The letter, however, did not refer to Kate; though, curiously enough, the Englishwoman it concerned had been, and still was concealed in an Afghan's house. Kate, then, had not been the only Englishwoman in Delhi. There was a certain consolation in the thought, since what was being done for one person by kindly natives might very well be done for another. Besides, removed as he was now from the fret and strain of actual search, Jim Douglas admitted frankly to Major Hodson that he was right in saying that Mrs. Erlton must either have come to an end of her troubles altogether, or have found friends better able, perhaps, than he to protect her.
Regarding the first possibility also Major Hodson was skeptical. He had hundreds of spies in the city. Such a piece of good luck as the discovery of a Christian must have been noised abroad. They had not mentioned it; he did not, therefore, believe it had occurred. He would, however, inquire, and till the answer came it would be foolish to go back to the city. Jim Douglas admitted this also; but as the days passed, the desire to return increased; especially when Major Erlton came to see him, which he did with dutiful regularity. Jim Douglas could not help admiring him when he stood, stiff and square, thanking him as Englishmen thank their fellows for what they know to be beyond thanks.
"I am sure no one could have done more, and I know I couldn't have done a quarter so much; and I'm grateful," he said awkwardly. Then with the best intentions, born from a real pity for the haggard man who sat on the edge of his cot looking as men do after a struggle of weeks with malarial fever, he added, "And the luck has been a bit against you all the time, hasn't it?"
"As yet, perhaps," replied Jim Douglas, feeling inclined then and there to start cityward, "but the game isn't over. When I go back----"
"Hodson says you could do no good," continued the big man, still with the best intentions.
"I don't agree with him," retorted the other sharply.
"Perhaps not--but--but I wouldn't, if I were you. Or--rather--I should of course--only--you see it is different for me. She----" Major Erlton paused, finding it difficult to explain himself. The memory of that last letter he had written to Kate was always with him, making him feel she was not, in a way, his wife. He had never regretted it. He had scarcely thought what would happen if she came back from the dead, as it were, to answer it; for he hated thought. Even now the complexity of his emotions irritated him, and he broke through them almost brutally. "She was my wife, you see. But you had nothing to do with it; so you had better leave it alone. You've done enough already. And as I said before, I'm grateful."
So he had stalked away, leaving his hearer frowning. It was true. The luck had been against him. But what right had it to be so? Above all, what right had that big brutal fellow to say so? There he was going off to win more distinction, no doubt. He would end by getting the Victoria Cross, and confound him! from what people said of him, he would well deserve it.
While he? Even these two days had brought his failure home to him. And yet he told himself, that if he had failed to save one Englishwoman, others had failed to save hundreds. Fresh as he was to the facts, they seemed to him almost incredible. As he wandered round the Ridge inspecting that rear-guard of graves, or sat talking to some of the thousand-and-odd sick and wounded in hospital, listening to endless tales of courage, pluck, sheer dogged resistance, he realized at what a terrible cost that armed force, varying from three to six thousand men, had simply clung to the rocks and looked at the city. There seemed enough heroism in it to have removed mountains; and coming upon him, not in the monotonous sequence of day-to-day experience, but in a single impression, the futility of it left him appalled. So did the news of the world beyond Delhi, heard, reliably, for the first time. Briefly, England was everywhere on her defense. It seemed to him as if from that mad dream of conquest within the city he had passed to as strange a dream of defeat. And why? The fire, unchecked at first, had blazed up with fresh fuel in place after place and left?--Nothing. Not a single attempt to wrest the government of the country from us; not even an organized resistance, when once the order to advance had been given. Had there been some mysterious influence abroad making men blind to the truth?
It was about to pass away if there had been, he felt, when on the 14th, he watched John Nicholson re-enter the Ridge at the head of his column. And many others felt the same, without in any way disparaging those who for long months of defense had borne the burden and heat of the day. They simply saw that Fate had sent a new factor into the problem, that the old order was changing. The defense was to be attack.
And why not, with that reinforcement of fine fighting men? Played in by the band of the 8th, amid cheering and counter-cheering, which almost drowned the music, it seemed fit--as the joke ran--if not to face hell itself, at any rate to take Pandymonium. The 52d Regiment looked like the mastiff to which its leader had likened it. The 2d Sikhs were admittedly the biggest fellows ever seen. The wild Mooltânee Horse sat their lean Beloochees with the loose security of seat which tells of men born to the saddle.
Jim Douglas noted these things like his fellows; but what sent that thrill of confidence through him was the look on many a face, as at some pause or turn it caught a glimpse of the General's figure. It was that heroic figure itself, seen for the first time, riding ahead of all with no unconsciousness of the attention it attracted! but with a self-reliant acceptance of the fact--as far from modesty as it was from vanity--that here rode John Nicholson ready to do what John Nicholson could do. But in the pale face, made paler by the darkness of the beard, there was more than this. There was an almost languid patience as if the owner knew that the men around him said of him, "If ever there is a desperate deed to do in India, John Nicholson is the man to do it," and was biding his time to fulfill their hopes.
The look haunted Jim Douglas all day, stimulating him strangely. Here was a man, he felt, who was in the grip of Fate, but who gave back the grip so firmly that his Fate could not escape him. Gave it back frankly, freely, as one man might grip another's hand in friendship. And then he smiled, thinking that John Nicholson's hand-clasp would go a long way in giving anyone a help over a hard stile. If he had had a lead-over like that after the smash came; if even now---- Idle thoughts, he told himself; and all because the picturesqueness of a man's outward appearance had taken his fancy, his imagination. For all he knew, or was ever likely to know----
He had been sitting idly on the edge of his cot in the tiny tent Major Erlton had lent him, having in truth nothing better to do, and now a voice from the blaze and blare of the heat and light outside startled him.
"May I come in--John Nicholson?"
He almost stammered in his surprise; but without waiting for more than a word the General walked in, alone. He was still in full uniform; and surely no man could become it more, thought Jim Douglas involuntarily.
"I have heard your story, Mr. Douglas," he began in a sonorous but very pleasant voice. "It is a curious one. And I was curious to see you. You must know so much." He paused, fixed his eyes in a perfectly unembarassed stare on his host's face, then said suddenly, with a sort of old-fashioned courtesy: "Sit you down again, please; there isn't a chair, I see; but the cot will stand two of us. If it doesn't it will be clearly my fault." He smiled kindly. "Wounded too--I didn't know that."
"A scratch, sir," put in his hearer hastily, fighting shy even of that commiseration. "I had a little fever in the city; that is all."
The bright hazel eyes, with a hint of sunlight in them, took rather an absent look. "I should like to have done it myself. I've tried that sort of thing; but they always find me out."
"I fancy you must be rather difficult to disguise," began Jim Douglas with a smile, when John Nicholson plunged straight into the heart of things.
"You must know a lot I want to know. Of course I've seen Hodson and his letters; but this is different. First: Will the city fight?"
"As well as it knows how, and it knows better than it did."
