Against all fear; against the weight of what,For lack of worse name, men miscall the Law;Against the Tyranny of Creed; against the hot,Foul Greed of Priest, and Superstition's Maw;Against all man-made Shackles, and a man-made Hell—Alone—At last—Unaided—I REBEL!
No single, individual circumstance, but a chain of happenings in very quick succession, brought about a climax, forcing the hand of Howrah and his brother and for the moment drawing the McCleans, father and daughter, into the toothed wheel of Indian action. As usual in India, the usual brought about the unexpected, and the unexpected fitted strangely into the complex, mysteriously worked-out whole.
Two days after Joanna left the mission house, through a hole made in the thatch, the spirit of revolt took hold of Rosemary McClean again. The stuffy, narrow quarters—the insolent, doubled, unexplained, but very obvious, guard that lounged outside—the sense of rank injustice and helplessness—the weird feeling of impending horror added onto stale-grown ghastliness—youth, chafing at the lack of liberty—stirred her to action.
Without a word to her father, who was writing reports that seemed endless at the little desk by the shaded window, she left the house—drew with a physical effort on all her reserve of strength and health—faced the scorching afternoon wind, as though it were a foe that could shrink away before her courage, and walked, since she had no pony now, in any direction in which chance or her momentary whim might care to lead her.
“I won't cry again—and I won't submit—and I'll see what happens!†she told herself; and the four who followed her at a none-too-respectful distance—two of the Maharajah's men in uniform and two shabby-looking ruffians of Jaimihr's—grinned as they scented action. Like their masters they bore no love for one another; they were there now, in fact, as much to watch one another as the missionaries; they detected the possibility of an excuse to be at one another's throats, and gloated as they saw two messengers, one of either side, run off in a hurry to inform the rival camps.
It was neither plan nor conscious selection that led Rosemary McClean toward the far end of the maidan, where the sluggish, narrow, winding Howrah River sucked slimily beside the burning ghats. When she realized where her footsteps were leading her she would have turned in horror and retreated, for even a legitimately roasting corpse that died before the Hindoo priests had opportunity to introduce it to the flames is no sight for eyes that are civilized.
But, when she turned her head, the sight of her hurrying escort perspiring in her wake—(few natives like the heat and wind one whit better than their conquerors)—filled her with an unexpected, probably unjustifiable, determination not to let them see her flinch at any kind of horror. That was the spirit of sahibdom that is not always quite commendable; it is the spirit that takes Anglo-Saxon women to the seething, stenching plains and holds them there high-chinned to stiffen their men-folk by courageous example, but it leads, too, to things not quite so womanly and good.
“I'll show them!†muttered Rosemary McClean, wiping the blown dust from her eyes and facing the wind again that now began to carry with it the unspread taint—the awful, sickening, soul-revolting smell inseparable from Hindoo funeral rites. There were three pyres, low-smouldering, close by the river-bank, and men stirred with long poles among the ashes to make sure that the incineration started the evening before should be complete; there was one pyre that looked as though it had been lit long after dawn—another newly lit—and there were two pyres building.
It was those two new ones that held her attention, and finally decided her to hold her course. She wanted to make sure. The smell of burning—the unoutlined, only guessed-at ghastliness—would probably have killed her courage yet, before she came close enough to really see; but the suspicion of a greater horror drew her on, as snakes are said to draw birds on, by merely being snakes, and with red-rimmed eyes smarting from smoke as well as wind she pressed forward.
The ghats were deserted-looking, for the funeral rites of those who burned were practically over until the time should come to scatter ashes on the river-surface; only a few attendants hovered close to the fires to prod them and occasionally throw on extra logs. Only round the two new pyres not yet quite finished was anything approaching a crowd assembled, and there a priest was officiously directing the laying of the logs. It was the manner of their laying and the careful building of a scaffold on each side of either pyre that held Rosemary McClean's attention—called all the rebellious womanhood within her to interfere—and drew her nearer.
Soon the priest noticed her—a cotton-skirted wraith amid the smoke—and shouted to the guards behind; one of them answered, laughing coarsely, and Rosemary understood enough of the dialect he used to grit her teeth with shame and anger. The men left off building, and, directed by the priest, came toward her in a ragged line to cut her off from closer approach; she stood, then—examined the new pyres as carefully as she could—walked to another vantage-point and viewed them sideways—then turned her back.
