"'Good-by,' said I, holding out my hand. 'To-morrow, if I may, I will come again and tell you what your unforgotten grief did for me.'

"But next morning I found that the flat had been left at its destination during the night. That is all."

There was a long pause.

"And your explanation?" asked a somewhat tremulous voice from a dark corner.

"Gentlemen," said the Major, "I have none to offer. What I know is this. Somehow--G.o.d knows how--I saw that mother's unforgotten grief, and it saved me from shirking my share."

THE DOLL-MAKER

"Christmas Eve!" echoed Mrs. Langford. "Yes! I suppose it is; but I had forgotten--there isn't much to remind one of it in India--is there?"

As she paused half-way up the verandah steps she glanced back at the creeper-hung porch where the high spider-cart, in which she had come home from the club, waited for its owner to return to the box-seat. He seemed in no hurry to do so, and his glance followed hers as he stood on the step below her. He was a tall man, so his face was on a level with hers, and the two showed young, handsome--hers a trifle pale, his a trifle red.

There was a stretch of garden visible beyond the creepers. It was not flowerful, since Christmas, even in India, comes when the tide of sap, the flow of life, is at its lowest; yet, in the growing dusk, the great scarlet hands of the poinsettias could be seen thrusting themselves out wickedly from the leafy shadows as if to clutch the faint white stars of the oleanders blossoming above them; and there was a bunch of Marechal Niel roses in the silver belt of the woman's white tennis dress, which told of sweeter, more home-like blossom.

"And it is just as well," she continued, with a bitter little laugh, "that there isn't, for it's a deadly, dreary time--"

"All times are dreary," a.s.sented the tall man in a low voice, rapidly, pa.s.sionately, "when there is no one who cares--"

"There is my husband," she interrupted, this time with a nervous laugh. The answer fitted doubly, for she turned to a figure which at that moment came out of the soft rose-tinted light of the room within, and said in a faintly fretful tone, "You don't mean to say, George, surely, that you've been working till now?"

"Working!" echoed George Langford, absently. "Yes! why not? Ah! is that you, Campbell? Brought the missus home, like a good chap. Sorry I couldn't come, my dear; but there was a beastly report overdue, so now I've only time for a spin on the bicycle before dinner, for I must have some exercise. By the way, Laura, you'd better send off your home letter without mine. I really haven't had time to write to the boys this mail."

He was busy now, in the same absent, preoccupied, yet energetic way, in seeing to the machine, which a red-coated servant held for him; but he looked up quickly at his wife's reply--

"I haven't written either."

"Haven't you? That's a pity," he began, then paused, with a vaguely unquiet look at her and her tall companion, which merged, however, into a good-natured smile. "Well, they won't know it was Christmas mail anyhow. 'Pon my soul I'd forgotten it myself, Campbell, or I'd have made a point.... But there's the devil of a crush of work just now, though I shall clear some of the arrears off to-morrow. That's about the only good of a holiday to me!" He was off as he spoke--a shadow gliding into the shadows, where the red hands of the poinsettias and the white stars of the oleanders showed fainter as the dusk deepened.

But he left a pair of covetous, entreating hands and a white face behind him in the verandah, between the rosy light of comfort from within and the grey gloom of the world without.

"It cannot go on--this sort of thing--for ever," said the man, still in that low, pa.s.sionate voice. "It will kill--"

"Kill him? Do you think so?" she interrupted, still with that little half-nervous, half-bitter laugh. "I don't; he's awfully strong and awfully clever, you know."

The owner of the dogcart turned to it impatiently.

"You will come to-morrow at eleven, anyhow," he said, bringing the patience back to his voice with an effort, for it seemed to him--as it so often seems to a man--that the woman did not know what she would be at. "It will be a jolly drive; and, as they are sending out a mess-tent, we need not come back till late. Your husband said he was to be busy all day."

He waited, reins in hand, for an answer. It came after a pause; came decidedly.

