Far to Seek Part 63

She sat stone-still, her face set and strained, as he had seen it after the tournament. "_There_ he is," she murmured--the words a mere movement of her lips.

He hated to see her look like that; and putting out a hand, he touched her arm.

"I don't see him," he said, answering her murmur. "He'll be coming, though. Not nervous, are you?"

She started at his touch--shrank from it almost; or so he fancied.

"Nervous? No--furious!" Her low tone was as tense as her whole att.i.tude.

"Mud and stones! Good heavens! Why don't they _shoot_?"

"They will--at a pinch," Roy a.s.sured her, feeling oddly rebuffed, and as if he were addressing a stranger. "Stay here. Don't stir. I'll glean a few details from one of our outlying sowars."

The nearest man available happened to be a Pathan. Recognising Roy, he saluted, a fighting gleam in his eyes.

"_Wah, wah!_ Sahib! This is not man's work, to sit staring while these throw words to a pack of mad jackals. On the Border we say, _paili lath; pechi bhat_.[31] That would soon make an end of this devil's noise."

"True talk," said Roy, secretly approving the man's rough wisdom. "How long has it been going on?"

"We came late, Sahib, because of the sports; but these have been nearly one hour. Once the police-_log_ gave buckshot to those on the roofs. How much use--the Sahib can see. Now they have sent a sowar for the Dep'ty Sahib. But these would not hear the Lat Sahib himself. One match will light such a bonfire; but a hundred buckets will not put it out."

Roy a.s.sented, ruefully enough. "Is it true there has been big trouble at Amritsar--burning and killing?"

"_Wah, wah! Shurrum ki bhat._[32] Because he who made all the trouble may not come into the Punjab, Sahibs who have no concern--are killed----"

An intensified uproar drew their eyes back to the mob.

It was swaying ominously forward, with yellings and prancings, with renewed showers of bricks and stones.

"Thus they welcome the Dep'ty Sahib," remarked Sher Khan with grim irony.

It was true. No mistaking the bulky figure on horseback, alone in the forefront of the throng, trying vainly to make himself heard. Still he pressed forward, urging, commanding; missiles hurtling round him.

Luckily the aim was poor; and only one took effect.

A voice shouted, "You had better come back, sir."

He halted. There was a fierce forward rush. Large groups of people sat down in flat defiance.

Again Rose broke out with her repressed intensity, "It's madness! Why on _earth_ don't they shoot?"

"The notion is--to give the beggars every chance," urged Roy. "After all, they've been artificially worked up. It's the men behind--pulling the strings--who are to blame----"

"I don't care _who's_ to blame. They're as dangerous as wild beasts."

She did not even look at him. Her eyes, her mind were centred on that weird, unforgettable scene. "And _our_ people simply sitting there being pelted with bricks and stones ... the Pater ... Lance...."

She drew in her lip. Roy gave her a quick look. That was the second time; and she did not even seem aware of it.

"Yes. It's a detestable position, but it's not of their making," he agreed; adding briskly: "Come along, now, Rose. It's getting dark; and I ought to be in Cantonments. There'll be pickets all over the place--after this. I'll see you safe to the Hall, then gallop on."

Her lips twitched in a half-smile. "Shirking congrats again?"

"Oh, drop it! I'd clean forgotten. I'll conduct you _right in_--and chance congrats. But they'll be too full of other things to-night.

Scared to death, some of them."

"Mother, for one. I never thought of her. We must hurry."

For new-made lovers, their tone and bearing was oddly detached, almost brusque. They had gone some distance before they heard shots behind them.

"Thank goodness! At last! I hope it hurt some of them badly," Rose broke out with unusual warmth. She was rather unusual altogether this evening.

"Really, it would serve them right--as Mr Hayes says--if we _did_ clear out, lock, stock, and barrel, and leave their precious country to be scrambled for by others of a very different _jat_[33] from the stupid, splendid British. I'm glad _I'm_ going, anyway. I've never felt in sympathy. And now, after all this ... and Amritsar ... I simply couldn't...."

She broke off in mid-career, flicked her pony's flanks, and set off at a brisk canter.

Pause and action could have but one meaning. "She's realising," thought Roy, cantering after, pain and anger mingled in his heart. At such a moment, he admitted, her outburst was not unnatural. But to him it was, none the less, intolerable. The trouble was, he could say nothing, lest he say too much.

At the Lawrence Hall they found half a company of British soldiers on guard,--producing, by their mere presence, that sense of security which radiates from the policeman and the soldier when the solid ground fails underfoot.

Within doors, the atmosphere was electrical with excitement and uncertainty. Orders had been received that, in case of matters taking a serious turn, the hundred or so of English women and children gathered at the Club would be removed under escort to Government House. No one was dancing. Every one was talking. The wildest rumours were current.

At a crisis the curtains of convention are rent and the inner self peers through, sometimes revealing the face of a stranger. While the imposing Mrs Elton quivered inwardly, Mrs Ranyard--for all her 'creeps' and her fluffiness--knew no flicker of fear. In any case, there were few who would confess to it, though it gnawed at their vitals; and Roy's quick eye noted that, among the women, as a whole, the light-hearted courage of Anglo-India prevailed. It gave him a sharp inner tweak to look at them all and remember that nightmare of seething, yelling rebels at Anarkalli. He wished to G.o.d Rose had not seen it too. It was the kind of thing that would stick in the memory.

On their appearance in the Hall, Mrs Elton deserted a voluble group and bore down upon them, fl.u.s.tered and perspiring.

"My darling girl--thank G.o.d! I've been in a fever!" she cried, and would have engulfed her stately daughter before them all, but that Rose put out a deterring hand.

"I was afraid you'd be upset--so we hurried," she said serenely; not the Rose of Anarkalli, by any means. "But we were all right along the Mozung road."

That 'we,' and a possessive glance--the merest--at her lover, brought down upon the pair a small shower of congratulations. Every one had foreseen it, of course, but it was so delightful to _know_....

After the sixth infliction, Roy whispered in her ear, "I say, I can't stand any more. And it's high time I was off."

"Poor dear! 'When duty calls...?'" Her cool tone was not unsympathetic.

"I'll let you off the rest."

She came out with him, and they stood together a moment in the darkness under the portico.

"I shall dream to-night, Roy," she said gravely. "And we may not even see the Pater. He's taken up his abode in the Telegraph Office. Mother will want to bolt. I can see it in her eye!"

"Well, she's right. You ought all to be cleared out of this, instanter."

"Are you--so keen?"

"Of course not." His tone was more impatient than loverly. "I'm only keen to feel--you're safe."

"Oh--safe!" she sighed. "_Is_ one--anywhere--ever?"

"No," he countered with unexpected vigour, "or life wouldn't be worth living. There are degrees of unsafeness, that's all. It's natural--isn't it, darling?--I should want to feel you're out of reach of that crowd.

If it had pushed on here, and to Government House, Amritsar doings would have been thrown into the shade."

She shivered. "It's horrible--incredible! I suppose one has to be a lifelong Anglo-Indian to realise quite _how_ incredible it feels--to us."