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Lupton
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How to Take Smart Notes One Simple Technique to Boost Writing Learning and Thinking for Students Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers 1st Edition Sönke Ahrens
A critical guide for designers, writers, editors, and students
typography is everywhere
Ellen Lupton thinking with
t3RD EDITION
REVISED AND EXPANDED
A critical guide for designers, writers, editors, and students
text layout
102 READERS, WRITERS, AND USERS
114 COLUMNS, LINES, AND SPACING
116 Aligning Columns
124 Line Length
126 Paragraphs
128 Short Lines
132 Kerning
134 Tracking
138 Vertical Space
144 Vertical Text
148 Legibility and Readability
150 Readable Prose
152 exercise | Texture
154 exercise | Space
156 HIERARCHY AND STRUCTURE
158 Minimal Hierarchy
160 Layered Hierarchy
164 Type Scale
166 Visual and Semantic Hierarchy
168 Inclusive Design
170 exercise | Grids and Hierarchy
172 MULTIPLICITY OF SCRIPTS
174 Arabic Typography
178 Chinese Typography
182 Korean Typography
190 Japanese Typography
194 Indic Typography
200 Kigelia: A Typeface for Africa
204 SCAFFOLDS AND SKELETONS
218 BALANCE AND ALIGNMENT
220 Symmetry and Asymmetry
222 Grouping
226 Aligning Elements
228 Borders
230 GRIDS
232 Manuscript Grid
234 Column Grid
236 Modular Grid
240 Baseline Grid
242 Responsive Layouts
244 Serial Design
246 exercise | Grid and Anti-Grid
248 exercise | Extended Series
250 CONTRIBUTORS
251 INDEX
Hood’s sarsaparilla (1884). In this advertising postcard, a woman’s healthy face bursts through a sheet of text. Her shining eyes and bright complexion demonstrate the product’s efficacy more vividly than written ad copy. Both text and image were drawn by hand, reproduced via color lithography.
The first edition of Thinking with Type appeared in 2004. Since then, designers worldwide have used this book to explore the art and craft of typography. Twenty years later, every last pica of this trusty tome has been renovated and refreshed. My understanding of design has grown and stretched, and so has this book. Now in its third edition, Thinking with Type has more pages and more content. The layouts have more space to breathe, and the text is more inclusive and accessible.
Thinking with Type, Third Edition features dozens of new and interesting fonts. You will see classic fonts, weird fonts, Libre fonts, Google fonts, Adobe fonts, indie fonts, and fonts and design work created by women and people of color. Leading experts have contributed visual essays about some of the world’s writing systems. These introductions to various scripts supplement the book’s main focus—working with Latin typography. The new edition also explores basic layout principles, such as visual balance and Gestalt grouping, making this book an integral guide for graphic design.
Thinking with Type highlights common mistakes and how to fix them. Previous editions used the phrase “type crimes” to poke fun at self-important type snobs—myself included. Alas, this mocking phrase makes light of real crimes and inhumane punishments. In the process of writing this new edition, I thought about removing typographic gaffes altogether. In the end, I decided that explaining errors in a nonjudgmental way helps readers take loving care of typography’s living traditions. This book welcomes everyone who works or plays with words. Typography is a tool for reading, writing, and learning—and for finding joy and revelation. Many thanks to Letterform Archive for the stunning photographs of historical works; to my teachers, students, family, and friends for their care and patience; and to the designers who wrote down the rules long before me.
humans and machines
Writing systems emerge from the body. The first typefaces copied calligraphy (which means “beautiful handwriting”) and everyday scripts. But unlike written forms, typefaces are manufactured symbols designed for repetition. The history of type reflects tensions between hand and machine production, organic and geometric forms, and the human body and abstract systems. These tensions still energize type design today.
Movable type, invented by Johannes Gutenberg, revolutionized writing across Europe. Previously, scribes had made books by hand, a slow and expensive process. In the system of movable type, letters are cast from a mold and assembled into forms for printing. After printing the pages, workers sorted and stored the letters for reuse. Movable type is considered the first form of mass production.
laTin bible (1455). This book launched the invention of movable type in Europe. The book was printed by Johannes Gutenberg, Johann Fust, and Peter Schoeffer in Mainz, Germany. Artisans added decorative initials by hand to match the luxurious appearance of manuscripts. Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
+ On the history of printing, see Michael F. Suarez S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen, The Book: A Global History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and Alan Bartram, Five Hundred Years of Book Design (London: British Library, 2001).
Movable type proved efficient for printing alphabetic scripts— such as Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic—which translate spoken sounds into a few dozen marks. Although Gutenberg printed his books with metal type, he wanted his products to look handmade. He created variations of many characters to emulate the dense, dark script known as blackletter or fraktur. He also created ligatures, characters combining two or more letters into a single mark. Such details made the process of producing books less efficient but more naturalistic.
The oldest printed book in existence, Diamond Sutra, was created in China in 868 CE.+ It was produced with woodblock printing , a technique well-suited to the Chinese writing system, which employs thousands of unique characters. In this process, artisans trace characters onto the block and carve around them. These workers did not need to know how to read, which helped make the technique economical.
Woodblocks were also vital in Korea, where the vast Buddhist text Tripitaka, printed 1236–1251 CE, required more than eighty thousand blocks. In addition to carving wood, Korean printers developed metal type in the thirteenth century. Movable type proved especially suitable for printing the Korean alphabet, Hangeul (also spelled Hangul), designed by King Sejong in 1443. Writing systems and techniques for copying them have flourished around the world.+ Although Gutenberg was unaware of Asian printing history, his invention built on various precedents in Europe, including woodblocks, manuscripts, wine presses, and metal coins stamped with punches.
diamond suTra (868 Ce). Printed in China, this book employed carved wood blocks printed on loose sheets of paper, later assembled into a scroll. Collection of the British Library.
+ Amalia E. Gnanadesikan, The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
THe revised CompreHensive mirror of good governmenT (1422). Book page set in bronze movable type. Printed leaf collected in Melvin P. McGovern, Korean Movable Types (Dawson’s Book Shop, 1966). Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
HUMANISM AND THE BODY
+ On the origins of roman type, see Gerrit Noordzij, Letterletter (Vancouver: Hartley and Marks, 2000) and John Boardley, Typographic Firsts: Adventures in Early Printing (Oxford: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2021).
franCesCo griffo designed roman and italic types for Aldus Manutius. Roman and italic were conceived as separate typefaces. This page was printed in 1525. Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
In fifteenth-century Italy, humanist writers and scholars employed various styles of handwriting. Lettera Antiqua is a classical script with wide, open forms. The preference for Lettera Antiqua was part of the Renaissance (rebirth) of classical Greek and Roman art, architecture, and scholarship, a movement known as humanism. Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman who had learned to print in Germany, established an influential printing firm in Venice around 1469. His typefaces merged the Gothic traditions of France and Germany with the Italian taste for rounder, lighter forms. He created some of the first roman typefaces.+
Many typefaces in use today, including Garamond, Bembo, Palatino, and Jenson, are named for printers who worked in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The style of these typefaces is called humanist. Over time, revivals of historical typefaces have been designed to work with changing technologies and current demands for sharpness, uniformity, language support, and more. Some revivals are based on metal types, punches, or drawings that still exist; most rely on printed specimens.
