On the Face of the Waters Part 57

"Wast not?" she retorted bitterly. "The G.o.ds know. Is there not woman in man, and man in woman, among those born at a birth? Soma! for the sake of that--do this for me----" It was her last appeal; she had kept it for the last, and now her somber eyes were ablaze with pa.s.sionate entreaty. "See, brother! I claim it of you as a right. Thou didst take my sainthood from me once. Count this as giving it back again."

"Back again?" echoed Soma thickly. "What fool's talk is this?"

"Let it be fool's talk, brother," she interrupted, with a strange intensity in her voice. "I care not--thou dost not know; I cannot tell thee. But--but _this_ will be counted to thee in rest.i.tution. Soma!

think of it as my sainthood! Sure thou dost owe me it! Somal for the sake of the hand which lay in thine."

In her excitement she moved a step forward, and he shrank back instinctively. True, she was a saint in another way if those scars were true; but--at the moment, being angry with her, he chose to doubt, to remember. "Stand back!" he cried roughly, unsteadily. "What do I owe thee? What claim hast thou?"

The question, the gesture outraged her utterly. The memory of a whole life of vain struggling after self-respect surged to her brain, bringing that almost insane light to her eyes. "What?" she echoed fiercely--"this!" Ere he could prevent it, her hand was in his, gripping it like a vice.

"So in the beginning--so in the end!" she gasped, as he struggled with her madly. "Tara and Soma hand in hand. Nay! I am strong as thou."

She spoke truth, for his nerve and muscle were slack with opium; yet he fought wildly, striking at her with his left hand, until in a supreme effort she lost her footing, they both staggered, and he--as she loosed her hold--fell backward, striking his head against a projecting brick in the ruined wall.

"Soma!" she whispered to his prostrate figure, "art hurt, brother?

Speak to me!"

But he lay still, and, with a cry, she flung herself on her knees beside him, feeling his heart, listening to his breathing, searching for the injury. It was a big cut on the crown of the head; but it did not seem a bad one, and she began to take his unconsciousness more calmly. She had seen folk like that before from a sudden fall, and they came to themselves, none the worse, after a while. But scarcely, here, in time to relieve guard.

She stood up suddenly and looked round her. Soma's uniform hung on a peg, his musket stood in a corner.

Half an hour after this, Kate, waiting in the thatch for Tara to come as usual, gave a cry, more of surprise than alarm, as a tall figure, in uniform, stepped into the flickering light of the cresset.

"Soma!" she cried, "what is it?"

A gratified smile came to the curled mustachios. "Soma or Tara, it matters not," replied a familiar voice. "They were one in the beginning. Quick, mem-sahib. On with the jewels. I have a dark veil too for the gate."

Kate stood up, her heart throbbing. "Am I to go, then? Is that what Sri Anunda meant?"

"Sri Anunda! hath he been here?" Tara paused, sniffed, and once more those dark eyes met the light ones with a fierce jealousy. "He hath given thee henna-blossom. I smell it; and he gives it to none but those who---- So the Swami's lesson is learned--and the disciple can go in peace----" She broke off with a petulant laugh. "Well! so be it.

It ends my part. The mem will sleep among her own to-night; Sri Anunda hath said it. Come----"

"But how? I must know how," protested Kate.

The laugh rose again. "Wherefore? The mem is Sri Anunda's disciple.

For the rest, I will let the mem out through the little river-gate.

There is a boat, and she can go in peace."

There was something so wild, so almost menacing in Tara's face, that Kate felt her only hope was to obey. And, in good sooth, the scent of the henna-blossom she carried with her, tucked into her bosom, gave her, somehow, an irrational hope that all would go well as she followed her guide swiftly through the alleys and bazaars.

"The mem must wait here," whispered Tara at last, pausing behind one of the ungainly mausoleums in what had been the old Christian cemetery. "When she hears me singing Sonny-baba's song, she must follow to the Water-gate. It is behind the ruins, there."

