"For Gawd's sake, sir! don't say I'm unfit for dooty, sir," pleaded a lad, who, as he stood to attention, tried hard to keep the sharp shivers of coming ague from the doctor's keen eyes. "I'm all right, aint I, mates? It aint a bad sort o' fever at worst, as I oughter know, havin' it constant. It's go ter hell, an' lick the blood up fust as I'm fit for with Jack Pandy. That's all the matter--you see if it aint, sir!"
He threw his fair curly head back, his blue eyes blazed with the coming fever light, but the bearded man next to him murmured, "'Ee's all right, sir. 'Ee'll 'old 'is musket straight, never fear," and the Doctor walked on with a nod.
"They killed his girl at Meerut," said his company officer in a whisper, and Herbert Erlton, standing by, set his teeth and glanced back, blue eye meeting blue eye with a sort of triumph.
For it was the 7th of June, and the blow was to be struck, the challenge given at last.
Nearly a month, thought Herbert Erlton, since it had happened. He had spent much of the time in bed, struck down with fever; for he had regained Meerut with difficulty, wounded and exhausted. And then it had been too late--too late for anything save to hang round hungrily in the hopes of that challenge to come, with many another such as he.
But it had come at last. The camp was ringing with cheers for the final reinforcement, every soul who could stand was coming out of hospital, and the air, new washed with rain, and cool, seemed to put fresh life, and with it a desire to kill, into the veins of every son of the cold North.
And now the dusk was at hand. The men, half-mad with impatience, laughed and joked over each trivial preparation. Yet, when the order came with midnight, weapons were never gripped more firmly, more sternly, than by those three thousand Englishmen marching to their long-deferred chance of revenge. And some, not able to march, toiled behind in hopes of one fair blow; and not a few, unable even for so much, slipped desperately from hospital beds to see at least one murderer meet with his reward.
For, to the three thousand marching upon Delhi that cool dewy night, sent--so they told themselves--for special solace and succor of the Right, there were but two things to be reckoned with in the wide world: Themselves--Men. Those others--Murderers.
The fireflies, myriad-born from the rain, glimmered giddily in the low marshy land, the steady stars shone overhead, and Major Erlton looked at both indifferently as he rode, long-limbed and heavy, through the night whose soft silence was broken only by the jingle of spurs and the squelching of light gun-wheels in water-logged ruts; save when--from a distance--the familiar tramp, tramp, of disciplined feet along a road came wafted on the cool wind; for the column in which he was doing duty moved along the canal bank so as to take the enemy, who held an intrenched position five miles from Alipore, in flank. But Herbert Erlton was not thinking of stars or fireflies; was not thinking of anything. He was watching for other lights, the twinkling cresset lights which would tell where the Murderers waited for that first blow. He did not even think of the cause of his desire; he was absorbed in the revenge itself, and a bitter curse rose to his lips, when just before dawn the roll of a gun and the startled flocks of birds flying westward told him that others were before him.
"Hurry up, men! For God's sake hurry up!" The entreaty passed along the line where the troopers of the 9th Lancers were setting shoulders to the gun-wheels, and everyone, men and officers alike, was listening with fierce regret to the continuous roll of cannon, the casual rattle of musketry, telling that the heavy guns were bearing the brunt of it so far.
"Hurry up, men! Hurry up. That's the bridge ahead! Then we can go for them!"
Hark! A silence; if silence it could be called, now that the shouts, and yells, and confused murmur of battle could be heard. But the guns were silent; and hark again. A ringing cheer! Bayonet work that, at last, at last! And yonder, behind the fireflies in the bushes? Surely men in flight! Hurrah! Hurrah!
When Major Erlton returned from that wild charge it was to find that one splendid rush from the 75th Regiment had cleared the road to Delhi. The Murderers had been swept from their shelter, their guns--some fighting desperately, others standing stupidly to meet death, and many with clasped hands and vain protestations of loyalty on their lips paying the debt of their race. But one man had paid some other debt, Heaven knows what; and the Rifle Brigade cleared the road to Delhi of an English deserter fighting against his old regiment.
It had not taken an hour; and now, as the yellow sun peered over the eastern horizon, a little knot of staff officers consulted what to do next.
What to do? Herbert Erlton and many another wondered stupidly what the deuce fellows could mean by asking the question when the jagged line of the Ridge lay not three miles off, and Delhi lay behind that? Could any sane person think that England had done its duty at sunrise, even though forty good men and true of the three thousand had dealt their first and last blow?
But if some did, there were not many; so, after a pause, the march began again. Westward, by a forking road, to the flat head of the Lizard lying above the Subz-mundi, eastward toward the tail and the old cantonment. And this time the bayonets went with the jingling spurs, and together they cleared the green groves merrily. Still, even so, it was barely nine o'clock when they met the eastward column again at Hindoo Rao's house and shook hands over their bloodless victory. For the eastward force had lost one man, the westward seven, despite the fact that the retreating Murderers had attempted a rally in their old lines.
Nine o'clock! In seven hours the ten miles had been marched, the battle of Budli-ke-serai won, and below them lay Delhi. Within twelve hundred yards rose the Moree Bastion, the extreme western point of that city face which, with the Cashmere gate jutting about its middle and the Water Bastion guarding its eastern end, must be the natural target of their valor--a target three-quarters of a mile long by twenty-four feet high.
Seven hours! And the Murderers had been driven into the city, while the men had gained "twenty-six guns and the finest possible base for the conduct of future operations." For the Ridge, the old cantonments were once more echoing to the master's step, and the city folk, as they looked eagerly from the walls, had the first notice of defeat in the smoke and flames of the sepoy lines which the English soldiers fired in reckless revenge; reckless because the tents were not up, and they might at least have been a shelter from the sun.
