The Call edit
I broke the night’s primeval bars I dared the old abysmal curse And flashed through ranks of frightened stars Suddenly on the universe! —Rupert Brooke
STEPHEN DENTON interrupted his tale now and then with shrewd and picturesque sidelights on native life, customs, and characters which proved now deep he had got below the skin of India. But I shall omit them here—doubtless at a future date, he himself will embody them in the great book on India which he is writing—and, in the following, I shall only give the pith of his incredible tale. I only regret that there is no way of reproducing his voice with the printed word— his happy, frank voice, unmistakably American in its intonations, yet once in a while with a quaint inflection which showed that he had begun to think at times in Hindustani.
You see, he commenced, it was all originally Roos-Keppel’s doing—fault, if you prefer to call it that. Roos-Keppel—“Tubby” Roos-Keppel— you must have met him over at the jockey club, or in the evening , in the Eden Gardens, driving about in his old-fashioned C-spring barouche— big, paunchy, brick-faced Britisher, who won the Calcutta Sweepstakes—in 1900. Why everybody in India knows the tale, how a sudden, mad prosperity went to his head; how he gave up his job in the Bengal Civil Service, and painted Calcutta crimson for three years; how he lost his hold on everything, including himself; everything that is, except his hospitality, his fantastic ideas, his infectious, daredevil madness.
I met him the day after I got here. How did I get here? Why? When?
Well, two years to-morrow, to answer your last question first, and as to why and how, there’s a native proverb which says that fate and selfexertion are half and half in power.
I came here on a sight-seeing trip after I’d got through Yale. I had money of my own, my parents were dead, there was nobody to say no— and I had an idea it would do me good to get a nodding acquaintance with the world and its denizens before I settled down in the Back Bay section—yes—you guessed it—originally I’m just that sort of a Bostonian.
Everything back home—with the dear old, white-haired lawyer, who was my guardian, and his little plump spinster sister who kept house for him, and the black walnut furniture and the antimacassars and the bound volumes, of Emerson and Longfellow and Thoreau—it seemed all so confounded safe and sure. Even timid. Respectably, irreproachably timid, if you get the idea.
Stephen Denton smiled reminiscently. Preordained, too, it seemed. Preordained from the mild cocktail before dinner to the hoary place on the bench I was expected to grace some day. I had every reason to be happy, don’t you think? And I was happy. Quite!
And then I smelled a whiff of wanderlust. And so it happened that that red faced Britisher of a Roos-Keppel kicked me, figuratively speaking, in the stomach—and I’m grateful to him—always shall be grateful.
I met him at the jockey club. He took to me and invited me to dinner at the Hotel Semiramis, where he had a gorgeous suite of rooms. It was some little dinner—just the two of us—and you know the sort of host he is. We tried every barreled, fermented, and bottle refreshment from Syrian raki to yellow-ribbon Grand Marnier; and it was at the end of the party—I was busy with a large cup of coffee and a small glass of brandy, and he with a small cup of coffee and a large glass of brandy—that he cut loose and told me tales about India—tales in which he had been either principal or witness—and, in half an hour, he had taught me more about the hidden nooks and corners of this land than there is in all the travel books, Murray’s government and missionary reports put together. What’s more his tales were true.
So I asked him, like a tactless young cub: “Heavens, man, with your knowledge of India— why did you throw your chance away? Why didn’t you stick to it? You would have made a great, big, bouncing, twenty-four carat success!”
“And I would have wound up with a G. C. S. I., a bloody knighthood, a pension of ten thousand rupees a year, and a two-inch space in the obituary column of the Calcutta Times—English papers please copy—when I’ve kicked the bally bucket!” He guffawed, and he hiccuped a little. For he had been hitting the brandy bottle, and all the other assorted bottles, like a corn-stalk sailor on a shore spree after two dry months on a lime-juicer without making port. “Success?” he continued, “why, my lad, I am a success. A number one— waterproof—and, damn my eyes. whisky-proof for that matter?”
“You are—what?” I asked, amazed for the man was serious, perfectly serious, mind you; and he kept right on with his philippic monologue, extravagant in diction and gesture, but the core of it—why it was serene, grotesquely serene! “I am a success, I repeat: don’t you believe me?” He lowered a purple-veined eyelid in a fat, Falstaffian leer.
“Take a good look at these rooms of mine— best rooms in the Semiramis, in Calcutta, in India, hang it all—in the whole plurry empire!” He pointed at the gorgeous furniture and the silk hangings, “Viceroys by the score have occupied them—and the Prince of Wales—and four assorted Russian grand dukes—and three bloated Yankee plutocrats. And our little supper—look at the bottles and dishes—how much do you think it‘ll cost? I tell you—five hundred rupees— without the tip! And,” he laughed, “I haven’t even got enough of the ready to tip the black-lacquered Eurasian majordomo who uncorked our sherry and, doubtless, swiped the first glass.”