"So I fancied. Hodson said not. By the way, he told me that you declared his Intelligence Department was simply perfect. And his accounts--I mean his information--wonderfully accurate."
"I did, indeed, sir," replied Jim Douglas, smiling again.
Nicholson gave him a sharp look. "And he is a wonderfully fine soldier too, sir; one of the finest we have. Wilson is sending him out this afternoon to punish those Ringhars at Rohtuck. I don't know why I should present you with this information, Mr. Douglas?"
"Don't you, sir?" was the cool reply; "I think I do. Major Hodson may have his faults, sir, but the Ridge couldn't do without him. And I'm glad to hear he is going out. It is time we punished those chaps; time we got some grip on the country again."
The General's face cleared. "Hm," he said, "you don't mince matters; but I don't think we lost much grip in the Punjâb. And as for punishments! Do you know over two thousand have been executed already?"
"I don't, sir; though I knew Sir John's hand was out. But if you'll excuse me, we don't want the hangings now--they can come by-and-by. We want to lick them--show them we are not really in a blind funk."
"You use strong language too, sir--very strong language."
"I did not say we were in one----" began Jim Douglas eagerly, when a voice asking if General Nicholson were within interrupted him.
"He is," replied the sonorous voice calmly. "Come in, Hodson, and I hope you are prepared to fight." The bright hazel eyes met Jim Douglas' with a distinct twinkle in them; but Major Hodson entering--a perfect blaze of scarlet and fawn and gold, loose, lank, lavish--gave the speech a different turn.
"I hope you'll excuse the intrusion, sir," he said saluting, as it were, loudly, "but being certain I owed this piece of luck to your kind offices, I ventured to follow you. And as for the fighting, sir, trust Hodson's Horse to give a good account of itself."
"I do, Major, I do," replied Nicholson gravely, despite the twinkle, "but at present I want you to fight Mr. Douglas for me. He suggests we are all in a blind funk."
With anyone else Jim Douglas might have refused this cool demand, for it was little else, that he should defend his statement against a man who in himself was a refutation of it, who was a type of the most reckless, dare-devil courage and dash; but the thought of that umpire, ready to give an overwhelming thrust at any time, roused his temper and pugnacity.
"I'm not conscious of being in one myself," said the Major, turning with a swing and a brief "How do, Douglas." He was the most martial of figures in the last-developed uniform of the Flamingoes, or the Ring-tailed Roarers, or the Aloo Bokhâra's, as Hodson's levies were called indiscriminately during their lengthy process of dress evolution. "And what is more, I don't understand what you mean, sir!"
"General Nicholson does, I think," replied the other. "But I will go further than I did, sir," he added, facing the General boldly: "I only said that the natives thought we were in a blind funk. I now assert that they had a right to say so. We never stirred hand or foot for a whole month."
"Oh! I give you in Meerut," interrupted Hodson hastily. "It was pitiable. Our leaders lost their heads."
"Not only our leaders. We all lost them. From that moment to this it seems to me we have never been calm."
"Calm!" echoed Hodson disdainfully. "Who wants to be calm? Who would be calm with those massacred women and children to avenge."
"Exactly so. The horrors of those ghastly murders got on our nerves, and no wonder. We exaggerated the position from the first; we exaggerate the dangers of it now."
"Of taking Delhi, you mean?" interrupted Nicholson dryly.
Jim Douglas smiled. "No, sir! Even you will find that difficult. I meant the ultimate danger to our rule----"
"There you mistake utterly," put in Hodson magnificently. "We mean to win--we admit no danger. There isn't an Englishman, or, thank Heaven, an Englishwoman----"
"Is the crisis so desperate that we need levy the ladies?" asked his adversary sarcastically. "Personally I want to leave them out of the question as much as I can. It is their intrusion into it which has done the mischief. I don't want to minimize these horrors; but if we could forget those massacres----"
"Forget them! I hope to God every Englishman will remember them when the time comes to avenge them! Ay! and make the murderers remember them, too."
"If I had them in my power to-day," put in the sonorous voice, "and knew I was to die to-morrow, I would inflict the most excruciating tortures I could think of on them with an easy conscience."
"Bravo! sir," cried Hodson, "and I'd do executioner gladly."
John Nicholson's face flinched slightly. "There is generally a common hangman, I believe," he said; then turned on Jim Douglas with bent brows: "And you, sir?"
"I would kill them, sir; as I would kill a mad dog in the quickest way handy; as I'd kill every man found with arms in his hands. Treason is a worse crime than murder to us now; and by God! if I tortured anyone it would be the men who betrayed the garrison at Cawnpore. Yet even there, in our only real collapse, what has happened? It is reoccupied already--the road to it is hung with dead bodies. Havelock's march is one long procession of success. Yet we count ourselves beleaguered. Why? I can't understand it! Where has an order to charge, to advance boldly, met with a reverse? It seems to me that but for these massacres, this fear for women and children, we could hold our own gayly. Look at Lucknow----"
"Yes, Lucknow," assented Hodson savagely. "Sir Henry, the bravest, gentlest, dead! Women and children pent up--by Heaven! it's sickening to think what may have happened."
John Nicholson shot a quick glance at Jim Douglas.
"It proves my contention," said the latter. "Think of it! Fifteen hundred, English and natives, in a weak position with not even a palisade in some places between them and five times their number of trained soldiers backed by the wildest, wickedest, wantonest town rabble in India! What does it mean? Make every one of the fifteen hundred a paladin, and, by Heaven! they are heroes. Still, what does it mean?"
He spoke to the General, but he was silent.
"Mean?" echoed Hodson. "Palpably that the foe is contemptible. So he is. Pandy can't fight----"
"He fought well enough for us in the past. I know my regiment----" Jim Douglas caught himself up hard. "I believe they will fight for us again. The truth is that half, even of the army, does not want to fight, and the country does not mean fight at all."
"Delhi?" came the dry voice again.
"Delhi is exceptional. Besides, it can do nothing else now. Remember we condemned it, unheard, on the 8th of June."
"I told you that before, sir; didn't I?" put in Hodson quickly. "If we had gone in on the 11th, as I suggested."
"You wouldn't have succeeded," replied Jim Douglas coolly. Nicholson rose with a smile.
"Well, we are going to succeed now. So, good-luck in the meantime, Hodson. Put bit and bridle on the Rânghars. Show them we can't have 'em disturbing the public peace, and kicking up futile rows. Eh--Mr. Douglas?"
"No fear, sir!" said Hodson effusively. "The Ring-tailed Roarers are not in a blind funk. I only wish that I was as sure that the politicals will keep order when we've made it. I had to do it twice over at Bhâgput. And it is hard, sir, when one has fagged horses and men to death, to be told one has exceeded orders----"
"If you served under me, Major Hodson," said the General with a sudden freeze of formality, "that would be impossible. My instructions are always to do everything that can be done."
Jim Douglas felt that he could well believe it, as with a regret that the interview was over, he held the flap of the tent aside for the imperial figure to pass out. But it lingered in the blaze of sunshine after Major Hodson had jingled off.
