Quietly he stole on. A few yards ahead of the spot where he had paused to take his bearings the road was crossed by a path wider than itself, and of such character and appearance as to be almost certain to mislead any but the dwellers in the jungle, or those who, like Bâl Narîn, had traversed it so often as to be fully acquainted with all its peculiarities.
He happened to know it, for it led to a little marsh surrounded lake where the tigers went down at night to quench their thirst, and near which he had waited for them more than once with European sportsmen.
He had lighted his lamp meanwhile, for he always carried one in his belt, and with its help he was examining the ground. Close to the opening of this jungle-road, where it turned off the road to the right, he found a third bead. He went on for some distance and saw nothing, then he retraced his steps. A conviction amounting almost to certainty had come to him that it was down this pathway those poor souls had gone. If so he must follow them. Having looked well to the priming of his revolver, and taken from its sheath the short, murderous-looking knife, which he had used several times with effect in close encounters with his fierce jungle-foes, Bâl Narîn adventured himself into the wild beasts' highway.
At first he found nothing to confirm his conjecture. The character of his surroundings had changed. Instead of the tall kutcha-grass there were about him low, thorny bushes, with here and there a ghostly-looking tree; and nullahs, in which hideous forms of vegetable life were growing, stretched along the sides of the beast-trodden path. A strange way it was, and devious, going straight for a few yards, and then shooting from right to left, as, like the fire-flash from lightning-charged clouds, it followed the track of least resistance. A dangerous region, and Bâl Narîn, being too old a hunter to be caught napping, trod warily. Once, however, he almost lost his caution. It was when the light of his lamp fell on a shred of coloured stuff that clung to one of the spiked leaves of a sickly, stunted aloe. That moment, he has told me, was one of the strangest, the most triumphant of his whole fife. He knew now that the sagacity upon which he prided himself had not failed him in his need. Whether the fugitives were found or not, he had positive proof that they had passed this way.
Meanwhile the darkness that had made Tom curse his helplessness began to assail Bâl Narîn's more subtly tempered senses. He did not mind it. All his greatest enterprises had been carried out in the night time, for it was then that the foes with whom he waged war were at large, and the blackness of the heavens rather quickened than deadened his energies. He drew aside quietly from the beasts' highway, let his lamp, which was burning steadily, shine in front of him, and having twisted some of the gigantic stems of the kutcha-grass into a torch as he came along, he set light to it, and held it flaming over his shoulder. Thus equipped he was far too terrible an object for even the man-eating tiger to tackle. So he went on towards the marsh-surrounded lake.
But what was his distinct object? He could not, I think, have explained it to himself. I found, in fact, when I tried to pin him to this point of his narrative, that a peculiar confusion reigned in his mind. Up to it and beyond it he was perfectly clear. He could tell about everything, even the working of his own mind. Here he faltered and stumbled in his speech. 'Why did I go on?' he exclaimed to me one day. 'Sahib, I must confess to you that I cannot tell. I should have been mad to think that they were alive. I should have been mad to suppose that, if they were alive, I should find them in that darkness. I knew I was going into danger. Think, Sahib, of where I should have been if my lamp had gone out. I thought of that myself. "Billy," I said, "you are a fool. You are running into danger like an ass that has no wit to keep out of it. Go back! Tell them at the camp what you have found, and bring the rajah and his men with you to search this place in the daylight." That would have been the wisest plan, Sahib. Why did I not take it? As I live I cannot tell you. Sometimes,' his voice dropped mysteriously, 'I have thought that it was not of my own will I went forward. The Sahib, being a wise man, will understand. There are things of which it is not well to speak too plainly. The jealousy of the gods is easy to rouse, and difficult to stay.'
I knew what Bâl Narîn meant, and I nodded my approval, whereupon he proceeded with his story. Though, as he had confessed, he was going forward without any distinct aim, his vigilance did not sleep for a moment. His ear, trained to a subtlety of perception such as we, dwellers in towns, and inheritors of the grossness born of luxurious living, can scarcely imagine, was alive to every sound. His eyes searched the darkness. His sense of touch, which was not, as with us, confined to the effects that arise from actual contact, sent out feelers in every direction. Through his delicate nostrils—the subtlest of the nine gates of the body—he interrogated the humid atmosphere, finding separate odours where we should have distinguished nothing but the vaporous distilments of the jungle.
Presently he came to a full stop, lowered his torch, and drew a long breath. Something strange, subtle, impalpable, was floating towards him. He could not for a moment determine what it was or even through which of the sense-avenues it had come; but he knew, he was penetrated with a conviction as strong as death, that presences, either spiritual or corporeal, but other than the beasts of the jungle, were near him.
He paused for fully five seconds, making an effort to define his sensations, and in the meantime he made another observation.
Overhead the darkness grew darker, there was a curious agitation of the air, and he knew that the vast birds of the mountains—the eagle and the vulture—were flying round him in ever-narrowing circles. The dead or the dying, then, were near, and they had scented them from their eyrie in the hills. At this moment, when he had recognised the birds as blots on the blackness, and was straining his eyes to follow their flight, there was a faint glimmer of light in the east from the rising moon. Faint as it was it gave the shikari all the light he needed to enable him to see plainly. He looked up and saw a gigantic bird sailing slowly down the wind. His heart beat, and his blood seemed to bound in his veins as he watched it, for it was taking the direction whence his own sense-perception had come. A second followed, and then a third. By the help of the silver light in the east he was able to keep them in sight. Leaping nullahs, tearing through thick jungle, uttering fierce cries to frighten away the wild creatures that might be crouching in cover, he followed in their track. If he had stopped to think, as he has told me, he could not have done it. Nor would it ever have occurred to him to follow the birds, had it not been for that impression, inexplicable even to this day to himself, that unseen presences were near him. But once started he staggered on. Insects stung him, thorns cut into his flesh, his torch was extinguished, his lamp burned dim. Through all his excitement he realised that if he was left in darkness he was lost beyond hope of redemption. His life-foes would have him as their prey. No one would ever hear of Bâl Narîn again. Once he fell, but he sprang to his feet again and flourished his lamp, and a tiger, disturbed in his lair, rushed by with angry growling that would have chilled the blood of a man of ordinary courage.
But still he held on. The vulture sailed on, swooped down, rose into the air with a harsh cry—was it of disappointment?—swooped down again, and was lost in the jungle. But Bâl Narîn was triumphant, for he had marked the very spot of his disappearance. The second bird and the third sailed up. They helped him to mark the spot. He could not mistake it now, for a tall cotton-tree, whose candelabra-like branches stood out boldly from the silver grey of the eastern sky, was in its immediate neighbourhood. There were few of these trees in the Terai, and they indicated places where the soil was comparatively wholesome. So far as he could judge he was not now very far from the tree which made his landing mark, but there was still a wide nullah to be crossed. Torn and exhausted as he was he experienced some difficulty in getting to the other side, and he considered himself happy in meeting no tiger. He had scarcely force left to grapple with one.
And now, to his measureless surprise, he saw the jungle open out before him. A small clearing, such as those in which the Aswalia villages are planted, only of much more limited extent, lay under his eyes. A low fig-tree, a stunted bamboo, and the cotton-tree which he had already seen, could be dimly discerned through the darkness. Nothing else at first except the three vast birds. They sat side by side under the cotton-tree, as if in hideous expectation of a feast. Bâl Narîn stamped his foot and cried out, and they rose slowly, but they did not go far. They hovered overhead, and it seemed to him that they were watching his movements.
