The outer court of the Palace lay steeped in the sunshine of noon. Its hot rose-red walls and arcades seemed to shimmer in the glare, and the dazzle and glitter gave a strange air of unreality, of instability to all things. To the crowds of loungers taking their siesta in every arcade and every scrap of shadow, to the horses stabled in rows in the glare and the blaze, to the eager groups of new arrivals which, from time to time, came in from the outer world by the cool, dark tunnel of the Lahore gate to stand for a second, as if blinded by the shimmer and glitter, before becoming a part of that silent, drowsy stir of life.
From an arch close to the inner entry to the precincts rose a monotonous voice reading aloud. The reader was evidently the author also, for his frown of annoyance was unmistakable at a sudden diversion caused by the entry of a dozen or more armed men, shouting at the top of their voices: "Pâdisâth, Pâdisâth, Pâdisâth!We be fighters for The Faith.Pâdisâth!a blessing, a blessing!"
A malicious laugh came from one of the listeners in the arcade--a woman shrouded in a Pathan veil.
"'Tis as well his Majesty hath taken another cooling draught," came her voice shrilly. "What with writing letters for help to the Huzoors to please Ahsan-Oolah and Elahi-Buksh, and blessing faith to please the Queen, he hath enough to do in keeping his brain from getting dizzy with whirling this way and that. Mayhap faith will fail first, since it is not satisfied with blessings. They are windy diet, and I heard Mahboob say an hour agone that there was too much faith for the Treasury. Lo! moonshee-jee, put that fact down among thy heroics--they need balance!"
"Sure, niece Hâfzan," reproved the old editor of the Court Journal, "I see naught that needs it. Syyed Abdulla's periods fit the case as peas fit a pod; they hang together."
"As we shall when the Huzoors return," assented the voice from the veil.
"They will return no more, woman!" said another. It belonged to a man who leaned against a pilaster, looking dreamily out into the glare where, after a brief struggle, the band of fighters for the faith had pushed aside the timid door-keepers and forced their way to the inner garden. Through the open door they showed picturesquely, surging down the path, backed by green foliage and the white dome of the Pearl Mosque rising against the blue sky.
"The Faith! The Faith! We come to fight for the Faith!"
Their cry echoed over the drowsy, dreaming crowds, making men turn over in their sleep; that was all.
But the dreaminess grew in the face looking at the vista through the open door till its eyes became like those Botticelli gives to his Moses--the eyes of one who sees a promised land--and the dreamy voice went on:
"How can they return; seeing that He is Lord and Master? Changing the Day to Darkness, the Darkness into Day. Holding the unsupported skies, proving His existence by His existence, Omnipotent. High in Dignity, the Avenger of His Faithful people."
The old editor waggled his head with delighted approval; the author fidgeted over an eloquence not his own; but Hâfzan's high laugh rang cynically:
"That may be so, most learned divine; yet I, Hâfzan, the harem scribe, write no orders nowadays for King or Queen without the proviso of 'writ by a slave in pursuance of lawful order and under fear of death' in some quiet corner. For I have no fancy, see you, for hanging, even if it be in good company. But, go on with thy leading article, moonshee-jee, I will interrupt no more."
"Thus by a single revolution of time the state of affairs is completely reversed,[4]and the great and memorable event which took place four days ago must be looked upon as a practical warning to the uninformed and careless, namely the British officers and those who never dreamed of the decline and fall of their government, but who have now convincing proof of what has been written in the Indelible Tablets by God. The following brief account, therefore, of the horrible and memorable events is given here solely for the sake of those still inclined to treat them as a dream. On Monday, the 16th of Rumzân, that holy month in which the Word of God came down to earth, and in which, for all time, lies the Great Night of Power, the courts being open early on account of the hot weather, the magistrate discharging his wonted duties, suddenly the bridge toll-keeper appeared, informing him that a few Toork troopers had first crossed the bridge----"
The dreamy-faced divine turned in sharp reproach. "Not so, Syyed-jee. The vision came first--the vision of the blessed Lord Ali seen by the muezzin. Wouldst make this time as other times, and deny the miracles by which it is attested as of God?"
"Miracles!" echoed Hâfzan. "I see no miracle in an old man on a camel."
The divine frowned. "Nor in a strange white bird with a golden crown, which hovered over the city giving the sacred cry? Nor in the fulfillment of Hussan Askuri's dream?"
Hâfzan burst into shrill laughter. "Hussan Askuri! Lo! Moulvie Mohammed Ismail, didst thou know the arch dreamer as I, thou wouldst not credit his miracles. He dreams to the Queen's orders as a bear dances to the whip. And as thou knowest, my mistress hath the knack of jerking the puppet strings. She hath been busy these days, and even the Princess Farkhoonda----"
"What of the Princess?" asked the newswriter, eagerly, nibbling his pen in anticipation.
"Nay, not so!" retorted Hâfzan. "I give no news nowadays, since I cannot set 'spoken under fear of death' upon the words."
She rose as she spoke, yet lingered, to stand a second beside the divine and say in a softer tone, "Dreams are not safe, even to the pious, as thou, Moulvie-sahib. A bird is none the less a bird because it is strange to Delhi and hath been taught to speak. That it was seen all know; yet for all that, it may be one of Hussan Askuri's tricks."
