In the Tideway

When I was a child I wept over a story--if I remember right, by Mrs. Sherwood--which bore this title.

Years after I came to man's estate, I felt inclined to weep over an incident in real life which this title seemed to fit.

Looking back on those first tears, I judge them uncalled for by what my maturer age condemns as false sentiment. Perhaps my later emotion is equally at fault. The reader had better judge for himself.

* * * * *

"Speak on, O Bisram, bearer! Wherefore dost not obey? Speak on about Mai Kali and the Noose--the Noose that is so soft, that never slips. Wherefore dost not speak, son of an owl?"

The voice was childish, fretful. So was the listless little figure in a flannel dressing-gown, which lay half upon the reed mat spread on the verandah floor, half against the red and yellow livery coat of Bisram, bearer. The latter remained silent, his dark eyes fixed deprecatingly on a taller figure within earshot. It was the child's mother, standing for a glance at her darling.

"Speak! Why dost not speak, base-born child of pigs? Lo! I will smite thee. Speak of Mai Kali and the Noose. Lo! Bisram, bearer, be not unkind. Remember I am sick. Show me the Noose. Ai! Bisra! show it to Sonny Baba."

The liquid Urdu fell from the child's lips with quaint precision, and ended in the coaxing wail of one who knows his power.

That was unmistakable. The man's high-bred, sensitive face, which had not quivered under the parentage assigned to him by the thin, domineering voice, melted at the appeal, and the red and yellow arms seemed to close round their charge at the very suggestion of sickness. Bisram gave another deprecating glance at the tall white figure at the door, and then, from the folds of his waistcloth, took out a silk handkerchief crumpled into a ball. But a dexterous flutter left it in uncreased folds across the child's knees.

"Lo! Protector of the Poor! such is the Noose of Kali," said Bisram, deferentially.

Seen thus, the handkerchief looked larger than one would have expected: or perhaps it is more correct to say longer, for, the texture being loose like canvas, even the slight drag across the child's knees stretched the stuff lengthwise. It was of that curious Indian colour called oodah, which is not purple or crimson, but which looks as if it had been the latter and might become the former--the colour, briefly, of recently spilt blood. It looked well, however, in the soft lustrous folds lying upon the child's white dressing-gown. He smiled down at it joyfully: yet not content, since there was more to come.

"Twist it for Mai Kali. Twist it, Bisram, bearer! Ai! base-born, twist it or I will smite--"

"It is time for the Shelter of the World to take his medicine," began Bisram, interrupting the imperious little voice. "Lo! does his Honour not see the mem waiting for him?"

Sonny gave a quick glance at his mother. He knew his power there also. "I'se not goin' to take it, mum," he called decisively, "till he's twisted a' Noose. I won't--I want a' stwangle somefin' first. Tell him, mum--please. Then I'll 'waller it like a good boy."

"Do what he wants, Bisram, and then bring him here," said Sonny's mother, her eyes soft. For the child had but lately chosen the path of Life instead of the Valley of the Shadow, so even wayward footsteps along it were welcome.

"Now is it Government orders," boasted Sonny, reverting to the precisions and peremptoriness of Hindustani with a wave of his small hand. "So twist and strangle, and if thou dost it not, my father will cause hanging to come to thee."

"Huzoor!" assented Bisram, cheerfully, as he shifted his burden slightly so as to free his left hand. The next instant a purple crimson rope of a thing, circled on itself, settled down upon the neck of a big painted mud tiger, bright yellow with black stripes and fiery red eyes, which one of the native visitors had brought that morning for the magistrate's little son.

"Now the Protector of the Poor can pull," said Bisram, bearer. "It will not slip."

But Sonny's wan little face had perplexity and doubt in it. "But, Bisra, Mai Kali rides a tiger. She wouldn't stwangle it. Would she, mum? I wouldn't stwangle my pony. I'd wather stwangle the gwoom; wouldn't you, mum? I would. I'd wather like to stwangle Gamoo."

"My dear Sonny!" exclaimed his mother, looking with amused horror at the still, helpless little figure which Bisram had brought to her. "You wouldn't murder poor Gamoo, surely!"

Sonny made faces over his quinine, as if that were a matter of much more importance.

"'Ess, I would," he said, with his mouth full of sweet biscuits. "I'd stwangle him, and then Mai Kali would be pleased for a fousand years; and then I'd stwangle Ditto an' Peroo too; so she'd be pleased for a fousand fousand years--wouldn't she, Bisra?"

"Huzoor!" assented Bisram, bearer.

"My dear," said Sonny's mother, going back with a somewhat disturbed look to the room where the magistrate, Sonny's father, was busy over crabbed Sanskrit texts and bright-coloured talc pictures; for in his leisure hours he was compiling a Hindu Pantheon for the use of students, "I almost wish Bisram would not tell Sonny so many stories about the gods and goddesses. They do such horrid things."

The scholar, who in his heart nourished a hope that his son might in due time follow in his footsteps, and, perhaps, gain reputation where his father only found amusement, looked up from his books mildly.

"Gods and goddesses always do, my dear. Their morality seldom conforms to that which obtains among their worshippers. I intend to draw general attention to this anomaly. Besides, Sonny will have to learn these things anyhow when he begins Greek and Latin; he will in fact find this previous knowledge of great use. Kali, for instance, is the terrific form of Durga who, of course, corresponds to the Juno of the Greeks and Romans and the Isis of Egypt. She is also the crescent-crowned Diana, and as Parbutt the Earth-mother Ceres. Under the name of Atma, again, she is 'goddess of souls governing the three worlds,' and so equivalent to Hecate Triformis--"

"Yes! my dear," interrupted his wife, meekly. "But for all that I don't want Sonny to talk of strangling the grooms; it really doesn't sound nice. However, as Bisram is eager, now Sonny is really recovering, to get away at once for his usual leave, I won't say anything to the child. He will forget while Bisram is away, and I will give orders that the latter is not to mention the subject on his return."