Italic letters, introduced in fifteenth-century Italy, were modeled on a more casual handwriting style. While the upright humanist forms appeared in expensive manuscript books, the cursive style thrived in the cheaper writing shops, where it could be written more quickly. Aldus Manutius, a Venetian printer, publisher, and scholar, used italic typefaces in his internationally distributed series of small, inexpensive printed books. For calligraphers, the italic form was cheaper because it saved time, while for printers, the cursive form saved space. Aldus Manutius often paired cursive letters with roman capitals; the two styles were considered fundamentally distinct.
In the sixteenth century, printers began integrating roman and italic forms into type families with matching weights and x-heights (the height of the main body of the lowercase letter). Today, the italic style in many fonts is more than a slanted version of the roman; it incorporates the curves, angles, and narrower proportions associated with cursive forms.
1471 | niColas Jenson
Jenson learned to print in Mainz, the German birthplace of typography, before establishing his own printing press in Venice. The strokes resemble the path of a broad-nibbed pen. The presses and paper of the era yielded blunt, imperfect impressions. Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
1890 | golden Type
English design reformer William Morris critiqued the degradation of factory labor. His Golden Type rejected the sparkling, high-contrast typefaces that dominated commercial printing in favor of the solemn density and soft edges of Jenson’s printed letters. Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
1995 | adobe Jenson
Designed by Robert Slimbach, Adobe Jenson emphasizes the ribbonlike strokes in Jenson’s letters. The slanted bar of the e extends slightly past the curve.
Lorem Potterum dolor sit Quidditch, consectetuer
2020 | epiCa
This superfamily, designed by Oscar Guerrero Cañizares, includes numerous weights in both serif and sans-serif styles. The strokes feel closer to the Renaissance than Adobe Jenson because they have less contrast.
Lorem Potterum dolor sit Quidditch, consectetuer
Hogwarts elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt labore et magic potion aliqua. Ut enim ad minim wand, quis nostrud exercitation Patronus charm laboris nisi ut aliquid ex ea potion concoction
ABSTRACTION
geofroy Tory wrote in 1529, “The cross-stroke covers the man’s organ of generation, to signify that Modesty and Chastity are required, before all else, in those who seek acquaintance with wellshaped letters.” Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
THe romain du roi (King’s Roman) was designed for the printing press of Louis XIV in France in 1695, using a fine grid. Philippe Grandjean created a typeface based on the theoretical drawings.
+ On the search for essential letterforms since the Renaissance, see Kate Brideau, The Typographic Medium (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022).
++ F. E. Pardoe, John Baskerville of Birmingham: Letter-Founder and Printer (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1975), 68.
Renaissance artists derived proportions from idealized human bodies. The French typographer Geofroy Tory published a treatise in 1529 linking letterforms to human figures.+ A new approach—distanced from the body—would unfold during the Enlightenment, an age of scientific and philosophical inquiry.
A committee appointed by Louis XIV in France in 1693 set out to construct roman letters against a finely meshed grid. Whereas Tory’s diagrams were produced as woodcuts, the gridded drawings of the Romain du Roi (King’s Roman) used engraving. This process employs a tool called a graver to incise a copper plate. The typefaces derived from these diagrams were influenced by the sharp, linear quality of engraving as well as by the scientific aspirations of the project.
Louis Barbedor, George Bickham, and other writing masters taught penmanship to the elite classes and disseminated their work via engravings, whose swelling, serpentine lines capture the motion of handwriting. Bickham’s book The Universal Penman (1743) features crisp roman letters—each engraved as a unique character—as well as flowing scripts.
In England, William Caslon and John Baskerville abandoned the rigid nib of humanist calligraphy for the flexible steel pen and the pointed quill of the new writing masters. Baskerville, himself a master calligrapher, would have admired the thinly sculpted lines printed in the engraved writing books. Because his typefaces were so sharp, contemporaries accused him of “blinding all the Readers in the Nation; for the strokes of your letters, being too thin and narrow, hurt the Eye.”++ To heighten the detail and contrast of his typography, Baskerville made his own inks and hot-pressed his pages after printing.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Giambattista Bodoni in Italy and Firmin Didot in France amplified Baskerville’s precise typographic style. Their typefaces have a strong vertical axis, severe contrast between thick and thin strokes, and crisp, waferlike serifs. This glittering new style launched an approach to typography unhinged from calligraphy.
William Caslon (1692–1766) produced typefaces in England with crisp, upright characters that appear, as Robert Bringhurst has written, “more modelled and less written than Renaissance forms.”+++ Caslon’s Specimen of Printing Types, 1780s. Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
+++ Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (Vancouver: Hartley and Marks, 1992, 1997), 127.
JoHn baskerville (1707–1775) was an English printer who aimed to surpass Caslon by creating more vivid contrast between thick and thin elements. Baskerville’s work was denounced by many of his contemporaries as amateur and extremist. Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis, 1757. Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
giambaTTisTa bodoni (1740–1830) created letters that exhibit abrupt, unmodulated contrast between thick and thin elements, and razor-thin serifs unsupported by curved brackets. Similar typefaces were designed in the same period by François-Ambroise Didot (1730–1804) in France and Justus Erich Walbaum (1768–1837) in Germany. Manuale Tipografico, Volume I, 1818. Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
faTHer sébasTien TruCHeT helped create the Romain du Roi. Drawing capitals on a grid, he rejected letterforms inspired by handwriting. Instead, Truchet defined typography as a branch of engraving.+ Manuscript (1692) reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
+ See Jacques André and Denis Girou, “Father Truchet, the Typographic Point, the Romain du Roi, and Tilings,” TUGboat 20, no. 1 (1999): 8–14.
marie niCole esTienne (known as Veuve Hérissant or the Widow Hérissant) took over a printing press and type foundry from her husband. Women in France could inherit businesses from their husbands. Her status was imprimeur ordinaire du roi
(Ordinary Printer to the King). This 1772 type specimen bears her name and shows the new taste for high-contrast letters with thin, unbracketed serifs. She ran the business until 1778. Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
MONSTER FONTS
By rejecting calligraphy and humanist proportions, Bodoni and Didot unleashed a strange new world. Features such as serif and stem, thick and thin strokes, and vertical and horizontal stress could be freely manipulated. In search of a beauty both rational and sublime, Bodoni and Didot had created a monster: an abstract approach to letters set free from the body and hand.
rob roy kelly studied the mechanized design strategies that generated a spectacular variety of display letters in the nineteenth century. The diagram above shows how the basic square serif form— called Egyptian or slab—was cut, pinched, pulled, and curled to spawn new species of ornament. Serifs were transformed from calligraphic end strokes into independent geometric elements that could be freely adjusted.
