The Dead Man's Gift: a tea-planter's romance

Chapter I. He

stood and looked at it ! It reared itself above him — an enormous Landslip in the middle of a Himalayan jungle in India. It was such a huge collapse of nature as could only find a home in magnificent mountains like those in front of him. Sheer from the hill's side two hundred acres of land had fallen away, leaving behind a great indentation, which was shaped like a horse's shoe, and formed _>■ well-defined gulf. At the apex rose a perpendicular cliff, from the crest to the bottom of which was a clean drop of several hundred feet ; at the base lay piled up a chaos of earth and stone and conglomerate, gradually sloping in a rugged fashion to the spot where he was standing, and, a little way lower down, exhausting itself in the bed of a mountain ravine, into which, in the monsoon or rainy season was evidently conveyed all the drainage of the mountain side.

It was a startling spectacle, for it seemed to reveal to human gaze the very bowels of our mother earth. He who stood curiously regarding it was a young man of about twenty-two years of age. A handsome young fellow, too, broad shouldered, and six feet in his stockings, with a frank open face, brightened by a pair of blue eyes full of good humour, and rendered interesting to womankind by a small but neat moustache. As he took off his hat to wipe his forehead, he disclosed a broad well-shaped brow and a head of chestnut hair, which was elaborately waved or rippled in a way that no art could copy, and which gave to his appearance a peculiarly graceful finish. But there was no one to criticise him now, for he was the one solitary being in the landscape. Low-wooded foothills and jungles lay on either side of him ; at his back there was just a peep of a flat fertile valley, glimpses of which he had caught and admired from time to time as he climbed his way hither.

In front t of him there certainly was a range of snowy mountains ; but, unfortunately, he could not see it, for his compass of vision in that direction was monopolised by the Landslip to the exclusion — its appearance almost suggested the extermination — of every thing else. What a Golgotha of stone and desolation stretched before him ! White and weird in the shadowy light (for the morning was yet young) loomed the great Landslip's bed. Time and a tropical sun had bleached the once black rocks, startled rudely from their deep sleep in the womb of earth, and hurled here below, where gravitation had levelled them in a fashion, so that the space intervening between him and the cliff looked like the dried-up bed of some broad river or sinuous lake. Here and there great boulders upheaved themselves in fantastic groups, whilst strange fissures and inequalities and waterways, owning no method, and adapting themselves to no ordinary laws of formation, ■dissected the sloping surface.

Dead trunks of forest trees peeped out at odd places ; trees which had been undermined and fallen from the edges of the slip into the chaos below, there to be engulfed as wreckage is by quicksands, or tossed hither and thither, or stranded on the sides, or swallowed up in the stony flood, and then temporarily disgorged in the centre, till some new convulsion dragged them below again, or, perchance, left them half submerged. Reft of their branches, bruised, dried black and dead, with their gaunt limbs often pointing to the sky like the the arms of a drowning man, these lost leviathans of the jungle seemed to appeal to the on-looker with a mute eloquence. On such a bright and peaceful morning as this, the Landslip di-closed but a passive personality. It interested- — it even startled — but it did not appal.

But a heavy tropical storm, or a current of rain cloud in the monsoon transformed it, as if by magic, into something that was terrible. When the accumulated drainage of the Hill above began to pour its many torrents into the Landslip's bed, then, and only then, did it parade its true powers. Under such influences the great stony bed had been known to heave and stir, and lift and fall like very water, carving suddenly in its broad bosom deep channels for the freer flow of the drainage, and as capriciously collapsing and filling them up again ; it had been heard thundering its boulders one against another with a loud sullen roar, like angry waves, and appearing like a river of some liquid element, and not the quasi torrent of stone and disintegrated rock and pulverised earth which it actually was.

And this, at such seasons, was wont to give the huge glittering mass an almost supernatural look, as it heaved and moved, and shook and rolled onwards in a strange convulsive manner, so that amongst the primitive hill folk who inhabited this portion of the Himalayas, and who were prone A TEA PLWTER'S ROMANCE. 3 to superstition, and awed by every throe of Nature, the Landslip had earned for itself and its idiosyncratical ways a grim and sinister reputation. The young Englishman knew nothing of this, and well for him he did not, for if he had, and had, further, been gifted with prophetical powers, he might have shuddered as he looked, and shunned a spot which was, at no distant date, to bring him face to face with death. As it was he gazed at the great white cliff and the ruin at its base with a half idle, half awed curiosity, which presently tempted him to clamber up the sloping bed that intervened and view it more closely.