“Oh, the brutes!†she ejaculated. There were tears in her voice, as well as helpless anger. “There is not one devil, there are a million, and they all live here!â€
She looked back again once, trembling with an overmastering hate, directed less at the priest who grinned back at her than at the loathsome rite he represented. In two actual words, she cursed him. It was the first time she had ever cursed anybody in her life, and the wickedness of doing it swept over her as a relief. She revelled in it. She was glad she had cursed him. Her little, light, graceful body that had been quivering grew calm again, and she turned to hurry home with an unexpected sense of having pulled some lever in the mechanism that would bring about results. She neither knew nor cared what results, nor how they were to happen; she felt that that curse of hers, her first, had landed on the mark!
But she had come further than she thought. Distance, hot wind, and emotion had exhausted her far more, too, than she had had time to realize. Before a mile of the homeward journey had been accomplished, she was forced against her stubborn Scots will to sit down on a big stone by the roadside and rest, while the four that followed came up close, grinning and passing remarks in anything but under-tones. If the meaning of the words escaped her, their gestures left little to be misunderstood. A crowd of stragglers drew together near the four—laughed with them—took sides in the coarse-worded argument about Jaimihr's known ambition—and shamed her into pressing on homeward.
But she was forced to rest again, and then again. Physical sickness prevented her from obeying instinct, reason, will, that all three urged her on. No false pride now told her to dare the insolence of the guards; nothing appealed to her but the desire to hurry, hurry, hurry, and do whatever should appear to need doing when she reached the mission house. She had no plan in her head. She only knew that she had cursed a man, and that the curse was potent. But her feet dragged, and her vitality died down. It was sundown when she reached the mission house, and she could hear the rising, falling, intermittent din of drums before she saw her father in the doorway.
“Father!†She ran to him, and he caught her in his arms to save her from falling headlong. “Father, there is going to be a suttee tonight! Hear the drums, father! Hear the drums! It'll be tonight! That's to stop the screams from being heard! Listen to them, father—two suttees, side by side—I've seen the pyres and the scaffolds—do they jump into the flames, father, from the scaffolds?—tell me! No-don't tell me—I won't listen! Take me away from here—away—away—away—take me away, d'you hear!â€
He carried her inside, and laid her on the caned couch in the living-room, looking like a great, big, helpless, gray-haired baby, as any man is prone to do when he has hysteria to deal with in a woman whom he loves.
“I cursed a man, father! I cursed a man! I did! I said 'Damn you!' I'm glad!â€
“Don't, little girl—don't! Lassie mine, don't! Never mind what you saw or what you said—be calm now—there is something we must do; we must act; I have determined we must act. We must act tonight. But we can't do anything with you in this state.â€
Slowly, gradually he calmed her—or probably she grew calm, in spite of his attentions, for he was too upset himself to exercise much soothing sway over anybody else. At last, though, she fell into a fitful sleep, and he sat beside her, holding rigid the left hand that she clutched, letting it stiffen and grow cold and numb for fear of waking her.
Outside a full moon rose majestically, pure and silvery as peace herself, bathing the universe in blessings. And each month, when the full moon rose above the carved dome of Siva's temple, there was a ceremony gone through that commemorated cruelty, greed, poisoning, throat-slitting, hate, and all the hell-invented infamy that suckles always at the breast of stagnant treasure.
Since history has forgotten when, at each full moon, the priests of Siva had gone with circumstantial ceremony to view the hoarded wealth tied up by jealousy and guarded jealously in Howrah's palace. With them, as the custom that was stronger than a thousand laws dictated, went the Maharajah and his brother Jaimihr—joint owners with the priests.
There had not been one Maharajah, since the first of that long line, who would not have given the lives of ten thousand men for leave to broach that treasure; nor, since the first heir apparent shared the secret with the priests and the holder of the throne, had there been one prince in line-son-brother-cousin—who would not have drenched the throne with his relation's blood with that same purpose.
Heir after heir could have agreed with Maharajah, but the priests had stood between. That treasure was their fulcrum; the legacy, dictated by a dead, misguided hand, intended as a war reserve to stay the throne of Howrah in its need, and trebly locked to guard against profligacy, had placed the priests of Siva in the position of dictators of Howrah's destiny. A word from them, and a prince would slay his father—only to discover that the promises of Siva's priests were something less to build on than the hope of loot. There would be another heir apparent to be let into the secret—another man to scheme and hunger for the throne—another party to the bloody three-angled intrigue which kept the Siva-servers fat and the princes lean.
