Erda Shepherd stood in her bedroom, under the wood-shingled house at Herrnhut, looking at a heap of white muslin and delicate embroideries which lay upon her bed.
It was the wedding dress. She had just unpacked it; partly because she feltdécœuvré, partly in the hope that the sight of it, ready to be worn so soon, would still the vague disquiet of which she was conscious. Yet if anyone had ventured to suggest, when she had said good-by to Lance Carlyon the evening before,--said good-by almost carelessly, by reason of the fervid enthusiasm which absorbed her,--that within twenty-four hours the wisdom of the farewell should seem logically doubtful, she would have been desperately angry.
But she was too honest to deny that the doubt had come. Come in a moment, wildly, passionately, when they had thwarted her desire of joining in the crusade over the other side of the river along the pilgrims' road. She had meant to go with David, who was to take up his position at a camping-ground some six miles off, and she had fought hard for the privilege. But they had quoted Scripture at her to prove that a wife, or a wife to be, must needs hamper a man more than any other woman, even his sister. David had been kind about it, almost too kind. She flushed a little at the recollection of his words, his look; for that sort of thing had scarcely come into her calculations. But Dr. Campbell had pompously reminded her that her future profession would be wife, caretaker, sympathizer, and general bolsterer--up to a worker. Nor need she think the task small; it was the noblest one a woman could have. He had gone on to comfort her with instances of such general support from his own life and those of his friends, until, with a flash, that unexpected questioning had come to the girl's mind. She had asked herself what difference there was in the nobility of being one man's wife or another's--provided the man was worthy and his work in the world good?
Father Ninian's words, "I can wish no better wish for you and for the world," had come back to her then, as if in answer to her questioning.
And, even now, they echoed in her heart. The house was very quiet, very shadowy, for the sun left the little oasis of valley set in its circling wilderness of hill, long before a fraction of light faded from the sky above it. She could hear Mrs. Campbell's voice down the little ladder-like stairs, conferring with the cook over the wedding cake, and, in a side-issue, exhorting him to be sure and have the soup hot in case the workers might return exhausted, and require something to eat the moment they arrived.
Erda sat down on the bed beside the white muslin, and fingered the quaint little cap idly, as she told herself that such things would be a part of her duties in the future.
But only a part. Life was no unknown country to this girl, who had spent years in a medical mission. She was no ignorant baby, standing, in a fashion happily past, on the verge of she knew not what. She looked ahead calmly, taking the world as the Creator made it. She thought, without a flush, as good women do, of the children she hoped might come; and as she thought, she frowned, not from any revolt of her spiritual or physical nature, but because, once more, the question arose: "Was not Lance right? Was not this the essence? Was it not everything to be sure of the inheritance?"
She started up at the sound of her aunt calling her, glad of the interruption.
Had she not better, the good lady suggested, try on the dress, now she was about it, since if there was anything amiss, the sooner the tailor set to work to rectify it the better.
Undoubtedly. Besides, she told herself, the mere putting on of this, the sign of her new profession, would be healthful. It would give her the feeling of being set apart for the life which she had chosen deliberately, chosen with her eyes open, though, maybe, focussed too much on that mental companionship. Too much? Impossible! Lance was wrong. That was the crowning glory of marriage; and even if it seemed hard to have to stand aside from actually fighting the good fight, the victory would be hers--hers almost more than her husband's, since the effort would be greater, the work more against the grain.
Yes, she would try on the dress; and if it did not fit perfectly, what matter?
Was anything in the world perfect? Yet it should be as perfect as she could compass; even the little cap should not lack its bunch of orange blossoms! As she told herself this she was for the time womanhood incarnate; womanhood playing, with dainty little tendernesses and conceits, about the abyss for which it is responsible. So, with the smile of an angel, she passed into the garden, the old militant feeling at her heart. Her feet were on the golden stairs. She was going to regain the lost Paradise hand in hand with one of those whom she had driven from it. They were going to forget all the consequences of that mistake. They were going to be--what?...
The vague confusion did not prevent her feeling that she was absolutely certain she was on the right path. Indeed, the only regret of which she was conscious was one that she was not on the other side of the river, on the pilgrims' road, with the rest of the mission.
She stood looking over to the frowning cliffs from the little wooden landing-stage, built out at the bottom of the garden into the wide shallows of the river, which here showed scarcely a streak or dimple of current. She could see the mission boat lying moored on the other side, against the fighters' return.
