On the Face of the Waters Part 22

Then the Major, being less secure of his ground since fighting was out of the question, turned on his heel. "So far as I'm concerned," he said, "the explanation is sufficient. Give the devil his due and every man his chance."

The innuendo was again unmistakable; but the words reminded Jim Douglas of an almost-forgotten promise, and he bit his lips over the necessity for silence. But in that--as he knew well--lay his only refuge from his own temper; it was silence, or speech to the uttermost.

"If you have quite done with the proof, Captain Morecombe," he said very ceremoniously.

"Certainly, certainly. Thanks for letting me see it," interrupted the Captain, who had been looking from one to the other doubtfully, as most men do even when their dearest friends are implicated, if the cause of a quarrel is a horse. "It is a serious business," he went on hurriedly to help the diversion. "After all the talk and fuss, this cutting down of an officer----"

"Is first blood," put in Jim Douglas. "There will be more spilled before long."

"Disloyal scoundrels!" growled Major Erlton wrathfully. "Idiots! As if they had a chance!"

"They have none. That's the pity of it," retorted his adversary as he rode off quickly.

Ay! that was the pity of it! The pity of blood to be spilled needlessly. The thought made him slacken speed, as if he were on the threshold of a graveyard; though he could not foresee the blood to be spilled so wantonly in that very garden-set angle of the city, so full now of the scent of flowers, the sounds of security. From far came the subdued hum which rises from a city in which there is no wheeled traffic, no roar of machinery; only the feet of men, their tears, their laughter, to a.s.sail the irresponsive air. Nearer, among the scattered houses hidden by trees, rose children's voices playing about the servants' quarters. Across the now empty playground of the College the outlines of the church showed faintly among the fret of branches upon the dull red sky, which a cloudless sunset leaves behind it. And through the open arch of the Cashmere gate, the great globe of the full moon grew slowly from the ruddy earth-haze, then loud and clear came the chime of seven from the mainguard gong, the rattle of arms dying into silence again. The peace of it all seemed una.s.sailable, the security unending.

"_Delhi dur ust!_"

The words were called across the road in a woman's voice, making him turn to see a shadowy white figure outlined against the dark arches of a veranda close upon the road. He reined up his horse almost involuntarily, remembering as he did so that this was Mrs. Gissing's house.

"I beg your pardon----" he began.

"I beg yours," came the instant reply. "I mistook you for a friend.

Good-night!"

"Good-night!"

As he paced his horse on, choosing the longer way to Duryagunj, by the narrow lanes clinging to the city wall, the remembrance of that frank good-night lingered with him. For a friend! What a name to call Herbert Erlton! Poor little soul! The thought, by its very intolerableness, drove him back to the other, roused by her first words:

"_Delhi dur ust_."

True! Even this Delhi lying before his very eyes was far from him. How would it take the news which by now, as he had said, must have filtered through the bazaar? He could imagine that. He knew, also, that the Palace folk must be all discussing the Resident's garden party, with a view to their own special aims and objects. But what did they think of the outlook on the future? Did they also say _Delhi dur ust?_

One of them was saying it on a roof close by. It was Abool-Bukr, who, on his way home, had given himself the promised pleasure of retailing his virtuous afternoon's experiences to Newasi; for his two-months-wed bride had not broken _him_ of his habit of coming to his kind one, though it had made _her_ graver, more dignified. Still she broke in on his thick a.s.sertion--for he had drunk brandy in his efforts to be friendly with the sahibs--that he had seen an Englishwoman of her sort, with the quick query:

"Like me! How so?"

He laughed mischievously. "And thou art not jealous of my wife!--or sayest thou art not! She was but like thee in this, aunt, that she is of the sort who would have men better than G.o.d made them----"

"No worse, thou meanest," she replied.

He shook his head. "Women, Newasi, are as the ague. A man is ever being made better or worse till he knows not if he be well or ill. And both ways G.o.d's work is marred, a man driven from his right fate----"

"But if a man mistakes his fate as thou dost, Abool," she persisted.

"Sure, if Jewun Bukht with that evil woman, Zeenut----"

He started to his feet, thrusting out lissome hands wildly, as if to set aside some thought. "Have a care, Newasi, have a care!" he cried.

"Talk not of that arch plotter, arch dreamer. Nay! not arch dreamer!

'tis thou that dreamest most. Dreamest war without blood, men without pa.s.sion, me without myself! Was there not blood on my hands ere ever I was born--I, Abool-Bukr, of the race of Timoor--kings, tyrants, by birth and trade? The blood of those who stood in my father's way and my father's fathers. I tell thee there is too much tinder yonder----"

He pointed to where, across the flat chequers of moonlit roofs, inlaid by the shadows of the intersecting alleys the cupolas of the Palace gates rose upon the sky. "There is too much tinder here," he struck his own breast fiercely, "for such fiery thoughts. Why canst not leave me alone, woman?"

She drew back coldly. "Do I ask thee to come thither? Thy wife----"

He gave a half-maudlin laugh. "Nay, I mean not that! Sure thou art very woman, Newasi! That is why I love mine aunt! That is why I come to see her--that----"

She interrupted him hastily; but her eyes grew soft, her voice trembled.

