Waiting for the Rains
I
IT was midnight, and they had just finished dinner; it had been too hot to face that daily ordeal earlier. They walked across the dusty grass, seared pale yellow, to a clump of long chairs that were placed as near as might be in the middle of the thirty-acre compound that surrounded the mud-walled bungalow. There they escaped the heat which it still reverberated; and the open space around them gave an illusion of comparative coolness. A bearer, carrying a guttering hurricane lantern, preceded them. It was a nightly ritual. The two white men in the station dined each night with the Deputy Commissioner; there was nothing else to do. And, as always, they talked shop at dinner; there was nothing else to talk about.
They settled cautiously into the long cane chairs; the bearer circled gravely round to see that there were no snakes in sight. He returned in a few minutes, lantern in one hand and a tray with ‘pegs’ in the other, fitted the long tumblers into the receptacle provided to that end in the broad flat arm of each chair, placed a box of cigars, with an air-tight lid, on a wicker table in the centre of the group, and padded off silently, taking the lantern with him. Without the light, the illusion of coolness was perhaps heightened a little. No one spoke.
When the swaying light had disappeared behind the bungalow, the night shut down on them. The sky was blue-black velvet; not a breath stirred; the scent of lilies came strongly from a hidden clump that grew, practically wild, in the vast sprawling garden, and mingled with the faint, acid-sweet odor of tamarinds from the great tree, seventy feet high or more, that heaved its huge bulk in front. Its feathery foliage showed merely as masses of darkness, and of deeper darkness; thousands of fireflies wove their way, their pale green lights glowing and dimming, in and out and round about its towering mass. Overhead, the stars shone brightly: not the cold, aloof stars of Northern lands, but glowing globe, as it seemed, big here, smaller there, that hung suspended at varying distances which the deluded eye thought it could easily appreciate. The men wriggled in their chairs, trying to find the positions where their prickly heat annoyed them least; a flying fox winged its way heavily across, shearing the air with slow, powerful strokes; every now and then ice tinkled coolly against glass, and the cigar tips waxed and waned, like red stars that had come to earth in the thick, scented darkness.
The three men there were the entire white population of the district, which covered about three thousand square miles and had a population of one and a half millions. Carstairs, the Deputy Commissioner and chief civil authority, was of the wire-drawn, capable, untiring, not-to-be-rattled type; he knew his work, and did it without fuss or worry. He had spent most of his life in taking charge of situations of all degrees of gravity; and he knew, with the certainty of complete conviction based on long experience, that if one kept one’s head, and did the ‘sensible thing,’ it would work out all right. Turner, the doctor, was a tiny little man, quick as a weasel, good at his job, but with a superficial air of callousness and brutality that the hard-pressed doctor so often has. Rendel, the policeman, looked a very bullock of a man: redfaced, thick-necked, with great heavy shoulders and abnormally long, powerful arms ending in huge clumsy hands. Elephantine, one would have said, in mind and body.
Cane creaked in the darkness, and Carstairs spoke.
‘What about the river, Doctor?’
‘Rising a foot a day. Snow water coming down good and hard. Pretty high already; and the banks flopping in all along that big curve, Somastipore way. They have moved the ferry to the rains station.’
And then, reflectively, ‘And I had one hell of a time getting across, too. Worse coming back.’
It sounded as if Rendel had sat up in his chair. ‘What were you doing across the river? ’ he asked, imperiously.
‘I was attending to my own business, young fella-me-lad.’
Carstairs chipped in, a trifle too rapidly: ‘Stop it, Doctor. He’s here, Rendel, to tell you all about it. Get on with it, Doctor, and speak your piece nicely.’
‘May I have a peg?’ Rendel asked. Carstairs apologized, and shouted for the bearer. The swaying lantern reappeared after a minute or twro, an order was given, and the servant returned with ice, a whiskey decanter, and three large bottles of soda water. In the flickering lantern light, Carstairs and Turner, eyes shaded with their open palms, watched closely: Rendcl’s peg was a three-finger one. ‘Foreign water for me,’ said the doctor, in Hindustani. ‘And for me,’ added Carstairs.
When all was darkness again, the doctor spoke.
‘I got a most urgent message from Bahadur Singh this morning. Wanted me out at Daulatpore at once. Life and death, and the usual flummery. Perfectly bloody journey in this weather, as you know. When I got there, I was told that his brother — that dropsical old swine Kallu — was very ill. Would I see him at once? Usual thing: there he was, in a room about the size of a bathroom, in that great pyramid of masonry; every window pasted up with dark green paper; every hole stuffed up with filthy rags; place packed with people, all of the usual hanger-on type; and a fugg that made me sick. When I managed to see in the dark, there was old Kallu on his string bed, propped up with loathsome pillows, and quite obviously pretty bad. He was very busy drawing imaginary threads from the ragged coverlet. You both know what that means?’