Past masters of the art by which superstitious ignorance is swayed, the priests could swing the allegiance of the mob whichever way they chose—even the soldiers, loyal enough to their masters under ordinary circumstances, would have rebelled at as much as a hint from holy Siva. It was the priests who made it possible for Jaimihr to dare take his part in the ceremony; without them he would not have entered his brother's palace-yard unless five thousand men at least were there to guard his back—but, if there was danger where the priests were, there was safety too.
As the custom was, he rode to the temple of Siva first with a ten-man guard; there, when the priests had finished droning age-old anthems to the echoing roof, when his brother, the Maharajah, also with a ten-man guard, had joined him, and the two had submitted to the sanctifying rites prescribed, eleven priests would walk with them in solemn mummery to the palace-entrance—censer-swinging, chanting, blasphemously acting duty to their gods and state.
The moon—and that, too, was custom-rested with her lower rim one full hand's breadth above the temple dome as viewed from the palace-gate, when a gong clanged resonantly, died to silence, music of pipes and cymbals broke on the evening quiet, and the strange procession started from the temple door, the Maharajah leading.
Generally it passed uninterrupted over the intervening street to the palace-entrance, between the ranks of a salaaming, silent crowd, and disappeared from view. This time, though, for the first time in living memory, and possibly for the first time in all history, the unforeseen, amazing happened. The procession stopped. Moon-bathed, between the carved posts of the palace-gate, two people blocked the way.
The music ceased. The sudden silence framed itself against the distant thunder of a hundred drums. The crowd—all heads bowed, as decreed—drew in its breath and held it. A sea of pugrees moved as brown eyes looked up surreptitiously—stared—memorized—and then looked down again. There was no precedent for this happening, and even the Maharajah and the priests were at a momentary loss—stood waiting, staring—and said nothing.
“Maharajah-sahib!—I must interrupt your ceremony. I must have word with you at once!â€
It was Duncan McClean, bareheaded, holding his daughter's hand. They had no weapons; they were messengers of peace, protesting, or so they looked. No longer timid, but resigned to what might happen—they held each other's hands, and blocked the way of Siva's votaries—Siva's tools—and Siva's ritual.
Jaimihr whispered to his brother—the first time he had dared one word to him in person for years—the high priest of the temple pressed forward angrily, saying nothing, but trying to combine rage and dignity with an attempt to turn the incident to priestly advantage. Surely this was a crisis out of which the priests must come triumphant; they held all the cards—knew how and when rebellion was timed, and could compare, as the principals themselves could not do, Howrah's strength with Jaimihr's. And the priests had the crowd to back them—the ignorant, superstitious crowd that can make or dethrone emperors.
But some strange freak of real dignity—curiosity perhaps, or possibly occasion—spurred desire to act of his own initiative and keep the high priest in his place—impelled the Maharajah in that minute. Men said afterward that Jaimihr had whispered to him advice which he knew was barbed because it was his brother whispering, and that he promptly did the opposite; but, whatever the motive, he drew himself up in all his jewelled splendor and demanded: “What do you people wish?â€
The McCleans were given no time to reply. The priests did not see fit to let the reins of this occasion slip; the word went out, panic-voiced, that sacrilege to Siva was afoot.
“Slay them! Slay them!†yelled the crowd. “They violate the sacred rites!â€
There were no Mohammedans among that crowd to take delight in seeing Hindoo priests discomfited and Hindoo ritual disturbed. There came no counter-shout. The crowd did not, as so often happens, turn and rend itself; and yet, though a surge from behind pressed forward, the men in front pressed back.
“Slay them! Slay the sacrilegious foreigners!†The yell grew louder and more widely voiced, but no man in the front ranks moved.
The Maharajah looked from the company of guards that lined the palace-steps to the priests and his brother and the crowd—and then to the McCleans again.
He remembered Alwa and his Rangars, thought of the messenger whom he had sent, remembered that a regiment of lance-armed horsemen would be worth a risk or two to win over to his side, and made decision.
“You are in danger,†he asserted, using a pronoun not intended to convey politeness, but—Eastern of the East—counteracting that by courtesy of manner. “Do you ask my aid?â€
“Yes, among other things,†Duncan McClean answered him. “I wish also to speak about a Rangar, who I know is held prisoner in a cage in the Jaimihr-sahib's palace.â€
“Speak of that later,†answered Howrah. “Guard!â€
He made a sign. A spoken word might have told the priests too much, and have set them busy fore-stalling him. The guards rushed down the steps, seized both McCleans, and half-carried, half-hustled them up the palace-steps, through the great carved doors, and presently returned without them.