"You are right in some things, Mr. Douglas," said the sonorous voice suddenly: "I'd ask no finer soldiers than some of those against us. By and by, unless I'm wrong, men of their stock will be our best war weapons; for, mind you, war is a primitive art and needs a primitive people. And the country isn't against us. If it were, we shouldn't be standing here. It is too busy plowing, Mr. Douglas; this rain is points in our favor. As for the women and children--poor souls"--his voice softened infinitely--"they have been in our way terribly; but--we shall fight all the better for that, by and by. Meanwhile we have got to smash Delhi. The odds are bigger than they were first. But Baird Smith will sap us in somehow, and then----" He paused, looking kindly at Jim Douglas, and said, "You had better stop and go in with--with the rest of us."
"I think not, sir----"
"Why? Because of that poor lady? Woman again--eh?"
"In a way; besides, I really have nothing else to do."
John Nicholson looked at him for a moment from head to foot; then said sharply:
"I didn't know, sir. I give my personal staff plenty of work."
For an instant the offer took his hearer's breath away, and he stood silent.
"I'm afraid not, sir," he said at last, though from the first he had known what his answer would be. "I--I can't, that's the fact. I was cashiered from the army fifteen years ago."
General Nicholson stepped back, with sheer anger in his face. "Then what do you mean, sir, by wearing Her Majesty's uniform?"
Jim Douglas looked down hastily on old Tiddu's staff properties, which he had quite forgotten. They had passed muster in the darkness of the tent, but here, in the sunlight, looked inconceivably worn, and shabby, and unreal. He smiled rather bitterly; then held out his sleeve to show the braiding.
"It's a general's coat, sir," he said defiantly. "God knows what old duffer it belonged to; but I might have worn it first- instead of second-hand, if I hadn't been a d----d young fool."
The splendid figure drew itself together formally, but the other's pride was up too, and so for a minute the two men faced each other honestly, Nicholson's eyes narrowing under their bent brows.
"What was it? A woman, I expect."
"Perhaps. I don't see that it matters."
A faint smile of approval rather took from the sternness of the military salute. "Not at all. That ends it, of course."
"Of course."
Not quite; for ere Jim Douglas could drop the curtain between himself and that brilliant, successful figure, it had turned sharply and laid a hand on his shoulder. A curiously characteristic hand--large, thin, smooth, and white as a woman's, with a grip in it beyond most men's.
"You have a vile habit of telling the truth to superior officers, Mr. Douglas. So have I. Shake hands on it."
With that hand on his shoulder, that clasp on his, Jim Douglas felt as if he were in the grip of Fate itself, and following John Nicholson's example, gave it back frankly, freely. So, suddenly the whole face before him melted into perfect friendliness. "Stick to it, man--stick to it! Save that poor lady--or--or kill somebody. It's what we are all doing. As for the rest"--the smile was almost boyish--"I may get the sack myself before the general's coat. I'm insubordinate enough, they tell me--but I shall have taken Delhi first. So--so good-luck to you!"
As he walked away, he seemed to the eyes watching him bigger, more king-like, more heroic than ever; perhaps because they were dim with tears. But as Jim Douglas went off with a new cheerfulness to see Hodson's Horse jingle out on their lesson of peace, he told himself that the old scoundrel, Tiddu, had once more been right. Nikalseyn had the Great Gift. He could take a man's heart out and look at it, and put it back sounder than it had been for years. He could put his own heart into a whole camp and make it believe it was its own.
Such a clattering of hoofs and clinking of bits and bridles had been heard often before, but never with such gay light-heartedness. Only two days before a lesson had been given to the city. There had been no more harrassing of pickets at night. Now the arm of the law was going coolly to reach out forty miles. It was a change indeed. And more than Jim Douglas watched the sun set red on the city wall that evening with a certain content in their hearts. As for him, he seemed still to feel that grip, and hear the voice saying, "Stick to it, man, stick to it! Save that poor lady or kill somebody. It's what we are all doing."
He sat dreaming over the whole strange dream with a curious sense of comradeship and sympathy through it all, until the glow faded and left the city dark and stern beneath the storm-clouds which had been gathering all day.
Then he rose and went back to his tent cheerfully. He would run no needless risks; he would not lose his head; but as soon as the doctors said it was safe, he would find and save Kate, or--kill somebody. That was the whole duty of man.
Kate, however, had already been found, or rather she had never been lost; and when Tara, a few hours after Jim Douglas slipped out of the city, had gone to the roof to fetch away her spinning wheel, and finding the door padlocked on the inside, had in sheer bewilderment tried the effect of a signal knock, Kate had let her in as if, so poor Tara told herself, it was all to begin over again.
All over again, even though she had spent those few hours of freedom in a perfect passion of purification, so that she might return to her saintship once more.
The gold circlets were gone already, her head was shaven, the coarse white shroud had replaced the crimson scarf. Yet here was the mem asking for the Huzoor, and setting her blood on fire with vague jealousies.
She squatted down almost helplessly on the floor, answering all Kate's eager questions, until suddenly in the midst of it all she started to her feet, and flung up her arms in the old wild cry for righteousness, "I am suttee! before God! I am suttee!"
Then she had said with a gloomy calm, "I will bring the mem more food and drink. But I must think. Tiddu is away; Soma will not help. I am alone; but I am suttee."
Kate, frightened at her wild eyes, felt relieved when she was left alone, and inclined not to open the door to her again. She could manage, she told herself, as she had managed, for a few days, and by that time Mr. Greyman would have come back. But as the long hours dragged by, giving her endless opportunity of thought, she began to ask herself why he should come back at all. She had not realized at first that he had escaped, that he was safe; that he was, as it were, quit of her. But he was, and he must remain so. A new decision, almost a content, came to her with the suggestion. She was busy in a moment over details. To begin with, no news must be sent. Then, in case he were to return, she must leave the roof. Tara might do so much for her, especially if it was made clear that it was for the master's benefit. But Tara might never return. There had been that in her manner which hinted at such a possibility, and the stores she had brought in had been unduly lavish. In that case, Kate told herself, she would creep out some night, go back to the Princess Farkhoonda, and see if she could not help. If not, there was always the alternative of ending everything by going into the streets boldly and declaring herself a Christian. But she would appeal to these two women first.
And as she sat resolving this, the two women were cursing her in their inmost hearts. For there had been no bangings of drums or thrumming of sutâras on Newâsi's roof these three days. Abool-Bukr had broken away from her kind, detaining hand, and gone back to the intrigues of the Palace. So the Mufti's quarter benefited in decent quiet, during which the poor Princess began that process of weeping her eyes out, which left her blind at last. But not blind yet. And so she sat swaying gracefully before the book-rest, on which lay the Word of her God, her voice quavering sometimes over the monotonous chant, as she tried to distill comfort to her own heart from the proposition that "He is Might and Right."