Mass production and mass consumption exploded in the nineteenth century. The new medium of advertising demanded new styles of typography. Type designers grabbed attention by embellishing, engorging, stretching, and squeezing the body parts of letters. Fonts of astonishing height, width, and depth appeared—expanded, contracted, shadowed, inlined, fattened, faceted, and floriated. Serifs abandoned their supporting role to become independent architectural structures. The traditional stress of Latin letters canted in new directions.
+ On decorated types, see Rob Roy Kelly, American Wood Type: 1828–1900, Notes on the Evolution of Decorated and Large Letters (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), Nicolete Gray, A History of Lettering (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1986), and Ruari McLean, “An Examination of Egyptians,” in Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography, ed. Steven Heller and Philip B. Meggs (New York: Allworth Press, 2001), 70–76.
Lead, the material for casting metal type, is too soft to hold its shape at large sizes under the pressure of the printing press. Wood type, however, can be printed at gigantic scales. In 1834 the combined pantograph and router revolutionized wood-type manufacture. The pantograph is a tracing device that, when linked to a router for carving, allows the designer to make variants of one parent drawing, creating alphabets with different proportions, weights, and details.+
This mechanized design method is divorced from calligraphy. The search for perfect archetypes grounded in idealized human figures gave way to a new view of typography as an elastic system of structural features (weight, stress, stem, crossbars, serifs, angles, curves, ascenders, descenders, and so on). The relationships among letters in a typeface became more important than the identity of individual characters.
anTique Clarendon
laTin/anTique TusCan TusCan
faT faCe is the name given to the inflated, hyper-bold type style introduced in the early nineteenth century. These designs exaggerated the thick and thin components seen in the typographic forms of Bodoni and Didot.
Condensed typefaces violated the classical proportions of lettering. Nineteenthcentury advertisements often combined fonts of varying styles and widths. Condensed type could force a word or phrase into a small space.
goTHiC and groTesque are nineteenth-century terms for letters built without serifs. Gothic letters command attention with their massive frontality. Although sans-serif typefaces were later associated with rational neutrality, their early purpose was to attract attention.
slab serifs transformed the serif from a delicate ornament into a load-bearing structure. The slab style was also called Egyptian, referring to the enormous scale and bottom-heavy architecture of the pyramids. Europeans had an exoticized fascination with African art, design, and hieroglyphics. This style first appeared around 1806.
My person was hideous, my stature gigantic.
Who was I? What was I?
…
Accursed creator! Why did you create a monster so hideous that even you turned away from me in disgust?
mary WollsToneCrafT
sHelley, Frankenstein, 1818
Exploring the dangers of technology, Frankenstein is considered the first work of science fiction. Like the mad scientist in Shelley’s novel, commercial type designers in the nineteenth century distorted the natural state of letters, alarming traditionalists.
Henry Caslon and other descendants of William Caslon carried on the family business. The Caslon foundry created heavy sans-serif styles (top) and Italian, a high-contrast style drawn with horizontal stress (bottom). Typographic critics would later call Caslon’s Italian a “monstrosity.”+ Caslon’s Specimen of Printing Types (1844). Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
+ See James Clough, “Caslon’s Italic,” 2010, www .paulshawletterdesign.com/2010/01/caslon’s-italianby-james-clough/.
full moon, 1875 (opposite). This letterpress poster uses a dozen different fonts. The printer chose a size and style of typeface for each line to maximize the scale of the letters in the given space. Although the typefaces are varied and decorative, the centered layout is as static and conventional as a tombstone.
REFORM AND REVOLUTION
edWard JoHnsTon based this 1906 diagram of essential letterforms on ancient Roman inscriptions. While deriding commercial lettering, Johnston appreciated medieval ornament. Writing & Illuminating & Lettering (Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1932).
Some designers condemned distortions of the alphabet, blaming industrialization for corrupting art, design, and typography. Writing in 1906, Edward Johnston renewed the search for an ideal alphabet and denounced exaggeration. Inspired by the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts Movement, he looked back to the Renaissance and the Middle Ages for pure, uncorrupted letterforms. Johnston and other reformers critiqued the commercial mainstream.
Avant-garde artists and poets sought to dissolve the barriers between art and everyday life. They drew experimental alphabets and arranged existing typefaces in new ways. The Italian poet F. T. Marinetti published the “Futurist Manifesto” in 1909. His typographic poems combine different styles and sizes of type, working against the rigid rectilinear order of letterpress printing. Futurism exposed the technological grid of letterpress while pushing beyond it. Dada artists and poets used mass media tools—from typography to film and photomontage—to attack conventional life and social institutions.
In the Netherlands, Piet Mondrian divided his paintings with vertical and horizontal lines that seemed to expand beyond the limits of the canvas. Theo van Doesburg, Piet Zwart, and other members of the Dutch De Stijl group applied this idea to design and typography. Converting the curves and angles of the alphabet into perpendicular units, they forced the letter through the mesh of the grid. Vilmos Huszár built his hand-drawn logo for the magazine De Stijl with modular blocks.
Constructivism, launched in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1910s, built on Futurist and Dada typography. El Lissitzky used printer’s rules and ornaments to divide space vertically and horizontally, foregrounding the mechanical matrix of letterpress. The page was no longer a fixed, hierarchical window for viewing content but an open expanse to be mapped and marked with letters, rules, and ornaments. El Lissitzky traveled extensively in Europe in the 1920s, where he met the German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and influenced many avant-garde designers.
William morris printed this excerpt of a famous work by John Ruskin. The Nature of Gothic: A Chapter of the Stones of Venice (Kelmscott Press, 1892). Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
f. T. marineTTi attacked the mechanical grid of letterpress. “Lettre d’une Jolie Femme à un Monsieur Passeiste,” 1912, from Les Mots en Liberté Futuristes (Edizioni Futuriste di Poesia, 1919). Reproduced with kind permission, Letterform Archive.