"Yes; at eleven, please. It will be better anyhow than stopping here.

There isn't even tennis on Christmas Day, you know; and the house is--is so deadly quiet." She turned to it slowly as she spoke, pa.s.sed into the rose light, and stood listening to the sound of the dogcart wheels growing fainter and fainter. When it had gone an intense stillness seemed to settle over the wide, empty house--that stillness and emptiness which must perforce settle round many an Englishwoman in India; the stillness and emptiness of a house where children have been, and are not.

It made her shiver slightly as she stood alone, thinking of the dogcart wheels.

Yet just at the back of the screen of poinsettias and oleanders which hid the servants' quarters from the creeper-hung porch there were children and to spare. Dozens of them, all ages, all sizes, belonging to the posse of followers which hangs to the skirts of bureaucracy in India.

Here, as the lights of the dogcart flashed by, they lit up for an instant a quaint little group gathered round a rushlight set on the ground. It consisted of a very old man, almost naked, with a grey frost of beard on his withered cheeks, and of a semicircle of wide-eyed, solemn-faced, brown babies--toddlers of two and three, with a sprinkling of demure little maidens of four and five.

The centre of the group lay beside the rushlight. It was a rudimentary attempt at a rag doll; so rudimentary indeed that as the pa.s.sing flash of the lamps disclosed its proportions, or rather the lack of them, a t.i.tter rose from the darkness behind, where some older folk were lounging.

The old doll-maker, who was attempting to thread a big packing-needle by the faint flicker, turned towards the sound in mild reproof: "Lo!

brothers and sisters," he said, "have patience awhile. Even the Creator takes time to make His puppets, and this of mine will be as dolls are always when it is done. And a doll is a doll ever, nothing more, nothing less."

"Yet thou art sadly behind the world in them, _babajee_," put in a pale young man, with a pen-box under his arm, who had paused on his way to the cook-room, whither he was going to write up the daily account for the butler; since a man must live even if he has a University degree, and, if Government service be not forthcoming, must earn a penny or two as best he can. "That sort of image did for the dark ages of ignorance, but now the mind must have more reality; gla.s.s eyes and such like. The world changes."

The old man's face took an almost cunning expression by reason of its self-complacent wisdom. "But not the puppets which play in it, my son.

The Final One makes _them_ in the same mould ever; as I do my dolls, as my fathers made theirs. Ay! and thine too, _babajee!_ As for eyes, they come with the sight that sees them, since all things are illusion. For the rest"--here he shot a glance of fiery disdain at the t.i.tterers--"I make not dolls for these scoffers, but for their betters. This is for the little masters on their Big Day. To-morrow I will present it to the _sahib_ and the _mem_, since the little _sahibs_ themselves are away over the Black Water. For old Premoo knows what is due. This dust-like one, lame of a leg and blind of an eye, has not always been a garden coolie--a mere picker of weeds, a gatherer of dried leaves, saved from starvation by such trivial tasks.

In his youth Premoo hath carried young masters in his bosom, and guarded them night and day after the manner of bearers. And hath found amus.e.m.e.nt for them also; even to the making of dolls as this one. Ay!

it is true," he went on, led to garrulous indignation by renewed sounds of mirth from behind; "dolls which gave them delight, for they were not as some folk, black of face, but _sahib logue_ who, by G.o.d's grace, grew to be _ginerals_ and _jedges_, and commissioners, and--and even _Lat-sahibs_."

The old voice, though it rose in pitch with each rise in rank, was not strong enough to overbear the t.i.tter, and the doll-maker paused in startled doubt to look at his own creation.

"I can see naught amiss," he muttered to himself; "it is as I used to make them, for sure." His anxious critical eye lingered almost wistfully over the bald head, the pincushion body, the sausage limbs of his creature, yet found no flaw in it; since fingers and toes were a mere detail, and as for hair, a tuft of wool would settle that point. What more could folk want, sensible folk, who knew that a doll must be always a doll--nothing more, nothing less?