And far away in another quarter of the town Tara, crouched up before a mere block of stone, half hidden in flowers, was telling her beads feverishly. "Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm!" That was the form she used for a whole tragedy of appeal and aspiration, remorse, despair, and hope. And as she muttered on, looking dully at the little row of platters she had presented to the shrine that morning--going far beyond necessity in her determination to be heard--the groups of women coming in to lay a fresh chaplet among the withered ones and give a "jow" to the deep-toned bell hung in the archway in order to attract the god's attention to their offering, paused to whisper among themselves of her piety. While more than once a widow crept close to kiss the edge of her veil humbly.
It was balm indeed! It was peace. The mem might starve, she told herself fiercely, but she would be suttee. After all the strain, and the pain, and the wondering ache at her heart, she had come back to her own life. This she understood. Let the Huzoors keep to their own. This was hers.
The sun danced in motes through the branches of the peepul tree above the little shrine, the squirrels chirruped among them, the parrots chattered, sending a rain of soft little figs to fall with a faint sound on the hard stones, and still Tara counted her beads feverishly.
"Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm! Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm!"
"Ari! sisters! she is a saint indeed. She was here at dawn and she prays still," said the women, coming in the lengthening shadows with odd little bits of feastings. A handful of cocoa-nut chips, a platter of flour, a dish of curds, or a dab of butter.
"Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm!"
And all the while poor Tara was thinking of the Huzoor's face, if he ever found out that she had left the mem to starve. It was almost dark when she stood up, abandoning the useless struggle, so she waited to see the sacred Circling of the Lights and get her little sip of holy water before she went back to her perch among the pigeons, to put on the crimson scarf and the gold circlets again. Since it was hopeless trying to be a saint till she had done what she had promised the Huzoor she would do. She must go back to the mem first.
But Kate, opening the door to her with eyes a-glitter and a whole cut-and-dried plan for the future, almost took her breath away, and reduced her into looking at the Englishwoman with a sort of fear.
"The mem will he suttee too," she said stupidly, after listening a while. "The mem will shave her head and put away her jewels! The mem will wear a widow's shroud and sweep the floor, saying she comes from Bengal to serve the saint?"
"I do not care, Tara, how it is done. Perhaps you may have a better plan. But we must prevent the master from finding me again. He has done too much for me as it is; you know he has," replied Kate, her eyes shining like stars with determination. "I only want you to save him; that is all. You may take me away and kill me if you like; and if you won't help me to hide, I'll go out into the streets and let them kill me there. I will not have him risk his life for me again."
"Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm!" said Tara under her breath. That settled it, and at dawn the next day Tara stood in her odd little perch above the shrine among the pigeons, looking down curiously at the mem who, wearied out by her long midnight walk through the city and all the excitement of the day, had dozed off on a bare mat in the corner, her head resting on her arm. Three months ago Kate could not have slept without a pillow; now, as she lay on the hard ground, her face looked soft and peaceful in sheer honest dreamless sleep. But Tara had not slept; that was to be told from the anxious strain of her eyes. She had sat out since she had returned home, on her two square yards of balcony in the waning moonlight, looking down on the unseen shrine, hidden by the tall peepul tree whose branches she could almost touch.
Would the mem really be suttee? she had asked herself again and again. Would she do so much for the master? Would she--would she really shave her head? A grim smile of incredulity came to Tara's face, then a quick, sharp frown of pain. If she did, she must care very much for the Huzoor. Besides, she had no right to do it! The mems were never suttee. They married again many times. And then this mem was married to someone else. No! she would never shave her head for a strange man. She might take off her jewels, she might even sweep the floor. But shave her head? Never!
But supposing she did?
The oddest jumble of jealousy and approbation filled Tara's heart. So, as the yellow dawn broke, she bent over Kate.
"Wake, mem sahib!" she said, "wake. It is time to prepare for the day. It is time to get ready."
Kate started up, rubbing her eyes, wondering where she was; as in truth she well might, for she had never been in such a place before. The long, low slip of a room was absolutely empty save for a reed mat or two; but every inch of it, floor, walls, ceiling, was freshly plastered with mud. That on the floor was still wet, for Tara had been at work on it already. Over each doorway hung a faded chaplet, on each lintel was printed the mark of a bloody hand, and round and about, in broad finger-marks of red and white, ran the eternal Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm! in Sanskrit letterings. In truth, Tara's knowledge of secular and religious learning was strictly confined to this sentence. There was a faint smell of incense in the room, rising from a tiny brazier sending up a blue spiral flame of smoke before a two-inch high brass idol with an elephant's head which sat on a niche in the wall. It represented Eternal Wisdom. But Kate did not know this. Nor in a way did Tara. She only knew it was Gunesh-jee. And outside was the yellow dawn, the purple pigeons beginning to coo and sidle, the quivering hearts of the peepul leaves.
"I have everything ready for the mem," began Tara hurriedly, "if she will take off her jewels."
"You must pull this one open for me, Tara," said Kate, holding out her arm with the gold bangle on it. "The master put it on for me, and I have never had it off since."
Tara knew that as well as she. Knew that the master must have put it on, since she had not. Had, in fact, watched it with jealous eyes over and over again. And there was the mem without it, smiling over the scantiness and the intricacies of a coarse cotton shroud.
"There is the hair yet," said Tara with quite a catch in her voice; "if the mem will undo the plaits, I will go round to the old poojârnis and get the loan of her razor--she only lives up the next stair."
"We shall have to snip it off first," said Kate quite eagerly, for, in truth, she was becoming interested in her own adventures, now that she had, as it were, the control over them. "It is so long." She held up a tress as she spoke. It was beautiful hair; soft, wavy, even, and the dye--unrenewed for days--had almost gone, leaving the coppery sheen distinct.
"She would never cut it off!" said Tara to herself as she went for the razor. No woman would ever shave her head willingly. Why! when she had had it done for the first time, she had screamed and fought. Her mother-in-law had held her hands, and----
She paused at the door as she re-entered, paralyzed by what she saw. Kate had found the knife Tara used for her limited cooking, and, seated on the ground cheerfully, was already surrounded by rippling hair which she had cut off by clubbing it in her hand and sawing away as a groom does at a horse's tail.
Tara's cry made her pause. The next moment the Rajpootni had snatched the knife from her and flung it one way, the razor another, and stood before her with blazing eyes and heaving breast.
"It is foolishness!" she said fiercely. "The mems cannot be suttee. I will not have it."
Kate stared at her. "But I must----" she began.
"There is no must at all," interrupted Tara superbly; "I will find some other way." And then she bent over quickly, and Kate felt her hands upon her hair. "There is plenty left," she said with a sigh of relief. "I will plait it up so that no one will see the difference."
And she did. She put the gold bangle on again also, and by dawn the next day Kate found herself once more installed as a screened woman; but this time as a Hindoo lady under a vow of silence and solitude in the hopes of securing a son for her lord through the intercession of old Anunda, the Swâmi.
"I have told Sri Anunda," said Tara with a new respect in her manner. "I had to trust someone. And he is as God. He would not hurt a fly." She paused, then went on with a tone of satisfaction, "But he says the mem could not have been suttee, so that foolishness is well over."
