THE MAN WITH THE YELLOW HAIR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XIV, 2 April 1898, Page 414

THE MAN WITH THE YELLOW HAIR.

(By CLINTON ROSS.) NOW, the doctor is a famous storyteller, as a man who has been everywhere often will be. He dates back through a lot of the century’s history; it's like being presented to gone worthies to hear him talk; —a man who was out in the Sepoy rebellion. Daisy Vandewater said: ‘Do tell us, doctor.’ ‘lt's not a very cheerful story, my dear young lady.’ ‘lt's about the man with the yellow hair?’ ‘Yes, about Captain Beckwith. It’s a long, long time ago, but things repeat themselves in India.’ Having the habit of yarning, he was persuaded, his interest reaching us; and that lawn, and our own matters, put themselves away. I. The major came across and looked at me, and I remember I looked at the major, before 1 said, slowly: ‘The plague, dem me, sir; the plague.!’ We knew what that meant in those days of the East India Company, just as we know now. A long time ago, I say, and I was a surgeon in that service. And it was in the days of one of those little wars—which are big enough, if you take the accounting of years, of all those that died in ’em, that are dying now. The account of England's wars in India is a long one; the men who were killed for that imperial idea are innumerable. When you read of it all, in brief newspaper accounts, you don't realise it, I tell you. Well, to return to the beginning, I left the major and went back to the mess. We were then at a little frontier station, far away, and there

seemed no hope, unless we should have reen f orcement. As I eame into the room a man, tall and grizzled, was telling a story; and I listened. This is what he said. I’ll repeat It to show how far back it takes us, though it has no particular bearing on the yarn of the man with the yellow hair. ‘After Waterloo, you know, we were following ’em up.’ Then he struck a match for his pipe (I can see his face now. in that sudden glare, as if it were not so many years since, grizzled and strong; there are officers who never had their deserts in all services). ‘We eame on,’ he continued, ‘an overturned coach. The Prussians had cut the sides to pieces with their sabres, thinking the Emperor was in it. How they hated him, those Prussians! But Napoleon wasn't there. We rode on —you have heard the story ?’ His little grey eyes gleamed with a pale light as he put the question; but no one responded and we listened again, as we had so many times. ‘Well, we rode on and on, that troop of us. you know', and at last we —about midnight—-we came to a little house in a forest—a hut. I went in first. The place was dim, with a flickering candle. A man and a woman crouched in a corner. “He has gone. Vive I’empereur!” said the man, in their patois. In the corner of the room was a eot. I thrust my hand in under the clothes. Dem me! they were still warm w'ith Napoleon’s body. We pushed on. riding hard; but, as you know, we didn’t, overtake him? We listened, perhaps rather apathetically, to this old story, which we had heard so many times before, for we were all concerned for our own to-morrow. And Waterloo, I tell you, was not far enough away in those days to be particularly novel. In the corner sat Beckwith. He was the Hon. Thomas Farquhar Beckwith, Lord Sussex’s grandson, a tall, broad-

shouldered, yellow - haired fellow; a most efficient officer, too. ‘Ferguson,’ he called to me. ‘Well?’ said I. ‘You are going down?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ said I. ‘Bombay.’ Well?’ •There'll Ire a deal of fighting on directly,’ said he. ‘What ails you?’ I retorted. ‘You never had the habit of the dumps? ‘l've been a fool? ‘Well, I’ve met several,' I answered, lighting a pipe. ‘This is to be a devil of a row? ‘We’re always having devils of rows. What of it?’ Unnatural of him to be talking in this strain. I didn’t understand it—not a word, indeed; so 1 sat there and listened, and from outside came the fresh, damp smells, nowhere so coolly refreshing as in such a tropical spot past sunset; and I thought my duty being that of your doctor, you know, what it all signified, what the rajah of Dornen had started up. It was in the year before the great rebellion; and this was a little one, which was already a considerable uprising and commotion between this and that. ‘I have persuaded her to come out,* Beckwith went on, slowly, lighting his pipe. ‘Her?’ said I. ‘Yes, Mary Danvers,’ my friend, the captain, went on, when, of course, I understood well enough. He had told us of this before; and the girl was coming out to him. I remember 1 chaffed him a bit. IT. Well, well, I was down-country a fortnight later, and word came of something that had been done near Simla. Beckwith had done it, too; he was always doing something or other. As I was crossing the paradeground that afternoon a very pretty girl spurred past.

