Hetty Wesley Part 16

"For my part," put in Nancy comfortably, "I don't suppose she would care to come down. And 'tis cosy to be back in the kitchen again, after ten days of the parlour and Mrs. Sam. Emmy agrees, I know."

But Emmy with fine composure put aside this allusion to her pet foe.

"Molly and Johnny should make a match of it," she sneered.

"They might set up house on their belief in Hetty, and even take her to lodge with them."

John Whitelamb sprang up as if stung; stood for a moment, still with his face averted upon the fire; then, while all stared at him, let drop the arm he had half-lifted towards the mantel-shelf and relapsed into his chair. He had not uttered a sound.

Mrs. Wesley had a reproof upon her tongue, and this time a sharp one.

She was prevented, however, by Molly, who rose to her feet, tottered to the door as if wounded, and escaped from the kitchen.

Molly mounted the stairs with bowed head, dragging herself at each step by the handrail. Reaching the garrets, she paused by Hetty's door to listen. No light pierced the c.h.i.n.ks; within was silence.

She crept away to her room, undressed, and lay down, sobbing quietly.

Her sobs ceased, but she could not sleep. A full moon strained its rays through the tattered curtain, and as it climbed, she watched the panel of light on the wall opposite steal down past a text above the washstand, past the washstand itself, to the bare flooring. "G.o.d is love" said the text, and Molly had paid a pedlar twopence for it, years before, at Epworth fair--quite unaware that she was purchasing the Wesley family motto. She heard her mother and sisters below bid one another good night and mount to their rooms. An hour later her father went his round, locking up. Then came silence.

Suddenly she sat up in her bed. She had heard--yes, surely--Hetty's voice. It seemed to come from outside, close below her window-- Hetty's ordinary voice, with no distress in it, speaking some words she could not catch. She listened. Actual sound or illusion, it was not repeated. She climbed out of bed and drew the curtain aside.

Bright moonlight lay spread all about the house and, beyond, the fenland faded away to an unseen horizon as through veils of gold and silver, asleep, no creature stirring on the face of it.

She let drop the corner of the curtain and on the instant caught it back again. A dark form, quick and noiseless, slipped past the shadow by the yard-gate. It was Rag the mastiff, left unchained at night: and as he padded across the yard in the full moonlight, Molly saw that he was wagging his tail.

She watched him to his kennel; stepped to her door, lifted the latch cautiously and stole once more along the pa.s.sage to Hetty's room.

"Hetty!" she whispered. "Hetty dear! Were you calling? Is anything wrong?" She shook the door gently. No answer came. Mr. Wesley had left the key in the lock after turning it on the outside: and still whispering to her sister, Molly wrenched it round, little by little.

No one stirred below-stairs: no one answered within. She pushed the door open an inch or two, then wider, pausing as it creaked.

A draught of the warm night wind met her as she slipped into the room, and--her fingers trembling and missing their hold--the door fell to behind her, almost with a slam.

She stood still, her heart in her mouth. In her ears the noise was loud enough to awake the house. But as the seconds dragged by and still no sound came from her father's room, "Hetty!" she whispered again.

Her eyes were on the bed as she whispered it, and in the pale light the bed was patently empty. Still she did not comprehend. Her eyes wandered from it to the open window.

When she spoke again it was with the same low whisper, but a whisper which broke as she breathed it to follow where it might not reach.

"What have they done to you? My darling, G.o.d watch over you now!"

She crept back to her room and lay shivering, waiting for the dawn.

BOOK III.

PROLOGUE.

In a chilly dawn, high among the mountains to the north of Berar, two Britons were wandering with an Indian attendant. They came like spectres, in curling wreaths of mist that magnified their stature; and daylight cowed each with the first glimpse of his comrade's face, yellow with hunger and gla.s.sy-eyed with lack of sleep. They were, in fact, hopelessly lost. They had spent the night huddled together on a narrow ledge, listening hour by hour to the sound of water tumbling over unknown precipices; and now they moved with painful cramped limbs, yet listlessly, being past hope to escape or to see another dawn.

The elder Briton was a Scotsman, aged fifty or thereabouts, a clerk of the H.E.I.C.; the younger an Englishman barely turned twenty, an officer in the same company's service. They hailed from Surat, and had arrived in Berar on a trade mission with an escort of fifty men, of whom their present attendant, Bhagwan Da.s.s, was the solitary survivor; and this came of believing that a "protection" from the Nizam would carry them anywhere in the Nizam's supposed dominions, whereas the _de facto_ rulers of Berar were certain Mahratta chieftains who collected its taxes and who had politely forwarded the mission into the fastnesses of the mountains. There, at the ripe moment, the ma.s.sacre had taken place, Mr. Menzies and young Prior escaping on their hill-ponies, with Bhagwan Da.s.s clutching at Prior's stirrup-leather. The ma.s.sacre having been timed a little before nightfall, darkness helped them to get clear away; but Menzies, by over-riding his little mare, flung her, an hour later, with a broken fetlock, and Prior's pony being all but dead-beat, they abandoned the poor brutes on the mountain-side, took to their feet and stumbled on until the setting of the young moon. With the first light of dawn they had roused themselves to start anew, lingering out the agony: for the slopes below swarmed with enemies in chase, and even if a village lurked in these heights the inhabitants would give no help, being afraid of their Mahratta masters.

They had crossed a gully through which a mountain runlet descended, unrolling a ribbon of green mossy herbage on its way, and slipping out of sight over the edge of a precipice of two hundred feet or so.