"Let it be so, woman," retorted Mohammed Ismail almost fiercely, "is there not miracle enough and to spare without it? Did not the sun rise four days ago upon infidels in power? Where are they now? Were there not two thousand of them in Meerut? Did they strike a blow? Did they strike one here? Where is their strength? Gone! I tell thee--gone!"
Hâfzan laid a veiled clutch on his arm suddenly and her other hand, widening the folds of her shapeless form mysteriously, pointed into the blaze and shimmer of sunlight. "It lies there, Moulvie-sahib, it lies there," she said in a passionate whisper, "for God is on their side."
It was a pitiful little group to which she pointed. A woman, her mixed blood showing in her face, her Christianity in her dress, being driven along like a sheep to the shambles across the courtyard. She clasped a year-old baby to her breast and a handsome little fellow of three toddled at her skirts. She paused in a scrap of shade thrown by a tree which grew beside a small cistern or reservoir near the middle of the court, and shifted the heavy child in her arms, looking round, as she did so, with a sort of wild, fierce fear, like that of a hunted animal. The cluster of sepoys who had made their prisoner over to the Palace guard turned hastily from the sight; but the guard drove her on with coarse jibes.
"The rope dangles close, Moulvie-jee," came Hâfzan's voice again. "Ropes, said I? Gentle ropes? Nay! only as the wherewithal to tie writhing limbs as they roast. If thou hast a taste for visions, pious one, tell me what thou seest ahead for the murderers of such poor souls?"
"Murderers," echoed Mohammed Ismail swiftly; "there is no talk of murder. 'Tis against our religion. Have I not signed the edict against it? Have we not protested against the past iniquity of criminals, and ignorant beasts, and vile libertines like Prince Abool-Bukr, who take advantage----"
"He was too drunk for much evil, learned one!" sneered Hâfzan. "Godly men do worse than he in their own homes, as I know to my cost. As for thine edict! Take it to the Princess Farkhoonda. She is a simple soul, though she holds the vilest liver of Delhi in a leash. But the Queen--the Queen is of different mettle, as you edict-signers will find. There are nigh fifty such prisoners in the old cook-room now. Wherefore?"
"For safety. There are nigh forty in the city police station also."
Hâfzan gathered her folds closer, "Truly thou art a simple soul, pious divine. Dost not think there is a difference, still, between the Palace and the city? But God save all women, black or white, say I! Save them from men, and since we be all bound to hell together by virtue of our sex, then will it be a better place than Paradise by having fewer men in it."
She flung her final taunts over her shoulder at her hearers as she went limping off.
"Heed her not, most pious!" said her uncle apologetically. "She hath been mad against men ever since hers, being old and near his end, took her, a child, and----"
But Moulvie Mohammed Ismail was striding across the courtyard to the long, low, half-ruinous shed in which the prisoners were kept.
"Have they proper food and water?" he asked sharply of the guard. "The King gave orders for it."
"It comes but now!" replied the sergeant glibly, pointing to a file of servants bearing dishes which were crossing the courtyard from the royal kitchens. The Moulvie gave a sigh of relief, for Hâfzan's hints had alarmed him. These same helpless prisoners lay on his conscience, since he and his like were mainly responsible for the diligent search for Christians which had been going on during the last few days; for it was not to be tolerated that the faithful should risk salvation by concealing them. The proper course was plain, unmistakable. They should be given up to the authorities and be made into good Mohammedans; by persuasion if possible, if not, by force. In truth the Moulvie dreamed already of ninety and odd willing converts, as a further manifestation of divine favor. Perhaps more; though most of these ill-advised attempts at concealment must have come to an end by now.
They had indeed; those four days of peace, of hourly increasing religious enthusiasm for a cause so evidently favored by High Heaven, had made it well nigh impossible to carry on a task attempted by so many, when it seemed likely to last for a few hours only.
