On the Face of the Waters Part 33

"Twelve! The Meerut troops will be in soon--if they started at dawn."

There was the finest inflection of scorn in his voice.

"They must have started," began his companion. But the tall figure with the grave young face was straining its eyes from the bastion they were pa.s.sing; it gave upon the bridge of boats and the lessening white streak of road. He was looking for a cloud of dust upon it; but there was none.

"I hope so," he remarked as he went on. He gave a half-involuntary glance back, however, to the stunted lemon-bush. There was a black streak by it, which might be relied upon to give aid at dawn, or dusk, or noon; high noon as it was now.

The chime of it echoed methodically as ever from the main-guard, making a cheerful young voice in the officer's room say, "Well! the enemy is pa.s.sing, anyhow. The reliefs can't be long--if they started at dawn."

"If they had started when they ought to have started, they would have been here hours ago," said an older man, almost petulantly, as he rose and wandered to the door, to stand looking out on the baking court where his men--the two companies of the 54th, who had come down under his charge after those under Colonel Riply had shot down their officers by the church--were lounging about sullenly. These men might have shot him also but for the timely arrival of the two guns; might have shot at him, even now, but for those loyal 74th over-awing them.

He turned and looked at some of the latter with a sort of envy. These men had come forward in a body when the regiment was called upon by its commandant to give honest volunteers to keep order in the city.

What had they had, which his men had lacked? Nothing that he knew of.

And then, inevitably, he thought of his six murdered friends and comrades, officers apparently as popular as he, whose bodies were lying in the next room waiting for a cart to remove them to the Ridge.

For even Major Paterson, saddened, depressed, looked forward to decent sepulture for his comrades by and by--by and by when the Meerut troops should arrive. And the half dozen or more of women upstairs were comforting each other with the same hope, and crushing down the cry that it seemed an eternity, already, since they had waited for that little cloud of dust upon the Meerut road. But for that hope they might have gone Meerutward themselves; for the country was peaceful.

Even in Duryagunj, though by noon it was a charnel-house, the score or so of men who kept cowards at bay in a miserable storehouse comforted themselves with the same hope; and women with the long languid eyes of one race, looked out of them with the temper and fire of the other, saying in soft staccato voices--"It will not be long now. They will be here soon, for they would start at dawn."

"They will come soon," said a young telegraph clerk coolly, as he stood by his instrument hoping for a welcome _kling_; sending, finally, that bulletin northward which ended with the reluctant admission, "we must shut up." Must indeed; seeing that some ruffians rushed in and sabered him with his hands still on the levers.

"They will be here soon," agreed the compositors of the _Delhi Gazette_ as they worked at the strangest piece of printing the world is ever likely to see. That famous extra, wedged in between English election news, which told in bald journalese of a crisis, which became the crisis of their own lives before the whole edition was sent out.

But down in the Palace Zeenut Maihl had been watching that white streak of road also, and as the hours pa.s.sed, her wild impatience would let her watch it no longer. She paced up and down the Queen's bastion like a caged tigress, leaving Hafzan to take her place at the lattice. No sign of an avenging army yet! Then the troopers' tale must be true! The hour of decisive action had come, it was slipping past, the King was in the hands of Ahsan-Oolah, and Elahi Buksh, whose face was set both ways, like the physician's. And she, helpless, half in disgrace, caged, veiled, screened, unable to lay hands on anyone! Oh!

why was she not a man! Why had she not a man to deal with! Her henna-stained nails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands, then in sheer childish pa.s.sion tore off her hampering veil and, rolling it into a ball, flung it at the head of a drowsy eunuch in the outside arcade--the nearest thing to a man within her reach.

"No sign yet, Hafzan?" she asked fiercely.

"No sign, my Queen," replied Hafzan, with an odd derisive smile. If they did not come now, thought this woman with her warped nature, they would come later on; come and put a rope round the necks of men who had laid violent hands on women.

"Then I stop here no longer!" cried Zeenut Maihl recklessly; "I must see somewhat of it or die. Quick, girls, my dhooli, I will go back to my own rooms. 'Twill at least bear me through the crowd, and the jogging will keep the blood from tingling from very stillness."

