PROLOGUE

The new year was already some hours old, but the world to which it had come was still dark. Dark with a curious obscurity, that was absolutely opaque yet faintly luminous, because of the white fog which lay on all things and hid them from the stars; for the sky above was clear, cold, almost frosty.

That was why the fog, born, not of cool vapour seeking for cloud life among the winds of heaven, but of hot smoke loving the warmth of dust and ashes, clung so closely to the earth; to its birthplace.

It was an acrid, bitter smoke, not even due to the dead hearthfires of a dead day, since they—like all else pertaining to the domestic life of India—give small outward sign of existence, but to the smouldering piles of litter and refuse which are lit every evening upon the outskirts of human habitation. Dull heaps with a minimum of fire, a maximum of smoke, where the humanity which has produced the litter, the refuse, gathers for gossip or for warmth.

Even in the fields beyond the multitude of men, where some long-limbed peasant, watching his hope of harvest, dozes by a solitary fire, this same smoke rises in a solid column, until—beaten down by the colder moister air above—it drifts sideways to spread like a vast cobweb over the dew-set carpet of green corn.

So it was small wonder if here, at Nushapore, with its fifty thousand and odd dwellers in cantonments, its two hundred and odd thousand dwellers in the town, the smoke fog hid earth from heaven; hid even the steady coming of day.

For it was close on dawn. The most silent, most restful hour of an Indian night, yet one still holding that vague sense of life and movement inseparable from an environment in which there is no set time for sleeping or waking; in which folk gossip all night, and sleep all day, should the humour so take them.

It had so seized on some one, apparently, this New Year's night, for two voices rose, not in whispers, but monotone, from one of the verandahs in Government House—rose insistently, until, from within the closed doors, came a sharp though drowsy order for silence—

'Chupra'o!'

The voices ceased; such orders, even when drowsy, must be obeyed, since they come from the master: at any rate, till he sleeps again.

So the minutes slipped by. Upon the round rim of the level wheatfields beyond the smoke, the violet sky above the cobwebs faded to grey at the sun's approach. The fog round Nushapore grew whiter, more luminous.

Then the voices began again; monotonous, insistent. Were they, in old-world fashion, beguiling the reality of darkness with legends of some heroic age of light? Were they, more modernly, making that reality darker by taking thought for the morrow, and discussing, say, the depreciation of the rupee? Or were they dreamers still, though wakeful, and were they discoursing of equality and the rights of the individual? Such theories are to be heard nowadays even in this Indian smoke fog.

'Chupra'o, you brutes, or—'

The threatening voice paused as a dull reverberation shivered through the chill air. It was the first gun of the Imperial salute which every New Year's morning proclaims that Victoria, Kaiser-i-hind, reigns over the fog, and the voices in it.

Now, when a hundred and one guns, each with its message of mastery, stand between a man and his sleep, what use is there in commanding silence elsewhere?

So the threat ceased, and between the beats of the guns the voices had their say unchecked.

About what?

That is a difficult question to answer, when the voices are in the night.

CHAPTER I

THE TOTALISATOR

'What's the big blackboard with white sums?' asked little Jerry Arbuthnot.

Jack Raymond, who was holding the child's hand, looked down at the six-year-old figure in the natty riding-suit so like his own, save for the racing silk which he himself wore half-hidden by a covert coat.

'It is the map of India,' he began, then pulled up at the sight of Jerry's face. 'You shouldn't believe everything you're told, young man—it hampers the sense of humour! No, Jerry, that's the totalisator—a calculating machine for doing sums in the compound rules. Ask Miss Drummond if it isn't?'

The girl thus challenged let the cool disdain, which is nowadays so often the prevailing expression of young womanhood for manhood, become slightly more aggressive.

'It is a betting machine, Gerald—'

'Don't profane the word, Miss Drummond,' interrupted the man. 'Betting is a bracing mental exercise. You back your opinion to be right against fixed odds. But this five-rupee-in-the-slot-trust-in-Providence business is a demoralising compromise. You stand neither to win nor lose.'

'Then, please, what does come to the five wupees?' asked Jerry urgently.

'Practical boy!' commented Jack Raymond with a laugh. 'It is "as you was" generally; for you see, Jerry, the world backs the favourite as a rule. It likes to follow a lead! And, if you divide the total of the tickets by their number, it's poor fun! So take my advice, young man; when you totalise, go for a rank outsider and stand to collar the lot!'