+ Christopher Burke, Paul Renner: The Art of Typography (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998) and Douglas Thomas, Never Use Futura (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2017).
fuTura, designed by Paul Renner in Germany in 1927, has sharp A’s and circular O’s. Renner designed numerous weights of Futura. The type family was a tool for painting the page in shades of black and gray.
Piet Zwart was influenced by the De Stijl movement and then by El Lissitzky and Constructivism. In his work for Fortoliet, a flooring company, Zwart combined existing typefaces with inventive new letterforms pieced together from the materials of the type shop. He combined visionary letter design with the ready-made mechanics of typography.
Herbert Bayer was a student and instructor at the Bauhaus, a German art school. He used drafting tools to construct letters with basic geometric forms. Such experiments approached the alphabet as a modular system of abstract relationships. Typography was becoming a critical tool that reflected on its own making.
Assembled like machines from uniform parts, avant-garde alphabets emulated factory production—yet few were executed as working typefaces for letterpress printing. In 1927 Paul Renner created Futura, a commercially viable font family that embodied the machine dreams of the avant-garde. Futura’s serene, abstract forms aimed to “dispense with handwritten movement.” Designers around the world embraced Renner’s font as an ideal match for modernity. Futura quickly became one of the world’s most popular typefaces.+
+ Wim Crouwel, New Alphabet (Amsterdam: Total Design, 1967).
++Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, Emigre No. 70: The Look Back Issue, Selections from Emigre Magazine, 1984–2009 (Berkeley: Gingko Press, 2009).
Responding to the rise of electronic communication, the Dutch designer Wim Crouwel published designs for a “new alphabet” in 1967, constructed from straight lines. He designed his letters for optimal display on a video screen (CRT), which renders curves and angles with horizontal scan lines. Some of his characters are legible only in the context of the system.+
neW alpHabeT | Wim Crouwel, 1967
In the mid-1980s, personal computers spread the tools of typography to a broader public. Zuzana Licko’s typefaces exploited the rough, jaggy grain of early screen displays and dot-matrix printers. She founded Emigre Fonts and Emigre magazine with Rudy VanderLans, heralding a new digital era.++
lo-res | Zuzana Licko, 1985
Variable fonts, introduced in 2016, generate endless type styles from one font file. A core design can generate gradations of weight, width, and other features. Fraunces, by Phaedra Charles and Flavia Zimbardi, includes a softness variable, allowing the terminals of the letters to harden or melt.
fraunCes | Phaedra Charles, Flavia Zimbardi, 2018
Designers keep exploring the elastic, fantastic potential of digital media. Emma Hall’s wavy-gravy typeface Ponte Glitch (2019) romanticizes the fault lines of technology. TYPE AS PROGRAM
Wim CrouWel published his designs for a “new alphabet,” consisting of no diagonals or curves, in 1967. The Foundry (London) created digital editions of Crouwel’s typefaces.
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There was a silence of a full minute, during which the young man’s heart thumped loudly against his ribs. Was he listening to the voice of one risen from the grave?
Then the weird singing recommenced, with a wail of passionate despair in the notes—
“The world can never give The bliss for which we sigh; ’Tis not the whole of life to live, Nor all of death to die.”
He waited for a considerable time in a fever of thrilling expectancy —but there was no more. Having made certain of this, his next move was to acquaint himself with the personality of the performer. He ran over to the ruins of the church, climbed in across a pile of broken masonry—the small square enclosure was easily measured at one glance—it was empty.
Then he walked slowly round, and examined the walls by the dying light. No, his quest was vain, there was not a soul— undoubtedly it had been a soul—to be seen. In the gathering darkness, the now silent valley had grown very sombre, the trees made awful shadows, and the forest seemed to stretch away up the mountains, until it was lost in the dusky sky.
“In what direction did you ride to-day, Mark?” inquired his father as they sat over their dessert.
“I cannot tell you precisely, sir; but I came home by the cantonment.”
“A lovely spot; the authorities could not have chosen better, if they had searched five hundred miles—good air, good water, good aspect; and yet the last regiment died there like flies. The natives
say it is an accursed place, and not a man of them will go near it after sundown.”
“I suppose you don’t believe in that sort of thing, sir; you are not superstitious?”
“Not I,” indignantly. “Mércèdes was superstitious enough for fifty; she had all the native superstitions at her finger-ends, and the European ones to boot! There was very little scope left between the two! Almost everything you said, or did, or saw, or wore, was bound to have a meaning, or to be an omen, or to bring bad luck. I remember she was reluctant to start from Mussouri the day she met her death, simply because she found a porcupine’s quill upon the doorstep! I have seen some queer things in my day,” continued Major Jervis. “When we were quartered at Ameroo I got a fright that I did not recover from for months. I had lost my way out pig-sticking, and was coming back alone, pretty late. At one part of the road I had to pass a large irregular strip of water, and there standing upright in the middle of it was actually a skeleton, swaying slowly to and fro; I shall never forget that blood-curdling sight—and I don’t know how I got home, to this very day.”
“And how was it accounted for?”
“By perfectly natural causes, of course! Cholera had broken out at a village close to where I saw the spectre, and the people had died in such numbers that there was no time for the usual funeral pyre. It was as much as those spared could do to bring the corpse to the spot, tie a gurrah (those large water vessels) to head and feet, fill them with water, push the body out, and then turn and fly almost before it could sink out of sight! My ghost was one of these bodies. The gurrah from the head had broken away, and that at the feet had pulled the corpse into an upright position, and there it was, a spectacle to turn a man’s brain! We were quartered at Ameroo for four years, and I never passed that miserable spot without a shudder When I last saw it the water lay low, covered with the usual reddish-looking Indian water-weed; down by the edge was a skull blackening in the sun. That hideous pool was the grave of two hundred people.”
“And so your ghost was accounted for and explained away,” said Mark. “Did you ever come across anything, in all your years out here, that could not be accounted for or explained away?”
“Yes, I did; a queer, senseless, insignificant little fact, as stubborn as the rest of its tribe. One morning many years ago I was out pigeon-shooting with some fellows, and we came upon a large peepul tree, among the branches of which waved sundry dirty little red-and-white flags, and under its shade was a chabootra, about fifteen feet square, and raised three feet off the ground. Mounting this, in spite of the protest of a fakir, we discovered a round hole in the centre, and looking down, we perceived filthy water, covered with most unwholesome-looking scum. The sides of the well were hollow and uneven and had a sort of petrified appearance. We asked the reason of the signs of “poojah” we beheld, and heard the simple story of the water in the well. It never increased or decreased, no matter if the weather were hot and dry, or cold and wet; no matter whether rain fell in torrents, or the land was parched with drought, whether sugar-cane juice or the blood of the sacrificial goat was poured in by buckets full, or not at all. It might be closely watched, to show that it was not regulated by human hands, and it would be seen that it never changed. Therefore it was holy. The god “Devi” was supposed to be responsible for the curious phenomenon of the water always standing at the same level—about four feet from the mouth of the well, and never increasing its depth—said to be thirty feet. Over and over again I revisited the spot, so did others—and we never discovered any change. That was a fact we could not explain. All the same, I do not believe in the supernatural!”