And now, pausing, he could hear distinctly sounds as of fluttered stirring to and fro, and breath drawn labouringly. He trimmed his lamp and went on cautiously, carrying it before him. In a few instants its light fell on a rude shed, made of branches of trees and dried leaves. On the side by which he had approached it there was no opening; but he could see, through the interstices between the branches, that figures were moving about within. Giving it rather a wide berth so as to see before he was seen, he came round to the front, and pulled up for a few moments to observe what was going on.
Within the small enclosure, which was such a hut as hermits dwell in, he saw three figures. Two were on the ground, whether dead or asleep he could not tell, and the third—a slender figure in woman's garments—was going from one to the other, stooping over them, and, as it seemed to Bâl Narîn, weeping bitterly. While he was considering how he should reveal himself without increasing her distress and alarm, she came out to the front of the hut, and, his lamp being turned that way, he saw her plainly. That was a moment which Bâl Narîn will never forget. For an instant he shut his eyes. He was seized with a tremor that seemed to be drawing away his power, and the presence of mind on which he prided himself. Wild as she was, with that haunting terror in her sweet eyes that was never, so long as she lived, to leave them again, there was a beauty and majesty in this face that awed him, he could not have told why. It was like the face of a spirit, he said—of one who had done with the earth for ever. Thus for a moment he saw it; in the next it was suffused with a horror and anguish, such as he had never beheld before. Looking up, he saw the heavens darkened with the wings of the birds of prey that were swooping nearer and nearer to the entrance of the hut, as if they would defy this weak living woman to keep them any longer from the dead.
A cry of unspeakable despair broke from the woman's lips, and she agitated her arms wildly above her head. They retired, settled, approached again, the girl still gesticulating wildly. Then the ping of the shikari's revolver rang through the jungle. Again it sounded, and again, the girl retreated trembling, and two of the birds fell to the ground mortally wounded, while their mate sailed away sullenly to his eyrie in the hills.
Before the echo of his last shot had died away, Bâl Narîn was standing with bowed head before the girl in the hut, and addressing her in his choicest Hindoostani. 'Let me entreat my gracious lady not to fear me,' he said. 'I am a poor hunter from the hills—a man of the Ghoorka nation, to whom the white races are honourable. I saw my gracious lady's distress, and I slew the birds that caused her fear. Can I help her further?'
'Could you help me—would you?' said the poor girl.
'Let my gracious lady try me?' said Bâl Narîn.
At this moment there rang another sound through the jungle—a low whistle, prolonged and flute-like, but curiously tremulous, that seemed to be floating down from above them. The girl pressed her finger to her lips, and a colour, soft as the crimson of the morning, flooded her pale face.
The tremulous, sweet sounds go on—they form themselves into a melody. Ah! What is this? What is this? In a moment—in less than a moment—the poor girl is back again in the past. Under her feet is a carpet of soft, green grass; above, swayed gently to and fro by the breath of a June morning in England, wave the light branches of a weeping willow-tree—the waters of a river lie before her—a boat is cutting through them—it has one rower. Oh! the fair, boyish face—the dreamy eyes—the rapture of adoring love!
'Come where my love lies dreaming,' he sings.
'Yes; I am dreaming. I must awake,' sobs poor Grace.
The sounds go on—distant but clear. 'Dreaming the happy hours away—Come—Come—Come where my love——' Groaning, she covers her face with her hands.
Bâl Narîn, in the meantime, is showing the most extraordinary excitement—shouting, dancing, tossing his hands about in exultation. Returning from her dream, the girl gazes at him in speechless surprise.
'Pardon your servant, gracious lady,' he says, 'if his pleasure lifts him off his feet! My master and I have waited for this moment. As the sick unto death long for the morning, so have we longed for it, and how can I help being triumphant?'
'Your—master?' says the girl, fixing her large, fever-bright eyes upon his face.
'My master—the Rajah of Gumilcund. He is on his way. He will be here soon, if—now the demons of the jungle guide him! Here! here!' he cries, lapsing into his native Ghoorka in his overpowering excitement. 'Look for the cotton-tree! Ah! what a fool I am! He does not know my tongue. Lady, you have a light within?'
Trembling with excitement, Grace ran inside and caught up a little rush-candle—their last!
'One moment, dearest Kit!' she cried, for a little moan had come up from the ground. 'They have found us. Tom—our Tom—will soon be here. He will frighten the dreadful birds away.'
She ran out to Bâl Narîn, who had torn off a dried stick from the cotton-tree and twisted a bunch of withered grass to its extremity. Anointed with the drop of oil left in his lamp and lighted from the rush-candle, it flamed out brilliantly in a moment. He waved it over his head and rushed forward with shouts into the jungle, 'This way, master; this way!'
But in a few instants he returned to the space before the hut, fed his torch with wisps of straw, and caught up the rush-candle. The whistling had ceased, and there was no answer to his frenzied cries. Grace looked up into his face and saw its hazard look.
'Is he not there?' she moaned.
'It is a dangerous road,' he answered, 'and my master is not a shikari like Bâl Narîn. Listen, Miss Sahib! Do you hear that?'
'Thunder. I have heard it several times to-night.'
'Not thunder—the tramp of a herd of wild elephants. Miss Sahib, I must go——'
But Grace did not hear. She had rushed back into the hut. With hands cramped together and beating heart she was crouched on the ground, near the couch of dried grass where she had laid her little Kit, praying that the Father in heaven, in Whom through all these dreadful days she had trusted, would, at this last moment, be gracious to them.
'Save him, oh! Father,' she sobbed. 'Let him take my darling Kit from this awful place, and then my work will be done, and I will go to Thee.'
Over and over again, while Kit's little arms were about her neck and his burning cheek rested on her shoulder, she whispered the same words, 'Save him! Save him!'
Moments passed into minutes. The hold of Kit's arms relaxed, as, lulled by the sound of her voice, he fell back upon the pillow. Her own head drooped. The long and awful watch by the dead that lay in the hut with them—the sudden shock of terror and joy—the suspense—the strain of expectation seemed to be more than her enfeebled frame could bear. Her mind wandered. 'Kit! keep me awake,' she whispered. 'Those awful birds will come again.' But Kit did not hear her. He was dropping off into a doze. Her eyelids fell. Oh! if she could only sleep! If somebody was here—a friend—some one who would watch for her, and keep the birds and beasts away! Ah!—she started up suddenly, wide awake and trembling in every limb. The light that was diffused through the tent—that shone on the rigid form of the old man who had protected them so far, giving at the last his life for theirs, and on the yellow matted curls of poor little Kit—was the light of the moon. There was nothing to keep the wild things out. A convulsive shudder agitated her frame, and she tried to rise but could not. Then she put her face down near Kit's. 'My poor darling,' she whispered. 'It is all over. I had a dream. It has gone—and I have no more strength to fight.'
This, in the meantime, was what had been happening to Tom. When, having provided himself with tinned meats and a bottle of the powerful restorative which he had always on hand, he left the camp, he had turned, by what he spoke of afterwards as a happy instinct, into the track which Bâl Narîn had been following, before the strong impression of human neighbourhood and the eccentric movements of the three birds of prey had started him on his perilous journey across the belt of jungle that lay between the wild beasts' track and the hermit's hut.