Kate crouched down, setting her back, native fas.h.i.+on, against the tomb. And as she waited she wondered idly what mortal lay there; so, being strangely calm, she let her fingers stray to the recess she felt behind her. There should be a marble tablet there; and even in the dark she might trace the lettering. But the recess was empty, the marble having evidently been picked out. So it was a nameless grave.

And the next? She moved over to it stealthily, then to the next.

But the tablets had been taken out of all and carried off--for curry-stones most likely. So the graves were nameless; those beneath them mortals--nothing more. As she waited under the stars, her mind reverted to Sri Anunda and the Wheel of Life and Death. The immortality of mortality! Was that the lesson which was to let her go in peace?

She started from the thought as that native version of the "Happy Land" came, nasally, from behind the ruins. As she pa.s.sed them, a group of men were squatted gossiping round a hookah, and more than one figure pa.s.sed her. But a woman with her veil drawn, and a clank of anklets on her feet, did not even invite a curious eye; for it was still early enough for such folk to be going home.

Then, as she pa.s.sed down a flight of steps, a hand stole out from a niche and drew her back into a dark shadow. The next minute, with a low whisper, "There is no fear! Sri Anunda hath said it. Go in peace!"

she felt herself thrust through a door into darkness. But a feeble glimmer showed below her, and creeping down another flight of steps, she found herself outside Delhi, looking over the strip of low-lying land where in the winter the buffaloes had grazed beneath Alice Gissing's house, but which was now flooded into a still backwater by the rising of the river. And out of it the stunted kikar and tamarisks grew strangely, their feathery branches arching over it. But to the left, beyond the Water Bastion, rose a ma.s.s of darker foliage--the Koodsia Gardens. Once there she would be beyond floods, and Tara had said there was a boat. Kate found it, moored a little further toward the river--a flat-bottomed punt, with a pole. It proved easier to manage than she had expected; for the water was shallow, and the trunks and branches of the trees helped her to get along, so that after a time she decided on keeping to that method of progress as long as she could. It enabled her to skirt the river bank, where there were fewer lights telling of watch-fires. Besides, she knew the path by the river leading to Metcalfe House. It might be under water now; but if she crept into the park at the ravine--if she could take the boat so far--she might manage to reach Metcalfe House. There was an English picket there, she knew. So, as she mapped out her best way, a sudden recollection came to her of the last time she had seen that river path, when her husband and Alice Gissing were walking down it, and Captain Morecombe----

Ah! was it credible? Was it not all a dream? Could this be real--could it be the same world?

She asked herself the question with a dull indifference as she struggled on doggedly.

But not more than two hours afterward the conviction that the world had not changed came upon her with a strange pang as she stood once more on the terrace of Metcalfe House with English faces around her.

"By Heaven, it's Mrs. Erlton!" she heard a familiar voice say. It seemed to her hundreds of miles away in some far, far country to which she had been journeying for years. "Here! let me get hold of her--and fetch some water--wine--anything. How--how was it, Sergeant?"

"In a boat, sir, coming hand over hand down at the stables. She sang out quite calmly she was an English-woman, and----"

"Then--then they touched their caps to me," said Kate, making an effort, "and so I knew that I was safe. It was so strange; it--it rather upset me. But I am all right now, Captain Morecombe."

"We had better send up for Erlton," said another officer aside; but Kate caught the whisper.

"Please not. I can walk up to cantonments quite well. And--I would rather have no fuss--I--I couldn't stand it."

She had stood enough and to spare, agreed the little knot of men with a thrill at their hearts as they watched her set off in the moonlight with Captain Morecombe and an orderly. They were to go straight to the Major's tent; and if he was still at mess, which was more than likely, since it was only half-past nine, Captain Morecombe was to leave her there and go on with the news. There would be no fuss, of that she might be sure, said the latter, forbearing even to speak to her on the way, save to ask her if she felt all right.

"I feel as if I had just been born," she said slowly. In truth, she was wondering if that spinning of the Great Wheel toward Life again brought with it this forlornness, this familiarity.