Lesley Drummond, being the child's governess, frowned. 'I see your mother arriving, Gerald,' she said, 'and we were to join her at once. Come!'

But Jerry held his new-found friend fast by the hand. 'You come too,' he petitioned, 'my mother is just an orful nice person.'

There was a moment's pause, during which the child's grip on the man tightened, before the latter replied, 'I know that, Jerry; your mother and I are old friends; but I have only time to see you safe across the green. I'm up in this race.'

'I used to wide waces when I was in India once,' began the child, when Lesley cut him short.

'You never rode a race in your life, Gerald, and I can't allow you to say that you have.' Then she turned suddenly, in the purely impersonal confidence of grievance, to the stranger beside her (for they had only just been introduced to each other), and said, 'I can't think why, but ever since Gerald landed in Bombay, just a week ago, he has had a bad habit of claiming to have done all sorts of things he never could have done. Lady Arbuthnot thinks it is because the child really does remember India a little. You see he was past four when he went home. But that,' she added magisterially, with a frown for the culprit, 'does not excuse telling stories—does it?'

The man's blue eyes, so curiously overshadowed by thick bushy fair eyebrows, sought the child's cool grey ones, and a sudden reflection of the perplexed obstinacy he saw in them came to his own.

'How the deuce do you know he hasn't?' he muttered, half to himself. 'This isn't England, where you can bet your last dib on certainties.' Then he looked at the immaculate white collar and cuffs of the figure in a tailor-made coat and skirt beside him, and gave in to convention by adding resignedly, 'But you mustn't tell whackers, you know, Jerry—must you?'

'I don't!' protested the six-year-old. 'I weally thought I had. But I will, anyhow, when I'm big. An' I'll bet wif the bookies evewy time, Mr. Waymond, like you do.'

That glance at the collar and cuffs showed guilt in it this time. 'Not a bit of it,' said the conscious sinner stoutly. 'You'll be a mighty big swell like your father, Sir George—'

'Please, they call my daddy "His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor" now,' interrupted Jerry, 'and his salute is twenty-one whole guns. They made an orful booming at the wailway station. But I liked it. An' the twoops pwesented arms to him to-day at the Queen's pawade—didn't they, Miss Dwummond?'

'Of course, dear! As Lieutenant-Governor, your father is entitled to these honours,' replied Lesley, head in air.

'Of course!' echoed the man beside her, making her, in her turn, glance at him, and wonder if contempt or envy brought that odd note to his voice. Either way, she admitted reluctantly, he would have carried such honours bravely; but then so would have half the Englishmen she had seen since landing at Bombay. The environment of India had a trick of giving an air of distinction to the Anglo-Saxon.

Radical as she was, inevitably, seeing that she had led the life of a definitely independent woman in England for six years, she felt a sneaking satisfaction as she walked across the enclosure with the tall spare man, whose haggard face looked still more haggard above his gay racing colours.

The afternoon sun sent blue-black shadows behind them. The golden glory in front of them lay lavishly on the shifting kaleidoscope of many-hued dresses. To one side, the pipers of a Highland regiment strutted their floating tartans through a pibroch. To the other, rose white mess-tents decorated with flowers and bunting, each centring its knot of crowding, colourful guests.

But the densest, most colourful crowd gathered round the totalisator which stood between the first and second-class enclosures, so that the sergeants in uniform could attend at the same time to both its five-rupee board fronting the grand stand and its one-rupee board giving on the mixed multitude; could attend even to the slender dark hands which sometimes stretched over the barrier with five rupees in their palms, and a petition to be allowed the higher stake. Hands unable to grasp the fact that five lesser gains may equal one greater gain; an inability provocative of much needless discontent all over the world.

Lesley Drummond's eyes, as she walked across the lawn, grew dazzled at the unusual glitter and colour of the crowd, her ears grew confused by the gamut of civilisation struck by the varying costumes. There, was the first note of Western influence in a pair of patent-leather shoes; yonder, the last echo of the East in a white turban above a frock coat.

'It's a queer crowd,' said Jack Raymond suddenly, as if in explanation of her look. 'And I could tell you a lot of queer tales. That man, for instance'—he nodded after a burly figure in a tinsel biretta which had just thrust a flabby waxen hand at him with a liquid Persian compliment on the New Year—'is the biggest brute in India. A Delhi pensioner by rights, but he does Buckingham here to the Rightful Heir, that young sweep to the left, in cloth of gold.'