But the Delhi force, taken as a whole, was in no mood to think; and so perhaps those at the head of it felt bound to think the more. There was Delhi, undoubtedly, but the rose-red walls with their violet shadows looked formidable. And who could tell how many Murderers it harbored? A thousand of them or thereabouts would return to Delhi no more; but, even so, if all the regiments known to have mutinied and come to Delhi were at their full strength, the odds must still be close on four to one. And then there was the rabble, armed no doubt from the larger magazine below the Flagstaff Tower, which, alas, had found no Willoughby for its destruction on the 11th of May. And then there was the May sun. And then--and then----
"What's up? When are we going on?" asked Major Erlton, sitting fair and square on his horse, in the shadow of the big trees by Hindoo Rao's house, as an orderly officer rode past him.
"Aren't going on to-day. Chief thinks it safer not--these native cities----"
He was gone, and Herbert Erlton without a word threw himself heavily from his horse with a clatter and jingle of swords and scabbards and Heaven knows what of all the panoply of war; so with the bridle over his arm stood looking out over the bloody city which lay quiet as the grave. Only, every now and again, a white puff of smoke followed by a dull roar came from a bastion like a salute of welcome to the living, or a parting honor to the dead.
Was it possible? His eyes followed the familiar outline mechanically till they rested half-unconsciously on some ruins beside the city wall. Then with a rush memory came back to him, and as he turned hurriedly to loosen his horse's girths, the tears seemed to scald his tired angry eyes. Yet it was not the memory of Alice Gissing only, which sent these unwonted visitors to Herbert Erlton's eyes; it was a wild desperate pity and despair for all women.
And as he stood there ignoring his own emotion, or at least hiding it, one of the women whom he pitied was looking up with a certain resentful eagerness at a man, who, from the corner turret of that roof in the Mufti's quarter, was straining his eyes Ridgeways.
"They must rest, surely," she said sharply; "you cannot expect them to be made of iron----"; as you are, she was about to add, but withheld even that suspicion of praise.
"Well! There goes the bugle to pitch tents, anyhow," retorted Jim Douglas recklessly. "So I suppose we had better have our breakfast too--coffee and a rasher of bacon and a boiled egg or so. By God! its incredible--it's----" He flung himself on a reed stool and covered his face with his hands for a second; but he was up facing her the next. "I've no right to say these things--no one knows better than I how worse than idle it is to press others to one's own tether--I learned that lesson early, Mrs. Erlton. But"--he gave a quick gesture of impotent impatience--"when the news first came in, the men who brought it ran in at the Cashmere and Moree gates in hundreds, and out at the Ajmere and Turkoman, calling that the masters had come back; and people were keeking round the doors hopefully. I tell you the very boys as I came in here were talking of school again--of holiday tasks, perhaps--Heaven knows! People were running in the streets--they will be walking now--in another hour they will be standing; and then! Well! I suppose the General funks the sun. So I'll be off. I only came because I thought I had better be here in case; you see the men would have had their blood up rushing the city----"
"And your breakfast?" she asked coldly, almost sarcastically; for he seemed to her so hard, so grudging, while her sympathies, her enthusiasms were red-hot for the newcomers.
He laughed bitterly. "I've learned to live on parched grain like a native, if need be, and I take opium too; so I shall manage." He was back again to the turret, however, before two o'clock, curtly apologetic, calmer, yet still eager. The people, to be sure, he said, had given up keeking round their doors at every clatter, and the gates had been closed on deserters by the Palace folk; but no one had thought of bricking them up, and after going round everywhere he doubted if there were more than seven or eight thousand real soldiers in Delhi. The 74th and the 11th regiments had been slipping away for days, and numbers of men who had remained did not really mean to fight. Tiddu, who seemed to know everything, said that the mutineers had been very strongly in-trenched at Budli-serai, so the resistance could not have been very dogged, or our troops could not have fought their way in before nine o'clock. Yes! since she pressed for an answer, the General might have been wise in waiting for the cool. Only he personally wished he had thought it possible, for then he would at any rate have tried to get a letter sent to the Ridge. Now it was too late.
And then suddenly, as he spoke, a fierce elation flashed to his face again at the sound of bugles, the roll of a gun from the Moree Bastion; and he was up the stairs of the turret in a second, casting a half-humorous, wholly deprecating glance back at her.
"A hare and a tortoise once--I learned that at school--put it into Latin!" he said lightly, as the walls round them quivered to the reverberating rolls, thundering from the city wall.
Kate walked up and down the roof restlessly, passing into the outer one so as to be further from that eager sentinel and his criticisms. Tara was spinning calmly, and Kate wondered if the woman could be alive. Did she not know that brave men on both sides were going to their deaths? And Tara, from under her heavy eyelashes, watched Kate, and wondered how any woman who had brought Life into the world could fear Death. Did not the Great Wheel spin unceasingly? Let brave men, then, die bravely--even Soma. For she knew by this time that her brother was in Delhi, and by the master's orders had dodged his detection more than once. So the two women waited, each after their nature; while like the pulse of time itself, the beat of artillery shook the walls. It came so regularly that Kate, crouching in a corner weary of restless pacing to and fro, grew almost drowsy and started at a step beside her.
"A false alarm," said Jim Douglas quietly; "a sortie, as far as I could judge, from the Moree; easily driven back."
His tone roused her antagonism instantly. "Perhaps they are waiting for night."
"There is a full moon--almost," he replied; "besides, there is fair cover up to within four hundred yards of the Cabul gate. They could rush that, and a bag or two of gunpowder would finish the business."
"They could do that as well to-morrow," she remarked hotly.
