Chapter II

A year is an eternity to the memory of a child. Indeed before a twelfth of one was over Sonny had ceased from suddenly, irrelevantly asking, "O Bisra! where is the Noose? Why didst not bring it back, son of an owl?" The thought seemed to have passed from his life altogether. From Bisrâm also, as he tended the child night and day, day and night, unremittingly, contentedly.

So the spring of the year returned, and with it, by one of those mysterious coincidences beyond classification, came the old desire. It came suddenly--irrelevantly it seemed to Sonny's parents--during a brief attack of fever which the changing season brought to the boy. But Bisrâm, bearer, hearing the little fretful wail, "O Bisra, where is the Noose? I want the Noose," stood silent for a moment with a scared look in his eyes, then turned them in quick appeal to his mistress, as if to ask leave for something. But she was silent also, so the old formula came gently--

"What Noose, Shelter of the World?"

That evening, however, when Harry--as his mother vainly strove to call him, now that, as she used to tell the boy fondly, he was a man and had had his curls cut--had fallen into the heavy sleep which brings so little relief, the bearer came into the study and asked for his usual yearly leave. A week might do, but leave he must have at once. True, the year was not up, but the master would doubtless remember that his slave had deferred going at the proper season last time because of Harry-sahib's illness (Bisrâm, punctilious to the least order, never forgot the child's new dignity). He did not want to lose the right season again; and so, if he went now, at once, even for a week, he would be back in time even if Harry-sahib were to be ill as he was last year, which Heaven forbid!

He was quite calm, but there was an almost pathetic entreaty in his dark eyes, so soft, so dark, that looking into them, one seemed to see nothing save soft darkness.

"Go!" commented Sonny's mother, when, moved by a vague feeling that Bisrâm meant well, his master handed on his request to the real authority. "Certainly not. I wonder he has the face to ask for leave when Sonny--I mean Harry--is down with fever. Not that it is anything, the doctor says, but a passing attack. Still, I am not going to run any risks with a strange servant. Go, indeed! It shows what his pretended devotion is worth--"

"Surely, my dear, he is devoted--"

"Oh, very! in his way. But really you spoil Bisra, Edward. Just because he can tell you things about those horrid gods and goddesses. Do you know, I really think of getting an English nurse for the child until I have--until I have to take him home," interrupted his wife, her initial sharpness of tone softening over the inevitable certainty of separation which clouds Indian motherhood. "It cannot be right to let him live in such an atmosphere of superstition and ignorance."

The magistrate, who was leaving the room, had paused at her remark about the nurse as he might have paused before a painful scene. "By Jove!" he murmured as if to himself, "I believe it would break the man's heart. I often wonder what on earth he'll do when the child has--to go home."

The inevitable lent a tremor to the father's voice also. But Bisrâm, despite the former's belief, spoke of the same separation quite calmly when, the very next morning the doctor coming early, found his little patient in the verandah getting the advantage of the fresh, bright air in Bisra's arms.

"When," asked the latter, calmly, but with that slow pathetic anxiety in his eyes, "was Harry-sahib going across the black water?"

"You think he ought to go?" said the doctor. "Why?"

"This slave does not think; he knows! The little master must go--go at once," replied the man, still calmly, though he held the child to him with a visibly closer strain. "The Huzoor himself knows how bad Hindustan is for the little ones. He must go, Huzoor, before he gets worse."

"But he is not going to get worse," said the doctor, kindly. "He is better already, and if he has another bout of fever his mother has promised to take him to the hills, so don't distress yourself."

Bisrâm's dark eyes looked wistfully into the doctor's.

"The hills? That would be worse. That would be nearer the evil. He must go far from Hindustan at once, Huzoor; and if you tell the mem this she will go--she will not mind."

"And you, Bisra?" asked the doctor, curiously.

The man's eyes flinched, but he never stirred a muscle under the blow.

"I am only the little master's bearer, Huzoor. He will not need one much longer: he grows big."

"It is only because he is in a hurry to get away himself, I verily believe," said Sonny's mother, when the doctor, also vaguely impressed with something in the man's appeal, told her of it. "You can't fathom these people. Oh! I know he wouldn't abate one atom of his care, and it is simply wonderful. All the same, I believe that just now he would be glad to be rid of the necessity for it, since it clashes with some of his religious notions. That's it, depend upon it. And I mean to let him go as soon as Sonny--I mean Harry--is better; and he really is better to-day, isn't he?"

"Much better. And you may be right; only it's always impossible to lay down the law for men like Bisra. Those high-caste hill Brahmins are a law unto themselves. However, I expect to find the boy quite cool to-morrow." He was not, however, and more than once, as he lay in Bisra's arms, the little fretful wail rose between sleeping and waking. "Where's the Noose, Bisra? I want the Noose." And Bisra would pause as if waiting for a promise of wayward life in threat or abuse, and when neither came would turn a wistful appeal to authority, and when it was silent say--

"What Noose, Shelter of the World?"