He, too, was well-armed with light and weapons, and he went cautiously lest he should be taken by surprise. Suddenly the ping of Bâl Narîn's bullet aroused him. He waited until the echoes died away to make sure of the direction whence the sound had come, and then dashed into another track. He was in great doubt as to whether he was right, for there is nothing more confusing than the sound of firing in a wood. The detonations repeated again and again, and dashed, as it were, from one opposing substance to another, seem to come from a hundred points at once. Instead of approaching Bâl Narîn he might be putting immeasurable distance between them, while, on the other hand, it was quite possible that one of a company of robbers or fugitive sepoys had fired, in which case a deadly conflict would be before him.
The prudent course would have been to retreat while he could, to rouse his little camp, and to take the advice of those who knew more than he did about this dangerous region. Tom, however, never once thought of retreating, for he was launched—launched, as he felt even at that moment of doubt and difficulty—on the last stage of his enterprise; and, if hell and all its legions had yawned at his feet, he was bound to go on.
The path into which he had struck, as being that which seemed to lead in the direction where he had heard the firing, was comparatively easy. As he went on cautiously, throwing the light of his lamp in front of him, he felt surprised that he met with so few difficulties. For a space several yards in width the tall kutcha-grass was so completely trodden down, and the low trees and bushes, with their rank wealth of undergrowth, were so uniformly levelled to the ground, that he could have imagined an army with artillery and baggage-waggons had passed this way. That such a thing was impossible he knew very well, for he had studied the map of Terai again and again with Bâl Narîn. The maharajah's road, which was the only one used for military purposes, was many miles distant from the point they had reached. But what he did not know was that he was in the very track of the monarch of the jungle. Eight months before, when the plains of the north-west were at peace, and the Terai was unhaunted by the deadly fever that, for three-quarters of the year, makes it uninhabitable to all but the savage Aswalias, Jung Bahadoor, who was at that time one of the keenest sportsmen of his generation, brought down from the high Nepaul valley a gallant company of hunters, mounted on tame elephants of proved skill and sagacity, to chase and capture some of the wild elephants that have their dwelling in the morass and jungle, and it was along this road that the hunters had come. A terrible chase it was to any but men mounted and caparisoned as they were, for the wild herd had made it their drive. Hither they came, from the mud in which they had been wallowing—night after night in awful phalanx serried—to drink from a pool in the morass, and to tear down the tall grasses and trees on their passage, for the succulent young shoots that made their food. Had Tom met the dark army, he was lost. Not even the flaming torch, which was a protection from serpents and tigers, would have saved him. They would have rushed over him—crushed him into a grave, where even the birds of prey would scarcely have found him.
Of this danger—the worst that had ever threatened him yet—Tom had no more idea than a child. He trusted for his protection to his torch, his lamp, and his weapons, and all the energies he had to spare from picking out his way were bent on watching for anything that might indicate human neighbourhood. That, at a moment so critical, his mind should have strayed even for an instant from the scenes in which he found himself, seems so strange as to be almost incredible. He was alone; he was surrounded with unknown perils; an object dearer far to him than the preservation of his own life was—or seemed to be—within his grasp; everything might depend upon the way in which he met the next few moments; and yet—I have it on an authority which there is no disputing—at this point his mind began to wander.
He could not help it, any more than he could have helped the curious transfusion of his own thoughts and ideas with those of another, which had come to him now and then since the night when he wandered unbidden into Grace's rose-garden, and dreamed his dream of fear. It came suddenly too, and without, as it seemed, anything to lead up to it. When, thinking to make a signal to Bâl Narîn, he lifted to his lips the flute-like reed which he always carried, and felt his breath quiver through it, he stepped all at once into another world. Instead of the long shrill whistle he had intended to send forth, it was the notes of a melody, which he had sung a year ago, floating with oars suspended, on the reach of the silver Thames by the lawn of the General's little garden, that stole out on the pestilential air of the wild beasts' haunt—'Come where my love lies dreaming—dreaming the happy hours away.' Was it his own voice—or was it the voice of another? He paused and looked round him trying to collect his thoughts. Ah! to him too the scene is changed. What are these—what are these—that come towards him out of the darkness? Old hopes—old memories, old dreams. He is the Indian rajah no longer—he is the English boy, into whose heart the honeyed sweetness of a new land of promise is stealing. 'My love! my love!' under his breath he whispers the magic words. And then again he lifts the reed to his lips, and again the melody that he dared to sing long ago, close—close to his darling's rose-bower—floats out upon the air. 'Come! Come! Come where my love lies dreaming!'
Unconsciously—blindly—he was rushing on. He did not hear the thunder behind him, and the mad cries of Bâl Narîn made no impression whatever upon his senses. Why he swerved aside—how it came about that he should have dashed into the jungle and precipitated himself into the deep nullah that yawned close by, he never knew. He thought he saw the flashing of silver water through trees—this is the only explanation he could ever give. But, meanwhile, as bruised and shaken, he lay in the slime, wondering what had come to him, and bitterly cursing himself for his folly in not being able, at a crisis so momentous, to keep his wits about him, the black army that had been marching in his rear, dashed over the spot where, but a few moments before, he had been tranquilly walking.
It took Tom some little time to recover his breath, climb to the edge of the nullah, and shake off the mud from his clothes. That time, as we know, had been spent by Grace in frenzied prayers to Heaven, and by Bâl Narîn in no less frenzied ejaculations and gestures. When silence fell upon the hut and silence upon the jungle—a silence fearfully broken by the earth-shaking tread of the herd of elephants—when he whistled and shouted, and fired wildly over his head, and no one answered, he made up his mind that all was lost. The young lord whom he had accompanied for gain, and clung to in despite of his own better judgment for love, had met with a sudden and fearful death at the very moment when his end was won.
Overcome for a few instants by pity and sorrow, Bâl Narîn covered his face and wept.
A desire came over him then to see what was left of his unfortunate young master, and leaving the little clearing he plunged into the jungle. His senses being far better trained than Tom's, he had no doubt whatever about the direction he should take. The last articulate sound the rajah had made, before darkness and silence swallowed him up, came from a point known to Bâl Narîn, who had been one of the mahouts in Jung Bahadoor's famous hunt, as a sharp curve in the elephants' drive. For this point he was making as speedily and cautiously as he could, when a tall figure—bareheaded, and covered from head to foot in a coating of mud—stood suddenly before him.
Grasping his weapon, Bâl Narîn challenged the man. He was answered by a voice that made his heart leap into his mouth. 'Don't you know me in this disguise, Billy?' it asked.
'Rajah Sahib'—cried the poor fellow passionately. 'Forgive me. I would have searched for you amongst the dead. Now thank the gods and the demons of the jungle, who have been favourable to his Excellency!' And he fell down before him and held him by the feet.
'Get up, you foolish fellow!' said Tom, who was touched, although he would not show it, by his devotion. 'I have fallen into a mud-bath, and got myself into a pretty mess; but why you should have thought me dead, I confess I don't see. You must have come this way yourself, since I find you here.'
'This way, that is true, Rajah Sahib, and why I came only the gods know. But I kept clear of the Elephants' Chace. I would no more have adventured myself there than I would have slipped my neck into an enemy's noose.'
'The Elephants' Chace,' stammered Tom, 'was that road——?'
'It is the deadliest road in all this region for a man not furnished as a hunter,' said Bâl Narîn. 'And the herd has just gone by. How his Excellency escaped is a mystery.'
'The herd—of what, Billy——?'
'Does not my lord know——?'