"I hope to God they won't be such fools as to try it!" he replied as hotly. "If they don't come in to-night they will have to batter down the walls, and then the city will go against them. What city wouldn't? It will rouse memories we can't afford to rouse. Who could? And every wounded man who creeps in to-day will be a center of resistance by to-morrow. The women will hound others on to protect him. It is their way. You have always to allow for humanity in war. Well! we must wait and see." He paused and rubbed his forehead vexedly. "If I had known, I might have got out with the sortie; but I suppose I couldn't really----" He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and went out.
And Kate, as she sat watching the red flush of sunset grow to the dome, remembered his look at her with a half-angry pang. Why should she be in this man's way always? So the day died away in soft silence, and there on the housetop it seemed incredible that so much hung in the balance, and that down in the streets the crowds must be drifting to and fro restlessly. At least she supposed so. Yet, monotonous as ever, there was the evening cry of the muezzin and the persistent thrumming of toms-toms and saringis which evening brings to a native city. It rose louder than usual from a roof hard by, where, so Tara told her, a princess of the blood royal lived; a great friend of Abool-Bukr's. The remembrance of little Sonny's hands all red with blood, and the cruel face smiling over an apology, made her shiver, and wonder as she often did with a desperate craving what the child's fate had been. Why had she let the old ayah take him? Why was he not here, safe; making life bearable? As she sat, the tears falling quietly over her cheeks, Tara came and looked at her curiously. "The mem should not cry," she said consolingly. "The Huzoor will save her somehow."
For an instant Kate felt as if she would rather he did not. Then on the distance and the darkening air came a familiar sound: the evening bugle from the Ridge with its cheerful invitation:
"Come-and-set-a-picket-boys! come-and-keep-a-watch."
So someone else was within hail, ready to help! The knowledge brought her a vast consolation, and for the first time in that environment she slept through the night without wakening in deadly dreamy fear at the least sound.
Even the uproarious devilry of Prince Abool in the alley below did not rouse her, when about midnight he broke loose from the feverish detaining hold which Newâsi had kept on him by every art of her power during the day, lest the master returning should find the Prince in mischief. But now he lurched away with a party of young bloods who had come to fetch him, swearing that he must celebrate the victory properly. But for a moment's weakness, fostered by a foolish, fearful woman, he might have led the cavalry. He wept maudlin tears over the thought, swearing he would yet show his mettle. He would not leave one hell-doomed alive; and, suiting the action to the word, he began incontinently to search for fugitives in some open cowyards close by, till the strapping dairymaids, roused from slumber, declared in revenge that they had seen a man slip down the culvert of the big drain. Five minutes afterward Prince Abool, half-choked, half-drowned, was dragged from the sewer by his comrades, protesting feebly that he must have killed an infidel; else why did the blood smell so horribly?
But after that the city sank into the soundlessness, the stillness, of the hour before dawn, save for a recurring call of the watch bugles on wall and Ridge and the twinkling lights which burned all night in camp and court. For those two had challenged each other, and the fight was to the bitter end. What else could it be with a death-pledge between them? The townspeople might sleep uncertain which side they would espouse, but between the Men and the Murderers the issue was clear.
And it remained so, even though the month-of-miracle lingered, and no assault came on the morrow, or the day after, or the day after that. So that the old King himself set his back to the wall and for once spoke as a King should. "If the army will not fight without pay, punish it," he said to the Commander-in-chief. But it was only a flash in the pan, and he retired once more to the latticed marble balcony and set the sign-manual to a general fiat that "those who would be satisfied with a trifle might be paid something." Whereat Mahboob Ali shook his head, for there was not even a trifle in the privy purse.
As for the city people, their ears and tongues grew longer during those three days, when the sepoys, returning from the sorties and skirmishes, brought back tales of glorious victory, stupendous slaughter. Her man had killed fifteen Huzoors himself, and there were not five hundred left on the Ridge, said Futteh-deen's wife to Pera-Khân's as they gossiped at the wall; and a good job too. When they were gone there would be an end of these sword cuts and bullet wounds. Not a wink of sleep had she had for nights, yawned Zainub, what with thirsts and poultices! And on the steps of the mosque, too, the learned lingered to discuss the newspapers. So Bukht Khân with fifty thousand men was on his way to swear allegiance, and the Shah of Persia had sacked Lahore, where Jan Larnce himself had been caught trying to escape on an elephant and identified by wounds on his back. And the London correspondent of the Authentic News was no doubt right in saying the Queen was dumfoundered, while the St. Petersburg one was clearly correct in asserting that the Czar was about to put on his crown at last. Why not, since his vow was at an end with the passing of India from British supremacy?
So the dream went on; the little brocaded bags kept coming in; the stupendous slaughter continued. Yet every night the Widow's Cruse of a Ridge echoed to the picket bugles, and the court and the camp twinkled at each other till dawn.
A sort of vexed despairing patience came to Jim Douglas, and more than once he apologized to Kate for his moodiness, like a patient who apologizes to his nurse when unfavorable symptoms set in. He gave her what news he could glean, which was not much, for Tiddu had gone south for another consignment of grain. But on the morning of the 12th he turned up with a face clearer than it had been; and a friendlier look in his eyes.
"The guides came in to camp yesterday. Splendid fellows. They were at it hammer and tongs immediately, though that man Rujjub Ali I told you of--it was he who said Hodson was with the force--declares they marched from Murdin in twenty-one days. Over thirty miles a day! Well! they looked like it. I saw them ride slap up to the Cabul gate. And--and I saw someone else with them, Mrs. Erlton. I wasn't sure at first if I had better tell you; but I think I had. I saw your husband."
"My husband," she echoed faintly. In truth the past seemed to have slipped from her. She seemed to have forgotten so much; and then suddenly she remembered that the letter he had written must still be in the pocket of the dress Tara had hidden away. How strange! She must find it, and look at it again.
Jim Douglas watched her curiously with a quick recognition of his own rough touch. Yet it could not be helped.
