggesting one of the four mystic elements of Fire, Air,
Earth and Water. Silence. Dust ascending in the moonlight. And then
Hawkes spoke:

"They'll be back about three in the morning. Would you swap that
for the stage o' Drury Lane, sir? It don't mean nothing to me.
And yet it means so much that I feel like turning pious. It's the
thirteenth time I've seen it. Twice I saw it in the monsoon, with
the girls all slick and wetted down with rain until the lot of
'em seemed naked--mud as slippery as oil, and not a foot set
wrong--wind and rain in their faces--moon under the clouds and
branches blowing off the trees. They liked it, if a grin means
anything. What would you say it all means?"

"Damned if I know." Joe crawled out from the ditch and
straightened himself, rubbing an elbow that had "gone to sleep"
from resting on the sun-baked earth. "They probably don't know
either. The meaning of things like that gets lost in the course
of centuries. Do you suppose all those red jewels glowing on the
high priest's robe are genuine rubies?"

"So they say, sir. Why not?"

"Who is that?"

Hawkes hesitated, and disguised the hesitation by spitting into
the embers of the fire.

"There's all sorts, sir, connected with the temple."

A woman--quite young, if the set of her shoulders and the grace
of her motion were any criterion--came along the path the
procession had taken. She was heavily veiled. As she passed the
Yogi she saluted him with both hands to her eyes, but he took no
notice.

The ayah knelt to her, murmuring what seemed like praises and,
seizing the end of her sari, pressed it to her lips. She took a
little notice of the ayah--not much. She seemed more inclined to
notice Hawkes, but Hawkes deliberately turned his back toward
her. Joe laughed.

"Scared of women?"

"Can't be too careful, sir."

Six of the native troopers strode forth from the shadow, halted,
formed up two deep, waited for the girl--then, one of them giving
the gruff command, they trudged off, two in front of her, four
following. She might have been their prisoner, except that the
escort looked too proud, and she too sure of herself. It seemed
to Joe that she was staring at him through her veil; however, he,
too, thought it better to be careful. He walked over to where the
Yogi sat as motionless as stone and stared at him instead.

The ayah clutched at Joe's legs, imprecating or else begging, it
was hard to tell which. Chandri Lal ran forward to prevent her,
but the Yogi stopped him with a monosyllable.

"What does she want?" Joe asked him.

The Yogi answered in English: "She wants instruction."

"Why not give it to her?"

The Yogi stared--smiled--spoke at last, in a deep voice, rich
with humor:

"Give? Do you give always what is asked? o' man from Jupiter!"



CHAPTER TWO


"You are an egg that is about to hatch."


Joe stared. The Jupiter Chemical Works, of which his mother owned
control by virtue of a trust deed drawn with much more foresight and
determination than the Constitution of the United States, is notorious
and he understood that perfectly. He was used to seeing his name in
newspapers that denounced him one day as a wealthy malefactor and the
next day, when he made a donation to something or other, praised him as
a pioneer in the forefront of civilization--so used to it that he had
ceased to laugh. He had ceased, too, to concern himself about it, having
long ago learned that the son of a trust deed drawn by his mother's
lawyers in her favor is as helpless as the husband of a reigning queen.
He could not even hire and fire the men who wrecked the company's
rivals, bribed and blackmailed politicians, cheated law and obliged him
to take public blame for what they did, while his mother banked the
dividends. He understood the hatred and the flattery of crowds, and
could even sympathize. But it puzzled him that a nearly naked Yogi, all
those thousands of miles away from New York, should know his business.
It was like a slap in the face.

"Why do you call me that?" he demanded.

"The strongest line on your forehead is that of Jupiter," the
Yogi answered. "It is long, strong, straight--and it is deepest
when you smile, which is as it should be. But you were born with
the rising sign of Gemini. If it had been Aries, no mother, nor
any woman, nor any combination of men, however masterful, could
have held you fettered. Even as it is, you are no woman's
plaything."

Joe shrugged his shoulders. He was not his mother's plaything,
simply and only because she did not know how to play. She had no
more sense of fun in her than Clytemnestra; no more lyrical
delight in unreality than a codfish. Owner of banks and trusts
and factories, all did her bidding or else learned the discontent
of being toads under a roller.

And he could swear on his oath, as a man who had tried it, that
astrology was stark, unmitigated bunk. He had studied it, using
Newton's method. For his own amusement he had tried it on the
rhythmic rise and fall of stock exchange quotations, and he found
it rather less reliable than broker's tips, or than the system
with which idiots lose their money at Monte Carlo.

"Smile!" said the Yogi. "Always smile when we ignorant folk
offend your honor's wisdom!"

Hawkes intervened. As showman for the night he felt his pride
involved again. "Say," he objected, "has some one fed you lemons?
Here's a gentleman who's acted generous. He's paid his money, no
matter who you gave it to. Now act honest and do what he paid
for. Tell his fortune."

"Do you demand that?" asked the Yogi, staring at Beddington.

"Tell hers," he answered. The ayah was clutching his ankles
again.

"I will tell it to you," said the Yogi. "It was you who paid, and
it is true I accepted the money, although I did not keep it.
Should you in turn tell her what I tell you, that is your
responsibility. I advise--I warn you not to, that is all."

"How in hell can I tell her? I don't know her language."

"Telling what should not be told--and hell--are as cause and
effect," said the Yogi. "She is a fool, that ayah. You will look
far for a fool who has greater faith and charity. But who can
make a fool wise?"

"Are you wise?" Joe asked him.

"No," said the Yogi, "but wiser than she is--and wiser than you,
or you would not have asked me. That fool--that charitable,
faithful fool desires to know what shall become of her child, who
now no longer is a child, but full grown and aware of the blood
in her veins, and of her sex, and of the sin of inertia. A riddle
is better than speech misunderstood, so I will speak in riddles.
This shall happen to her: a war within herself--a worse than ever
soldiers wage with bayonets. She shall be torn between the camel
of her obstinacy, the horse of her ambition, the mule of her
stupidity, and the elephant of her wisdom. When those four have
pulled her enough apart, a devil may enter into her, or ten
devils--or perhaps a benign spirit--who knows? It depends on at
least a hundred thousand million influences, each one of which in
former lives she wove into her character. Do you understand that?
No, of course you don't. Nevertheless, I have answered you. So go
away and think about it. Doubt it--deny it--believe it--mock--
swear--take or leave it--it is all one to me. I have told you the
truth."

Chandri Lal was whispering to the ayah. Apparently he knew
English--possibly enough to misinterpret what he heard. At any
rate he understood the ayah and her hunger for information, which
was hardly keener than his own craving for money. She had money.

"Heavenborn," he began, "Holy one!" Then, seeing that the Yogi
took no notice of him, he addressed Hawkes in the vernacular.
Hawkes, nothing loath, interpreted:

"He says," said Hawkes, "that ayah wants to know, shall her child
be a queen--a royal ranee?"

"Tell her," suggested Beddington.

"She can be," said the Yogi. "I have cast her horoscope. If she
is brave, she can be a queen over herself. She has resources and
a struggle is impending. Nay--I will say no more. I am in debt to
that fool woman for necessities. Shall I repay her with speech
that will stick like a barb in her heart? Shall I use my wisdom
to unbridle folly? Nay, nay. There is a time for silence."

He relapsed into silence as solid as concrete. He exuded silence.
He was its image, its expression. Even the ayah ceased from
importunity, since even she in her hysteria could recognize
finality. She began to abuse Hawkes, including Joe within the
scope of a tempest of words.

"What does she say?"

"She accuses you and me, sir, of having stopped that Yogi just
when he was coming to the point. She says for you to take your
money back, it's bad-luck money."

Joe turned away. He felt he had had enough of unreality for one
night, yet he grudged returning to the real. The ascending moon,
grown pale, was whitening walls and blackening the shadows; even
he himself felt like a bone-white ghost, the more so because his
foot-fall made no sound in the dry dust. He knew that to talk to
his mother would produce a sort of psychic anticlimax that he
could not explain, and for which she would have no sympathy. It
was at such moments that he knew he hated her; the hatred was kin
to fear; the fear, if not prenatal, something she had fastened on
him with her will when he was a suckling. At the age of eight and
twenty a man had no right, he knew, to be under any one's
dominance. He had an iron will of his own; he was notoriously
uncontrollable by any one except his mother. Her stronger will,
compelling his, was what enabled her, unseen, to guide the
destinies of interwoven trusts so intricate that even governments
were helpless to prevent.

It was only at night, and at times like this when life seemed
like a dream, that he was really conscious of the grudge he owed
his mother and of a secret sense of shame that he must obey her
always. True, he had often resisted her. He could withstand her
tantrums. The bludgeoning abuse with which she browbeat servants,
secretaries and even the firm's attorneys to obedience, made no
impression on him. He could laugh. It was when she was quiet and
determined, when she grew kittenish and motherly by turns, and
above all when she pretended to need his advice that he grew
aware of the numbness somewhere in his conscience and an impulse
to obey her that was irresistible. He had long ago ceased to
attempt to resist that.

It had been only to oblige his mother that he undertook this idiotic
search for some one who, for all the proof he had, had not been born.
They had nothing but rumor to go on, and a twenty-year rumor at that. It
was one of his mother's incredible lapses into sentimentality that she
mistook for philanthropic zeal.

Such thoughts flash through a man's mind in a moment. Habit, as
it were, presented them en masse, along with their product in the
shape of disgust and an impulse to escape from them. Activity of
mind or body was the only possible way of escape--learn,
discover, do something--now, swiftly. That accounted for Joe's
sudden forays at a tangent after odds and ends of stray clues
into other people's business--swift questions that made some men
think him an inquisitive butter-in; while others thought the
habit indicated some form of degeneracy, as if he could not
concentrate on one thing at a time.

"Why did you hit that Poonchi?" he demanded, turning
disconcertingly on Hawkes. "Who is he?"

Hawkes resented it, yet hardly cared to show resentment--yet at
any rate. Only those who meet millionaires every day of their
lives understand that there is nothing to be gained by yielding
to their arrogance; and besides, as a soldier, the habit of
answering all questions promptly was as well developed in him as
evasiveness was; he could answer questions fluently and instantly
but keep the essential information to himself.

"A spy of the Rajah of Poonch-Terai."

"Has he any right here?"

"Damned if I know. A man's rights in this country are mostly what
he can get away with. If he'd been up to no mischief he'd have
hit back, he wouldn't have run."

"Have you any idea what sort of mischief?"

"That's not difficult to guess, sir."

"Guess for me. I'm curious."

