The Hosts of the Lord. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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gave time for an elaborate wink of a wicked old eye. Possibly this was due to the smoke, for the old voice went on as before almost dolorously.
"He had the money-bags, you see, and looked after the rents. But my master, Bun-avatâr--lo! thou shouldst have seen him when he came first--the picture of a man!--they say he was a prince in his own country, but fell into trouble; so came to make his fortune here with Pidar Narâyan--was called Wazeer. And let me tell thee, Gu-gu, it means something to be body-servant to a Wazeer! Lo! to think I might have been it still but for that jade, Anâri Begum!"
Despite the epithet, he smiled, and his pipe this time gave out quite a chuckling sound.
"As ill to keep within walls as a butterfly!" he muttered. "Up and down the garden, in and out the balconies, and the Nawab in two minds to use force, or put her in a sack. For she flouted him. The prettiest ones play that game for power always, and she was Walidâd, her brother's, last hope of favour. Walidâd, Kanjara, who had been king's caterer for years before my master, Bun-avatâr-sahib, came to make all the court cry sour buttermilk! Walidâd, who had once stood so high, that, in a drunken bout, the Nawab promised him his half-sister to wife. And he got her too! She wept on her wedding day, but we in the lower storey heeded not tears in the upper. For, see you, mine uncle was chief eunuch--we kept the honour thus in the family from generation to generation--so I was in and out, seeing what went on. Until somehow (mine uncle with the bowstring round his neck--as was right, honest man--swore he knew not how) Bun-avatâr-sahib caught a sight of her! Some say it was a plot, from beginning to end, of Walidâd's; others that his enemies feared lest Anâri should succeed. There be balls within balls, even in a plaything, if the workmen are cunning! Anyhow, he saw her.
"And I, his body-servant, was able to come and go where Pidar Narâyan hath made his church nowadays. But there! what matters it? 'Tis all one. Love and the Faith are in and out of men's minds like a shelldrake in weedy water; a body cannot tell which way its head may be and which its tail! Nevertheless I felt a choke at my throat, Gu-gu, many a time, as I waited for him in the boat below the balcony; yet in the end, it was not my throat, but mine uncle's. He died in the faith, Gu-gu, cursing women. His head was that way at the last!--'Tis mostly so--he--he--"
The chuckle of his pipe was fiendish, yet his wizened face was wistful. "Still, God knows, one could scarce look on at such a wooing, and not beat the drum in time, as musicians to a dancer. And it runs in our blood, see you, to watch, and beat the drum. That is our profession; and, by mine ancestors! I deemed it enough for mortal man. But Bun-avatâr-sahib, see you, was not of our race. He was of Italy wilayat and a prince. So, one day, my liver dissolved hearing that the butterfly was over the walls! But, as I said, it was mine uncle's neck, not mine. Yet the game ended for me when Bun-avatâr-sahib died."
"They poisoned him, folk say; is't true?" asked Gu-gu. It was a point in the oft-told tale which was still discussed by Eshwara gossips.
"That is other folks' news, not mine," replied Akbar, discreetly. "May be, may be not. The Huzoors, anyhow, sent the Nawab to die in Calcutta on a pinson[2] for it; but they have ever an excuse to take land! Pidar Narâyan had a hard fight to keep Bun-avatâr-sahib's grants--the Nawab was ever generous to his favourites, look you--for Anâri Begum's baby; ay! though he showed a writing of marriage, and had made the infant Christian after their habit. Still he got them, land and palace and all. So I stayed on serving my master's child, and when she died, her child, the Miss-baba, even to the haggling for fish. Lo! slave! it grows late. Give it to me and have done with it--Thou wilt not. Oh! for the devil that was in her grandmother Anâr to be in this Miss-baba, and for her to come to Bun-avatâr-sahib's rights as Wazeer--then would there be loppings and--"
"Or if Roshan Khân should come to his," sneered Gu-gu. "The canal sahib's ayah was telling me thou didst prostrate thyself in the dust as if he were indeed Nawab! Have a care! eunuch-jee, the police are agog nowadays to find disloyalty even in newspapers."