Yet the very idea of fight seemed impossible, she thought, in that utter peacefulness and stillness. The rim of dark hills circled the jewel of the sun-bright sky tenderly, as if it sought to keep in the heavy, sweet perfume of the orange blossoms which starred every tree in the wide, fruitful garden. They were famous oranges, those in the Herrnhut garden; grafts brought by a missionary from Malta. Mrs. Campbell, notable woman as she was, made a steady income for good works out of the sale of the great red-skinned, red-hearted fruit, and prided herself in keeping them later on her trees than anyone in India. Indeed, in the shadier, colder alleys some were still hanging side by side with the new blossoms. A sort of example to these novices, showing them what their real work in the world ought to be! Erda, smiling at her own conceit, stroked one of the warm yet stainless petals in the bunch she held as if it were a sentient thing. Perhaps it was. Who knows!
As she turned to go back, warned by a softening of the sky that the time was later than she thought, something showed rounding the smooth, silver bend of the river above; and she paused, shading her eyes with her hand, to see what it was.
A raft. The first of the rafts of wood which at certain seasons were floated down the river to Eshwara. Am-ma's raft, most likely, which he had told her he had to pilot.
Yes! There he was on the quaint contrivance which the river folk used for journeys down stream. A common string bed, no more, no less, supported between inflated bladders of skin. The sight of it gave her a pang to think that she would never more go bobbing, sidling, dipping, racing on one of them, as the mission folk always did when they wanted to stay the last possible minute of holiday at Herrnhut, and get back to Eshwara as quickly as they could. For it took half the time of the winding road, when the river, as now, was quiet and manageable. And Am-ma was the most dexterous manager of the singular craft. There he was, paddling for dear life; now leaping to his great pile of timber, steering it with his paddle round a bend, then back to his string bed with the tow rope, to haul the rudderless mass to a straight line again.
If she had time, she thought, she would have asked him to take her, just once more, as far as the ferry, two miles below. Then she might have walked back through the fields. She had often taken the pleasant little trip with Am-ma. There was no danger so far; but after that, when the river began to slip and slide, even he had sometimes to cut a raft adrift and trust to catching it again in smoother water; since it was not pleasant to have such a crushing neighbour in the eddies and swirls of a lasher.
As she stood watching him, she saw him pause, looking towards her, then leap from the raft and come paddling down stream. He had evidently seen her waiting on the landing-stage, and thought she wanted him; so she shook her head and began to walk back to the house. As she did so an orange caught her eye under a tree, whence it had fallen from sheer red-gold ripeness, and, knowing how Mrs. Campbell mourned a single loss, she gathered it up and took it with her.
Back in her own room, she began to pin her bunch of blossoms in her cap hurriedly, for she had lingered longer in the garden than she had intended, and there was a chance, only a chance, that those much to be envied Church-militants might return and claim her attention.
Still, hurried as she was, she knelt down beside the bed for a moment or two, and, with her clasped hands laid almost caressingly among the soft muslin, prayed that she might wear this symbol of her entry into a new profession worthily.
So, scarcely looking at herself in the glass which, indeed, was too small to show her more than a rather pale face smiling under a quaint little cap, she dressed hastily. Her aunt would be able to tell her if there was anything wrong in the lighter rooms below; here, under the roof, it was already a little dark. Then catching up the orange, she ran downstairs, wondering if the bridal blossoms always smelt so overpoweringly strong, and thinking that, if it was so, they must make the trying ceremony still more trying to one who disliked to have strong scents about them, as she did.
Her aunt was not to be seen in the dining room, so Erda parted the heavy curtains which, in Indian fashion, divided it from the drawing-room, and looked in to see if she were there.
It was at all times a dark room, especially in late afternoon, as now; but the light from behind her sent a shaft straight to the pier glass which stood--the joy of Mrs. Campbell's heart--just opposite the curtains; so making--as the good lady used fondly to say--the room look much larger than it really was to those entering it.
But what the girl saw in it to-day was no illusory enlargement of actualities, no idealization of fact. It was something real, something not to be explained away, exaggerated, or minimized. It was a woman, tall, slender, robed in white; a woman with red-gold hair, edged by the light behind her; a woman with a red-gold apple in her hand.
She stood arrested before herself; helpless before the memory of a voice--
"All straight folds--the sunshine on your hair, and a red-gold apple in your hand--the World's Desire!"
And she had refused himhis. She stood for a second, not thinking at all; simply, with a rush, feeling the truth, feeling herself.
Then with a queer little cry which might have been his name had it been articulate, she broke adrift. Broke, for the time, from all moorings, and possessed with but the one idea that shecouldnot do one thing, that shemustdo another, she turned to the garden, and,--the red-gold fruit still in her hand,--hurried breathlessly through the waning light, through the dead-sweet perfume of the blossoms, till she found herself, she knew not why--save that she must have air, have space--upon the edge of the river.
