On the Face of the Waters Part 45

"Any chance of--of anything?"

"None with our present chiefs. If we had Sir Henry Lawrence here it would be different."

But Sir Henry Lawrence, having done his duty to the uttermost, already lay dead in the residency at Lucknow, though the tidings had not reached the Ridge. And yet more direful tidings were on their way to bring July, that month of clouds and cholera, of flies and funerals, of endless buglings and fifings, to a close.

It came to the city first. Came one afternoon when the King sat in the private Hall of Audience, his back toward the arcaded view of the eastern plains, ablaze with sunlight, his face toward the garden, which, through the marble-mosaic traced arches, showed like an embroidered curtain of green set with jeweled flowers. Above him, on the roof, circled the boastful legend:

"If earth holds a haven of bliss It is this--it is this--it is this!"

And all around him, in due order of precedence, according to the latest army lists procurable in Delhi, were ranged the mutinous native officers; for half the King's sovereignty showed itself in punctilious etiquette. At his feet, below the peac.o.c.k throne, stood a gilded cage containing a c.o.c.katoo. For Hafzan had been so far right in her estimate of Hussan Askuri's wonders that poor little Sonny's pet, duly caught, and with its crest dyed an orthodox green, had been used--like the stuffed lizard--to play on the old man's love of the marvelous.

So, for the time being, the bird followed him in his brief journeyings from Audience Hall to balcony, from balcony to bed.

The usual pile of brocaded bags lay below that again, upon the marble floor, where a reader crouched, sampling the most loyal to be used as a sedative. One would be needed ere long, for the Commanders-in-Chief were at war; Bukht Khan, backed by Hussan Askuri, with his long black robe, his white beard, and the wild eyes beneath his bushy brows, and by all the puritans and fanatics of the city; Mirza Moghul by his brother, Khair Sultan, and most of the Northern Indian rebels who refused a mere ex-soubadar's right to be better than they.

"Let the Light-of-the-World choose between us," came the sonorous voice almost indifferently; in truth those secret counsels of Bukht Khan with the Queen, of which the Palace was big with gossip, held small place, allowed small consideration for the puppet King.

"Yea! let the Pillar-of-State choose," bawled the shrill voice of the Moghul, whose yellow, small-featured face was ablaze with pa.s.sion.

"Choose between his son and heir and this low-born upstart, this soubadar of artillery, this puritan by profession, this debaucher of King's----"

He paused, for Bukht Khan's hand was on his sword, and there was an ominous stir behind Hussan Askuri. Ahsan-Oolah, a discreet figure in black standing by the side of the throne, craned his long neck forward, and his crafty face wore an amused smile.

Bukht Khan laughed disdainfully at the Mirza's full stop. "What I am, sire, matters little if I can lead armies to victory. The Mirza hath not led his, _as yet_."

"Not led them?" interrupted an officious peace-bringer. "Lo! the h.e.l.l-doomed are reduced to five hundred; the colonels are eating their horses' grain, the captains are starving, and our sh.e.l.ls cause terror as they cry, 'Coffin! Coffin! (_boccus! boccus!_)----'"

"The Mirza could do as well as thou," put in a partisan, heedless of the tales to which the King, however, had been nodding his head, "if, as thou hast, he had money to pay his troops. The Begum Zeenut Maihl's h.o.a.rds----"

The sword and the hand kept company again significantly. "I pay my men by the h.o.a.rd I took from the infidel, Meean-jee," retorted the loud, indifferent voice. "And when it is done I can get more. The Palace is not sucked dry yet, nor Delhi either."

The Meean, well known to have feathered his nest bravely, muttered something inaudible, but a stout, white-robed gentleman bleated hastily:

"There is no more money to be loaned in Delhi, be the interest ever so high."

The broad face broadened with a sardonic smile. "I borrow, banker-jee, according to the tenets of the faith, without interest! For the rest, five minutes in thy house with a spade and a string bed to hang thee on head down, and I pay every fighter for the faith in Delhi his arrears."

"_Wah! Wah!_" A fierce murmur of approval ran round the audience, for all liked that way of dealing with folk who kept their money to themselves.

"But, Khan-jee! there is no such hurry," protested the keeper of peace, the promoter of dreams. "The h.e.l.l-doomed are at the last gasp.

Have not two Commanders-in-Chief had to commit suicide before their troops? And was not the third allowed by special favor of the Queen to go away and do it privately? This one will have to do it also, and then----"

"And a letter has but this day come in," said a grave, clever-looking man, interrupting the tale once more, "offering ten lakhs; but as the writer makes stipulations, we are asking what treasury he means to loot, or if it is hidden h.o.a.rds."

Bukht Khan shrugged his shoulders. "The Meean's or the banker's h.o.a.rds are nearer," he said brutally, "and money we must have, if we are to fight as soldiers. Otherwise----" He paused. There was a stir at the entrance, where a news-runner had unceremoniously pushed his way in to flourish a letter in a long envelope, and pant with vehement show of breathlessness. "In haste! In haste! and buksheesh for the bringer."

The King, who had been listening wearily to the dispute, thinking possibly that the paucity of commanders on the Ridge was preferable to the plethora of them at court, looked up indifferently. They came so often, these bearers of wonderful news. Not so often as the little brocaded bags; but they had no more effect.