"And I do but goad thee for thine own good, Abool. These are strange times. Even the Mufti sahib----"

"Ah! defend me from his wise saws. I know the ring of them too well as 'tis. Even that I endure--for mine aunt's sake. Though, by the faith, if he and others of his kidney waylay me as they do much longer, I will have a rope ladder to thy roof and scandalize them all. I can stomach thy wisdom, dear; none else. So tell them that Abool-Bukr can quote saws as well as they. Tell them he lives for Pleasure, and Pleasure lives in the present. For the rest, _Delhi dur ust! Delhi dur ust!_"

His reckless, unrestrained voice rang out over the roofs, and into the alley below where Jim Douglas was telling himself, that with his finger on the very pulse of the city he had failed to count its heart beats.

He looked up quickly. "_Delhi dur ust!_" All the world seemed to be saying it that night; though the first blood had been shed in the quarrel.

CHAPTER VI.

THE YELLOW FAKIR.

The days pa.s.sed to weeks, the weeks to a month, after that shedding of first blood, and no more was spilled, save that of the shedders. Two of them were hanged, the regiment ordered to be disbanded. For the rest, though causeless fires broke out in every cantonment, though a Sikh orderly divulged to his master some tale of a concerted rising, though the dread of the greased cartridge grew to a perfect panic, even Jim Douglas, with his eyes wide open, was forced to admit that, so far as any chance of action went, the reply might still be "_Delhi dur ust_." The sky was dark indeed, there were mutterings on the horizon; but he and others remembered how often in India, even when rain is due, the clouds creep up and up day by day, darker and more lowering, until the yellowing crops seem to grow greener in sheer hope of the purple pall above them. And then some unseen hand juggles those portentous rain-clouds into the daily darkness of night, and some dawn rises clear and dry to show, in its fierce blaze of sunlight, how the yellow has gained on the green.

So, day by day, the impression grew among the elect that the storm signals would pa.s.s; that the best policy was to tide over the next few months somehow. In pursuance of which a sepoy who ventured to draw attention to the state of feeling in one regiment was publicly told he need expect no promotion.

But there were dissentients to this policy, apparently. Anyhow, in the end of April, Colonel Carmichael Smyth, commanding the 3d Bengal Cavalry at Meerut, returned from leave one evening, and ordered fifteen men from each troop to be picked out to learn the use of the new cartridge next morning, and then went to bed comfortably. The men, through their native officers, appealed to their captain for delay.

They were neither prepared to take nor refuse the cartridges, old or new. No answer was given them. They marched to the parade obediently at sunrise, and eighty-five of the ninety men picked from a picked regiment for smartness and intelligence refused to take the cartridges, even from their Colonel's or their Adjutant's hand. Their own troop officers were not present. They were at once tried by a court-martial of native officers, some of whom came from the regiments at Delhi; but thirty odd miles off along a broad, level driving road.

They were sentenced to ten years' penal servitude, and a parade of all troops was ordered for sunrise on the 9th of May, to put the sentence into force.

So the night of the 8th found Jim Douglas riding over from Delhi in the cool to see something which, if anything could, ought to turn mere talk into action. It had brought a new sound into the air already. The clang of cold iron upon hot, rising from the regimental smithy, where the fetters for the eighty-five were being forged. A cruel sound at best, proclaiming the indubitable advantage of coolness and hardness over glow and plasticity. Cruel indeed when the hardness and insistency goes to the forging of fetters for emotion and ignorance.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The sound rang out into the hot airless night, rang out into the gusty dawn; for it takes time to forge eighty-five pairs of shackles. Rang out to where a mixed guard of the 11th and 20th Regiments of Native Infantry were waiting round the tumbrils for the last fetter. The gray of dawn showed the rest piled on the tumbrils, showed two English officers on horseback talking to each other a little way off, showed the faces of the guard dark and lowering like the dawn itself.

"_Loh!_ sergeant _jee!_ there is the last," said the master-armorer cheerfully. His task was done, at any rate.

Soma took it from him silently, and flung it on the others almost fiercely; it settled among them with a clank. His regiment, the 11th, had but newly come to Meerut, and therefore had as yet no ties of personal comradeship with the eighty-five, but fetters for any sepoys were enough to make the pulse beat full and heavy.

"The last, thank Heaven!" said the Captain, giving his bridle rein a jag. "All right forward, Jones! Then fall in, men. Quick march! We are late enough as it is."

The disciplined feet fell in without a waver; the tumbrils moved on with a clank and a creak.

Quick march! Soma's mind, fair reflection of the minds of all about him, was full of doubt. Was that indeed the last fetter, or did Rumor say sooth when it told of others being secretly forged? Who could say in these days, when the Huzoors themselves had taken to telling lies.

Not his Huzoors as yet; his Colonels and Captains and Majors, even the little sahib, who laughed over his own mistakes on parade, told the truth still. But the others lied. Lied about enlistment, about prize-money and leave, about those cartridges. At least, so the men in the 20th said; the sergeant marching next to him behind the tumbril most of all.

"'Tis but three weeks longer, comrade," said this man suddenly in a low whisper. They were treading the dim, deserted outskirts of the cantonment bazaar, and Soma looked round nervously at the officers behind. Had they heard? He frowned at the speaker and made no reply.