As his father did not believe in the supernatural and was likely to be a sceptical listener, Mark resolved to keep his experience to himself; perhaps there might be a natural cause for it too.
The arrival of a visitor to the Yellow House was not lost upon the neighbourhood; several young planters flocked down to look him up, and discussed fruit crops, tea crops, and the best beats for gurool, the best rivers and lakes for mahseer, and gave him hearty invitations to their respective bungalows. The German missionary sought him out, also Mr. Burgess the American doctor and padré,
who worked among the lepers. He, like his predecessors, had been struck with the remarkable and almost magical change that had been wrought in and around the Pela Kothi. He beheld his patient, Major Jervis, in a comfortable airy room, dressed in a neat new suit, reading a recent Pioneer like a sane man. Like a sane man, he discussed politics, local topics, and with greater enthusiasm his son, who unfortunately was not at home. Presently an excellent tiffin was served to the visitor, he was conducted round the garden, and as he noted the improvements in every department, he came to the conclusion that Jervis, junior, must be a remarkable individual. He had an opportunity of judging of him personally before he left, for he rode up just as Mr. Burgess was taking his departure, regretted that he had not arrived sooner, and calling for another pony, volunteered to accompany the reverend guest part of the way home.
A spare resolute-looking young fellow and a capital rider, noted Mr. Burgess, as Mark’s young pony performed a series of antics all the way down the path in front of his own sober and elderly animal.
“Your father is wonderfully better. I am his medical adviser, you know,” said the missionary
“Yes, and I wish you lived nearer than twelve miles.”
“He has a wonderful constitution. He has had one stroke of paralysis, he may be taken suddenly, and he may live for the next thirty years. Is it long since you met?”
“I have not seen him till lately—since I was a child.”
“That is strange, though of course India does break up families.”
“I was adopted by an uncle, and lived in London most of my time.”
“Ah, I understand; and came out to visit your father.”
“Yes, partly; indeed, I may say chiefly.”
“And have thrown in your lot with him. Mr. Jervis, I honour you for it.” Mark looked uncomfortable, and his companion added, “This life must be a great change, indeed, as it were another form of existence, to you; you must not let yourself stagnate now you have set your house in order, but come among us when you can. There
are Bray and Van Zee, the two nearest planters to you, both good fellows. You have a much nearer neighbour, that you will never see.”
“Indeed, I am sorry to hear that. May I ask why?”
“It is one who shrinks from encountering Europeans, even holds aloof from me. Though we work in the same field, we have rarely met.”
Mark would have liked to have gleaned more particulars, but the burly American missionary was not disposed to be communicative, and all he could gather about his mysterious neighbour was, that the individual was not a European, not a heathen, and not young.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
A FRIENDLY VISIT.
Captain Waring had departed for England without ceremony or beat of drum (leaving his debts behind him), also presumably his cousin, who had not had the common decency to leave P. P. C. cards—no, not even on the mess or the club—and who had treated poor Honor Gordon shamefully; indeed, several matrons agreed that in the good old days such a man would certainly have been shot or horsewhipped!
How Colonel Sladen had chuckled, surmised, and slandered, had bemoaned the girl’s lost good looks, and her aunt’s idiotcy to all comers, as he waited impatiently for his afternoon rubber! Next to his whist, the relaxation he most thoroughly enjoyed was a bonâ fide illnatured gossip, with a sauce in the form of sharp and well-spiced details.
No reliable information respecting Mr. Jervis had as yet been circulated—for Clarence, on second thoughts, had kept his late comrade’s plans and whereabouts entirely to himself.
Mrs. Brande knew, and held her tongue. What was the good of talking? She was much subdued in these days, even in the colour of her raiment. She rarely went to the club; she dared not face certain questioning pitiless eyes in the awful verandah; indeed she kept in the background to an unparalleled degree. Nevertheless she had her plans, and was prepared to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of her former hopes. She was actually contemplating a second venture, in the shape of a niece. She thought Honor wanted cheering up, and a face from home—especially such a lovely face—would surely have a happy result. But Honor’s thoughts were secretly fixed upon another countenance, a certain colourless, handsome face—a face she never expected to see again. Her mind dwelt with poignant
memories on a pair of eyes, dim with wordless misery, that had looked into her own that hateful June morning.
“We can well afford it, P.,” urged his wife, apropos of her scheme. “One girl is the same as two—one ayah between them.” She little knew Fairy.
“Please yourself,” cried Mr. Brande, at last; “but Honor shall always be my niece, my chief niece, and nothing shall ever put her nose out of joint with her uncle Pelham.”
“No one wants to! I should like to see any one try that, or with me either. But what a nose Fairy has! Just modelled to her face like a wax-work.”
Mrs. Brande talked long and enthusiastically to Honor about her sister. But Honor was not responsive; her eyes were averted, her answers unsatisfactory; indeed, she said but little, and looked positively uncomfortable and distressed. And no doubt she felt a wee bit guilty because she had prevented the child from coming out before. But that was very unlike Honor; Mrs. Brande could not understand it.
How she would exult in a niece who was a miracle of loveliness, instead of being merely a pretty, bright, and popular girl. Not that Honor was very bright now; she was losing her looks, and Honor’s love affair had come to such a woeful end. Honor was not the sort of girl to take up with any one else; and, indeed, she could not wonder. Poor Mark! of all her boys, he was the one nearest to her heart.
Still she considered that he had carried filial love a great deal too far, when she had thought over his sacrifice in moments of cool reflection. It was a shame that Mark, and Honor, and a magnificent fortune should all be sacrificed to an eccentric old hermit.
Mrs. Brande said little; she was not receiving the support and encouragement she expected. She placed Fairy’s photograph in poor Ben’s silver frame in a conspicuous place in the drawing-room, and she mentally sketched out the rough draft of another letter to Hoyle.
Before this letter took definite shape, Mrs. Langrishe came to call —a dinner “call”—in full state and her best afternoon toilet. Seating herself on the sofa, she began to tell Mrs. Brande all about her dear invalid, exactly as if she were talking to a most sympathetic listener —instead of to a deadly rival.
