On the Face of the Waters Part 48

But Kate had remembered it too, and she also had turned to Jim Douglas pa.s.sionately, almost accusingly. "It was you! You were Fate--you---- Ah! I understand now!"

"Do you?" he answered with a frown. "Then it's more than I do." He walked away moodily toward the knife Kate had flung away, and stooped to pick it up. "But you were right in what you did. It was an inspiration. Look there!"

He pointed to the old Baharupa, who was playing antics to amuse Sonny, who lisped, "_Tha bath!_" (bravo!) solemnly at each fresh effort. But Kate s.h.i.+vered. "I did nothing. I thought I did; but it was Fate."

"My dear lady," he retorted with a kindly smile, "it is all in the nature of dreams. The convalescent home is turned into a _creche_. But we must transfigure the street urchin into the darling of his parents'

hearts----" He paused and looked at Kate queerly. "I'll tell Tara to rig him out properly; and you must take off half the stain, you know, and leave some color on his cheeks; for he must play the part as well as----" He laughed suddenly. "It is really more dream-like than ever!"

he added. And Kate thought so too.

CHAPTER VI.

VOX HUMANA.

The five days following on the 2d of August were a time of festivity for the Camp, a time of funerals for the City. There was a break in the rains, and on the Ridge the suns.h.i.+ne fell in floods upon the fresh green gra.s.s, and the air, bright and cool, set men's minds toward making the best of Nature's kindness; for she had been kind, indeed, to the faithful little colony, and few even of the seniors could remember a season so favorable in every way. And so the messes talked of games, of races; and men, fresh from seeing their fellows killed by b.a.l.l.s on one side of the Ridge, joined those who, on the other side, were crying "Well bowled!" as wickets went down before other b.a.l.l.s.

But in the city the unswept alleys fermented and festered in the vapors and odors which rose from the great ma.s.s of humanity pent within the rose-red walls. For the gates had been closed strictly save for those with permits to come and go. This was Bukht Khan's policy.

Delhi was to stand or fall as one man. There was to be no sneaking away while yet there was time. So hundreds of sepoys protesting illness, hunger, urgent private affairs--every possible excuse for getting leave--were told that if they would not fight they could sulk.

Starve they might, stay they should. The other Commanders-in-Chief, it is true, spent money in bribing mercenaries for one week's more fighting; but Bukht Khan only smiled sardonically. He had tried bugles and fifes, he had tried the drum-ecclesiastic; he was now trying his last stop. The _vox humana_ of self-preservation.

In the city itself, however, the preservation of life took for the present another form, and never within the memory of man had there been such a pounding of pestles and mortars over leaf-poultices. The sound of it rose up at dawn and eve like the sound of the querns, mingling with the _vox humana_ of grief as the eastern and southern gates were set wide to let the dead pa.s.s out, and allow the stores for the living to pa.s.s in.

It formed a background to the gossip at the wells where the women met to draw water.

"Faiz-Ahmed found freedom at dawn," said one between her yawns. "He was long in the throes. The bibis made a great wailing, so I could not even sleep since then. There are no sons, see you, and no money now the old man's annuity is gone."

"Loh, sister!" retorted another, "thou speakest as if death were a morsel of news to let dissolve on the tongue. There be plenty such soppets in Delhi, and if I know aught of wounds there will be another at nightfall. My mistress wastes time in the pounding of simples, and I waste time in waiting for them till my turn comes at the shop; for if it be not gangrened, I have no eyes." The speaker jerked her pot to her shoulder deftly and pa.s.sed down the alley.

"Juntu is wise in such matters," said a worn-looking woman with sad eyes; "I must get her to glance at my man's cut. 'Tis right to my mind--he will put naught but water to it, after some foreign fas.h.i.+on--but who can tell these times?"

"Save that none pa.s.s their day, sister. Death will come of the Great Sickness, or the wound, as it chooses," put in a half-starved soul who had to carry a baby besides her pot. "The cholera rages in our alley.

'Tis the smell. None sweep the streets or flush the gutters now."

"Ari, f.u.kra!" cried a fierce virago, "thou art a traitor at heart! She bewails the pig-eating infidels who gave her man five rupees a month to bring water to the drains. Ai teri! If they saved one life from good cholera, have they not reft a hundred in exchange from widows and orphans? Oo-ai-ie-ee!"