'I understand,' said Tom, a shiver, which he could not control, running through him. 'Wild elephants! My life must be valuable to some one, Billy. Yes; I heard them. I thought it was thunder. I must have only jumped into the nullah in time. And I wasn't trying to escape. Well! it is over now, so there's no use thinking about it. I will stick to you for the future, my good friend! Why did you separate yourself from us last evening?'
'If I tell my master, he will scarcely believe me,' said Bâl Narîn.
'Billy! Billy!' Tom was trembling from head to foot. 'You have found something.'
'I have found those his Excellency is seeking.'
'What? The English lady and the child. And in life? Billy, you are torturing me. Speak plainly. No; no; I cannot bear it. Don't speak at all. I shall see. And yet—where has my manhood gone? If they are dead——'
'Master, they are not dead.'
'Not? Now Heaven be praised!'
'Yes; but my master must be careful. See! there are pits here! If his Excellency goes in so headlong a fashion, he will break his limbs, and how will that profit his friends? Let him follow me, and I will take him where they are.'
'Yes; yes; I will follow you—my good guide—my noble guide! If all I have can recompense you, it is yours. But it cannot.'
'That my master gives me his confidence still is all I ask,' said Bâl Narîn.
'My confidence! I am bound to you for ever and ever. From this day I look upon you as the nearest and dearest of my friends. But how, in the name of heaven, could you have found them in this thicket?'
'That is a long story. Some day I will tell my master. But truly those he loves are favoured by the gods, for the birds and the beasts that are their children have helped me in my search——'
And there he broke off, for they had leapt over the last nullah that separated them from the clearing and the hermit's hut; and the moon having risen and floating freely overhead, Tom saw, as Bâl Narîn had seen before him, the little enclosure of dried twigs and leaves; but within there was darkness, and no one was moving to and fro.
How Tom lived through the next few moments he never knew. The next thing of which he was distinctly conscious was standing in front of the hut and looking within and seeing nothing but blackness. As he groped forward with arms extended blindly, Bâl Narîn, who had been busy kindling another torch, came up behind him, and the flashing light flamed suddenly upon a spectacle that made Tom's heart stand still, and brought a wild cry to his lips.
There were three figures in the small enclosure. On one side, rigid in death, lay the fearfully emaciated body of an old man. A couch of dried grass was his bier, and his limbs were covered with the long robe that he had worn in his lifetime. On the other side, the little heap of grass on which he lay pressed close against the opposite side of the hut, and as far as possible from that sight of fear, was a child with golden hair, whose tiny face, thin and pinched with suffering, bore upon its lips the tranquil smile of sleep, or her twin-sister death. This in the flashing of an instant Tom saw. But it was not this, for all its pitifulness, that brought the sick chill to his heart, and that wrung from his lips that tortured cry. For he saw something else.Shewas lying there—his love—his darling! On the damp floor, but close beside the couch, and with arms outspread, as if her last conscious effort had been spent in defending the child, she lay before him motionless. She did not stir when Bâl Narîn's light fell upon her. The cry of irrepressible anguish that had broken from Tom brought from her pale lips no answering note of recognition. It was as he had so often dreamed it would be. He had found her, indeed; but she was dead—dead—dead!
For the space of an instant he paused. Love and a reverence that almost slew him were waging war in his heart. He was sick with the longing to raise her in his arms, and press her against his breast, and breathe into her lips of his own life and energy, and he dared not.
In that instant Bâl Narîn looked over his shoulder. 'Quick, master, quick!' he cried. 'They are not dead. This is the shock of a great joy. A few moments ago the gracious lady was speaking to me. Bring her out under the moonlight. And here are my chuddah and girdle to make her a bed. You have the cordial?'
'Yes, Billy; I have the cordial. Thank God that I remembered it. So!' as he lifted up the light form in his arms; 'gently! gently! Take away the torch, Billy. Let there be nothing to frighten her when she awakes! And the child, poor little Kit! bring him out—let him be near her! God! how light she is! My sweet one! my love! how you must have suffered! But it is all over now!' He laid her down reverently on the couch that Bâl Narîn had prepared, and wet her lips with the cordial. Then her eyelids fluttered, and a tremor ran through her limbs, and her lips parted in a long, shuddering sigh that went straight to Tom's heart. He was chafing one of her hands softly. 'My poor love!' he whispered. 'Is it cruel to bring you back? Have you suffered enough? But you shall never suffer again—never, so long as I have life and strength to protect you. Will you not open your eyes and look at me?'
Her lips parted, though her eyes were still sealed. He stooped over her and caught one word—'Kit.'
'Kit is safe, darling. My good friend Billy is with him. Ah! I hear his voice.'
Not his voice only. It was a little feeble laugh that came at that moment from the door of the hut, for Kit, who was a proficient in children's and bearers' Hindoostani, and Bâl Narîn were already on the best of terms.
'Do you hear?' said Tom. 'Do you hear him, Grace?'
'Thank you,' she whispered.
Then her eyelids lifted, and her sweet eyes, deep with the passion of pain and horror that, so long as she lived, would haunt her, rested upon his. 'You are our Tom,' she said.
'I am Tom. Your Tom——'
'I have something to tell you. It is very strange—very horrible. I don't quite understand it myself. Sometimes I think it is a dream; but, if it were——'
'Dearest, you must tell me nothing now. See! You are exhausted. You have suffered so much. And we are here now, Billy and I, to look after your little Kit and you. Let me give you some of this cordial—it is better than food—and then go to sleep and I will watch over you, and in the morning, which is very near, dearest Grace, Billy and I will carry you through the jungle to our camp.'
She did as he begged her. She was as weak as a little child, and the feeling of security, absent from her for so many long days and nights, was of itself enough to make her drowsy. But before she settled herself to sleep, she opened her eyes once more.
'Rungya is in there,' she whispered. 'He died for Kit and me. You won't let the wild birds have him?'
'No; Bâl Narîn shall watch.'
'He killed two of the birds,' said Grace. 'They were watching for us. I could not keep them away.'
And then her eyelids fell, and she slept peacefully until the morning.
Kit slept, too. He was in Bâl Narîn's arms, just as he had thrown himself when he had eaten biscuit and tinned meat and drunk a glass of cordial. The guide had, in the meantime, lighted a large fire, which blazed and crackled, keeping effectually all the wild things away. As he held the little one, and fed the fire with dried grass and sticks, he and Tom were holding a council of war. Which would be the best plan—to carry Grace and Kit between them to the spot where they had left the men and waggons, or for Bâl Narîn to rush thither at once and bring assistance?
Billy was for the latter alternative. He would take an hour to go, and an hour to come back. By the time the sun was well up they could start together.
But Tom, who, since the adventure of the previous evening, which might have had so terrible a termination for himself, clung to his Ghoorka guide as to a sheet-anchor of strength and hope, was of a contrary opinion. 'Let us keep together, Billy,' he said. 'To-night we have both escaped from almost certain death, and how can we expect to escape a third time?'
'But, Sahib, consider——'
'I have considered. If there were ten bearers I should carry her myself. And you, if you will, shall help me. How if we contrived a litter——?'
'Out of our garments and those of the holy man,' said Bâl Narîn.
'He will not want them any more——'
'We must burn him, Sahib. That is the burial for the Hindu-Saint. Before we leave this place we will fire the hut.'
'Could we do it now, while they are sleeping?'
'I am afraid of the flame spreading, Sahib. With the first break of day, I will set my torch to it, and we shall be far on our road before it blazes high.'
