Flora Annie Webster Steel

“ The old man shook his head, and a trace of hurry crept into his voice. "I give them such rest as I can, Huzoor. That is why I sat with them in heaven's healing water; but I must get to Mānasa Sarovara, or my pilgrimage will be lost--and it is not for my own soul, see you." Then he smiled brilliantly. "And this slave will reach it, Huzoor. Shiv's angels tell me so."
"Shiv's angels?" queried the doctor.
"The birds yonder, Huzoor," replied the old man gravely, pointing to the flock of fishing egrets. ”

“ Hoshyari rose also. "The Salt of the Earth cannot ride through the gate," he said--the time for dissuasion had come now. "He will only be killed in the attempt."
The Boy rounded on him instantly. "Didn't I always tell you you were the greatest scoundrel unhung? Now I've found you out, you skunk!"
"Has this slave not always said the Huzoor was as the Salt of the Earth," came the instant rapid reply. "My lord, listen! This is the Hand of Fate. Wise men bow to it. You are here, safe, alone, none know of you. Come with this slave and he will save you ..." ”

“ The desert itself could scarcely have been stiller than the camp. In the white moonlight the white tents looked like some shrouded city of the dead, forgotten yet unburied; for, here and there, some out in the moonlit open, other flecked with the fine shadow of the kikar trees, lay corpse-like figures swathed in sheets, as if waiting for their graves. There was no sound, no sign of life, not even where the moonlight, slanting through the still, wide-set wings of the drawing-room tent, showed the folds of a woman's dress, the daintiness of a high-heeled shoe. ”

“ Dinner or no dinner? Spring or no spring? And the circling dark shadows of the kites above in the blue sky were almost the only other signs of life, for Elflida Norma had found sleep the easiest way of keeping Lily-baba from the melons, and the boys slept as they slept always.
But as the sun set Imân knew that fate had decided in favour of the dinner, for Jullunder-sahib came over from the smithy with empty hands, and found hot water in his room, and the change of white raiment he carried in his knapsack laid out decorously on the bed. ”

“ The rain pelted, the thunder roared, but every time that blue brilliance filled the tent, it showed two men at work, both doing their duty nobly.
A born nurse! thought the doctor almost remorsefully, as he saw the old man moving about swiftly and remembered those blistered and bleeding feet. "They must hurt you--awfully," he said at last.
"God's healing water cools them, Huzoor," replied the old man, with a radiant smile, "I shall not be delayed in reaching the Lake of High Hope."
So the long night drew down to dawn once more, and dawn brought peace again, even to the cholera camp. ”

“ Givs'h some of--wish-dom--Shri Ganêsh--eh--what?"
When I roused again it was dawn; pale primrose dawn over a cloudless sea.
It was the strange wind that roused me, the soft, warm wind that passed over my face and sought something else--and found it. Soft as a snake the elephant's trunk found the drunken man's neck as he lay asleep, half hanging out of the cushioned howdah, and closed on it. The sight drove the blur from my mind, and in an instant I saw all things clearly.
We were on the very edge of a high cliff. Below us lay the scarce dawn-lit waters of the calm sea. ”

“ An hour or so afterwards, therefore, a yellow-legged constable escorted the goatherd who had answered to the name of Khesroo into the verandah of the Miss-Sahiba's drawing-room tent. It, also, was set wide to the cool of the desert evening, and its easy-chairs and low, flower-decked tables strewn with books and magazines struck a curiously dissonant note from that sounded by the wilderness of sandy waste which on all sides hemmed in the little square of white-winged camp with a certain hungry emptiness. ”

“ It was, if anything, shorter, but it brought them instantly into the grip, as it were, of the desert, which crept hungrily upon the camp on all sides; so that, ere they had gone five steps beyond the canvas wings of the tent, they seemed as much alone, as far from conventional twentieth-century life, as they had been two days before, when they first sat together as betrothed lovers in the sunset of a world of curves telling the tale of eternal, of unseen circlings. Even so much of Life's secret was invisible now. ”

“ The mahout, seated on the big brute's neck, turned calmly. "It is against the orders that Sri Ganêsh, King of Elephants and Lord of Wisdom, should touch carrion even of the Huzoor's."
I looked at my old friend Mahadeo with astonishment. He and I had been out on Ganêsh, the Rajah's finest elephant, scores of times, and again and again the cunning old rogue's inquisitive trunk had nosed out and up a partridge or snipe which the coolies had failed to find.
"He hath a scent like a bed of roses," old Mahadeo would say proudly, "and as for wisdom! Doth he not hold the Huzoor even as his own mahout?" ”

“ Hoshyari could have answered that question easily; he knew the strange wordless rapidity with which news travels in India; in Delhi to-day, in Peshawur to-morrow. A mystery that has passed undiscovered with the coming of telegraphs and telephones that do it for pennies and twopences.
Yes! he knew, but his task was to prevent this Angel of God from putting his life into the hands of men who, at best, were devils; as he was, himself, at bottom. He knew that also. Most men with brains did.
"It is not a lie, Huzoor," he said, simply. "These men are mutineers themselves. ”

“ Desire dies."
Listening, she turned to look, then realised that in her searching she must once more have circled back on her own footsteps, for behind and not before her, dark, clear, unmistakable, the domed shadow of the lost city lay against the lightening east. And on its swelling side, as Khesroo had stood before, he stood again. Was it the rising sun which turned the fillet of knotted cord about his head to gold?--which dyed the coarse blanketing to royal purple, and transformed the wearer into the perfect kingliness of buoyant youth and beauty? She never knew. ”