"Yes. He was looking splendid, doing splendidly. I couldn't help wishing---- Well! I wish you could have seen him; you would have been proud."
She interrupted him with swift, appealing hand. "Oh!--don't--please don't--what have I to do with it? Can't you see--can't you understand he was thinking of--of her--and doesn't she deserve it? while I--I----"
It was the first breakdown he had seen during those long weeks of strain, and he stood absolutely, wholly compassionate before it.
"My dear lady," he said gently, as he walked away to give her time, "if you good women would only recognize the fact which worse ones do, that most men think of many women in their lives, you would be happier. But I doubt if Major Erlton was thinking of anyone in particular. He was thinking of the dead, and you are among them, for him; remember that. Come," he continued, crossing over to her again and holding out his hand. "Cheer up! Aren't you always telling me it is bad for a man to have one woman on the brain, and think, think how many there may be to avenge by this time!"
His voice, sounding a whole gamut of emotion, a whole cadence of consolation, seemed to find an echo in her heart, and she looked up at him gratefully.
It would have found one also in most hearts upon the Ridge, where men were beginning to think with a sort of mad fury of women and children in a hundred places to which this unchecked conflagration of mutiny was spreading swiftly. What would become of Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, if something were not done at Delhi? if the challenge so well given were not followed up? And men elsewhere telegraphed the same question, until, half-heartedly, the General listened, and finally gave a grudging assent to a plan of assault urged by four subalterns.
What the details were matters little. A bag of gunpowder somewhere, with fixed bayonets to follow. A gamester's throw for sixes or deuce-ace, so said even its supporters. But anything seemed better than being a target for artillery practice five times better than their own, while the mutiny spread around them.
The secret was well kept as such secrets must be. Still the afternoon of the 12th saw a vague stir on the Ridge, and though even the fighting men turned in to sleep, each man knew what the midnight order meant which sent him fumbling hurriedly with belts and buckles.
"The city at last, mates! No more playin' ball," they said to each other as they fell in, and stood waiting the next order under the stars; waiting with growing impatience as the minutes slipped by.
"My God! where is Graves?" fumed Hodson. "We can't go on without him and his three hundred. Ride, someone, and see. The explosion party is ready, the Rifles safe within three hundred yards of the wall. The dawn will be on us in no time--ride sharp!"
"Something has gone wrong," whispered a comrade. "There were lights in the General's tent and two mounted officers--there! I thought so! It's all up!"
All up indeed! For the bugle which rang out was the retreat. Some of those who heard it remembered a moonlight night just a month before when it had echoed over the Meerut parade ground; and if muttered curses could have silenced it the bugle would have sounded in vain. But they could not, and so the men went back sulkily, despondently to bed. Back to inaction, back to target practice.
"Graves says he misunderstood the verbal orders, so I understand," palliated a staff-officer in a mess tent whither others drifted to find solace from the chill of dis-appointment, the heat of anger. A tall man with hawk's eyes and sparse red hair paused for a moment ere passing out into the night again. "I dislike euphemisms," he said curtly. "In these days I prefer to call a spade a spade. Then you can tell what you have to trust to."
"Hodson's in a towering temper," said an artilleryman as he watched a native servant thirstily; "I don't wonder. Well! here's to better luck next time."
"I don't believe there will be a next time," echoed a lad gloomily. And there was not, for him, the target practice settling that point definitely next day.
"But why the devil couldn't--" began another vexed voice, then paused. "Ah! here comes Erlton from the General. He'll know. I say, Major----" he broke off aghast.
"Have a glass of something, Erlton?" put in a senior hastily, "you look as if you had seen a ghost, man!"
The Major gave an odd hollow laugh. "The other way on--I mean--I--I can't believe it--but my wife--she--she's alive--she's in Delhi." The startled faces around seemed too much for him; he sat down hurriedly and hid his face in his hands, only to look up in a second more collectedly. "It has brought the whole d----d business home, somehow, to have her there."
"But how?" the eager voices got so far--no further.
"I nearly shot him--should have if he had not ducked, for the get up was perfect. Some of you may know the man--Douglas--Greyman--a trainer chap, but my God! a well plucked one. He sneaked into my tent to tell. But I don't understand it yet, and he said he would come back and arrange. It was all so hurried, you see; I was due at the muster, and he was off when he heard what was up to see Graves--whom he knows. Oh, curse the whole lot of them! Here, khânsaman! brandy--anything!"
He gulped it down fiercely, for he had heard of more than life from Jim Douglas.
The latter, meanwhile, was racing down a ravine as his shortest way back to the city. His getting out had been the merest chance, depending on his finding Soma as sentry at the sally port of the ruined magazine. He had instantly risked the danger of another confederate for the opportunity, and he was just telling himself with a triumph of gladness that he had been right, when a curious sound like the rustling of dry leaves at his very feet, made him spring into the air and cross the flat shelf of rock he was passing at a bound; for he knew what the noise meant. A true lover's knot of deadly viper, angry at intrusion, lay there; the dry Ridge swarms with them. But, as he came down lightly on his feet again, something slipped from under one, and though he did not fall, he knew in a second that he was crippled. Break or sprain, he knew instantly that he could not hope to reach the sally-port before Soma's watch was up. Yet get back he must to the city; for this--he had tried a step by this time with the aid of a projecting rock--might make it impossible for him to return for days if he did the easiest thing and crawled upward again hands and knees. That, then, was not to be thought of. The Ajmere gate, however, might be open for traffic; the Delhi one certainly was, morning and evening. The latter meant a round of nearly four miles, and endless danger of discovery; but it must be done. So he set his face westward.
It was just twenty-four hours after this, that Tara, unable for longer patience, told Kate that she must lock herself in, while she went out to seek news of the master. Something must have happened. It was thirty-six hours since they had seen him, and if he was gone, that was an end.
