Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 2 of 3

I have no doubt that Captain Roberts so rests, and am fain to believe, in the mercy of God, the same of the brave old Colonel. At least, we will hope that he is not gone to that eternal punishment, whose existence our divines contend for in a manner so disinterested. He had been a harum–scarum man; and now, having drowned and buried him, we may enter upon his history with the charity due to both quick and dead, but paid to the latter only.

A soldier is, in many things, by virtue of his calling, a generous, careless man. We have always credited the sailor with these popular qualities; hornpipes, national drama, and naval novels imbuing us. I doubt if the sailor be, on the whole, so careless a man as the soldier. Jack is obliged, by force of circumstance, to bottle up his money, his rollicksomeness and sentimentality, and therefore has more to get rid of, when he comes ashore once in a twelvemonth. But spread the outburst over the year, strike the average of it, and the rainfall at Aldershot will equal that at Portsmouth.

Only by watching the Army List – which at length he was tired of doing – could the English brother tell if the Indian brother were living. Even the most careful of us begin to feel that care is too much for the nine lives of a cat, when Fahrenheit scores 110° in the very coolest corner, and the punkah is too hot to move. So, after one or two Griffin letters, full of marvels which the writer pretended not to marvel at, a silence, as of the jungle, ensued, and Sir Cradock thought of tigers. Then the slides of his own life began to move upon him; and less and less every year he thought of the boy who had laughed and cried with him.

Lieutenant Nowell was ordered suddenly to the borders of the Punjaub, and for twenty years his brother Cradock drank his health at Christmas, and wondered how about the Article against praying for the dead. The next thing he heard, though it proved his own orthodoxy, disproved it by making him swear hard. Clayton Nowell had married; married an Affghan woman, to the great disgust of his brother officers, and the furious disdain of her kinsmen. A very fine family of Affghan chiefs immediately loaded their fusils, and swore to shoot both that English dog and their own Bright Eyes of the Morning.

“To think,” cried Sir Cradock Nowell, “that a brother of mine should disgrace himself, and (what matters far more) his family, by marrying a wretched low Affghan woman!”

“To think,” cried Mohammed Khans, “that a sister of ours should disgrace herself, and (what matters far more) her family, by marrying a cursed low English dog!”

Which party was in the right, judge ye who understand the matter. The officers’ wives got over their prejudice against Bright Eyes of the Morning, and matronised, and petted, and tried to make a Christian of her. Captain Nowell adored her; she was so elegant in every motion, so loving, and so simple. She quite reformed him for the time from his too benevolent anthropology, from the love of dice, and the vinous doings which the Prophet does not encourage.

But the poor thing died in her first confinement, while following her husbandʼs regiment at the foot of the Himalayah, leaving her new–born babe to the care of a faithful Affghan nurse, who had kept at her dear ladyʼs side, even among the infidels. This good nurse, being great of soul, and therefore strong of faith, could not bear that the child of her mistress, the highest blood of the Affghans, should become a low Frank idolater. So she set off with it, in the dark night, crouching past the sentinels, thieves, and other camp followers, and trusted herself to the boundless jungle, with only the stars to guide her. She put the wailing child to her breast, for her own dear babe was dead, and hushed it from the vigilant ears of the man–eating tiger. Then off again for Affghanistan, six hundred miles in the distance.

How this wonderful woman, soothing and coaxing the little stranger (obtrusively remarkable for the power of her squalls), how she got on through the thorns, the fire, the famine, the jaws of the tiger, and, worse than all, the pestilent fever, bred from the rich stagnation of that alluvial soil, is more than I, or any other unversed in womanʼs unity, may pretend to show. Enough that with her eyes upon the grand religious heights – heathen high places, we should call them – she struggled along through nearly three–quarters of her pilgrimage, and then she fell among robbers. A villanous hill–tribe, of mixed origin, always shifting, never working, never even fighting when they could run away, hated and despised by the nobler mountain races, the pariahs of the Himalayah, ignorant of any good, debased as any Africans – in a single word, Rakshas, or worshippers of the devil. A nice school of education for a young lady of tender years – or rather months – to commence in.