‘Aconite,’ said Carstairs and Rendel together.
‘Right, me sons. Aconite: all Lombard Street to a China orange, in fact, that he had been poisoned. It is your pigeon, of course, Carstairs; but I gather that, if old Kallu slipped off the hooks, Bahadur Singh and his scallywag sons would become the sole proprietors of Daulatpore?’
‘That is so.’
‘Well, I sized it up that way, and did some pretty quick thinking. Kallu, as you know, is just a great putrescent bag of rottenness, kept from immediate dissolution by being constantly soaked in country liquor. He told me himself that even whiskey had lost its bite for him; opium just sent him to sleep, without his getting any kick out of it; and charas was n’t much use anyway. Nice lad, Kallu! As you know, professional honor requires us doctors to do our own killing. I did n’t like it at all. I’d clearly been brought out when they knew it was no damned use — I was merely respectability, which was to cover them as a garment. I had to stand between them and the gallows. What I resented most of all — most offensive, I call it — was that they quite obviously thought I was a bloody fool. And there I was, in that cursed great warren of masonry, with every man within a mile Bahadur Singh’s man, to the marrow of his bones, and with his life hanging on Bahadur Singh’s word.’
Silence fell again, and the fireflies wove in and out of the great tamarind tree, while the cigar tips glowed and dimmed.
‘Might I have another drink?’ said Rendel. More apologies; more cautious watching. Another three-finger peg for Rendel; soda again for the other two.
‘Well,’ the doctor went on when the light had disappeared, ‘I told them to call in all Kallu’s men. There were bags of them, of course; but we made room. Then I asked them what Kallu was doing. They told me, quite accurately. I picked out some of the more important, and asked them, one by one. All quite good at their lesson. Then I cut loose, once I had got that fact well rubbed into them all. I told them Kallu had been poisoned; I doubted if he’d live, whatever I did; but I was quite certain he’d die, and quickly at that, if what I told them to do was not done. I said the Deputy Commissioner would be most interested in hearing all about it; and I was going off now to tell him. If Kallu died, somebody would certainly be hanged — perhaps quite a lot of somebodies. Then I got busy, and did what I could for him. He is as rotten as punk. When I left, he was probably all right — bar accidents. One can’t dogmatize about a decaying dung heap like that; but I think he’ll pull through, this time. I left them working hard, regular little busy bees, to save their precious necks. They fair twittered with eagerness. Ziyada haddiadab., (To say more would be to exceed the bounds of decorum and due respect.)
Rendel’s feet swung down from the chair arms, and came to the grass with a vicious stamp. ‘And why the hell did Durga Singh not come to me about all this?’ Durga Singh was the thanadar, or chief police officer, at Daulatpore. ‘I’d like to wring his blasted neck. He’s getting much too slack — and uppish. Does he think he’s there because he’s beautiful, the lousy beast?’
‘Oh, ease off, Rendel. Turner is just back; Durga Singh rode with him to the ferry; and he knew you would have the story to-night. There was no earthly reason why he should have come in that I can see. He’ll be far more useful at Daulatpore.’
Turner added, ‘Yes. Rode with me to the ferry; and that roaring piebald stallion of his tried to eat my leg all the way, more by token. I told him I’d tell you all about it. Nice boy, Durga Singh; he can ride, too, that lad — though I don’t admire his taste in horseflesh. Great fiddle-headed brute.’
But Rendel was not to be placated. He cursed away stoutly, working himself into a passion, his words rumbling out, now fast, now slow, with curious little halts and mispronunciations.
‘By the way, Captain Sahib,’ Carstairs broke in firmly, ‘when are you taking that second spot of casual leave you wanted?’
‘Leave? How the devil can I take leave when we’re running two dacoities, or something like it, a week?’
‘Well, that can’t last long. The rains are overdue already; and this perfectly damnable heat must work up to something, and soon. We can’t go on like this. What is it now, Doctor?’
‘It’s been one hundred and twenty for three days; and touched one hundred and twenty-three to-day. Something bound to break soon.’
‘It’s we who’ll break,’ said Rendel, and his voice flickered. ‘Anyhow, rains or no rains, and whether the bloody thermometer bursts or boils, here I stay till this dacoity game ends. I’m seeing it through, I am. You can run away if you like,’ he added, throwing his voice toward Carstairs.