“He is such a nice man, and so quiet in a house.”
“For that matter,” retorted Mrs. Brande, “he is quiet enough out of the house, and everywhere else.”
“And he is so contented and easily amused,” continued Mrs. Langrishe. “I left him with Lalla reading aloud to him.”
“Do you think that is quite the thing?” inquired Mrs. Brande, with a dubious sniff.
“Why should she not do it as well as hospital nurses?” demanded her visitor.
Mrs. Brande reflected on the result of her own nursing. Would this nursing have the same effect?
“Hospital nurses are generally young, single, and very frequently pretty,” resumed Mrs. Langrishe. “They read to their patients, and take tea with them, and no one says a word. All the difference between them and these girls is, their uniform and their experience; and surely no one ever dreams of making a remark about those excellent, devoted young women!”
Lalla was not excellent, but she had certainly been most devoted —as her aunt thankfully acknowledged.
“Well, I don’t know that I should allow Honor to do it,” said Mrs. Brande, with a meditative air.
“Possibly not. It would, of course, depend upon circumstances. Now”—laying two fingers playfully on Mrs. Brande’s round arm—“I am going to be a little bird, and whisper a little secret in your ear.”
Mrs. Brande drew back, as if she thought Mrs. Langrishe was going to be a little rattlesnake.
“It is not to be given out for a few days, but Lalla and Sir Gloster are engaged. It is quite settled.”
Sir Gloster had only proposed the previous evening, and had begged that the fact of the engagement might be kept quiet for a week, until he had wired home to his all-important mother. She must be told before any one. Yes, he had succumbed to Lalla’s bright blandishments. He was a dull, heavy man; he liked to be amused. He would have amusement all day long when Lalla was his wife. She had a charming voice, and read aloud well. She brought him all the scraps of news, she was an admirable mimic, an adroit flatterer, and altogether a charming girl; and her daily tête-à-têtes were of a most stimulating character, and he looked forward to them with keen anticipation. She gave him a capital description of the unmasking of Captain Waring, the sensation created by the soi-disant poor relation; how every one was certain that it was going to be a match between him and Miss Gordon; how he had absconded, and Miss Gordon was left. He had evidently joined his friend in Bombay—wise young man!
Sir Gloster, who was naturally of a huffy and implacable disposition, had never recovered the shock to his affections and selfesteem. He was by no means sorry to hear that in her turn Miss Gordon had been spurned, and he was resolved to show her how speedily he had been consoled.
Mrs. Langrishe, when she entered Mrs. Brande’s house, had not intended to divulge her great news—merely to throw out hints, draw comparisons, and trample more or less on the fallen and forsaken.
But for once human nature was too strong for her: she would have had a serious illness if she had not then and there relieved her mind of her overwhelming achievement.
Mrs. Brande opened her blue eyes to their widest extent; her worst fears were confirmed.
She however mustered up an artificial smile, and said—
“I am sure you are very pleased,” which was true—“and I am glad indeed to hear it,” which was not true.
“It is to be kept quiet for a week,” murmured Mrs. Langrishe; “but I am telling you as an old friend, who I feel sure will be pleased with the news. Of course, we are all delighted; it is everything we could wish,” and she drew herself up.
“I should rather think it was!” rejoined Mrs. Brande, tartly; she was but human after all.
“My brother and all my people will be much gratified—Sir Gloster is such a dear good fellow, and so well off, and so steady.”
“I hope he won’t be a little too steady for Lalla!”
“Not he; and he delights in all her fun, and singing——”
“It will not be a long engagement,” ignoring this little thrust. “This is the second week of September; we shall all be going down in another six weeks. We will have the wedding in about a month.”
It was on the tip of Mrs. Brande’s tongue to say, “Delays are dangerous,” but she closed her lips.
“Where is Honor?” inquired Mrs. Langrishe, with rare effusion.
“She has gone off down the khud to get ivy for the table. I have a small dinner this evening.”
“You are always having dinners, you wonderful woman.”
“Well, you see, in Pelham’s position, we must entertain, and I make it a rule to have a dinner once a week.”
“You are quite a providence to the station!” cried her visitor affectedly. “How pretty those grasses are. I suppose Honor arranged them? What a useful girl she is!”
“Yes, she takes all trouble off my hands. I don’t know how I shall ever get on without her.”
“How lucky for you, that there is no chance of her leaving you! My dear, that was a most unfortunate affair about Mr. Jervis.”
“What do you mean?” inquired Mrs. Brande, whose crest began to rise.
“Oh,” with a disagreeable laugh, “it is what did he mean! He paid Honor the most devoted attention, and the moment he was revealed in his true colours—he fled. No one knows what has become of him.”
“Pardon me—we do!” returned his champion, with a quiver of her double chin.
“And—where is he, dear? what is he doing?”
“He is doing a good—a noble action. Putting himself and his wishes aside for the sake of others,” returned Mrs. Brande in a white heat of emotion.
“Oh well,” rather disconcerted, “if you and Honor, and above all Mr. Brande, are satisfied, of course there is no more to be said——”
“No,” pointedly. “I hope no more will be said. Have you seen the photograph of my other niece, Honor’s sister?” making a desperate effort to rally and change the conversation, and reaching for the frame, which she solemnly placed in Mrs. Langrishe’s hand.
“What do you think of her?” Here at least she was certain of scoring a small triumph.
“Think, my dear woman! Why, that she is perfectly lovely.” (It was safe to praise a girl who was in England.)
“At first she was coming out to me,” her aunt pursued, “but she changed her mind. Now we are thinking of having her out in November with the Hadfield’s girl.”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Langrishe, reflectively, and still nursing the picture, as it were, on her knee.
She had a wonderful knack of picking up odd bits of news, and her brain contained useful little scraps of the most promiscuous description. Her mind was a sort of ragbag, and these scraps often came in appropriately. She rummaged out a scrap now.
She had recently heard, from a cousin of hers (an artist), of a Mrs. Gordon, a widow with two daughters, one of them lovely, who was
sitting to him as Rowena—an ideal Rowena—but who was also a dwarf—a sort of little creature that you might exhibit.
“Does your niece live at Hoyle, and is her name Fairy?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?” rather eagerly.
“I have heard of her, recently, from my cousin, Oscar Crabbe. And why did she not come out?” looking at her with a queer smile.
“Her health was not very good—and there was some other reason —which I have not been told.”
“I know the reason, and can tell you, if you like,” said Mrs. Langrishe, with an air of affectionate confidence.
Here was an unexpected opportunity of planting a dart in her adversary’s side.
