Three miles away Kate Erlton sat in her home-like, peaceful drawing room, feeling dazzled. The sunshine, streaming through the open doors, seemed to stream into the very recesses of her mind as she sat, still looking at the letter which she had found half an hour before waiting for her beside a bunch of late roses which the gardener had laid on the table ready for her to arrange in the vases. The flowers were fading fast; the dog-cart waiting outside to take her on to see a sick friend ere the sun grew hot, shifted to find another shadow; but she did not move.
She was trying to understand what it all meant; really--deprived of her conventional thoughts about such things. And one sentence in the letter had a strange fascination for her. "I am not such a fool as to think you will mind. I know you will get on much better without me."
Of course. She had, in a way, accepted the truth of this years ago. The fact must have been patent to him also all that time; and she had known that he accepted it.
But now, set down in black and white, it forced her into seeing--as she had never seen before--the deadly injury she had done to the man by not minding. And then the question came keenly--"Why had she not minded?" Because she had not been content with her bargain. She had wanted something else. What? The emotion, the refinement, thefin-fleurof sentiment. Briefly, what madeherhappy; what gavehersatisfaction. It was only, then, a question between different forms of enjoyment; the one as purely selfish as the other. More so, in a way, for it claimed more and carried the grievance of denial into every detail of life. She moved restlessly in her chair, confused by this sudden daylight in her mind; laid down the letter, then took it up again and read another sentence.
"I believe you used to think that I'd get the regiment some day; but I shouldn't--after all, the finish is the win or the lose of a race."
The letter went down on the table again, but this time her head went down with it to rest upon it above her clasped hands. Oh! the pity of it! the pity of it! Yet how could she have avoided standing aloof from this man's life as she had done from the moment she had discovered she did not love him?
Suddenly she stood up, pressing those clasped hands tight to her forehead as if to hold in her thoughts. The sunlight, streaming in, shone right into her cool gray eyes, showing in a ray on the iris, as if it were passing into her very soul.
If she had been this man's sister, instead of his wife, could she not have lived with him contentedly enough, palliating what could be palliated, gaining what influence she could with him, giving him affection and sympathy? Why, briefly, had she failed to make him what Alice Gissing had made him--a better man? And yet Alice Gissing did not love him; she had no romantic sentiment about him. Did she really lay less stress--she, the woman at whom other women held up pious hands of horror--on that elemental difference between the tie of husband and wife, and brother and sister than she, Kate Erlton, did, who had affected to rise superior to it altogether? It seemed so. She had asked for a purely selfish gratification of the mind. And Alice Gissing? A strange jealousy came to her with the thought, not for herself, but for her husband; for the man who was content to give up everything for a woman whom he "loved very dearly." That was true. Kate had watched him for those three months, and she had watched Mrs. Gissing too, and knew for a certainty the latter gave him nothing any woman might not have given him if she had been content to put her own claims for happiness, her own gratification, her own mental passion aside. So a quick resolve came to her. He must not give up the finish, the win or the lose of the race, for so little. There was time yet for the chance. She had pleaded for one with a man a year ago; she would plead for it with a woman to-day.
She passed into the veranda hastily, pausing involuntarily ere getting into the dog-cart before the still, sunlit beauty of that panorama of the eastern plains, stretching away behind the gardens which fringed the shining curves of the river. There was scarcely a shadow anywhere, not a sign to tell that three miles down that river the man with whom she had pleaded a year ago was straining every nerve to give her and himself a chance, and that within the rose-lit, lilac-shaded city the chance of some had come and gone.
Nor, as she drove along the road intent on that coming interview in the hot little house upon the wall, was there any sign to warn her of danger. The Cashmere gate stood open, and the guard saluted as usual. Perhaps, had the English officers seen her, they might have advised her return, even though there was as yet no anticipation of danger; had there been one, the first thought would have been to clear the neighboring bungalows. But they were in the main-guard, and she set down the stare of the natives to the fact that nine o'clock was unusually late for an English lady to be braving the May sun. The road beyond was also unusually deserted, but she was too busy searching for the winged words, barbed well, yet not too swift or sharp to wound beyond possibility of compromise, which she meant to use ere long, to pay any attention to her surroundings. She did not even catch the glimpse of Sonny, still playing with the cockatoo, as she sped past the Seymours' house, and she scarcely noticed the groom's "Hut! teri, hut!" (Out of the way! you there!) to a figure in a green turban, over which she nearly ran, as it came sneaking round a corner as if looking for something or someone; a figure which paused to look after her half doubtfully.