"Sir, when a man lurks in the shadows where he's uninvited, and
runs when he's hit, you can bet he was after either plunder or a
woman. Where's the plunder hereabouts? He'd have hit back,
wouldn't he, if it had been his own woman or a woman for himself
that he was after? Q. E. D. he was a pimp; it'd be sinful not to
chase him off the lot."

"Did you say he belongs to the Rajah of Poonch-Terai? But Poonch-Terai
is several hundred miles from here."

"Maybe, sir. But the Rajah isn't. He's what they call a Maharajah
--a nineteen-gun-salute man so rich he needn't trouble himself to
pay his debts."

"You mean that spy was trying to get women for him--for his
harem?"

"Draw your conclusions. Why not? They're always doing it. The
Rajahs haven't much else to think about. They've other folks to
collect the taxes for them and rule their district. They can't
play polo and get drunk all the time. They pretty soon get weary
of a woman, so they're always wanting new ones; and if there
happens to be one they can't get, that's the one woman in the
universe they've got to have."

"And that's why you're here?"

"Me and those Bengali troopers."

Joe smiled. Hawkes stiffened.

"Which of you loves the lady?"

Soldiers have to learn to sweat their tempers; only generals may
grow apoplectic; Hawkes, as a sergeant, grinned appropriate
complaisance and instantly made up his mind to take the one
revenge available to a poor man faced by a rich one's impudence.
He could bleed him. He could act the sycophant and make it pay.
The point Joe had missed, and that Hawkes knew he had missed, was
a certain vaguely evasive element of mystic chivalry connected
with that night-watch by a British sergeant, several Indian
troopers and, to make the mixture triply unconventional, a Yogi.
What Joe had probably forgotten, if he ever knew it, was that the
poor have a way of despising the rich for what they regard as
ignorant ill-manners.

"Did you wish me to look for that girl you spoke about, sir?�

"Yes. You've one chance in a hundred million."

"Make it worth my while, sir."

"Very well. A thousand if you find her."

"A thousand pounds, sir--right-o, that's fair enough." Beddington
had meant rupees; Hawkes knew that. "I'll have to hire a spy or
two as well, sir, and I can't afford to pay them out of pocket. I
suppose you'll pay legitimate expenses? If you can let me have
some money now, sir--?"

Joe gave him three hundred rupees in paper money.

"Thanks, sir. I'll account for it, of course. The district
collector asked me to bring you up to his bungalow afterward. If
you'll wait half a minute while I explain to those troopers, I'll
see you on your way, sir."

But Joe had sensed the intention to lay siege to his pocketbook.
The rich like being "worked," when they are aware of it, about as
keenly as eels like being skinned alive. Generosity is one thing,
submission to extortion something else.

"No thanks. I know the way. I'll walk. Will you tell the sais to
take my horse home?"

"Very well, sir. Do you mind telling Mr. Cummings that I offered?
Otherwise he might not understand."

Joe nodded, too displeased to trust himself to speak. Cummings
had ordered him spied on, had he? What did the ass suspect him
of? Souvenir hunting? Sacrilege? "I wonder," he thought, "who
invented the lie that Government service develops genius? They're
most of 'em pay-roll parasites, who'd be a failure in any other
walk in life--grafters or else incompetents--or both."

The midnight of a wave of discontent submerged him. He was far
more of a poet than a pirate--hated piracy, from too intimate
knowledge of his mother's methods--hated most its subtler
intricacies--liked open black-jack methods better as more honest.
In such moods a poet is gloomier than any other mortal; and the
gloomiest of poets is one who is tied to the chariot wheels of a
Jupiter Chemical Works and a bank, by the spidery threads of a
trust deed. Worse yet, when the spider in the center of it is his
mother, because he must rebel, in despair, against nature herself
who has ruled that a filial instinct shall be sometimes
overwhelming, and maternal instinct not invariably sweet with the
odor of selflessness.

"Damn!" he remarked aloud, and turned toward the Yogi for a last
stare. Suddenly he strode into the pool of moonlight in front of
the rock where the Yogi sat apparently in meditation. "Old Man--
or ought I to call you Holy One?"

"Like unto like," said the Yogi. "Call me what you feel like
calling me, that I may know you better. What you see in me is a
reflection of that part of you that you desire to hide from
others; the remainder of me is, to you, invisible."

"Be generous then. Show me some of it."

"I can't," said the Yogi. "Can I educate you in a minute? It has
taken me not less than a million lives on earth to learn the
little that I know now. That little does not include the art of
changing you instantly into a seer."

"I'm blue," said Joe. "I'm as blue as a hungry nigger. You seem
to enjoy life. How do you do it?"

"If you can see that I enjoy it, that is something."

"Come on, take a peep into my future. I'm about desperate. I feel
like putting a bullet into my brain. Nevertheless, I know I won't
do that."

"Are you afraid to?"

"No. If I were afraid I'd do it, I'd so despise myself for being
afraid. I can't see anything ahead for me but more and more
melancholy--more and more of a kind of existence I hate, with
less and less chance to escape it. To put it bluntly I'm in
hell."

"O man from Jupiter!"

"That's what you called me before. What do you mean exactly?"

"You would not understand if I told you. In part, I mean this:
Jupiter--Gemini rising: a disturbing influence. You are in hell,
to make you boil and put forth. You are a thunderbolt that
might, indeed, be quenched amid a seething sea of trouble; but no
umbrella nor any information can withstand you. You are an
influence that will burst into another's life. And you will raise
that other to an equal height with yours, or you will struggle
upward to that other's height, or you will strangle yourself and
that other, like two camels caught in one rope."

"When?"

"You are at the threshold."

"I feel as if I had my back toward hope and ambition and were
wandering off into a wilderness."

"You are an egg that is about to hatch. The tight shell yields."

"Yogi, I feel like Orestes. You know who he was? He slew his
mother."

"That Greek legend is a symbolism and an allegory. Orestes
destroyed a tyranny, not a woman; and the hounds of his
conscience were changed into heralds of happiness."

"But Clytemnestra died," said Joe.

"As I might also, did I interfere with thunderbolts," the Yogi
answered. "Listen to me: Darkness is the womb whence Light is
born. No-hope is the matrix out of which Hope burgeons.
Discontent is a growing pain; it is the pangs of roots imprisoned
in clefts of a rock that shall crush them or be burst asunder.
Cowards cry out and shrink and their roots die under them. But
strong souls reach into the Silence for more energy, though it
brings more pain; they seek relief from pain by bursting that
which hurts. It is they whose branches ultimately reach the sky
and become a cool bower such as the birds of Wisdom love."

"Am I a coward?" Joe asked.

"You have been. What you are now is your own affair. And what you
shall be is the outcome of what you do with what you are; it is
the consequence of what you are and what you do. You have my
leave to go and leave me to my laughter at the simpleness of
things."



CHAPTER THREE


"Cut me off and set me free. I'll be so grateful . . ."


The dusty moonlit road toward Cummings' bungalow led between
slattern walls and ill-kempt gardens, through a grove of trees
that had been blackened by the fires of vagrants and nibbled by
goats into naked poverty--on past cheap pretentious cottages of
Eurasians--past shuttered shops and littered byways where the
Christians did business and a Catholic chapel, neat and lean and
hungry-looking, raised a crucifix above a white iron roof. Then
past the park, so called, where a caged tiger lay dreaming of
life with his paws through the bars and his white teeth agleam in
a grin of despair made monstrous by the moonlight. On past the
club and the tennis courts--the mean hotel "for Europeans only,"
in a compound in which white-clad servants slept like corpses
under trees that cast mottled shadows.

Joe was conscious of being followed. He supposed that the man
with the basket of snakes, and the ayah, were taking advantage of
his company for the protection it might give them; they kept far
enough behind him not to intrude, near enough to be heard if they
should cry for help, walking one on each side of the road like
ghosts who did not like each other but were wafted on the same
slow wind. He glanced over his shoulder at them only once or
twice, afraid that if he glanced too often they might take that
for an invitation to draw nearer. It occurred to him once that
they might be spying on him. He stopped to see if they would
stop. But they came on, so he dismissed the thought and continued
on his way, his shoes white with dust and his thoughts black with
boredom.

He resented being bored, it seemed so stupid. He knew that with his
tastes and spiritual equipment he should find life fascinating. He was
offended because he did not--even more offended because he vaguely
understood the reason, and whose fault it was.

"There's nobody to blame but me," he muttered. Nevertheless, he
knew that to throw up everything and leave his mother to find
some other vizier of her despotism, would solve nothing. Running
away would merely substitute for his mother's tyranny an even
more degrading one of laziness and fear. It was not business he
dreaded. He well knew there is poetry in commerce, art in high
finance and music in the melody and flow of manufacture; as a
matter of actual fact, and with only a few exceptions, he had
found the conversation of artists even more platitudinous and
dull than that of his business intimates.

"Bankers, bishops, band-wagon conductors--painters and musicians
--doctors--scientists--politicians--writers--nearly all of 'em
are paralyzed by public opinion. It kills 'em if they dare to
stick their head out of the herd-thought and--got it, by God!
I've got it! My mother is herd-thought individualized!"

He began to walk faster, with more resilience in his stride. He
had begun to understand his enemy. "I've been tilting at
windmills," he muttered. "No more windmills!" Once Joe Beddington
had grasped the nature of a mistake he was not given to repeating
it, although he would deliberately repeat one again and again
until he understood it. He was built that way--so constituted. It
was that that had made him suffer so beneath his mother's yoke.
He had not understood her. He had sometimes thought she was a
devil in a human skin. Not less frequently he had suspected
himself of being one, since who else than a devil could hate his
own mother? He had wasted breath and patience trying to argue
with her. And he had feared her. "Might as well try to argue with
the sea--be afraid of the sea.

"Public opinion? Wow! The thing to do with that stuff is to make
it--mold it--navigate it. Look out for the tides and storms and
currents. I can do it. Damn, I understand her now, I've been a
blind superstitious idiot!"

He walked faster, leaving Chandri Lal and the ayah far behind
him. He had forgotten the temple ceremony and the Yogi. He had
forgotten Hawkes.

"She's public opinion. She's it, idealized. Greedy--fat--cunning
--tyrannical--cruel--jealous--envious--intolerant--a hypocrite--
a coward--opportunist--liar. She is all that--and yet she isn't.
I've got to separate 'em in my mind. How come? That needs
puzzling out."

He was excited. He had forgotten boredom. He had forgotten the
dull inertia that usually crept into some corner of his brain
when he thought of his mother. He had seen, as it were, a crack
between her and her despotism, into which he could drive, he
believed, his new-found wedge. It did not occur to him that he
was using arguments familiar to king's sons, to rebels against
the divine right of kings, and to all the archiconoclasts of
history. It seemed to him he was the first discoverer of
something new.

