On the Face of the Waters Part 39

He stood silent, gazing at the stains stupidly. "I did not strike," he muttered to himself, "but I called; or did I strike? I--I----" He threw up his head and his words rushed recklessly in a high shrill voice, "I warned thee! I told thee it was not safe! They were herded like sheep in the suns.h.i.+ne by the cistern, and the smell of blood rose up. It was in my very nostrils, for, look you, that first shot missed them and killed one of my men. I saw it. A round red spot oozing over the white--and they herded like sheep----"

"Who?" she asked faintly.

"I told thee; the prisoners, with the cry to kill above the cries of the children, the flash of blood-dulled swords above women's heads--and I---- Nay! I warned thee, Newasi, there was butcher _here_"--his blood-stained hands left their mark on his gay clothes.

"Abool!" she cried, "thou didst not----"

"Did I?" he almost screamed. "G.o.d! will it ever leave my sight? I gave the call, I ran in, I drew my sword. It spurted over my hands from a child's throat as I would have struck--or--or--did I strike? Newasi!"

his voice had sunk again almost to a whisper, "it was in its mother's arms,--she did not cry,--she looked and I--I----" he buried his face in his hands--"I came to thee."

She stood looking at him for a moment, her hands clenched, her beautiful soft eyes ablaze; then recklessly she tore the jewels from her arms, her neck, her hair.

"So she has dared! Yea! Come! thou art right, Abool!" The words mixed themselves with the tinkle of bracelets as, flung from her in wild pa.s.sion, they rolled into the corners of the room, with the c.h.i.n.k of necklaces as they fell, with the rustle of brocade and tinsel as she tore them from her. "She has killed them--the helpless fugitives, guests who have eaten the King's salt! She thinks to beguile us all--to beguile thee. But she shall not. It is not too late. Come!

Come! Abool--thou shalt have all from me--yea! all, sooner than she should beguile thee thus--Come!"

She had s.n.a.t.c.hed an old white veil from its peg and wrapped it round her, as she pa.s.sed rapidly to the door; but he did not move. So she pa.s.sed back again as swiftly to take his hand, stained as it was, and lay her cheek to it caressingly.

"Thou didst not strike, dear, thou didst not! Come, dear, that she-devil shall not have thee--I will hold thee fast."

Five minutes after a plain curtained dhoolie left the precincts and swayed past the Great Hall of Audience with its toothed red arches, looking as if they yawned for victims. The courtyard beyond lay strangely silent, despite the s.h.i.+fting crowd, which gathered and melted and gathered again round the little tree-shaded cistern where but the day before Hafzan and the Moulvie had watched a mother pause to clasp her baby to softer, securer rest.

The woman and the child were at the cistern now, and the Rest had come. Softer, securer than all other rest, and the mother shared it; shared it with other women, other children.

But as the Princess Farkhoonda, fearful of what she might see, peeped through the dhoolie curtains, there was nothing to be seen save the s.h.i.+fting, curious crowd, while the impartial suns.h.i.+ne streamed down on it, and those on whom it gazed.

So let the s.h.i.+fting, crowding years with their relentless questioning eyes shut out all thought of what lay by the cistern, save that of rest and the impartial suns.h.i.+ne streaming upon it.

For as the beautiful soft eyes drew back relieved, a bugle rang through the arcades, echoed from the wall, floated out into the city.

The bugle to set watch and ward, to close the gates; since the irrevocable step had been taken, the death-pledge made.

So the dream of sovereignty began in earnest behind closed gates. But if women had lost Delhi, those who lay murdered about the little cistern had regained it. For Hafzan had spoken truth; the strength of the Huzoors lay there.

The strength of the real Master.

CHAPTER II.

PEACE? PEACE?

Three weeks had pa.s.sed, and still the dream of sovereignty went on behind the closed gates, while all things s.h.i.+mmered and simmered in the fierce blaze of summer sunlight. The city lay--a rose-red glare dazzling to look at--beside the glittering curves of the river, and the deserted Ridge, more like a lizard than ever, sweltered and slept lazily, its tail in the cool blue water, its head upon the cool green groves of the Subz-mundi. And over all lay a liquid yellow heat-haze blurring every outline, till the whole seemed some vast mirage.

And still there were no tidings of the master, no cloud of dust upon the Meerut road. None.

Amazing, incredible fact! Men whispered of it on the steps of the Great Mosque when, the last Friday of the fast coming round, its commination service brought many from behind closed doors to realize that by such signs of kings.h.i.+p as beatings of drums, firing of salutes, and levying of loans, Bahadur Shah really had filched the throne of his ancestors from the finest fighters in the world. Filched it without a blow, without a struggle, without even a threat, a defiance.