Yet these same words, which came so readily to her imaginings, failed her, as set words will, before the commonplace matter-of-fact reality. If she could have jumped from the dog-cart and dashed into them without preamble, she would have been eloquent enough; but the necessary inquiry if Mrs. Gissing could see her, the ushering in as for an ordinary visit, the brief waiting, the perfunctory hand-shake with the little figure in familiar white-and-blue were so far from the high-strung appeal in her thoughts that they left her silent, almost shy.
"Find a comfy chair, do," came the high, hard voice. "Isn't it dreadfully hot? My old Mai will have it something is going to happen. She has been dikking me about it all the morning. An earthquake, I suppose; it feels like it, rather. Don't you think so?"
Kate felt as if one had come already, as, quite automatically, she satisfied Alice Gissing's choice of "a really--really comfy chair."
How dizzily unreal it seemed! And yet not more so, in fact, than the life they had been leading for months past; knowing the truth about each other absolutely; pretending to know nothing. Well! the sooner that sort of thing came to an end, the better!
"I have had a letter from my husband," she began, but had to pause to steady her voice.
"So I supposed when I saw you," replied Alice Gissing, without a quiver in hers. But she rose, crossed over to Kate, and stood before her, like a naughty child, her hands behind her back. She looked strangely young, strangely innocent in the dim light of the sunshaded room. So young, so small, so slight among the endless frills and laces of a loose morning wrapper. And she spoke like a child also, querulously, petulantly.
"I like you the better for coming, too, though I don't see what possible good it can do. He said in his letter to me he would tell you all about it, and if he has, I don't see what else there is to say, do you?"
Kate rose also, as if to come nearer to her adversary, and so the two women stood looking boldly enough into each other's eyes. But the keenness, the passion, the pity of the scene had somehow gone out of it for Kate Erlton. Her tongue seemed tied by the tameness; she felt that they might have been discussing a trivial detail in some trivial future. Yet she fought against the feeling.
"I think there is a great deal to say; that is why I have come to say it," she replied, after a pause. "But I can say it quickly. You don't love my husband, Alice Gissing, let him go. Don't ruin his life."
Bald and crude as this was in comparison with her imagined appeal, it gave the gist of it, and Kate watched her hearer's face anxiously to see the effect. Was that by chance a faint smile? or was it only the barred light from the jalousies hitting the wide blue eyes?
"Love!" echoed Alice Gissing. "I don't know anything about love. I never pretended to. But I can make him happy; you never did."
There was not a trace of malice in the high voice. It simply stated a fact; but a fact so true that Kate's lip quivered.
"I know that as well as you do. But I think I could--now. I want you to give me the chance."
She had not meant to put it so humbly; but, being once more the gist of what she had intended to say, it must pass. There was no doubt about the smile now. It was almost a laugh, that hateful, inconsequent laugh; but, as if to soften its effect, a little jeweled hand hovered out as if it sought a resting-place on Kate's arm.
"You can't, my dear. Itisso funny that you can't see that, when I, who know nothing about--about all that--can see it quite plainly. You are the sort of woman, Mrs. Erlton, who falls in love--who must fall in love--who--don't be angry!--likes being in love, and is unhappy if she isn't. Now I don't care a rap for people to be thinking, and thinking, and thinking of me, nothing but me! I like them to be pleasant and pleased. And I make them so, somehow----" She shrugged her shoulders whimsically as if to dismiss the puzzle, and went on gravely, "And you can't make people happy if you aren't happy yourself, you know, so there is no use in thinking you could."
It was bitter truth, but Kate was too honest to deny it. There had always been the sense of grievance in the past, and the sense of self-sacrifice, at least, would remain in the future.
"But there are other considerations," she began slowly. "A man does not set such store by--by love and marriage as a woman. It is only a bit----"
"A very small bit," put in Mrs. Gissing, with a whimsical face.
"A very small bit of his life," continued Kate stolidly, "and if my husband gives up his profession----"
Mrs. Gissing interrupted her again; this time petulantly. "I told him it was a pity--I offered to go away anywhere. I did, indeed! And I couldn't do more, could I? But when a man gets a notion of honor into his head----"
"Honor!" interrupted Kate in her turn, "the less said about honor the better, surely, between you and me!"
The wide blue eyes looked at her doubtfully.
"I never can understand women like you," said their owner. "You pretend not to care, and then you make so much fuss over so little."
"So little!" retorted Kate, her temper rising. "Is it little that my boy should have to know this about his father--about me? You have no children, Mrs. Gissing! If you had you would understand the shame better. Oh! I know about the baby and the flowers--who doesn't? But that is nothing. It was so long ago, it died so young, you have forgotten----"
She broke off before the expression on the face before her--that face with the shadowless eyes, but with deep shadows beneath the eyes and a nameless look of physical strain and stress upon it--and a sudden pallor came to her own cheek.