So through the tawdry, dirty, musky curtains a woman's fierce eye watched the crowd hungrily, as the dhooli swung through it. A fierce crowd too in its way, but lacking cohesion. Like the world without those four rose-red walls, it was waiting for a master. And the man who should have been master was taking cooling draughts, and composing couplets, so her spies brought word. No hope from him till she could lure him back from his vexation and put some of her own energy into him. Who next was there likely to do her bidding? Her eye, taking in all the strangeness of the scene, troopers stabling their horses in the colonnades, sepoys bivouacking under the trees, courtiers hurrying up and down the private steps, found none in all that crowd of place-hunters, boasters, enthusiasts, whom she could trust. The King's eldest son Mirza Moghul was the fiercest tempered of them all, the only one whom she feared in any way; perhaps if she could get hold of him----

As her dhooli swayed up the steps he was standing on them talking to Mirza Khair Sultan. She could have put out her hand and touched him; but even she did not dare convention enough for that. Nevertheless, the sight of him determined her. If the King did not come back to her by noon, she must lure the Mirza to her side.

"Thou art a fool, Pir-jee," she said petulantly to Hussan Askuri who, as father confessor, had entrance to the womens' rooms and was awaiting her. "Thou hast no grip on the King when I am absent. Canst not even drive that slithering physician from his side?"

"Cooling draughts, seest thou, Pir-jee," put in Hafzan maliciously, "have tangible effects. Thy dreams----"

"Peace, woman!" interrupted the Queen sternly, "'tis no time for jesting. Where sits the King now?"

"In the river balcony, Ornament-of-palaces," replied Fatma glibly, "where he is not to be disturbed these two hours, so the physician says, lest the cooling draught----"

The Queen stamped her foot in sheer impotent rage. "I must see someone. And Jewan Bukht, my son? why hath he not answered my summons?"

"His Highness," put in Hafzan gravely, "was, as I came by just now, quarreling in his cups with his nephew, the princely Abool-Bukr, regarding the Inspectorship-of-Cavalry; which office both desire--a weighty matter----"

"Peace! she-devil!" almost screamed the Queen. "Can I not see, can I not hear for myself, that thy sharp wits must forever drag the rotten heart to light--thou wilt go too far, some day, Hafzan, and then----"

"The Queen will have to find another scribe," replied Hafzan meekly.

Zeenut Maihl glared at her, then rolled round into her cushions as if she were in actual physical pain. And hark! From the Lah.o.r.e gate, as if nothing had happened, came the chime of noon. Noon! and nothing done. She sat up suddenly and signed to Hafzan for pen and ink. She would wait no longer for the King; she would at least try the Mirza.

"'This, to the most ill.u.s.trious the Mirza Moghul, Heir-Apparent by right to the throne of Timoor,'" she dictated firmly, and Hafzan looked up startled. "Write on, fool," she continued; "hast never written lies before? 'After salutation the Begum Zeenut Maihl,'"--the humbler t.i.tle came from her lips in a tone which boded ill for the recipient of the letter if he fell into the toils,--"'seeing that in this hour of importance the King is sick, and by order of physicians not to be disturbed, would know if the Mirza, being by natural right the King's vice-regent, desires the private seal to any orders necessary for peace and protection. Such signet being in the hands of the Queen'--nay, not that, I was forgetting--'the Begum.'"

She gave an angry laugh as she lay back among her cushions and bid them send the letter forthwith. That should make him nibble. Not that she had the signet--the King kept that on his own finger--but if the Mirza came on pretense or rather in hopes of getting it? Why! then; if the proper order was given and if she could insure the aid of men to carry out her schemes, the signet should be got at somehow. The King was old and frail; the storm and stress might well kill him.

So her thoughts ranged from one plot to another as she waited for an answer. If this lure succeeded, she would but use the Heir-Apparent for a time. What use was there in plotting for him? He could die, as other heirs had died; and then the only person likely to put a spoke in her wheel was Abool-Bukr. He was teaching his young uncle the first pleasures of manhood, and might find it convenient to influence the boy against her. It would be well therefore to get hold of him also.

That was not a hard task, and she sat up again without a moment's hesitation and signed once more to Hafzan.

"Thy best flourishes," she said with an evil sneer, "for it goes to a rare scholar; to a fool for all that, who would have folk think nephews visit their aunts from duty! 'This to Newasi loving and beloved, greeting. Consequent on the disturbances, the princely nephew Abool-Bukr lieth senseless here in the Palace.' Stare not, fool!

senseless drunk he is by this time, I warrant. 'Those who have seen him think ill of him.'" Here she broke off into malicious enjoyment of her own wit. "Ay! and those who have but heard of him also! 'The course of events, however, being in the hands of Heaven, will be duly reported.'"