"May her gossiping tongue be slit!" stuttered the old retainer. "Can a body not do obeisance to his masters? For look you, Roshan is true grand-nephew to the Nawab through his grandmother, Walidâd's wife--ay! and for that matter, cousin to the Miss, through Anâri Begum, Walidâd's sister! I did but welcome him; I did but my duty--I did but show my manners--I did but what we have done from generation to generation." He moved away muttering, full of virtuous resentment that a suspicion of anything save sheer servility should have been imputed to him. After a lifetime of trucklings and bootblackings, to be credited with higher motives was too bad. To prove his innocence he would that very evening, he told himself, seek out Roshan, not at the Fort,--that might be misunderstood,--but at his grandmother's. His grandmother, who, though she had been upstart Walidâd's wife, was still the late Nawab's half-sister! His sister!! What could be nearer than that!!!
And he would prostrate himself again, and assure the family of his services. That was his birthright.
Meanwhile Gu-gu looked after him, and laughed. He was a clever fellow, was Gu-gu, and in a previous generation of scholars had been pet pupil in a little school started by another Miss from another Missen. He had got pennies for attending it, which had come in useful before he was big enough to face the river.
But now he was the best man on either the Hara or the Hari, save one. And he?
Gu-gu's beady black eyes, watching the curve of the current mechanically, gave a sudden flash. He was on his feet in a second. There was something dipping, diving, sidling, drifting, out yonder which might be secured for his wigwam before anyone else saw it! But as, silently, like a seal's, his black head came up from his first forge under water which was to give him a fair start from the shore without even a splash to attract notice, another black head showed to the right of him, a yard or two behind.
But it was his head! Am-ma's head! Am-ma, the frog-like, Am-ma, whose wide hands and feet looked as if webbed in the water. Am-ma, the only man who could touch him. He set his teeth, gave up silence, and surged ahead with an overhand stroke, his hand seeming to clutch and hold the water. It was a faster stroke than Am-ma's; for a time the swifter. Then with a backward glance he drew a quick breath, knowing it would be a race indeed, for the black head had gone, and only a faint wale on the smooth water told where his rival, avoiding the slight resistance of the air, swam like a fish. Dangerous tactics for most men, ending often in a sudden collapse, bleedings from nose and ears, or, at least, time lost in coming to the surface. But Am-ma was not as other men. Half-witted, except in river lore, uncouth, misshapen, he was practically amphibious.
Gu-gu ground his teeth impotently as the faint wale crept up and up. The man must have air in his stomach like a fish! Ah! if the river had been in flood, if this had been a race with air bladders, indeed,--one black head of inflated skin under each arm, and your own in the middle--the issue would have been certain; for no one, in the whole tribe, knew the backward rip of a knife from below which would leave a rival helpless, lopsided, bound to seek safety on shore, so well as Gu-gu! But it was not flood time, so he must risk all. Like a porpoise at play the curve of his dark back disappeared, and now there were two wales upon the water side by side.
And ahead, sidling, dipping, diving to the current was a deodar log with the broad arrow of government on it, now visible, now out of sight.
It was a question of steering; steering without eyes, steering by instinct, steering by sheer experience of logs and their ways, of the meeting currents of the two rivers and their ways.
And over against them, to the right across the broad lagoon, were low brick buildings, and a horde of fifteen hundred ruffians with fascines and earth-baskets finishing a dam that was to alter the currents, and protect the canal! They looked like swarming ants in the sunshine.
The wales were neck and neck now, side by side, straight as a die on the log. Then suddenly, the right-hand one swerved outward. Only a yard or two; a yard or two nearer to the ants in the sunshine.
A second after the log swerved also--swerved to the right. The next, two black heads rose silently; but one of them was two yards to the left of that dancing, dipping prize!
Gu-gu,