"So he hasn't told you," came the high voice half-fretfully, half-pitifully. "That was very mean of him; but I thought, somehow, he couldn't by your coming here. Well! I suppose I must. Mrs. Erlton----"
Kate stepped back from her defiantly, angrily. "He has told me all I need, all I care to know about this miserable business. Yes! he has! You can see the letter if you like--there it is! I am not ashamed of it. It is a good letter, better than I thought he could write--better than you deserve. For he says he will marry you if I will let him! And he says he is sorry it can't be helped. But I deny that. It can, it must, it shall be helped! And then he says it's a pity for the boy's sake; but that it does not matter so much as if it was a girl----"
It was the queerest sound which broke in on those passionate reproaches. The queerest sound. Neither a laugh nor a sob, nor a cry; but something compounded of all three, infinitely soft, infinitely tender.
"And the other may be," said Alice Gissing in a voice of smiles and tears, as she pointed to the end of the sentence in the letter Kate had thrust upon her. "Poor dear! What a way to put it! How like a man to think you could understand; and I wonder what the old Maiwouldsay to its being----"
What did she say? What were the frantic words which broke from the frantic figure, its sparse gray hair showing, its shriveled bosom heaving unveiled, which burst into the room and flung its arms round that little be-frilled white one as if to protect and shield it?
Kate Erlton gave a half-choked, half-sobbing cry. Even this seemed a relief from the incredible horror of what had dawned upon her, frightening her by the wild insensate jealousy it roused--the jealousy of motherhood.
"What is it? What does she say?" she cried passionately, "I have a right to know!"
Alice Gissing looked at her with a faint wonder. "It is nothing aboutthat," she said, and her face, though it had whitened, showed no fear. "It's something more important. There has been a row in the city--the Commissioner and some other Englishmen have been killed and she says we are not safe. I don't quite understand. Oh! don't be a fool, Mai!" she went on in Hindustani, "I won't excite myself. I never do. Don't be a fool, I say!" Her foot came down almost savagely and she turned to Kate. "If you will wait here for a second, Mrs. Erlton, I'll go outside with the Mai and have a look round, and bring my husband's pistol from the other room. You had better stay, really. I shall be back in a moment. And I dare say it's all the old Mai's nonsense--she is such a fool about me--nowadays." Her white face; smiling over its own certainty of coming trouble, was gone, and the door closed, almost before Kate could say a word. Not that she had any to say. She was too dazed to think of danger to the little figure, which passed out into the shady back veranda perched on the city wall, looking out into the peaceful country beyond. She was too absorbed in what she had just realized to think of anything else. So this was what he had meant!--and this woman with her facile nature, ready to please and be pleased with anyone--this woman content to take the lowest place--had the highest of all claims upon him. This woman who had no right to motherhood, who did not know----
God in Heaven! What was that through the stillness and the peace? A child's pitiful scream.
She was at the closed windows in an instant, peering through the slits of the jalousies; but there was nothing to be seen save a blare and blaze of sunlight on sun-scorched grass and sun-withered beds of flowers. Nothing!--stay!--Christ help us! What was that? A vision of white, and gold, and blue. White garments and white wings, golden curls and flaming golden crest, fierce gray-blue beak and claws among the fluttering blue ribbons. Sonny! His little feet flying and failing fast among the flower-beds. Sonny! still holding his favorite's chain in the unconscious grip of terror, while half-dragged, half-flying, the wide white wings fluttered over the child's head.
"Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!"
That was from the bird, terrified, yet still gentle.
"Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!"
That was from the old man who followed fast on the child with long lance in rest like a pig-sticker's. An old man in a faded green turban with a spiritual, relentless face.
Kate's fingers were at the bolts of the high French window--her only chance of speedy exit from that closed room. Ah! would they never yield?--and the lance was gaining on those poor little flying feet. Every atom of motherhood in her--fierce, instinctive, animal, fought with those unyielding bolts....
What was that? Another vision of white, and gold, and blue, dashing into the sunlight with something in a little clenched right hand. Childish itself in frills, and laces, and ribbons, but with a face as relentless as the old man's, as spiritual. And a clear confident voice rang above those discordant cries.
"All right, Sonny! All right, dear!"
On, swift and straight in the sunlight; and then a pause to level the clenched right hand over the left arm coolly, and fire. The lance wavered. It was two feet further from that soft flesh and blood when Alice Gissing caught the child up, turned and ran; ran for dear life to shelter.
"Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!"
The cry came after the woman and child, and over them, released by Sonny's wild clutch at sheltering arms, the bird fluttered, echoing the cry.