But in the dead of night a day or two later, when even maternal authority slept for a brief spell, Bisra's answer to the request, which came almost incoherently from the child's dry lips, was different.

Then he stood bent over the boy's cot in the attitude of a suppliant, and his joined petitioning hands trembled.

"Why dost ask it, Kâli ma?" he whispered rapidly. "Lo! have I not served thee? Would I not serve thee now if I could? But I have promised this, and they will not let me go for the other. Lo! Kâli ma! be merciful and ask no more, and when the child has gone away, I will serve thee all the years--yea! every day of all the years."

There was no passion, no excitement in his face or voice; only that pathetic appeal which passed into a murmured lullaby as the restless little sleeper turned on his pillow with a sigh of greater content.

"Better again this morning," was the doctor's verdict, with the rider that Bisrâm himself stood in need of a little rest. The man smiled faintly when his mistress replied that it would be her turn that night; though, to say sooth, Harry certainly did seem to improve when she slept.

"Perhaps Bisrâm works charms," remarked the doctor, thoughtlessly; whereat she frowned.

Charms or no charms, the boy was certainly worse next morning, and that despite the fact that Bisrâm, who had steadily refused to go further than the verandah, had spent the night huddled up outside the threshold, within which his mistress refused to allow him to come. He needed rest, she said, and though she could not compel him to take it, he should at least not work.

"You had better let him have his own way to-night," said the doctor at his evening visit. "The child gets on better, and you are fresher for the day's nursing. Those thin, delicate-looking natives are very wiry, and if the man won't rest, he won't, and that's an end of it."

He spoke cheerfully; but as he was getting into his dogcart he saw Bisrâm at his elbow. "The doctor-sahib thinks the little master very ill to-night?" he asked quietly.

"So ill that you must do your very best for him to-night. If any one can pull him through, you can, remember that."

"Huzoor!" said Bisrâm, submissively.

It was a very dark night; so dark that the rushlight in Sonny's room seemed almost brilliant from the verandah. Looking thence you could see the child's cot, one of its side rails removed, and in its place, as it were, the protection of Bisrâm's crouching figure. He did not touch the cot; he crouched beside it with clasped hands hanging over his knees, and dark eyes staring hard into the darkness as if waiting and listening.

So he sate, his clasped hands loosening, his eyes growing softer as the hours passed, bringing nothing but half-conscious sleep, half-conscious wakening to the child. Until suddenly, irrelevantly, just on the border-land of night and day, the fretful wail rose upon the silence loudly, insistently--

"Where is the Noose, Bisra? I want it. O Bisrâm, bearer, bring the Noose, and strangle something."

The slackness, the dreaminess left the man's hands and eyes. He stood up blindly, desperately to face these last words; the words for which he had been listening. Yet there was still the same pathetic self-control as he stretched his hands out over the sleeping child.

"Lo! Kâli ma," he muttered, "have I not served thee as ever, despite the child. Have I set him before thee? Nay! thou knowest I have risked life itself to have thy tale of offering complete when I was hindered. Thou didst not suffer. Wilt not wait for once? Wilt not wait one little while?"

His voice, sinking in its entreaty, ended in silence. But only for a second. Then the fretful wail began again.

"The Noose, Bisra! Be not unkind. Remember I am ill. O Bisra! I want you to strangle something for me--"

Bisra gave a faint sob; then joined his outstretched hands.

"Huzoor! so be it! the Noose shall find a victim. Yea, Shelter of the World, Bisra will strangle something. Sleep in peace!"

There was no sound in the room after that save the little contented sigh in which restlessness finds rest.

Outside, the shiver of the cicalas seemed to count the seconds, but inside the hours seemed to pass unnoticed as Bisra sate beside the cot, his hands listless, his eyes dreamy. There was nothing to wait for now, nothing to fear. That which had to come had come.

So with the first glint of light, a stealthy step glided in, and an anxious voice whispered--

"How is it with the child, Bisra?"

"It is well!" he whispered back, rising rather stiffly. "He hath slept since the darkest hour. He will sleep on."

The mother, peering carefully for a glimpse of the child's face, smiled at what she saw.

"He sleeps, indeed. Thou hast done well, Bisra!"

He made no answer. But ere he left the room, his night-watch being over, he paused to touch the foot-rail of the cot with both hands and so salaam, as those do who leave the presence.

Sonny was still sleeping when his father, entering his study with a lighter heart, found a stranger, as he thought, awaiting him there. It was a man, naked save for a waistcloth, lean, sinewy, lithe; the head was clean-shaven, save for the Brahminical tuft, and the face was disfigured by the weird caste marks of extreme fanaticism.