Her face as she spoke was fierce, but Kate did not seem to care; she had, in truth, almost ceased to care for her own safety except for the sake of the man who had taken so much trouble about it. So she sat down quietly, resolved to open the locked door no more. They might break it in if they chose, or she could starve. What did it matter?
Tara meanwhile went, naturally, to seek Soma's aid, all other considerations fading before the master's safety; and so of course came instantly on the clew she sought. He had left the city, let out by Soma's own hands; hands which had never meant to let him in again, that being a different affair. And though he had said he would return, why should he? asked Soma. Whereupon Tara, to prove her ground for fear, told of the hidden mem. She would have told anything for the sake of the master. And Soma looked at her fierce face apprehensively.
"That is for after!" she said curtly, impatiently. "Now we must make sure he is not wounded. There was fighting to-day. Come, thou canst give the password and we can search before dawn if we take a light. That is the first thing."
But as, cresset in hand, Tara stooped over many a huddled heap or long, still stretch of limb, Kate, with a beating heart, was listening to the sound of someone on the stairs. The next moment she had flung the door wide at the first hint of the first familiar knock.
"Where is Tara?" asked Jim Douglas peremptorily, still holding to the door jamb for support.
"She went--to look for you--we thought--what has happened?--what is the matter?" she faltered.
"Fool! as if that would do any good! Nothing's the matter, Mrs. Erlton. I hurt my ankle, that's all." He tried to step over the threshold as he spoke, but even that short pause, from sheer dogged effort, had made its renewal an agony, and he put out his hand to her blindly. "I shall have to ask you to help me," he began, then paused. Her arm was round him in a second, but he stood still, looking up at her curiously, "To--to help," he repeated. Then she had to drag him forward by main force so that he might fall clear of the door and enable her to close it swiftly. For who could tell what lay behind?
One thing was certain. That hand on her arm had almost scorched her--the ankle he had spoken of must have been agony to move. Yet there was nothing to be done save lay cold water to it, and to his burning head, settle him as best she could on a pillow and quilt as he lay, and then sit beside him waiting for Tara to return; for Tara could bring what was wanted. But if Tara was never to return? Kate sat, listening to the heavy breathing, broken by half-delirious moans, and changing the cool cloths, while the stars dipped and the gray of dawn grew to that dominant bubble of the mosque; and, as she sat, a thousand wild schemes to help this man, who had helped her for so long, passed through her brain, filling her with a certain gladness.
Until in the early dawn Tara's voice, calling on her, stole through the door.
It was still so dark that Kate, opening it with the quick cry--"He is here, Tara, he is here safe," did not see the tall figure standing behind the woman's, did not see the menace of either face, did not see Tara's quick thrust of a hand backward as if to check someone behind.
So she never knew that Jim Douglas, helpless, unconscious, had yet stepped once more between her and death; for Tara was on her knees beside the prostrate figure in a second, and Soma, closing the door carefully, salaamed to Kate with a look of relief in his handsome face. This settled the doubtful duty of denouncing the hidden Mlechchas. How could that be done in a house where the master lay sick?
And he lay sick for days and weeks, fighting against sun-fever and inflammation, against the general strain of that month of inaction, which, as Kate found with a pulse of soft pity, had sprinkled the hair about his temples with gray.
"He would die for her," said Tara gloomily, grudgingly, "so she must live, Soma----"
"Nay! 'twas not I----" began her brother, then held his peace, doubtful if the disavowal was to his praise or blame; for duty was a puzzle to most folk in those hot, lingering days of June, when the Ridge and the City skirmished with each other and wondered mutually if anything were gained by it. Yet both Men and Murderers were cheerful, and Major Erlton going to see the hospital after that fifteen hours' fight of the 23d of June, when the centenary of Plassey, a Hindoo fast and a Mohammedan festival, made the sepoys come out to certain victory in full parade uniform, with all their medals on, heard the lad whose girl had been killed at Meerut say in an aggrieved tone, "And the nigger as stuck me 'ad 'er Majesty's scarlet coatee on 'is d----d carcass, and a 'eap of medals she give him a-blazin' on his breast--dash 'is impudence."
So blue eye met blue eye again sympathetically, for that was no time to see the pathos of the story.
There was a blessed coolness in the air, for the rains had broken, the molten heats of June had passed. And still that handful of obstinate aliens clung like barnacles to the bare red rocks of the Ridge. Clung all the closer because in one corner of it, beside the canal, they had become part of the soil itself in rows on rows of new-made graves. A strong rear-guard this, what with disease and exposure superadded to skirmishes and target-practice. Yet, though not a gun in the city had been silenced, not a battery advanced a yard, the living garrison day after day dug these earthworks for the dead one, firm as it, in silent resolve to yield no inch of foot-hold on those rocks till the Judgment Day, when Men and Murderers should pass together to the great settlement of this world's quarrels.
And yet those in command began to look at each other, and ask what the end was to be, for though, despite the daily drain, the Widow's Cruse grew in numbers as time went on, the city grew also, portentously.
Still the men were cheerful, the Ridge strangely unlike a war-camp in some ways; for the country to the rear was peaceful, posts came every day, and there was no lack even of luxuries. Grain merchants deserting their city shops set up amid the surer payments of the cantonment bazaar, and the greed for gain brought hawkers of fruit, milk, and vegetables to run the gauntlet of the guns, while some poor folk living on their wits, when there was not a rag or a patch or a bit of wood left to be looted in the deserted bungalows, took to earning pennies by tracking the big shot as they trundled in the ravines, and bringing them to the masters, who needed them.