Giving Kit over into Tom's arms. Bâl Narîn proceeded to make his arrangements. Out of the hermit's robe and the rajah's upper garment, and a long straight branch from the cotton-tree, he devised such a litter as could be carried on the shoulders of two men: then he took a parcel of dried twigs and grass into the hut, scattered them over the old hermit's body, and anointed them with oil. This done, he went outside again, cleared from the neighbourhood of the hut everything of an inflammable nature, cut two or three stout stakes from the cotton-tree, and hammered them into the ground at a sufficient distance from the hut to allow of their escaping from the fire that was presently to consume it.
'Rungya was a holy man,' he said, in explanation, 'and the time may come when his friends and disciples will wish to do honour to his ashes. We leave these stakes as a signal.' By the time all this was done the light of the morning was beginning to peep in the east, and the wild world of the jungle was sinking to rest.
'It is time for us to move,' said Bâl Narîn.
Tom looked down regretfully at Grace's sleeping face. 'Couldn't we wait a little?' he said. 'It seems such a pity to disturb her.'
'We will not awake her,' said Bâl Narîn. 'Will his Excellency allow me?'
Tom moved aside while, with a dexterous gentleness which he envied but could not emulate, the clever Ghoorka, who in his youth had served an enforced apprenticeship to a robber tribe in the plains, transferred the sleeping girl from her bed on the ground to her bed on the litter.
Kit, in the meantime, had awoke. He was much stronger, he said, though to Tom his poor little legs looked piteously weak and slender. It was possible for him, however, to walk, and when he was tired Bâl Narîn said he would carry him on his shoulder. Then a match was applied to the touchwood under the hut; Grace, who had only stirred once, was lifted slowly and carefully to the shoulders of her bearers, and, with light hearts, they set out to rejoin the rest of their party on the robbers' road.
The sleep which had fallen upon Grace when she knew that her task was done, lasted for many hours. Passing through the air, resting for brief spells when the shoulder of the rajah, which was unaccustomed to weight-carrying, threatened to give way, taken up again with reverent care, and lifted skilfully over the various obstructions of the way, she neither moved nor spoke. Tom would, now and then, look at her with alarm; but Bâl Narîn smiled.
'The gracious lady is a child of the Supreme Spirit,' he said, 'and this is His sleep which has fallen upon her. When she awakes, Sahib, her trouble will be gone.'
'Grace never slept,' said Kit, who was perched now on Bâl Narîn's unoccupied shoulder, and holding on by his head, 'after Rungya died.'
'How long was that, my little Sahib?' said Bâl Narîn.
'I don't remember,' said Kit wearily. 'A long time, I think. The big birds came and frightened us. Grace had some candles and she lighted them. I tried to keep awake; but I couldn't. She kept awake always.'
'She is making up for it now,' said Tom from the other side of the litter.
'Yes, she is sleeping beautifully,' said Kit. 'She'll be all right when she awakes, won't she?'
'All right? What do you mean, Kit?'
'She used to look so funny—just as if she were somewhere else. She didn't look so at first, when that dreadful man was with us—but'—pulling himself up, 'I mustn't say anything about that. I promised.'
'No,' said Tom. 'Grace will tell us everything herself when she awakes.'
What the sleep was to her—how delicious it had been to close her eyes, and to let herself drift away on the sea of unconsciousness that, for these many days, had been wooing her; to half open her eyelids just to be sure that she had not dreamed this strange and sudden bliss, and then to close them again; to hear, without understanding, Kit's bird-like voice throbbing through the air, and Tom's grave, kind answers; to know that there was no need for her to rouse herself, that she might sleep—sleep till the death-like languor had gone from her limbs and the pain about her heart was stilled—of the rapture of all this what tongue can tell? Only those who have passed suddenly, as I did once, from peril and anguish, and the mad terror of the hunted, to perfect rest and security, can have the faintest idea of what it means.
It was impossible, meanwhile, that their progress could be swift, for they could not tear straight through the jungle as they had done the night before; and Bâl Narîn had to make many a detour to avoid the wild beasts' haunts.
When the sun rose, he rigged up a leafy umbrella, which he fixed at the head of the litter, and under it Grace lay like a sylvan queen being borne in a trance to her woodland home. At last, after three hours' steady tramp, they came out into the robbers' road, and sighted their waggons and horses in the distance.
There had been much excitement in the camp. When they arose in the morning, and Abiman, one of the Ghoorka soldiers, reported that the rajah had left them shortly after moon-rise in search of Bâl Narîn, and that neither of them had returned, it was felt that some calamity must have happened.
'This is what comes of killing a serpent,' said Abiman to Purtab; and, indeed, Purtab's conscience had already been reproaching him.
But when a swift-footed coolie, who had run back to see if anyone was coming, rushed into camp with the joyful news that the rajah and Bâl Narîn were on the road, and that they carried a litter between them—then Purtab and Abiman changed places.
'The gods have won the day,' said Purtab seriously, 'and the demons of the jungle may mourn.'
Everyone knew what to do, for the rajah had often prepared his followers for this moment. In a trice the coolies dragged out and rigged up the tent which was held in readiness, and the water-carriers brought water from a neighbouring stream and heated it in jars over the camp-fires, and the bearers unpacked the soft cushions and fresh garments with which Gambier Singh had supplied Tom, and laid them out temptingly, and toilet-appliances were hunted out from their cases and set in order, so that before Grace, who had been brought in and set down amongst them, had found strength to open her eyes, her tent in the jungle was as well-served with all that was needful for her refreshment and comfort as the room from which she had fled when insurrection broke out in Nowgong. So wonderful are Indian servants.
As for Tom, when he came in and looked round, he was so glad and thankful that he would fain have scattered, then and there, rich largesse amongst his people; and it was fortunate, perhaps, both for himself and his guests, that he had nothing at that moment to dispense but promises.
It was Kit who took Grace by the hand and led her into the tent, and it was Kit who served her with the tea and biscuits which had been prepared for her. They were together for a few minutes, and then he came out, and dropped the curtain, and they saw that there was an awed look on his little face.
'She is somewhere else still,' he said to Tom; 'but I think if we don't make any noise she will come back to us.'
'You are sure, Kit?' said Tom, in a broken voice.
'She always came back when she could sleep a little,' said Kit. 'Poor old Rungya used to watch sometimes. Then he died. I will look, in and see how she is presently,' he added, with an encouraging nod, and then he went on to play the hero, and to be petted and tenderly cared for by the Indian servants.
They happened to be in a comparatively wholesome region when they halted, and it was decided, in the brief consultation which Tom held with his followers, that they should remain where they were for that day and part of the next night, starting for the Maharajah's Road with the rising of the moon. Grace and Kit would have a cart to travel in, so, although their progress would be slow, the fatigue would not be great, and as there would be no need now for any of those tentative flights into the open spots amongst the jungle that made their former journey tedious, they would get over the ground more quickly. Bâl Narîn calculated that in two or three days, at the outside, they would reach the Maharajah's Road, at the point where they left it. Here Tom hoped to pick up Hoosanee. It had been arranged that if he found no trace of the fugitives on the lower slopes of Sisagarhi, he should return to the point where the cavalcade had divided, and wait there a certain specified time for his master, after which time, should no news come, he would hasten back to Gambier Singh, acquaint him with what had happened, and ask his advice. It was almost certain now that the rajah and his party would reach the meeting-point before the time agreed upon, and Tom's only fear was that Hoosanee, who was so much of his friend that he longed to let him know speedily his success and happiness, would not be there so soon. But, in such case, a plan for communicating with him could soon be devised.