Even Jim Douglas told himself he must fail unless he could get help. He had succeeded so far, simply because--by a mere chance--he had, not one but several, places of concealment ready to his hand without the necessity for taking anyone into his confidence. For he had found it convenient in his work to have cities of refuge, as it were, where he could escape from curiosity or change a disguise at leisure. The shilling or so a month required for the rent of a room in some tenement house being more than repaid by the sense of security the possession gave him. It was to one of these, therefore, that he took Kate on the dawn of the 12th, leaving her locked up in it alone; till night enabled him to take her on to another; so by constant change managing to escape suspicion. But as the days passed in miraculous peace, he recognized the hopelessness of continuing this life for long. To begin with, Kate's nerves could not stand it. She was brave enough, but she had an imagination, and what woman with that could stand being left alone in the dark for twelve hours at a time, never knowing if the slow starvation, which would be her fate if anything untoward happened to him, had not already begun? He could not expect her to stand it, when three days of something far less difficult had left him haggard, his nerves unstrung; left him with the possibility looming in the future of his losing his self-control some day, and going madly for the whole world as young Mainwaring had done. Not that he cared for Kate's safety so much, as that the mere thought of failure roused a beast-like ferocity in him. So, as he wandered restlessly about the city, waiting in a fever of impatience for some sign of the world without those rose-red walls--waiting day by day, with a growing tempest of rage, for the night to return and let him creep up some dark stairs and assure himself of a woman's safety, he was piecing together a plan in case---- Of what? In case the stories he heard in the bazaars were true? No! that was impossible. How could the English have been wiped out of India? Yet as he saw the deserted shops being reopened in solemn procession by an old pantaloon on an elephant calling himself the Emperor, when he saw Abool-Bukr letting off squibs in general rejoicing over the reestablishment of Mohammedan empire; above all when he saw the tide of life returning to the streets, his mad desire to strike a blow and smash the sham was tempered by an almost unbearable curiosity as to what had really happened. But he dared not try and find out. Useless though he knew it was, he hung round the quarter where Kate lay concealed for the day, feeling a certain consolation in knowing that he was as close to her as he dared to be. Such a life was manifestly impossible, and so, bit by bit, his plan grew. Yet, when it had grown, he almost shrank from it, so strange did it seem, in its linking of the past with the present. For Kate must pass as his wife--his sick wife, hidden, as Zora had been, on some terraced roof, with Tara as her servant; he, meanwhile, passing as an Afghan horse-dealer, kept from returning North, like others of his trade, by this illness in his house. The plan was perfectly feasible if Tara would consent. And Jim Douglas, though he ignored his own certainty, never really doubted that she would. He had not been born in the mist-covered mountains of the North for nothing. Their mysticism was part of his nature, and he felt that he had saved her for this; that for this, and this only, he had played that childish but successful cantrip with her hair. In a way, was not the pathetic idyl on the roof with little Zora but a rehearsal of a tragedy--a rehearsal without which he could not have played his part? Strange thread of fate, indeed, linking these women together! and though he shrank from admitting its very existence, it gave him confidence that the whole would hang together securely. So that when he sought Tara out, his only real doubt was whether it would be wiser to tell her the truth about Kate, or assert that she was his wife. He chose the latter as less risky, since, even if Tara refused aid, she would not overtly betray anyone belonging to him.
But Tara did not refuse. To begin with, she could have refused nothing in the first joy of finding him safe when she had believed him dead like all the other Huzoors. And then a vast confusion of love, and pride, and remorse, and fierce passionate denial of all three, led her into consent. If the Huzoor wanted her to help to save his wife why should she object? Though it was nothing to her if the mem washismem or not. Jim Douglas, listening to the eager protest, wondered if he might not safely have saved himself an unnecessary complication; but then he wondered at many things Tara said and did. At her quick frown when he promised her both hair and locket as her reward. At the faint quiver amid the scorn with which she had replied that he would still want the latter for the mem's hair. At her slow smile when he opened the gold oval to show the black lock still in sole possession. She had turned aside to look at the hearth-cakes she had been toasting when he came in, and then gone into the necessary details of arrangement in the most matter-of-fact way. Naturally the Huzoor had sought help from his servant. From whom else could he seek it? As for her saintship, there was nothing new in that. She had been suttee always as the master very well knew. So nothing she did for him, or he for her, could make that suffer. Therefore she would arrange as she had arranged for Zora. The Huzoor must rent a roof--roofs were safest--and she would engage a half-blind, half-deaf old sweeper-woman she knew of. Perhaps another if need be. But the Huzoor need have no fear of such details if he gave her money. And this Jim Douglas had hidden in the garden of his deserted bungalow in Duryagunj; so that in truth it seemed as if the whole plan had been evolved for them by a kindly fate.
And yet Jim Douglas felt a keen pang of regret when, for the first time, he gave the familiar knock of those old Lucknow days at the door of a Delhi roof and Tara opened it to him, dressed in the old crimson drapery, the gold bangles restored to her beautiful brown arms. He had brought Kate round during the previous night to the lodging he had managed to secure in the Mufti's quarter, and, leaving her there alone, had taken the key to Tara; this being the safest plan, since everything could then be arranged in discreet woman's fashion before he put in an appearance.
And the task had been done well. The outside square or yard of parapeted roof which he entered lay conventional to the uttermost. A spinning-wheel here, a row of water-pots there, a mat, a reed stool or two, a cooking place in one corner, a ragged canvas screen at the inner doors. Nothing there to prepare him for finding an Englishwoman within; an Englishwoman with a faint color in her wan cheeks; a new peace in her gray eyes, busy--Heaven save the mark!--in sticking some disjointed jasmine buds into the shallow saucer of a water-pot.
"Tara brought them strung on a string," said Kate half apologetically after her first welcome, as she noted his look. "I suppose she meant me to wear them--with the other things," she paused to glance down with a smile at her dress, "but it seemed a pity. They were like a new world to me--like a promise--somehow."
He sat down on the edge of the string bed feeling a little dazed and looked at her and her surroundings critically. It was a pleasant sunshiny bit of roof, vaulted by the still cool morning sky. There was a little arcaded room at one end, the topmost branches of a neem tree showed over one side; on the other, the swelling dome of the big mosque looked like a great white cloud, and in one corner was a sort of square turret, from the roof of which, gained by a narrow brick ladder, the whole city was visible. For it was the highest house in the quarter, higher even than the roof beside it, over which the same neem tree cast a shadow.
And as he looked, he thought idly that no dress in the world was more graceful than the Delhi dress with its billowy train and loose, soft, filmy veil. And Kate looked well in white--all in white. He pulled himself up sharply; but indeed memory was playing him tricks, and the stress and strain of reality seemed far from that slip of sun-saturated roof where a graceful woman in white was sticking jasmine buds into water. And suddenly the thought came that Zora would have worn the chaplets heedlessly; there would have been no sentimentality over withered flowers on her part.