There was something now swaying idly against the landing-stage; a rude craft buoyed up by air! And there was a rude sort of man in it,--comprehending, yet uncomprehending,--primitive, simple, expectant. "Huzoor!" he said, with broad smiles and outstretched hand. "I have been waiting theHuzoor'spleasure. The Presence will go whither?"
Whither?
Even in her excitement the quaint coincidence struck her as absurd, and yet it seemed to sweep her further still from her moorings.
Whither?
She gave that queer little cry again, and this time it was "Lance! Lance!"
"Whither did the Miss-sahibasay?" asked Am-ma gravely.
The cry turned to a strange laugh. "To Eshwara--where else does the river go--where else?"
The strange, frail boat was sidling against the landing-stage in the pulse of the river; her stranger, frailer self was adrift on the greater river of life. And a hand, heedless, seeing nothing strange in either, careless of all the fine-drawn niceties of culture, had hold of hers.
"So, straight to the centre,Huzoor!I have placed the seat correctly. That is right! The Miss-sahibarecollects the old rules; we shall be in Eshwara before dawn!"
She sat down mechanically, feeling only that she was adrift--adrift on the river that went to Eshwara--where else--and that she was glad; glad because she could not stay, because she could not face--
And then the thought came of facing something else--hisglad delight when she came floating down the river--not dead, like the Lily Maid to Lancelot--but alive--a woman with a red-gold apple in her hand--
She sat staring at what she held, as if hypnotized by its colour, absolutely unconscious of anything else till Am-ma's voice came stolidly.
"We must pick up the raft first,Huzoor. This slave let it drift while he waited for the Miss; but we shall find it at the ferry."
At the ferry! The familiar idea startled her from dreams to the reality.
How came she there? What had she done? What did this mean? A flush of intolerable shame swept to her face; she rose to escape. But Am-ma's warning hand was on hers in an instant; that hand, so heedless of so many limitations, so certain here that there was no escape fromtheselimitations.
"The Miss-sahibaforgets," he said deferentially. "When one is in the stream there is no change possible; but if the place is not right we can alter it at the ferry."
She sat down again, telling herself this was true. She could alter it at the ferry. She could walk home through the fields. No one need know (the quaint craft, rocking itself back to balance, made her feel giddy), her dress was only muslin, she could remove the cap; if necessary, borrow a shawl from the bible-woman near the ferry, saying she had not thought it would be so chilly.
She buried her face in both her hands in a sort of despairing revolt at the duplicity, so, with the red-gold fruit in her lap, sat trying to think. But she could not. The scent of the orange blossoms seemed to cloud her senses. So she raised her face again, and stared at the river. Why had she done this? Why had she put this thing, that she must always conceal, into her life? There would always, now, be something she could not say straight out; and yet if she lived to be a hundred the memory of it would never fade; it would be as fresh as it was now when she died, with David's hand in hers!
The intolerable humiliation of it stung deep; the instinct to escape rose fiercely.
"Be quick!" she cried, seeing Am-ma idle, letting the current do the work. "I want to get there as soon as possible. I must, or something worse may happen. There isn't a moment to spare!"
Am-ma bent towards her from his seat astride a skin air-bag. "Did they kill anyone?" he asked, in sudden interest. "Did the prisoners escape as it was arranged? And was it Carlone-sahibthey killed?--they swore it should be he, because he laughed at the miracle."
"The prisoners--Carlone-sahib--killed!" she echoed stupidly. Then with a great throb of the heart she realized that here might be something of more importance than her self-humiliation. Had Father Ninian been right? Had there really been some conspiracy afoot, and had Am-ma heard?
"I have had no news from Eshwara, Am-ma," she said boldly, "what is this about prisoners escaping, and thesahib-loguebeing killed? Who was going to do that?"
Am-ma looked crestfallen. "I thought theHuzoorhad heard--thatthatwas why she was going. It is nothing. Idle talk. It is always talk. And theHuzoorshave theDee-puk-râg. They must still be kings."
"Am-ma," she interrupted sternly, "you must tell me about this. If you do not, I will take my hand off your son's head--I will never--"
He almost dropped his paddle in absolute terror. "Huzoor" he said helplessly, "it is talk, idle talk. It is always so. All day long, and all night long in the bazaars, and the Masters have theDee-puk-râg. There is no fear; but this slave will tell."
They were almost opposite the ferry before he had finished his tale, and she had grasped the whole tissue of trivialities which yet went to make up so formidable a possibility.