But one bolt was down at last, the next yielding--Ah! who was that dressed like a native, riding like an Englishman, who leaped the high garden fence and was over among the flower-beds where Sonny was being chased. Was he friend or foe? No matter! Since under her vehement hands the bolt had fallen, and Kate was out in the veranda. Too late! The flying sunlit vision of white, and gold, and blue had tripped and fallen. No! not too late. The report of a revolver rang out, and the Cry of Faith came only from the bird, for the fierce relentless face was hidden among the laces, and frills, and ribbons that hid the withered flowers.
But the lance? The lance whose perilous nearness had made that shot Jim Douglas' only chance of keeping his promise? He was on his knees on the scorched grass choking down the curse as he saw a broken shaft among the frills and ribbons, a slow stream oozing in gushes to dye them crimson. There was another crimson spot, too, on the shoulder, showing where a bullet, after crashing through a man's temples, had found its spent resting place. But as the Englishman kicked away one body, and raised the other tenderly from the unhurt child, so as not to stir that broken shaft, he wished that if death had had to come, he might have dealt it. To his wild rage, his insane hatred, there seemed a desecration even in that cold touch of steel from a dark hand.
But Alice Gissing resented nothing. She lay propped by his arms with those wide blue eyes still wide, yet sightless, heedless of Kate's horrified whispers, or the poor old Mai's frantic whimper. Until suddenly a piteous little wail rose from the half-stunned child to mingle with that ceaseless iteration of grief. "Oh! meri buchchi murgyia!" (Oh, my girlie is dead!--dead!)
It seemed to bring her back, and a smile showed on the fast-paling face.
"Don't be a fool, Mai. It isn't a girl; it's a boy. Take care of him, do, and don't be stupid. I'm all right."
Her voice was strong enough, and Kate looked at Jim Douglas hopefully. She had recognized him at once, despite his dress, with a faint, dead wonder as to why things were so strange to-day. But he could feel something oozing wet and warm over his supporting arm, he knew the meaning of that whitening face; so he shook his head hopelessly, his eyes on those wide unseeing ones. She was as still, he thought, as she had been when he held her before. Then suddenly the eyes narrowed into sight, and looked him in the face curiously, clearly.
"It's you, is it?" came the old inconsequent laugh. "Why don't you say 'Bravo!--Bravo!--Bra--'"
The crimson rush of blood from her still-smiling lips dyed his hands also, as he caught her up recklessly with a swift order to the others to follow, and ran for the house. But as he ran, clasping her close, close, to him, his whispered bravos assailed her dead ears passionately, and when he laid her on her bed, he paused even in the mad tumult of his rage, his anxiety, his hope for others to kiss the palms of those brave hands ere he folded them decently on her breast, and was out to fetch his horse, and return to where Kate waited for him in the veranda, the child in her arms. Brave also; but the certainty that he had left the flood-level of sympathy and admiration behind him at the feet of a dead woman he had never known, was with him even in his hurry.
"I can't see anyone else about as yet," he said, as he reloaded hastily, "and but for that fiend--that devil of a bird hounding him on--what did it mean?--not that it matters now"--he threw his hand out in a gesture of impotent regret and turned to mount.
Kate shivered. What, indeed, did it mean? A vague recollection was adding to her horror. Had she driven away once from an uncomprehensible appeal in that relentless face? when the bird----
"Don't think, please," said Jim Douglas, pausing to give her a sharp glance. "You will need all your nerve. The troops mutinied at Meerut last night, and killed a lot of people. They have come on here, and I don't trust the native regiments. Go inside, and shut the door. I must reconnoiter a bit before we start."
"But my husband?" she cried, and her tone made him remember the strangeness of finding her in that house. She looked unreliable, to his keen eye; the bitter truth might make her rigid, callous, and in such callousness lay their only chance.
"All right. He asked me to look after--her."
He saw her waver, then pull herself together; but he saw also that her clasp on Sonny tightened convulsively, and he held out his arms.
"Hand the child to me for a moment," he said briefly, "and call that poor lady's ayah from her wailing."
The piteous whimperings from the darkened rooms within ceased reluctantly. The old woman came with lagging step into the veranda, but Jim Douglas called to her in the most matter-of-fact voice.
"Here, Mai! Take your mem's charge. She told you to take care of the boy, remember." The tear-dim doubtful eyes looked at him half-resentfully, but he went on coolly. "Now, Sonny, go to your ayah, and be a good boy. Hold out your arms to old ayah, who has had ever so many Sonnys--haven't you, ayah?"
The child, glad to escape from the prancing horse, the purposely rough arms, held out its little dimpled hands. They seemed to draw the hesitating old feet, step by step, till with a sudden fierce snatch, a wild embrace, the old arms closed round the child with a croon of content.
Jim Douglas breathed more freely. "Now, Mrs. Erlton," he said, "I can't make you promise to leave Sonny there; but he is safer with her than he could be with you. She must have friends in the city. You haven'tone."