“There is no object in keeping the matter secret, it is just as foolish as that scheme of young Jervis’s, who was like an ostrich sticking his head in the sand. By the way, it appears that that is quite an exploded idea! Every one in Hoyle knows Miss Fairy Gordon’s appearance—she is extraordinary lovely—but——”
“But not mad? Don’t say she is mad!” protested Mrs. Brande, excitedly.
“No, no; not so bad as that. But,” looking steadily into her listener’s eyes, she added, “poor little creature, she is a dwarf! She never grew after she was ten, I am told. Yes, it is a dreadful pity,” gazing into her hostess’s horrified countenance. “Sitting down, she is just like other people—but when she stands up, she seems to have no legs.”
“A dwarf! No legs! And she thought of coming to me! And I was just going to write and ask her to start in November,” repeated Mrs. Brande in gasps.
“Well, my dear, it is a most fortunate circumstance that your letter has not gone. What could you have done with her? You could never have taken her out except after dark.”
This was a terribly effective thrust. Mrs. Brande was wholly unable to retaliate, and made no reply.
“A dwarf!” Her mind conjured up a little fat sallow woman, such as she had once seen outside a show at a fair, and that miserable stunted native who was carried about Shirani, begging, on the shoulders of a boy.
And her niece, of whose picture she was so proud, that she had placed it in a solid silver frame—her lovely niece was like that!
“I wonder Honor never told me,” murmured Mrs. Brande at last.
“And I do not,” was the emphatic rejoinder. “From all accounts, the mother and sisters have always spoiled the little one, who believes that she is in no way different to other people, and is too ridiculously vain. Even if she had been five foot six, I am sure that you are far happier without her,” concluded Mrs. Langrishe, rising and squeezing her hostess’s hand as she spoke. And having offered this small fragment of consolation, she rustled away.
Mrs. Brande, poor woman, had been indeed trampled upon, and crushed to the very earth. She had been asked to join in her rival’s song of triumph over Miss Paske’s superb success; she had been condoled with on her own dear girl’s misfortunes; and she had been informed that she was aunt to a dwarf!
She sat for some time in a shattered, stupefied condition; then she got up, and hastily carried off Fairy’s photograph and locked it away in a box, secure from all eyes, and from even the ayah’s inquisitive brown fingers.
Honor noticed the absence of her sister’s picture from its usual post of honour—it was nowhere to be seen—the absence of Fairy’s name in conversation, the sudden cessation of all interest in Gerty Hadfield’s movements, and guessed rightly that some one had kindly enlightened her aunt, and that she was in possession of the other reason now.
CHAPTER XL.
THE NEW WEARER OF THE CORNELIAN RING.
Six weeks had crawled by With all his occupation Mark found time desperately hard to kill; he felt as if he had lived his present life for at least six years. The monsoon had broken, and on some days the torrents compelled him to remain indoors; and whilst sheets of rain and hurricanes of wind swept the valley, an appalling loneliness settled down upon the miserable young man. His father passed many hours in sleep, and he had not a soul with whom to exchange a word. One evening, during a welcome break, he was riding homewards down a steep and slippery path that wound through wet dark pine-woods, when his pony suddenly shied so violently as almost to lose its footing; he had taken fright at an undefined object beside the road, something which at first his rider mistook for a bear, until it emitted a groan of unmistakable human anguish.
“What is the matter?” asked Jervis, as he quickly dismounted.
“Alas, I have hurt my foot!” replied a female voice in Hindostani. “I fell down—I cannot walk.”
Jervis threw the bridle over his arm, lit a match, and, shading it with his hand, saw, huddled up, what appeared to be an old native woman. She explained to him, between groans and gasps, that she had twisted her ankle over a root on the path, and could not move.
“Are you far from home?” he inquired.
“Three miles.”
“In which direction?”
“The hill above the old cantonment.”
“I know. If you think you can sit on my pony, I will lead him and take you home safely.”
“Oh, I am such a coward,” she cried. “Is the pony gentle?”
“Yes, he is all right; I will answer for the pony.”
“I—and I cannot bear pain. Oh—oh! but I must”—vainly struggling to rise, and sinking down again.
She proved a light weight, as Jervis raised her bodily in his arms, and placed her in the saddle. Fortunately the pony, who bore the suggestive name of “Shaitan,” was too much sobered by a long journey to offer any active opposition to carrying a lady. The homeward progress proved exceedingly tedious; the road was bad and nearly pitch dark. The native woman, who appeared to know every yard of the way, directed her companion by a path almost swallowed up in jungle, to a hill behind the old mess-house. Up and up they climbed, till they came to a tiny stone bungalow, with a light in the window. The door was thrown open by another native woman and an old man, whose shrill voluble lamentations were almost deafening.
“You had better let me carry you in?” suggested Jervis.
“No, no.” Then imperiously to the other woman, “Anima, bring hither a chair and help me down.”
But Anima, of the lean and shrivelled frame, had been set a task far beyond her strength, and in the end it was the muscular arms of the young Englishman that lifted the other from the saddle. As he placed her carefully on the ground, her shawl, or saree, fell back, and the lamplight revealed a fair-skinned woman with snow-white hair, and a pair of magnificent black eyes. She was possibly fifty years of age—or more—and though her lips were drawn with pain, she was remarkably handsome, with a high-bred cast of countenance. No native this; at any rate, she resembled no native that Jervis had ever seen. Who was she?
A glance into the interior surprised him still further; instead of the usual jumble of cooking-pots, mats, and hookahs, he caught a glimpse of a round table, with a crimson cover. A newspaper, or what looked like one, lay upon it; there was an armchair, a fire blazing in a fireplace, with a cat sedately blinking before it.
Who was this woman? He was not likely to learn any further particulars—at present, for she was helped in by her two servants; and as he waited, the door was abruptly closed and barred, and he was left outside, alone in the cold and darkness. Here was gratitude!
He rode slowly home, the pony figuratively groping his way, whilst his master was lost in speculation. This was the mysterious neighbour, he felt certain; this was the tender of the graves—the owner of the voice.
He related his adventure to his father whilst they played picquet.
Major Jervis was not half as much surprised as the young man had anticipated—he simply stroked his forehead, a favourite trick of his, and said, with his eyes still fastened on his cards—
“Oh, so you have come across the Persian woman! I so seldom hear of her, I had forgotten her.”
“Persian?”
“Yes. She has been in these hills for years, working among the lepers. A fair-skinned woman, with great haunting dark eyes.”
“But who is she?” throwing down his cards and looking eagerly at his father.
“She is what I tell you,” impatiently—“a Persian; they are generally fair, and I dare say she has been handsome in her day, about thirty years ago. Why are you so interested?”