The discontent and dread regarding the canal, the strange lights, the deaths in gaol, the return of the cursed corpse, Gopi--the ticket-of-leave man's--talk of revenge if the cleansing water should fail.
Much of this was new to her, but it hung together with what she already knew; and yet it seemed incredible! What could be the object? What could they expect to do? Here Am-ma had smiled inscrutably, and said the Miss did not know bazaar talk. Everything was possible to it. Had they not even spoken of making a new Nawab out of Roshan Khân, therisaldar?indeed, had not thejemedarat the palace already treated him as one?
And the Pool of Immortality? Had it risen or not? Am-ma could not say. They had asked him with bribes and threats to do the job--that was only the priest's revenge, but it would serve other purposes too--but he had refused, partly because he had to come away, and partly because he was the servant of the Light-bringers. As to when the prisoners were to escape he could not say. To-day, perhaps to-morrow, most likely never; unless something really happened. It was talk. The Miss need have no fear. TheHuzoors, having theDee-puk-râg, must needs be safe, and Carlone-sahibwas a real hero; none braver, none stronger.
That decided her. She had been counting costs as she listened. An hour, say, back to Herrnhut. Even if anyone were there, which was uncertain, half an hour at least to start a messenger. Then the boat might be at the other side of the river. Then all those miles, on a rough road at night!
"When shall we get to Eshwara?" she asked.
"At the turn of the night and day if the river is kind," said Am-ma, but he looked doubtfully into a copper tint that remained in the sky, though the sun must have set behind the mountains. It had a curious effect, that copper-coloured dome above the rim of almost black hills, with the river, dark, mysterious, already beginning to slide towards the narrowing ravine. It did not strike her that she herself, adrift on that river in what was to be her wedding dress, with prehistoric, aboriginal Am-ma as pilot to her and a lumber raft, would have had a still more curious effect to a spectator's eyes. But there were none, and it was already almost dark.
"Am-ma," she said, "I will give you fifty rupees, and keep my hand on the son's head, if you will leave the raft here, and take me as quick as you can to Eshwara--to the little steps below the fort--fifty whole rupees!"
He shook his head and grinned, partly at his own superlative honesty. "We should not go so fast,Huzoor, now the slide is near," he said; "for, see you, the raft is the wood-sahib'snew shape. It is a good shape; it came down the rapids above the valley like a boat, faster thanthis, when the paddle cannot be used. It will take us with it. I will fastenthisbehind, and steer. Then in the slacker water when the paddle is possible, we will leave it; if the Miss-sahibais in a hurry. But there is none. TheHuzoorsare Light-bringers." He had already paddled alongside the raft,--a boat-shaped mass of huge logs rising towards the back--and, leaping to it, came back, after a moment, with the tow-rope.
"It shall do the work," he said, with another grin, as he fastened the air-buoyed bed to a ring placed for the purpose in one of the logs. Then he clucked emphatically. "Lo! who would grudge men's brains to the Masters when they are clever as the Gods themselves? The Miss will see how fast this goes. We shall be at Eshwara before the night turns to day."
Something in his tone warned her that the recurrence of the phrase was not pure chance.
"That is when the prisoners were to escape?" she said quickly.
He did not affirm or deny it. "So many things happen in the fight of Dawn," he said affably. That was all; but she thought rapidly. The rising, or whatever the conspiracy aimed at, could scarcely have happened just after they left Eshwara the night before. In that case the news must have followed them on the road. Therefore, if it was to happen at all, if this were not all talk--and Father Ninian's words came to make her doubt its being so--it would happen in a few hours. So she must be there in time to give warning.
As she thought this, a sudden strain at the tow-rope, a quick dip of the boat-shaped prow of the raft, a louder swish of the water as it curved out from its rising stern, told her she was adrift, indeed, on the way to Eshwara! It seemed almost more incredible than what had gone before. But there was nothing to be ashamed of here. It was the only possible thing to do under the circumstances. Her journey might prove unnecessary, but it might not; and supposing anything should really happen--to--toanybody--she would never be able to forgive herself if, knowing this chance of danger, she had not done her best to avert it.
The copper-coloured glow, into which weather-wise Am-ma had looked, distrustfully, as it domed the little valley set in its rim of hills, had replaced that of sunset in Eshwara also, and Pidar Narâyan's eyes, weather-wise as the fisherman's, looked at it as doubtfully, as he walked home with Lance and Vincent Dering when the long strain at the Pool of Immortality was over.
"If it were not so early in the year, I should predict a dust-storm--a real electrical dust-storm," he said.