“ Couldn't anyone save her, as the wisdom of Sri Ganêsh had saved that other one?...
And then in a second I was gone. I was under the brassy blue sky of India, and from the twisted tufts of marsh-grasses by the elephant's feet came a native beater's lament--"As God sees me it is invisible--what a tyranny is here."
"Bid Ganêsh seek," said Nat Gwynne's voice, imperatively from the howdah from which we were both shooting. He was in a Lancer regiment cantooned in the native State where for many years I had been consulting engineer. ”

“ She sighed, and yet she smiled again, as the slow-circling oxen brought her husband Prema almost to her feet once more. How handsome he was, his bare head lying on the turban he had pressed into the service of a pillow. And his slender limbs! How ingeniously he had curved them on the forked seat so as to gain a comfortable resting-place! Trust Prema to make himself and everyone else in the world comfortable! A sudden leap of her heart sent the blood to dye her dark face still darker, as she thought of the softness, the warmth, the colour he had brought into her life. ”

“ Mahadeo, however, supplied the return to calm.
"The Huzoor is mast," he said to me, rapidly in low contemptuous Hindustani, turning the while to sit, immovable as ever, a mere head and trunk of a man, all else being hidden by the elephant's great shields of ears. "He is as the beasts that perish. And Ganêsh, too, nears his time of power--" he pointed to the great head he bestrode where, oozing apparently from a slight hollow in the skin a few drops of ichor showed, half hardened into amber, "so let those who would harm him--or his friends beware!" ”

“ Should he go backwards or forwards? Go on to Mānasa Sarovara, or set his face towards lower levels? Should Hope of the mind take the place of Hope of the body? Bah! he was a fool! He would be a sensible man and return. That was his last thought as he rolled himself in his hunter's blanket and lay down to sleep.
But the dawn found him plodding on in front of his two coolies towards that compelling cone of snow. He left the tent at the foot of the next ridge, and that night the last thing he saw was Orion's Sword resting upon the summit of Mount Kailāsa. ”

“ He looked at Hoshyari with dissatisfaction in his face.
"When are we going to find something worth finding out?" he asked cavalierly.
"If it is God's will, before long, Huzoor," was the reply, and there was a curious undertone of certainty about it. "Look, my lord! yonder are the buck. They are on the move already; we must hasten."
They were off at a gallop, rifles crossed on the saddle bow, over the hard white putt ground that was interspersed by ribbed drifts of fine white sand. Hoshyari sate his horse like an Englishman. ”

“ Castello's house, and, pointing with dignity to the glimmer of a hurricane lantern in the dusty darkness by the gate, said, as he produced a moth-eaten cashmere opera-cloak trimmed with moulting swansdown:
"As per previous order, the Miss-Sahiba's ayah hath appeared for her mistress, with this slave as escort."
Elflida Norma, a dancing incarnation of pure mischief, looked round angrily on the burst of noisy laughter which followed, and the pausing stamp of her foot was not warranted by the polka.
"Why you laugh?" she cried, passionately. "He is my servant--he belongs to our place." ”

“ It was old Khulâsa Khânum.
"She must be dead," he said, simply, to Aftâba's horrified disbelief. "See! She sits with face unveiled."
And she was dead. Her retaining fee had brought justice swiftly. And Lateefa?
Aftâba, when she realised the emptiness of the roof save for herself and the dead woman, wondered if it was the sight of one who belonged to it slipping downstairs from its virtue that, by its terrible confirmation of wantonness, had sent Khulâsa to seek to a higher tribunal. ”

“ Those who know India know how unscrupulous heirs can oppress a strange lone woman--ignorant, secluded; a woman whose position as wife has from the first been cavilled at, resented, impugned. It is sufficient to say that Maimuna, after a few feeble protests, found herself in the little cell under the stairs, earning a few farthings by her spinning wheel, and thankful that her great skill at it kept her from that last resort of deserted womanhood in India--the quern. ”

“ So I, knowing that the word of Jullunder Baba is even as the word of a King, unbreakable, said, 'But whither, my lord?' And he said, 'That will I show thee! Do thou as thou art bid, slave!' Now the night, as the Huzoor knows, was dark, and I grow old. So I bethought me of help, lest evil should befall. Therefore I said, 'Lo! it is not meet to go without the Army.' So these came willingly. For, see you, Protector of the Poor, we are all old, and the durshan is even as the sight of a god--it heals sin. ”

“ But few people came thither except on certain festivals; so Parbutti, still in her wedding finery, stole down to it confidently. She liked the small, dim, arched chamber where you could only see Mai Kâli as a blotch of crimson in her dark niche. And as you crept down the stairs behind that niche, and looked through the crisscross iron bars that filled up the arch, "She" showed nothing but a black shadow against the brilliance beyond. Parbutti used often to stand for an instant or two on the cornerwise landing of the stairs to look before passing up. ”

“ And beyond it, where the flap divided, was or was that not a rough image of the Elephant Headed God of Wisdom painted in hot ochres on an elephant's fore front? I was out of the blankets in a second, flinging back the tent flaps with a delirious laugh. Aye! It was true! Earth and air alike seemed blocked by a huge mass of flesh that quivered all over with delight. Come! this was something like a fever dream! To have an Indian Rajah's pad elephant to ride on--to go whither you would for a fresh breeze--to cool your brain.
"Baito, Ganêsh! Baito!" ”