"Mother," he said to himself, "is a victim. It isn't she who uses
power. Power uses her."

In a flash, as a man sees in a dream cause and effect and process
simultaneously, he discerned the tactics and the strategy that he
must use.

"Separate her from the power in my own mind. She's my mother.
_It_ isn't. It isn't a disease exactly, but call it one for the
sake of clarity. It causes a disease. She's as good as mad this
minute--mad with a cold intelligence that outwits anything
human, her own humanity included. It's as merciless to her as to
any one else; it makes her ridiculous as well as greedy--makes
her stupid in her hour of triumph. Good God! How stupid _I've_
been. The thing for me to do, from now on, is to attack _it,_ not
her--and not to attack it like a damned fool and be overwhelmed.
Guile--subtlety--"

Absorbed in thought he walked beyond the lane between the
bougainvilleas, where the sign-board bearing Cummings, the
district collector's name, was clearly legible in the moonlight.

"God, but I'll need to be subtle!" He noticed he had walked too
far, and turned back. "She's on its side. It's her God and her
glory. Give her half a hint that I'm awake at last, and she'll
kill me as she killed Dad. He was half awake before the end. I
think he knew she killed him. She broke his will. That broke his
health. She make him sign that trust deed and then put him on his
back and hired three nurses." He laughed a little. "Funny I never
thought of that before. How many doctors--five?--six? And they
couldn't agree what to call the disease. I can name it for them.
Octopus-itis! She strangled his will. He simply quit and left her
victrix on a bloodless battlefield. Bloodless? He hadn't a drop
of blood left in him. I wonder if he loved her. I don't. But I
don't hate her any longer. And I won't quit. I'll be damned if
I'll quit."

He turned up the lane between the bougainvilleas--a narrow curved lane
rising steeply to the garden surrounding Cummings' bungalow. The gate
was open; he made scarcely a sound as he entered because the dust lay
deep on the tiles of the garden path. The bungalow faced eastward and
the garden gate was to the south, so that he had to approach one end of
the long verandah, where there was a screen of painted reeds to provide
privacy; that and the shadows combined to make him invisible from the
verandah or from the windows in front of the house. He had no intention
of eavesdropping, but his mother's voice was too distinct not to be
recognized; and to that he had been forced to listen since he was a
child. It was a habit.

"What would life be without our illusions? And who knows that the
illusions are not more genuine than what we think is real?"

Then the voice of Cummings: "Stark reality--stark reality--sordid
grim reality--that is the life of a Government official, Mrs.
Beddington. If I had one illusion left, I would not know what to
do with it."

His mother: "When I was a little girl my dolls provided the
illusion. I had a boy-doll that was the inspiration for most of
my dreams. I have that doll even to-day, tucked away in a drawer.
Sawdust, I suppose you will say--a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit--a
yellow wig--a wax face, with the paint gone where I kissed it--
diamond buckles made of cheap glass--one eye missing. But around
that doll I built my dreams of a prince charming who should come
into my life and make it romantic."

"Did he?"

"Not yet. I am like Queen Elizabeth, still hoping. Money, yes.
Mr. Beddington possessed the gift of making money. He could think
of nothing else. We were not romantic."

"Money, to me," said Cummings, "is the most romantic theme on
earth. Money--the blood of nations--the key to independence--the
essence of power. They tell you money can't buy happiness. I say
it can."

Sharply: "Is that you, Joe?"

Joe mounted the steps. He merely nodded to Cummings--understood
him, and lacked enough hypocrisy to pretend to feel more than
tolerantly civil. But he stared at his mother. She was full in
moonlight, all two hundred pounds of her, in a dress that he knew
had made a modiste nearly frantic; she invariably wore out any
one who waited on her; her gowns were trophies wrung from
defeated artistes whose profit was gone in time and overtime,
and whose bills were paid when Mrs. Beddington saw fit. Such
ingrates sometimes even sued her.

She looked magnificent. Joe knew she had saved that dress for an
"occasion." Her conversation, too, was the sort that she reserved
for disarming strangers when she had drastic ends in view. He
wondered what design she had on Cummings. He could see at a
glance that she had pumped him to a point where she knew the
exact limits of his imagination and could foresee to a fraction
how he would react to any given impulse. She would presently
provide the impulse--not that that made any difference, or was of
the slightest interest to her son; but he could not help
wondering why she should waste her arts on such a futile person.

"Ready to go to the hotel, Mother? Shall I call for the
rickshaw?"

"Not yet. I was telling Mr. Cummings--"

"Sit down, Beddington. Sit down and have a whisky with us. What's
your hurry? You Americans are always on the run, and what on
earth do you gain by it? I understand you even hurry to your
funerals in a motor-hearse. I think that comical. If you hurried
off to bed now, you would probably only lie awake inventing a way
of doing twice as much in half the time to-morrow."

"Probably," said Joe. "The mistake, of course, that we made was
to insist on independence. We ought to have kissed King George on
both cheeks. Then we'd have been taught, like India, how to
behave."

He was sorry at once that he had said it. Cummings was too futile
to be worth snubbing and too dull to enjoy an argument with, but
an argument now was inevitable; he had invited one; and, what
made it worse, he could see that he had played into his mother's
hand in some way. Desperately he sought to switch the conversation
to another subject:

"Tell me about the nautch-girls at that temple."

Cummings jumped at that. He was the type that loves to display
familiarity with subjects on which he can't be checked up every
easily. It opened the way too, for a retort:

"Don't try making love to them. Be advised by me and control your
curiosity and instincts, both, as long as you stay here."

Joe let that pass.

Cummings looked pleased with himself and exchanged a glance with
Joe's mother. Middle-aged, fat bachelor he might be, but he knew
how to give a younger man the right cue at the proper moment. He
desired her to appreciate it, and apparently she did; she could
disguise her feelings from almost any one except her son, who
looked the other way. Joe yawned and Cummings cleared his throat:

"Those are very unusual nautch-girls. There are none other like
them in India. Generally speaking, I regret to say, the Indian
nautch-girls are a blot on the country's reputation. They're a
problem very difficult for us to deal with. They're a social evil
so protected by religious custom and priestly privilege that no
government can do anything about it. They belong to the temple.
They're married to trees or to graven images. Their morals
generally speaking--judged, that is, by our standards--are--well
--they haven't any."

"How are they recruited?" Joe asked.

"All sorts of ways. Many of them are the daughters of nautch-girls. Some
are the daughters of well-to-do, high-caste Indians who dedicate them to
the temple, usually along with an endowment. Some of them--the less
privileged ones--are child-widows, who are given that means of escape
from the otherwise deadly existence of the Hindu widow, who becomes the
slave of her husband's parents. A few of them are the daughters of
wealthy public prostitutes. As a rule they are all intensively trained,
extremely highly educated in the legendary mysticism of the cult to
which they are attached, good-looking--and more wicked than you could
readily make yourself believe."

"Those girls I saw to-night," said Joe, "were marvelous. I've
seen convent children in the States who looked much less
spiritual. Loose women don't look as they did--at least, not any
that I ever saw."

Cummings suppressed the interruption with a fatly important hand:

"I was coming to that. This temple is unique. It is very ancient
and was formerly Buddhist. A century or so ago its Hindu priests
were partly reconverted to the Buddhist teaching. Blending one
traditional philosophy with another, as I understand it, they
were able to discard the grosser forms of superstition and retain
the essence of both teachings, with the result that something new
and very remarkably good grew out of it. They retained the
secrecy, but not the exclusiveness--to some extent the theory of
caste, but not its system. I am told they sent some very highly
educated priests to Europe to study the better known types of
Christianity, from which they learned a great deal. To this day
they are astonishingly tolerant of Christian missionaries. They
own all the land hereabouts and could have made it next to
impossible for Christian missionaries to obtain a foothold; but
what they actually did was to let them have land for schools and
so on at a rent so nominal that it amounted to a gift. They're
funny. I believe they're trying to convert the missionaries. But
they won't let any outsider inside their temple, and they're
rather touchy about strangers witnessing their temple rites.
They're on very good terms, by the way, with the Catholic priest,
who has established a hospital, to which they contribute very
liberally from the temple funds."

Mrs. Beddington purred. She almost looked like a well-fed cat
when there was a mouse to be coaxed within reach of her paws. Her
bulk seemed all softly luxurious comfort. She exuded invitation
and appreciation. Her son might recognize, even by lamplight, a
certain hard glint in her eyes; but a mouse, such as Cummings,
saw nothing but generous instincts oozing from a rather handsome
widow.

"Oh, how fascinating, Mr. Cummings! What a wonderful life you
must lead, with all this opportunity to study life's drama! Most
of us waste our lives, don't we? You should write a book--truly
you should."

"Ah!" remarked Cummings, but he deceived no one, not even
himself. He was much too lazy mentally to write anything except a
cut-and-dried report. However, he enjoyed the flattery. Joe
wondered again why his mother possibly could wish to ensnare such
a futile person--and again, from habit, not from sympathy, he
straightway played into her hand.

"My mother loves to look into the guts of things," he
volunteered.

Cummings blinked; he thought the expression coarse; he was
already unconsciously taking the side of the mother against the
son. "Your mother strikes me as a very able woman, if I may say
so without offense. It's rare to find intelligence and great
wealth under the same hat, so to speak. If I had had such a
mother as yours, I think I would have had more of a career." The
imputation that Joe Beddington was a loafer in his estimation was
only vaguely veiled.

Joe glanced at his mother and smiled to himself. He changed the
subject, abruptly:

"I'd like to see the inside of that temple."

"Impossible, my dear man, so it's no use wishing. But why see it?
Gloom--dirt--images of gods on ancient walls--obscene--monstrous
--stupid. There are lots of other places where you can see it
all, price two rupees, and a picture post-card thrown in."

"You know, I suppose."

"I can guess. One doesn't live in India for twenty-five years
without knowing what temples are like. Archeology, in my humble
opinion, is an over-rated subject. It's like art in general,
which got the Greeks nowhere--got China, Egypt, India nowhere.
Art, I take it, is a sign of decadence. As soon as a nation takes
up art it goes to pieces and gets conquered."

It was aimed, of course, at Joe. Joe's mother understood, and
relished it.

"Joe, I think, would rather be an artist than a business man,"
she remarked. "He paints really quite beautifully when he has the
time."