"But what is to be done next, Tara?" asked Kate, looking in astonishment round the wide old garden, arched over by tall forest trees, and set round with high walls, in which she found herself. In the faint dawn she could just see glimmering straight paths parceling it out into squares; and she could hear the faint tinkle of the water runnels. "I can't surely stop here."
"The mem will only have to keep still all day in the darkest corner with her face to the wall," said Tara. "Sri Anunda will do the rest. And when Soma returns he must take the mem away before the thirty regiments come and the trouble begins."
"Thirty regiments!" echoed Kate, startled.
"He and others have gone out to see if it is true. They say so in the Palace; but it is full of lies," said Tara indifferently.
It was indeed. More than ever. But they began to need confirmation, and so there was big talk of action, and jingling of bits and bridles and spurs in the city as well as in the camp. They were to intercept the siege train from Firozpur; they were to get round to the rear of the Ridge and overwhelm it. They were to do everything save attack it in face.
And, meanwhile, other people besides Soma and such-like Sadducean sepoys had gone out to find the thirty regiments, and secret scouts from the Palace were hunting about for someone to whom they might deliver a letter addressed
"To the Officers, Subadars, Chiefs, and others of the whole military force coming from the Bombay Presidency:
"To the effect that the statement of the defeat of the Royal troops at Delhi is a false and lying fabrication contrived by contemptible infidels--the English. The true story is that nearly eighty or ninety thousand organized Military Troops, and nearly ten or fifteen thousand regular and other Cavalry, are now here in Delhi. The troops are constantly engaged, night and day, in attacks on the infidels, and have driven back their batteries from the Ridge. In three or four days, please God, the whole Ridge will be taken, when every one of the base unbelievers will be sent to hell. You are, therefore, on seeing this order, to use all endeavors to reach the Royal Presence, so, joining the Faithful, give proofs of zeal, and establish your renown. Consider this imperative."
But though they hunted high and low, east, north, south, and west, the Royal scouts found no one to receive the order. So it came back to Delhi, damp and pulpy; for the rains had begun again, turning great tracts of country into marsh and bog, and generally wetting the blankets in which the sepoys kept guard sulkily.
They drenched Kate Erlton also, despite the arcaded trees above her corner as she sat with her face to the wall in the wide old garden. At first her heart beat at each step on the walk behind her, but she soon realized that she was hidden by her vow, happed about from the possibility of intrusion by her penance. But not many steps came by her; they kept chiefly to the other end of the garden where Sri Anunda was to be found. It was a curious experience. There was a yard of two of thatch, screened by matting and supported by bamboos, leaning not far off against the wall; and into this she crept at night to find the indulgence of a dry blanket. At first she felt inclined to seek its shelter when the rain poured loudly on the leaves above her and fell thence in big blobs, making a noise like the little ripe figs when the squirrels shook them down; but the remembrance that such women as Tara performed like vows cheerfully kept her steady. And after a day or two she often started to find it was already noon or dusk, the day half gone or done. Time slipped by with incredible swiftness in watching the squirrels and the birds, in counting the raindrops fall from a peepul leaf. And what a strange peace and contentment the life brought! As she sat after dark in the thatch, eating the rice and milk and fruit which Tara brought her stealthily, she felt, at times, a terrified amaze at herself. If she ever came through the long struggle for life, this surely would be the strangest part of the dream. Tara, indeed, used to remark with a satisfied smile that though the mem could not of course be suttee, still she did very well as a devoted and repentant wife. Sri Anunda could never have had a better penitent. And then, in reply to Kate's curious questions, she would say that Sri Anunda was a Swâmi. If the mem once saw and spoke to him she would know what that meant. He had lived in the garden for fifteen years. Not as a penance. A Swâmi needed no penance as men and women did; for he was not a man. Oh, dear no! not a man at all.
So Kate, going on this hint of inhumanity, and guided by her conventional ideas of Hindoo ascetics, imagined a monstrosity, and felt rather glad than otherwise that Sri Anunda kept out of her way.
She was eager also to know how long she might have to stay in his garden. The vow, Tara said, lasted for fifteen days. Till then no one would question her right to sit and look at the wall; and by that time Soma would have returned, and a plan for getting the mem away to the Ridge settled. For the master was evidently not going to return to the city; perhaps he had forgotten the mem? Kate smiled at this, drearily, thinking that indeed he might; for he might be dead. But even this uncertainty about all things, save that she sat and watched the squirrels and the birds, had ceased to disturb her peace.
As a matter of fact, however, he was thinking of her more than ever, and with a sense of proprietorship that was new to him. Here, by God's grace, was the one woman for him to save; the somebody to kill, should he fail, needing no selection. There were enough enemies and to spare within the walls still, even though they had been melting away of late. But a new one had come to the Ridge itself, which, though it killed few, sapped steadily at the vigor of the garrison. This was the autumnal fever, bad at Delhi in all years, worse than usual in this wet season, counterbalancing the benefit of the coolness and sending half a regiment to hospital one day and letting them out of it the next, sensibly less fit for arduous work. It claimed Jim Douglas, already weakened by it, and made his wound slow of healing.
"You haven't good luck certainly," said Major Erlton, finding him with chattering teeth taking quinine dismally. "I don't know how it is, but though I'm a lot thinner, this life seems to suit me. I haven't felt so fit for ages."
He had not been so fit, in truth. It was a healthier, simpler life than he had led for many a long year; and ever since John Nicholson had bidden him go back to his tent and sleep, even the haggardness had left his face; the restlessness having been replaced by an eager certainty of success. He was coming steadily to the front, too, so the Ridge said, since Nicholson had taken him up. And he had well deserved this, since there was not a better soldier; cool, stubborn, certain to carry out orders. The very man, in short, whom men like the General wanted; and if he stayed to the finish he would have a distinguished career before him.
But Herbert Erlton himself never thought of this; he hated thought instinctively, and of late had even given up thinking of the city. He never sat and watched the rose-red walls now. Perhaps because he was too busy. So he left that to Jim Douglas, who had nothing else to do, while he went about joyously preparing to accompany Nicholson in his next lesson of law and order.
For in the city it was becoming more and more difficult every day to make the lies pass muster, even in the Palace; and so, in despair, the four Commanders-in-Chief for once had laid their heads together and concocted a plan for intercepting the siege train from Ferozpur. So it was necessary that they should be taught the futility of such attempts. Not that even the Palace people really believed them possible. How could they? when almost every day, now, letters came to the Ridge from some member or another of the Royal family asking effusively how he could serve the English cause. Only the old King, revising his lists of precedence, listening still to brocaded bags, taking cooling draughts, making couplets, being cozened by the Queen, and breathed upon by Hussan Askuri, hovered between the policy of being the great Moghul and a poor prisoner in the hands of fate. But the delights of the former were too much for him as a rule, and he would sit and finger the single gold coin which had come as a present from Oude as if he were to have the chance of minting millions with a similar inscription.
"Bahâdur Shâh Ghâzee has struck upon gold the coin of Victory."
