The Potter's Thumb. Flora Annie Webster Steel
Huzoor.'
'If you did not, who did?' he continued, his triumph mixed with anxiety for the future; but the old man's thoughts did duty for an answer.
'Without doubt my fathers made it; since it is an Ayôdhya pot.'
'Ayôdhya,' broke in Dan, 'that means old, Keene; you'll have to send it back. I half suspected it was valuable, from that old fox's look. But he said it was made here, the sinner! Can you make pots like that, oh! Fuzl Elâhi?'
The old man smiled. 'None can give the glaze, Huzoor, there is a pattern in it, but none can catch the design. Even I know it not; that is the secret of Ayôdhya.'
'What is he saying? What is Ayôdhya?' asked George irritably.
'Same as Hodi--old; it means here the half-forgotten heroic age. Well, as you can't get a pair, we had best be moving. Salaam! potter-ji, and don't let your thumb slip too often in the future.'
'God send it hath not slipped too often in the past,' he replied, half to himself.
An hour afterwards the two Englishmen sat on the low parapet of the canal bridge looking out over a world-circle of dusty plain, treeless, featureless, save for the shadowy mound of Hodinuggur on one side, and on the other a red brick house dotted causelessly upon the sand. A world-circle split into halves by the great canal, which eastwards towards the invisible hills showed like a bar of silver; westwards towards the invisible sea like a flash of gold, at whose end the last beams of the setting sun hung like the star on a magician's wand.
'Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink,' murmured Dan Fitzgerald discontentedly. 'Upon my soul, it must be rough on them watching it all day long, and knowing that if they could only get you to open the sluice they would get rupees on rupees from the Rajah. That's how it stands, you see. It isn't so much for their own bit of land, but for the bribe. I sometimes wish the overflow cut had been higher up, or lower down; but we had to protect the big embankment against abnormal floods. Confound the thing! what business has it to put hydraulic pressure on us all?'
'Don't feel it much as yet,' said George cheerfully, with his eyes on the palace, which was gaining an unreal beauty from the dust of ages. For the village cattle were homing to the thorn-set folds, and the cloud from their leisurely feet lay in a golden mist between the shadowed plain and the shadowed mound rising against the golden sky. A lingering shaft of light showed the white fretwork of the Diwân's tower clear against the pale purple of the potter's thatch beyond.
'Perhaps not. You will, though. The wilderness plays the dickens with civilisation sometimes.'
'Does it? I don't believe it will with mine. Not that sort. I haven't your imagination, your sensitiveness, your poetical----'
'Pull up,' said Dan, laughing. 'You'll come to my vices soon, and as I've pet names for most of them, I object to have them scientifically classified. But I wish I hadn't to leave you there.' He pointed distastefully to the red parallelogram of a house with the initials of the Public Works Department stamped on each brick like the broad arrow on a convict. 'It isn't fit for a youngster like you. But as it can't be helped, there's the key. For my sake don't let the World, the Flesh, or the Devil wheedle it out of you.'
'All right,' replied the boy, pocketing the Chubb. 'If you are engaged to be married, go and do it right off. Promotion in due course guaranteed.'
Dan Fitzgerald, looking down at the sliding water, was silent for a minute. 'You've hit the right nail on the head,' he said at last. 'That's why I'm anxious; but by the powers! your work is cut out for you if you are to keep me from getting into hot water.'
'It isn't the water that does it,' muttered George, as they strolled off to dinner, 'it's the spirits.'
That was the truth in more senses than one. George had been living with his superior officer for two months at headquarters, and his cool, clear head had noted the fascination which stimulants of all kinds had for Dan's excitable nature. But he had said nothing, after the manner of men. Therefore it came as a surprise even to himself when that evening something made him say hurriedly--
'Better not, Fitzgerald; you've a long ride before you.'
Dan, his hand on the whisky bottle, paused, surprised in his turn; but George seemed to feel that key in his pocket outline itself against the thumping of his heart.
'Are you afraid I won't leave you any?' asked the elder quickly. 'I'll send you a bottle by post, if that's it. Come! hands off, youngster; don't be a fool! That's enough.'
The angry red was not on his cheek only. It had spread to the boy's, as he stood back in a sudden flare of utterly unexpected dignity.
'Quite enough, Mr. Fitzgerald. 'I've been your guest for two months, I know; but you are mine now. This is my house, and that's my bottle. I'll trouble you to put it down.'
For an instant it seemed on its way to the speaker's head; then it was pushed aside scornfully; the next Dan held out his hand.
'Thanks. No one has taken that trouble for years. What made you do it?'
But the English boy's shame at his own impulsiveness was on George now, and he laughed uneasily. 'I--I believe it was that confounded key,' he began. Dan's smile was transfiguring.
'God bless the boy!' he cried, with the ring of tears and laughter in his rich brogue. 'So you're the Keeper of the Key of the King's conscience, are you? The saints protect you; for see! your sort don't know mine. We leave off the effort after virtue where you begin, and I spend more solid holiness in refusing a glass of sherry than you do in keeping all the Ten Commandments. Sure the sun's got into my head, and I must be off to the water cure.'
He was out of the room, out of the house, standing on the bridge abutment and stripping as for dear life before George caught him up breathlessly and asked if he were quite mad.
'Not yet!' came the joyous voice. 'I'm going to swim up stream till I'm beat, and come down with the current--an epitome of my life!'
The rapid Indian twilight had fallen into night, but the moon had risen, and the air was warm with tho first touch of spring which in Northern India treads close on the heels of the new year. Fitzgerald pausing for a second showed like a white statue on the buttress; then his curved body shot into the shadow with the cry--
'I come, Mother of All!'
Tristram's cry when he sprang to 'the sea's breast as to a mother's where his head might rest,' thought George, watching with the vague anxiety inseparable from the disappearance of life beneath the water. Ah! there he was--safe; turning his head to call out 'Don't wait, please! Tell the syce to have the mare ready for me in half an hour.'
Yet George did wait, watching the arrowy ripple cleaving the steel-grey path which led straight up to the steel-grey sky where the stars hung sparkling. If, he thought, they were reflected in the still water ahead as they were in the still water below the bridge, Dan must feel as if he was swimming in the ether!
Decidedly, imagination was catching. George Keene was reminded of the fact again as he stood looking over to the mound of Hodinuggur, and listening to the last echo of the horse's hoofs bearing Dan away from the wilderness. There was a light in the Diwân's tower, another in the potter's hut. He wondered vaguely which was really the highest; then, to check such idle thoughts, began on the first duty of youth in a foreign land--home letters.
'Dear father,' he wrote fluently, 'I arrived at Hodinuggur, my headquarters, to-day. It is----'
Half an hour afterwards he tore up the sheet angrily and went to bed.
CHAPTER II
It was band-night in the public gardens; mail night also; a combination of dancing and picture papers, ensuring a large attendance in the big hall, which