He stooped and spoke lower. "Yes! it's a G.o.d-forsaken spot all round--for _you_. But, look here! I saw a _dhatura_ actually in blossom to-day--close to my bungalow. It's not unlike a lily--as white, anyhow--and sweeter. They use it in their temples--so why not in church? It doesn't do to be too particular--when you want anything."

She shook her head again. "It's poisonous--besides, it doesn't do--to leave the beaten path."

"Try!"

There was a pause; for the undercurrent, which had seemed to sweep each trivial word to another meaning, seemed suddenly to sweep this man and woman within touch--dangerous touch--of each other.

"What _are_ you two talking about?" asked Boy's mother, coming towards them. "What a lovely cross, Muriel! And why, please, should Christmas in India be skittles, Colonel Gould?"

He laughed. "How stern you look! I wish I could get that righteous indignation up for orderly room. I need it!"

"My husband never found the regiment difficult to manage," interrupted the wife of its absent commander jealously.

"Nor do I," retorted its present head, "but--" he paused, not caring to explain that he, an outsider sent but lately to drill a corps back to the discipline it had lost after her husband's departure, had naturally a very different task.

"Hullo, Boy!" he said, to change the subject, "that is a jolly little sword! Who gave it you?"

"Hirabul Khan gaved it me," replied the child. "When I'm Colonel, he'sh going to be my risshildar, 'cos you shee he was my Daddy's orderly first, an' then Daddy made him--oh, lotsh of fings."

"He'll have to look out if he doesn't want to lose some things," said Colonel Gould, sharply; then answering a vexed look of Boy's mother, continued: "He was a _protege_ of your husband's, I know--but he really has wind in his head. For his own sake it must be got out. I put him under arrest to-day, and told him squarely I'd have to block his promotion."

"What had he done?" She spoke quite fiercely.

"Cheek, as usual. It was over that escape from the camp. Haven't you heard? Viljeon, that cantankerous brute who gives so much trouble, managed to get out again last night. I wish it had been any one else--for he's half mad and dangerous. I'm glad the General has ordered the search-party to shoot at sight if he offers resistance."

Boy, in his white robe, his toy sword in his hand still, nodded his red aureole sagely.

"The Tommies down at the camp told _me_. He'sh just an awful brute, Vile John is. He is goin' to kill all the little English children he meets, 'cos--'cos they killed his: but that's a d.a.m.ned lie."

The calm deliberation of the last was so evidently imitative that Boy's mother smiled, despite a sudden pain at her heart.

"They died, dear, and so you must be very sorry for him. Think how sad I should be if--" The thought produced a sudden caress, a sudden glisten in her grey eyes. "Now, Boy of mine, let me take that thing off. Then you must go and lie down and sleep, for you'll have to keep wide awake half the night."

"Take care of my shword, Mummy, please!" said Boy, superbly, as, in unrobing, he shifted it from one hand to the other; "it's most dweadful sharp!"

"By George, it is," remarked Colonel Gould; "a trifle too sharp for safety."

"Is it?" said Boy's mother, anxiously. "Hirabul ought not--"

"It wasn't Hira," interrupted Boy. "It was Kunder sharped it, so as I could kill Vile John if I met him, like as my Daddy done over in Africa. Didn't you, Kunder?"

A figure squatting in a far corner rose and salaamed.

"The _Huzoor_ speaks truth."

The speaker was an old man, slender, upright, unusually dark-skinned; this latter fact made his bare limbs look curiously youthful and lissom.

"Done it uncommonly well, too," a.s.sented Colonel Gould, feeling the edge. "Where did you learn the trick?"

"Your slave was once sword-sharpener by trade," was the submissive reply.

"Kunder'sh an awful clever chap," said Boy, loquaciously. "He can make--oh! all sorts of fings as deads people--bows and stw.a.n.gles, you know--can't you, Kunder?"

The man salaamed, with a watchful look at his other hearers.