CHAPTER IV.

AT LAST.

No fuss indeed! Kate, as she sat in her husband's little tent waiting for him to come to her, felt that so far she might have arrived from a very ordinary journey. The bearer, it is true, who had been the Major's valet for years, had salaamed more profoundly than usual, had even put up a pious prayer, and expressed himself pleased; but he had immediately gone off to fetch hot water, and returning with it and clean towels, had suggested mildly that the mem might like to wash her face and hands. Kate, with a faint smile, felt there was no reason why she should not. She need not look worse than necessary. But she paused almost with a gasp at the familiar half-forgotten luxuries. Scented soap! a sponge--and there on the camp table a looking-gla.s.s! She glanced down with a start at the little round one in the ring she wore; then went over to the other. A toilet cover, brushes, and combs, her husband's razors, gold studs in a box; and there, her own photograph in a frame, a Bible, and a prayer book, the latter things bringing her no surprise, no emotion of any kind. For they had always been fixtures on Major Erlton's dressing-table, mute evidences to no sentiment on his part, but simply to the bearer's knowledge of the proprieties and the ways of real sahibs. But the other things she saw made her heart grow soft. The little camp bed, the simplicity and hardness of all in comparison with what her husband had been wont to demand of life; for he had always been a real prince, feeling the rose-leaf beneath the feather bed, and never stinting himself in comfort. Then the swords, and belts, and Heaven knows what panoply of war--not spick-and-span decorations as they used to be in the old days, but worn and used--gave her a pang. Well! he had always been a good soldier, they said.

And then, interrupting her thoughts, the old khansaman had come in, having taken time to array himself gorgeously in livery. The Father of the fatherless and orphan, he said, whimperingly, alluding to the fact that he had lost both parents--which, considering he was past sixty, was only to be expected--had heard his prayer. The mem was spared to Freddy-baba. And would she please to order dinner. As the Major-sahib dined at mess, her slave was unprepared with a roast. Fish also would partake of tyranny; but he could open a tin of Europe soup, and with a chicken cutlet--Kate cut him short with a request for tea; by and by, when--when the Major-sahib should have come. And when she was alone again, she s.h.i.+vered and rested her head on her crossed arms upon the table beside which she sat, with a sort of sob. This--Yes!--this of all she had come through was the hardest to bear. This surge of pity, of tenderness, of unavailing regret for the past, the present, the future. What?--What could she say to him, or he to her, that would make remembrance easier, antic.i.p.ation happier?

Hark! there was his step! His voice saying goodnight to Captain Morecombe.

"I hope she will be none the worse," came the reply. "Good-night, Erlton--I'm--I'm awfully glad, old fellow."

"Thanks!"

She stood up with a sickening throb at her heart. Oh! she was glad too! So glad to see him and tell him to----

How tall he was, she thought, with a swift recognition of his good looks, as he came in, stooping to pa.s.s under the low entrance. Very tall, and thin. Much thinner, and--and--different somehow.

"Kate!" He paused half a second, looking at her curiously--"Kate!

I'm--I'm awfully glad." He was beside her now, his big hands holding hers; but she felt that she was further away from him than she had been in that brief pause when she had half-expected, half-wished him to take her in his arms and kiss her as if nothing had happened, as if life were to begin again. It would have been so much easier; they might have forgotten then, both of them. But now, what came, must come without that chrism of impulse; must come in remembrance and regret.

_Awfully glad!_ That was what Captain Morecombe had said. Was there no more between them than that? No more between her and this man, who was the father of her child. The sting of the thought made her draw him closer, and with a sob rest her head on his shoulder. Then he stooped and kissed her. "I--I didn't know. I wasn't sure if you'd like it," he said, "but I'm awfully glad, old girl, upon my life I am. You must have had a terrible time."

She looked up with a hopeless pain in her eyes. He was gone from her again; gone utterly. "It was not so bad as you might think," she answered, trying to smile. "Mr. Greyman did so much----"