After all this, having heard through Kit that Grace wanted nothing, the rajah and Bâl Narîn gave themselves up to the rest which they needed so sorely. The hours of the day rolled on. The sun rose high in the heavens, and a deep noontide silence, unbroken by the noises that at dead of night and early morning make the jungle terrible, brooded over the camp. Everyone slept but the two or three who remained on watch to keep the camp-fires burning.
It was in the midst of this silence that the English girl came slowly to herself. Up to this she had been in a dream. All she had distinctly realised was that she might rest—that the strain, which had tried her to the utmost limit of endurance, was over. Now, as she opened her eyes and, by the light that stole in through the canvas walls and closed chicks, saw the curtains of rose and amber, and the pretty camp-furniture, and the fresh garments, and the bowls of clear water, she began dimly to understand that this was not a dream, such as those that had visited her in her wanderings, but a reality. The gates of the dear old life—the life of safety, and love, and reverence—were opening to her once more. It was the horror she and Kit had lived through that was the dream. This was true.
For the first few moments her mind was too weak to be able to take in anything more than this: she was with her own people: she was travelling back into the past: some day, if God was gracious to her, she might see her mother and her sisters again: she might give up her darling Kit to his friends. Then, gradually, as her mind grew stronger, the events of the night, and of the days that had preceded it, shaped themselves before her.
They had been on their way to Nepaul. The good Rungya, who had rescued them one night from a horde of brutal villagers, had promised to take them thither, and place them under the protection of the minister, Jung Bahadoor. They had crossed the plains and entered one of the great sâal-forests of the Terai together. Then their cart broke down, and the animals sickened, and word came to them that a party of fugitive sepoys, who had taken up robbery as a profession, were haunting the great highway. So they turned aside, walking painfully on foot through the jungle, till they reached the Aswalia village. They had scarcely left it before Kit sickened with the fever. They carried him on between them, hoping to reach opener ground, where they might rest, when Rungya bethought him of the clearing into which they turned. A holy man, a Brahmin, who had passed through his life's different stages, and who was preparing himself in solitude and meditation for his eternal rest, lived there once. Rungya had visited him when his own life was lusty within him, and had kissed his feet reverently as a spiritual teacher. It could not be that the holy man was alive still; but his hut, which even the savage tribes of the jungle would respect, might be standing, and it, for a few days, would afford them shelter. Before they reached it Kit began to mend; but Rungya was stricken down. For two days Grace tended him as if she had been his daughter. On the third day he died; and then began that awful struggle between the heroic girl and the wild things of the wilderness, which had nearly reached its limit when Bâl Narîn found her. How long it lasted she could not tell—neither could Kit. When it began they had water and rice, and faggots for firing; when it ended their little stock was exhausted. She dared not leave the hut so much as to cut a stick of wood or fill her brass lota with water at the pool. It was like a horrible siege. The wild things without; she and her dead and dying within.
Slowly and painfully her mind travelled on. She remembered the determined attitude of the three great birds, and her own wild tempest of passion. She remembered vividly the ping of the shikari's bullet, and the fall of her enemies, and his friendly address. After that came a terror which she only dimly recalled, and which was followed by a blank—a peaceful falling away into forgetfulness.
That she had been taken from her dangerous position, and that she had heard Kit laughing and talking beside her was all she knew for certain.
The effort of thinking was great, and she fell into another brief sleep. When she awoke the day had begun to decline, and the camp was astir. Grace was stronger. Her mind worked fitfully. She was like one who is in search of something, and who has a clue which makes him believe that he will not be long in ignorance.
Suddenly, like a flash of light in midwinter darkness, there rose before her a scene out of the past—a little room, with bare mud walls and costly furniture: in its midst an Englishwoman, dressed in Oriental robes, and lovely as a vision, with soft eyes and dimpled cheeks, and a little voice like rippling waves on a pebbly shore. She—Grace—is standing before her. Her hands are bound; her face is stained; her garments are dirty and ragged. How vividly she feels the contrast between them! The lady in Oriental robes feels it too. She laughs—not brutally, as one who exults over a fallen enemy; but with gushing gladness like a child. 'Dearest Grace!' she says, 'this is shocking! What has come to you; and where, in the name of Heaven, is your rajah?' There is no answer. Grace cannot speak. The little rippling voice goes on: 'I think he is here, dear; but we cannot let him see you. You are so beautiful. You would turn his brain.' Silence again, and then: 'Won'tyou speak to me, you serious young person? Am I too frivolous for your taste? Well! but never mind. I mean to give you your liberty, now at once! Such fun! While Tom is in the fort expecting to see you! A friend of your father's, one of his favourite Soubahdars, will take care of you, and no doubt you will reach the English lines in safety'—and then there rises before her suddenly the wicked face with its sinister smile——
In a moment—in less than a moment—it sprang before her. She had no force to go further. There was something to be remembered still; something horrible; something that she would have to think out and tell before she had peace. But this for the moment was enough. It was the cry of her heart, the strong rapture of conviction, which, through all the shame and agony of those awful moments, had been present with her, that she remembered now.
'Tom is looking for us! Tom will find us!'
Tom, then, had traced them into the jungle. Tom had sent the shikari to slay the birds. Tom had taken them into his keeping and was transporting them to a place of safety. There had been war between him and the White Ranee and he had conquered.
Weary and spent with this strange flight of memory, she sank back and closed her eyes. But she could not rest any longer. An impulse, dead for all these terrible days, but so much a part of herself that even now she could not imagine how it had ever slept, was rising up within her.
Once more she opened her eyes, and this time they fell on a mirror which an officious servant had placed near her. She propped it up in front of her, and gazed at herself, and a blush of maidenly shame tinged her pale face. Was she Grace—Grace who had been so proud and dainty? Ah! but she had forgotten Grace. Grace must have lived long ago in some other world. Grace was a memory—a dream—it was this haggard woman, with the ragged robe and tangled hair, who was the reality. But could not Grace come back again?
With a swelling heart she looked round her. Some one had thought of this too. Everything she could want, clear water and English soap, and fresh and lovely garments were in the tent. If only she had the strength, she could, in a few minutes, make herself fit to be seen. Slowly and painfully she rose from her couch. How weak she was! Could it be she, her very self, who only yesterday had withstood the wild beasts and birds of the jungle? When she was on her feet she staggered and nearly fell; but she would not give up till she had washed the stains of travel away and put on the robe of pale blue and snowy white, which was lying ready for her. Then, once more, she looked into the mirror. Very white and haggard was the face that gazed upon her, and the eyes—oh! what was it? What was it? She dared not look into them. There was some awful tale; some picture of horror that would not fade, behind their half-dropped lids; something that was not Grace—that never would be. And yet she was happier, more tranquil, than she had been. The fresh water and the fair garments had helped her to dream that she was herself once more. She was ready to meet her deliverer.
She saw Kit's face first. He had been sleeping too—close to Bâl Narîn, whose large, kind presence had, from the first, inspired him with confidence, and now he had awoke, and his new friend, who was one of the most versatile of men, being as well able to nurse a child as to snare an elephant or to kill a tiger, had taken pleasure in washing from his face and hands the stains of travel, and combing out his long golden curls, and dressing him in smart new garments. So when Kit stole in softly to see if his dearest Grace was awake, he almost startled her by his beauty. It was the little fine gentleman of Nowgong, before the revolt, the adored of Englishburra sahib-logand native servants—who had come back. Kit was surprised too. He stopped short just inside the tent and broke into a little laugh. 'Who made you so pretty, dearest Grace?' he said. 'Was it Tom? Billy dressed me.'