Between the rain-showers too, men, after the manner of Englishmen, began to talk of football matches, sky races, and bewail the fact of the racket court being within range of the walls. But some, like Major Reid, who never left his post at Hindoo Rao's house for three months, preferred to face the city always. To watch it as a cat watches a mouse to which she means to deal death by and by. Herbert Erlton was one of these, and so his old khânsaman, with whom Kate used to quarrel over his terribly Oriental ideas of Irish stew and such like--would bring him his lunch, sometimes his dinner, to the pickets. It was quite a dignified procession, with a cook-boy carrying a brazier, so that the Huzoor's food should be hot, and the bhisti carrying a porous pot of water holding bottles, so that the Huzoor's drink might be cool. The khânsaman, a wizened figure with many yards of waistband swathed round his middle, leading the way with the mint sauce for the lamb, or the mustard for the beefsteak. He used at first to mumble charms and vows for safe passage as he crossed the valley of the shadow; as a dip where round shot loved to dance was nicknamed by the men. But so many others of his trade were bringing food to the master that he soon grew callous to the danger, and grinned like the rest when a wild caper to dodge a trundling, thundering ball made a fair-haired laddie remark sardonically to the caperer, "It's well for you, my boy, that you haven't spilled my dinner."
Perhaps it was, considering the temper of the times. Herbert Erlton, eating his lunch, sheltered from the pelting rain behind the low scarp which by this time scored the summit of the Ridge, smiled also. He was all grimed and smirched with helping young Light--the gayest dancer in Upper India--with his guns. He helped wherever he could in his spare time, for a great restlessness came over him when out of sight of those rose-red walls. They had a fascination for him since Jim Douglas' failure to return had left him uncertain what they held. So, when the day's work slackened, as it always did toward sunset, and the rain clearing, he had drifted back to his tent for a bath and a change, he drifted out again along the central road, where those off duty were lounging, and the sick had their beds set out for the sake of company and cooler air. It was a quieter company than usual, for some two days before the General himself had joined the rear-guard by the canal; struck down by cholera, and dying with the half-conscious, wholly pathetic words on his lips, "strengthen the right."
And that very day the auctions of his and other dead comrades' effects had been held; so that more than one usually thoughtless youngster looked down, maybe, on a pair of shoes into which he had stepped over a grave.
Still it was an eager company, as it discussed Lieutenant Hills' exploit of the morning, and asked for the latest bulletin of that reckless young fighter with fists against the swords.
"How was it?" asked the Major, "I only heard the row. The beggars must have got clean into camp."
"Right up to the artillery lines. You see it was so beastly misty and rainy, and they were dressed like the native vidette. So Hills, thinking them friends, let them pass his two guns, until they began charging the Carabineers; and then it was too late to stop 'em."
"Why?"
"Carabineers--didn't stand, somehow, except their officer. So Hills charged instead. By George! I'd have given a fiver to see him do it. You know what a little chap he is--a boy to look at. And then----"
"And then," interrupted the Doctor, who had been giving a glance at a ticklish bandage as he passed the bed round which the speakers were gathered, "I think I can tell you in his own words; for he was quite cool and collected when they brought him in--said it was from bleeding so much about the head----"
A ripple of mirth ran through the listeners, but Major Erlton did not smile this time; the laugh was too tender.
"He said he thought if he charged it would be a diversion, and give time to load up. So he rode--Yes! I should like to have seen it too!--slap at the front rank, cut down the first fellow, slashed the next over the face. Then the two following crashed into him, and down he went at such a pace that he only got a slice to his jacket and lay snug till the troop--a hundred and fifty or so--rode over him. Then--ha--ha! he got up and looked for his sword! Had just found it ten yards off, when three of them turned back for him. He dropped one from his horse, dodged the other, who had a lance, and finally gashed him over the head. Number three was on foot--the man he'd dropped, he thinks, at first--and they had a regular set to. Then Hills' cloak, soaked with rain, got round his throat and half choked him, and the brute managed to disarm him. So he had to go for him with his fists, and by punching merrily at his head managed all right till he tripped over his cloak and fell----"
"And then," put in another voice eagerly, "Tombs, his Major, who had been running from his tent through the thick of those charging devils on foot to see what was up that the Carabineers should be retiring, saw him lying on the ground, took a pot shot at thirty paces--and dropped his man!"
"By George, what luck!" commented someone; "he must have been blown!"
"Accustomed to turnips, I should say," remarked another, with a curiously even voice; the voice of one with a lump in his throat, and a slight difficulty in keeping steady.
"Did they kill the lot?" asked Major Erlton quickly.
"Bungled it rather, but it was all right in the end. They were a plucky set, though; charged to the very middle of the camp, shouting to the black artillery to join them, to come back with them to Delhi."
"But they met with a pluckier lot!" interrupted the man who had suggested turnips. "The black company wasn't ready for action. The white one behind it was; unlimbered, loaded. And the blackies knew it. So they called out to fire--fire at once--fire sharp--fire through them--Well! d----n it all, black or white, I don't care, it's as plucky a thing as has been done yet." He moved away, his hands in his pockets, attempting a whistle; perhaps to hide his trembling lips.
"I agree," said the Doctor gravely, "though it wasn't necessary to take them at their word. But somehow it makes that mistake afterward all the worse."
"How many of the poor beggars were killed, Doctor," asked an uneasy voice in the pause which followed.
"Twenty or so. Grass-cutters and such like. They were hiding in the cemetery from the troopers, who were slashing at everyone, and our men pursuing the party which escaped over the canal bridge--made--made a mistake. And--I'm sorry to say there was a woman----"
"There have been too many mistakes of that sort," said an older voice, breaking the silence. "I wish to God some of us would think a bit. What would our lives be without our servants, who, let us remember, outnumber us by ten to one? If they weren't faithful----"
"Not quite so many, Colonel," remarked the Doctor with a nod of approval. "Twenty families came to the Brigade-major to-day with their bundles, and told him they preferred the quiet of home to the distraction of camp. I don't wonder."