Even in its solitary grandeur it had, in truth, a surpassing dignity of its own in the phrase--"struck upon gold the coin of Victory." So, looking at it, he forgot that it was a mere sample, sent, as the accompanying brocaded bag said, with a promise to pay more when more victory brought more gold. But Zeenut Maihl, as she looked at it, thought with a sort of fury of certain gold within reach, hidden in her house. What was to become of these coins with John Company's mark on them? For she still lingered in the Palace. Other women had fled, but she was wiser than they. She knew that, come what might, her life was safe with the English as victors; so there was nothing but the gold to think of. The gold, and Jewun Bukht, her son. The royal signet was in her possession altogether now, and sometimes the orders, especially when they were for payment of money, had to go without it, because "the Queen of the World was asleep." But she did not dream. That was over; though in a way she clung fiercely to hope. So Ghaus Khân with the Neemuch Brigade, and Bukht Khân with the Bareilly Brigade, and Khair Sultân with the scrapings and leavings of the regiments, who, owning no leader of their own, did what was right in their own eyes, set out to intercept the big guns; and Nicholson set out on the dawn of the 25th to intercept them.
The rain poured down in torrents, the guns sank to their axles in mud, the infantry slipped and slithered, the cavalry were blinded by the mire from the floundering horses. So from daybreak till sunset the little force, two thousand in all--more than one-half of whom were natives--labored eighteen miles through swamps. At noon, it is true, they called a halt nine miles out at a village where the women clustered on the housetops in wild alarm, remembering a day--months back--when they had clustered round an unleavened cake, and the head-man's wife had bidden them listen to the master's gun over the far horizon.
They were to listen to it again that day. For the enemy was ten miles further over the marshes; and it was but noon. The force, no doubt, had been afoot since four; but General Nicholson was emphatically not an eight-hour man. So the shovings and slitherings of guns and mortals began again cheerfully.
Still it was nigh on sundown when, across a deep stream flowing from the big marshes to the west, these contract-workers came on the job they were eager to finish ere nightfall. Six thousand rebels of all arms, holding three villages, a bastioned old serai, and a town. It was a strong position, in the right angle formed by the stream and the flooded canal into which it flowed. Water, impassable save by an unknown ford in the stream, by a bridge held in force over the canal, on two sides of it. On the others dismal swamps. A desperately strong position to attack at sundown after eighteen miles slithering and shoving in the pouring rain; especially with unknown odds against you. Not less, anyhow, than three to one. But John Nicholson had, a single eye; that is, an eye which sees one salient point. Here, it was that bridge to the left, leading back to safe shelter within the walls of Delhi. A cowardly foe must have no chance of using that bridge during silent night watches. So, without a pause, fifteen hundred of the two thousand waded breast-high across the stream to attack the six thousand, Nicholson himself riding ahead for a hasty reconnoissance, since the growing dusk left scant leisure for anything save action. Yet once more a glance was sufficient; and, ere the men, exposed to a heavy fire of grape in crossing the ford, were ready to advance, the orders were given.
There was a hint of cover in some rising ground before the old serai--the strongest point of the defense. He would utilize this, rush the position, change front, and sweep down on the bridge. That must not remain as a chance for cowards an instant longer than he could help; for Nicholson in everything he did seems never to have contemplated defeat.
So flanked by the guns, supported by squadrons of the 9th Lancers and the Guides cavalry, the three regiments[7] marched steadily toward the rising ground, following that colossal figure riding, as ever, ahead. Till suddenly, as his charger's feet touched the highest ground, Nicholson wheeled and held up his hand to those below him.
"Lie down, men!" came his clear strong voice as he rode slowly along the line; "lie down and listen to what I've got to say. It's only a few words."
So, sheltered from the fire, they lay and listened. "You of the 61st know what Sir Colin Campbell said to you at Chillianwallah. He said the same thing to others at the Alma. I say it to you all now. 'Hold your fire till within twenty or thirty yards of that battery, and then, my boys! we will make short work of it!'"
Men cannot cheer lying on their stomachs, but the unmelodious grunt--"We will, sir, by God, we will!"--was as good as one.
Nicholson faced round on the serai again, and gave the order to the artillery. So, in sharp thuds widening into a roar, the flanking guns began work. Half a dozen rounds or so, and then the rider--motionless as a statue in the center--looked back quickly, waved his sword, and went on. The men were up, after him, over the hillock, into the morass beyond, silently.
"Steady, men! steady with it. On with you! Steady!"
They listened to the clear sonorous voice once more, though there was no shelter now from the grape and canister, and musket balls; or rather only the shelter of that one tall figure ahead riding at a foot's-pace.
"Steady! Hold your fire! I'll give the word, never fear! Come on! Come on!"
So through a perfect bog they stumbled on doggedly. Here and there a man fell; but men will fall sometimes. "Now then! Let them have it."
They were within the limit. Twenty yards off lay the guns. There was one furious volley; above it one word answered by a cheer.
So at the point of the bayonet the serai was carried. Then without a pause the troops changed front with a swiftness unforeseen and swept on to the left.
"To Delhi, brothers! To Delhi!" The old cry, begun at Meerut, rose now with a new meaning as the panic-stricken guns limbered up and made for the bridge. Too late! Captain Blunt's were after them, chasing them. The wheel of the foremost, driven wildly, jammed; those following couldn't pull up. So, helter skelter, they were in a jumble, out of which Englishmen helped the whole thirteen! The day, or rather the night, was won; for Nature's dark flag of truce hung even between the assailants and the few desperate defenders of the third village, who, with escape cut off, were selling their lives at a cost to the attackers of seventeen out of that total death-roll of twenty-five. But Nicholson knew his position sure, so he left night to finish the rout, and, with his men, bivouacked without food or cover among the marshes; for it was too dark to get the baggage over the ford. Yet the troops were ready to start at daybreak for an eighteen miles tramp back to the Ridge again. There was no talk of exhaustion now, as at Budli-ke-serai; so just thirty-six hours after they started, that is, just one hour for every mile of morass and none for the fight, they startled the Ridge by marching in again and clamoring for food! But Nicholson was in a towering temper. He had found that another brigade had been lurking behind the canal, and that if he had had decent information he might have smashed it also, on his way home.
"He hadn't even a guide that he didn't pick up himself," commented Major Erlton angrily. "By George! how those niggers cave in to him! And his political information was all rot. If the General had obeyed instructions he would have been kicking his heels at Bahâdagurh still."
"We heard you at it about two o'clock," said a new listener. "I suppose it was a night attack--risky business rather."
Herbert Erlton burst into a laugh; but the elation on his face had a pathetic tenderness in it. "That was the bridge, I expect. He blew it up before starting. He sat on it till then. Besides there were the wagons and tumbrils and things. He told Tombs to blow them up, too, for of course he had to bring the guns back, and he couldn't shove the lot."
As he passed on some of his listeners smiled.
"It's a case of possession," said one to his neighbor.
"Pardon me," said another, who had known the Major for years. "It's a case of casting out. I wonder----" The speaker paused and shrugged his shoulders.