She coiled herself up again on the cushions, an insignificant square homely figure draped in worn brocade and laden with tarnished jewelry; ill-matched strings of pearls, flawed emeralds, diamonds without sparkle. Yet not without a certain dignity, a certain symmetry of purpose, harmonizing with the arched and frescoed room in which she lay; a room beautiful in design and decoration, yet dirty, comfortless, almost squalid.

"Nay! not my signature," she yawned. "I am too old a foe of the scholars; but a smudge o' the thumb will do. If I know aught of aunts and nephews, she will be too much fl.u.s.tered by the news to look at seals. And have word sent to the Delhi gate that the Princess Farkhoonda be admitted, but goes not forth again."

Her hard voice ceased; there was no sound in the room save that strange hum from the gardens outside, which at this hour of the day were generally wrapped in sun-drugged slumbers.

But the world beyond, toward which the old King's l.u.s.terless eyes looked as he lay on the river balcony, was sleepy, sun-drugged as ever. Through the tracery-set archs showed yellow stretches of sand and curving river, with tussocks of tall tiger-gra.s.s hiding the slender stems of the palm-trees which shot up here and there into the blue sky; blue with the yellow glaze upon it which comes from sheer sunlight. A row of _saringhi_ players squatted in the room behind the balcony, thrumming softly, so as to hide that strange hum of life which reached even here. For the King was writing a couplet and was in difficulties with a rhyme for _cartouche_ (cartridge); since he was a stickler for form, holding that the keynote of the lines should jingle. And this couplet was to epitomize the situation on the other side of the _saringhies_. _Cartouche? Cartouche?_ Suddenly he sat up.

"Quick! send for Hussan Askuri; or stay!" he hesitated for an instant.

Hussan Askuri would be with the Queen, and no one ever admired his couplets as she did. How many hours was it since he had seen her? And what was the use of making couplets, if you were denied their just meed of praise? "Stay," he repeated, "I will go myself." It was a relief to feel himself on the way back to be led by the nose, and as they helped him across the intervening courtyard he kept repeating his treasure, imagining her face when she heard it.

"Kuchch Chil-i-Room nahin kya, ya Shah-i-Roos, nahin Jo Kuchch kya na sara se, so cartouche ne."

A couplet, which, lingering still in the mouths of the people, warrants the old poetaster's conceit of it, and--dog-anglicized--runs thus:

"Nor Czar nor Sultan made the conquest easy, The only weapon was a cartridge greasy."

"The Queen? Where is the Queen?" fumed the old man, when he found an empty room instead of instant flattery; for he was, after all, the Great Moghul.

"She prays for the King's recovery," said Fatma readily. "I will inform her that her prayer is granted." But as she pa.s.sed on her errand, she winked at a companion, who hid her giggle in her veil; for Grand Turk or not, the women hold all the trump cards in seclusion. So how was the old man to know that the one who came in radiant with exaggerated delight at his return, had been interviewing his eldest son behind decorous screens, and that she was thanking Heaven piously for having sent him back to her ap.r.o.n-string in the very nick of time.

Sent him, and Hussan Askuri, and pen and ink within reach of her quick wit.

"That is the best couplet my lord has done," she said superbly. "That must be signed and sealed."

So must a paper be, which lay concealed in her bosom. And as she spoke she drew the signet ring lovingly, playfully from the King's finger and walked over to where the scribe sat crouched on the floor.

"Ink it well, Pir-jee," she said, keeping her back to the King; "the impression must be as immortal as the verse."

Despite the warning, a very keen ear might have detected a double sound, as if the seal had needed a second pressure. That was all.

So it came about that, half an hour or so afterward, the Head-of-the-nine at the magazine was looking contemptuously at a paper brought by the Palace Guards, and pa.s.sed under the door, ordering its instant opening. George Willoughby laughed; but some of the eight dashed people's impudence and cursed their cheek! Yet, after the laugh, the Head-of-the-nine walked over, yet another time, to that river bastion to look down at that white streak of road. How many times he had looked already, Heaven knows; but his grave face had grown graver, though it brightened again after a glance at the lemon bush. The black streak there would not fail them.

"In the King's name open!" The demand came from Mirza Moghul himself this time, for the Palace was without arms, without ammunition; and if they were to defend it, according to the Queen's idea, against all corners, till there was time for other regiments to rebel, this matter of the magazine was important. Abool-Bukr was with him, half-drunk, wholly incapable, but full of valor; for a scout sent by the Queen had returned with the news that no English soldier was within ten miles of Delhi, and within the last half hour an ominous word had begun to pa.s.s from lip to lip in the city.