Lance, whose hands were full of cut-paper Gods--for in obedience to a sudden impulse, he had stopped on his way through the crowd to buy up the old Brahmin's whole stock in trade, and give him an extra eight annas to go away and not drum any more--looked up also, and filled his broad chest with a great breath. "Perhaps that is it. I've felt choking all day--horrid!"
Vincent Dering laughed. "I don't choke--I tingle; and it is rather jolly. Yes, sir; there is a lot of electricity in the air, and I shouldn't wonder if we had a regular black snorter. Glad it didn't come in the middle of the miracle 'biz', for, as a general smasher-up of ordinary experiences, commend me to a real electrical dust-storm! It seems to attract the earth, earthy, in everything. In fact, if there is such a thing as the Devil, and he ever gets the upper hand, it is then--"
Father Ninian turned to him quickly, and then to the crowd,-through which they were still cleaving that curiously acquiescent way which white faces still cleave through dark ones--"Then I trust, my son," he said gently, "that for your sake andtheirsthe storm may not come."
"Or that there isn't a Satanic majesty!" retorted Captain Dering, cynically. "That, sir, is the easiest way out of the difficulty."
Lance had looked round on the crowd also. "Well! if there is," he said, "and I had to paint him, I'd take that man's face as my model for Lucifer." He pointed to agosainwho was forming the centre of a group of gossipers round a syrup-seller's shop, and added--for he knew his Milton as well as his Shakespeare--"The superior fiend who gives not Heav'n for lost!"
"Looks a bad lot, I admit," remarked Vincent, carelessly. "Have an idea I've seen him before; in gaol, I believe. Yes! I'm sure of it. He is the fellow Dillon told me was going to get his ticket-of-leave for good conduct. He looks scoundrel enough for that! But really, sir--" he turned to Father Ninian again--"I think we may count on their behaviour now." He indicated the crowd. "If there was going to be a row it would have come off before this; now they will settle down, you'll see, and go on to the next camping-ground to-morrow morning as if nothing had gone wrong. They are such creatures of habit; you could see that from their sticking on in expectation of that footling old miracle all day!"
Father Ninian, in that curiously irrelevant way he had, put on the goldpince-nezwhich always dangled over his black soutane, and looked round him again. "They will settle down," he said quietly, "if nothing new crops up to give them a lead into new ways. That is always the danger; and a very small thing does it, sometimes, in India."
They had reached the courtyard which lay between the palace and the Fort, and with a wave of his hand in farewell, he passed along the wall to the former, while the others, striking across the raised union-jack of paths, made for the latter. The yard was crammed with pilgrims on their way to bathe on the river steps.
"Who the deuce are those fellows?" said Vincent, angrily, as half a dozen figures slipped out through the door in the bastion, as they approached, and mixing with the crowd, got lost in it, while the door was closed behind them by some unseen hand. "I'll talk to Roshan about that. He was complaining only this morning that the men were breaking out of barracks. What else can he expect if he doesn't look out. By Jove! I'll teach 'em!"
His first words, indeed, as he entered the outer courtyard of the Fort, was to order a sentry down to close the doors against all comers without a written pass from him, and as he went by the guard-house he gave rather a sharp reprimand to Roshan Khân, who happened to be outside, for not having kept his eyes open while in charge of the Fort during his absence. No one was in future to use the small door; the key was to be brought to him, and all passes were to be stopped for that night.
"Roshan looks in a demon bad temper. I wonder what's up?" remarked Lance, casually, as he passed on through a wicket in the massive closed gates to the inner courtyard, where the officers' quarters lay, hugging the river wall. It was quite a citadel, a distinct fortification of itself, with no entrance or exit except through the outer yard, or by the little flight of steps leading down to the river, at the foot of which Lance moored his canoe.
"He has been sulky as a bear with me these last few days," replied Captain Dering, with a contemptuous smile. "I believe the old Colonel was right after all, and coming here has put wind in his head. I shall have to teach Mr. Roshan that, good man as he is, he is only arisaldar, before long."
"Poor devil," said Lance under his breath. "I'm always a bit sorry for Roshan. He would be a fine fellow--if--if he wasn't so--so civilized."
"Civilized," echoed Vincent, with a laugh. "You haven't seen him fight. I have. Talk of devils; he has got one in him, if you like!"
He certainly had at that moment, when, having gone straight to his quarters after Vincent's reprimand, he found himself alone, and free to show his feelings.
And yet, had he been calm, he could scarcely have told wherein the grievance lay which for the moment clamoured for--no--not redress--revenge.