"Did you hear his name had gone up for the V. C.?" began his companion.
"Gone up! My dear fellow! It might have gone up fifty times over. But it isn't his pluck that I wonder at; it is his steadiness. He never shirks the little things. It is almost as if he had found a conscience."
Perhaps he had. He was cheerful enough to have had the testimony of a good one, as, in passing, he looked in on Jim Douglas and met his congratulations.
"Bad shilling!" replied the Major, beautifully unconscious. "So you've heard--and--hello! what's up?" For Jim Douglas was busy getting into disguise.
"That old scoundrel Tiddu came into camp with the news an hour ago," said the latter, whose face was by no means cheerful. "He was out carrying grain--saw the fugitives, and came in here, hoping for backsheesh, I believe. But"--Jim Douglas looked round rapidly at the Major--"I'm awfully afraid, Erlton, that he has not been in Delhi, to speak of, since I left. And I was relying on him for news----"
"There isn't any--is there?" broke in Major Erlton with a queer hush in his voice.
"None. But there may be. So I'm off at once. I couldn't have a better chance. The villain says the sepoys are slipping in on the sly in hundreds; for the Palace folk, or at least the King, thinks the troops are still engaged, and is sending out reinforcements. So I shall have no trouble in getting through the gates."
Major Erlton, radiant, splashed from head to foot, covered at once with mud and glory, looked at the man opposite him with a curious deliberation.
"I don't see why you should go at all," he said slowly. "I wouldn't, if I--I mean I would rather you didn't."
"Why?" The question came sharply.
"Do you want the truth?" asked Herbert Erlton with a sudden frown.
"Certainly."
"Then I'll tell it, Mr. Greyman--I mean Douglas--I--I'm grateful, but--d----n me, sir, if--if I want to be more so! I--I gave you my chance once--like a fool; for I might have saved her----"
The hard handsome face was all broken up with passionate regret, and the pity of it kept Jim Douglas silent for a moment. For he understood it.
"You might," he said at last. "But I don't interfere with you here. You can't save her--your wife, I mean--and if I fail you can always----"
"There is no need to tell me what to do then," interrupted Major Erlton grimly. "I'll do it without your help."
He turned on his heel, then paused. "It isn't that I'm ungrateful," he repeated, almost with an appeal in his voice. "And I don't mean to be offensive; only you and I can't----"
His own mental position seemed beyond him, and he stood for a moment irresolute. Then he held out his hand.
"Well, good-by. I suppose you mean to stick to it?"
"I mean to stick to it. Good-by."
"And I must be off to my bed. Haven't slept a wink for two nights, and I shall be on duty to-morrow. Well! I believe I've as good a chance of seeing Kate here as you have of finding her there; but I can't prevent your going, of course."
So he went off to his bed, and Jim Douglas, following Tiddu, who was waiting for him in the Koodsia Gardens, carried out his intention of sticking to it; while John Nicholson in his tent, forgetful of his advice to both of them, was jotting down notes for his dispatch. One of them was: "The enemy was driven from the serai with scarcely any loss to us, and made little resistance as we advanced." The other was: "Query? How many men in buckram? Most say seven or eight thousand. I think between three and four."
He had, indeed, a vile habit of telling the truth, even in dispatches. So ended the day of Nujjufghar.
The next morning, the 27th, broke fine and clear. Kate Erlton waking with the birds, found the sky full of light already, clear as a pale topaz beyond the overarching trees.
She stood after leaving her thatch, looking into the garden, lost in a sort of still content. It seemed impossible she should be in the heart of a big city. There was no sound but the faint rustling of the wet leaves drying themselves in the soft breeze, and the twitterings of squirrels and birds. There was nothing to be seen but the trees, and the broad paths rising above the flooding water from the canal-cut which ran at the further side.
And Sri Anunda had lived here for fifteen years; while she? How long had she been there? She smiled to herself, for, in truth, she had lost count of days altogether, almost of Time itself. She was losing hold of life. She told herself this, with that vague amaze at finding it so. Yes she was losing her grip on this world without gaining, without even desiring, a hold on the next. She was learning a strange new fellowship with the dream of which she was a part, because it would soon be past; because the trees, the flowers, the birds, the beasts, were mortal as herself. A squirrel, its tail a-fluff, was coming down the trunk of the next tree in fitful half-defiant jerks, its bright eyes watching her. The corner of her veil was full of the leavings of her simple morning meal, which she always took with her to scatter under the trees; and now, in sudden impulse, she sank down to her knees and held a morsel of plantain out tenderly.
Dear little mortal, she thought, with a new tenderness, watching it as it paused uncertain; until the consciousness that she was being watched in her turn made her look up; then pause, as she was, astonished, yet not alarmed, at the figure before her. It was neither tall nor short, dark nor fair, and it was wrapped from knee to shoulder in a dazzling white cloth draped like a Greek chiton, which showed the thin yet not emaciated curves of the limbs, and left the poise of the long throat bare. The head was clean shaven, smooth as the cheek, and the face, destitute even of eyebrows, was softly seamed with lines and wrinkles which seemed to leave it younger, and brighter, as if in an eternity of smile-provoking content. But the eyes! Kate felt a strange shock, as they brought back to her the innocent dignity Raphael gave to his San-Sistine Bambino. For this was Sri Anunda; could be no one else. In his hand he held a bunch of henna-blossom, the camphire of Scripture, the cypress of the Greeks; yellowish green, insignificant, incomparably sweet. He held it out to her, smiling, then laid it on her outstretched hand.
"The lesson is learned, sister," he said softly. "Go in peace, and have no fear."
The voice, musical exceedingly, thrilled her through and through. She knelt looking after him regretfully as, without a pause, he passed on his way. So that was a Swâmi! She went back to her corner--for already early visitors were drifting in for Sri Anunda's blessing--and with the bunch of henna-blossom on the ground before her sat thinking.
What an extraordinary face it was! So young, so old. So wise, so strangely innocent. Tara was right. It was not a man's face. Yet it could not be called angelic, for it was the face of a mortal. Yes! that was it, a mortal face immortal through its mortality; through the circling wheel of life and death. The strong perfume of the flowers reaching her, set her a-thinking of them. Did he always give a bunch when the penance was over and say the lesson was learned? It was a significant choice, these flowers of life and death. For bridal hands had been stained with henna, and corpses embalmed with it for ages, and ages, and ages. Or was that "peace go with you," that "have no fear" meant as an encouragement in something new? Had they been making plans? had anything happened? She scarcely seemed to care. So, as the cloudless day passed on, she sat looking at the henna-blossom and thinking of Sri Anunda's face.
But something had happened. Jim Douglas had come back to the city and Tara knew it. She had barely escaped his seeing her, and she felt she could not escape it long. And then, it seemed to her, the old life would begin again; for she would never be able to keep the truth from him. The mem might talk of deceit glibly; but if it came to telling lies to the master she would fail.