"A promise," he echoed half-bitterly. "Well! one must hope so. And even if the worst comes, it will come easier here."
She looked up at him reproachfully. "Don't remind me of that, please," she said hurriedly; "I seem to have forgotten--here under the blue sky. I dare say it's very trivial of me, but I can't help it. Everything amuses me, interests me. It is so quaint, so new. Even this dress; it is hardly credible, but I wished so much for a looking-glass just now, to see how I looked in it."
Her eyes met his almost gayly, and he felt an odd resentment in recognizing that Zora would have said the words as frankly.
"I have one here--in a ring," he replied somewhat stiffly, with a vague feeling he had done all this before, as he untied the knot of a small bundle he had brought with him. "It is not much use--for that sort of thing--I'm afraid," he went on, "but I think you had better have these: it is a great point--even for your own sake--to dress as well as play the part."
Kate, with a sudden gravity, looked at the pile of native ornaments he emptied out on to the bed. Bracelets in gold and silver, anklets, odd little jeweled tassels for the hair, quaint silk-strung necklets and talismans.
"Here is the looking-glass," he said, choosing out a tiny round one set in filigree gold; "you must wear it on your thumb--but it will barely go on my little finger," he spoke half to himself, and Kate, fitting on the ring, looked at him and set her lips.
"It is too small for me also," she said, laying it down with a faint air of distaste. "They are very pretty, Mr. Greyman," she added quickly, "but I would rather not--unless it is really necessary--unless you think----"
He rose half-wearily, half-impatiently. "I should prefer it; but you can do as you like. The jewels belonged to a woman I loved very dearly, Mrs. Erlton. She was not my wife--but she was a good woman for all that. You need not be afraid."
Kate felt the blood tingle to her face as she laid violent hands on the first ornament she touched. It happened to be a solid gold bangle. "It is too small too," she said petulantly, trying to squeeze her hand through it. "Really it would be better----"
"Excuse me," he replied coolly, "if you will let me." He drew the great carved knobs apart deftly, slipped her wrist sideways through the opening, and had them closed again in a second.
"You can't take it off at night, that is all," he went on, "but I will tell Tara to show you how to wear the rest. I must be off now and settle a thousand things."
As he passed into the outer roof once more, Kate felt that flush, half of resentment, half of shame, still on her face. In such surroundings how trivial it was, and yet he had guessed her thought truly. Had he guessed also the odd thrill which the touch of that gold fetter gave her? Half-mechanically she tried to loosen it, to remove it, and then with an impatient frown desisted and began to put on the other bracelets. What did it matter, one way or the other? And then, becoming interested despite herself, she set to work to puzzle out uses and places for the pile.
Meanwhile Jim Douglas was dinning instructions into Tara's ear; but she also, he told himself angrily, was trivial to the last degree. And when finally he urged an immediate darkening of Kate's hair and a faint staining of the face to suit the only part possible with her gray eyes--that of a fair Afghan--he flung away in despair from the irrelevant remark:
"But the mem will never be so pretty as Zora; and besides she has such big feet."
Big feet! He swore under his breath that all women were alike in this, that they saw the whole world through the medium of their sex; andthatwas at the bottom of all the mischief. Delhi had been lost to save women; the trouble had begun to please them. Even now, as far as he could see, resistance would collapse but for one woman's ambition; though despite the Queen and her plots, a hundred brave men or so might still be masters of Delhi if they chose. Since it was still each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost with the mutineers. The certainty of this had made these long days of inaction almost beyond bearing to him; and as Jim Douglas passed out into the street he thought bitterly that here again a woman stood in the way; since but for Kate he could surely have forced Meerut into making reprisals by reporting the true state of affairs.
Yet every hour made these reprisals more difficult. Indeed, as he left the Mufti's quarters on that morning of the 16th of May, something was going on in the Palace which ended indecision for many a man and left no chance of retreat. For Zeenut Maihl saw facts as clearly as Jim Douglas, and knew that the first tramp of disciplined feet would be the signal for scuttle; if a chance of escape remained.
And so this something was going on. By someone's orders of course; by whose is one of the unanswered questions of the Indian Mutiny.
The Queen herself was sitting with the King, amicably, innocently, applauding his latest couplet; which was in sober truth, one of his best:
"God takes this dice-box world, shakes upside down,Throws one defeat, and one a kingly crown."
"God takes this dice-box world, shakes upside down,Throws one defeat, and one a kingly crown."
He was beginning to feel the latter on the old head, which was so diligently stuffed with dreams; but the Queen knew in her heart of hearts that the fight for sovereignty had only just begun. So her mind was chiefly occupied in a spiteful exultation at the thought of some folk's useless terror when--this thing being done--they would find their hands irrevocably on the plow. Ahsan-Oolah and Elahi-Buksh, for instance; their elaborate bridges would be useless; and Abool-Bukr with his squibs and processions, Farkhoonda with her patter of virtue and religion. If only for the sake of immeshing this last victim Zeenut Maihl would not have shrunk; since those three or four days of cozening had left the Queen with a still more vigorous hate for the Princess Farkhoonda, who had fallen into the trap so easily, and who already began to give herself airs and discuss the future on a plane of equality. Pretty, conceited fool! who even now, so the spies said, was waiting to receive the Prince, her nephew, for the first time since she came to the Palace. The very fact that it was the first time seemed an aggravation in the Queen's angry eyes, proving as it did a certain reality in Farkhoonda's pretensions to decorum.
