"Nay, sister, 'tis not proved," stammered Zulfkar.

"Not proved!" she went on still more pa.s.sionately. "Nay, 'tis not proved to thy neighbours, maybe, but to me? Mine eyes have seen--I know the trick--and out thou goest. I will have no such doings in my house, and so I warned her months ago. But there! what need for railing? Live on her gold an thou wiliest, it shall not c.h.i.n.k beside mine."

She sank back upon the silk coverlet again, and with a bitter laugh began to rustle the tinsel fan once more. And Zulfkar, after unavailing protests, slunk down the dark stairs, and so along the street to a certain house over the liquor-seller's shop, about which a noisy crowd gathered all day long.

And that night screams and blows came from the second storey, and unavailing curses on the mischief-maker. But if the latter heard them, she gave no sign to the approved visitors drinking sherbets in the cool upper storey with the windows set wide to the stars.

It was Zulfkar beating his wife, of course, because she was so handsome primarily; secondly, because she had been foolish enough to be found out; thirdly, because even in liquor he was sharp enough to recognise that Burfani would keep her word.

And she did. The supplies stopped from that day. Within a week the second storey lay empty, while Lazizan wept tears of pain and spite in a miserable little lodging in the very heart of the city. It is difficult even to hint at the impotent rage the woman felt towards her sister-in-law. Even Zulfkar's blows were forgotten in the one mad longing to revenge herself upon the pink-and-saffron daintiness which would not spare one crumb from a full table. For so to Lazizan's coa.r.s.e, pa.s.sionate nature the matter presented itself, bringing with it a fierce delight at the perfections of her own lover. He had deserted her for the time, it is true, but that was the way of lovers when husbands were angry; by-and-by he would come back, and there would be peace, since Zulfkar must have gold.

So ran her calculations; but she reckoned without a certain fierce intolerance which the latter shared with his sister; also somewhat prematurely on an immediate emptying of his pockets. But luck was not all against him; the cards favoured him. And so, when a few days after the flitting from the second storey, she, being sick to death of dulness, thought the time had come for self-a.s.sertion, she found herself mistaken. Zulfkar, still full of Dutch courage, fell upon her again, and beat her most unmercifully, finishing up with an intimidatory slash at her nose. It was not much, not half so serious as the beating, but the very thought of possible disfigurement drove her mad, and the madness drove her to a corner where she could plan revenge while Zulfkar slept heavily--for he was more than half drunk.

And _this_, too, was the fault of the saffron-and-rose devil in the upper storey, who had her amus.e.m.e.nt and spied upon other women's ways.

And _this_ meant days more ere she, Lazizan, would be presentable, even if she did not carry the mark to her grave, and all because that she-devil was jealous--jealous of _her_ lover!

Oh for revenge! And why not? The door was unlatched, since Zulfkar had forgotten it in his anger; the streets were deserted. Even the broad path down by the river would be asleep, the green light gone from above, only the red lamp swinging over the outer door, sending a glow.... Fire! The thought leapt to her brain like a flame itself. Why not? Zulfkar had purposely kept--all unbeknown to the she-devil--a second key to that empty second floor, and he was in a drunken sleep.

If she stole it--if she took the bottle of paraffin--if she set fire to the wooden part.i.tion separating the stairs--if she broke the red lamp and pretended that was it--

She did not stop to think. She had begun the task almost before she had thought out the details, and was fumbling in Zulfkar's pockets as he lay. And there were two bottles of paraffin in the corner; that was because he had brought one home, and the market-woman another by mistake. So much the better, so much the bigger blaze. Then out into the street, not forgetting a box of safety matches--strange companions to such a task. She knew her way well, having wandered free enough as a child before the lot was drawn, the die cast which sent her to suckle babes. Yet, being a woman beset by a thousand superst.i.tious fears, it needed all her courage ere she found herself face to face with the thin wooden part.i.tion surrounding the steep stair leading upwards. How many times had she not listened to feet ascending those unseen stairs, and heard the tinkle of laughter as the unseen door above opened?

Well, it would blaze finely, and cut off at once all means of escape.

A devilish plan indeed, and the leaping flames, ere she left them to their task, showed the face of a fiend incarnate.

And so to wait for the few minutes before the whole world must know that the saffron and the rose daintiness was doomed. No more laughter--no more lovers--that would be for her, Lazizan, not for the other with her cold sneers.

A licking tongue of flame showed for an instant and made her pray Heaven none might see it too soon. Then a crackle, a puff of smoke, next a cry of fire, but, thank Heaven, only from the broad path. And what good were the running feet, what good the shouts of the crowd in which her shrouded figure pa.s.sed unnoticed, unless the upper storey had wings? For the stairs must be gone--hopelessly gone--by this time.