‘Who is she?* I asked. ‘Miss Danvers? Beckwith’s girl. I was to see her with Mrs Major MacPherson that night at dinner, as I remember. And Ibegan a talk with Beekwith, of course, and then was sorry I had. For I ended, before I went to quarters that night, by wanting her to think more of me than of him. But that was scarcely loyal; so that next day I went boldly to the subject again—what he had done and was doing in the little war. what a charming, brave fellow he was, indeed. And she listened. with rapt eyes, now blushing over her pride in him, and again turning white lest he be hurt or killed up there in the hill-country. And one day there came a letter to me: ‘Dear old Ferguson:—Don’t forget to make it pleasant for Mary. We are having a fearful time up here, but we are taking it out of ’em for little Withers? Little Withers was the chap who had commanded at Dornen when the uprising came, and he and all his command had been eut to pieces. Well, you know how it is when one is thirty and is thrown too often with a pretty girl. I had my excuse if he had asked it, and, in fact, most of the men were away. Now, among the things we did, we went ramshackling about the old city. You know what an Indian city is now; it was not very different then. Years don’t change things or people in the East. For the young lady just from the North Country here was startling contrast, strange colour, an endless story. She could not have enough of it. And there was never a beggar, which is saying a deal in India, to whom she didn’t toss a penny or so. We had been riding one day through a forest, and at a cross-road we came on an old woman, sitting mumbling to herself. Miss Danvers would rein her pony, though my Mohammedan boy remonstrated.

The hag’s eyes opened from under heavy, swollen lide; they looked out piercingly on the fresh young English girl. ‘The evil eye,’ said my boy, Mohammed Ali, ‘the evil eye’; for he believed in it, you know. And Mary Danvers shrank from that gaze, shivering, while the woman, raising a bony hand, pointed at her, shouting out an execration in some jargon. With something like an oath, I fear, I seized her bridle, and directly we were out from the dark, evil place and- the sound of the cross-legged witch at the turning. ‘Something will happen to him,’ she added. And she added, shuddering: ‘Wasn't she horrible?’ ‘Oh, don’t mind,’ I remember I said, soothing her. ‘They hate us English.’ Little did we realise how deep that hate was; the rebellion of the next year'was to show it all plainly. That danger is ever alive in India. What if all the Mohammedans should rise as one man? I heard Mohammed Ali muttering that night as he brought my shavingwater: ‘The evil eye.’ ‘Stop that d —d nonsense!’ I cried, flinging a boot at his head, which he deftly dodged. ‘Yes, sahib,’ he said, with an ugly gleam in his own eyes. There seemed something in the air which kept my nerves on edge. I found myself swearing at him. and wondering at my strange irritability. But after I was dressed I asked him: ‘Well, you understand the lingo. What did she say?’ ‘The black curse on him she loves, sahib. She said that for all the wrong that had been done India there will be retribution, sahib.’ And he bent his head, like the welltrained servant he was. Well, I went out to dinner. As I say, there was something in the air; we were a singularly uncompanionable lot.

111. My irritability, I say, was not unshared. Something seemed to have seized all our tempers — something that left our nerves unstrung; while the long days following, hot and dank, made us listless. Suddenly, as if it were all pre-ar-ranged, people began to die; not by ones or twos, but by scores. As you walked abroad a low, distant wail seemed to fill the air; to reach out of the city’s narow alleys into the broader streets. There was indeed a sound of lamentation in that part of the land; for the dread plague held it. Men fell dead at their vocations—as they breakfasted or dined. The wrath of the god of Mohammedan, Buddhist, Brahmin, or Christian was over that place. No longer was there a jest in the garrison; the fearful death reached among our soldiers. The interest in the little war of the rajah of Dornen dulled. Men may fight one another with a becoming spirit, but when it is a fight with death, grinning and ghastly, it’s a matter of a paler colour. My own irritability, the tension of my nerves, lessened in the duties that the trouble put on me. The surgeon became suddenly the most important person. You who live in the comfort of the temperate latitudes can’t imagine, by any stretch, the fear, the panic, that held us. I, of course, being so busied, saw little of the ladies of our post. They were brave enough—huch braver, indeed Men can endure battle and campaigning; but it takes women to bear patiently the long-continued terror. Y’et as I passed to and fro and saw Mary Danvers with her friend, Mrs Macpherson, I caught myself cursing the mood which had led Jack Beckwith to send for his bride out of England. She would stop me, too, and ask how matters were going in Dornen—was the plague there?—was Captain Beckwith safe?—would it be reasonable to expect him back that month? One day the post caught news that