I made an instinctive gesture toward my pocket-book, but he stopped me with another laugh. “Don’t make a silly ass of yourself,” he said. “I don’t want to borrow any money. All I want to prove to you is that I live and I do as I please—forgetful of the yesterday, careless of the morrow—serene in my belief in my own particular fate. To-night I am broke—hopelessly, desperately broke, you’d call it. For I haven’t got a rupee in the world. My bank-account is concave, I owe wages to my servants, I owe for my stable service and horse feed. Everything I have—even my old C-spring barouche, even my old, patched, green bedroom slippers are mortgaged. But what of it? I’ll sleep to-night as quiet and untouched as a little babe. something is sure to happen tomorrow— always does happen. I always kick through—somehow—”
“But—how?” I was beginning to get worried for him—I liked him.
“How? Because I am a success—a success with reverse English. The world? Why, I put it all over this fool of a world. For I believe in myself. That’s why I win out. Everybody who believes in himself wins out—in what he wants to win out. You, Denton,” he went on after a short pause, “are a nice lad, clean and well-bred and no end proper. But you are too damned smug—no offense meant—you are like a respectable spinster owl with respectable astigmatism. Cut away from it. See life. Make life. Take life by the tail and swing it about your head and force it to disgorge. Take a chance—say to yourself that nothing can happen to you!”
“Pretty little theory,” I interrupted.
“Theory—the devil!” he cried. “It’s the truth! Don’t take me as an example if you don’t want to. Take people who have done real things. Take you own adored George Washington—take the Duke of Wellington, take Moltke, Ghengiz Khan, U. S. Grant, Attila, Tamerlane, Joffre, or Theodore Roosevelt! They lived through to the end until they had achieved what they wanted to achieve. They made their own fate. The bullet was not run, the sword was not forged which could kill these— for they had willed to live, willed to succeed! They—” a little superstitious hush came into his voice, “they bore the charmed life—”
He poured himself another stiff drink, gulped it down, and pointed through the open window, out at the streets of Calcutta, which lay at our feet, bathed in moonlight.
I looked, and the sight of it, the scent of it, the strange, inexpressible feel of it crept through me—yes, that’s it—it crept through me. You know this town—this Calcutta—this melting pot of all India—and remember, that brick-faced reprobate of a Roos-Keppel had been telling me tales of it—grim, fantastic, true tales—and here they were at my feet, the witnesses and actors, the heroes and villains in his tales—hurrying along the street in a never-ending procession—a vast panorama of Asia’s uncounted races. There were men from Bengal, black, ungainly, slightly Hebraic shuffling along on their eternal, sissified patent leather pumps. There were men some bearded Rajputs—weaponless, that being the law of Calcutta, but carrying about them somehow the scent of naked steel—and next to them their blood enemies—fur-capped, wide shouldered, sneering Afghans, with screaming voices, brushing through the crowds like the bullies they are—doubtless dreaming of loot and rapine and murder. There were furtive Madrases—“monkey men” we call them here—and a few red-faced duffle-clad hillmen from the North—thin, stunted desertmen from Bikaneer, with their lean jaws bandaged after the manner of the land, and Sikhs and Chinamen and Eurasians and what-not.
And, directly below our window, there was a Brahman priest, a slow, fanatic fire in his eyes— the light from out room caught in them—a caste mark of diagonal stripes of white and black on his forehead, chanting in Sanskrit the praises of the hero and demi-god Gandharbasena—
“. . . and thus did the great hero persuade the king of Dhara to give to him in marriage his daughter. Ho! Let all men listen to the Jataka for he was the son of Indra....”
Roos-Keppel’s thick, alcoholic voice sounded at my elbow. “India,” he hiccuped, “and the horror, the beauty, the wonder, the cruelty, the mad color and scent which is India!” He clutched my arm. “My game’s played down to the last rubber, Denton, and my score is nearly settled— but you—why. you’ve got a stack of chips—you are strong and young—your eyes are clear— and—Gad, I wish I had your chance! I’d take this town by the throat—I’d jump into its damned mazes, regardless of consequences. Heavens, man, can’t you feel it beckon and wink and smile—and leer? Listen—” momentarily he was silent, and, from the street came a confused mass of sounds—voices in many languages, rising, then decreasing, the shouts of the street-vendors, the tinkle-tinkle of a woman’s glass bracelet—the sounds leaped up like gay fragments of some mocking tunes, again like the tragic chorus of some world—old, world—sad rune. “India!” he continued, “can you resist the call of it?”