It was not the first time that he had had to ignore hints, innuendoes, suggestions of Heaven knows what impossible intrigues, as he had had that very afternoon. It was not the first time that, in his position as intermediary between the ignorance of the native soldier and the ignorance of the English officer, he had had to 'ca' canny,' so as not to alienate the confidence of either. Indeed, the consciousness of the necessity for this, by enhancing the value of his services, had always been a pride to him hitherto. And these particular intrigues were so childish; especially if--he paused in his angry pacing of the room, and smiled complacently. Why should he give a thought to an impossible plan, when a possible one lay ready to his hand? If he married Laila, the land, almost the title, would be his of right. It would be easy anyhow to regain. Then with a fresh frown, he remembered Vincent's order. That would upset his plans. He had meant to slip out by the bastion gate just before--say an hour before--dawn, and cross over to the palace. Akbar Khân had arranged to be there to let him into the garden. Now he must make other arrangements. He must find the old eunuch, change the hour and the place; since nothing--no! not all the tyranny in the world--should prevent his carrying out his intention of seeing his cousin, and claiming her as his--his by right. So he must settle this at once; settle it before there was any chance, he told himself bitterly, of his superior officer coming out of the mess--where no doubt he was guzzling swine's flesh and bibbing wine--(that faint amaze at the presence in his own mind of such antiquated half-forgotten ideas assailed him again at this point) to encroach further on his liberty, his privileges.
He had to pass the troopers' lines on his way to the main gate, and the quicksalaams, the ready smiles given him by the men, as they lounged and smoked after their long day on duty, soothed his pride.
The Captain had certainly said they had behaved well--kindly, and discreetly; but whose merit was that? The Englishman's who gave the word of command, or his, who had drilled them to obedience, who lived with them day and night? Without such as he, a native regiment could not be managed, if he chose to give the word. He would not, of course, but if he chose--
He set his teeth as he walked out of the Fort, and met at its very gate that surging tide of patient, eager faces drifting on, and back again, aimlessly.
He need not, as a matter of fact, have feared any further interference from Vincent Dering, for the latter, being very tired after the long day in the sun, and having reason to know that part of the night time, at any rate, which is usually given to sleep would be employed in something better, had, after staving off hunger with what the cook would produce at a moment's notice, and postponing the dinner hour, gone to sleep deliberately, advising Lance to do the same.
But the latter had, rather to his own surprise, found this impossible; not even over a cigar in the balcony above the sliding, rushing river, the sound of which was as a rule sleep-compelling, would sleep come; not even in the cool darkness which was settling on Eshwara, despite the curious hint of glow lingering in the sky.
The air was too electrical, he decided. And then--Erda! He had slept the night before, after she had said good-by so carelessly, without realizing that the good-by was for ever. And he had not had time to think all day. But now, at rest in the cool darkness, looking from his lounge chair down the river to that other balcony, he did realize it. For ever! Yes! that regret was in his life for ever. And he was so young. Only twenty-five.
Why had this come to him?
Erda! Erda,--his heart's desire.
He sat there voiceless, sucking mechanically at a cigar, long since gone out; but that was as much the cry at his heart as if he had allowed himself a fine frenzy of despair in older fashion.
And he imagined her as he had seen her--this way, that way, every way, in an unending torture of visions--until he exhausted reality, and fancy showed her to him in her wedding dress. And then he felt as if he could kill the Reverend David Campbell without shame or fear. He was vaguely ashamed of the lack of shame, however, especially when his fancy led him into endless mishaps which might befall a man, especially a missionary, before his wedding day.
"There they ate a missionary--"
Yes, sometimes; but there was not much time left for that sort of end--
What a brute he was, when the only thing that mattered was that she should be happy and content.
But would she be so?
It went on and on and on, the controversy between himself and that other self, so that he felt worn, and harassed, and dirty, and altogether undesirable, when Vincent, about nine o'clock, reappeared, dapper and scented as usual, in his mess kit, and expressed surprise at finding his companion still undressed. He was hungry as a hunter, he said; besides he wanted to have a decent interval between dinner and turning in. Andthatmust be early, for he had just heard from the police authorities that though everything was quiet for the night, absolutely quiet, they thought it would be safer to have the Pool guarded again at dawn, in case of accidents; since none of the pilgrims, though apparently quite resigned, had as yet gone on.
"They never do till the next day; Pidar Narâyan told me so," commented Lance, crossly. "Why should they rake us up at such an unearthly hour? Why can't they let the people have a row if they want one? I'd like it; give a fellow something to do in this beastly hole."