More than the stairs, for with one sudden blaze the lath-and-plaster house seemed to melt like ice itself before the sheet of flame which the soft night wind bent riverwards.

And still the top storey slept, or was it suffocated? No! there was some one at the window--some one gesticulating wildly. A man--not a woman.

"Throw yourself down!" cried an authoritative foreign voice, "'tis your only chance."

Surely, since the ice melted visibly during the sudden hush which fell upon the jostling crowd.

"Throw yourself down!" came the order again; "we'll catch you if we can. Stand back, good people."

"Quick! it's your last chance," came the inexorable voice once more.

Then there was a leap, a scream--a crash, as in his despair the man overleapt the mark and fell among the parting crowd. Fell right at Lazizan's feet face uppermost.

And it was the face of the handsome stranger--of her lover.

Her shriek echoed his as she flung herself beside him. And at the sound something white and ghostlike slipped back from the window with a tinkle of laughter.

"Burfani! Burfani!" shouted the crowd. "Drop gently--we'll save you!

Burfani! Burfani!"

But there was no answer; and the next moment with a roar and a crash Vice fell upon Virtue, and both together upon the swept and garnished hall and the hall where the little girls had played.

The ice-cream house had become a blazing pile of fire.

THE SHaHBaSH WALLAH

Shahbash, Bhaiyan, Shahbash!

The words, signifying "Bravo, boys, bravo!" came in a despondent drawl from the coolie leaning against the ladder--one of those crazy bamboo ladders with its rungs tied on with gra.s.s twine at varying slants and distances, whereon the Indian house-decorator loves to spend long days in company with a pot of colour-wash and a gra.s.s brush made from the leavings of the twine.

There were two such ladders in the bare, oblong, lofty room, set round with open doors and windows, and on each was balanced a man, a pot, and a brush--all doing nothing. So was the coolie below.

He was a small, slight man, with a dejected expression. Stark naked, save for two yards or so of coa.r.s.e muslin wisped about his short hair and a similar length knotted about his middle. What colour either had been originally could not be guessed, since both were completely covered with splashes of colour-wash--blue, green, yellow, and pink.

So was his thin body, which, as he stood immovable at the bottom of the ladder, looked as if it was carved out of some rare scagiola.

For they were doing up the hospital in Fort Lawrence, and Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, of the 10th Sikh Pioneers--then engaged in making military roads over the Beloochistan frontier--had an eye for colour. Not so, however, Surgeon-Major Pringle, who that very morning had marched in with the detachment of young English recruits which had been sent to take possession of the newly enlarged fort. It was a queer mud building, looking as if it were a part of the mud promontory which blocked a sharp turn in the sun-dried, heat-baked mud valley, through which the dry bed of a watercourse twisted like the dry skin of a snake. Everything dry, everything mud, baked to hardness by the fierce sun. It was an ugly country in one way, picturesque in another, with its yawning fissures cracking the mud hills into miniature peaks and pa.s.ses, its almost leafless flowering shrubs, aromatic, honeyful, and its clouds of painted b.u.t.terflies. A country in which colour was lost in sheer excess of sunshine.

That, however, was not the reason why Surgeon-Captain O'Brien had painted his wards to match Joseph's coat. As he explained to Surgeon-Major Pringle, who, as senior officer, took over charge, it was wiser, in his opinion--especially with youngsters about--to call wards by the colour of their walls rather than by the diseases to be treated in them; since if a patient "wance found out what was really wrong with his insoide, he was sure to get it insthanter."

The Surgeon-Major, fresh from England and professional precisions--fresh also to India and its appeals to the imagination--had felt it impossible to combat such statements seriously. Besides, there was no use in doing so. The walls were past remedy for that year, and even the _post-mortem_ house--that last refuge of all diseases--was being washed bright pink; a colour which, according to Terence O'Brien, was "a nice, cheerful tint, that could not give annyone, not even a corpse, the blues."

In the course of which piece of work the small man at the foot of the ladder was becoming more and more like a statue in _rosso antico_, as he repeated: "_Shahbash, bhaiyan, shahbash!_" at regular intervals.

His voice had no resonance, and not an atom of enthusiasm about it; but, like a breeze among rain-soaked trees, it always provoked a pitter-patter of falling drops--a patter of pink splashes like huge tears--upon the concrete floor and the scagiola figure. For the words set the brushes above moving slowly for a while; then the spasm of energy pa.s.sed, all was still again, until a fresh "Bravo, boys, bravo!" was followed by a fresh shower of pink tears.