He was off as he spoke, leaving her to that knowledge. Not a friend! No! not one. Still, he need not have told her so, she thought proudly, as she passed in and closed the doors as she had been bidden to do. But he had succeeded. A certain fierce, dull resistance had replaced her emotion. So while the ayah, still carrying Sonny, returned to her dead mistress, Kate remained in the drawing room, feeling stunned. Too stunned to think of anything save those last words. Not a friend! Not one, saving a few cringing shop-keepers, in all that wide city to whom she had ever spoken a word! Whose fault was that? Whose fault was it that she had not understood that appeal?
A rattle of musketry quite close at hand roused her from apathy into fear for the child, and she passed rapidly into the next room. It was empty, save for that figure on the bed. The ayah with her charge had gone, closing the doors behind her; to her friends, no doubt. But she, Kate Erlton, had none. The renewed rattle of musketry sent her to peer through the jalousies; but she could see nothing. The sound seemed to come from the open space by the church, but gardens lay between her and that, blocking the view. Still it was quite close; seemed closer than it had been. No doubt it would come closer and closer till it found her waiting there, without a friend. Well! Since she was not even capable of saving Sonny, she could at least do what she was told--she could at least die alone.
No! not quite alone! She turned back to the bed and looked down on the slender figure lying there as if asleep. For the ayah's vain hopes of lingering life had left the face unstained, and the folded hands hid the crimson below them. Asleep, not dead; for the face had no look of rest. It was the face of one who dreams still of the stress and strain of coming life.
So this was to be her companion in death; this woman who had done her the greatest wrong. What wrong? the question came dully. What wrong had she done to one who refused to admit the claims or rights of passion? What had she stolen, this woman who had not cared at all? Whose mind had been unsullied utterly. Only motherhood; and that was given to saint and sinner alike.
Given rightly here, for those little hands were brave mother-hands. Kate put out hers softly and touched them. Still warm, still life-like, their companionship thrilled her through and through. With a faint sob, she sank on her knees beside the bed and laid her cheek on them. Let death come and find her there! Let the finish of the race, which was the win and the lose----
"Mrs. Erlton! quick, please!"
Jim Douglas' voice, calling to her from outside, roused her from a sort of apathy into sudden desire for life; she was out in the veranda in a second.
"The game's up," he said, scarcely able to speak from breathlessness; and his horse was in a white lather. "I had to see to the Seymours first, and now there's only one chance I can think of--desperate at that. Quick, your foot on mine--so--from the step---- Now your hand. One! two! three! That's right." He had her on the saddle before him and was off through the gardens cityward at a gallop. "The 54th came down from the cantonments all right," he went on rapidly, "but shot their officers at the church--the city scoundrels are killing and looting all about, but the main-guard is closed and safe as yet. I got Mrs. Seymour there. I'll get you if I can. I'm going to ride through the thick of the devils now with you as my prisoner. Do you see--there at the turn. I'll hark back down the road--it's the only chance of getting through. Slip down a bit across the saddle bow. Don't be afraid. I'll hold as long as I can. Now scream--scream like the devil. No! let your arms slack as if you'd fainted--people won't look so much--that's better--that's capital--now--ready!"
He swerved his horse with a dig of the spur and made for the crowd which lay between him and safety. The words describing the rape of the Sabine women, over the construing of which he remembered being birched at school, recurred to him, as such idle thoughts will at such times, as he hitched his hand tighter on Kate's dress and scattered the first group with a coarse jest or two. Thank Heaven! She would not understand these, his only weapons; since cold steel could not be used, till it had to be used topreventher understanding. Thank Heaven, too! he could use both weapons fairly. So he dug in the spurs again and answered the crowd in its own kind, recklessly. A laugh, an oath, once or twice a blow with the flat of his sword. And Kate, with slack arms and closed eyes, lay and listened--listened to a sharper, angrier voice, a quick clash of steel, a shout of half-doubtful, half-pleased derision from those near, a jest provoking a roar of merriment for one who meant to hold his own in love and war. Then a sudden bound of the horse; a faint slackening of that iron grip on her waist-belt. The worst of the stream was past; another moment and they were in a quiet street, another, and they had turned at right-angles down a secluded alley where Jim Douglas paused to pass his right hand, still holding his sword, under Kate's head and bid her lean against him more comfortably. The rest was easy. He would take her out by the Moree gate--the alleys to it would be almost deserted--so, outside the walls, to the rear of the Cashmere gate. They were already twisting and turning through the narrow lanes as he told her this. Then, with a rush and a whoop, he made for the gate, and the next moment they had the open country, the world, before them. How still and peaceful it lay in the sunshine! But the main-guard was the nearest, safest shelter, so the galloping hoofs sped down the tree-set road along which Kate generally took her evening drive.