"It is all their own fault," broke in an angry young voice, "why did they----"
And so began one of the arguments, so common in camp, as to the right of revenge pure and simple. Arguments fostered by the newspapers, where, every day, letters appeared from "Spartacus," or "Fiat Justitia," or some such nom de plume. Letters all alike in one thing, that they quoted texts of Scripture. Notably one about a daughter of Babylon and the blessedness of throwing children on stones.
But Major Erlton did not stop to listen to it. The ethics of the question did not interest him, and in truth mere revenge was lost in him in the desire, not so much to kill, as to fight. To go on hacking and hewing for ever and ever. As he drifted on smoking his cigar he thought quite kindly of the poor devils of grass-cutters who really worked uncommonly well; just, in fact, as if nothing had happened. So did the old khânsaman, and the sweeper who had come back to him on his return to the Ridge, saying that the Huzoor would find the tale of chickens complete. And the garden of the ruined house near the Flagstaff Tower whither his feet led him unconsciously, as they often did of an evening, was kept tidy; the gardener--when he saw the tall figure approaching--going over to a rose-bush, which, now that the rain had fallen, was new budding with white buds, and picking him a buttonhole. He sat down on the plinth of the veranda twiddling it idly in his fingers as he looked out over the panorama of the eastern plains, the curving river, and the city with the white dome of the mosque hanging unsupported above the smoke and mist wreaths. For now, at sunsetting, the sky was a mass of rose-red and violet cloud and a white steam rose from the dripping trees and the moist ground. It was a perfect picture. But he only saw the city. That, to him, was India. That filled his eye. The wide plains east and west, north and south, where the recent rain had driven every thought save one of a harvest to come, from the minds of millions, where the master meant simply the claimer of revenue, might have been non-existent so far as he, and his like, were concerned.
Yet even for the city he had no definite conception. He merely looked at it idly, then at the rosebud he held. And that reminding him of a certain white marble cross with "Thy will be done" on it, he rose suddenly, almost impatiently. But there was no resignation in his face, as he wandered toward the batteries again with the white flower of a blameless life stuck in his old flannel coat and a strange conglomerate of pity and passion in his heart, while the city--as the light faded--grew more and more like the clouds above it, rose-red and purple; until, in the distance, it seemed a city of dreams.
In truth it was so still, despite the clangor of bugles and fifes which Bukht Khân brought with him when, on the 1st of July, he crossed the swollen river in boats with five thousand mutineers. A square-shouldered man was Bukht Khân, with a broad face and massive beard; a massive sonorous voice to match. A man of the Cromwell type, of the church militant, disciplinarian to the back-bone, believing in drill, yet with an eye to a Providence above platoon exercise. And there was no lack of soldiers to drill in Delhi by this time. They came in squads and battalions, to jostle each other in the streets and overflow into the camp on the southern side of the city; that furthest from the obstinate colony on the Ridge. But first they flung themselves against it in all the ardor of new brooms, and failing to sweep the barnacles away, subsided into the general state of dreaminess and drugs. For the bugles and fifes could always be disobeyed on the plea that they were not sounded by the right Commander-in-Chief. There were three of them now. Bukht Khân the Queen's nominee, Mirza Moghul, and another son of the King's, Khair Sultân. So that Abool-Bukr's maudlin regrets for possible office became acute, and Newâsi's despairing hold on his hand had to gain strength from every influence she could bring to bear upon it. Even drunkenness and debauchery were safer than intrigue, to that vision of retribution which seemed to have left him, and taken to haunting her day and night. So she held him fast, and when he was not there wept and prayed, and listened hollow-eyed to a Moulvie who preached at the neighboring mosque; a man who preached a judgment.
"Thou art losing thy looks, mine Aunt," said the Prince to her one day. Not unkindly; on the contrary, almost tenderly. "Dost know, Newâsi, thou art more woman than most, for thou dost brave all things, even loss of good name--for I swear even these Mufti folk complain of thee--for nothing. None other I know would do it, so I would not have it--for something. Yet some day we shall quarrel over it; some day thy patience will go; some day thou wilt be as others, thinking of thyself; and then----"
"And then, nephew?" she asked coldly.
He laughed, mimicking her tone. "And then I shall grow tired and go mine own way to mine own end."
In the meantime, however, the thrummings and drummings went on until Kate Erlton, watching a sick bed hard by, felt as if she must send round and beg for quiet. It seemed quite natural she should do so, for she was completely absorbed over that patient of hers, who, without being seriously ill, would not get better. Who passed from one relapse of fever to another with a listless impatience, and now, nearly a month after he had stumbled over the threshold, lay barely convalescent. It had been a strange month. Stranger even than the previous one, when she had dragged through the lonely days as best she could, and he had wandered in and out restlessly, full of strain and stress. If even that had been a curious linking of their fates, what was this when she tended him day and night, when the weeks slipped by securely, almost ignorantly? For though Soma came every day to inquire after the master, standing at the door to salute to her, spick and span in full uniform, he brought no disturbing news.
It seemed to her, now, that she had known Jim Douglas all his life. And in truth she had learned something of the real man during the few days of delirium consequent on the violent inflammation which set in on the injured ankle. But for the most part he had muttered and moaned in liquid Persian. He had always spoken it with Zora, who had been taught it as part of her attractions, and no doubt it was the jingle of the jewels as Kate tended him, which reminded him of that particular part of his life.
By the time he came to himself, however, she had removed all the fineries, finding them in the way; save the heavy gold bangle which would not come off--at least not without help. He used to watch it half confusedly at first as it slipped up and down her arm, and wondered why she had not asked Tara to take it off for her; but he grew rather to like the look of it; to fancy that she had kept it on on purpose, to be glad that she had; though it was distinctly hard when she raised him up on his pillows! For, after all, fate linked them strangely, and he was grateful to her--very grateful.