"Lazy brutes!" came a boy's voice from the group of young recruits who were enjoying a well-earned rest after having marched in fifteen miles, carrying their kits as if they had been born with them, and settling down into quarters as if they were veterans. For they were smart boys, belonging to a smart regiment, whose recruiting ground lay far from slums and sc.u.ms; one whose officers were smart also, and kept up the tone of their men by teaching them a superior tolerance for the rest of the world. "Jest look at that feller--like an alley taw. He ain't done a blessed 'and's turn since I began to watch 'im." They were seated on some shady mud steps right over against the hospital compound, and the _post-mortem_ house being separate from the wards, and having all its many windows and doors set wide, the inside of it was as plainly visible as the out.

"Rum lot," a.s.sented another voice with the same ring of wholesome self-complacency in it. "I arst one of the Sickees, as seems a decent chap for a n.i.g.g.e.r and knows a little decent lingo, wot the spotted pig was at with his everlastin' _shabbashes_, an' 'e says it's to put courage to the Johnnies up top. Not that I don't say I shouldn't cotton myself much to them ladders, that's more like caterpillars than a decent pair o' 'ouse-steps. A poor lot--that's wot they are, as doesn't know the differ in holt between a nail and a bit o' twine."

"Well, mates," said a third voice, "all I can say is that if they ain't got no more courage than _shahbash_ can put to them, it's no wonder we licks the blooming lot of them--as we does constant."

There was a faint laugh first, and then the group sucked at their pipes decisively as they watched the doings in the _post-mortem_.

Though they would have scouted the suggestion, the _shahbash wallah_ had justified his calling; for patriotism brings courage with it.

He did not trouble his head about justification, however. Some one, in his experience, always did the shouting, and it suited him better than more active occupation, for he was lame; stiff, too, in his back.

Surgeon-Major Pringle, coming in later to find the _post-mortem_ very much as it had been hours before, looked at him distastefully, and began a remark about what two English workmen could have done, which Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien interrupted with his charming smile: "Sure, sir, the sun rises a considerable trifle airlier East than West, an' that's enough energy for wan hemisphere. Besides, ye can't get on in India without a _shahbash wallah_. Or elsewhere, for that matter. Ye always require 'the something not ourselves which makes for righteousness'--"

"Makes for fiddlesticks!" muttered the senior under his breath, adding aloud, "Who the d.i.c.kens is the _shahbash wallah_ when he is at home, and what's his work?" He asked the question almost reluctantly, for his junior's extremely varied information had, since the morning, imparted a vague uncertainty to a round world which had hitherto, in Dr. Pringle's estimation of it, been absolutely sure--c.o.c.ksure!

"What is he? Oh! he's a variety of names. He's objective reality, moral sanction, antecedent experience, unconditioned good. Ye can take yer choice of the lot, sir; and if ye can't win the thrick with metaphysics--I can't, and that's the thruth--play thrumps.

Sentiment!--sympathy! Ye can't go wrong there. Ye can't leave them out of life's equation, East or West. Just some one--a fool, maybe--to say ye're a fine fellow, an' no misthake, at the very moment whin ye know ye're not. Biogenesis, sir, is the Law of Life. As Schopenhauer says, the secret that two is wan, is the--"

His senior gave an exasperated sigh, and preferred changing the subject. So at the appointed time, no sooner, no later, the last patter of pink tears fell from the brushes upon the floor of the _post-mortem_ and upon the still figure, which might have been a corpse save for its drowsy applause--"Bravo, boys, bravo!" Then the caterpillar ladders, with the decorators and the pots of colour-wash and the brushes still attached to them, crawled away, and the _shahbash wallah_ followed in their wake, his skin bearing mute evidence to the amount of work he had provoked.

His turban and waistcloth testified to it for days--in lessening variety of tint as the layers of pink, green, blue, and yellow splashes wore off--for at least a fortnight, during which time Surgeon-Major Pringle, busy in making all things conform to his ideal, constantly came across the _shahbash wallah_ bestowing praise where, in the doctor's opinion, none was deserved. What right, for instance, had the water-carriers filling their pots, the sweepers removing the refuse, to senseless commendation for the performance of their daily round, their common task?

Especially when it was so ill performed; even in the matter of punkah-pulling, a subject on which the native might be credited with some knowledge. Surgeon-Major Pringle seethed with repressed resentment for days over the intermittent pulse of the office punkah, and finally, in a white heat of discomfort and indignation, burst out into the verandah, harangued the coolie at length, and in the fulness of Western energy went so far as to show him how to keep up a regular, even swing. His masterly grasp of a till then untouched occupation not only satisfied himself but also the _shahbash wallah_, who, as usual, was lounging about in the verandah doing nothing. So, of course, his "_Shahbash, jee, shahbash_," preceded Surgeon-Major Pringle's hasty return to the office and prepared Terence O'Brien for the dictum that the offender must be sent about his business; for _if_ he was a camp-follower he _must_ have some business, some regular work.