"Reward him, Keeper-of-the-Purse," he said punctiliously, "and read, slave. It is some victory to our troops, no doubt."

There was a pause, during which people waited indifferently, wondering, some of them, if it was bogus news that was to come or not.

Then the court moonshee stood up with a doubtful face. "'Tis from Cawnpore," he murmured, forgetting decorum and etiquette; forgetting everything save the news that the Nana of Bithoor had killed the two hundred women and children he had pledged himself to save.

Bukht Khan's hand went to his sword once more, as he listened, and he turned hastily to Hussan Askuri. "That settles it as _thou_ wouldst have it," he whispered. "It is Holy War indeed, or defeat."

But Mirza Moghul shrank as a man shrinks from the scaffold.

The old King stood up quickly; stood up between the lights looking out on the curtain of flowers. "Whatever happens," he said tremulously, "happens by the will of G.o.d."

His sanctimoniousness never failed him.

So on the night of the 23d of August there was an unwonted stillness in the city, and the coming of day did not break it. The rain, it is true, fell in torrents, but many an attack had been made in rain before. There was none now. The bugles and fifes had ended, and folk were waiting for the drum ecclesiastic to begin. What they thought meanwhile, who knows? Delhi held a hundred and fifty thousand souls, swelled to nigh two hundred thousand by soldiers. Only this, therefore, is certain, the thoughts must have been diverse.

But on the Ridge, when, after a few days, the tidings reached it with certainty, there was but one. It found expression in a letter which the General wrote on the last day of July. "It is my firm intention to hold my present position and resist attack to the last. The enemy are very numerous, and may possibly break through our intrenchments and overwhelm us, but the force will die at its post."

No talk of retirement now! The millions of peasants plowing their land peaceably in firm faith of a just master who would take no more than his due, the thousands even in the b.l.o.o.d.y city itself waiting for this tyranny to pa.s.s, were not to be deserted. The fight would go on. The fight for law and order.

So the sanctimonious old King had said sooth, "Whatever happens, happens by the will of G.o.d."

Those two hundred had not died in vain.

CHAPTER V.

THE DRUM ECCLESIASTIC.

The silence of the city had lasted for seven days. And now, on the 1st of August, the dawn was at hand, and the rain which had been falling all night had ceased, leaving pools of water about the city walls.

Still, smooth pools like plates of steel, dimly reflecting the gray misty sky against which the minarets of the mosque showed as darker streaks, its dome like a faint cloud.

And suddenly the silence ended. The first shuddering beat of a royal salute vibrated through the heavy dewy air, the first chord of "G.o.d save the Queen," played by every band in Delhi, floated Ridgeward.

The cheek of it!

That phrase--no other less trenchant, more refined--expressed purely the feeling with which the roused six thousand listened from picket or tent, comfortable bed or damp sentry-go, to this topsy-turveydom of anthems! The cheek of it! The very walls ought to fall Jericho-wise before such sacrilegious music.

But in the city it sent a thrill through hearts and brains. For it roused many a dreamer wild had never felt the chill of a sword-hilt on his palm to the knowledge that the time for gripping one had come.

Since this was Bukr-eed, the Great Day of Sacrifice. No common Bukr-eed either, when the blood of a goat or a bull would worthily commemorate Abraham's sacrifice of his best and dearest, but something more akin to the old patriarch's devotion. Since on Bukr-eed, 1857, the infidel was to be sacrificed by the faithful, and the faithful by the infidel.

For the silence of seven days had been a silence only from bugles and fifes; the drum ecclesiastic had taken their place. The mosques had resounded day and night to the wild tirades of preachers, and even Mohammed Ismail, feeling that in religious war lay the only chance of forgiveness for past horrors, spent every hour in painting its perfections, in deprecating any deviation from its rule. The sword or the faith for men; the faith without the sword for those who could not fight. But others were less scrupulous, their denunciations less guarded, and as the processions pa.s.sed through the narrow streets flaunting the green banner, half the Mohammedan population felt that the time had come to strike their blow for the faith. And Hussan Askuri dreamed dreams; and the Bird-of-Heaven, with its crest new-dyed for the occasion, gave the Great Cry viciously as it was paraded through jostling crowds in the Thunbi Bazaar, where religion found recruits by the score even among the women. While Abool-Bukr, vaguely impressed by the stir, the color, the noise, took to the green and swore to live cleanly. So that Newasi's soft eyes shone as she repeated Mohammed Ismail's theories. They were very true, the Prince said; besides this could be nothing but honest fighting since there were no women on the Ridge; whereupon she st.i.tched away at his green banner fearlessly.

But in the Palace it needed all Bukht Khan's determination and Hussan Askuri's wily dreams to reconcile the old King to the breach of etiquette which the sacrifice of a camel instead of a bull by the royal hands involved. For the army--three-quarters Brahmin and Rajpoot had been promised, as a reward for helping to drive out the infidel, that no sacred kine should be killed in Hindustan.

And others besides the King objected to the restriction. Old Fatma, for instance, Shumsha-deen the seal-cutter's wife, as she swathed her husband's white beard with pounded henna leaves to give it the orthodox red dye.