Beyond this the eye saw nothing but clouds of mist heaving and smoking to the very lip of the fall. Young Prior halted for a moment on the farther slope to take breath, and precisely at that moment something happened which he lived to relate a hundred times and always with wonder. For as his eye fell on these clouds of mist, a beam of light came travelling swiftly down the mountain and pierced them, turning them to a fierce blood-red; next, almost with an audible rush, the sun leapt into view over the eastern spurs: and while he stared down upon the vapours writhing and bleeding under this lance-thrust of dawn--while they shook themselves loose and trailed away in wreaths of crimson and gold and violet, and deep in the chasms between them shone the plain with its tilled fields and villages--a cry from Bhagwan Da.s.s fetched him round sharply, and he beheld, a few yards above him on the slope, a man.

The man sat, naked to the waist, at the entrance of a low cave or opening in the hillside. He seemed to be of great age, with a calm and almost unwrinkled face and gray locks falling to his shoulders, around which hung a rosary of black beads, very highly polished and flashing against the sun. From the waist down he was wrapped in a bright yellow shawl, and beside him lay a crutch and a wooden bowl heaped with rice and conserves.

Before the two Britons could master their dismay, Bhagwan Da.s.s had run towards the cave and was imploring the holy man to give them shelter and hiding. For a while he listened merely, and his first response was to lift the bowl and invite them with a gesture to stay their hunger. Famished though they were, they hesitated, and reading the reason in their eyes, he spoke for the first time.

"It will not harm you," said he in Hindustani: "and the villagers below bring me more than I can eat."

From the moment of setting eyes on him--Prior used to declare--a blessed sense of protection fell upon the party; a feeling that in the hour of extreme need G.o.d had suddenly put out a shield, under the shadow of which they might rest in perfect confidence. And indeed, though they knew the mountain to be swarming with their enemies, they entered the cave and slept all that day like children. Whether or no meanwhile their enemies drew near they never discovered: but Prior, awaking towards nightfall, saw the hermit still seated at the entrance as they had found him, and lay for a while listening to the click of his rosary as he told bead after bead.

He must, however, have held some communication with the unseen village in the valley: for three bowls of milk and rice stood ready for them. They supped, forbearing--upon Bhagwan Da.s.s's advice--to question him, though eager to know if he had a mind to help them further, and how he might contrive it. Until moonrise he gave no sign at all; then rising gravely, crutch and bowl in hand, stepped a pace or two beyond the entrance and whistled twice--as they supposed for a guide. But the only guides that answered were two small mountain foxes--a vixen and her half-grown cub--that came bounding around an angle of the rock and fawned about his feet while he caressed them and spoke to them softly in a tongue which none of the party understood. And so they all set out, turning their faces westward and keeping to the upper ridges; the foxes trotting always a few paces ahead and showing the way.

All that night they walked as in a dream, and came at daybreak to a ledge with a shrine upon it, and in the shrine a stone figure of a G.o.ddess, and below the ledge--perhaps half a mile below it--a village clinging dizzily to the mountain-side.--There was no food in the shrine, only a few withered wreaths of marigolds: but the holy man must have spoken to his foxes, for at dawn a priest came toiling up the slope with a filled bowl so ample that his two arms scarcely embraced it. The priest set down the food, took the hermit's blessing and departed in silence: and this was the only human creature they saw on their journey. Not for all their solicitation would the hermit join them in eating: and at this they marvelled most of all: for he had walked far and moderately fast, yet seemed to feel less fatigue than any of them. That night, as soon as the moon rose, he started afresh with the same long easy stride, and the foxes led the way as before.

The dawn rose, but this time he gave no signal for halting: and the cool of morning was almost ended when he led them out through the last broken crests of the ridge and, pointing to a broad plain at their feet, told them that henceforward they might fare in safety.

A broad road traversed the plain, and beside it, some ten to twelve miles from the base of the foothills, twinkled the white walls of a rest-house.

"There," said he, pointing, "either to-day or to-morrow will pa.s.s the trader Afzul Khan: and if indeed ye come from Surat--"

His mild eyes, as he pointed, were turned upon Menzies, who broke out in amazement: "For certain Afzul Khan is known to us, as debtor should be to creditor. But how knowest _thou_ either that he pa.s.ses this way or that we come from Surat?"

"It is enough that I know."

"Either come with us then," Menzies pressed him, "and at the rest-house Afzul Khan shall fill thy bowl with gold-dust; or remain here, and I will send him."

"Why should he do aught so witless?"

Menzies laughed awkwardly. "Though money be useless to thee, holy man, I dare say thy villagers might be the gladder for it."

The hermit shook his head.

"Anyhow," broke in Prior, addressing Menzies in English, "we must do _something_ for him, if only in justice to some folks who will be glad enough to see us back alive."

"My friend here," Menzies interpreted, "has parents living, and is their only son. For me, I have a wife and three children. For their sakes, therefore--"

But the hermit put up a hand. "Something I did for their sakes, giving you back to the chains they will hang upon you. It was weakness in me, and no cause for thanks." He turned his begging bowl so that it shone in the sun: an ant clung to it, crawling on its polished side. "If ye have sons, I may live belike to see them pa.s.s my way."

"That is not likely."

"Who knows?" The old man's eyes rested on Bhagwan Da.s.s.

"Unlikelier things have befallen me while I sat yonder. See--" he turned the bowl in his hand and nodded towards the ant running hither and thither upon it. "What happens to him that would not likewise happen if he stood still?"

"There is food at the rest-house," Menzies persisted; "but I take it you can find food on your way back, even though since starting we have seen none pa.s.s your lips: and that is two days."

"It will be yet two days before I feast again: for I drink not save of the spring by which you found me, and I eat no food the taste of which I cannot wash from me in its water."

Menzies and Prior eyed one another. "Cracked as an old bell!" said the younger man in English, and laughed.