It was a psychological moment. Yes—it was that often misquoted, decidedly overworked psychological moment—the brandy and champagne fumes were working in my brain— and something tugged at my soul—if I had wings to fly from the window, to launch myself across the purple haze of the town, to alight on the flat roofs and look into the houses, the lives, the gaieties, the mysteries, the sorrows of this colorful, turbaned throng. And then everything I was—racially, traditionally, you understand—the Back Bay of Boston; the old lawyer, my preordained place on the bench, the antimacassars, Phi Beta Kappa, and all the rest of it, made a last rally in my defense.
“But,” I said and I guess my voice was thin, apologetic—just as if Roos-Keppel was the driving master of my destinies, “this is said to be a dangerous place—away from the beaten paths— so what is the use of—”
“The use? The use?” he cut in, with a bellow of laughter, and then, suddenly, his voice was low and quiet “Why, just because it’s dangerous, that; why you should try your chance—and your life.” He pointed again through the window, east, where, on the horizon, a deep-gray smudge lay across the bent of glimmer and glitter. “See that patch of darkness?” he asked, with something of a challenge in his accents which were getting more and more unsteady, “ that’s the Colootallah Section—cha—charming little bunch of real estate—worst in the world, not even excepting Aden, Naples and all the wickedness and crimes of Port Said. Only two men are safe there, and they aren’t quite safe,” he laughed, and to my quickly interjected question, he replied, “Why, a fakir—holy man, you know—and a member of the filthy castes who thrive there—you know even criminal have their own castes in India, and they all seem to congregate there—thugs and thieves and murderers and what-not.
“Wait “—he stopped my questions with a gesture—” perhaps, mind you, I say ‘perhaps,’ an exceptional detective of the Metropolitan Police in Lal Bazaar may be safe there for three minutes, but—” He was silent and leered at me.
“But what?” I asked impatiently.
“I’d tackle it just the same if I were you, young and strong. No white man has done it before. By Jupiter, I’d tackle it if I had a char— char charmed life—” and quite suddenly he fell into snoring, alcoholic slumber.
I stepped out on the balcony. India was at my feet, cruel, beckoning, mysterious, scented, minatory, fascinating, inexplicable. Right then it got below my skin.
I gave a low laugh. No, I don’t know why I laughed.
Stephen Denton was silent for a moment. He was thinking deeply. Then he shook his head.
Honestly, 1 don’t know why I laughed. I don’t know why I did any of the things I did that night, until I came to the wall at the other end of Ibrahim Khan’s Gully. No, no. I had imbibed quite a little—couldn’t help it—with Roos- Keppel, but I was not drunk. Not a bit of it.
Well, imagine me there on the balcony of the Semiramis, laughing at India, if you wish; perhaps at the Back Bay, perhaps at myself. I left the balcony, patted the drunken man on the shoulder, and stepped out of the hotel and into the smoky, purple night. The storm which had threatened earlier by the evening was melting into a quiet night of glowing violet, with a pale, sneering, negligent sort of a moon. A low, cool wind was blowing up from the River Hooghli.
I gave a mocking farewell bow in the direction of Park Street, the white man’s Calcutta, Government House, green tea and respectability,. and turned east, sharp east, toward the patch of darkness, toward the Colootallah. I walked very steadily, as if I had a definite aim and object, turned on the corner of Park Street, and there a policeman, an English policeman, stopped me.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said with that careful. Anglo-Saxon politeness, “you’re goin’ the wrong way, I fancy, sir. The hotel is over yonder, sir,” pointing in the opposite direction; and I laughed. I pressed a rupee into his ready hand. “Hotel, nothing:.” I said. “I am going toward the Street of Charmed Life!”
“Right-o.” commented the policeman. “Some of these ‘ere native streets do ‘ave funny names, don’t they? But—beggin’ your pardon, sir—better ‘ave a care. Those streets ain’t safe for a white man, least—ways at night.”
“Quite safe—for me!” I assured him. and I walked on, on and on, not caring where I went— away from the thoroughfares, through grimy little gardens in the back of opium dens where the brick paths were hollow and slimy with the tread of many naked, unsteady feet; then through a greasy, packed wilderness of three-storied houses, perfectly respectable Babu houses, from which a faint, acrid smell seemed to emanate; on, twisting and turning, through the Burra Bazaar and the Jora Bagan—you know the sections, don’t you, and their New York counterpart, the Bowery and Hell’s Kitchen—and then up into the crooked mazes of the Machua Bazaar—evil, filthy, packed.