“They are my prisoners,†said the Maharajah, turning to the high priest. “We will now proceed.â€
The crowd was satisfied, at least for the time being. Well versed in the kind of treatment meted out to prisoners, partly informed of what was preparing for the British all through India, the crowd never doubted for an instant but that grizzly vengeance awaited the Christians who had dared to remonstrate against time-honored custom. It looked for the moment as though the high priest's word had moved the Maharajah to order the arrest, and the high priest realized it. By skilful play and well-used dignity he might contrive to snatch all the credit yet. He ordered; the pipes and cymbals started up again at once; and, one by one—Maharajah, Jaimihr, high priest, then royal guard, Jaimihr's guard, priest again—the procession wound ahead, jewelled and egretted, sabred and spurred, priest-robed, representative of all the many cancers eating at the heart of India.
Chanting, clanging, wailing minor dirges to the night, it circled all the front projections of the palace, turned where a small door opened on a courtyard at one side, entered, and disappeared.
Oh, is it good, my soldier prince and is the wisdom clear,To guard thy front a thousand strong, while ten may take thy rear?
Now, because it was impregnable to almost anything except a yet-to-be-invented air-ship, the Alwa-sahib owned a fortress still, high-perched on a crag that overlooked a glittering expanse of desert. More precious than its bulk in diamonds, a spring of clear, cold water from the rock-lined depths of mother earth gushed out through a fissure near the Summit, and round that spring had been built, in bygone centuries, a battlemented nest to breed and turn out warriors. Alwa's grandfather had come by it through complicated bargaining and dowry-contracts, and Alwa now held it as the rallying-point for the Rangars thereabout.
But its defensibility was practically all the crag fort had to offer by way of attraction. Down at its foot, where the stream of rushing water splashed in a series of cascades to the thirsty, sandy earth, there were an acre or two of cultivation—sufficient, in time of peace, to support an attenuated garrison and its horses. But for his revenues the Alwa-sahib had to look many a long day's march afield. Leagues of desert lay between him and the nearest farm he owned, and since—more in the East than anywhere—a landlord's chief absorption is the watching of his rents, it followed that he spent the greater part of his existence in the saddle, riding from one widely scattered tenant to another.
It was luck or fortuitous circumstance—Fate, he would have called it, had he wasted time to give it name—that brought him along a road where, many miles from Howrah City, he caught sight of Joanna. Needless to say, he took no slightest notice of her.
Dog-weary, parched, sore-footed, she was hurrying along the burning, sandy trail that led in the direction of Alwa's fort. The trail was narrow, and the horsemen whose mounts ambled tirelessly behind Alwa's plain-bred Arab pressed on past him, to curse the hag and bid her make horse-room for her betters. She sunk on the sand and begged of them. Laughingly, they asked her what a coin would buy in all that arid waste.
“Have the jackals, then, turned tradesman?†they jeered; but she only mumbled, and displayed her swollen tongue, and held her hands in an attitude of pitiful supplication. Then Alwa cantered up—rode past—heard one of his men jeering—drew rein and wheeled.
“Give her water!†he commanded.
He sat and watched her while she knelt, face upward, and a Rangar poured lukewarm water from a bottle down her tortured throat. He held it high and let the water splash, for fear his dignity might suffer should he or the bottle touch her. Strictly speaking, Rangars have no caste, but they retain by instinct and tradition many of the Hindoo prejudices. Alwa himself saw nothing to object to in the man's precaution.
“Ask the old crows' meat whither she was running.â€
“She says she would find the Alwa-sahib.â€
“Tell her I am he.â€
Joanna fawned and laid her wrinkled forehead in the dust.
“Get up!†he growled. “Thy service is dishonor and my ears are deaf to it! Now, speak! Hast thou a message? Who is it sends a rat to bring me news?â€
“Ali Partab.â€
“Soho! And who is Ali Partab? He needs to learn manners. He has come to a stern school for them!â€
“Sahib—great one—Prince of swordsmen!—Ali Partab is Mahommed Gunga-sahib's man. He bid me say that he is held a prisoner in a bear-cage in Jaimihr's palace and needs aid.â€
Alwa's black beard dropped onto his chest as he frowned in thought. He had nine men with him. Jaimihr had by this time, perhaps, as many as nine thousand, for no one knew but Jaimihr and the priests how many in the district waited to espouse his cause. The odds seemed about as stupendous as any that a man of his word had ever been called upon to take.