'Rightful Heir!' echoed Lesley captiously, 'rightful heir to what?' Anglo-Indians in her limited experience oscillated between supposing her crassly ignorant or absolutely omniscient; and either treatment annoyed her, for she was accustomed to consider herself, and be considered, thoroughly well informed.

'The whole caboodle,' replied Jack Raymond tolerantly. 'You see there were kings in Nushapore—'

'I know that, of course!' she interrupted impatiently, 'but do they still claim?'

'Great Moses! Claim? Nushapore is a vox clamavi, chiefly to mutiny pensions which, being mortgaged up to the hilt, are of no use to any one but the usurers. But they will generally lend the bankrupts enough for the entrance-fee to the races, so of course they come here in crowds.'

'Why?' asked the girl, feeling herself a mere mark of interrogation.

'It's a change from betting on cocks and kites. Besides, there's the position.'

'What position?' she asked, with a prayer for patience.

He laughed easily. 'All races are equal on a course, Miss Drummond; and a racecourse is, practically, the only place where the native meets us on equal terms. Look! there's the biggest brute in Asia elbowing Mrs. Member-of-the-Board Collins at the totalisator! If he tried it on elsewhere, some one would kick him, and quite right too.'

Lesley's disdain became active, though she told herself the remark was only to be expected from 'that type of man.'

'May I ask why?' she said superbly.

'Because it is contrary to his own estimate of the proprieties, and it is impossible to be virtuous on another person's decalogue, isn't it?' he replied coolly; then, ere she had time to reply, went on: 'There are a lot of chaps want kicking in this crowd, I can tell you. For instance, do you see that man buttonholing the Rightful Heir?'

'With the red tie?' she asked, feeling interested in spite of herself. 'Is he English?'

'God forbid!' said her companion piously. 'Grecian Archipelago, I should say for choice; but he won't let on. Anyhow, he's a merchant; wheat, diamonds, dust, bones—everything out of which he can screw a pice. And Jehân Aziz, the Rightful Heir, has the finest table emerald in the world—the old king's signet-ring. Now I don't mind betting it will be in Paris before the year's out.'

'In Paris!—why in Paris? I don't understand—nobody could be expected—nobody could understand,' protested Lesley.

Jack Raymond smiled. 'Filthy Lucre—his real name is Philip Lucanaster—does, I assure you, Miss Drummond! He knows that heirlooms always pay debts of honour.' He paused to lift his cap elaborately to a well-dressed fair woman who passed with a tall dark man, whose face had a wistful look. 'There's a case in point,' he went on carelessly. 'That fellow—he is a pure-bred Brahmin, Miss Drummond—is paying his heirlooms through the nose because he contracted a debt of honour in marrying an Englishwoman. She has made him sacrifice home, friends, relations; prints his cards Mr. and Mrs. Chris Davenant—his real name is Krishn Davenund—and so tries to hang on to the frayed edge of society'-he glanced at an effusive greeting between the lady in question and Mr. Lucanaster.

'Poor thing!' ejaculated Lesley with the wholesale defence of all things feminine which belongs to her type. 'What a terrible experience for her—'

'And for him,' retorted her companion drily. 'Matrimonial mistakes, though women will not recognise the fact, come inevitably in pairs.'

Apparently there was some suggestion in his own words, for he looked ahead hastily, and finding himself closer to an advancing group than he wished to be, told Jerry he must be off, and turned back towards the paddock.

'Who was that, Lesley?' asked Lady Arbuthnot, who, with her husband, formed the centre of that little knot of advancing notables. She was a beautiful woman, beautifully dressed, and with the beautiful manners which a perfectly calm consciousness of beauty always gives to a woman. Her soft voice softened still more as she spoke to her child's governess; so there was small wonder that the latter's face, as she replied, told yet one more tale of modern girlhood—the tale of one woman's blind hero-worship of another.

'A race steward. Jerry took a violent fancy to him and I didn't! But he said he knew you—a Mr. Raymond—'

A faint echo of the name was checked on Grace Arbuthnot's lips by a greeting to a new arrival, which, when she returned to the subject, lent them the continuance of a set smile of welcome.

'Yes! I knew him very well years ago. I shall be glad to meet him again.' The faint unreality which previous rehearsal gives, even to truth, was in her voice.

'He's up in this wace,' quoted Jerry sagely, 'or he'd have come, for he said you was orful nice. Oh, mum! do be quick, or we shan't see him win.'