The nurse was allotted to one of their chiefs, and the babe was about to be knocked on the head, when it struck an enlightened priest that in two years’ time she would make a savoury oblation to the devil; so the Affghan woman was allowed to keep her, until she began to crawl about among the dogs and babes of the station. Here she so distinguished herself by precocious skill in thieving, that her delighted owner conferred upon her the title of “Never–spot–the–dust,” and even instructed her how to steal the high priestʼs knife of sacrifice. That last exploit saved her life. Such a genius had never appeared in any tribe of the Rakshas until this great manifestation.

So “Never–spot–the–dust” was well treated, and made much of by her owner, to whom she was quite a fortune; and soon all the band looked up to her as the future priestess of the devil. For ten years she wandered about with them, becoming every year more important, proud that none could approach her skill in stealing, lying, and perjury, utterly void of all religion, except the few snatches of Moslemism which her nurse had contrived to impart, and the vague terror of the evil spirit to whom the wild men paid their vows. But, when she was ten years old, a tall and wonderfully active child, and just about to be consecrated by the blood of inferior children, a British force drew suddenly all around the nest of robbers. Of late the scoundrels had done things that made John Bullʼs hair stand on end; and, when his hair is in that condition, sparks are apt to come out of it.

Seeing no chance of escape, and having very faint hopes of quarter, the robbers fought with a bravery which quite astonished themselves; but the evil spirit was against them – a rare inconsistence on his part. Their rascally camp was burnt, which they who had burned some hundreds of villages looked upon as the grossest cruelty, and more than half of their number were sent home to their patron and guardian. Then the Affghan nurse, so faithful and so unfortunate, fled from the burning camp with her charge, fell before the British colonel, and poured forth all her troubles. The Englishman knew Major Nowell, and had heard some parts of his history; so he took “Never–spot–the–dust” to her father, who was amazed at once and amused with her. She could run up the punkah, and stand on the top, and twirl around on one foot; she could cross the compound in three bounds; she could jump upon her fatherʼs shoulder, and stay there with the spring of her sole; she could glide along over the floor like a serpent, and hold on with one hand to anything. And then her most wonderful lightness of touch; she had fully earned her name, she could brush the dust without marking it. She could come behind her fatherʼs back, crawling over the table, and fasten his sword–hilt to his whiskers, without his knowing a thing of it. She could pick all his pockets, of course; but that was too rude an operation for her to take any delight in it. What she delighted to do, and what even she found difficult, was to take off his shoes and stockings without his being aware of it. It was a beautiful thing to see her: consummate skill is beautiful, in whatever way it is exercised. The shoe she could get off easily enough, but the difficulty was with the stocking; and there the chief difficulty was through the sensitiveness of the skin, unaccustomed to exposure. Though she had never heard of temperature, evaporation, or anything long, her genius told her the very first time where the tug was and how to meet it. Keeping her little cornelian lips – lips which you could see through – just at the proper distance, she would breathe so softly upon the skin that the breath could not be felt, as inch by inch she lowered down the thin elastic covering. Then she would jump up out of the ground, and shout into his ears, with a voice of argute silver —

“Faddery, will ‘oo have ‘oor shoe? Fear to go wiyout him?”

She began to talk English, after a bit; and the weather beaten Colonel – for now he had got that far – who had never looked upon any child, except as one rupee per month – thinking of his beloved Bright Eyes of the Morning, who might, with the will of God, have made a first–rate man of him, only she was too good for him, – thinking of her, and seeing the gleam of her glorious eyes in her child, he loved that child beyond all reason, and christened her “Eoa.”

He never took to bad things again. He had something now in pledge with God; a part of himself that still would live, and love him when he was skeleton. And that, his better part, should learn how lying and stealing do not lead to the right half of the other world.

His ideas about that other world were as dormant as Eoaʼs; but now he began to think about it, because he wanted to see her there. So, with lots of tears, not only feminine, Eoa Nowell was sent to the best school in Calcutta, where she taught the other young ladies some very odd things indeed.

Wherever she went, she must be foremost; “second to none” was her motto. Therefore she learned with amazing quickness; but it was not so easy to unlearn.