A moment more, and without consulting any one, he bade one of his men dismount.
“Put that hag on thy horse!†he commanded. “Mount thou behind another!â€
The order was obeyed. Another Rangar took the led horse, and Joanna found herself, perched like a monkey on a horse that objected to the change of riders, between two troopers whose iron-thewed legs squeezed hers into the saddle.
“To Howrah City!†ordered Alwa, starting off at an easy, desert-eating amble; and without a word of comment, but with downward glances at their swords and a little back-stiffening which was all of excitement that they deigned to show, his men wheeled three and three behind him.
It was no affair of Alwa's that a full moon shone that night—none of his arranging that on that one night of the month Jaimihr and his most trusted body-guard should go with the priests and the Maharajah to inspect the treasure. Alwa was a soldier, born to take instant advantage of chance—sent opportunity; Jaimihr was a schemer, born to indecision and the cunning that seeks underhanded means but overlooks the obvious. Because the streets were full of men whose allegiance was doubtful yet, because he himself would be too occupied to sit like a spider in a web and watch the intentions of the crowd unfold, Jaimihr had turned out every retainer to his name, and had scattered them about the city, with orders, if they were needed, to rally on a certain point.
He did think that at any minute a disturbance might break out which would lead to civil war, and he saw the necessity for watchfulness at every point; but he did not see the rather obvious necessity for leaving more than twenty men on guard inside his palace. Not even the thoughtfulness of Siva's priests could have anticipated that ten horse-men would be riding out of nowhere, with the spirit in them that ignores side issues and leads them only straight to their objective.
Alwa, as a soldier, knew exactly where fresh horses could be borrowed while his tired ones rested. A little way beyond the outskirts of the city lived a man who was neither Mohammedan nor Hindoo—a fearful man, who took no sides, but paid his taxes, carried on his business, and behaved—a Jew, who dealt in horses and in any other animal or thing that could be bought to show a profit.
Alwa had an utterly complete contempt for Jews, as was right and proper in a Rangar of the blood. He had not met many of them, and those he had had borne away the memory of most outrageous insult gratuitously offered and rubbed home. But this particular Jew was a money-lender on occasion, and his rates had proved as reasonable as his acceptance of Alwa's unwritten promise had been prompt. A man who holds his given word as sacred as did Alwa respects, in the teeth of custom or religion, the man who accepts that word; so, when the chance had offered, Alwa had done the Jew occasional favors and had won his gratitude. He now counted on the Jew for fresh horses.
To reach him, he had to wade the Howrah River, less than a mile from where the burning ghats glowed dull crimson against the sky; the crowd around the ghats was the first intimation he received that the streets might prove less densely thronged than usual. It was the Jew, beard-scrabbling and fidgeting among his horses, who reminded him that when the full moon shone most of the populace, and most of Jaimihr's and Howrah's guards, would be occupied near Siva's temple and the palace.
He left his own horses, groomed again, and gorging their fill of good, clean grain in the Jew's ramshackle stable place. Joanna he turned loose, to sneak into any rat-hole that she chose. Then, with their swords drawn—for if trouble came it would be certain to come suddenly—he and his nine made a wide-ringed circuit of the city, to a point where the main street passing Jaimihr's palace ended in a rune of wind-piled desert sand. From the moment when they reached that point they did not waste a second; action trod on the heel of thought and thought flashed fast as summer lightning.
They lit through the deserted street, troubling for speed, not silence; the few whom they passed had no time to determine who they were, and no one followed them. A few frightened night-wanderers ran at sight of them, hiding down side streets, but when they brought up at last outside Jaimihr's palace-gate they had so far escaped recognition. And that meant that no one would carry word to Jaimihr or his men.
It was death-dark outside the bronze-hinged double gate; only a dim lamp hung above from chains, to show how dark it was, and the moon—cut off by trees and houses on a bluff of rising ground—lent nothing to the gloom.
“Open! The jaimihr-sahib comes!†shouted Alwa and one of his horsemen legged up close beside the gate.
Some one moved inside, for his footsteps could be heard; whoever he was appeared to listen cautiously.
“Open for the Jaimihr-sahib!†repeated Alwa.