'Win? How do you know he's going to win, sonnie?' asked Grace Arbuthnot, and there was no unreality in her voice now, only a slightly troubled curiosity.

''Cos he will,' answered the child in childish fashion; whereat his mother flushed faintly, but smiled also.

Jerry was a good prophet. Five minutes after, he was dancing on his chair, as crimson and gold came in first. 'Oh! did you see, mum?' he cried. 'He was quite quite first.'

Lady Arbuthnot held out her hand to steady the child, and her voice seemed to need support also. 'Of course I saw, dear; and I am glad.'

'So's every one, Lady Arbuthnot,' said young Nevill Lloyd—captain by virtue of his A.D.C.-ship—who stood behind her. 'Raymond is our most popular win.'

It seemed so by the cheer which rose as the winners went by.

'I suppose he has won a lot of money,' sniffed Lesley, noting the rider's pleased face.

'Not a penny, Miss Drummond!' protested the young fellow. 'Raymond is only on the saddle when he rides another chap's horse, as he's doing to-day; and it is safer, you know.'

'I do not know, Captain Lloyd,' she retorted loftily. 'I know nothing about horse-racing. Why is it safer?'

He coughed uneasily. 'Ah! I thought you would know, you know, and it's a bit hard to explain. You see, Indian racing is sometimes a trifle odd—considering, I mean, that we are all gentlemen—or supposed to be so. But Raymond,' here he brightened up, 'is always a straight win. That's why Lucre and his crew—'

He stopped short as one of a group of men, amongst whom Mr. Lucanaster showed conspicuous by his red tie, paused in the general exodus to answer a bystander's question.

'Luck? How the deuce is any one to have luck when you can't get a fair bet placed? Even the Devil's Own didn't get on with His Royal Highness.'

Mr. Lucanaster acknowledged another of his nicknames by a lavish smile. 'There is faith as mustard in Raymond among our nigger friends,' he said, with the eccentricity of accent and idiom which, following him into every language he knew, made his nationality an insoluble problem. He glanced back as he spoke towards a cluster of native gentlemen who, following a lead as ever, were also making their way from the stand. The similarity of their oval yellow faces, their thin curves of moustache trained to a fine sweep above the full betel-stained lips, proclaimed them of the same family; but Lesley singled out the Rightful Heir by his cloth-of-gold coatee, and by something which, rather to her own surprise, thrilled her unexpectedly—a green gleam of sovereignty on the small supple hand raised in a salaam of servitude as its owner passed the Lieutenant-Governor and his party.

'I'm always glad,' continued Nevill Lloyd virtuously, when Lucre and his crew are hit! They get betting with the Nawâbs and offering 'em drinks. Shocking bad form—by the way, Miss Drummond, come to our tent and have a peach-brandy!'

Lesley, with another trait of the modern girl—her toleration of the male sex up to the age of twenty-five—laughed good-humouredly. 'It isn't bad form with a lady, apparently, for that's the fifth peach-brandy I've been offered in half an hour!'

'Well! aren't there five tents? And you haven't been to ours,' argued the lad quite gravely. 'Do come! It needn't be a peach-brandy, you know. Have tea, or a chocolate caramel, just to show there isn't any ill-feeling.'

She smiled in sisterly fashion at his kindly, clean-looking young face, and—Jerry having gone with his father—passed with it into that marvellous golden glory of Indian sunshine which still struck her Western eyes as the most noticeable factor in her Eastern environment. The rest, barring the native costumes, was hopelessly Western, she told herself, as she stood listening to the scraps of talk around, while Nevill Lloyd struggled for her cup of tea. Polo talk, polite talk, political talk; then something she could not classify as two natives drifted by with an air of aloofness.

As they did so a plaintive woman's voice rose close to her. 'I shall send baby home, as we've been transferred to Cawnpore.'

'Isn't she rather young?' said some one in answer.

'Oh! it isn't that,' replied the first voice, 'I mean that I couldn't take a child to Cawnpore. I should always be thinking of the well!'

Always thinking of the well!

The words brought home to Lesley Drummond in an instant—a never-to-be-forgotten instant—that something which so often chills the golden glory of the Eastern sunshine, that vision of the sentinel of memory which, for both races, bars the door of reconciliation that might otherwise stand open for comradeship.

She had read books on that past tragedy, she had told herself that it was past, that it should be forgotten; and now—