The silence shut down again; the fireflies wove in and out of the branches of the tamarind tree; from far off came the ‘third call’ of a pack of jackals; peafowl in the trees near by stirred uneasily in their sleep at that ghoulish sound staining the silence of the night; and the heavy sweet scent of the lilies came in thick gusts of perfume.
‘One,’ rapped out the doctor. ‘I’m for bed. The flea bag, or Indian couch, for this one. May I call my man, Carstairs?’
‘Have a drink before you go.’
The three men all took whiskey and soda — Rendel’s peg was again a threefinger one — and sat on the long arms of their chairs, while three servants, each with his hurricane lantern, waited silently close by. As Turner rose to go, Carstairs spoke.
‘Do you mind having just a word about that Mullanpore dispensary, Doctor, before you go? Night-night, Rendel. And don’t worry too much about these dacoits. “Fret not thyself because of evil doers, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass.” Ever read your Bible? The dacoits are lots of things, but they are certainly not damned fools; and they won’t wait, in between the rivers, for us to step in as soon as the rains come, and pick them up like peaches off a plate. I bet you ten to one, in rupees, that we’ve had our last dacoity for the season.’
‘Maybe. I think not, however; and I know my dacoit as well as anybody else. Anyhow, Doctor, you’ll have a pleasant morning. Two p.m.’s! Sent ’em on to-day. Both women; both tortured to death; and both,’ he added viciously, ‘rather impatient at being kept waiting for three days in this heat.’ He swung off, balancing himself carefully. When the ‘clip-clop’ of his orderly’s wooden shoes had ceased to sound on the metaled path, Carstairs spoke.
‘I’m worried about Rendel, Doctor. You saw what he took? And he has never been a drinking man. His temper has gone to shreds; and the official stuff that comes to me from him recently is just plain, plumb foolish. He’s been out night and day for a month, Muhamdi way, and in the forests toward Sitapore, after these blasted dacoits. I don’t suppose he’s had three hours’ sleep a day for the last week; and he was run down to start with. What do you think about him? And is there anything to be done?’
‘It isn’t the drink,’ replied the doctor. ‘Rendel could drink barrels without it bothering him much. He starts from scratch, as it were. But he seems to me devilish near a breakdown. I don’t like the way he talks. Too much staccato altogether about that movement. I noticed he seemed to find some difficulty in lighting his cheroot, too. And he has n’t the kind of neck that goes well with this kind of weather. But he’ll take no advice; trying to do anything for him would just rile him; and there’s nothing for it but wait and see. Night-night,’ and he went off slowly.
II
Rendel was exasperated with things. His bearer was asleep, curled up on the stone flags of the verandah, instead of being ready to receive him as he arrived. He wakened him by stirring him up, none too gently, with the toe of his boot. The heavy, used-up, stuffy, thrice-heated air inside the bungalow irritated him still further. He sent his bearer for another peg, sat listlessly waiting for it on the side of his bed, drank it off in great gulps, and then began to undress. His shirt, soaked with perspiration, did not come off easily; furious, he rent the thin silk in shreds, and threw the sodden mass in the bearer’s face. His clothes — thin silk also — he flung here and there as he removed them. Dressed in light woolen pyjamas, he followed the servant out of the stifling room on to the lawn.
His bed was there, on a large cotton rug or dhurrie. Beside it stood a wicker table with glasses, a whiskey decanter, candle, and matches — for it was unsafe to move anywhere at night without a light. Below was a small ice box with bottles of soda. Alongside the bed lay a wooden trough, about four feet long and a foot deep, three quarters full of water. The bed itself had no sheets, merely a thin woven mat (a ‘smallpox mat,’ of fine reeds, the coolest thing to lie on) placed directly over the interlaced tapes of its wooden frame. Over the bed a wooden framework had been fixed, with a punkah slung to it; and attached to the punkah frill by safety pins was a bath towel so arranged that, when in movement, it just cleared the body and face.
Rendel twitched the mat straight, placed his handkerchief on the table, and rolled into the bath. He emerged, dripping, and lay down on the bed. The coolie — some yards off, at the end of the long punkah rope — started pulling at once.
The bearer, standing just clear of the swinging beam, asked. ‘Has the Presence need of anything else?’
There was no reply.
‘At what hour does the Presence desire to be wakened ? ’
‘Go to hell — and quick!’ was the answer.
Rendel, despite the temporary coolness which his unorthodox method provided, found difficulty in getting to sleep. He lay open-eyed, watching the stars slowly wheeling round the pole; the distant barking of a fox annoyed him; he went over and over in his mind the central problem that had worried him for weeks: How was he to catch the dacoits who harried his district? Had all his guards at the river ferries been alive and active? Was it possible that the dacoits could have slipped through his cordon toward Teripore way? Could he scrape up some more mounted men for a big drive?