“Because I have another idea in my head; I believe she is an Englishwoman.”
The major’s laugh was loud, and sound, and not at all mad.
“She is a Persian—only, of course, you are no judge—and to the very tips of her fingers.”
“But what is she doing up here?”
“I would rather you asked her that than I did,” was the extremely sane reply. “She is a Christian, I believe, and is working out her sins.
I have no doubt she is a woman with a past. You can read it in her eyes. Come, my boy, take up your hand; it’s your turn to play.”
Mark Jervis, as we know, had not been permitted time or opportunity to read anything, whether referring to past or present, in the Persian’s eyes; but this omission was corrected ere long.
One afternoon he noticed a figure, stick in hand, resting on the mess-house steps, as he rode by—a figure which raised the stick, and imperatively summoned him to approach.
It was undoubtedly his recent acquaintance, who pulled the veil further over her head, as she said—
“Sahib, I wish to thank you for your charitable benevolence. Truly, but for you, I should have lain all night in the forest, in the rain, and among the beasts.”
“I hope you are better?” he asked, doffing his cap.
“Yea, nearly well. Though I am a stranger to you, I know that you are Jones Sahib’s son.”
“Major ‘Jervis’ is his real name. Yes—I am his son.”
“I have heard of you,” she continued, rather loftily.
“Indeed!”
“From the leper-folk,” she added, significantly.
“It is you who keep the graves yonder in order?”
“May be!” was her cautious reply.
“And who sing English hymns in the old church?”
A slight contraction passed over her face as she replied—
“Nay—I am a Persian woman from Bushire. What should I know of thy songs or thy tongue?”
“Then who—can it be?” inquired Jervis, looking at her steadfastly.
“Noble youth—why ask me? A woman from the dead, perchance,” she retorted mockingly.
“At least, it is you who do so much good among the sick Paharifolk and lepers?” he persisted.
“Yea, I am but one—the field is great. Who can fill jars with dew? I would I could do more.”
“I believe that were hardly possible.”
“As far as these hands go,” extending a pair of delicately-shaped members, “I do what I can; but what is one lemon for a whole village to squeeze! If I had a big house that would serve as a hospital, I should have my heart’s desire. I am skilled in medicine, so also is my servant; we would have our sick beside us, and could do much—that is my dream. It will never come to pass till the sun shall be folded up and the stars shall fall.”
“Surely one of these bungalows would answer. Why not this messhouse?” suggested Jervis generously
“True; but the sircar would not yield it to me. Already the sircar has given me my abode; and, doubtless, were I to ask for the Mess Khana, they would aver that I was like to the man who, on receiving a cucumber, demanded a tope of mango trees! Moreover this dead station may reawaken once more. Even in my memory the merry sahibs and mem sahibs have sojourned here, and held great tamashas; but it is years since they came, and the place, perchance, is forgotten.”
“And so you have lived here alone—for years?” said the young man. His remarkably expressive eyes distinctly added the “Why?” his tongue refrained from uttering.
“Yea, I have been dead to the world and the roar of strife and life for many moons! If all tales be true—tales whispered even in this empty land—you have forsaken many delights to give your days to the old man, your father? Is it not so?” She looked up with a quick gesture, and her saree fell back.
As Jervis gazed down into the dark eyes turned towards him, he agreed with his father; here was undoubtedly a woman with a past— and a tragic past!
“It is a noble sacrifice,” she continued; “but what saith the Koran? ‘Whatever good works ye send on for your behoof, ye shall find them with God.’ I am old enough to be your mother. I marvel if I had had a son, would he sacrifice himself thus for me—were I of your people, a Feringhee woman, I marvel?” she repeated meditatively, as she put up her hand to draw her veil further over her head.
As she did so, the young man started as he recognized her ring— Honor’s cornelian ring. Many a time he had noticed it on her finger, and her peculiar trick of turning it round and round, when in any mental quandary, had been the subject of more than one family jest. How came it to be on the hand of this Mahommedan woman?
She instantly interpreted his glance, and exclaimed—
“You observe my ring. Truly it is of little value—in money—but to me it is beyond price. It was given to me by a maiden I saw but once. Her words were pearls, her lips were rubies, but her music, and her eyes, drew the story of my life from my inmost soul.”
“I am sure I know the lady!” cried her listener impetuously, “young —and tall—and beautiful. She plays what you call the sitar. Where did you meet her?”
“Ah, sahib, that is my secret,” she answered after an expressive pause; “but, lo! I can reveal yours,” and she looked at him steadily as she added, “you love her.”
“What do you mean?” he stammered. “Why do you say so?” and he coloured up to the roots of his crisp brown hair.
“Of a truth, I read it in your face. It is not for naught that folk call me a magic wallah.” And she rose stiffly to depart. “You have abandoned her, I see,” she continued, with a flash of her wonderful eyes, “and lo, the fat old mem sahib, her mother, will marry her to some one else! Behold your reward, for doing your duty!” And entirely forgetting her previous quotation from the Koran, with this unpleasant and cynical remark, the Persian made him a profound salaam, and hobbled away.
CHAPTER XLI.
“IT WAS A HYENA.”
The rains were over by the middle of August, and Shirani cast off mackintoshes, discarded umbrellas, and society—restless and fluctuating—looked about for some fresh and novel form of out-door amusement.
Among the second-leave arrivals, the most active and enterprising of the new-comers, was a Captain Bevis, the moving power in whatever station he was quartered; the very man for getting up dances, races, and picnics. He was resolved to strike out an entirely original line on the present occasion, and inaugurated a grand joint expedition into the interior—none of your exclusive “family parties,” or a petty little “set” of half a dozen couples. No, this sanguine individual actually proposed to move Shirani en masse. He had heard of the abandoned cantonment, of Hawal Bagh, galloped over to inspect it with his customary promptitude, and came flying back to the station on the wings of enthusiasm. “It was a perfect spot,” this was his verdict; scenery exquisite, good road, good water, lots of bungalows, a mess-house to dance in, a parade ground for gymkanas. Every one must see the place, every one must enjoy a short informal outing, the entertainment to be called the “Hawal Bagh week.” Captain Bevis threw himself into the project heart and soul; he invited another hill station to join; he sent out circulars, he collected entries for gymkanas and polo matches, and the names of patronesses for the grand ball at Hawal Bagh. Dead and longforgotten Hawal Bagh, that was to awake and live once more!
Subscriptions poured in, parties went over to explore, empty houses were allotted, a vast army of coolies was enlisted, the jungle was cut down, the bungalows cleaned up, the very gardens were put in order. A quantity of supplies and cart loads of furniture were soon en route, and the servants of Shirani entered into the project with the