There was only one chance. If she could get the mem safely out of the city at once; then she could tell the truth without fear. The necessity for immediate action came upon her by surprise. She had ceased to expect the master's return, she had not cared personally for Kate's safety, and so had been content to let the future take care of itself. But now everything was changed. If Kate were not got rid of, sent out of the city, one of two things must happen: The master must be left to get her out as best he could, at the risk of his life; or she, Tara, must return to the old allegiance; return and sit by, while the mem in a language she did not understand, told the Huzoor how she had been willing to be suttee for him!
So while Kate sat looking at the henna-blossom, Tara sat telling herself that at all costs, all risks, she must be got out of the city that night. She, and her jewels. They were at present tied up in a bundle in Tara's room, but the Huzoor might think her a thief if the mem went without them. And another thing she decided. She would not tell the mem the reason of this sudden action. True, Kate had professed herself determined that the master should not risk his life for her again; but women were not--not always--to be trusted. For the rest, Soma must help.
She waited till dusk, however, before appealing to him, knowing that her only chance lay in taking him by storm, in leaving him no time for reflection. So, just as the lights were beginning to twinkle in the bazaars, she made her way, full of purpose, to the half ruined sort of cell in the thickness of the wall not far from the sally-port, in which of late--since he had taken morosely to drugs--he was generally to be found at this time, waking drowsily to his evening meal before going out.
She found him thus, sure enough, and began at once on her task. He must help. He could easily pass out the mem. That was all she asked of him. But his handsome face settled into sheer obstinacy at once. He was not going to help anyone, he said, or harm anyone, till they struck the first blow, and then they had better defend themselves. That was the end. And so it seemed; for after ten minutes of entreaty, he stood up with something of a lurch ere he found his feet, and bid her go. She only wasted her time and his, since he must eat his food ere he went to relieve the sentry at the sally-port.
She caught him up reproachfully, almost indignantly.
"Then thou art there, on guard! and it needs but the opening of a door, a thrusting of a woman out--to--die, perchance, Soma. Remember that!"
She spoke with a feverish eagerness, as if the suggestion had its weight with her, but he treated it contemptuously.
"Loh!" he said in scorn. "What a woman's word! Thank the Gods I was not born one."
The taunt bit deep, and Tara drew herself up angrily. So the brother and sister stood face to face, strangely alike.
"Wast not?" she retorted bitterly. "The Gods know. Is there not woman in man, and man in woman, among those born at a birth? Soma! for the sake of that--do this for me----" It was her last appeal; she had kept it for the last, and now her somber eyes were ablaze with passionate entreaty. "See, brother! I claim it of you as a right. Thou didst take my sainthood from me once. Count this as giving it back again."
"Back again?" echoed Soma thickly. "What fool's talk is this?"
"Let it be fool's talk, brother," she interrupted, with a strange intensity in her voice. "I care not--thou dost not know; I cannot tell thee. But--but this will be counted to thee in restitution. Soma! think of it as my sainthood! Sure thou dost owe me it! Somal for the sake of the hand which lay in thine."
In her excitement she moved a step forward, and he shrank back instinctively. True, she was a saint in another way if those scars were true; but--at the moment, being angry with her, he chose to doubt, to remember. "Stand back!" he cried roughly, unsteadily. "What do I owe thee? What claim hast thou?"
The question, the gesture outraged her utterly. The memory of a whole life of vain struggling after self-respect surged to her brain, bringing that almost insane light to her eyes. "What?" she echoed fiercely--"this!" Ere he could prevent it, her hand was in his, gripping it like a vice.
"So in the beginning--so in the end!" she gasped, as he struggled with her madly. "Tara and Soma hand in hand. Nay! I am strong as thou."
She spoke truth, for his nerve and muscle were slack with opium; yet he fought wildly, striking at her with his left hand, until in a supreme effort she lost her footing, they both staggered, and he--as she loosed her hold--fell backward, striking his head against a projecting brick in the ruined wall.
"Soma!" she whispered to his prostrate figure, "art hurt, brother? Speak to me!"
But he lay still, and, with a cry, she flung herself on her knees beside him, feeling his heart, listening to his breathing, searching for the injury. It was a big cut on the crown of the head; but it did not seem a bad one, and she began to take his unconsciousness more calmly. She had seen folk like that before from a sudden fall, and they came to themselves, none the worse, after a while. But scarcely, here, in time to relieve guard.
She stood up suddenly and looked round her. Soma's uniform hung on a peg, his musket stood in a corner.
Half an hour after this, Kate, waiting in the thatch for Tara to come as usual, gave a cry, more of surprise than alarm, as a tall figure, in uniform, stepped into the flickering light of the cresset.
"Soma!" she cried, "what is it?"
A gratified smile came to the curled mustachios. "Soma or Tara, it matters not," replied a familiar voice. "They were one in the beginning. Quick, mem-sahib. On with the jewels. I have a dark veil too for the gate."
Kate stood up, her heart throbbing. "Am I to go, then? Is that what Sri Anunda meant?"
"Sri Anunda! hath he been here?" Tara paused, sniffed, and once more those dark eyes met the light ones with a fierce jealousy. "He hath given thee henna-blossom. I smell it; and he gives it to none but those who---- So the Swâmi's lesson is learned--and the disciple can go in peace----" She broke off with a petulant laugh. "Well! so be it. It ends my part. The mem will sleep among her own to-night; Sri Anunda hath said it. Come----"
"But how? I must know how," protested Kate.
The laugh rose again. "Wherefore? The mem is Sri Anunda's disciple. For the rest, I will let the mem out through the little river-gate. There is a boat, and she can go in peace."
There was something so wild, so almost menacing in Tara's face, that Kate felt her only hope was to obey. And, in good sooth, the scent of the henna-blossom she carried with her, tucked into her bosom, gave her, somehow, an irrational hope that all would go well as she followed her guide swiftly through the alleys and bazaars.
"The mem must wait here," whispered Tara at last, pausing behind one of the ungainly mausoleums in what had been the old Christian cemetery. "When she hears me singing Sonny-baba's song, she must follow to the Water-gate. It is behind the ruins, there."
Kate crouched down, setting her back, native fashion, against the tomb. And as she waited she wondered idly what mortal lay there; so, being strangely calm, she let her fingers stray to the recess she felt behind her. There should be a marble tablet there; and even in the dark she might trace the lettering. But the recess was empty, the marble having evidently been picked out. So it was a nameless grave. And the next? She moved over to it stealthily, then to the next. But the tablets had been taken out of all and carried off--for curry-stones most likely. So the graves were nameless; those beneath them mortals--nothing more. As she waited under the stars, her mind reverted to Sri Anunda and the Wheel of Life and Death. The immortality of mortality! Was that the lesson which was to let her go in peace?
She started from the thought as that native version of the "Happy Land" came, nasally, from behind the ruins. As she passed them, a group of men were squatted gossiping round a hookah, and more than one figure passed her. But a woman with her veil drawn, and a clank of anklets on her feet, did not even invite a curious eye; for it was still early enough for such folk to be going home.