"And you?" she asked hurriedly as he set her down at the moat and bade her run for the wicket and knock, while he kept the drawbridge.
He shook his head. "The reliefs from Meerut must be in soon. If they started at dawn, in an hour. Besides, I'm off to the Palace to see what has really happened; information's everything."
She saw him turn with a wave of his sword for farewell as the wicket was opened cautiously, and make for the Moree gate once more. As he rode he told himself there should be no further cause for anxiety on her account. De Tessier's guns were in the main-guard now, and reinforcements of the loyal 74th. They could hold their own easily till the Meerut people smashed up the Palace. They could not be long now, and the city had not risen as yet. The bigger bazaars through which he cantered were almost deserted; everyone had gone home. But at the entrance to an alley a group of boys clustered, and one ran out to him crying, "Khân-sahib! What's the matter? Folk say people are being killed, but we want to go to school."
"Don't," said Jim Douglas as he passed on. He had seen the schoolmaster, stripped naked, lying on his back in the broad daylight as he galloped along the College road with Kate over his saddle-bow.
"Ari, brothers," reported the spokesman. "He said 'don't,' but he can know naught. He comes from the outside. And we shall lose places in class if we stop, and others go."
So in the cheerful daylight the schoolboys discussed the problem, school or no school; the Great Revolt had got no further than that, as yet.
But there was no cloud of dust upon the Meerut road, though straining eyes thought they saw one more than once.
But if the schoolmaster of one school lay dead in the sunlight there was another, well able to teach a useful lesson, left alive; and his school remains for all time as a place where men may learn what men can do.
For about three hundred yards from the deserted College, about six hundred from the main-guard of the Cashmere gate, stood the magazine, to which the two young Englishmen, followed by a burlier one, had walked back quietly after one of them had remarked that he could hold his own. For there were gates to be barred, four walls to be seen to, and various other preparations to be made before the nine men who formed the garrison could be certain of holding their own. And their own meant much to others; for with the stores and the munitions of war safe the city might rise, but it would be unarmed; but with them at the mercy of the rabble every pitiful pillager could become a recruit to the disloyal regiments.
"The mine's about finished now, sir," said Conductor Buckley, saluting gravely as he looked critically down a line ending in the powder magazine. "And, askin' your pardon, sir, mightn't it be as well to settle a signal beforehand, sir; in case it's wanted? And, if you have no objection, sir, here's Sergeant Scully here, sir, saying he would look on it as a kind favor----"
A man with a spade glanced up a trifle anxiously for the answer as he went on with his work.
"All right! Scully shall fire it. If you finish it there in the middle by that little lemon tree, we shan't forget the exact spot. Scully must see to having the portfire ready for himself. I'll give the word to you, as your gun will be near mine, and you can pass it on by raising your cap. That will do, I think."
"Nicely, sir," said Conductor Buckley, saluting again.
"I wish we had one more man," remarked the Head-of-the-nine, as he paused in passing a gun to look to something in its gear with swift professional eye. "I don't quite see how the nine of us are to work the ten guns."
"Oh! we'll manage somehow," said his second in command, "the native establishment--perhaps----"
George Willoughby; the Head-of-the-nine, looked at the sullen group of dark faces lounging distrustfully within those barred doors, and his own face grew stern. Well, if they would not work, they should at least stay and look on--stay till the end. Then he took out his watch.
"Twelve! The Meerut troops will be in soon--if they started at dawn." There was the finest inflection of scorn in his voice.
"They must have started," began his companion. But the tall figure with the grave young face was straining its eyes from the bastion they were passing; it gave upon the bridge of boats and the lessening white streak of road. He was looking for a cloud of dust upon it; but there was none.
"I hope so," he remarked as he went on. He gave a half-involuntary glance back, however, to the stunted lemon-bush. There was a black streak by it, which might be relied upon to give aid at dawn, or dusk, or noon; high noon as it was now.
The chime of it echoed methodically as ever from the main-guard, making a cheerful young voice in the officer's room say, "Well! the enemy is passing, anyhow. The reliefs can't be long--if they started at dawn."
"If they had started when they ought to have started, they would have been here hours ago," said an older man, almost petulantly, as he rose and wandered to the door, to stand looking out on the baking court where his men--the two companies of the 54th, who had come down under his charge after those under Colonel Riply had shot down their officers by the church--were lounging about sullenly. These men might have shot him also but for the timely arrival of the two guns; might have shot at him, even now, but for those loyal 74th over-awing them. He turned and looked at some of the latter with a sort of envy. These men had come forward in a body when the regiment was called upon by its commandant to give honest volunteers to keep order in the city. What had they had, which his men had lacked? Nothing that he knew of. And then, inevitably, he thought of his six murdered friends and comrades, officers apparently as popular as he, whose bodies were lying in the next room waiting for a cart to remove them to the Ridge. For even Major Paterson, saddened, depressed, looked forward to decent sepulture for his comrades by and by--by and by when the Meerut troops should arrive. And the half dozen or more of women upstairs were comforting each other with the same hope, and crushing down the cry that it seemed an eternity, already, since they had waited for that little cloud of dust upon the Meerut road. But for that hope they might have gone Meerutward themselves; for the country was peaceful.