They must be getting supplies from Beharipore: and his local information must be defective. He’d skin Mahmud Khan if that were so. And so on, and so on; his mind wove in and out, like the fireflies, round the one central problem. Eventually, dog-weary in mind and body, he dropped off to sleep.
He awoke, some time later, with an extraordinary sense of well-being. It was — he glanced at the stars — perhaps about half-past two. He felt cool and comfortable, and at peace with all the world; it was delightful to lie there, watching the stars, breathing in the scented air, and feeling that all was well with him, and with his work. Ah, yes: his work! Now he had got the clue to it all. Somehow, woven into the fabric of his dreams and carried out of sleep into the present waking hour, he had acquired a tremendous conviction that the whole problem had been solved.
Just as, in a fevered dream, where threads cross and recross, tie and knot themselves, move, and slip, and worry the racing brain into an agony in its efforts to trace from the beginning to the end the one thread it wants, sometimes peace suddenly comes, and one sees — with a crystal clarity of vision that admits of no doubt, and that soothes like balm on a wound — the one master thread that controls the maddening complex, so he saw, clearly, with a calm certainty that excluded all doubt, his master thread. His dacoits were but little people after all; he had never thought of that. They were merely on the fringe of a great conspiracy — necessary, essential incidents of that vast conspiracy, but microscopic, all the same, in their importance. They would come in—helplessly, unresistingly—when he pulled on the master thread; and he now held that master thread in his hand!
He sat up on the edge of the bed, clear of the punkah: the coolie had long since dropped asleep. He stroked the shiny surface of the sleeping mat; he enjoyed its hard polished coolness; and he allowed himself to revel, for a time, in the thought that he, Rendel, had been chosen to frustrate that plot of diabolical wickedness and infernal cunning. The possibility of failure did not cross his mind. The thing would work out, successful to the last detail, just as surely as the sun would rise to-morrow.
He lit the candle, and, watching the ground closely, passed on into the bungalow. Its stifling, heavy heat did not cause the usual wave of irritation and resentment; his mind was on other things. He did not wake the sleeping coolie as he passed. He slipped off his pyjamas; then slowly, methodically, with neat precision, he took from the shelf where they always stood his jack boots with the spurs already fixed, and pulled them on. He unhooked his Sam Browne belt from an adjoining peg; fitted it snugly into the small of his back with the customary automatic wriggles and pulls; slipped his sword, brown-leather-sheathed and brass-mounted, into place; and, unlocking a drawer, took out his heavy service revolver, jerked it open, and loaded it carefully with six cartridges. He placed it in the holster by his side, put on his helmet, slipped its chain over the point of his chin, and, extinguishing the candle, walked out quietly — mothernaked, except for his belt and boots — into the silent night.
No fear of snakes, with riding boots on. He made his way, confident despite the darkness, to the stables, woke his sleeping syce by prodding him gently with the toe of his boot, and ordered him to saddle Sultan at once, putting on the ‘Government’ saddle.
A minute or two later he swung into the saddle, picked his way deftly through the trees in the compound, and, with the syce walking behind, took the road to the station. The hoof beats were muffled by the soft dust that coated the road, inches deep. The countryside was silent — not a light to be seen, not a sound to be heard. Every now and then, as he passed under a mango tree, the ‘mango flies’ rose in an angry buzz, then spattered — exactly like the sound of rain — against the leaves.
Rendel liked drifting like that, silently, through the night; and his heart was light, for the key to the great conspiracy lay in his hand. An hour perhaps, more or less, and the thing would be done! India would be safe; his dacoits would soon be under lock and key; the district would have the peace it so sorely needed; he would take that long-deferred leave in the hills. He thought with pleasure of the tonga ride, past trees covered with moss and fern, up through the foothills to the cool heights above; thought of the delightful sound of rushing streams, of the joy of driving for hours through greenery, of the never-to-be-forgotten smell of the Himalayas, made up of damp moss and rotting fern, wood smoke, and hot sunshine on lush forest.
There was the station. He swung his right leg over his horse’s head and slipped to the ground, handing the reins to his syce. The girths loosened, he told his syce to remain there, close to the entrance, and stalked into the station, through lines of sleeping forms, each with its head completely covered by a blanket or sheet. One can take no risks with the evil eye, whatever the temperature may be.
III
The long platform was lit by two guttering oil lamps only. The Indian station master is economical. Inside the long, buff-colored walls, the heat was intense; and there was the usual smell, common to all stations in India, of smouldering waste, coal smoke, and reeking humanity. Rendel paced up and down, intent on his own thoughts. The sweetmeat vendor, crouching beside his brass tray of indescribable horrors, eyed him curiously; it was not every day one saw a sahib, mothernaked, red in the face as a harvest moon, white as milk in the body, striding up and down the platform, his spurs ringing on the stone flags.