Bisram himself, receiving his pay and his orders ere starting on the yearly visit to his own country, which was the only portion of his life by day or night not absolutely--without any reservation whatever--at the disposal of his employers, fully acquiesced in the mem-sahiba's dictum. The Noose of Kali was scarcely a nice game for the little master; indeed his slave would never have introduced it under ordinary circumstances. But the mem must remember that dreadful day when the Heart's-eye lay so still, caring for nothing, and the doctor-sahib had said there was nothing to be done save to coax him into looking into the restless Face of Life instead of into the restful Face of Death. That was when he, Bisram, who knew, had spoken of the Noose; and, at least, it had done the little Shelter of the World no harm.

"Harm?" echoed Sonny's mother, gently. "You have never done him harm, Bisra. Why, the doctor-sahib himself said your hand was fortunate with the child. If you had not been with him, I think--I think, Bisram--he might have died. And now I am even wondering if I am wise to let you go--"

Bisram looked up eagerly. "I must go, Huzoor--I must go without fail to-night--the year is over--" He paused abruptly, then added quietly: "The Huzoor need have no fear. The little master will do well. The Mighty One who cares for children will protect this one."

He spoke with such faith in voice and face, that Sonny's mother going back once more to the study, and finding her husband busy as usual over his Pantheon, lingered to look doubtfully at the talc pictures, and finally remark that after all the people really had a good deal of religious feeling, and actually seemed to believe in a God. Bisram, for instance, had said that Sonny was in the guardianship of One who suffered the little children-- Here her eyes filled with tears, and her voice sank.

"He meant Mata Devi, I expect, my dear," replied the scholar without looking up. "She is another form of Kali or Durga, and corresponds to Cybele or the Mater Montana--"

"He was very eager to get away, however," went on Sonny's mother, almost aggrievedly. "I really think he might have stayed a few days longer till the boy was quite himself. But devoted as he is, he is just like the rest of them--selfishly set on what they are accustomed to--"

"He put off going nearly a month though, and you know, my dear, that when he took service as Sonny's bearer, he stipulated for a fortnight's leave every spring, about a certain time, in order to perform some religious ceremonial," protested the justice.

"Well, and he has had it. Every year for five years; so he might have given it up for once. But he wouldn't. I don't believe he would, not even to save Sonny's life. However, I think the child is all right, and even if I had kept Bisram, he wouldn't have been much good, for he has been frightfully restless and hurried the last few days."

He did not seem so, however, as he stood quietly in the growing dusk at the gateless gate of the compound to look back at the house where he had left the little Shelter of the World asleep. His scarlet and yellow coat was gone, replaced by the faint coral-coloured garments of the pilgrim; he carried a network-covered pot for holy water, slung on his left wrist, and the yellow trident of Siva showed like a frown on his forehead. The thickets of flowering shrubs, the tangles of white petunias bordering the path, sent their perfume into the air; but above it rose the heavy, dead-sweet scent from a wild dhatura plant which, taking advantage of an unweeded nook by the gate, thrust its long white flowers across the pilaster; one of them indeed reaching past it, and so, seen five-pointed against the dusk beyond, looking like a slim white hand pointing the way thither.

Bisram stooped deliberately to pick it, tore it into its five segments, and placed the pieces in his bosom, muttering softly, "With heart and brain and feet, and hands and eyes, Devi, I am thy servant." Then for a second he raised himself to his full height, and stretched both his thin, fine hands--such delicately supple, strong hands--towards the house. "Sleep sound, Life of my Life," he murmured again. "Sleep sound, and have no fear. The offering will be complete, though the time is short indeed."

So, turning on his heel, he passed into the dusk, beyond the gate, whither the flower had pointed.

A fortnight later he came out of it once more, passed into his hut in the gloaming, dressed as a pilgrim, and emerged therefrom ten minutes afterwards in the red and yellow coat, with a huge white turban with a bend, as the heralds call it, across it bearing his master's crest. So altered, he slipped back into his place as if he had never left it, and setting aside the reed screen at the door of Sonny's nursery, stood within. Sonny, in his white flannel dressing-gown, was convalescent enough to be saying his prayers, kneeling on his mother's knee.

"Go on, dear," she said gently. "You can speak to Bisram afterwards."

Sonny, whose feet were less wayward, now shut his eyes again, and assumed a prayerful expression.

"--an' all kine friends, an' make me a velly good boy--yamen--O Bisra! where's the Noose?" The mother might smile, unable so far to pretend ignorance. Not so Bisram, bearer, who had his orders.

"What Noose, Shelter of the World?" he asked gravely. "Thy servant remembers none; but he hath brought the Protector of the Poor a toy."

It was only one of the many which you can buy in any Indian town for the fraction of a farthing, made of mud, straw, cane; a bit of tinsel perhaps, or tuft of cotton-wool, their sole value over and above the ingenuity and time spent in making them. But Sonny had never seen this kind before, and laughed as the snakes, made out of curled shavings, leapt and twisted. Leapt so like life that his mother drew back hastily, telling herself that the bearer had certainly a fine taste in horrors. And no doubt there would be some tale to match these. Sonny, however, seemed to know it vaguely, for a puzzled look replaced the laugh. "Yea! Bisra," he said in imperious argument, "Mai Kali had snakes and skulls too; but I like the Noose best. Why didst not bring it back, son of an owl?"

The man never moved a muscle. "The little master mistakes," he replied calmly. "It was some others who tied the Noose. Not this dustlike one. He is but the Protector of the Poor's bearer, Bisram."