Suddenly a thought came to make him put doubt to the test, and he turned to the nearest of the solemn-faced, wide-eyed semicircle of babies.

"Thou canst dandle it whilst I thread the needle, Gungi," he said pompously, "but have a care not to injure the child, and let not the others touch it."

The solemnity left one chubby brown face, and one pair of chubby brown hands closed in glad possession round the despised rag doll. Old Premoo heaved a sigh of relief.

"Said I not so, brothers and sisters?" he cried exultingly. "My hand has not lost its art with the years. A doll is a doll ever to a child, as a child is a child ever to the man and the woman. As for gla.s.s eyes, they are illusion--they perish!"

"Nevertheless, thou wilt put clothes to it, for sure, brother,"

remonstrated the fat butler, who had joined the group, "ere giving it to the Presences. 'Tis like a skinned fowl now, and bare decent."

Premoo shook his head mournfully. "Lo! _khangee_, my rags, as thou seest, scarce run to a big enough body and legs! And the _Huzoor's_ tailor would give no sc.r.a.ps to Premoo the garden coolie; though in the old days, when the little masters lay in these arms, and there was favour to be carried by the dressing of dolls, such as he were ready to make them, male and female, kings and queens, fairies and heroes, _mem-sahibs_ and _Lat-sahibs_ after their kind. But it matters not in the end, _khanjee_, it matters not! The doll is a doll ever to a child, as a child is a child ever to the man and the woman, though they know not whether it will wear a crown or a shroud."

So as Christmas Eve pa.s.sed into Christmas night, Premoo st.i.tched away contentedly as he sat under the stars. There was no Christmas message in them for the old man. The master's Big Day meant nothing to him save an occasion for the giving of gifts, notably rag dolls! There was no vision for him in the velvet darkness of the spangled sky of angels proclaiming the glad tidings of birth; and yet in a way his old heart, wise with the dim wisdom which long life brings, held the answer to the great Problem, as in vague self-consolation for the t.i.tterings he murmured to himself now and again: "It is so always; naught matters but the children, and the children's children."

And when his task was over, he laid the result for safety on the basket of withered leaves which he had swept up from the path that evening, and wrapping himself in his thin cotton shawl, lay down to sleep in the shelter of the poinsettia and oleander hedge.

So, the Christmas sun peering through the morning mists shone upon a quaint _creche_ indeed--on the veriest simulacrum of a child lying on a heap of faded red hand-like leaves and white star-like blossoms.

Perhaps it smiled at the sight. Humanity did, anyhow, as it pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed from the servants' quarters to its work in the house. For in truth old Premoo's creation looked even more comical in the daylight than it had by the faint flicker of the lamp. There was something about it productive of sheer mirth, yet of mirth that was tender. Even the fat butler, on his way to set breakfast, stopped to giggle foolishly in its face.

"G.o.d knows what it is like," he said finally. "I deemed it was a skinned fowl last night, but 'tis not that. It might be anything."

"Ay!" a.s.sented the bearer, who had come out, duster in hand. "That is just where it comes. A body cannot say what it might or might not be.

Bala Krishna himself, for aught I know." Whereupon he salaamed; and others pa.s.sing followed suit, in jest at first, afterwards with a suspicion of gravity in their mirth, since, when all was said and done, who knew what anything was really in this illusory world?

So the rag doll held its levee that Christmas morning, and when the time came for its presentation to the _Huzoors_ there were curious eyes watching the old man as he sate with his offering on the lowest step of the silent, empty house, waiting for the master and mistress to come out into the verandah. Premoo had covered the doll's bed of withered flowers with some fresh ones, so it lay in pomp in its basket, amid royal scarlet and white and gold; nevertheless he waited till the very last, until the smallest platter of sugar and oranges and almonds had been ranged at the master's feet, ere he crept up the steps, salaaming humbly, yet with a vague confidence on his old face.