Even in Duryagunj, though by noon it was a charnel-house, the score or so of men who kept cowards at bay in a miserable storehouse comforted themselves with the same hope; and women with the long languid eyes of one race, looked out of them with the temper and fire of the other, saying in soft staccato voices--"It will not be long now. They will be here soon, for they would start at dawn."
"They will come soon," said a young telegraph clerk coolly, as he stood by his instrument hoping for a welcomekling; sending, finally, that bulletin northward which ended with the reluctant admission, "we must shut up." Must indeed; seeing that some ruffians rushed in and sabered him with his hands still on the levers.
"They will be here soon," agreed the compositors of theDelhi Gazetteas they worked at the strangest piece of printing the world is ever likely to see. That famous extra, wedged in between English election news, which told in bald journalese of a crisis, which became the crisis of their own lives before the whole edition was sent out.
But down in the Palace Zeenut Maihl had been watching that white streak of road also, and as the hours passed, her wild impatience would let her watch it no longer. She paced up and down the Queen's bastion like a caged tigress, leaving Hâfzan to take her place at the lattice. No sign of an avenging army yet! Then the troopers' tale must be true! The hour of decisive action had come, it was slipping past, the King was in the hands of Ahsan-Oolah, and Elahi Buksh, whose face was set both ways, like the physician's. And she, helpless, half in disgrace, caged, veiled, screened, unable to lay hands on anyone! Oh! why was she not a man! Why had she not a man to deal with! Her henna-stained nails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands, then in sheer childish passion tore off her hampering veil and, rolling it into a ball, flung it at the head of a drowsy eunuch in the outside arcade--the nearest thing to a man within her reach.
"No sign yet, Hâfzan?" she asked fiercely.
"No sign, my Queen," replied Hâfzan, with an odd derisive smile. If they did not come now, thought this woman with her warped nature, they would come later on; come and put a rope round the necks of men who had laid violent hands on women.
"Then I stop here no longer!" cried Zeenut Maihl recklessly; "I must see somewhat of it or die. Quick, girls, my dhooli, I will go back to my own rooms. 'Twill at least bear me through the crowd, and the jogging will keep the blood from tingling from very stillness."
So through the tawdry, dirty, musky curtains a woman's fierce eye watched the crowd hungrily, as the dhooli swung through it. A fierce crowd too in its way, but lacking cohesion. Like the world without those four rose-red walls, it was waiting for a master. And the man who should have been master was taking cooling draughts, and composing couplets, so her spies brought word. No hope from him till she could lure him back from his vexation and put some of her own energy into him. Who next was there likely to do her bidding? Her eye, taking in all the strangeness of the scene, troopers stabling their horses in the colonnades, sepoys bivouacking under the trees, courtiers hurrying up and down the private steps, found none in all that crowd of place-hunters, boasters, enthusiasts, whom she could trust. The King's eldest son Mirza Moghul was the fiercest tempered of them all, the only one whom she feared in any way; perhaps if she could get hold of him----
As her dhooli swayed up the steps he was standing on them talking to Mirza Khair Sultan. She could have put out her hand and touched him; but even she did not dare convention enough for that. Nevertheless, the sight of him determined her. If the King did not come back to her by noon, she must lure the Mirza to her side.
"Thou art a fool, Pir-jee," she said petulantly to Hussan Askuri who, as father confessor, had entrance to the womens' rooms and was awaiting her. "Thou hast no grip on the King when I am absent. Canst not even drive that slithering physician from his side?"
"Cooling draughts, seest thou, Pir-jee," put in Hâfzan maliciously, "have tangible effects. Thy dreams----"
"Peace, woman!" interrupted the Queen sternly, "'tis no time for jesting. Where sits the King now?"
"In the river balcony, Ornament-of-palaces," replied Fâtma glibly, "where he is not to be disturbed these two hours, so the physician says, lest the cooling draught----"
The Queen stamped her foot in sheer impotent rage. "I must see someone. And Jewan Bukht, my son? why hath he not answered my summons?"