Then arose that awful mutiny, and the Colonel at Mhow was shot through the neck, and let lie, by his own soldiers. His daughter heard of it, and screamed, and no walls ever built would hold her. All the way from Calcutta, up the dreary Ganges, she forced her passage, sometimes by boat, sometimes on her weariless feet.

She had never cared much for civilization, and loved every blade of the jungle. The old life revived within her, as she looked upon the broad waters, and the boundless yellow tangle, wherein glided no swifter thing, nothing more elegant, than herself.

She found her darling father in some rude cantonment, prostrate, helpless, clinging faintly to the verge of death. Dead long ago he must have been but for Rufus Hutton; and dead even now he would have been but for his daughterʼs presence. His dreamy eyes went round the hut to follow her graceful movements; she alone could tend the wounds as if with the fall of gossamer, she alone could soothe and fan the intolerable aching. They looked into each otherʼs eyes and cried without thinking about it.

Then, as he gradually got better, and the surge of trouble passed them, Eoa showed for his amusement all her strange accomplishments. She had not forgotten one of them in the grand school at Calcutta. They had even grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength.

She would leap over Rufus Huttonʼs head like a flash of light, and stand facing him, without a muscle moving, and on his back would be a land–crab; she would put his up–country hat on the floor, and walk on one foot round the crown of it; she would steal his case of instruments, and toss them in the air all open, and catch them all at once.

By her nursing and her loving, her stealing and her mockery, she won Dr. Huttonʼs heart so entirely that he would have proposed to her, had she only been of marriageable age, or had come to think about anything.

Then they had all to cut and run, with barely three hours’ notice, for the ebb of the rebellion swept through that district mightily. Eoa went to school again, and her father came to see her daily, until he was appointed to a regiment having something more than name and shadow.

Now Eoa, having learned everything that they can teach in Calcutta, the Himalayah, or the jungle, was coming to England to receive the down and crown of accomplishments. Who could tell but what they might even teach her affectation? Youth is plastic and imitative; and she was sure to find plenty of models.

Not that the honest Colonel wished to make a sickly humbug of her. His own views were wide and grand, only too philoprogenitive. Still, like most men of that class, who, upon sudden reformation, love Truth so much that they roll upon her, having no firm rules of his own, and being ashamed to profess anything, with the bad life fresh in memory, he took the opinion of old fogeys who had been every bit as unblest as himself, but had sown with a drill their wild oats. The verdict of all was one – “Miss Nowell must go to England.”

Finding his wound still troublesome, he resolved to retire from service; he had not saved half a lac of rupees, and his pension would not be a mighty one; but, between the two, there would be enough for an old man to live upon decently, and go wherever he was told that his daughter ought to go.

He had seen enough of life, and found that it only meant repentance; all that remained of it should be for the pleasure and love of his daughter. And he knew that there was a sum in England, which must have been long accumulating – a sum left on trust for him and his children, under a very old settlement. He would never touch a farthing of it; every farthing should go to Eoa. Bless her dear eyes; they had the true light of his own Bright Eyes of the Morning.

CHAPTER VI

Eoa was now sixteen years old, tall, and lithe, and graceful as the creepers of tropic woodlands. Her face was of the clearest oval, a quick concise terse oval, such as we find in the eggs of wild birds rather than of tame ones. Her eyes were of bewildering brightness, always flashing, always in motion, rarely allowing the gazer a chance of guessing what their colour was. Very likely they were of no positive colour, but a pure dark lustre, such as a clear swift river has, when overhung by palm–trees. Her complexion, beautifully soft and even, was toned with a delicate eastern tinge, like that fawn–coloured light which sometimes flushes a cloudless sky before the midsummer sunrise. And her warm oriental blood suffused it, at the slightest emotion, as the leaping sun pervades that sky with a flood of limpid rubies.

She had never been flattened by education: all her qualities and feelings, like her beauty, were in excess. You could see it in the quick rise and fall of her breath, in the sudden grace of her movements, in the infinite variety of her attitudes and aspects.

Whatever she thought, she said at once; yet none ever called her a bold girl. Her modes of thought were as widely different from those of an English maiden, as a wild honeysuckle differs in form, habit, and scent, from a rose. She cared for no oneʼs opinion of her, any more than the wind cares how a tree swings; unless indeed it were one whom she loved, and then she would crawl to please him. For she loved with all her heart and soul, and hated with no less; and she always took care in either case to apprise the object of it. And yet, with all her depth of passion, Eoa was pure of heart and mind, – ay, as pure as our own Amy.