Evidently that was not the usual command, or otherwise the gates would have swung open on the instant. Instead, one gate moved inward by a fraction of a foot, and a pureed head peered cautiously between the gap. That, though, was sufficient. With a laugh, the man up closest drove his sword-hilt straight between the Hindoo's eyes, driving his horse's shoulder up against the gate; three others spurred and shoved beside him. Not thirty seconds later Alwa and his nine were striking hoof sparks on the stone of Jaimihr's courtyard, and the gates—that could have easily withstood a hundred-man assault with battering-rams—had clanged behind them, bolted tight against their owner.
“Where is the bear cage?†demanded Alwa. “It is a bear I need, not blood!â€
The dozen left inside to guard the palace had recovered quickly enough from their panic. They were lining up in the middle of the courtyard, ready to defend their honor, even if the palace should be lost. It was barely probable that Jaimihr's temper would permit them the privilege of dying quickly should he come and find his palace looted; a Rangar's sword seemed better, and they made ready to die hard.
“Where's Ali Partab?â€
There was no answer. The little crowd drew in, and one by one took up the fighting attitude that each man liked the best.
“I say I did not come for blood! I came for Ali Partab! If I get him, unharmed, I ride away again; but otherwise—â€
“What otherwise?†asked the captain of the guard.
“This palace burns!â€
There was a momentary consultation—no argument, but a quickly reached agreement.
“He is here, unharmed,†declared the captain gruffly.
“Bring him out!â€
“What proof have we that he is all you came for?â€
“My given word.â€
“But the Jaimihr-sahib—â€
“You also have my given word that unless I get Ali Partab this palace burns, with all that there is in it!â€
Distrustful still, the captain of the guard called out to a sweeper, skulking in the shadow by the stables to go and loose Ali Partab.
“Send no sweepers to him!†ordered Alwa. “He has suffered indignity enough. Go thou!â€
The captain of the guard obeyed. Two minutes later Ali Partab stood before Alwa and saluted.
“Sahib, my master's thanks!â€
“They are accepted,†answered Alwa, with almost regal dignity. “Bring a lamp!†he ordered.
One of the guard brought a hand-lantern, and by its light Alwa examined Ali Partab closely. He was filthy, and his clothing reeked of the disgusting confinement he had endured.
“Give this man clothing fit for a man of mine!†commanded Alwa.
“Sahib, there is none; perhaps the Jaimihr-sahib—â€
“I have ordered!â€
There was a movement among Alwa's men—a concerted, horse-length-forward movement, made terrifying by the darkness—each man knew well enough that the men they were bullying could fight; success, should they have to force it at the sword-point, would depend largely on which side took the other by surprise.
“It is done, sahib,†said the leader of the guard, and one man hurried off to execute the order. Ten minutes later—they were ten impatient minutes, during which the horses sensed the fever of anxiety and could be hardly made to stand—Ali Partab stood arrayed in clean, new khaki that fitted him reasonably well.
“A sword, now!†demanded Alwa. “Thy sword! This man had a sword when he was taken! Give him thine, unless there is a better to be had.â€
There was nothing for it but obedience, for few things were more certain than that Alwa was not there to waste time asking for anything he would not fight for if refused. The guard held out his long sword, hilt first, and Ali Partab strapped it on.
“I had three horses when they took me,†he asserted, “three good ones, sound and swift, belonging to my master.â€
“Then take three of Jaimihr's!â€
It took ten minutes more for Ali Partab and two of Alwa's men to search the stables and bring out the three best chargers of the twenty and more reserved for Jaimihr's private use. They were wonders of horses, half-Arab and half-native-bred, clean-limbed and firm—worth more, each one of them, than all three of Mahommed Gunga's put together.
“Are they good enough?†demanded Alwa.
“My master will be satisfied,†grinned Ali Partab.
“Open the gate, then!†Alwa was peering through the blackness for a sight of firearms, but could see none. He guessed—and he was right—that the guard had taken full advantage of their master's absence, and had been gambling in a corner while their rifles rested under cover somewhere else. For a second he hesitated, dallying with the notion of disarming the guard before he left, then decided that a fight was scarcely worth the risking now, and with ten good men behind him he wheeled and scooted through the wide-flung gates into outer gloom.
He galloped none too fast, for his party was barely out of range before a ragged volley ripped from the palace-wall; one of his men, hampered and delayed by a led horse that was trying to break away from him, was actually hit, and begged Alwa to ride back and burn the palace after all. He was grumbling still about the honor of a Rangar, when Alwa called a halt in the shelter of a deserted side street in order to question Ali Partab further.