In the mysterious way that things happen in India, without a word apparently said, without a sign given, the platform began to fill with people. They looked intently at the white man pacing up and down, and were unusually silent as they squatted, immobile. The station master emerged from the dark reeking hole that was his office and made his way toward Rendel.
‘Good evening, sare,’ he said.
‘Good evening, Babu Sahib. Is the train on time?’
‘The mail is forty-two minutes late, sare. There has been detention owing buckling of rails by excessive temperature. It is very heavy mail, to-night. Government gentlemen are emigrating Calcutta, owing to anticipated breaking of rains. Many most high personages arc on mail to-night.’
Rendel was glad to hear that; it fitted in with his scheme of things.
' Well, you have a lot to do, Babu Sahib. Don’t, let me keep you’ — and he continued to pace the platform. About an hour later the train rushed into the station. All the lamps had then been lit; and Rendel could see the white and gold coaches, shuttered up against the flying dust, that told of high dignitaries on their unwilling way to Calcutta. With a roar of grinding brakes, the train drew up. Rendel walked quickly to the engine, fingering his revolver as he went. The engine driver and fireman — white men, both — were just about to descend to water the engine. That was the only reason why the Kalka-Calcutta mail stopped at that God-forgotten spot.
‘I am the district superintendent of police. I arrest you both,’ he said.
They gaped at him in astonishment, and then burst into helpless laughter. They were naked to the waist themselves, but this! This, with never a stitch to cover it, all tricked out in polished brass and pipe-clayed helmet; this, with jack boots and jingling spurs; this apparition that came out of the night and talked of arresting them!
Rendel was not annoyed, but his voice took an edge that there was no mistaking. Both the men were old soldiers, and they knew what that tone meant.
‘Get off that footplate, and walk together, arms linked, in front of me. If you try to escape, or make a suspicious movement, I shall shoot. And I do not often miss. Get down.’ They got down. ‘Link arms.’ They linked arms. ‘Is the engine safe?’ he asked. ‘It’s safe enough,’ the driver replied. ‘Then march to the entrance. No talking, to anyone.’
Rendel, his revolver drawn, followed them closely, two or three paces behind. The people on the platform divided automatically to make way for them, regarded them curiously, but did not speak. Rendel stopped his men outside the station master’s office.
’Babu Sahib, get me some rope, please.’
‘Sare, I do not comprehend fully. What rope does your honor want?’
‘Take that rope off the punkah, please.’ The tone was authoritative. It was done.
‘Now tie these two men together, wrist to wrist, forearm to forearm.’ It was done, wonderingly but quickly; it did not seem good to argue. Rendel saw to it that the job was done properly. ‘Get another rope, and tie it to the first, by the elbow.’ That too was done.
Rendel took the end of the eight-foot rope in his left hand, and, revolver in his right, marched his men out of the station to the waiting syce. He mounted, and keeping the men on his left, with the weapon still handy in his right hand, started back along the road to his bungalow.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I send no white man, on a night like this, to the lock-up. If you behave decently, you will spend the night at my bungalow; if you try to escape — and you know you could not escape now, even if you were free and I were not here — I shall shoot, at once.’
‘What are we arrested for, guv’nor?’ asked the driver.
‘Sedition, high treason, conspiracy to wage war against the King, and dacoity,’ replied Rendel. There was no venom behind this surprising declaration; it was an objective statement of fact. ‘God Almighty!’ was the only, and sufficient, comment of the engine driver.
IV
Carstairs dealt adequately with the unusual situation when he heard of it at six o’clock that morning. Rendel eventually found himself in the hills; his wandering wits came back to him, reasonably quickly, and without undue inconvenience to himself or to anyone else. The trainload of dignitaries, apoplectic with rage and stewing slowly in the grilling heat, was, after many hours of delay, dispatched to its appointed destination.
Still, there were bound to be unpleasant repercussions; you cannot hold up many of the mightiest for hours, in a place like Puranpore, on a night like that, without something happening.
The Government of India regarded the whole thing with weary, delicate disgust. Rendel had been drinking; the man had smelt like a shebeen; he had walked about naked; his conduct had been deplorable and inexcusable. They were not interested in temperatures, or in the fact that he had been chasing dacoits night and day for a month. They were coldly objective. But they could not possibly retain Rendel in their service. Nor did they.
Rendel is now growing vegetables for the Sydney market, and is making quite a good thing of it.