It was a favorite trick of hers to tempt confidence and sympathy by
hinting that her only son was a disappointing person. She was equally
ready at any moment to advertise him as the greatest genius alive. It
all depended on the circumstances and the view-point of her victim. Joe
wondered again what she could see worth conquering in Cummings; he knew
that her perception was uncanny and her sense for intrigue and strategy
Bismarckian; but why pick such a specimen as Cummings? Why waste genius?
He gave it up.

"Let's go home to bed," he suggested, yawning. "Shall I shout for
the rickshaw?"

Mrs. Beddington decided she would walk. Perhaps she wished to intimate
to Cummings that she could walk in spite of her weight. Joe knew that
she hated to have dust invade her shoes. However, it was only a short
way to the hotel; if she should turn bad-tempered he could endure it
during those few minutes. He nodded to Cummings--shook hands, since
Cummings seemed to wish that--and waited at the foot of the verandah
steps, signing to the sleepy rickshaw coolies to go along home. His
mother was in no haste:

"A delightful evening. What a time we two had until that gloomy person
interrupted us! Imagine my telling you all about my dolls! It must have
been the magic of the moonlight and your hospitality. Some day you must
tell me all about the princess you have cherished in your dreams--I
believe you're as romantic as I am under that proconsular mask of
yours."

Cummings almost writhed with pleasure at being likened to a grim
proconsul. He had missed promotion. He was a little lucky if the truth
were known, not to have been sent home last year on his half-pay.

"Romantic?" he answered. He would be anything to please her, but it was
hard to think of phrases on the spur of the moment. "Ah, but I have
never dared to speak of it."

"You shall tell me," said Mrs. Beddington. "Confess--you owe me that
revenge. Besides, it will do you good to talk of it. Romance dies, if it
is not shared with some one. And romance is good for all of us. Good
night."

On the way home Joe kept silence until his mother paused to kick the
dust out of her shoes, holding his shoulder to balance herself. "Joe,"
she remarked suddenly, "I wish you could be more polite to people. You
were positively rude to that man. It was disgraceful. Why, you couldn't
even shake hands without scowling."

"He's such an ass," Joe answered.

"He is nothing of the kind. I like him."

"Mother, you know he's an ass. What are you planning? To make him find
that purely hypothetical cholera baby? I'll bet he bungles it. Probably
he'll foist a sweeper's daughter on you--or perhaps a half-caste brat
with rickets and a chi-chi accent. Then what?"

Mrs. Beddington removed her other shoe, shook out its contents, replaced
it and then waited for her son to kneel and fasten up the strap.

"I have all along intended _you_ should find that child," she answered.
"It will give you a chance to use those wits you are so proud of. When I
have a hunch I am never far wrong. I know the child lives. I know it, I
know it. So you look for her, and use all your ingenuity. Meanwhile, I
will cultivate Mr. Cummings, so that in case you have to overstep the
boundaries a bit there will be some one to stand between you and the
lawyers."

That was one of her pet expressions. It made Joe shudder, since it
always meant that she was contemplating treachery of some kind that she
would not even hint at until it would be too late to prevent her. He
answered grimly:

"I have taken steps already."

"You speak as if I had asked you to cut your throat. Listen, Joe. I
won't have you being sulky with me. I won't stand it for a minute. If
there's one thing I will not endure, it's disloyalty. Your father knew
you all right when he had that deed drawn. He knew what he was doing
when he put that clause in giving me the right to cut you off by a
stroke of a pen without a nickel. One would think, to see your long
face, that you were jealous of a child you'd never seen."

Joe laughed. "Come on, Mother," he said, "there's pen and ink at the
hotel. Cut me off and set me free. I'll be so grateful that--"

She interrupted him. "Joe, I'm nervous. Can't you see I need comforting?
Are you so mean you won't oblige me during the few years I have to live?
Isn't it soon enough to be independent when I'm dead and gone? Do you
wish me dead?"

He yielded--put his arm around her. She was as well as he was, and he
knew it. She was insincere; he knew that also. But whenever she ceased
threatening and coaxed him, there always stole over him that feeling of
helplessness that was so like the effect of a drug that it made him feel
worthless--even wicked. He had to take an antidote for it; when his
mother had gone to bed he carried out a chair into the compound and made
charcoal sketches of servants sleeping in the shadows under gaunt
wind-twisted trees.



CHAPTER FOUR


"You wish to question me?"


Joe sat at breakfast on the hotel verandah, prodding export bacon with
an import fork and wondering why God had gone to all the trouble to
create a universe. His mother had sent for him to her bedroom and had
made him sign some documents of no particular importance except to nine
unfortunates in New York, whose jobs had now ceased to exist. "Just like
her. It's murder, as I sit here--long-distance murder by mail. They
weren't rowing their weight. But is she? And am I? Are dividends the one
criterion? If one of those poor devils--Weismuller--doesn't commit
suicide I'll take my hat off to him--sick wife--seven kids--a
mortgage--probably car and piano half paid for. Dad never did that kind
of dirt. He flogged old horses, but he didn't turn them out to starve.
It was the last nail in the old man's coffin when he learned about her
firing all the old-timers. She has more than quadrupled the money Dad
left. He never gave a cent to charity, and she has given away more than
he earned in his whole lifetime. Nevertheless, he was human. And she
isn't. Damn! I hate her."

Gone was last night's resolution. He looked around him at the white-clad
servants standing along the verandah rail in abject adoration of his
mother's millions. There were far too many of them; she had insisted on
traveling like a circus, as he phrased it, with a private car on the
railway and a private crew of rickshaw coolies, to say nothing of
interpreters, bearers, a cook, two cook's assistants and a boy.

Beyond them, beneath the compound trees were unnumbered job-hunters,
cheek by jowl with beggars, conjurers, acrobats and "guides." Among them
he noticed Chandri Lal with his basket of cobras; and, not very far from
Chandri Lal, the ayah. They added in some vague way to his annoyance. It
was ridiculous to think they might be spying on him. For whom could they
be spying? But why else were they here? Why did they keep on staring at
him?

On the verandah was a horde of peddlers, opening their boxes if he as
much as glanced in their direction, meanwhile arranging trash for his
inspection--arranging the stuff so that he could hardly step off the
verandah without treading on some of it. Pariah dogs were sniffing
around the compound. Nine unpleasant-looking crows, with bright eyes on
the breakfast food and obscene voices making probably appropriate
remarks, were perched on the rail at the far end. The proprietor, smugly
subservient, stood with his back to the doorway where he could watch the
merchants and keep account of his rake-off from the price of anything
they might succeed in selling. There were no other guests in the hotel;
there was that much relief.

However, presently came Hawkes, slapping his leg with a swagger-cane and
much too perky to harmonize with Joe's mood.

"I suppose he wants more money."

Joe decided not to give him any. He turned his back--resumed dissection
of the embalmed remains of a Chicago pig, fried to a boracic
cinder--prodding at it. But he could not carry on; two pale eggs, like
the eyes of indigestion, stared up from the plate and put him out of
countenance. The grease had grown cold; a fat fly struggled in it.
Toast, weak marmalade and strong tea. Hawkes invaded the verandah,
perfectly aware of the annoyance he was causing; soldiering equips a man
with a brass face for irritability to grind itself against. No snubbing
Hawkes.

"Good morning, sir. I've news."

"Sit down then. Light your pipe. Tea's rotten. Have some."

"Thanks, sir, I've had breakfast. And if I'd tell the news myself you
might think I was lying."

"There would be nothing abnormal about that. I'm quite used to
disbelieving people."

"Yes, sir. And I want my thousand pounds. I'd like to take you straight
to the source where I got my information."

"What information?"

"The identity and present whereabouts of that young woman that you spoke
of last night."

Habit froze Joe's face at once. He had learned from his mother. Show
her, black on white, a soundly reasoned statement and she would
pitilessly and without shame rend it until no one but herself believed
it even worth another moment's thought. "Remember this, Joe: if it's
good, it won't be worse for being doubted. The more you can make others
doubt it, the cheaper it's yours in the long run. So don't believe any
one--anything, until you've seen all sides of it. Make others sick of
hanging on. That's business." He had learned in the end to doubt her
also. A mere stranger such as Hawkes had no chance to get under his
guard.

"I have letters to write. Sorry."

Hawkes, a trifle over-eager to persuade him, made a wrong move: "Sir,
you saw me punch a man last night. His gang is after that young woman."

"Sounds bad. As I told you, if she's fallen too far down the social
scale my mother would not be interested."

Hawkes saw his mistake. He decided to show his own quality and see what
came of it.

"All right, sir. I've done my part. Here's that three hundred you gave
me for expenses. I don't need it."

He laid the money on the table. Joe let it stay, with the corner of one
eye watching Hawkes; it might be Hawkes' way of suggesting a tip. But
Hawkes stepped away from the table.

"Send for me, sir, any time you wish. I'll tell your servant where to
find me."

"Why not tell your news?" Joe asked him.

"No, sir. If you'll take it straight as man to man--it may sound fishy,
but it's fact--I wouldn't take a thousand pounds to be called a liar by
you or any one."

Joe had seen senators sell their souls for that price. He had bought the
souls, and found them not worth buying.

"I will pay you ten pounds for your news," he answered.

"Keep it, sir. As one man to another, you agreed to pay a thousand
pounds if I find the girl."

"All right. Bring her to me."

"Not so easy. If I fetched her, supposing she'd come, who's to prove
she's it? No, sir, proof first--that's fair. Then when you set eyes on
her I get my thousand and no argument."

Joe still suspected him. However, he heard his mother's voice. She was
getting up, and finding fault. He knew that mood. He leaped at anything
to escape her.

"All right, I'll go with you." He caught the proprietor's eye.

"Two horses!"

"Ek particularly dum!" Hawkes added. "Make it sudden."

That Hindu had noticed the interrelation of speed and profit when
providing for Americans. With the tail of his turban flying, scandalized
crows on the wing, and the pariah dogs in flight in front of him, he
scooted across the compound to the stable, where a needy
relative-contractor kept starved horses and well-fed flies. Long before
Mrs. Beddington's voice announced through an open window that her shoes
were no place for cockroaches, two unenthusiastic horses drooped in
front of the verandah. Joe was swift; in another moment he and Hawkes,
at a comfortless trot in the dust outside the compound wall, could hear
her doing her worst to make the universe all wretched. Joe shuddered:

"Always that way when she has done dirt. Justifies herself by torturing
some other helpless human. Then she'll feed the pariah dogs on buttered
toast and gyp the peddlers out of half their junk. By the time I return
she'll feel pious and want me to take her to call on missionaries."