" Come along, Shot," he cried, addressing a dog which was standing by him, looking enquiringly into his face. " In for a. penny, in for a pound. I think I'll go right through this job. It can't be more than a quarter of a mile to the cliff, and I would like to see what the place looks and feels like. It will be cool, anyhow, like a tunnel. There, don't look disgusted, old fellow ! I promise you I won't stop long." Shot, an intelligent brown spaniel, watched his master com mencing his adventurous journey, and over his clever canine face there stole an expression of undisguised disgust. For, with a gun — and his master carried one — he associated, from past experience, pheasants, jungle fowl, and peacocks, with, possibly, a woodcock or a solitary snipe, and, now and then, a wild pig or a barking deer.

But this — -this ! — -Treeless, Grassless, Coverless ! Stones, Boulders, Rocks! Why, he might just as well be in a paleocrystic ocean ! However, being a dog, and an obedient one to boot, he submitted to a superior intelligence and followed. Onward and upward the young man slowly and toilfully made his way, now jumping a fissure, now mounting a boulder, now avoiding the dead trunk of a tree, which lay across his path like a wall. On either side the scarp increased in height as it neared the main cliff, and soon he was lost in shadow. The temperature struck chill and damp, and the stones were wet with dew. At last he came to a halt at the very base of the cliff. " Devilish queer place ! " he soliloquised, " isn't it, Shot ? " he added in deference to the dog's company, and as excusing him self for talking aloud.

Adjusting himself to the slope of a stone on which he was resting, he leant his head back and gazed upwards, following with a half critical, half careless eye, the geological strata, which could be distinctly and consecutively traced in the precipitical cutting of the cliff. It was evident that geology had not been included in the curriculum of his studies, for the examination merely elicited the too purely practical remark — " Like a piece of streaky bacon, begad ! " He picked up one or two bits of stone that were within reach of his hand, and turned them over perfunctorily in his palm. Then, with a careless humour, he tossed them on to Shot's head. " Only a junk of the prevailing strata, old chap ! " he explained, by way of apology, as he noticed the dog's resentful eye. " Well ! " he observed, rising to his feet, " I can say I have been here, anyhow, and that is more than the other fellows can !

And now, Shot, hi, 'long, and find the quickest way to the jungle ! " Shot marked his appreciation of this new departure by giving a joyful bark, and scuttling forward over the broken ground. His master followed more cautiously, and presently came to a sloping spot in the eastern scarp, which offered an opportunity for entry into the forest above, and, not without some severe exertion, climbed his way to the top. He found the jungle thick and the undergrowth dense, though the grass had dried down, and the ferns were brown and withered. Shot led the way, ranging up hill, as all well-behaved dogs should do, and hunting as he went with nose to the ground, whilst his master toiled after in a zigzag course, and assisted him with a running commentary of, " Hi, 'long ! Hi, lost ! " as being a sportsmanlike encouragement to the beast.

Bad luck attended the chase, for no bird was flushed ; and the jungle here being too thick, the young man called to Shot to follow him, and led the way to where an opening in the sombre shadows promised clearer ground. A few minutes' stiff climbing brought him to the place. He found a small level sward on the brow of the hill, where the chequered sunlight streamed through fewer branches over-head. There was a little open space, and in the centre of it — a newly dug grave 1 Shot, a few steps in advance of his master, pulled up sharply at the brink. ?>^d =nj'JTed suspiciously as he craned his head over trie excavation, wmist the young sportsman came to a sudden halt and examined it with evident amazement. It could be nothing but a grave. There was a rude stone vault at the bottom, and a few rough boards held up the sides, whilst a couple of ropes rested on the fresh-turned soil, ready for lowering a coffin !

His first impulse, as he realised the situation, was to retrace his steps ; but at this moment Shot gave a low, warning growl, and footsteps crackling on the dry leaves sounded so near that no :hance was afforded for retreat. Then in the vista of the forest above he was suddenly aware of a very strange procession coming towards the open grave. First, four natives with a long bamboo pole slung on their shoulders, from which there swung and dangled an oblong box covered with black cloth, and, though not fashioned in the orthodox sexangular shape of a coffin, yet indisputably such. Following it, a solitary mourner, a European, dressed in a ■quaint old-fashioned naval garb, with a cocked hat under his arm and a serviceable ancient cutlass at his side. An old man of some seventy years of age, or thereabouts, and evidently in sore distress, for the tears streamed from his deep-set eyes, and his large, kindly mouth twitched nervously.