In truth they were very real to the Princess herself; had been gaining reality ever since that first deft suggestion of a possibility had set her heart beating. The possibility, briefly, of the King choosing to set aside that early marriage so tragically interrupted; choosing to declare it no marriage and give his consent to another. Newâsi had indignantly scouted the suggestion, had stopped her ears, her heart; but the remembrance of it lingered, enervating her mind, and as she waited for the interview with the Prince she felt vaguely that it was a very different matter receiving him in these bride-like garments, in these dim, heavily scented rooms, to what it had been under the clear sky in her scholar's dress. Yet as she stooped from mere habit, aroused by the finery itself, to arrange her long brocaded train into better folds, she gave something between a sigh and a laugh at the certainty of his admiration. And after all, why should she not have it if the King----
The sound of a distant shot made her start and pause, listening for another. So she stood a slim figure ablaze with color and jewels, a figure with studied seductiveness in every detail of its dress; and she knew that it was so. Why not? If--if he liked it so, and if the King----
Newâsi clasped her hands nervously and walked up and down the dim room. Abool was late, and he had no right to be late on this his first visit of ceremony to his aunt. The Mirza-sahib was no doubt late, admitted her attendants, but the door-keeper had reported a disturbance of some kind in the outer court which might be the cause of delay.
A disturbance! Newâsi, a born coward, shrank from the very thought, though she felt that it could be nothing--nothing but one of the many brawls, the constant quarrels.
God and his prophet! who--what was that? She recoiled with a scream of terror from the wild figure which burst in on her unceremoniously, which followed her retreat into the far corner, flung itself at her knees, clasping them, burying its face among her scented draperies. But by that time her terror was gone, and she stooped, trying to free herself from those clinging arms, from the disgrace, from the outrage; from the drunken----
"Abool!" she cried fiercely, then turning to the curious tittering women, stamped her foot at them and bade them begone. And when they had obeyed, she beat her little hands against those clinging ones again with wild upbraidings, till suddenly they fell as if paralyzed before the awful horror and dread in the face which rose from her fineries.
"Come, Newâsi!" stammered the white trembling lips, "come from this hangman's den. Did I not warn thee? But thou hast put the rope round my neck--I who only wanted to live my own life, die my own death. Come! Come!"
He stumbled to his feet, but seemed unable to stir. So he stood looking at his hands stupidly.
Farkhoonda looked too, her face growing gray.
"What is't, Abool?" she faltered; "what is't, dear?"
But she knew; it was blood, new shed, still wet.
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 sunshine 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, Newâsi, there was butcherhere"--his blood-stained hands left their mark on his gay clothes.
"Abool!" she cried, "thou didst not----"
"Did I?" he almost screamed. "God! 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? Newâsi!" 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 passion, they rolled into the corners of the room, with the chink 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 snatched an old white veil from its peg and wrapped it round her, as she passed rapidly to the door; but he did not move. So she passed 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 shifting crowd, which gathered and melted and gathered again round the little tree-shaded cistern where but the day before Hâfzan 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 shifting, curious crowd, while the impartial sunshine streamed down on it, and those on whom it gazed.
So let the shifting, crowding years with their relentless questioning eyes shut out all thought of what lay by the cistern, save that of rest and the impartial sunshine 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 Hâfzan had spoken truth; the strength of the Huzoors lay there.
The strength of the real Master.
Three weeks had passed, and still the dream of sovereignty went on behind the closed gates, while all things shimmered 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 kingship as beatings of drums, firing of salutes, and levying of loans, Bahâdur Shâh 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 anticipation.
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 pass 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 régime.
Soma, however, with a cut over one eye sorely in need of a stitch, 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," assented 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 gods 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 passed 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-glass 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 passed muster so long as a greengrocer's assistant."
"Well--I would rather hear if you don't mind."
His dark eyes met hers with a sudden eagerness, a sudden passion 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 God! 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--worships the very ground you tread on," interrupted Kate sharply, "that is evident enough."
"Is that my fault?" he began angrily; "I happened----"
"Thank you, I have no wish to hear the story."
The commonplace, second-rate, mock-dignified phrase came to her lips unsought, and she felt she could have cried in sheer vexation at having used it there; in the very face of Death as it were. But Jim Douglas laughed; laughed good-naturedly.
"I wonder how many years it is since I heard a woman say that? In another world surely," he said with quite a confidential tone. "But the fact remains that Tara protects you as my wife, and if I were to go----"
Kate looked at him with a quick resentment flaming up in her face beneath the stain.
"I think you are mistaken," she said slowly. "I believe Tara would be better pleased if--if she knew the truth."
"You mean if I were to tell her you are not my wife?" he replied quickly. "Why?"
"Because I should be less of a tie to you--because----" She paused, then added sharply, "Mr. Greyman, I must ask you to tell her the truth, please. I have a right to so much, surely. I have my reasons for it, and if you do not, I shall."
Jim Douglas shrugged his shoulders. "In that case I had better tell her myself; not that I think it matters much one way or another, so long as I am here. And the whole thing from beginning to end is chance, nothing but chance."
"Your chance and mine," she murmured half to herself. It was the first time she had alluded openly to the strange linking of their fates, and he looked at her almost impatiently.