Her howling wail, like a jackal's, was caught up whimperingly by the others; and so they pa.s.sed on with their water pots, to spread through the city the tale of Faiz-Ahmed's freedom, Juntu's suspicions of gangrene, and Kartina the butcher's big wife's retort. And, in the evening, folk gathered at the gates, and talked over it all again as the funerals pa.s.sed out; old Faiz-Ahmed, in his new gold shoes, looking better as a corpse, tied up in tinsel, than as a martyr, so the spectators agreed. Whereat _his_ family had their glow of pride also.

Then, when the show was over, the crowd dispersed to pay visits of condolence, and raise the wailing _vox humana_ in every alley.

Greatly to Jim Douglas' relief, for there was another voice difficult to keep quiet when the cool evenings came, and all Kate's replies in Hindustani would not beguile Sonny's tongue from English. He was the quaintest mother's darling now, in a little tinsel cap fringed with brown silk ta.s.sels hiding that dreadful gangway, anklets, and bracelets on his bare corn-colored limbs, the ruddy color showing through the dye on his cheeks, his palms all henna-stained, his eyes blackened with kohl, and a variety of little tinsel and brocaded cootees ending far above his dimpled knees. There were little muslin and net ones too, cunningly streaked with silver and gold, for Tara was reckless over the boy. She insisted, too, on a great black smudge on his forehead to keep away the evil eye; and Soma, coming now with the greatest regularity, brought odd little coral and gra.s.s necklets such as Rajpoot bairns ought to wear; while Tiddu, the child's great favorite, had a new toy every day for the little Huzoor. Paper whirligigs, cotton-wool bears on a stick, mud parrots, and such like, whereat Sonny would lisp, "_Tha bath_, Tiddu." Though sometimes he would go over to Kate and ask appealingly, "Miffis Erlton! What has a-come of my polly?"

Then she, startled into realities by the words, would catch him up in her arms, and look around as if for protection to Jim Douglas, who, having overdone himself in the struggle with Tiddu, had felt it wiser to defer further action for a day or two. The more so because Tiddu had promised to help him to the uttermost if he would only be reasonable and leave times and seasons to one who had ten times the choice that he had.

So he would smile back at Kate and say, "It's all right, Mrs. Erlton.

At least as right as it can be. The lot of them are devoted to the child."

Yet in his heart he knew that there was danger in so many confederates. He felt that this incredibly peaceful home on the housetop could not last. Here he was looking at a woman who was not his wife, a child who was not his child, and feeling vaguely that they were as much a part of his life as if they were. As if, had they been so, he would have been quite contented. More contented than he had been on that other roof. He was, even now, more contented than he had been there. As he sat, his head on his hand, watching the pretty picture which Kate, in Zora's jewels, made with the be-tinseled, be-scented, bedecked child, he thought of his relief when years before he had looked at a still little morsel lying in Zora's veil. Had it been brutal of him? Would that dead baby have grown into a Sonny? Or was it because Sonny's skin was really white beneath the stain that he thought of him as something to be proud of possessing; of a boy who would go to school and be f.a.gged and flogged and inherit familiar virtues and vices instead of strange ones?

"What are you thinking of, Mr. Greyman? Do you want anything?" came Kate's kind voice.

"Nothing," he replied in the half-bantering tone he so often used toward her; "I have more than my fair share of things already, surely!

I was only meditating on the word 'Om'--the final mystery of all things."

So, in a way, he was. On the mystery of fatherhood and motherhood, which had nothing to do with that pure idyl of romantic pa.s.sion on the terraced roof at Lucknow, yet which seemed to touch him here, where there was not even love. Yet it was a better thing. The pa.s.sion of protection, of absolute self-forgetfulness, seeking no reward, which the sight of those two raised in him, was a better thing than that absorption in another self. The thought made him cross over to where Kate sat with the child in her lap, and say gravely:

"The _creche_ is more interesting than the convalescent home, at least to me, Mrs. Erlton! I shall be quite sorry when it ends."

"When it ends?" she echoed quickly. "There is nothing wrong, is there?

Sonny has been so good, and that time when he was naughty the sweeper-woman seemed quite satisfied when Tara said he was speaking Pushtoo."

"But it cannot last for all that," he replied. "It is dangerous. I feel it is. This is the 5th, and I am nearly all right. I must get Tiddu to arrange for Sonny first. Then for you."

"And you?" she asked.

"I'll follow. It will be safer, and there is no fear for me. I can't understand why I've had no answer from your husband. The letter went two days ago, and I am convinced we ought."