Ali Partab protested that he did not know what to say or think about the missionaries. He explained his orders and vowed that his honor held him there in Howrah until Miss McClean should consent to come away. He did not mention the father; he was a mere side issue—it was Alwa who asked after him.
“A tick on the belly of an ox rides with the ox,†said Ali Partab.
“Lead on, then, to the mission house,†commanded Alwa, and the ten-man troop proceeded to obey. They had reached the main street again, and were wheeling into it, when Joanna sprang from gutter darkness and intercepted them. She was all but ridden down before Ali Partab recognized her.
“The mohurs, sahib!†she demanded. “Three golden mohurs!â€
“Ay, three!†said Ali Partab, giving her a hand and yanking her off the ground. She sprang across his horse's rump behind him, and he seemed to have less compunction about personal defilement than the others had.
“Is she thy wife or thy mother-in-law?†laughed Alwa.
“Nay, sahib, but my creditor! The mother of confusion tells me that the Miss-sahib and her father are in Howrah's palace!â€
They halted, all together in a cluster in the middle of the street—shut in by darkness—watched for all they knew, by a hundred enemies.
“Of their own will or as prisoners?â€
“As prisoners, sahib.â€
“Back to the side street! Quickly! Jaimihr' rat's nest is one affair,†he muttered; “Howrah' beehive is another!â€
Now, secrets and things of the Councils of KingsAre deucid expensive to buy,For it wouldn't look nice if a Councillor's priceWere anything other than high.Be advised, though, and note that the price they will quoteIs less at each grade you go deeper,And—(Up on its toes it's the Underworld knows!)—The cheapest of all is the Sweeper.
JOANNA—when Alwa forgot about her and loosed her to run just where she chose—had sneaked, down alleys and over roof-tops, straight for the mission house. She found there nothing but a desultory guard and an impression, rather than the traces, of an empty cage. About two minutes of cautious questioning of neighbors satisfied her where the missionaries were; nothing short of death seemed able to deprive her of ability to flit like a black bat through the shadows, and the distance to Howrah's palace was accomplished, by her usual bat's entry route, in less time than a pony would have taken by the devious street. Before Alwa had thundered on Jaimihr's gate Joanna had mingled in the crowd outside the palace and was shrewdly questioning again.
She arrived too late to see McClean and his daughter seized; what she did hear was that they were prisoners, and that the Maharajah, Jaimihr, and the priests were all of them engaged in the secret ceremony whose beginning was a monthly spectacle but whose subsequent developments—supposed to be somewhere in the bowels of the earth—were known only to the men who held the key.
Like a rat running in the wainscot holes, she tried to follow the procession; like everybody else, she knew the way it took from the palace gate, and—as few others were—she was aware of a scaling-place on the outer wall where a huge baobab drooped century-scarred branches nearly to the ground on either side. The sacred monkeys used that route and where they went Joanna could contrive to follow.
It was another member of the sweeper caste, lurking in the darkness of an inner courtyard, who pointed out the bronze-barred door to her through which the treasure guardians had chanted on their way; it was he, too, who told her that Rosemary McClean and her father had been rushed into the palace through the main entrance. Also, he informed her that there was no way—positively no way practicable even for a monkey or a bird—of following further. He was a sweeper-intimate acquaintance of creeper ladders, trap-doors, gutters drains, and byways; she realized at once that there would be no wisdom in attempting to find within an hour what he had not discovered in a lifetime.
So Joanna, her beady eyes glittering between the wrinkled folds of skin, slunk deeper in a shadow and began to think. She, the looker-on, had seen the whole play from its first beginning and could judge at least that part of it which had its bearing on her missionary masters. First, she knew what Jaimihr's ambition was—every man in Howrah knew how he planned to seize Miss McClean when the moment should be propitious—and her Eastern wisdom warned her that Jaimihr, foiled, would stop at nothing to contrive vengeance. If he could not seize Miss McClean, he would be likely to use every means within his power to bring about her death and prevent another from making off with his prize. Jaimihr, then, was the most pressing danger.
Second, as a Hindoo, she knew well how fiendishly the priests loathed the Christian missionaries; and it was common knowledge that the Maharajah was cross-hobbled by the priests. The Maharajah was a fearful man, and, unless the priests and Jaimihr threatened him with a show of combination, there was a slight chance that he might dread British vengeance too much to dare permit violence to the McCleans. Possibly he might hold out against the priests alone; but before an open alliance between Jaimihr and the priests he would surrender for his own throne's sake.