So here they were in a new world without posts or telegraphs, laws or order. Time itself turned back hundreds of years and all power of progress vested absolutely in one old man, the Light of Religion, the Defender of the Faith, the Great Moghul. If that were not a miracle it came too perilously near to one for some folk's loyalty; and so they drifted palaceward when prayers were over to swell the growing crowd of courtiers about the Dream King. And even the learned and most loyal lingered on the steps to whisper, and call obscure prophecies and ingenious commentaries to mind, and admit that it was strange, wondrous strange, that the numerical values of the year should yield the anagram "_Ungrez tubbah shood ba hur soorut_," briefly "The British shall be annihilated." For the Oriental mind loves such trivialities.

And, to all intents and purposes, the English were annihilated, during that short month of peace between the 11th of May and the 8th of June, 1857; for Delhi knew nothing of the vain striving, the ceaseless efforts of the master to find tents and carriages, horses, ammunition, medicine, everything once more, save, thank Heaven! courage, and the determination to be master still.

Even Soma admitted the miracle grudgingly; for he had so far bolstered up his disloyalty by thoughts of a fair fight. He had not, after all, gone to Delhi direct, but had cut across country to his own village near Hansi, and had waited there, hoping to hear of a regular outbreak of hostilities before definitely choosing his side; and he was still waiting when, after a fortnight, his greatest chum in the regiment had turned up from Meerut. For Davee Singh had been one of the many sepoys of the 11th who had gone back to the colors after that one brief night of temptation was over. Soma had known this, and more than once as he waited, the knowledge had been as a magnet drawing him back to the old pole of thought; for that his chum should be led to victory and he be among the defeated was probable enough to make Soma hate himself in antic.i.p.ation.

But here was Davee Singh, a deserter like he was, sulkily uncommunicative to the village gossips, but to his fellow admitting fiercely that the latter had been right. The Huzoors had forgotten how to fight. Meerut was quiet as the grave; but there was no word of Delhi, and folk said--what did they not say?

So these two, with a strange mixture of regret and relief in their hearts, set out for Delhi to see what was happening there; not knowing that many of their fellows were drifting from it, weary like themselves of inaction.

They had arrived there, two swaggering Rajpoots, in the midst of the thanksgivings and jollity of the Mohammedan Easter which followed on the last Friday of Fast; and they had fallen foul of it frankly. As frankly as the Mohammedans would have fallen foul of a Hindoo Saturnalia, or both Mohammedans and Hindoos would have fallen foul of the festivities in honor of the Queen's Birthday which, on this 25th of May, 1857, were going on in every cantonment in India as if there was no such thing as mutiny in the world. So, annoyed with what they saw and heard, they joined themselves to other Rajpoot malcontents promptly. They sneered at the old pantaloon's procession, which was in truth a poor one, though half the tailors in Delhi had been impressed to hurry up trappings and robes. Perhaps if Abool-Bukr had still been in charge of squibs and such like, it would have been better; but he was not. The order he had given to let the Princess Farkhoonda's dhoolie pa.s.s out, before the gates were closed on that day of the death-pledge, had been his last exercise of authority; for the next Court Journal contained the announcement that he was dismissed from his appointment. So he, hovering between the Thunbi Bazaar and the Mufti's quarter, had nothing to do with the procession at which the Rajpoots sneered, criticising Mirza Moghul, the Commander-in-Chief's seat on a horse, and talking boastfully of Vicra-maditya and Pertap as warlike Hindoos will. Until, about dusk, words came to blows amid a tinkling of anklets and a terrible smell of musk; for valor drifted as a matter of course to the wooden balconies of the Thunbi Bazaar during the month of miracle. So that the inmates, coining money, called down blessings on the new regime.

Soma, however, with a cut over one eye sorely in need of a st.i.tch, swore loudly when he could find none to patch him up save a doddering old Hakeem, who proposed dosing him with paper pills inscribed with the name of Providence; an incredible remedy to one accustomed to all the appliances of hospitals and skilled surgery.

"Yea! no doubt he is a fool," a.s.sented the other sepoys in frank commiseration, "yet he is the best you will get. For see you, brother, the doctors belong to the Huzoors; so many a brave man must expect to die needlessly, since those cursed dressers are not safe. There was one took the bottles and things and swore he could use them as well as any. And luck went with him until he gave five heroes who had been drunk the night before somewhat to clear their heads. By all the G.o.ds in Indra's heaven they were clear even of life in half an hour. So we fell on the dresser and cleared him too. Yea! fool or no fool, paper pills are safer!"