'And who is Billy?' asked Grace.
'Oh! don't you know Billy. He's the shikari that killed the birds. He's told me all about it, and how he found us. But I must go and find Tom.'
'No, no—come here first!' said Grace softly. 'Is it quite—quite—true, Kit? Isn't it a dream?'
'You can pinch me if you like,' said the little fellow. 'I don't mind. Do you think I look nice?'
'You look lovely, darling. I never saw anything so strange. Somebody we know has thought of everything, Kit. To think that we should find new dresses in the jungle!'
'It's Tom, I know,' said Kit with conviction. 'He's a big man here, like Dost Ali Khan, only bigger. The fellows call him the rajah. But, I say, you mustn't keep me, dearest Grace. I promised to let him know the very minute you were awake. I looked in twice and you were asleep.'
He gave her a hug, and ran out; but looked back to say, with a little nod, 'They're getting dinner ready,sucha jolly one! Can't you smell the cooking? Tom knows how to do it, I can tell you.'
Yes: Tom certainly knew how to do it; this Grace said to herself with a smile. But there was a tremor at her heart all the same. What was she to say to him? How could she make him understand her passionate gratitude? While she was thinking he stood at the door, for Kit had found him close by. 'May I come in?' he said, raising the chick.
'Oh yes—yes; come in,' said Grace, half rising from her couch. 'I wanted to see you; I wanted to thank you.'
'And that is just what I can't let you do,' said Tom, as quietly as he could for the furious beating of his heart. 'Are you comfortable?' he went on, looking round. 'Have my people done all they can for you? If you will deign to come with me to Gumilcund, we can do much better; but here——'
'Oh,' cried Grace, with a little agitated laugh; 'but it is just this that is the wonder. It is like a miracle. Howdidyou—howcouldyou have done it?'
'It is my best—I think it is my best,' stammered Tom. 'I wish I could have brought some one who knew you better—your mother, or one of your sisters; but the way was so rough. I was afraid of their breaking down. Is there anything else? Am I tiring you? Had you rather not see me until you are stronger? I would—woulddieto give you comfort or relief.'
'I know you would,' said Grace simply.
'Oh! thank you,' said the poor fellow in a broken voice. 'It is infinitely good of you to say so; and indeed—indeed it is the simple truth. But'—trying to smile—'dying isn't of much use, is it? If you had died, you couldn't have saved Kit, and, if I had died, I should never have found you. You are sure you have everything you want?' he added, looking round with a sort of piteousness in his face. 'I know very little, you know, about what ladies want; but if there is anything—these Indians are wonderful people——'
'No, no; there is nothing,' said Grace. 'Wonderful! They aremarvellous; they can almost create. I shall never forget what Hoosanee was to us—' she was speaking rapidly and in little broken sentences—she wanted to put him at his ease; but she felt so strange herself. 'Where is he?' she went on. 'In Gumilcund, I suppose?'
'Ah! poor Hoosanee!' said Tom, smiling freely now. 'He wouldn't be left, Grace. He fell in love with you, like everyone else; wanted to start off at once and find you alone; but of course, I couldn't allow that, so he came with me. I owe it to his love and devotion that I am here now.'
'Then he is in the camp. Poor brave Hoosanee! I should like to see him.'
'But I am sorry to say he is not in the camp. I sent him off to the mountains three days ago, to search for you there. I hope he will join us presently.'
'And have you been looking for me ever since I was taken away?' said Grace.
'I should have looked for you till my hair was grey and my limbs were withered, Grace. I have found you much sooner than I thought.'
'It may not be so long as I think,' she murmured. 'To-day it seems to me that ages—eternities—have gone over my head since the night I was carried away. This morning I was trying to think back and—I could not—'
There came a pitiful agonised consciousness into her face that frightened Tom. 'Don't,' he said beseechingly. 'There is no need. Put all those dreadful memories away! Let us go back, both of us, to the dear old days. Do you remember, Grace, our gardens that nearly touched, and the little wicket-gate, and the river? What a plague I must have been to you sometimes!'
'I think you were pretty tiresome,' said Grace, smiling.
'Ah! but the girls were tiresome too. Trixy and Maud—how they used to tease me! And the General was just as bad. I can feel the grip of his hand on my shoulder now—that night he found me, what he would have called philandering in his compound.'
'Father was very downright,' said Grace. 'But he liked you, Tom. I don't think there was anyone he liked better. Dearest father! I am afraid he must have been dreadfully miserable about me. Ah! how often—how often—I have wished for him—his stern look and his strong voice—I believe he could have frightened away any number of them.'
'He fought fifty—single handed,' said Tom. 'Bertie Liston came to Gumilcund and told me about it. They had laid an ambush for him—his own regiment—they nearly had him; but his audacity and resource carried the day. Some came over to his side——
'He came out of it safely?' cried Grace.
'With only a slight wound, and he is better. When Bertie came to me he was nearly well. I sent word that I hoped to find you. They are all safe at Meerut. Our little Trixy is quite a heroine, at least Bertie thinks so. She got hold of a revolver and fired at one of the wretches who were trying to get in——'
'And mother?' broke in Grace. 'Is she well? Ah! what would I not give just to see her for a moment! Mother's dear, kind face! It is the sweetest face in all the world.' She broke down and covered her face with her hands, and tears, that seemed to heal her pain, came stealing down her pale cheeks.
Then Tom stole away, for he felt that she would prefer to be alone.
In a few moments he sent in Kit and Bâl Narîn. Billy was radiant in fresh white linen, and Kit had so happy a face that Grace could not help smiling at him.
'Billy won't let anyone wait upon you but himself, dearest Grace,' he said, 'and Tom says dinner is ready, and the sun's gone down, and it's very nice by the camp fire. Will you come out, or shall they bring yours here?'
'I will come out, Kit,' said Grace.
And then came the joyful buzz of the camp, and the glowing evening light on the jungle, and the spread table, to which the rajah led her, his servants and camp followers bending down humbly, with their faces to the ground, and again she felt as if she were moving in a dream. Though she was only able to take a very little of what had been provided for her, Grace felt stronger when she had eaten. Leaning on Tom's arm, and with Kit clinging to her hand, she was able to move about the camp. She made the acquaintance of Purtab, who had slain the serpent, and, using Bâl Narîn as an interpreter, he and Abiman congratulated her upon her escape, and expressed their conviction that she was favoured of the gods. So long as she was talking and moving she was at peace. But when she was alone the horror came again. They were not to start until moon-rise. Tom left her in her tent to rest. Kit went to sleep on a cushion by her side. Silence fell upon the camp, and in the darkness and solitude her nameless dread took form. There she lay, with hands cramped together and staring eyeballs, while vision after vision, full of horror, swept by. Was it she, her very self—this Grace who was not of heroic mould, to whom all these things had happened? Was she dreaming hideously, or were they true? Oh! God, were they true? She had suffered, but it was not that alone. She had heard what curdled her blood in her veins, and made her feel that the gentle, innocent gaiety of the past was a sin. Women and little children tortured to death, men blown away from guns, inhuman crimes, inhuman vengeance, hell gaping its mouth to devour, and heaven, the dear heaven, of which, in the days of her childhood, she had dreamed, passing away as visions pass in the lurid light of a world in flames.