The procession emerged into the open glade and made for the grave. Then the natives lowered their burden to the ground, and stood aside, and as the old man came forward he caught sight of the uninvited guest. He started back, and stood peering at the young stranger with a peculiar half-awed intensity. Then he passed the back of his hand three or four times before his eyes, and opened and shut them as one awakening from a dream, and once again stared at the intruder. The latter bore the scrutiny bravely. He bowed, and stood .respectfully by, as one who, having committed himself, was too well bred to show it. Something in this decorum of manner seemed to satisfy the old man, for he said nothing, but, taking a prayer-book from his pocket, slowly fumbled through the well-worn pages, found his place, and, taking his stand by the side of the coffin, began to read in a low, deep voice the Funeral service of the Church of .England.

Presently the necessity arose for lowering the coffin into the grave. The natives stepped forward to assist, but the old man waved them back as he saw the younger volunteer his aid. Between them they consigned the departed to the last resting place. Then the old man resumed his reading. When the appropriate time came — " Earth to earth " — the younger lifted a handful of soil, and dropped it reverently on the coffin, from whence came back that dead and hollow sound which strikes so solemnly on the stillness of the funeral service, and is so often followed by a burst of despairing sobs. Even so now. The reader faltered in his reading, tried to proceed, failed, and gave in. Slowly he drew his sleeve across bis face, and, with a mute eloquence, resigned the book to the stranger, who completed the task.

It was a strange contrast — the clear, fresh young voice following the hoarse, broken accents. Shot jumped up and looked into his master's face, his head cocked on one side, and his expression one of acute curiosity ; but a stern glance made him lie down again until the service was duly finished. Then the two, without speaking a word, set to work and filled in the grave, and raised a mound above it At last the elder broke silence. " I thank you, sir," he said, "I thank you very much." " No need of thanks. As an accidental intruder, and one who offers you his sincere apology, my duty, no less than my inclination, prompted me to proffer my assistance." " Do not apologise, I beg of you, sir," said the old man, " I io not know who you are, or how you came here. But you have deeply obliged me, and I am very grateful.

My name is Andrew Marling — Lieutenant Andrew Marling, late of the Bombay Marine; and I thank you, sir." He laid a little emphasis on the " Lieutenant," and, not without an air of quiet dignity, drew himself up and made a formal bow. " My name is Durand," answered the younger man, returning the salutation, " and my excuse for my presence is that I was out shooting this morning, and chance brought me here. I am a new arrival in this district, and so my name is probably unknown to you." " It is known now, sir — known and honoured, Mr. Durand. For the future it will command my respect and gratitude. And now, I pray you, come back and break bread under my humble roof. I live but a short distance off. You will not refuse, I hope." " Certainly not, Mr. Marling, if I shall not intrude." " No intrusion, Mr. Durand, no intrusion.

Please follow me." And after one sad last look at the grave, the Lieutenant turned and led the way uphill. Five minutes' walk brought them out of the sorest to a place where most of the trees had been felled, and a clearance made, in the centre of which stood a neat little cottage with a verandah, over which a mass of roses, jessamine, and honeysuckles climbed. In front of it was a garden, beautifully laid out, bright with gay flowers and green lawns, and dissected by two or three trim paths. A few of the older Himalayan oak trees had been left for shade, and these, together with several English fruit and forest trees which had been planted and were flourishing, gave the little place an almost park-like appearance. " Let me welcome you to Good Hope! " said the Lieutenant, " and beg your leave to excuse me for five minutes."

Left to himself, Durand had leisure to note the scene in front of him. The view from the verandah of the cottage was one passing description. It had been built almost on the brow of the Landslip, and from it could be seen the whole of the valley and foothills two thousand feet below, which stretched in an undulating panorama of full fifty miles into the distant plains of India away on the horizon. From the verandah the foreground sloped gradually down to a low parapet wall which skirted the brink of the cliff, and a path led to it, bordered with bright flower beds all neatly raked, and shrubs and trees all trimly pruned. Tempted by the view, Durand stepped down from the verandah and strolled to the parapet wall, which was quite close. Looking down from the coign of vantage, he obtained a magnificent birdseye view of the district.

He could trace, as in a map, the countless mountain streams that stole away from the hills to lose themselves twenty miles lower down in the great river, which was the main artery of this part of the country. He could see the Ryot's fields, here brown and green and golden twice a year, and mark the homesteads, and, easier still, discern the dark green patches of cultivation which denoted tea plantations, for Tea planting was the industry of the district Thoroughly enjoying the view, he was trying to make out the locality of his own newly-purchased estate, when he heard a footstep behind him, and discovered the Lieutenant, who was now arrayed in civilian garb. " Enjoying the view ? " queried the old man, instinctively. " Ah, but you should see it three months' hence, when the crops are ripe and the whole valley is a sea of gold !