"Yes! your chance and mine; and we must make the best of it. I'll tell her as I go out."
But Tara interrupted him at the beginning.
"If the Huzoor means that he does not love the mem as he loved Zora, that requires no telling, and for the rest what does it matter to this slave?"
"And it matters nothing to me either," he retorted roughly, "but of this be sure. Who kills the mem kills me, unless I kill first; and by Krishnu, and Vishnu, and the lot, I'd as lief kill you, Tara, as anyone else, if you get in my way."
A great broad flash of white teeth lit up her face as she salaamed, remarking that the Huzoor's mother must have been as Kunti. And Jim Douglas understanding the complimentary allusion to the God-visited mother of the Lunar race, wished as he went downstairs, that he was like the Five Heroes in one respect, at least, and that was in having only a fifth part of a woman to look after, instead of two whole ones who talked of love! So he passed out to listen, and watch, and wait, while the fire-balloons went up into the velvety sky, replacing the kites. For May is the month of marriages also, and night after night these false stars floated out from the Dream-City to form new constellations on the horizon for a few minutes and then disappear with a flare into the darkness. Into the darkness whence the master did not come. Yet, as the month ended, villagers passing in with grain from Meerut averred that the masters were not all dead, or else God gave their ghosts a like power in cursing and smiting--which was all poor folk had to look for; since some had appeared and burned a village.
Not all dead? The news drifted from market to market, but if it penetrated through the Palace gates it did not filter through the new curtains and hangings of the private apartments where the King took perpetual cooling draughts and wrote perpetual appeals for more etiquette and decorum. For nothing likely to disturb the unities of dreams was allowed within the precincts, where every day the old King sat on a mock peacock throne with a new cushion to it, and listened for hours to the high-flown letters of congratulation which poured in, each with its own little covering bag of brocade, from the neighboring chiefs. And if any day there happened to be a paucity of real ones, Hussan Askuri could supply them, like other dreams, at so much a dozen; since nothing more costly than the brocade bag came with them. So that the Mahboob's face, as Treasurer, grew longer and longer over the dressmaker's and upholsterer's bills, and the Court Journal was driven into recording the fact that someone actually presented a bottle ofPandamus odoratissimus, whatever that may be. Some subtle essence, mayhap, favorable to dreaminess; since, in the month of peace, drugs were necessary to prevent awakening.
Especially when, on the 30th of May, a sound came over the distant horizon; the sound of artillery.
At last! At last! Jim Douglas, who, in sheer dread of his own growing despair, had taken to spending all the time he dared in moody silence on that peaceful roof, started as if he had been shot, and was down the stairs seeking news. The streets were full of a silent, restless crowd, almost empty of soldiers. They had gone out during the night, he learned, Meerutward; tidings of an army on the banks of the Hindu river, seven or eight miles out, having been brought in by scouts.
At last! At last! He wandered through the bazaars scarcely able to think, wondering only when the army could possibly arrive, feeling a mad joy in the anxious faces around him, lingering by the groups of men collected in every open space simply for the satisfaction of hearing the wonder and alarm in the words: "So the master lives."
He lived indeed! Listen! That was his voice over the eastern horizon! Kate, when he came back to the roof about noon, had never seen him in this mood before, and wondered at his fire, his gayety, his youth. But the recognition brought a dull pain with it, in the thought that this was natural to the man; that gloomy moodiness the result of her presence.
"You are not afraid, surely?" he said suddenly, breaking off in the recital of some future event which seemed to him certain.
"No. I am only glad," she replied slowly. "It could not have lasted much longer. It is a great relief."
"Relief," he echoed, "I wonder if you know the relief it is to me?" And then he looked at her remorsefully. "I have been an awful brute, Mrs. Erlton, but women can scarcely understand what inaction means to a man."
Could they not? she wondered bitterly as he hastened off again, leaving her to long weary hours of waiting; till the red flush of sunset on the bubble dome of the mosque brought him back with a new look on his face; a look of angry doubt.
"The sepoys are coming in again," he said; "they claim a victory--but that, of course, is impossible. Still I don't understand, and it is so difficult to get any reliable information."
"You should go out yourself--I believe it would be best for us both," replied Kate, "Tara----"
He shook his head impatiently. "Not now. What is the use of risking all at the last. We can only have to wait till to-morrow. But I don't understand it, all the same. The sepoys say they surprised the camp--that the buglers were still calling to arms when their artillery opened fire. But so far as I can make out they have lost five guns, and from the amount of bhang they are drinking, I believe it was a rout. However, if you don't mind, I'll be off again--and--and don't be alarmed if I stay out."
"I'm not in the least alarmed," she replied. "As I have told you before, I don't think it is necessary you should come here at all."
He paused at the door to glance back at her half-resentfully. To be sure she did not know that he had slept on its threshold as a rule; but anyhow, after eating your heart out over one woman's safety for three weeks, it was hard to be told that you were not wanted. But, thank Heaven! the end was at hand. And yet as he lingered round the watch-fires he heard nothing but boasting, and in more than one of the mosques thanksgivings were being offered up; while outside the walls volunteers to complete the task so well begun were assembling to go forth with the dawn and kill the few remaining infidels. Some drunk with bhang, more intoxicated by the lust of blood which comes to fighting races like the Rajpoot with the first blow. It had come to Soma, as, with fierce face seamed with tears, he told the tale again and again of his chum's gallant death. How Davee Singh, brother in arms, his boyhood's playmate, seeing some cowards of artillerymen abandoning a tumbril full of ammunition to the cursed Mlechchas, had leaped to it like a black-buck, and with a cry to Kali, Mother of Death, had fired his musket into it; so sending a dozen or more of the hell-doomed to their place, and one more brave Rajpoot to Swarga.