He hardly noticed where Hawkes was leading him. He remembered passing a
squadron of native cavalry out exercising horses--might not have
remembered it except that he was glad their officers did not halt to
talk to him--as likely as not damned decent fellows who would invite him
to call on the mess. He could enjoy meeting them if it weren't for his
mother; she would insist on their being introduced to her. She would
probably make their mess a gift of some useless ornament picked up in
Kashmir. She would ask the Colonel's confidential advice about
his, Joe's, character. He understood her game from _a_ to
_izzard_--understood, yet could not defeat it. She was his mother, worse
luck. There are limits to what conscience will let a man do to his
mother, even if he hates her, for accumulated reasons.

Knowing resentment would give him a headache he tried to interest
himself in the streets and the early traffic. They had reached the heart
of the native city almost before he realized it. He remembered now that
there were things to see in this place. There were said to be
architectural wonders--freaks that had set the antiquarians at
loggerheads with thousands of years of differences between their
estimated dates. He began to notice some of them--amazing carvings on
patched walls at the end of mean streets, old and new all fitted into
one another as if an earthquake, or perhaps a dozen earthquakes had
flattened the city and, after each cataclysm, men had rebuilt with the
old material. One image that he saw was upside down--a dozen tons of it
incorporated in a wall whose greater part was almost modern brick
--perhaps a thousand-year-old brick, or even more recent than that.

It was a hodge-podge city. Corrugated iron side by side with
ancient masonry and carved teak blackened by the course of
centuries. Trees in which monkeys sported. Sacred trees a-flutter
with scraps of rag and colored paper to remind some godlet of a
bribe paid and a promise taken, in return, for granted. Walls
without windows. Shops all unglazed window, with a wall behind
them. Thatch, tile, rotting canvas--and a roof here and there
whose ponderous calm suggested destiny perceived and understood
by conjurers in stone. A Moslem mosque, chaste and pearl-gray in
the shadows of high trees, frowned at from a hundred feet away by
the obscene divinities carved on the gloom of a Hindu temple.
Stinks--and then a breath of Oriental perfume--spices, dry dung
and the horizonless scent of piles of gunny-sacks. An elephant or
two--incessant streams of laden asses--bullock-carts--innumerable
sweating porters, threading their way through a crowd whose black
umbrellas cheapened sunlight. Vivid colors splashed on shadow--
dark holes--dinginess drowned in golden light where clouds of
parakeets as green as emeralds shot screaming from tree to tree--
veiled women--unveiled girls with white teeth dipping brass jars
at a fountain--Ford cars--insolent policemen swinging yellow
clubs. And then, when they paused at a trough that was a godlet's
lap, to let the horses drink, none else than Chandri Lal, his
flat, round basketful of cobras on his head. The ayah, draped in
dingy black, was less than half a street behind him.

"How in hell did those two follow, at the speed we've come?"

"The same as rats, sir. They know scores of shortcuts where a
horse can't get through."

"What are they spying on me for?"

"They're not spying. It's the jackal system. Follow a tiger long
enough and something happens. It's like that piece in the Bible,
sir, about the woman and her importunity--except that those two
don't know what they want. What turns up can't be worse than what
they've got, that's all."

Joe doubted it. He half suspected Hawkes of having told those two
to follow, and he was still in a mood to be quarrelsome. He had
an acrid comment hesitating on his teeth, when a bheestee went by
swishing water from his goatskin mussuk. Just as no man can slay
even himself in the presence of one of Leonardo's paintings, so
none can harbor hatred with the smell in his nostrils of freshly
sprinkled dry earth. Perfectly unconscious of the cause, Joe let
his natural tolerance creep up like sap and he decided that to be
a circus for whoever chose to stare at him was better fun than
doing nothing. He, too, was a spectator, growing curious.

"Let's go."

Hawkes led through by-ways to a sunlit court, whose paving stones
were masonry from ancient walls. Grass grew here and there
between the cracks. In places, faintly visible, were carvings
worn smooth by the tread of centuries. The buildings were all
ancient, except one, a little lower than the rest, that occupied
a corner and was white, in contrast to the gray-green dinginess
of all the others. It had awnings, striped red and yellow, and
the two-story wall that faced the street was pierced with as many
windows as a colonial house in Salem. The windows had muslin
curtains, clean and trim. The flat roof was entirely tented over
and hung with a line of paper Chinese lanterns.

"Here we are," said Hawkes. He hitched the horses to a big hook
near the front door. "Can you guess what that is, sir? That's a
hook off a siege-gun carriage that was drawn by elephants at
Plassy. There's a story to it; but maybe she'll tell you
herself."

He used his swagger-cane to beat a tattoo on the brass-bound teak
front door. Then he lifted the latch and the top half opened.

"Anybody home?"

A parrot answered--"Cup o' caw-fee--Polly want a cup o' caw-fee?"
Then footsteps on a tiled floor. Suddenly a smell of lavender,
and some one in larkspur-light-blue linen stood framed in the
door like a painting, with dimness behind her.

"Hawkesey! Well, come in. My house is a mess; you must excuse it
--but you soldiers notice everything."

She had snow-white hair brushed well back from her forehead and
pinned in an old-fashioned knot. Her eyes were almost baby-blue;
they mocked the thin line of a mouth that seemed to disapprove of
such amusement as those eyes insisted on enjoying. She had the
calm chin of a fighter who fights seldom, having also diplomatic
skill and self-restraint besides unconquerable courage. She wore
a gold chain and a locket. The sleeves at each wrist were pinned
with old cameo brooches. Wrinkled, used but well-kept, very
shapely hands. She was not more than five feet tall and slightly
built--sixty years of age or thereabouts, but upright as an arrow
and, beyond words, beautiful. She drew the lower latch and
glanced at Hawkes' boots as she swung the half-door open. Hawkes
kicked the wall and flicked the dust off with his handkerchief.

"Mr. Beddington--Miss Annie Weems."

She bowed, appraising Joe, then suddenly shook hands, as if the
blue eyes had discovered something that the lips refused to tell.
They were a wee mite stern, those lips--a bit convinced, perhaps,
of masculine infidelity, deplorable but comprehensible and not
beyond forgiveness.

"My school," she said, turning to lead the way in. She turned as
neatly as they used to in the days of quadrilles and crinolines.
"To-day's a holiday. No pupils to tidy up. You mustn't look."

They followed her across a red-tiled floor that was as clean as
the floor of a dairy. There were benches of scrubbed wood, mats
folded and piled in a corner, a blackboard, a desk and a chair
and rows of book-shelves. There was not even dust in the beams of
sunlight slanting through the windows. Nothing seemed soiled or
out of place, and nothing even faded except the flowers; those
were yesterday's--the only hint of Asia; all the rest was neat
New England, even to the ribboned cat that came and rubbed
against Joe's trousers legs.

"There, Kitty likes you. I have never known her to make a
mistake."

She led past a grandfather clock in a passage that contained a
dresser made of maple-wood, its shelves loaded with Derby
chinaware, into a room that might have been a parlor in a
Massachusetts village, except that there were no stuffed birds in
glass cases and no samplers. There was a piano built not less
than half a century ago and varnished to match the maple chairs
and gate-leg table. Flowers everywhere--framed paintings of New
England landscapes--a parrot perch with seed and water-cups at
either end. Rag rugs on a polished teak floor. Nothing lacking
but a fireplace--and in place of that a white stone altar carved
with long-stemmed lotus-flowers, built into the strong foundations
of the house by pious Hindus, and now used by the cat as a
snoozing place between two long-stemmed Copenhagen vases.

"You wish to question me?"

She chose the armchair near the window and sat facing Joe and
Hawkes, hands in her lap. Joe hesitated. Since she put it that
way he felt he had no right to question her. Hawkes intervened:

"Miss Weems has run a private school here since--how long is it,
Miss?"

"Twenty-seven years."

"Anyhow," said Hawkes, "for seventeen years or more I believe she
has known the girl you're looking for."

Miss Weems sat silent, mouth firm, eyes alight with interest and
something else that might have been excitement. Joe crossed his
legs and began calmly:

"One and twenty years ago--about--I don't remember dates--Carrie
Morgan, who was my mother's youngest bridesmaid, married a young
professor of botany named Owen Wilburforce and came to this part
of India. We were informed she gave birth to a daughter; she is
supposed to have written to that effect to an aunt in Charleston,
but the letter has been lost. She and her husband are supposed to
have died of cholera not long afterward, and their effects were
said to have been burned in a raid by dacoits, who set fire to
the house they lived in. But there was a plausible, undocumented
story that an ayah--said to have been a wet-nurse--carried away
the baby and concealed it. The girl should now be twenty years
old, more or less. Hawkes appears to believe that you know a
young woman who might be that one. And that you even have what
you consider proof of her identity. Is that so?"

Annie Weems looked straight at him and blinked. She produced a
plain white hemstitched handkerchief and touched her lips. She
glanced at the cat--at the parrot--and back at Joe. Her eyes were
steady now; it was her lips that seemed to tremble, and there was
a catch in her throat; she swallowed before answering:

"It may be."



CHAPTER FIVE


"Amrita is a sort of Joan of Arc."


It felt like Sunday. From without there were only a few sounds;
some one, probably a servant, moved about a courtyard. A crow
cawed on a near-by roof. Annie Weems picked up her reading
spectacles from beside the book on the table, tried them on, and
put them down again.

"About the proof, Miss?" Hawkes suggested.

"Judas Iscariot once sold Jesus," she retorted.

Slapped down, as it were, Hawkes prodded his boot with his
swagger-cane. Joe felt curiously pleased, but cautious.

"Hawkes," he said, "will be paid a stipulated sum if the girl is
produced along with proof of her identity. That was the
agreement. But it might not be wise to let her know who she is,
unless she knows already; nor who is looking for her--you see, my
mother has no actual obligation. Do you get my meaning?"

"No, sir." Annie Weems understood perfectly. Joe knew she did.
However she was entitled to insist on clarity.

"I mean," he said, "she may be better off in India. Having been
brought up in this country among colored people, she might be
like a fish out of water in the United States. If she should
happen to learn she is being looked for, she might jump to false
conclusions. She has no legal claim on us--none whatever."

"You would like to look her over, so to speak, without her
knowing why?"

"That's it," said Joe.

"You would need to be far more clever than I have any right to
suppose you are," Annie Weems answered. "She is neither deaf,
dumb, blind nor unintelligent. I have had her in this school, at
intervals, for nearly sixteen years. I have not yet learned how
to deceive her, or to keep her uninformed about anything that has
stirred her interest. However, you can try."