"And," continued Boy, in vicarious boasting, "he can do all sorts of dweadful fings, too! He can steal people's purses when they'se sleepin', an' make d.i.c.ky-birds tumble off bwanches, an' little boys like me wake never no more--can't you, Kunder?"

Submissiveness grew crafty. "This slave has certainly told such tales to the children-people."

"Looks scoundrel enough," remarked Colonel Gould, carelessly. "Where did you pick him up?"

"Oh! he isn't _my_ servant," replied Boy's mother. "He is Muriel's. I can't think why she keeps him."

The cross-maker rose and held her work at arm's length. "Does any one really know why they do anything?" she asked. "Perhaps, as you say, he will steal my jewels some day--or murder me. But, as Boy says, he's awful clever, and one must be amused! Now I must go and put this up.

Will you drive me to the church, Colonel Gould?"

"Better come in the victoria with me," said Boy's mother, hastily; "it is going to rain." This other woman, this childless wife with an unspeakable husband, must be guarded from herself.

"I don't think so," put in the Colonel, firmly. "Kunder! call my dogcart, and we can go round by my bungalow and pick the _dhatura_."

Kunder, pa.s.sing on his errand, looked up curiously at the last word.

Colonel Gould gave back the look. "Queer customer! Shouldn't wonder if he's a Thug--they use _dhatura_ poison to stupefy their victims, you know."

He spoke carelessly as they stood looking out at the bare patch of parched ground called by courtesy a garden. The lowering sky, of an even purplish grey, was so dark that the level lines of dust-laden _sirus_ trees along the road showed light against it.

"I wish some one would stupefy me," said Muriel, with a sudden pa.s.sion in her voice; to cover which she went on recklessly: "How I hate Christmas in India!--the sham of it--sham decorations--sham church, for it isn't real! The reality is outside among the poor folk in the fields and the towns, to whom Christmas is a day when _we_ guzzle and _they_ pay the piper!"

"My dear Muriel!"

"It's true! Think of it! Peace and goodwill? Isn't the whole station at daggers-drawing because one lady said another wasn't the best-dressed woman in India? Isn't your regiment, Colonel, ready to murder you? Then that camp, right in the middle of us Christians, with how many prisoners eating their hearts out? And Vile John--as Boy has been taught to call him--half mad in thinking of his children who have died. Oh, I know it is all inevitable--but think, just think of him wandering about this Christmas Eve, liable to be shot at sight.

There's a Santa Claus for you!"

Her voice had risen, her fingers had closed tremblingly on the sprig of poinsettia she had fastened in her breast. It showed against the white laces of her dress like a clutching scarlet hand.

Colonel Gould shrugged his shoulders uneasily. "Don't forget Kunder in the picture of peace and goodwill!--Kunder with his 'fings as kills'; for the matter of that don't forget _you_ and _me_, and the rest of us! The Decalogue is in danger on Christmas Eve as always--perhaps more so."

"I don't believe it," exclaimed Boy's mother in sudden pitiful emotion. "Don't believe him, Muriel! Wait and see! Why, even that storm brewing"--as she spoke a shivering seam of lightning shot slanting across the purple pall behind the dusty trees--"only means the Christmas rains. How welcome they will be after this endless drought! They will perhaps save millions of lives--"

"A doubtful message of peace," put in the Colonel, drily. "But hadn't we better start? or we shan't have time for the _dhatura_."

"You haven't time," said Boy's mother, sharply. "You must be back by eight, Muriel, for we have to be at the camp by nine. Ayah will bring Boy down ready dressed when we want him--so please don't be late."

This thing which she saw looming as plainly as she saw that storm in the sky, should not be if she could help it. They were too good, both the man and the woman, for that sort of ruin.

She shivered as she watched the dogcart drive off. Truly there were storms ahead! And that thought of Viljeon--childless, half-distraught--wandering about, liable to be shot like a wild beast, made her fear for what might happen ere Christmas dawned.

The verandah darkened silently after she left it. Every now and again a puff of wind rattled the dry pods of the _sirus_ trees, making them give out a faint crackle like that of a scaled viper coiled watchfully in a corner.