"Jai! Jai! Kâli ma ki jai!"
An echo of the dead man's last cry came from many a living one, as muskets were gripped tighter in the resolve to be no whit behind. A few more such heroes and the Golden Age would come again; the age of the blessed Pandâva, who forgot the cause in the quarrel.
And so for one day more Jim Douglas strained his ears for that distant thunder on the horizon, while the people of the town, becoming more accustomed to it, went about their business, vaguely relieved at anything which should keep the sepoys' hands from mischief.
The red sunset glow was on the mosque again when he returned to the little slip of roof to find Kate working away at her grammars calmly. The best thing she could do, since every word she learned was an additional safeguard; and yet the man could not help a scornful smile.
"It is a rout this time, I am sure," he said; "and yet there is no sign of pursuit. I cannot understand it; there seems a Fate about it!"
"Is that anything new?" she asked wearily, as she laid down her book, and with the certain precision which marked all her actions, saw that the water was really boiling before she made the tea. It was made in alota, and drunk out of handleless basins, yet for all that it was Western-made tea, strong and unspiced, with cream to put to it also, which she skimmed from a dish set in cold water in the coolest, darkest place she could find. Dreamlike indeed, and Jim Douglas, drinking his tea, felt, that with his eyes shut, he might have dreamed himself in an English drawing room.
"Nothing new," he retorted, "but it seems incomprehensible. Hark! That is a salute; for the victory, I suppose. Upon my soul I feel as if--as if I were a dream myself--as if I should go mad! Don't look startled--I shan't. The whole thing is a sham--I can see that. But why has no one the pluck to give the House-of-Cards a push and bring it about their ears? And what has become of the army at the Hindun? It took three days to march there from Meerut, I hear--not more than twenty-four miles. No! I cannot understand it. No wonder the people say we are all dead. I begin to believe it myself."
He heard the saying often enough certainly to bring relief during the 1st and 2d of June, when there was no more distant thunder on the horizon, and the whole town, steeped and saturated with sunshine, lay half-asleep, the soldiers drowsing off the effect of their drugs.
Dead? Yea! the masters were dead, and those who had escaped were in full retreat up the river; so at least said villagers coming in with supplies. But someone else who had come in with supplies also, sat crouched up like a grasshopper on a great pile of wool-betasseled sacks in the corn market and laughed creakily. "Dead! not they. As thetandapassed Karnal four days agone the camping ground was white as a poppy field with tents, and the soldiers like the flies buzzing round them. And if folk want to hear more, I, Tiddu Baharupa-Bunjârah, can tell tales beyond the Cashmere gate on the river island where the bullocks graze."
The creaking voice rose unnecessarily loud, and a man in the dress of an Afghan who had been listening, his back to the speaker, moved off with a surprised smile. Tiddu had proved his vaunted superiority in that instance; though by what arts he had penetrated the back of a disguise, Jim Douglas could not imagine. Still here was news indeed--news which explained some of the mystery, since the seeming retreat up the river had been, no doubt, for the purpose of joining forces. But it was something almost better than news--it was a chance of giving them. He had not dared, for Kate's sake, to risk any confederate as yet; but here was one ready to hand--a confederate, too, who would do anything for money.
So that night he sat in tamarisk shadow on the river island talking in whispers, while the monotonous clank of the bells hung on the wandering bullocks sounded fitfully, the flicker of the watchfires gleamed here and there on the half-dried pools of water, the fireflies flashed among the bushes, and every now and again a rough, rude chant rose on the still air.
"They have been there these ten days, Huzoor," came Tiddu's indifferent voice. "They are waiting for the siege train. Nigh on three thousand of them, and some black faces besides."
Jim Douglas gave an exclamation of sheer despair. To him, living in the House-of-Cards, the Palace-of-Dreams, such caution seemed unnecessary. Still, the past being irretrievable, the present remained in which by hook or by crook to get the letter he had with him, ready written, conveyed to the army at Kurnal. And Tiddu, with fifty rupees stowed away in his waistband, being lavish of promise and confidence, there was no more to be done save creep back to the city, feeling as if the luck had turned at last.
But the next morning he found the Thunbi Bazaar in a turmoil of talk. There were spies in the city. A letter had been found, written in the Persian character, it is true but with the devilish knowledge of the West in its details of likely spots for attack, the indecision of certain quarters in the city, its general unpreparedness for anything like resistance. Who had written it? As the day went on the camps were in uproar, the Palace invaded, the dream disturbed by denouncings of Ahsan-Oolah, the giver of composing draughts--Mahboob Ali, the checker of the purse strings; even of Mirza Moghul, commander-in-chief himself, who might well be eager to buy his recognition as heir by treachery.
The net result of the letter being that, as Jim Douglas, with wrath in his heart, crept out at dusk to the low levels by the Water Bastion, intent on having it out with Tiddu, he could see gangs of sepoys still at work by torchlight strengthening the bridge defense, and had to dodge a measuring party of artillerymen busy range-finding. His suggestions had been of use!