"Does she talk English?" Joe asked nervously. "I mean--"

"You are afraid of a chi-chi accent? If she has one I can't
detect it. Of course, my ear may be ruined by long association
with Indian children. But I taught her to sing at this piano. She
has recited, and acted, most of the female parts from Shakespeare,
in this room. She has also read such parts of the Bible as are fit
for decent folk. I can't detect a trace of accent."

"How long have you known she was not an Indian child?" Joe asked
her.

"From the beginning."

"Did no one else know?"

"Others did. Some temple priests, for instance. She has been
partly brought up in the temple. The priests have been very kind
to her."

"Couldn't you have saved her from that?" Joe asked. He kept the
note of horror from his voice, but it found means to express
itself--vibration, probably.

"You would have had me turn her over to the Government?"

"I suppose, something of that sort."

"They would have sent her to one of the Government schools, or to
a mission orphanage," said Annie Weems.

"Are those so terrible!"

"Prisons." She pursed her lips. "They are sometimes sanitary.
They are places where children are taught to be hypocrites--
cowardly thinkers, thoroughly mistrusting anything that has
spiritual value. I tried to save her from that fate--so have the
priests."

"Is she a Christian?"

"I know no way of answering that. You must wait until you get an
opportunity to ask God, that is to say, if it is any of your
business."

Annie Weems was becoming belligerent; the blue eyes glistened
with enjoyment of the pugnacity at the corners of her mouth. Joe
declined combat. He had tact enough to retire gracefully, and
sense of strategy enough to leave that kind of conversation to
his mother.

"She sounds interesting," he said. "I don't doubt she is a credit
to your care and teaching. I would like to see her at your
convenience. Meanwhile, Hawkes said something about proofs of her
identity."

Annie Weems glanced at Hawkes, who nodded and stood up, hesitated
and then started for the front door.

"See that she cleans her feet, and don't admit that person with
the cobras. I will not have them or him in my house."

"Yes, Miss."

Hawkes strode out. His clean white uniform looked somehow dirty
in that spotless room. But that, perhaps, was produced by
suggestion; if one could judge by his eye and the set of his mouth,
the reference to Judas Iscariot had bitten more than skin-deep.

Joe thought swiftly. "You are sending for the ayah? Does this
explain why she was spying on me? Does she know the girl? How
does she know I am interested?"

"Sergeant Hawkes has told me that you saw the temple ceremony
last night. There is a Yogi there--I think you had some
conversation with him. It was he to whom the ayah took the child
the moment it was weaned, and it was he who gave it to the temple
priests. She suspects any white man who talks to that Yogi; she
is afraid her priestess-princess may be taken from her."

"What is the girl's name, by the way?"

"Amrita."

Hawkes returned, the ayah following in time to hear the name
Amrita. The yellowish whites of her eyes and her wrinkled face
betrayed alarm, although she plainly did not fear Miss Weems,
whom she salaamed with respectful familiarity. It was from Joe
that she shrugged herself, wrapping her dingy black cotton stuff
around her as if that might serve as shield against his iron-gray
eyes. Joe noticed that she kept her fingers crossed and made
curious furtive gestures with her right hand.

Hawkes sat down again. The ayah remained standing. There was
silence for a moment, interrupted only by the parrot who appeared
to know the ayah.

"Amal!" the bird cried. "Amal!--Polly want a cracker!"

The ayah smiled and fell again on the defensive, scared of Joe
and none too confident of Hawkes whom she seemed to suspect of
telling tales. With a gesture of her arms within the long black
garment, she enwrapped herself in silence.

Annie Weems knew how to manage her. "Amal, I want you to tell
this sahib why you followed him."

The ayah seemed to understand, but she had the excuse as yet that
English was not her language. Itching to answer, she sulked.
Annie Weems translated into the vernacular, and waited. Suddenly
the ayah's pent up misery escaped--first two tears, like drops of
water seeping through cracks in weakening masonry--then floods of
tears--and then the dam went down in a torrent of words that
tumbled over one another, galloping and plunging, ends of sobbing
sentences surging to swamp their beginnings and two streams of
argument fighting for room in the gap of one muttering throat.
She ceased at last for lack of tears and lack of breath to begin
the tale over again.

"She says," said Annie Weems, "that that Yogi is her Yogi and she
will not have you asking him questions and learning her business.
She says she, not you, has fed and combed the Yogi all these
years, and cleaned his cell, and cared for him, and asked for
nothing in return except a little comfort now and then. Amrita,
she says, is her child, not yours. And she says she knows what
the Yogi told you yesterday: he said you are a man from Jupiter,
and Jupiter is a royal planet, so she does not doubt you are a
king. She says you are to go away and be a king where you belong,
wherever that is. You are not to come into Amrita's life and
cause war inside her, which is what she heard the Yogi say you
will do."

"Why does she call Amrita her child?" Joe asked.

No need to interpret. Amal caught the meaning of that question
instantly. She burst into another torrent of invective in her own
tongue, flinging aside her sari now and going through the motions
of nursing a baby, shielding it, loving it--suddenly denouncing
Joe with out-flung arm and calling Annie Weems to witness--down
on her knees then and surrendering the child to some one--hugging
at her heart as if it tortured her and beating at her old dry
breasts with knotted fists. On her feet again--glaring--
breathless.

"Perfect pantomime," said Joe. "I'm sorry for her. What's it all
about?"

"Her answer to your question. She says the baby's parents died of
cholera, and bad men came--she means dacoits. So she took the
child and hid it--she was its wet-nurse--who else should have
taken it? But she was young in those days and desirable; she was
afraid that the dacoits would catch her and carry her off. And
she had no money, so she hid by day and ran by night. And then
some one accused her of stealing the child and threatened
blackmail; she became afraid that if she took the child to any
one in authority she would be thrown in prison on a false charge.
She was not so afraid of the prison, but she knew they would take
the child away from her, and she loved it--could not bear to part
with it. So she hid, starving, stealing scraps of food and
fearful that her flow of milk would cease--as it began to do. At
last, in despair, she took the baby to that Yogi. And he gave it
to the temple priests, who have never allowed Amal within the
temple precincts but have been kind about letting her see the
child from time to time, outside the temple. So Amal borrowed a
little money from the priests, and paid it back. She bought a
loom, and lived near by, and made a living for herself. And she
has watched that child grow. She has sat with her at the Yogi's
feet by night and listened to the lessons that he gave her. And
it was Amal who told me about Amrita, in secret, exacting my
promise to keep the secret--as indeed I have done, on condition
that the child should come here daily to be taught in my school.
It was a little difficult at first to get the priests to agree to
that, but the Yogi helped us. He cast her horoscope." Annie Weems
chuckled. "I am told he understands that nonsense. Certainly they
think he does. I have my own opinion. I know if I wanted to have
my way, I could cast a thoroughly convincing horoscope for any
one who puts faith in such fancies though I don't say, mind you, that
there's nothing in it--I have seen some strange coincidences, of whom
you are one. At any rate, they let the child come here to my school, and
they have even let me visit her within the temple, so I have no personal
quarrel with astrology."

"It's like politics--the bunk, with brass tacks here and there,"
Joe answered. "Did the ayah ever mention the name of the child's
parents?"

"Wilburforce."

"Any birth certificate available?"

"No. The birth had been registered in the office of the Collector
of the district, but the office and all the records were burned
by the dacoits."

"Pretty hard to prove then?" Joe glanced at Hawkes for
amusement's sake. Hawkes shifted his feet; he had no notion of
the pitfalls hidden in a partly proven title, but he began to
feel uneasy. That thousand pounds seemed less material--more like
an unkind dream of affluence with only disappointment in its
wake.

"Maybe, sir, you might recognize the family likeness if you saw
her," he suggested.

"Mother might."

"She is the child you are looking for," said Annie Weems.

"Not a doubt of it." Hawkes nodded eagerly.

"And it might even be possible to prove her identity legally,"
Miss Weems went on. "If there were money coming to her--"

"Not a cent," Joe interrupted.

"I was about to say: if there were money coming to her, even so I
don't think she would wish to give up the life she is leading.
She is one of the happiest girls I have ever known--I think the
happiest."

"I've heard it said one can be happy in the U. S. A.," Joe
answered.

"Ship me somewheres west of Ireland, where the money grows on
trees!" said Hawkes. "I'm with you there, sir. Me for Hollywood.
My name goes on the quota on the same day I get my discharge.
I've heard they make you swear an oath to fight King George the
Third. They may throw in Henry the Eighth and Cardinal Wolsey--
I'll fight all three of 'em."

"Can I see her?" Joe asked.

"Why not?"

"When?"

"She will be here the day after to-morrow."

Miss Weems� effect on Joe was just the opposite of that of Hawkes.
Hawkes' eagerness had made him hang back. Her coolness urged him
forward. He felt genuine interest--almost excitement. He began to
think of reasons other than his boredom why a wait of two days
might be inadvisable.

"Hawkes said something about a Maharajah sending some of his gang
to waylay her and carry her off," he remembered. "Is there any
danger?"

"There is always danger in the world," said Annie Weems. "I have
been facing danger here for more than twenty years. It is good
for us. When danger gets too dangerous, we die and render our
account; it will look better to God without cowardice stamped all
over it."

"But there are risks a decent girl should not run," Joe objected.

"There is a risk that none of us should run the risk of being
false to our ideal," said Annie Weems. "Amrita is a sort of Joan
of Arc. That girl has character. And she has good friends, who
protect her. I suppose she is the only woman that ever lived who
upset all the customs and traditions of a Hindu temple from the
inside--mind you, from the inside. Nevertheless, I sometimes
think the priests would die for her if necessary; and I know that
a number of Indian soldiers would. Of course she is in danger.
She has beauty, talent, intellect--dangerous gifts, Mr.
Beddington. She has also courage."

"You've 'sold' me. I can't wait to see her," said Joe.

Hawkes leaned forward. "Mr. Beddington, if you should care to
come with me to-night, I'll show her to you. I know her goings
and comings--some of 'em--I know some. Shall I call for you?"

"You're on. What time?"

"About a half-hour after dinner."

"I'll be ready for you. Can you get two decent horses? Bring
'em."

Joe offered the ayah ten rupees. She refused the money, biting
her lip, turning her head the other way, with both hands clenched
and her bare toes kneading at the clean New England rug.



CHAPTER SIX


"What's the odds? She's harmless."


Joe always had hated to dine with his mother alone. Fortunately there
was a bottle of not-so-bad Madeira. Joe's mother drank two-thirds of it.
Joe kept filling her glass; she sometimes became good-tempered when she
drank too much--she even let pass opportunities to poison hope with
cynicism. So he kept on pouring and did not even mention Annie Weems.
There was a sort of silent laughter deep within him. He was so absorbed
by his own line of thought that he had to jerk himself out of it to
listen to his mother. It was never safe not to listen to her.

