Voices in the Night. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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why they made him caretaker; but I've reason to believe he was outside--not that it matters now! Well, his answer was: "The sahibs had nothing to do with it. It was the dead women and the dead babies. Every one knows that the strength of the strongest man is water before the ghost of a mother and child."'
They had reached the slope of that gentle hollow where, even in their bitterest stress, the living had crept obstinately, under cover of night, to lay their dead to rest in the shadow of the deserted church, and he paused to point downwards to a tall cypress and add, 'There is John Ellison's grave.'
Lesley paused too. Calm and still in the moonlight, the grassy slopes, set with flowers and blossoming shrubs, seemed to centre on that hollow of heroes' graves, as they, in their turn, centred round the plain plinth, with its marble slab under the cypress tree.
There were but two words on it--'John Ellison'--but they filled the eye, the heart, the brain.
Lesley Drummond stood looking at them silently, and Jack Raymond stood watching her, approving her silence. But Jerry, whose round childish face had a curious ghostly look on it, as if he were seeing visions, went creeping on round the plinth, his grey eyes wide; a stealthy little figure dreaming of torches and deaders and crack-bang firings over walls. But he was back in a second, his face eager, startled.
'Oh, if you please--he's quite, quite shot--lyin' there close by. Hadn't we better buwy him?'
'Bury him? who?' asked Lesley; but Jack Raymond had grasped the child's meaning, and was passing to the other side of the plinth to see for himself. Then he looked up from the figure of a man which lay on its back, its head supported on the first step of the plinth, asked a question of Budlu the caretaker in Hindustani, and finally turned reassuringly to Lesley.
'It is only an idle sweep of a loafer, Miss Drummond, who has rather a queer story. Stay! I'll wake him--Budlu reports him sober--and he will tell the story himself, I've no doubt.' As he spoke, a vigorous shake roused the sleeper to an oath, then to a stare, finally to a bland smile as he rose.
'Bin overtook by slumber, sir,' said a rich, mellow voice as (possibly in evasion of more salient faults in his personality) the owner of it began to brush away the dust and dry twigs which clung to his dirty drill-clothing. 'The w'ich we all of us shall be w'en our time comes to lie within the silent toomb--b.' He prolonged the final syllable into a reminiscent humming of a funeral hymn until his task was done. Then he looked up, and showed in the moonlight the face of a man about forty, smooth shaven, of the bulldog type, with the mobile lips of a born comedian.
'I done my level best with the job you giv' me down country, sir,' he continued affably, yet with a furtive apology lurking beneath his assurance, 'but it done no sort of dooty by me. I gone down two stone in a six weeks with them pestilential chills, so w'ot with plague follerin' famine like the prayer-book, sir, I made bold to cut back to Nushapore. I 'adn't a grave bespoke there, sir, as I 'ave here; an' so I didn't want no
"Death's bright Angel speakin' in a chord a-ga-ain."'
Once more that prolongation of the final syllable was followed by an appropriate tune.
'If you don't mend your ways, my man,' said Jack Raymond severely, 'you'll have no grave bespoke here either. The authorities won't allow----'
'Can't 'elp 'emselves, sir,' interrupted the loafer, touching the battered billycock hat which he had resumed after a careful dusting. 'It's the Queen's regulations, sir, that them as went through the siege may wait for the las' trump in an 'ero's grave beside 'is, if they choose. An', Lord love you! I do choose, for they chris'en me in token I shouldn't fear the very day 'e died.' He laid his hand on the slab.
'That was why they called you John Ellison, wasn't it?' asked Jack Raymond, with a side-look at Lesley, which the loafer appraised, for he replied coolly--
'Yes, m'lady! Mr. Raymon', 'e know the story correc'! My father died o' the drink a few days afore we come into the Garding Mound, an' my mother--savin' your presence, m'lady, she didn't 'ave bin to church with 'im through 'er real 'usband 'aving deserted 'er or died, cruel uncertain--she popped off a few days after I, so to speak, popped in. That was nigh on a nine-months' sequent. So I was through the siege, m'lady, from the beginnin', an' 'avin' no one to promise an' vow when they Holy baptismed me the day 'e died, they called me John Ellison. And an uncommon good name it is, m'lady, though I've took it to a sight o' queer places since; for I seen a deal o' life at 'ome an' abroad, as the sayin' is. Bin in a surplus chore singin' 'ymns seven year, m'lady; an' pickin' up sticks for a Aunt Sally two. Then I served my way out to see
"--the place where I was born"'--
he paused for a faint humming--'an' Mr. Raymon', good gentleman, 'e 'ave put me in to a many jobs, but only local demons; they ain't some'ow bin no sort of permanent. An'
"So the world goes round and round
Until our life with sleep is crowned--d--d."'
He was fairly afloat this time with his rich mellow voice, when Jack Raymond bid him shut up and not play the fool. Why couldn't he stick to work when it was given him?
The jauntiness disappeared in a curiously dignified dejection. 'By the Lord 'oo made me, sir,' he said contritely, 'I dun'no. I begins well; then--I--I don't! I git on the lap foolin' round them bazaars, until I 'aven't a feather ter fly with. Then 'e begin to dror me to 'im--m.' He paused again to indicate the slab, and the final syllable merged into the whole first line of 'They grew in beauty side by side.' 'Beg parding, sir,' he went on, anticipating reproof, 'but the warblin' fetches me 'ome so often, wot with penny gaffs an' such like, that it gits a continooal hold on me too frequent.'
'You'll lay hold of nothing else soon,' retorted Jack Raymond. 'You're out of work now, I suppose?'
'Jes' so, sir; ready for active service.'
'And I've a great mind to let you find it for yourself. However, you're in the Strangers' Home, I suppose, as usual?'
'As usooal, sir!' came the cheerful reply, and as they passed on, the mellow rich tenor followed them in a florid rendering of 'Home, sweet Home.' It echoed through the hollow of heroes, over the grave-set slope where the descendants of those who held the fort are allowed burial, and so passed with the little party to the gate. Here Budlu, who had followed all the time, ghostlike, silent, made some petition in Urdu, to which Jack Raymond replied with a smile.
'He said something about "Jân-Ali-shân," didn't he?' asked Lesley. 'You must excuse the curiosity, but I am naturally anxious to learn everything about India.'
'A most laudable ambition, I'm sure,' he replied drily. 'Budlu only wanted to know, Miss Drummond, if Jân-Ali-shân was going back to his grave to-night; for if not, it would be better to leave the cemetery gate open--he usually locks it at sundown.'
'Jân-Ali-shân!' she echoed aghast. 'He can't call that wretched creature--he can't think----'
Jack Raymond interrupted her. 'I don't know very much about the possibilities or impossibilities of India, though I've lived in it for twenty years; but I do happen to know that half Nushapore has a sneaking idea that the wretched creature is, well, a sort of emanation of the great John Ellison. He has the same strain, you see, of sheer devilry, pluck, ability, call it what you will--the something that makes its mark on Eastern people. And they think he comes for revenge, because, as you heard him say, he is in such a mortal funk of being cheated out of "an 'ero's grave" if he dies away from Nushapore, that he always comes back when there's trouble about. The natives are quick to notice such things. Well, he may have his tens of thousands this year.'
'You mean that the plague will come?'
'And a row, too, if we aren't careful.'
Jerry's hand tightened on Jack Raymond's. 'A weal wow, sir, with sieges and everything?'
'Sieges? Well, I don't know. What do you want sieges for, young man?'
The child's face showed confident. 'Because I want an 'ero's grave of my vewy own, like what that man's got. An' it wouldn't be dog-in-the-mangery,