The Hosts of the Lord. Flora Annie Webster Steel
of pneumonia! Those are the facts. I don't profess to understand them; and as I told you I don't want to. It's dangerous. As that cracked old Jesuit, Father Narâyan, admitted, with that unfathomable smile of his, when all the other parsons were at me for refusing to allow them access to a postulate or a catechumen, or someone of that sort, who was sent to my jail 'the Church has always admitted the value of invincible ignorance.'"
"Father Narâyan!" interrupted Lance Carlyon eagerly, "I suppose that's the Father Ninian Bruce who has lived here fifty years, and has a sort of Begum in tow, a descendant of General Bonaventura's, who was the Nawabs' favourite. I want to see that old chap; he must be a character. My grandmother, old Lady Carewe, used to tell me about him; long yarns, though she hadn't met him since she was in her teens in a convent at Rome, and he was father confessor, I suppose--she's a Holy Roman, you know, and was a desperate flirt too."
"So am I," said Vincent Dering quickly. "I mean a Catholic--at least my people are. So I can tell you one thing, Dillon; Father Ninian isn't a Jesuit. I was talking about him at the Club, when I knew I was coming here, and Father Delamere was indignant at the idea--said he was a disgrace to his cloth."
George Dillon's dry face grew dryer. "Did he, indeed! I quite agree that he is, but I didn't think Delamere would have admitted the fact himself! As for Pidar Narâyan, as the natives call him, he--he--" here the dry face melted. "Bless the man," he continued, and the dry voice grew soft, "he thinks he knows more about doctoring than I do, and the worst of it is--" here a perfectly charming smile took possession of every wrinkle--"he does, in a way; for the natives believe in him, and the 'saffron bag' is the best of all remedies. You see, when he was younger, he used often to go with the pilgrims and try to pull some of the poor devils out of the fire--or rather out of the snow--for the 'Cradle of the Gods' lies yonder."
He pointed to where, faint and far, a peak showed paler than the rest.
"Why don't they smear themselves here?" asked Lance stolidly.
"Why? Because they don't. Besides, there isn't much to come and go upon for a robe of righteousness here. Look! the breeze is blowing it away already!"
In truth the sun, which with the other three elements of earth, and air, and water, give us, in all religions, the whole spiritual life of man,--the world of his probation, the heaven of his hopes, the means of his purification, and the fire of his retribution--had scorched the fine film to dust, and the wind, blowing where it listed, was sweeping it away, leaving the sand stretches unregenerate as ever.
"An extra touch of pipe-clay!" laughed Vincent Dering, dusting his knee as he settled himself in his saddle. "Well! good-by, old chap. I shall see you again soon, for I shall be coming over to the Smiths' pretty often, and I suppose your regiment of ruffians leaves you off duty sometimes. Carlyon, make Dillon an honourary member of the headquarters mess!"
George Dillon, leaning with his hands in his pockets against the rail of the first pontoon, watching the little cavalcade start, nodded. "Thanks. I'm over pretty often at the Palace. Pidar Narâyan plays the fiddle, and the Begum,--as you call her,--Miss Laila Bonaventura, has a voice. Besides, Babylon--I mean Eshwara--amuses me."
"Why Babylon?" asked Captain Dering, stooping to straighten his stirrup.
The doctor laughed, as his lounge changed to a start homeward. "Means the same thing. Esh-dwarra--or in another tongue, Bab-y-lon,--is 'the Gate of God,' though Babylon stands for something else nowadays, doesn't it? That's why I say it's never any use to find out the meanings of things. They change so. Stick to facts; they don't. Well, ta-ta. I'll see you to-morrow, most likely, at the Palace. They have a sort of concert-practice-afternoon on Wednesdays--some of the Mission ladies sing jollily in parts--and the old man is sure to ask you. He sets great store on his ward's position; besides, I told him you were a nailer at the piano."
Vincent Dering made a wry face. "The deuce you did! My dear fellow, I couldn't play hymn tunes to save my life. I shall refuse."
"Pity," replied Dr. Dillon over his shoulder, as he swung off in strides which emphasized the undue shortness of his trousers, "for I heard Mrs. Smith say they wanted a good accompanist. She sings alto--rather well."
"Oh, does she?" said Captain Dering, in a different tone.
As they set their faces different ways, there was a smile on both, but the doctor's was scarcely a pleasant one; it would, in fact, have been wholly sardonic but for the touch of impatient weariness it brought with it.
So, through the sun-bright, sun-dried air, while George Dillon walked back to his fifteen hundred malefactors, the little trail of spear-points and bayonets, men and horses, drifted at a foot-pace across the frail bridge towards the town; drifted unsteadily, the yielding boats swaying, the wooden girders giving and groaning over their burden. Seen so, with but a plank between it and the milky water creased by the faint current, there was something unreal in the gay troop of colour and glitter making its way to the quaint, storeyed town, ablaze in the sunlight, which turned each golden temple-spike to a star. A cool breeze fluttered the lance-pennants, and brought that faint film of white to horse and man, warm flesh, and cold steel.
And far away on that pale peak, a little white cloud had rested, hiding the "Cradle of the Gods."
"There must be fish here," remarked Lance dogmatically. "I'll get out my rods to-morrow and try for a 'mahseer.'" And the earnestness of his face, as he lifted his eyes skyward to watch a couple of cormorants, would have suited a knight-errant of old on the quest of the Holy Grail.
"It won't be half bad, I expect--for a time, at any-rate," assented Vincent Dering, still with that content upon his face. "We will get up some fun while the camp is here, of course; and after that--" he paused, and the content became greater--"we'll manage for the month or so we have to stop. At least I shall."
His voice was soft. He might have been another knight-errant of old, riding across to the enchanted castle of his beloved.
"I beg pardon, sir," said a voice behind him; a voice with a strong native accent, yet with a curiously English phrasing in it, "but by dismounting here you will reach the Fort in a few minutes on foot. The road is longer."
Captain Dering turned, as if surprised, to the speaker, a native officer who sat his horse at the salute; then smiled, and with a clatter of accoutrements slipped to the ground.
"Come along, Carlyon. I was forgetting that Roshan Khân is up to the ropes here. You belong to Eshwara, don't you, risaldar sahib?"
The man to whom he spoke had slipped from his saddle also, and stood, smart as uniform could make him, still as discipline could hold him. He was a good-looking young Mahomedan of about thirty, curiously English in his movements, curiously native in his exaggeration of martial airs.
"Huzoor!" he assented. "We are connected with the late Nawab's house."
He spoke with absolute indifference, but Captain Dering, as they left the bazaar, which led from the bridge, for a short flight of steps and a narrow alley cleaving it's way through crowded, shouldering houses, remarked aside:--
"I believe that means he is about the nearest relation left. The Colonel, I know, wasn't sure about the wisdom of his coming here; but then the Colonel is that sort. So I insisted. One wants somebody who can tell you things in a new place. What's that, in there, Roshan?"
They had come to a long, high wall, with trees showing above it, which stretched away on their right hand for two or three hundred yards, until it ended in an arched tunnel through a massive block of buildings at right angles to it.
"The palace garden, sir; and that is the palace. There is no entrance this side."
"The women's apartments, I suppose?"
"Huzoor," assented Roshan Khân once more. "The Miss Sahib lives there now, and the Padré has his chapel there too. The river runs along the side, and it is pleasant."
"Pleasant and cool," echoed Lance, as the shadow of the tunnel closed in on them. "I'd no idea it was so hot outside. By Jove! what a quaint place."