" " It's perfection as it is ! " cried Durand, enthusiastically. If I lived up here I should do nothing but sit on this jolly wall all day long and feast my eyes on it." The Lieutenant was evidently highly pleased at this praise. " Well, yes ; it is lovely. Maybe as fine a view as you'd get in all Indy ! I've thought that sometimes myself, I have." " I can imagine nothing grander. Why, Mr. Marling, there are people in England who would give twenty thousand pounds merely to have such a view as this in front of their windows." " And would they, now ? Twenty thousand pounds, you say?" echoed the old man, in a tone of intense satisfaction. Then he suddenly changed his tone. " But what is twenty thousand pounds to me now? " he broke off. "I would not sell my little place, and its memories — its happy, happy memories, no, not for ten times twenty thousand pounds."

Durand caught the change of tone. "I can quite understand that, Mr. Marling," he said. " And it is a beautiful place ; so cool and breezy. What is your elevation here?" " Over six thousand feet above sea level. I never thought when I was at sea I'd get so high up. More'n a mile above the main truck. Just think o' that ! " " Have you lived here long ? " " Nigh twenty years. And twenty very happy years till yester day." He paused for a moment, and then, with a sudden and almost fierce impulse, added, "Do you know — can you guess over whom you read the funeral service just now ? " " No." " Then I'll tell you, for it's my duty. It was over a native woman. A heathen, if you will, but my wife, sir — before Heaven my wife — even though she and I were never married. Perhaps " — he went on in a softer tone — " perhaps I have done wrong.

Maybe I have led you into an act which is against your religious principles. She had no right, a parson might say, to the services of the Christian Church, even though she prayed to the Christian's God. I say she had. But, then, I loved her. And believe me, sir, I meant no harm. I didn't think of principles and convictions. I was only thinking of her. And if I have done you a wrong, I ask you to forgive me." " Nay, nay, Mr. Marling, no need to ask for forgiveness where no error was committed. I have no such scruples as you suggest. If I may so express myself, I am glad I was able to help you." " Thank you, Mr. Durand ; thank you for that. You are very kind and considerate," answered the old man in a broken voice. " I was afraid to tell you there — afraid lest you might have turned and spurned her as she lay there, dead !

But now, having con fessed my fault, I will, with your kind leave, talk no more about it." Saying which, he rose and took a few turns up and down to recover his composure. " You were praising my view," he ventured, after a short silence. " That I was ; and yet, do you know, I cannot help thinking you were a bold man to build your house so near the edge of the Land slip. Do you consider it quite safe ? " " Oh, Good Hope is safe enough ! " replied the Lieutenant, calmly. " For my time, anyhow. I mind me, when I first came here twenty years ago, I thought the same as you do, and had a thought to lay the house further back, but there was the View ! That tempted me to build it just where it stands. I examined the slip, and I asked all the natives hereabout, and they said not a foot had given in the memory of man — that is, not from the top.

The sides do cave in sometimes, but that's nothing. I determined to chance it, and you see I was right, for it has stood firm all these years that I have been here, and firm it will stand, I believe, for the little time more that I want." " Well, it is not undermined, anyhow, for I was down there below this morning, and it is a plumb perpendicular. Still there is a sort of uncanny suggestiveness about the site that would dis turb my slumbers on a rainy night. You might actually throw a stone from your verandah right over this parapet wall and down to the bottom there below." " I've done it," answered the old man, laconically. " But it will last out my time. If you had been here as long as me, you wouldn't notice anything. But come, breakfast is ready. I hope Mr. Durand, it won't be the last you will have with me !

There is ever a grateful welcome for you after your kindness to me to day. It would please me to think this was the beginning of a friendship with you."

Chapter II. Denis

Durand was a tea planter, and owned a promising tea garden, named Chundwarra, in the well known tea district of Dulgoorie. As for how he came to " go into tea," the matter a few preliminary paragraphs. He was an orphan, and an only child. His father, owing to •some disagreement with his family, had cut himself aloof from them when he married Denis's mother. The union was a happy one, but very short, for before he was two years old Denis had lost both his parents. The care of him devolved upon an elderly bachelor, named Horace Grand, his mother's first cousin, and, if the truth were iknown, her first and ever faithful admirer. He had wished to win her for his own wife, but when he saw that this was impossible, he ■unselfishly sacrificed himself, and became as faithful a friend to her -as he had been a lover.