"You are laughing at me," she said one morning as she came up to his bed, with a tray improvised out of a brass platter, and found him smiling.
"I have been laughing at you all the morning, when I haven't been grumbling," he replied, "at you and the chicken tea, and that little fringed business, to do duty as a napkin, I suppose, and the fly-paper--which isn't the least use, by the way, and I'm sure I could make a better one--and the mosquito net to give additional protection to my beauty when I fall asleep. Who could help laughing at it?"
She looked at him reproachfully. "But it makes you more comfortable, surely?"
"Comfortable," he echoed, "my dear lady! It is a perfect convalescent home!"
But in the silence which followed his right hand clenched itself over a fold in the quilt unmistakably.
"If you will take your chicken tea," she replied cheer-fully, despite a faint tremble in her voice, "you will soon get out of it. And really, Mr. Greyman, you don't seem to have lost any chance. Soma is not very communicative, but everything seems as it was. I never keep back anything from you. But, indeed, the chief thing in the city seems that there is no money to pay the soldiers. Do you know, I'm afraid Soma must loot the shops like the others. He seems to get things for nothing; though of course they are extraordinarily cheap. When I was a mem I used to pay twice as much for eggs."
He interrupted her with a laugh that had a tinge of bitterness in it. "Do you happen to know the story of the Jew who was eating ham during a thunderstorm, Mrs. Erlton?"
She shook her head, smiling, being accustomed by this time to his unsparing, rather reckless ridicule.
"He looked up and said, 'All this fuss about a little bit of pork.' So all this fuss has taught you the price of eggs. Upon my word! it is worse than the convalescent home!" He lay back upon his pillows with a half-irritated weariness.
"I have learned more than that, surely----" she began.
"Learned!" he echoed sharply. "You've learned everything, my dear lady, necessary to salvation. That's the worst of it! Your chatter to Tara--I hear when you think I am asleep. You draw your veil over your face when the water-carrier comes to fill the pots as if you had been born on a housetop. You--Mrs. Erlton! If I were not a helpless idiot I could pass you out of the city to-morrow, I believe. It isn't your fault any longer. It's mine, and Heaven only knows how long. Oh! confound that thrumming and drumming. It gets on my nerves--my nerves!--pshaw!"
It was then that Kate declared that she would really send Tara----
"Mrs. Erlton presents her compliments to the Princess Farkhoonda Zamâni, and will be obliged," jested Jim Douglas; then paused, in truth more irritated than amused, despite the humor on his face. And suddenly he appealed to her almost pitifully, "Mrs. Erlton! if anyone had told you it would be like this--your chance and mine--when the world outside us was alive--was struggling for life--would you--would you have believed it?"
She bent to push the chicken tea to a securer position. "No," she said softly; then to change the subject, added, "How white your hands are getting again! I must put some more stain on them, I suppose." She spoke regretfully, though she did not mind putting it on her own. But he looked at the whiteness with distinct distaste.
"It is with doing nothing and lying like a log. Well! I suppose I shall wake from the dream some day, and then the moment I can walk----"
"There will be an end of peace," she interrupted, quite resolutely. "I know it is very hard for you to lie still, but really you must see how much safer and smoother life has been since you were forced to give in to Fate."
"And Kate," he muttered crossly under his breath. But she heard it, and bit her lip to prevent a tender smile as she went off to give an order to Tara. For the vein of almost boyish mischief and lighthearted recklessness which showed in him at times always made her think how charming he must have been before the cloud shadowed his life.
"The master is much better to-day, Tara," she said cheerfully. "I really think the fever has gone for good."
"Then he will soon be able to take the mem away," replied the woman quickly.
"Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?" asked Kate with a smile, for she had grown fond of the tall, stately creature, with her solemn airs of duty, and absolute disregard of anything which came in its way. The intensity of the emotion which swept over the face, which was usually calm as a bronze statue, startled Kate.
"Of a truth I shall be glad to go back. The Huzoors' life is not my life, their death not my death."
It was as if the woman's whole nature had recoiled, as one might recoil from a snake in the path, and a chill struck Kate Erlton's heart, as she realized on how frail a foundation peace and security rested. A look, a word, might bring death. It seemed to her incredible that she should have forgotten this, but she had. She had almost forgotten that they were living in a beleagured city, though the reverberating roll of artillery, the rush and roar of shells, and the crackle of musketry never ceased for more than a few hours at a time.
She was not alone, however, in her forgetfulness. Half Delhi had become accustomed to cannon, to bugles and fifes, and went on its daily round indifferently. But in the Palace the dream grew ominously thin once or twice. For not a fraction remained in the Treasury, no effort to collect revenue had been made anywhere, and fat Mahboob, the only man who knew how to screw money out of a stone, lay dying of dropsy. And as he lay, the mists of personal interest in the future dispersing, he told his old master, the King, some home truths privately, while Ahsan-Oolah, the physician, administering cooling draughts as usual, added his wisdom to the eunuch's. There was no hope where there was no money. Life was not worth living without a regular pension. Let the King secure his and secure pardon while there was yet time, by sending a letter to the General on the Ridge, and offering to let the English in by Selimgarh and betray the city. When all was said and done, others had betrayed him, had forced his hand; so let him save himself if he could, quietly, without a word to any but Ahsan-Oolah. Above all, not one word to Zeenut Maihl, Hussan Askuri, and Bukht Khân--that Trinity of Dreams!
With which words of wisdom mayhap lightening his load of sins, the fat eunuch left the court once and for all. So the old King, as he sat listening to the quarrels of his Commander-in-Chief, had other consolation besides couplets; and when he wrote