She shuddered as she lay. This was terrible. She ought to be so thankful. Ah! and she was thankful; but it was to man, not God. Once she opened her lips, and the cry, old as humanity, the 'Our Father,' that will instinctively break from the heart of Earth's children when they realise their weakness and the strength of the forces set in array against them, rose on a wave of anguish from her soul. But in the next instant the cry was withdrawn. Father! There was no Father, only a blind power that hurled the world-atoms, which for once in the measureless ages have shaped themselves into sentient lives, from steep to steep of a dead eternity. Awful, unutterable, sorrow piercing her heart, like barbed arrows, each of which leaves its sting in the wound, looking out pitifully from a myriad of eyes, making life impossible and death the only refuge to be hoped for!
In the darkness Kit awoke and heard her laboured breathing. He groped for her hand, and, finding it cold, was frightened and stole out to awake Tom.
He came in, lighted the lamps, and knelt down beside her. 'You are with friends,' he whispered, when he had made her drink a few drops of Bâl Narîn's cordial. 'You must have courage for a little while.'
'I will try,' she said plaintively. 'I should like to see them once more.'
'You will see them once more, and many times. When all this tangle is over, we must go back to England.'
'England!' murmured Grace. 'Ah! they are good there. One can believe, but,' shuddering, 'one cannot forget. I suppose we have to go out of life for that.'
'Grace, if you love us, if you love them, do not, for heaven's sake, speak so!'
She raised her heavy eyes and looked at him.
'Poor boy!' she said softly. 'I am troubling him. And when he has done so much for me—all that way through the thicket! But the others, ah! Tom, the others!—there was no God to save them.'
'My dearest, in heaven's name, I beseech you, put these thoughts away! There was a God. Thereisa God. Death opens the way into His kingdom.'
'I used to think so,' said Grace dreamily. 'That was long ago, before I knew, when I thought the world was good.'
'And so it is, Grace; so it is! Give yourself time, dearest, and you will come back to the old thoughts. You will know that the horror which it has pleased God to let you look upon is the exception, not the rule. It is like the tempest which comes and goes, and does its awful work. Peace returns afterwards.'
'Does peace return?' cried the girl, fixing her agonised eyes upon her companion's face; 'and if it does, is it a true peace? This is no dead storm, like a storm of winds and waves. It is a storm of human souls. The passion, the cruelty, the restlessness, the awful, awful, unquenchable thirst, are alive. Oh! I have seen them again and again. It is like the look in the eyes of the wild creatures,misery and pain—misery and pain.' Her voice dropped. Into her face came a look of horror as if some vision long driven back were forcing itself upon her. 'How did it come?' she whispered. 'Where does it go? It must be somewhere, even when there is peace. Is it below us, ready, like the wild beasts, to spring at our throats, or does it go away? When we open our eyesthere, shall we see it,misery and pain—misery and pain?'
'Grace, for pity's sake, formysake,' said Tom hoarsely, 'try to forget. For you the horror is over.'
'For me, but for the others, for the world! Did He make it? Did He give it gentle and good things to triumph over? And what will He do with it by-and-by? Is it to go on for ever and ever and ever?'
'Don't think of it; don't think of it, Grace.'
'I can't help myself,' she sobbed. 'Itis—now, at this very moment while we are speaking—the misery, and the cruelty, and the restlessness, and the despair. Hark!' starting up. 'Do you hear?'
'I hear the wild beasts howling, nothing else. Abiman and Purtab are keeping the camp-fires alight. Everything is safe. Oh! my dear! don't look so! you frighten me!'
She tried to smile! 'I am so sorry,' she said gently. 'Iwilltry—yes—Iwilltry to put it all away. But I think you must let me go, Tom. You are looking for the Grace you once knew. You will not find her; she has gone. The horror has touched her, and she can never—never—be the same again.'
'Grace, you will break my heart. As you are, love, as you are, with the sorrow in your eyes and the anguish in your soul, you are more, ten thousand times more, to me than even then in all your dainty pride and sweetness. I loved you, God knows I loved you—now—' he threw himself down on his knees by her side, 'now—I adore you.'
'My poor boy! My poor boy!' she murmured, touching his face tenderly, with her long white fingers.
'Grace,' he whispered. 'Do you care for me a little?'
'I care for you more than a little, Tom. I love you. I have loved you from the first day we met.'
'Loved me! Oh! Grace; oh! my darling! is it true?'
'Hush, dear!' she said softly. 'You must keep quiet. If we speak too loud we shall awake Kit. Poor little Kit! He has suffered so much. And this sleep is restoring him.' Her voice was so quiet that it sent a chill to his heart. There was no passion in it, no trouble, not even the agitation, the sweet tremulous consciousness of a woman happy in loving.
There surged up in his throat a sob of uncontrollable anguish. 'I can't even think of Kit,' he said. 'I can only think of you—you. Say it again, Grace—it is the dearest, sweetest sound in all the world. Whisper it as low as you like and I shall hear it. If I were on earth and you were in heaven, above the stars, myriads and myriads of miles away, still I should hear it. Are you smiling, darling? I can smile too now. But even you don't know everything. I will tell you some day. Say, I love you.'
'I love you, Tom; I love you.' She was still touching his face and hair, still gazing into his face with a tenderness that almost slew him, it was so strangely quiet. 'I did not mean to tell you,' she went on, 'but the time is so short. To-morrow perhaps I shall be somewhere else.'
'Grace,' he cried passionately. 'Do you wish to kill me?'
'No dear, I wish to live, and I think I shall live a little while longer. I have seen you, I must see mother and father and the girls, and poor little Lucy, and Kit's mother, and the others. I didn't mean that I should die, but I may not be here. Didn't Kit tell you? I wander away sometimes. He used to tell me about it when I came back. "You have been somewhere else, dearest Grace." I can hear his little voice now. That was before Rungya left us. Afterwards, I remembered everything till I fell asleep and you found me.'
'Ah! but it was natural then. You were in such trouble. It is a wonder to me that you lived through it at all. But that is over!'
'Yes,' said Grace, closing her eyes, 'all over! all over!'
He watched her, his heart beating painfully. She lay quite still, and, hoping she was asleep, he stole to the door and lifted the chick, for in another hour they would have to start. He looked out, with a dazed feeling in his mind, at the sleeping camp and the fires that were burning brightly. He listened to the monotonous jabber of the watchmen, and saw how the solemn, silvery light, that would presently change the dark jungle world into an enchanted region, was beginning to dawn in the sky. Then he returned to Grace, whom he found with wide-open eyes and smiling lips. 'Is that you, Dad?' she said.
'Yes, dear,' he answered.
'Call the girls,' she cried. 'They said they would start early. The river is so lovely in the morning. Is the boat ready, Dad?'
'Yes, dear. It is moored under the willows. I will come for you directly.'
He took up Kit in his arms, and carried him out to Bâl Narîn. Tears were in his eyes, and the beating of his heart nearly choked him. Grace did not know him. She was 'somewhere else.'
Afterwards Tom Gregory looked back upon this journey as one of the strangest experiences of his strange and chequered life. As regards outward events there is little to record. Bâl Narîn knew every step of the way. The soldiers, servants, camp-followers, and coolies, of whom the cavalcade consisted, were so well up in their duties, and so hopeful of large reward from the rajah, that they worked with all the regularity and much more than the intelligence of machines. Even the heavens seemed to smile upon the intrepid travellers, for there could be no doubt that the air was less pestilential than is usual at this season, while there were none of those sweeping storms of rain that, in late summer and early autumn, will sometimes make the roads of the Terai impassable.