it was settled up there; the rajah was a prisoner. Captain Beckwith and the others were on the way down. One night that I ean never forget, fagged out, I had been snatching a bit of a sleep. Somebody shook me. ‘Devilish sorry, Tom,' said Beckwith; for there he stood in the flare of a candle. ‘Jack,’ said I. sitting up, ‘what’s the matter with you, man?’ ‘Just came in. Something’s wrong; something's wrong.’ His yellow hair framed hectic cheeks. ‘Let's see,’ said I, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. And I saw all at once, with a sickening of my heart. He was talking crazily. 1 put him to bed. That thing, that infection, killed men almost instantly. 1 had been called away for a few moments when my boy, Mohammed Ali, came to me with chattering teeth. ‘The sahib is dead,’ said he. I hurried back. ‘He is turning black," said the boy, at my heels. I knew what that meant—the black death. As I entered the room my friend’s long, outstretched figure caught my eyes. A dim dawn now lit his face, which 1 too saw was darkening. With something like on oath I pulled the sheet over it, and, turning, warned Mohammed Ali to admit no one there. He had come back from the wars to her, to die. I left the thing—for it was more than the dead usually are to surgeons—and went away to arouse the functionary’s wife. She gave a cry when she heard of it. ‘She mustn’t know,’ the little woman said. ‘lt will kill her.’ ‘But what can we say? She doesn’t know he is here.’ ‘She expects him.’ J ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she said; and fcthen, with more resolution, ‘we must Itell her that he died in the hills.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ I said; ‘you must remember that —in the hills.’

But I left her doubtfully, a lump in my throat. It must have been three hours later before 1 was able to return to my quarters, where Beckwith lay. As I passed in an old woman came out; her step was hurried, yet she turned around to face me with an evil grin. I ean see her toothless mouth, her deep-set eyes, even now; and with a sudden fear 1 remembered what Mohammed Ali had said of her; for it flashed over me that this was the same woman Mary Danvers and I had passed that day at the turning. I don’t understand now why 1 had chanced to remember her. I called out, but she seemed to slip away and was lost in the hurrying street—gone, indeed, like an apparition; and I never saw her again. At the inner floor I met Mohammed Ali, standing there with a strtinge stare. When I asked him about the woman he only looked dazed, his white, shining teeth giving a sort of click-clack. Perhaps the fear of the plague had seized him. since the dead lay in my quarters. I went in the room where Beckwith lay. Kneeling by the bed, her hair loose over her shoulders, was Mary Danvers. ‘Look.’ she said, turning and facing me, and there was that in her face and eyes which shook me; and from her 1 looked at the dead, and then found myself crying out. The body of my friend lay there, yet changed to a deep black; a black man, I say, whose face was framed by yellow hair waging in the little breeze, and though 1 had known the plague to so change a victim, in this ease it was so horribly startling that I found myself gasping out incoherent words; and I turned to her. who knelt there staring with the fixity of mad‘My poor girl,’ 1 said, ‘my poor girl.' But she did not answer; only knelt on still. Remembering the contagion, 1 put my hand on her shoulder to drag her away.

‘Who brought you here?’ I asked, not knowing clearly what I said. ‘My love,’ the girl said; ‘and he has gone over the dark river.’ ‘Over the dark river,’ I repeated. Again I pulled the coverlid across the face. ‘He was a brave officer, Miss Danvers; and now be brave, as he would have you.’ It's so hard, you all know, to say what one would wish in the presence of trouble. She leaned forward and pulled the sheet back and pressed her lips against his; and then gave a little cry and fell over him. It seemed to me that the worst would follow. I hardly know how I carried her away from that. 1 remember some time after I was telling the story to Mrs MacPherson, and that good woman was saying, the plague or no, Mary Danvers should stay there in her quarters. An hour later I thought of the coincidence of meeting the old woman of the cross-roads. So I called to Mohammed Ali: ‘That old woman brought Miss Danvers here?’ ‘Yes, sahib —the woman of the turning, to show the curse she had made.’ ‘Her curse, Mohammed?’ I said. ‘Why should she hate Miss Danvers?’ ‘Allah knows,’ said the boy; ‘because she is old and wrinkled, while Miss Danvers is young; because her people once held this city and this land, and it is reasonable to hate those who have driven you out.’ ‘How did she know he—he was dead ?' ‘Allah knows.’ That was all: God knew. He repeated it with a certain fervour that I cannot reproduce here. I can say no more. ‘God knows.’ There is in it the mystery of hate and of suffering; I can explain it no further. ‘Hush, doctor,’ said Mrs MacPherson at the door ‘She came over the seas to him—and now she has gone to him.’ And my countrywoman smothered a sob, and then laid her hand on my shoulder. ‘lt’s well they should go together,’ she said, as women will. The plague passed. That dull potson the air held was swept away and new life left us forgetful of the old. But the next year was to come the great revolt, the outburst of that spirit which had been expressed by the avenging Fury of the cross-roads.