He went off to dress moodily, wishing savage wishes, so adding, perhaps, to that electricity in the air. And Vincent gave it his quota of desire also, in his reckless determination to regain Paradise, as it was lost, through a woman. And that play of Romeo and Juliet in the scented garden--Juliet, whose bounty was "as boundless as the sea"--was a bit of pure paradise to him. He had never, he thought, been in love before. He had never known what love was. Those other loves of his had been mean, ungenerous, calculating.
So he was at his best, his brightest, during dinner. Lance, on the contrary, was at his worst, his dullest; and Vincent made this his excuse for going to his room betimes. He was not due at the palace till twelve, but he was anxious to ensure the coast being clear, and Lance seemed just in the mood when a fellow sits up sulkily, out of pure cussedness, and drinks whiskey-and-water if he can find a companion on whom to vent his cavillings.
In truth Lance would have liked to do so. He wanted to feel miserable; but after Vincent had gone, and he was left alone in the balcony, sleep began to assert itself. He found even his despair becoming dreamy, and being obstinate, tried to fight against the fact. The result being that he finally fell asleep in his lounge chair with a soundness and unconsciousness usually reserved for bed. Fell asleep, and promptly relaxed into content with happy dreams of Erda's return to him; for his, left to itself, was a healthy soul.
And so were the vast majority of those which, through patient yet eager eyes, were looking into the scarce-lit darkness of the streets, as the pilgrims, crowded into an almost solid mass, seemed to slide with a slow, almost unseen movement, through them. They were waiting for the dawn. If nothing new came before then, they would pass on towards the 'Cradle of the Gods.' So, scarcely seen, restless yet restful, their feet on the next rung of the golden stairs, they waited.
And overhead the young moon had risen with a copper-coloured edge to its crescent of light. For the glow was still in the sky, and the troopers in the Fort, resting, after their long day, in Indian fashion by sprawling on their beds and gossiping, had dragged these beds into the open and discarded most of their clothing, since the night was strangely still and warm. So even the wonder what had become of therisaldar-sahibwas languid.
For Roshan Khân had not returned. And yet, as he sat in a quiet courtyard of the city, with closed doors, realizing how late it was growing, he had no fear of further reprimand. On the contrary, his pulses were bounding with the certainty that he would gain praise. And there was something beyond this mere desire for personal advantage in the keen-witted diplomacy with which he listened, with which he suggested, with which he led the talkers on to tell what it was of the utmost importance that he should know, not so much to himself, as to the Government he served. For his vague discontent had vanished, his well-reasoned, well-founded loyalty returned at this, the first hint at anything beyond the wild, aimless intrigue with which every Indian bazaar teems. But here, in this definite plan, by the collaboration of his troopers, of liberating fifteen hundred scoundrels,--or, at least, desperadoes,--of aping the stroke of action which made the great mutiny of '57 possible, was something tangible. Something which, when known to the uttermost, must be told without delay to his superior officer. A vast pride swept through him, as, when the gongs were striking one,--short, yet with lingering vibration in the dull, still air,--he made his way, fast as he could, back to the Fort. Without him, and such as he, faithful despite limitations, what would the Masters know?
Hours before, as he went out, he had arranged with Akbar Khân that the palace door giving on the great square between it and the Fort should be on the latch only, so that he might slip in at any time and take his chance of hiding in the garden, his chance of seeing Laila before the dawn came and he had to go back to the Fort. The old sinner, indeed, had jumped at this indefinite arrangement, which bound him to nothing; which made it unnecessary for him even to broach the subject of an interview to his mistress. Since what was easier to say than that it had been impossible; as, indeed, it was! Perhaps Roshan Khân had himself grasped this fact; perhaps in insisting on this entry to the garden he had been backing more than his own luck, and had been meditating acoup d'étatof his own. However that may have been, all was forgotten in his newly recovered loyalty, his keen ambition, as he hurried back to the Fort intent on but one thing--the forewarning and forearming of those whom he had long ago deliberately chosen as his masters.
Some of his men were still lounging about on their beds, and he spoke a word to them as he passed, warning them to be ready if wanted. So, leaving them in sudden vague excitement, he passed on to the inner court. Here, where Lance Carlyon's small band of Sikh pioneers were quartered in the long, low building in which the fortified gateway stood, no one was astir. And no lights were visible in the opposite building where Lance and Vincent lived. Doubtless everyone was in bed.