On and on, farther and farther away, and at every corner, in every doorway, there were new faces, new types, new voices, new odors, until I came to the Colootallah.
How did I know I was there? Oh, I asked a native, decent sort he was, though he was a bit unsteady with opium, and, just like the English policeman, he advised me to go back to Park Street.
Perhaps he was right. For a moment I was quite sure that he was right, but I walked on, through streets that grew steadily more narrow. You know how narrow they can be, with a glimpse of smoky sky above the roofs revealing scarcely three yards of breadth, and all sorts of squirmy, squishy things underneath your feet, and shawls, and bit of underwear, and turban clothes hanging from the windows and balconies and flopping unexpectedly into your face, and beggars, and roughs, and lepers slinking and pushing against you, jabbering, quarreling, begging; and the roadway ankle-deep in thick slime, and a fetid stink hanging over it all like a cloud; and the darkness, the bitter darkness— black blotched, compact, except for a haggard moon-ray shooting down occasionally from above and glancing off into the cañon of the street from bulbous roof and crazy, tortured balcony.
By ginger, I was sick for a moment. I said to myself that there was a steamer sailing the next day—home and America via Liverpool—and I was about to turn when—
Wait a second.
Get first where I was, though you’ll never find the place. You’ll hear the reason why later on. You see, I had meanwhile turned up a narrow street; it was quite lonely there; not a soul, not a footstep, hardly a sound. They called the place then—mind you, I said then—Ibrahim Khan’s Gully. It was typical of its sort. Whitewashed walls without windows or doors, mysterious, useless-looking to right and to left; and straight in front of me, at the end of the gully, was another wall. It sat there at the end of that cul-de-sac like a seal of destiny, portentous threatening. The moon was pretty well behaved and bright just then, and so I looked at that wall. It impressed me.
It was perhaps ten feet high, and it seemed to be the support of some roof-top for it was crowned with rather an elaborate balustrade of carved, fretted stone. At a certain distance behind it rose another higher wall, then another, still higher, and so on; as if the whole block was terraced from the center toward the gully. To the left and right the wall stretched, gradually rising into the dark without a break, it seemed, and surmounted here and there by the fantastic outline of some spire or balcony or crazy, twisted roof, the whole thing a confounded muddle of Hindu architecture, with apparently neither end nor beginning—mad, brusk, useless—like a harebrained giant’s picture-puzzle.
There I stood and stared. I said to myself, “Back, you fool? Straight home with you to Boston, to the bound volumes of Emerson, to the mild cocktail—and I wonder who’ll win the mile at the Intercollegiate—” And then—and I remember it as if it was to-day, it was just in the middle of that thought about the mile race—I heard a voice directly above me.
It was a woman’s voice, singing in that quaint, minor wail of Eastern music. Perhaps you know the words. I have learned them by heart—
You are to me the gleam of sun That breaks the gloom of wintry rain; You are to me the flower of time— O Peacock, cry again!
“Bravo, bravo!” I shouted. For you see I was only a fool of an outsider, looking into this nightwrapped, night-sounding India as I would look at a fantastic play, and then suddenly the song broke off, came another voice, harsh, hissing, spitting, the sound of a hand slapping bare flesh, and then a piercing shriek. A high-pitched, woman’s shriek that shivered the night air, that somehow shivered my heart.
I must help that woman, but—“Home you fool, you silly, meddling idiot.” said my saner ego “This is no quarrel of yours.” “Take a chance,” replied another cell in my brain. “Take a chance with chance! See what all this talk about a charmed life is!”
No, no, I decided the next moment it was mad. Impossible. A native house, a native woman—they were sacred. Not even the police would dare enter without a search warrant; and this was the Colootallah, the worst section of Calcutta; and I knew next to nothing about India, about the languages, the customs, the prejudices of the land, except what Roos-Keppel had told me.
“Hai-hai-hai!” came once more the piercing, woman’s wail: and right then I consigned Back Bay and safety first to the devil. I made for that wall with a laugh, perhaps a prayer.
A charmed life! By the many hecks, I’d find out presently I said to myself, as I jumped on a narrow ledge a few feet from the ground, from which I could clutch the top of the stone balustrade.
Up!
I swung myself into the unknown, balanced for the fraction of a second on the balustrade, then let myself drop. I struck something soft and bulky that squirmed swiftly away. Came a grunt and a curse—at least, it sounded suspiciously like a curse—then somebody struck a light which blinded me momentarily.
And at that very moment the bell from the Presbyterian Church in Old Court House Street struck the midnight hour.