And when her son was left an orphan, with no one to care for him, he stepped into the breach, and fulfilled his promise of being guardian to the child. Denis inherited five thousand pounds, in which his father had 'only enjoyed a life interest, and in the event of his dying before he came of age, this little fortune reverted to his father's family, ■which consisted of two half-brothers and a half-sister. This fact .gave them an interest in his life which they had never experienced when his parents were alive, and they soon began to evince a •curiosity to know how the little fellow was going on. But Horace Grand easily diagnosed the reasons of their new-found concern in their nephew's welfare, and bitter in the remembrance of the way in which they had slighted the child's mother, refused all ■communion with them except through the medium of the family solicitor, who was a joint trustee of Denis's fortune.

Being thus -denied a personal inspection of this interesting morsel of humanity, Denis's uncles and aunt sought a gloomy satisfaction in studying the statistics of infant mortality, and regretted that the tables did not include records of babes brought up by bachelors. Tended by a kindly nurse, and affectionately watched over by bis cousin and guardian, little Denis grew out of childhood into boyhood, passing triumphantly through the entire range of infantile afflictions, from mumps to scarlet fever, and through the complete sequence of garments which commences with embroidered frocks and culminates in coat tails. And, at eighteen years of age, he proved himself as good a specimen of a public school boy as any one could desire to meet. One advantage, however, he had never enjoyed, and that was a woman's care and influence.

Horace Grand, after his first and only disappointment in love, had sunk into a confirmed bachelor, and with the departure of Denis's old nurse when he was seven years old (and of whose authority it must be owned he was even. then impatient) his first and last experience of female influence was over. It did not strike his guardian that there was any anomaly in this. He loved Denis as a son, and it never occurred to him that the little lad required any further form or fashion of affection. Nor in truth did Denis miss that to which he had never been accustomed ; only sometimes at school, when a comrade grew very confidential and referred to his mother or sisters, Denis would listen to all that was said or hinted with a silent interest, and a curiosity for more details which he was ashamed to exhibit; and to such friends he was unusually reticent about his own domestic institutions.

His schoolmaster's wife — the only lady with whom he had ever been brought in close contact — declared he was the shyest bov she had known, and as every year about a hundred new specimens took high tea. with her in turn on Sunday evenings, her opinion is worth recording. At the age of eighteen Horace Grand suggested to Denis that he should make choice of a profession. Two of the boy's school chums having recently gone up to Oxfoid, it occurred to him he would like to join them, and so he decided on a University career. But the particular one he followed was so erratic and contracted by debt that, after two years, his guardian terminated it very suddenly upon the receipt of a dozen or so heavy bills, payment of which was demanded. Horace Grand was a man of small means, strict ideas, and absolutely no petty vices, and Denis's imperial extravagance horrified him.

For the first time in his life he asked himself whether he had kept his promise to the lad's mother, which he had given her on her death bed, and if he had, how was it that the boy, on the very threshold of life, had fallen into bad ways. He had only one year's authority left in which to repair the evil. With a stern severity, which pained him far more than it did Denis, he determined on a new departure. The bills were paid, and Denis was taken away from Oxford, and set. down to study for the bar. Thus the last year of his minority passed, during which he learnt something of law, but more of London. The operas, theatres, and concert halls knew him frequently, for he was an enthusiastic lover of music, and a good performer for a school taught boy. His guardian promulgated no edicts against these: forms of amusement, for he recognised Denis's talent, and saw it was the music and not the dissipation which attracted him.

But in permitting this relaxation he never ceased to urge on him the more sober pursuit of the profession he was entering on. Denis, who fully appreciated the liberty that was allowed him, did his best to deserve it, and got so far as to work with steadiness if not with enthusiasm. And so a year passed by and he reached his twenty-first birthday. Not until this day did he realise how dear his guardian was to him. He had always found him kind, affectionate, and indulgent ;. but now a yet more tender chord was touched. There were accounts and deeds and releases to be examined and signed, and various legal formalities to be gone through. The family solicitor, who was a co-trustee, attached his sign-manual with an air of relief, congratulated Denis in set phrase, hoped he would enjoy life, impressed on him the necessity of being careful and prudent, and the wisdom of living on his interest and never touching his capital ; in short, with very unprofessional brevity, compressed into three minutes the lesson that Horace Grand had been striving to teach by example for many years.