Jim Douglas, who, profiting by the dusk and confusion, had lingered by the group after recognizing Soma's voice, turned away with a savage chuckle; not that the tale amused him, but that he was glad to think six of the devils had gone to their account. For those long days of peace and enforced inaction had sunk him lower and lower into sheer animal hatred of those he dare not rebuke. He knew it himself, he felt that his very courage was becoming ferocity, and the thought that others, biding their time as he was, must be sinking into it also, filled him with fierce joy at the thought of future revenge. And yet, so far as he personally was concerned, those long days had pa.s.sed quietly, securely, peacefully, and he could at any time climb out of all sight and sound of turmoil to a slip of sunlit roof where a woman waited for him with confidence and welcome in her eyes. With something obtrusively English also for his refreshment, since tragedy, even the fear of death, cannot claim a whole life, and Kate took to amusing herself once more by making her corner of the East as much like the West as she dare. That was not much, but Jim Douglas' eye noted the indescribable difference which the position of a reed stool, the presence of a poor bunch of flowers, the little row of books in a niche, made in the familiar surroundings. For there were books and to spare in Delhi; for the price of a few pennies Jim Douglas might have brought her a cartload of such loot had he deemed it safe; but he did not, and so the library consisted of grammars and vocabularies from which Kate learned with a rapidity which surprised and interested her teacher. In truth she had nothing else to do. Yet when he came, as he often did, to find her absorbed in her work, her eyes dreamy with the puzzle of tense, he resented it inwardly, telling himself once more that women were trivial creatures, and life seemed trivial too, for in truth his nerves were all jangled and out of tune with the desire to get away from this strange shadow of a past idyll; to leave all womanhood behind and fall to fighting manfully. So that often as he sat beside her, patient outwardly, inwardly fretting to be gone even in the nightmare of the city, his eye would fall on the circlet of gold he had slipped, out of sheer arrogance and imperious temper, round that slender wrist, and feel that somehow he had fettered himself hopelessly when, more than a year past, he had given that promise. His chance and hers! Was this all? One woman's safety. And she, following his eyes to the bangle, would feel the thrill of its first touch once more, and think how strange it was that his chance and hers were so linked together. But, being a woman, her heart would soften instinctively to the man who sat beside her, and whose face grew sterner and more haggard day by day; while hers?--she could see enough of it in the little looking-gla.s.s on her thumb to recognize that she was positively getting fat! She tried to amuse him by telling him so, by telling him many of the little humorous touches which come even into tragic life, and he was quite ready to smile at them. But only to please her. So day by day a silence grew between them as they sat on the inner roof, while Tara spun outside, or watched them furtively from some corner. And the flare of the sunset, unseen behind the parapeted wall, would lie on the swelling dome and spiked minarets of the mosque and make the paper kites, flown in this month of May by half the town, look like drifting jewels; fit canopy for the City of Dreams and for this strangest of dreams upon the housetop.

"Has--has anything gone wrong?" she asked in desperation one day, when he had sat moodily silent for a longer time than usual. "I would rather you told me, Mr. Greyman."

He looked at her, vaguely surprised at the name; for he had almost forgotten it. Forgotten utterly that she could not know any other. And why should she? He had made the promise under that name; let them stick to it so long as Fate had linked their chances together.

"Nothing; not for us at least," he said, and then a sudden remorse at his own unfriendliness came over him. "There was another poor chap discovered to-day," he added in a softer tone. "I believe that you and I, Mrs. Erlton, must be the only two left now."

"I dare say," she echoed a little wearily, "they--they killed him I suppose."

He nodded. "I saw his body in the bazaar afterward. I used to know him a bit--a clever sort----"

"Yes----"

"Mixed blood, of course, or he could not have pa.s.sed muster so long as a greengrocer's a.s.sistant."

"Well--I would rather hear if you don't mind."

His dark eyes met hers with a sudden eagerness, a sudden pa.s.sion in them.

"What a little thing life is after all! He only said one word--only one. He was selling watermelons, and some brute tried to cheat him first, and then cheeked him. And he forgot a moment and said: _Chup-raho_,' (be silent)--only that!--'_chup-raho_'! They were bragging of it--the devils. We knew he couldn't be a coolie, they said, that is a master's word.' My G.o.d! What wouldn't I give to say it sometimes! I could have shouted to them then, _Chup-raho_, you fools!

you cowards!' and some of them would have been silent enough----"

He broke off hurriedly, clenching his hands like a vise on each other, as if to curb the tempest of words.

"I beg your pardon," he said after a pause, rising to walk away; "I--I lose control----" He paused again and shook his head silently. Kate followed him and laid her hand on his arm; the loose gold fetter slipped to her wrist and touched him too.

"You think I don't understand," she said with a sudden sob in her voice, "but I do--you must go away--it isn't worth it--no woman is worth it."

He turned on her sharply. "Go? You know I can't. What is the use of suggesting it? Mrs. Erlton! Tara is faithful; but she is faithful to me--only to me--you must see that surely----"

"If you mean that she loves you--wors.h.i.+ps the very ground you tread on," interrupted Kate sharply, "that is evident enough."

"Is that my fault?" he began angrily; "I happened----"