"His Highness," put in Hâfzan gravely, "was, as I came by just now, quarreling in his cups with his nephew, the princely Abool-Bukr, regarding the Inspectorship-of-Cavalry; which office both desire--a weighty matter----"
"Peace! she-devil!" almost screamed the Queen. "Can I not see, can I not hear for myself, that thy sharp wits must forever drag the rotten heart to light--thou wilt go too far, some day, Hâfzan, and then----"
"The Queen will have to find another scribe," replied Hâfzan meekly.
Zeenut Maihl glared at her, then rolled round into her cushions as if she were in actual physical pain. And hark! From the Lahore gate, as if nothing had happened, came the chime of noon. Noon! and nothing done. She sat up suddenly and signed to Hâfzan for pen and ink. She would wait no longer for the King; she would at least try the Mirza.
"'This, to the most illustrious the Mirza Moghul, Heir-Apparent by right to the throne of Timoor,'" she dictated firmly, and Hâfzan looked up startled. "Write on, fool," she continued; "hast never written lies before? 'After salutation the Begum Zeenut Maihl,'"--the humbler title came from her lips in a tone which boded ill for the recipient of the letter if he fell into the toils,--"'seeing that in this hour of importance the King is sick, and by order of physicians not to be disturbed, would know if the Mirza, being by natural right the King's vice-regent, desires the private seal to any orders necessary for peace and protection. Such signet being in the hands of the Queen'--nay, not that, I was forgetting--'the Begum.'"
She gave an angry laugh as she lay back among her cushions and bid them send the letter forthwith. That should make him nibble. Not that she had the signet--the King kept that on his own finger--but if the Mirza came on pretense or rather in hopes of getting it? Why! then; if the proper order was given and if she could insure the aid of men to carry out her schemes, the signet should be got at somehow. The King was old and frail; the storm and stress might well kill him.
So her thoughts ranged from one plot to another as she waited for an answer. If this lure succeeded, she would but use the Heir-Apparent for a time. What use was there in plotting for him? He could die, as other heirs had died; and then the only person likely to put a spoke in her wheel was Abool-Bukr. He was teaching his young uncle the first pleasures of manhood, and might find it convenient to influence the boy against her. It would be well therefore to get hold of him also. That was not a hard task, and she sat up again without a moment's hesitation and signed once more to Hâfzan.
"Thy best flourishes," she said with an evil sneer, "for it goes to a rare scholar; to a fool for all that, who would have folk think nephews visit their aunts from duty! 'This to Newâsi loving and beloved, greeting. Consequent on the disturbances, the princely nephew Abool-Bukr lieth senseless here in the Palace.' Stare not, fool! senseless drunk he is by this time, I warrant. 'Those who have seen him think ill of him.'" Here she broke off into malicious enjoyment of her own wit. "Ay! and those who have but heard of him also! 'The course of events, however, being in the hands of Heaven, will be duly reported.'"
She coiled herself up again on the cushions, an insignificant square homely figure draped in worn brocade and laden with tarnished jewelry; ill-matched strings of pearls, flawed emeralds, diamonds without sparkle. Yet not without a certain dignity, a certain symmetry of purpose, harmonizing with the arched and frescoed room in which she lay; a room beautiful in design and decoration, yet dirty, comfortless, almost squalid.
"Nay! not my signature," she yawned. "I am too old a foe of the scholars; but a smudge o' the thumb will do. If I know aught of aunts and nephews, she will be too much flustered by the news to look at seals. And have word sent to the Delhi gate that the Princess Farkhoonda be admitted, but goes not forth again."
Her hard voice ceased; there was no sound in the room save that strange hum from the gardens outside, which at this hour of the day were generally wrapped in sun-drugged slumbers.
But the world beyond, toward which the old King's lusterless eyes looked as he lay on the river balcony, was sleepy, sun-drugged as ever. Through the tracery-set archs showed yellow stretches of sand and curving river, with tussocks of tall tiger-grass hiding the slender stems of the palm-trees which shot up here and there into the blue sky; blue with the yellow glaze upon it which comes from sheer sunlight. A row ofsaringhiplayers squatted in the room behind the balcony, thrumming softly, so as to hide that strange hum of life which reached even here. For the King was writing a couplet and was in difficulties with a rhyme forcartouche(cartridge); since he was a stickler for form, holding that the keynote of the lines should jingle. And this couplet was to epitomize the situation on the other side of thesaringhies.Cartouche? Cartouche?Suddenly he sat up. "Quick! send for Hussan Askuri; or stay!" he hesitated for an instant. Hussan Askuri would be with the Queen, and no one ever admired his couplets as she did. How many hours was it since he had seen her? And what was the use of making couplets, if you were denied their just meed of praise? "Stay," he repeated, "I will go myself." It was a relief to feel himself on the way back to be led by the nose, and as they helped him across the intervening courtyard he kept repeating his treasure, imagining her face when she heard it.