So far Joanna could reason readily enough, for there was a vast fund of wisdom stored beneath her wrinkled ugliness. But her Eastern limitation stopped her there. She could not hold loyalty to more than one cause, or to more than one offshoot of that cause, in the same shrewd head at once. She decided that at all costs Jaimihr must be out of the way so that the Maharaja might be left to argue with the priests alone. For the moment no other thought occurred to her.
The means seemed ready to her hand. A peculiarity of the East, which is democratic in most ways under the veneer of swaggering autocracy, that servants of the very lowest caste may speak, and argue on occasion, with men who would shudder at the prospect of defilement from their touch. There was nothing in the least outrageous in the proposition that the sweeper, waiting in a corner for the procession to emerge again so that he might curl on his mat and sleep undisturbed when it had gone, should dare to approach Jaimihr and address him. He would run no small risk of being beaten by the guards; but, on the other hand, should he catch jaimihr's ear and interest him, he would be safe.
“Wouldst thou win Jaimihr's favor?†asked Joanna, creeping up beside him, and whispering with all the suggestiveness she could assume.
“Who would not? Who knows that within week he will not be ruler?â€
“True. I have a message for him. I must hurry back. Deliver it for me.â€
“What would be the nature of the message?â€
“This. His prisoner is gone. A raid has taken place. In his absence, while his men patrolled the city, certain Rangars broke into his palace—looted—and prepared to burn. Bid him hurry back with all the men he can collect.â€
“From whom is this message?â€
“From the captain of the guard.â€
“And I am to deliver it? Thou dodderest! Mother of a murrain, have I not trouble sufficient for one man? Who bears bad news to a prince, or to any but his enemy? I—with these two eyes—I saw what happened to the men who bore bad news to Howrah once. I—with this broom of mine—I helped clean up the mess. Deliver thine own message!â€
“Nay. Afterward I will say this—to the Jaimihr-sahib in person. There is one, I will tell him, a sweeper in the palace, who refused to bear tidings when the need was great.â€
“If his palace is burned and his wealth all ashes, who cares what Jaimihr hears?â€
“There is no glow yet in the sky,†said Joanna looking up. “The palace is not yet in flames; they loot still.â€
“What if it be not true?â€
“Will Jaimihr not be glad?â€
“Glad to see me, the bearer of false news, impaled—or crushed beneath an elephant—ay—glad, indeed.â€
“The reward, were the Jaimihr-sahib warned in time, would be a great one.â€
“Then, why waitest thou not to have word with him. Art thou above rewards?â€
“Have no fear! He will know in good time who it was brought thee the news.â€
They argued for ten minutes, Joanna threatening and coaxing and promising rewards, until at last the man consented. It was the thought, thoroughly encouraged by Joanna, that the penalty for not speaking would be greater than the beating he might get for bearing evil news that at last convinced him; and it was not until she had won him over and assured herself that he would not fail that it dawned on Joanna just what an edged tool she was playing with. While getting rid of Jaimihr, she was endangering the liberty and life of Alwa—the one man able to do anything for the McCleans!
That thought sent her scooting over housetops, diving down dark alleyways, racing, dodging, hiding, dashing on again, and brought her in the nick of time to a ditch, from whose shelter she sprang and seized the hand of Ali Partab. That incident, and her intimation that the missionaries were in Howrah's palace, took Alwa back up the black, blind side street; and before he emerged from it he saw Jaimihr and his ten go thundering past, their eyes on the sky-line for a hint of conflagration, and their horses—belly-to-the-earth—racing as only fear, or enthusiasm, or grim desperation in their riders' minds can make them race.
A little later, in groups and scattered fours, and one by one, his heavy-breathing troopers followed, cursing the order that had sent them abroad with-out their horses, damning—as none but a dismounted cavalryman can damn—the earth's unevenness, their swords, their luck, their priests, the night, their boots, and Jaimihr. Forewarned, Alwa held on down the pitch-dark side street, into whose steep-sided chasm the moon's rays would not reach for an hour or two to come, and once again he led his party in a sweeping, wide-swung circle, loose-reined and swifter than the silent night wind—this time for Howrah's palace. There was his given word, plighted to Mahommed Gunga, to redeem.