"Mr. Cummings told me, by the way, that it's useless to try to
find the Wilburforces� child. If she's alive, which he doubts,
she'd be beyond hope of redemption--probably Mahommedan or Hindu,
with three or four half-caste children of her own already and an
inferiority complex like a stray cat's. He says white children
raised by natives in this climate lose all sense of honesty and
moral stamina. She'd be too old to be educated and too familiar
with vice to be safe with anybody's children. I can't see myself
taking that sort of young person back to the States with us, even
if the immigration people would permit it. I believe we'd better
leave her to the gods, as Mr. Cummings phrased it. What do you
propose to do to-night?"

"Moonlight sketches."

He said that through his teeth, with eyelids lowered. He cracked
nuts swiftly, finding one at last that he could pass to her:
"Here you are--all the way from Brazil--but don't ask why." He
knew her capable, because she knew he loved sketching, of
inventing something else for him to do--for instance, find a
doctor for imaginary, agonizing ailments. He had hard work not to
betray relief when she seemed hardly to notice his answer--
although he knew she weighed it and passed judgment on it before
almost casually saying what, in turn, she wished him to believe.

"I'm so tired--I suppose I ought to go to bed. However, Mr.
Cummings wants to show me photos of the Delhi Durbar, taken years
ago. I think I'll take the rickshaw and submit to being shown."

Joe knew she was lying, although he had no doubt that Cummings
wished to show his photographs. A creepy feeling down his spine
warned him that she meant to make her own inquiries about the
Wilburforce child and to set in motion means of legally
disproving in advance the girl's identity, in case she should
turn up and prove embarrassing. Thoroughly, through and through,
he understood his mother's vanity and cruelty. The unfamiliar new
laughter he had found within himself mocked the very nervousness
that caused it.

He summoned the rickshaw, helped his mother into it and even
delayed her by making her look at the violet mystery of shadows
under the trees and on the compound wall. "I'd give a year's
salary to be able to get that color right with oil or pastel."

"You will be a fool with money to your dying day," she retorted.
"Don't disturb me if you're out late. I expect to return early
and go straight to bed. Come to my room after breakfast in the
morning."

And then Hawkes came, astride a Waler mare that he had borrowed,
leading an Arab gelding. He was smoking his short pipe and there
was about him an air of genial recklessness that was probably due
to thoughts about the thousand pounds, but it suggested adventure
and Joe's mood grew luxuriously free from responsibility. He told
himself he did not give a damn what happened that night. He
ordered two whiskies and spilled his own in the dust while Hawkes
drank.

The Arab gelding moved with silky smoothness and the night was
a-swim with impalpable dust made luminous by starlight. There
were soft sounds at uncertain intervals, but for the most part a
mystic silence enveloped everything. It was another universe, in
which anything might happen except the rational and real. It
seemed comfortingly familiar, and his own voice sounded, friendly
fashion, like the voice of some one else--some fellow full of
confident amusement.

He asked Hawkes the familiar question, that, from Greenwich
Village to Darjiling, always crops up on a dark night amid
strange surroundings.

"Did you ever come to a place where you knew you had never been
before, yet the place was perfectly familiar and you recognized
every detail of it?"

"Sure, sir, lots o' times. Once when I went with a girl near
Woking and we came to a clump o' deodars. I hadn't never been in
India in those days. But I saw those deodars, and smelt 'em, and
I felt it was a place I'd seen. I knew what was around the
corner, so to speak, and where there was a waterfall--and
mountains 'way away beyond it. Funny, 'cause there ain't a
waterfall near Woking and the only thing that even hints at
mountains is the Surrey Downs, about eight hundred feet high.
Pretty soon I forgot it. She was a girl who made a man forget
things--scrumptious, but too expensive for a soldier's income.
And besides, I had to be back in barracks before midnight.
Anyhow, I forgot them deodars. Forgot myself, too."

"Well, what of it?" Joe rather resented sharing mystic interludes
with Hawkes. He was half afraid the man would bring him back to
earth with inane explanations.

"This, sir: three years later I was in India, and I was always a
one for getting myself transferred to places I'm curious to see.
That's quite a trick. I'm not a soldier, I'm a tourist with a
liking to have my expenses paid by Government. So, 'fore long, me
and Simla makes acquaintance. Presently, ten days leave; and I go
pony riding, acting nursemaid to a subaltern who wants to see the
sights. The subaltern goes sick with collywobbles in his tummy
along o' being careless. Them Hills, as they call 'em, are tough
on amateurs unless they watch their stummicks. Camp--and I've
time on my hands. A full moon--deodars--and I go walking. There
she is! The very sight I'd seen that night at Woking--waterfall,
mountains--mist in a valley--everything. And mind you, I
say, everything. There was a woman there, the very spitting image
of the girl I'd loved in Woking, only this one wasn't white and
couldn't speak a word of any language _I_ knew. But she knew me
as sudden as I knew her, and we stood there grinning at each
other until a savage with a long knife came and took her away,
she looking back at me over her shoulder. How do you account for
that, sir?"

"Can't. There's no accounting for lots of things that happen.
What's the noise behind us?"

"Nothing but your bodyguard, I reckon."

Joe drew rein. A moment later the sound of pattering footsteps
ceased. He turned back, legged his horse into a shadow, stopped
again to listen--heard labored breathing. Hawkes, drawing rein
beside him, chuckled and lifted a heel to knock the ashes from
his pipe.

"Come on out o' there, Amal, nobody won't hurt you."

There was a moment's pause and then the ayah stepped out from the
darkness, followed after a moment by Chandri Lal. Hawkes turned a
pocket flashlight on the woman; her breast was heaving and her
nostrils trembled.

"Ask what in hell does she follow me for?"

Hawkes spoke to her, but she merely looked dumbly determined,
nervous grin and sulky defiance alternating. There was something
about her that was irritating but nevertheless respectable. Joe
felt toward her as he might toward an uninvited lost dog that had
adopted him.

"She won't let up, sir. Some people might try whipping her, but
I'm not that kind and I don't think you are. We might gallop a
bit, but we'd only make her suffer. She'd follow. She'd track us.
She'd catch up. What's the odds? She's harmless."

Joe tried English: "What do you want, Amal?"

Silence. Joe's hand, feeling for support as he leaned back in the saddle
to ease himself, discovered that the numnah was an over-size one that
protruded about a foot behind the polo-saddle. It suggested a rather
amusing notion.

"Tell her, if she's so set on following, I'll save her all the
trouble. She may climb up behind if she isn't afraid."

"She, sir--she's afraid o' nothing that'd scare you and me. Her
kind keep a whole seraglio of fears that couldn't scare us in a
month o' Sundays. How about it, Mother?" He translated Joe's
invitation.

The ayah hesitated. Chandri Lal whispered--pushed her. The whites
of the ayah's eyes were like green glass in the glare of the
flashlight. She struck Chandri Lal with her elbow to silence him,
grinned--stepped up to Joe's stirrup. Chandri Lal lent her the
use of his shoulder. She was up behind Joe in a moment, gripping
with strong legs that made the Arab restless, and with a hand
under Joe's arm-pit that lay like a threat on his heart; he could
feel his heart beating beneath it.

"Who said anything about you, you devil?" Hawkes legged the Waler
mare away from Chandri Lal.

"Can't you take him up behind you?"

"He's got them blasted cobras with him in a basket. I don't know
which gives me the creeps most, he or they. Besides, he don't
belong to her. He's like a leech or a louse. He's a blooming
parasite, that's what he is. He's like one o' them whimpering
jackals that follow a tiger."

"Ask her if she wants him."

Hawkes asked. Joe could feel the ayah's laughter; it was
soundless but there was plenty of it. She spoke, though, with
what sounded like anger.

"She says he's none o' her business."

"Let's go."

They began to trot, Chandri Lal following with the end of a cloth
in his teeth and one hand balancing the big flat basket on his
turban. Ten minutes later, when they passed a pool of light that
flowed from the open door of a Eurasian's bungalow, he was still
following, his bare feet padding silently in deep dust and the
basket bobbing up and down like a piece of machinery.

The warmth of the ayah's body against Joe's back excited him in a
way that his brain could not analyze. She kept that left hand on
his heart and her right hand on his shoulder. It was as if a
current flowed between them--not of electricity--a current of
thought. Partly, perhaps, because his mother, not he, possessed
all the family wealth, he had often told himself that possessions
do not constitute importance; and as the arbiter of the destiny
of hundreds of employees from vice-president downward he had very
often in his own mind minimized his own importance, in order to
avoid the stings of conscience on account of arbitrary cruelties
that his mother had compelled him to inflict. He was only a cog
in a huge machine. In theory he could readily agree with the
doctrine that no individual is more important than another.
Nevertheless, if he had occasion to pass judgment and act on it,
he would have considered himself as a matter of fact a great deal
more important than the ayah. He was now uncomfortably conscious
of importance which, apparently, she had and he had not. He could
not have explained it. He was merely aware of a condition.

Small groups of Eurasian loafers and Hindus gathered in doorways
or around flickering firelight; their mocking, obscene laughter
yelped at the sight of a sahib carrying a native woman up behind
him. It was much too dark for any one to guess that she was old
and undesirable; her figure was young; as a silhouette observed
against crimson bonfire-light, her bare legs dimly outlined on
the horse's flank and her right arm on his shoulder, she probably
looked bacchanalian--beautiful--suggestive. However, he was
defiant; he rather hoped he might be seen by some one of his own
race, on whom his scorn would not be wasted. All the same, the
ayah's vibrant warmth and the pressure of her hand on his heart
made him feel disturbed and unpleasantly creepy; and for that
reason, not because of onlookers, he wished he had told her
to mount behind Hawkes.

They skirted the small city, passing a slaughter-house where foul
birds roosted restlessly along the ridge of a near-by roof. Then
they turned to the right through mean streets, where men and
women slept in sheeted rows on pallets on the sidewalk to avoid
the infernal heat of the unventilated rooms. Just as the moon was
rising a street widened, became near-respectable and flowed like
a spreading estuary into a paved square that had flower-beds in
the midst, and a fountain, and a few well-tended trees. Along the
far side was a high stone wall and a sentry-box to one side of
an iron-bossed wooden gate that had spikes at the top. There was
a roof behind the wall--a neat, plug-ugly thing of corrugated
iron, painted white. In moonlight it looked like the corpse of a
roof.


"What's that place?"