"Who--?" he began, shrinking involuntarily from one who might well be dangerous.

"It is Bisra, Huzoor" said a familiar voice, gently. "Bisra, the child-bearer. Bisra, the servant of Kâli also. Lo! here is Her Noose." As he spoke he held out the crimson-scarlet handkerchief twisted to a rope, and coiled in his curved palms like a snake. "The master, being learned, will know the Noose and its meaning. It hath brought Her many a blood-offering, Huzoor. Many and many every year without fail. And it will not fail this year either. It will bring Her the blood of Her servant, the blood of Bisrâm the Strangler."

"Bisrâm the Strangler!" echoed the magistrate, stupidly, as the even, monotonous voice ceased. Then he sate down helplessly in his chair. In truth he knew too much of the mystery of India to be quite incredulous.

Yet two hours after, when with the help of the police-officer he had been cross-questioning Bisra upon his confession, he told himself as helplessly that it was incredible--the man must be mad. He had been born to strangle, he said, and had strangled to keep Kâli ma content. That was necessary when you were born Her servant, especially when you had children. Perhaps he had let the little Shelter of the World creep too close to his heart, though he had striven to be just. At any rate Kâli ma had become jealous. He had not known this, at first, or he would never have given the mistress that promise about the Noose, for if it had been in Harry-sahib's hands Devi would never have sought his life. She always protected those with the Noose--they never came to harm--unless-- He had paused there, and then asked quickly if he had not said enough? Did they want him to tell any more! He could not give them the names of the victims, of course, not knowing them; but they were many--very many.

"There is nothing against him but his own story," said the magistrate, fighting against his growing conviction that the man spoke truth. "I can't commit him to the sessions on that."

"There is something more, I think," replied the police-officer, reluctantly. "Don't you remember that man who was found dead in a railway carriage about this time last year? He had an up-country ticket on him, and as this was out of the beat of Stranglers, no inquiry was made here. It was just about this time, and--and Bisrâm says he was in a hurry because the year was nearly up. He had been nursing the boy."

The boy's father, leaning with his head on his hand, groaned.

But Bisra was quite cheerful. He looked a little anxious, however, when two days after he was brought up formally to be committed for trial. There was still nothing definite against him save his own confession and the coincidence of the strangled man in the railway carriage. But opinion was dead against him amongst his countrymen. Of course he was one of Kâli's Stranglers. Did he not look one? Was he not born one? So how could he help being one? The argument brought no consolation to Sonny's father. But Bisrâm again was cheerful. He stood patiently between two yellow-legged policemen and told his tale at length, as if anxious to incriminate himself as much as possible, anxious that there should be no mistake. And when all the mysterious intricacies of charges and papers were over, and the two policemen nudged him to make place for other criminals, with a friendly "Come along, brother," he paused a moment with handcuffed, petitioning hands to ask how soon he was to be hanged.

The magistrate, leaning his head on his hand, made no answer. He knew what the question meant, and could not. The thought of his little son came between him and the truth; namely, that Bisra's sacrifice must wait the law's pleasure.

The doctor, too, in charge of the gaol where Bisra awaited trial, had not the heart to tell the truth. Every day when on his rounds he looked into the cell, like a wild beast's cage, where Bisra, being a Strangler, and therefore dangerous to life, was confined alone, he answered the question which the tall, naked figure stood up at his entrance to ask in the same words. Harry-sahib was better, and as for the hanging, that would come soon enough, never fear. Yet every day the pathetic, self-controlled eagerness on the man's face struck him with a sense of physical pain, and left him helpless before his own pity.

Until a day came--after not many days--when with a face sad from the sight of bitter grief that he could understand, the sense of his absolute helplessness before the mystery of this man's nature made the doctor feel inclined to throw pity to the winds and fall back on sheer common sense. After all the man was a murderer; and if he had been fond of the child--what then? Such criminals were often men of strong affections.

Yet once again, the sight of the submissive, salaaming figure, the sound of the wistful yet calm voice made him answer as usual. The child was better. The hanging would doubtless come ere long.

For once, however, Bisrâm did not accept the reply as final.

"The Huzoor means that it will not come today?" he asked quietly.

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "To-day? What made you think of to-day? Certainly not. There's no chance of it."

But he was wrong. Two hours afterwards the gaol overseer sent for him in a hurry, because Bisrâm had completed his sacrifice by strangling himself in his cell with his waistcloth. What else could he do, seeing that it was the last day of the year during which the propitiation of a sacrifice kept Kâli ma from revenge?

"Poor devil!" said the doctor, as he stood up after his useless examination. "I'm glad now I didn't tell him the child was dead."