The frown was back on his face, the restlessness in his brain; and both grew when in private talk with Tiddu the latter hinted at suspicions in the caravan which had made it necessary for him to be very cautious. The letter, therefore, had certainly been delayed, might never have reached. If no answer came by the morrow, he himself would take the opportunity of a portion of the caravan having a permit to pa.s.s out, and so insure the news reaching the Ridge; trusting to get into the city again without delay, though the gates were very strictly kept. Nevertheless, in his opinion, the Huzoor would be wiser with patience. There was no immediate danger in continuing as they were, and the end could not be long if it were true that the great Nikalseyn was with the Punjab reinforcements. Since all the world knew that Nikalseyn was the prince of sahibs, having the gift, not only of being all things to all people, but of making all people be all things to him, which was more than the Baharupas could do.

In truth, the news that John Nicholson was coming to Delhi made even Jim Douglas hesitate at risking anything unnecessarily, so long as things went smoothly. As for the letter to Major Erlton, it was no doubt true that the number of spies sending information to the Ridge had made it difficult of late to send any, since the guards were on the alert.

It was, indeed, even for the Queen herself, who had a missive she was peculiarly anxious should not fall into strange hands.

"There is no fear, Ornament of Palaces," said Ahsan-Oolah urbanely; "I will stake my life on its reaching." He did not add that his chief reason for saying so was that a similar letter, written by the King, had been safely delivered by Rujjub Ali, the spy, whose house lay conveniently near the physician's own, and from whom both the latter and Elahi-Buksh heard authentic news from the Ridge. News which made them both pity the poor old pantaloon who, as they knew well, had been a mere puppet in stronger hands. And these two, laying their heads together, in one of those kaleidoscope combinations of intrigue which made Delhi politics a puzzle even at the time, advised the King to use the _vox celeste_ as an antidote to the _vox humana_ of the city, which was being so diligently fostered by the Queen and Bukht Khan.

Let him say he was too old for this world, let him profess himself unable longer to cope with his coercers and claim to be allowed to resign and become a fakir! But the dream still lingered in the old man's brain. He loved the brocaded bags, he loved the new cus.h.i.+on of the Peac.o.c.k throne; and though the c.o.c.katoo's crest was once more showing a yellow tinge through the green, the thought of jehad lingered sanctimoniously. But other folk in the Palace were beginning to awake. Other people in Delhi besides Tiddu had heard that Nikalseyn was on his way from the Punjab and not even the rose-red walls had been able to keep out his reputation. Folk talked of him in whispers.

The soldiers, unable to retreat, unwilling to fight, swore loudly that they were betrayed; that there were too many spies in the city. Of that there could be no doubt. Were not letters found concealed in innocent looking cakes and such like? Had not one, vaguely suggesting that some cursed infidels were still concealed in the city, been brought in for reward by a Bunjarah who swore he had picked it up by chance? The tales grew by the telling in the Thunbi Bazaar, making Prince Abool-Bukr, who had returned to it incontinently after the disastrous failure of faith on the 2d, hiccough magnificently that, poor as he was, he would give ten golden mohurs to anyone who would set him on the track of a h.e.l.l-doomed. Yea! folk might laugh, but he was good for ten still. Ay! and a rupee besides, to have the offer cried through the bazaar; so there would be an end to scoffers!

"What is't?" asked the languid loungers in the wooden balconies, as the drum came beating down the street.

"Only Abool offering ten mohurs for a Christian to kill," said one.

"And he swore he had not a rupee when I danced for him but yesterday,"

said another.

"He has to pay Newasi, sister," yawned a third.

"Then let her dance for him--I do it no longer," retorted the grumbler.

So the crier and his drums pa.s.sed down the scoffing bazaar. "He will find many at that price," quoth some, winking at their neighbors; for the Prince was a b.u.t.t when in his cups.

Thus at earliest dawn next morning, the 7th of August, Tiddu gave a signal knock at the door of the roof, rousing Jim Douglas who, since the child's arrival, had taken to sleeping across it once more.

"There is danger in the air, Huzoor," he said briefly; "they cried a reward for the infidels in the bazaar yesterday. There is talk of some letter."

"The child must go--go at once," replied his hearer, alert in an instant; but Tiddu shook his head.

"Not till dark, Huzoor. The bullocks are to pa.s.s out with the moon, and he must pa.s.s out with them. In a sack, Huzoor. Say nothing till the last. Then, the Huzoor knows the cloth merchant's by the Delhi gate?"