But the old Bunjârah took his fierce reproaches philosophically. "'Tis the miscreant Bhungi," he assented mournfully. "He is not to be trusted, but Jhungi having a tertian ague, I deemed a surer foot advisable. Yet the Huzoor need not be afraid. Even the miscreant would not betray his person; and for the rest, the Presence writes Persian like any court moonshee."
The calm assumption that personal fear was at the bottom of his reproaches, made Jim Douglas desire to throttle the old man, and only the certainty that he dare not risk a row prevented him from going for the ill-gotten rupees at any rate. His thought, however, seemed read by the old rascal, for a lean protesting hand, holding a bag, flourished out of the darkness, and the creaking voice said magnificently:
"Before Murri-âm and the sacred neem, Huzoor, I have kept my bargain. As for Jhungi or Bhungi, did I make them that I should know the evil in them? But if the Huzoor suspects one who holds his tongue, let the bargain between us end."
His hearer could not repress a smile at the consummate cunning of the speech. "You can keep the money for the next job," he said briefly; "I haven't done with you yet, you scoundrel."
A grim chuckle came out of the shadows as the hand went back into them.
"The Huzoor need not fret himself, whatever happens. The end is nigh."
It seemed as if it must be with three thousand British soldiers within sixty miles of Delhi; or less, since they might have marched during those five days. They might be at Delhi any moment. Three thousand men! Enough and to spare even though in the last few days a detachment or two of fresh mutineers had arrived. Ah! if the blow had been struck sooner. If--if----
Kate listened during those first days of June to many such wishes, despairs, hopes, from one whose only solace lay in words; since with relief staring him in the face, Jim Douglas crushed down his craving for action. There was no real need for it, he told her; it must involve risk, so they must wait--sleep and dream like the city!
For, lulled by the delay, stimulated to fresh fancy by the newcomers, the townspeople went on their daily round monotonously; the sepoys boasted and drank bhang. And in the Palace, the King, in new robes of state sat on his new cushion and put the sign-manual to such trifles as a concession to a home-born slave that he might "continue, as heretofore, a-tinning the royal sauce-pans!" though Mahboob Ali's face lengthened as he doled out something on account for faith and finery, and suggested that the army might at least be employed in collecting revenue somewhere. But the army grinned in the commander-in-chief's face, scorned laborious days, and between the seductions of the Thunbi Bazaar gave peaceful citizens what one petitioner against plunder calls "a foretaste of the Day of Judgment."
But one soul in Delhi felt in every fiber of him that the Judgment had come--that atonement must be made.
"Thou wilt kill thyself with prayers and fastings and seekings of other folks' salvations, Moulvie-sahib," said Hâfzan almost petulantly as, passing on her rounds, she saw Mohammed Ismail's anxious face, seeking audience with everyone in authority, "Thou hast done thy best. The rest is with God; and if these find death also, the blame will lie elsewhere."
"But the blame of those, woman?" he asked fiercely, pointing with trembling finger to the little cistern shaded by the peepul tree.
Hâfzan gave a shrill laugh as she passed on.
"Fear not that either, learned one! This world's atonement for that will be sufficient for future pardon."
It might be so, Mohammed Ismail told himself as he hurried off feverishly to another appeal. He had erred in ignorance there; but what of the forty prisoners still at the Kotwâli--forty stubborn Christians despite their dark skins? They were safe so far, but if the city were assaulted?--if some of the fresh, fiery-faithed newcomers---- The doubt left him no peace.
"If thou wilt swear, Moulvie-jee, on thine own eternal salvation that they are Mohammedans, or stake thy soul on their conversion," jeered those who held the keys. A heavy stake, that! A solemn oath with forty stubborn Christians to deal with. No wonder Mohammed Ismail felt judgment upon him already.
But the stake was staked, the oath spoken on the 6th of June. The record of it is brief, but it stands as history in the evidence of one of the forty. "We were released in consequence of a Moulvie of the name of Mohammed Ismail giving evidence that we were all Mohammedan; or that if any were Christian they would become Mohammedan."
And it was given none too soon. For on the 6th of June as the sun set, a silhouette of a man on a horse stood clear against the red-gold in the west, looking down from the Ridge on Delhi. Looking down on the city bathed in the dreamy glamour of the slanting sunbeams; rose-red and violet-shadowed, with the great white dome hovering above the smoke wreaths, and a glitter of gold on the eastern wall, where, backed by that arcaded view of the darkening Eastern plains, an old man sat listening to sentiments of fidelity from a pile of little brocaded bags.
It was Hodson of Hodson's Horse, reconnoitering ahead. So there was an Englishman on the Ridge once more as the paper kites came down on the 6th of June. But the fire balloons did not go up; for the night set in gusty and wet, giving no chance to new constellations.
Jim Douglas did not sleep at all that night, for Tiddu had brought word that the English were at Alipore, ten miles out; and nothing but the dread of needless risk kept him in Delhi. For any risk was needless when to a certainty the English flag would be flying over the city in a few hours.
And Hodson of Hodson's Horse back at Alipore slept late, for he lingered, weary and wet after his long ride, to write to his wife ere turning in, that "if he had had a hundred of the Guides he could have gone right up to the city wall."
But Mohammed Ismail slept peacefully, his work being over, and dreamed of Paradise.