She soon recovered from her bruises, being perfectly healthy, and elastic as india–rubber. Nevertheless, she would not have been saved from that terrible sea but for the generosity of poor Captain Roberts, and the gallantry of Bob Garnet.

Now Bob was hurt rather seriously, and, being (as we are well aware) an uncommonly shy young fellow, he was greatly astonished, and shocked a little, when on the Friday morning a beautiful girl, very strangely dressed, ran to the side of his sofa, threw her arms round him, and kissed him till he was out of breath, and his face was wet with the dew of her tears.

“Oh, please donʼt,” said Bob; “I am sure I donʼt deserve it.”

“Yes, you do; and I will marry you when I am old enough. I donʼt know what you are like, and I donʼt care two straws, directly they told me what you had done. Only I must have papaʼs leave. Kiss me again, I like it. Now where is my darling papa?”

“What, donʼt you know? Havenʼt they told you? Oh, poor thing!”

At the tone of his voice she leaped back, like a bird at the gun–flash, and stood with her little hands clasped on her head, her eyes with their deep light quivering, and the whole of her form swinging to and fro, from the wild push of sudden terror. Then she spoke with a hollow depth, which frightened Bob more than the kissing.

“They told me that he was well, gone to his brother somewhere, and I thought it wasnʼt like him to leave me so, and – tell me the truth, or Iʼll shake you to pieces.”

“No, donʼt,” said Bob, as she leaped at him; “I have had shaking enough.”

“Yes, you poor boy, and for my sake. I am a brute, I know. Tell me the truth, if you love me.”

“Your dear father is dead. But they have found his body.”

“Do you mean to say that God has been so wicked as to kill my father?”

“God knows best,” said Bob; he could think of nothing else to say.

“No, He doesnʼt. No, He doesnʼt. No, He never knows anything. He couldnʼt have known who he was, and how terribly I loved him, or He wouldnʼt have the heart to do it. Oh, you wicked boy; oh, you wicked boy! I will never forgive you for saving me. Hya, hya, hya!”

Bob never saw such a thing before, and never will again. And he wonʼt be much the loser; although the sight was magnificent. The screams and shrieks of the clearest voice that ever puzzled echo brought up the landlord and landlady, and our good friend Rufus Hutton, who had set forth full speed from home on hearing about the Aliwal. He caught Eoa in his arms, carried her back to her room, and dosed her. He gave her some Indian specific, some powder of a narcotic fungus, which he had brought on purpose.

It stupefied her for nearly three days, and even then she awoke into the dreamy state of Nirwana, that bliss of semi–consciousness, like mild annihilation, into which the Buddha is absorbed, and to which all pious Buddhists look as their eternal happiness. Then she opened her delicate tapering arms, where you could see the grand muscles moving, but never once protruding, and she called for her darling father to come. Finding that he did not come, she was satisfied with some trifling answer, and then wanted to have Bob instead; but neither was Bob forthcoming.

On the very day when Dr. Hutton came to look for Eoa, Mr. Garnet found himself getting better from that wretched low nervous fever into which his fright had thrown him. Then he asked Dr. Hutton whether there would be any danger in moving Robert, and, finding that there would be none whatever, if it were carefully managed, he ordered a carriage immediately, and with some of his ancient spirit. The Crown, which had the cross–bar of its N set up the wrong way (as is done, by–the–by, on the roof of Hampton Court chapel, and in many other places), made public claim to be regarded as a “commercial hotel and posting–house.” No Rushford folk having yet been known to post anything, except a letter at rare intervals, and a bill at rarer, this claim of the Crown had never been challenged, and strangers entertained a languid theoretical faith in it. But Mr. Brown looked very blue when Bull Garnet in reviving accents ordered “a chaise and pair at the door in half an hourʼs time; a roomy chaise, if you please, because my son must keep his feet up.”

“Yes, sir; yes, to be sure, sir; I quite understand, sir. It shall be attended to, sir.”

“Then why donʼt you go and order it?”