"The jail," Hawkes answered. He slowed to a walking pace, and the
ayah vaulted to the ground, as active as an ape; Joe tried to see
which way she went, but she vanished into shadow; it was several
seconds before he saw her running toward a group of people who
appeared to be holding an argument within the shadow of the wall,
beside the sentry-box. A small door in the wide gate opened and a
man stepped out who seemed to be an officer. He shut the gate
behind him.



CHAPTER SEVEN


"So you sing to them, eh?"


Now, by quite imperceptible stages, Joe changed---as a chrysalis
does, only much more swiftly. He emerged out of a state of
consciousness into another one, in which values were not the
same, and he was not the same Joe Beddington. The strangest part
of that was, that he could not tell how it happened.

It began by the moon coming over the wall of the jail. Then
Hawkes took both the horses and tied their bridles to a god's leg
on the fountain in the center of the square, so that they could
drink all they pleased and make confession afterward, if they
should happen to feel sinful. Hawkes made a more or less obvious
and rather bawdy joke about that. The joke hardly penetrated
Joe's thought; however, he laughed politely and set foot across
the square in something of a hurry, trying to conceal his haste.
He felt curious and queerly excited.

There were seven or eight native Indian soldiers--tall bearded
shadows, standing around some sort of Eurasian official, who was
insisting on talking English to establish his importance; further
to establish it, he was wearing his white sun-helmet in the
moonlight. The man who belonged in the sentry-box was standing,
looking nervous, with his back to the small open door in the big
shut gate, through which the undersized Eurasian had come.

Joe's first thought was that he was witnessing a jailbreak or
perhaps an abortive attempt at one. But before he had come close
enough to hear what any one was saying--even the annoyed Eurasian
was speaking in undertones--he heard a girl's voice. She was
singing. She was somewhere in the jail yard, out of sight. Joe
had heard all the imported voices and knew enough music to
confess to himself that he might be fooled a little by the mellow
moonlight and by the weird state of his nerves, but he knew that
what he heard had quality. He had to stand still and listen--so
intently that he did not notice whether the Indian soldiers and
the Eurasian went on arguing or not; and he became oblivious of
Hawkes.

The song was in some Indian language, of which he knew no word.
But he could recognize tone when he heard it. He himself had
perfect pitch. He might have followed music, if his mother had
not had too much money. He told himself that he had never heard
quite such quality in any other woman's voice in all his life. He
stood still, spellbound, something happening within him that he
could neither analyze nor measure.

It was a mystic moment--the sort when bankers make their big
mistakes and men of destiny march toward Waterloo. There was a
winelike inspiration of the kind that goes to Kaisers' heads and
makes nursemaids yield themselves to soldiers in psychic ecstasy
that the soldier mistakes for worship of himself. The mellow
moonlight and the pastel-shaded shadows were the sort that make a
Swinburne write odes to Revolution, or a Tennyson write idylls to
the King. Joe felt, for the first time in his whole experience, a
mood that some men can only attain by getting drunk--a mood that
drink destroys in other men. To use his own phrase, he felt like
old-man Abraham on camel-back, aloof from earth, conscious of
incomprehensible destiny, borne forward, he knew not whither.

Meanwhile, his feet rang solidly on paving stones. Seven soldiers and a
scared Eurasian, mistaking him for a British officer on a tour of
inspection, faced him, saluted and stood at attention. Even when he drew
near and it was seen he was not in uniform the tenseness was not
relaxed, there being no accounting in the native mind for the
peculiarities of British method, that seems to consist so often in
having no method at all; he might be a new arrival with mysterious
authority, snooping like Haroun-al-Raschid in mufti in quest of
embarrassing facts for the morning's session of the court. He might be
that most awful of enormities, an officer on secret service. The man
with his back to the open door presented arms with a rattle of carbine
swivels.

Joe waited for revelation. And it came, of course, from the
Eurasian, who saw Hawkes' uniform approaching and was sure now
that Joe was an official personage.

"She sings, sir."

"So I notice."

"Sir, Mr. Cummings gave strict orders there should be no visitors
at night. Nevertheless, she comes. She sings. What can I do?"

"Why does she sing, and about what?" Joe asked.

"Sir, she makes song to the prisoners. Mr. Cummings gave such
strict orders I am afraid now there will be an inquiry and we
shall all be punished. Sir, will you not speak to her and--"

"Hello!"

It was hardly a startling voice. It was too exactly in the middle
of F-major and too bell-like to have anything unpleasant about
it, but it produced silence in the way the backstage gong does
when the curtain goes up on the drama. Joe only had to turn his
head a little to the left and he did it almost stealthily, as if
he were trespassing and hoped to see unseen. He was not scared.
He could not have explained his attitude. He saw the black-robed
ayah, like a shadow, glide past him and be swallowed in the
darkness by the corner of the sentry-box.

Framed in the gap in the gate, with moonlight on the white wall
of the jail behind her causing a sort of luminescent aura, stood
a girl with a chaplet of flower-buds, binding dark-brown hair.
Beneath some sort of silken cloak that was thrown back carelessly
she wore a low-necked garment of cloth-of-gold. There was a
girdle at her waist that appeared to be made of gold wire woven
into the form of a serpent with jeweled eyes. She had bracelets
that clashed, and something gleamed on her ankle. Her bare feet
looked like living marble. One hand resting on the edge of the
doorway, she stood with the grace of a water-carrier, one foot on
the door-sill.

"Hello, Hawkesey."

The Eurasian interrupted: "Miss, please tell this gentleman I did
my utmost--yes, indeed, my utmost to prevent your going in."

"Should he know? Do you wish him to think you cruel?"

"Miss, my job to me is not a joke, it is my daily bread. And my
honor--"

Hawkes interrupted. "Miss Amrita, this is Mr. Beddington."

She bowed, almost imperceptibly, the motion making the moonlight
on her hair wave slightly as it does on water. She seemed able to
leap to swift conclusions. She walked straight up to Joe and
shook hands with him. Her hand was the most magnetic thing he had
ever touched and she seemed in no haste to withdraw it. The
sensation was of being touched by some one in a dream. She moved
like some one in a dream. She was gentle, faintly scented with
some mysterious eastern stuff that smelled dew o' the morning
clean. Joe let her lead him out into moonlight, where he really
saw her for the first time as she turned her head to speak
abruptly to the ayah. She had the marvelous rhythmic movement of
an animal, such as even the most perfect dancers have only
rarely, and as she turned her head the moonlight made a silver
line along her neck that was almost maddening, it was so
beautiful. The ayah slunk again into a shadow.

"You are not here by accident. Why did you come to see me?" she
asked.

"How do you know I am not here by accident?"

"Hawkesey brought you. And you are pleased to see me. Why?"

He answered lamely. "Why were you singing in there?"

"Why not?"

"If I heard correctly, it's against the rules."

"Whose rules? Yours? God's?" Indignation, whether it was true or
simulated made her lovelier than ever. Joe's impulse was to sketch her,
with her shadow willowing beyond her on the mouse-gray paving-stone; but
his left fist, obeying instinct, remained clenched behind his back,
expressing disbelief in beauty as a mark of virtue, viewed from the
banker's angle. He was conscious of Hawkes. He had a business man's
distaste for being compromised by a woman before witnesses. Habit,
instinct, training told him to go away before trouble began.

"Why should you sing at night?" he asked her.

Her voice changed to the soft, persuasive, reasonable note one
uses to a child who can't grasp principles:

"Were you ever in prison? Were you ever in hospital? Do you know
what the sleepless hours are like to men born in the open, who
have lived with sky-room for their thoughts? They wall them in.
They roof them in. They shut out the wonderful wind of the night
that whispers of friendly familiar scenes. They shut out
moonlight, starlight--and they say to them, 'Be honest men, such
as we are, who have stolen all God's goodness from you because
you stole some devil's trash from Us!'"

"So you sing to reduce their agony?"

She nodded. "And a spiritless official who, I dare say, thinks
that toothache is worse than a broken spirit, says I may not
sing!"

"And you defy him? I can sympathize. But aren't you defying
Bumbledom in general? The man is backed up by society. He has to
be obeyed."

"Has he? If he forbade me to give alms--or to smile--or to bless
all earth with every breath I breathe, should I obey him then?"

"But he's responsible for the prisoners."

"True! And the Lords of Life will hold the fool responsible! They
will demand of him those prisoners' hearts that he is breaking.
But they shall not accuse me of neglecting to sing. In that
prison are thieves, murderers, quarrelsome men, debtors,
weaklings who have taken others' blame, and some who are in no
way guilty of the charge against them. By day they have a little
work to do that keeps their hearts from bursting. But at night,
in the dark, and no stars? I come and I let the starlight melt
me, I flow along my voice into their poor dumb hearts, so that
for at least a little while they think of love instead of hatred.
Do you think I would dare to obey that fool when he says I shall
not? Will he dare to attempt to prevent me? If he does dare, let
him answer for it to the Lords of Life, who have less patience
with stupidity than with sin."

That was over Joe's head. He had sent cigarettes to an ex-vice-president
of a bank in prison for defalcation, and had thought rather well of
himself for doing it, but he had never even pondered whether Shakespeare
meant what he was saying about music having charm. When he had thought
of it at all, which was hardly ever, he thought that a prison should be
as nearly hell as human ingenuity could make it--short, of course, of
actual savagery or neglect. People should keep out of prison.

"How did you come by your name?" he asked her.

"I took it. Out of all the names there are, in all the languages
I know, I liked that name best. So I took it--just the way a crow
steals anything it wants. It probably belonged to some one else,
but there it was. I took it."

"What does the name mean?"

"Daybreak."

"Dawn?"

"Daybreak--break--break--breaking through--until it bursts my
heart unless I become--do--act--instead of sitting still."

"I like that."

"Do you? You won't like it when your own breakthrough begins! I
mean, when it really begins. You have been incubating quite a
long time. Which hen sat on you?"

Joe smiled. "Do I seem such a desperate chicken as that?"

"Eaglet," she answered.

"Flatterer!"

"You don't know me. And you won't like it when you feel your
feathers quilling out. Ask Hawkesey. He got incubated, and he
didn't like it either. Hawkesey got drunk and then tried to get
sent to a war where Hillmen rub the ends off bullets to make sure
of killing. You may talk of killing yourself, to yourself; but
you will think like dynamite; and when you go off, some one--who
is it, I wonder?--will have to get out of the way. I should say
you have Jupiter, Mars and Saturn all in Gemini."

"You're right. But isn't astrology rather piffle?"

"Yes, but so would mathematics be if they taught you twice five
are eleven. Calling things piffle won't take the Jupiter
influence out of your l