He passed on, therefore, swiftly to the room he knew to be his Captain's, and knocked. There was no answer. He opened the door and looked in. It was empty. A vague wonder assailed him, and he passed on to Lance Carlyon's room. It was empty also, and the vague uneasiness died down. They must be sitting up still in the balcony overlooking the river, where they sat every day after dinner. Stupid of him not to have gone there first; and yet, surely, it was late. Perhaps they were uneasy; perhaps they had already heard! An open letter "On Her Majesty's Service" lying on the dinner table as he passed through the mess room (which was still lit up--sign that the servants had gone to sleep awaiting their masters' call) attracted his attention. He glanced at it, half fearing to find himself forestalled by the police authorities. No! It was from them, as he had seen at once; but it was only that notice for dawn. Ah! what was this? this tiny scrap of paper, which had been twisted to a cocked-hat note, lying caught in the fold of the foolscap, with the two words--"twelve o'clock"--written on it?
In a woman's writing. Roshan knew enough of invitations from Englishwomen to be sure of that.
The vague uneasiness returned, as he went on to the balcony beyond the dining-room. There too, the swinging lamp still burnt, and showed him Lance Carlyon fast asleep in a lounge chair; but no one else.
Where was Captain Dering? Captain Dering, who had the key of the little door in the bastion; Captain Dering, who had had a note with "twelve o'clock" in it?
A sudden thought struck him. If--if there was anything in his vague fear--then, by taking the canoe, which lay at the bottom of the stairs, he could slip down stream, and see--
Forgetting everything else, Roshan stole softly past the sleeping Lance, and went down the stairs.
The canoe was not there.
Then Captain Dering must have taken it and gone--whither?
There was but one place whither he was likely to go alone at that hour of the night; one place, a stair like this leading up to a balcony over the river where he had gone once before with a woman, a woman in a dress which marked her for what she was, really--a dress that marked her secluded--which madethis, shame unutterable!
Roshan's impotent fury rose hot at the inexpressible humiliation. The thought of Captain Dering and Laila alone in that balcony meant but one thing to his inherited ideas. No glaze of romance was possible. It was shame unutterable, irredeemable. Shame that must be revenged without delay. So, forgetting everything else in the world except this, he passed the sleeping Lance once more, hurried back to his quarters for his revolver, and only stopping to see that one chamber at least was loaded, made his way to that door which he knew would be on the latch.
That patient, eager crowd was still thronging the courtyard as he crossed it, pausing a moment beside the great gun which centred the union-jack of raised paths.
The "Teacher of Religion!"
Ay! they needed a teacher, needed a lesson; these aliens, these usurpers, these depravers of women.
Yet, in sober truth, Vincent Dering, at that moment sitting in the little balcony alone with Laila Bonaventura, felt quite virtuous. They had just come in from the garden, where they had been strolling and whispering, and now, as they sat together, without a word, scarcely a thought, in the faint light of the young moon and a red jewelled hand-lamp--which Laila, with that unfailing instinct of hers for all that matched the passionate mystery of the place, had set in a carved niche, where it looked like a votive offering to the unseen image of a saint--Vincent could feel the warm ivory of her cheek against his own, hear the soft chink of her jewels as they slid towards him, following the soft warm curves on which they lay. The red light of the lamp glittered faintly in red stars on the myriad facets of looking-glass with which the vaulted roof above them was adorned. It fell, reddening the red lights on the gold-stiffened crimson waves of her dress, that sent such a bewildering perfume to cloud his senses with passionate content.
A vast tenderness, a vast triumph, surged through him at the thought of her. Who dared to judge her by the narrow standards of to-day--she, who had gone back boldly to realities!
Thiswas what poets had sung since time began;thiswas what the world had exchanged for Paradise!
Juliet! Juliet!
And if he was the "god of her idolatry," she was to him the "dearest morsel of earth."
He bent and whispered the name to her with a kiss.
And as he did so, a step, swift, bold, masterful, sounded in the passage above; the step of one with a right to be there.
Vincent, startled, sat listening; but Laila was on her feet in a second, with a reckless laugh.
"Father Laurence!" she cried. "Well! let him come. I'm not afraid! For he lovedher. Hemustremember!"
So, as a dim figure showed, half seen, in the archway, she stood like a queen, her hand raised, her head thrown back; a sight never to be forgotten.
"There is no use in being angry, guardian," she called, in her full-throated voice. "It is too late for that. Remember--" She paused, gave a slight scream, and flung herself before Vincent.
There was a flash, a second scream, and then the arches rang with the echoes of a pistol-shot.
"Laila! Laila!"
"You damned scoundrel! You've killed her!"
"Laila! Laila!"
There were two voices echoing the woman's name, but only that one pistol-shot. Then two useless clicks of a trigger, before, with an oath, Roshan Khân flung the revolver from him and fled.