On the Face of the Waters Part 63

There was a flood of it now outside the ruth as it lumbered along by the jail, not a quarter of a mile yet from the city gate.

Half-shivering she peeped through the gay patchwork curtains to a.s.sure herself it held no horror.

G.o.d and his Holy Prophet! What was that crowd on the road ahead? No, not ahead, she was in it, now, so that the oxen paused, unable to go on. A crowd, a cl.u.s.ter of spear-points, and then, against the jail wall, an open s.p.a.ce round another ruth, an Englishman on foot, three figures stripped. No; not three! only two, for one had fallen as the crack of a carbine rang through the startled air. Two? But one, now, and that, oh! saints have mercy! the vision! the vision! It was Abool, dodging like a hare, begging for bare life; seeking it, at last, out of the sunshine, under the shadow of the ruth wheels.

"Abool! Abool!" she screamed. "I am here. Come! I am here."

Did he hear the kind voice? He may have, for it echoed clear before the third and final crack of the carbine. So clear that the driver, terrified lest it should bring like punishment on him, drove his goad into the oxen; and the next instant they were careering madly down a side road, b.u.mping over watercourses and ditches. But Newasi felt no more buffetings. She lay huddled up inside, as unconscious as that other figure which, by Major Hodson's orders, was being dragged out from under the wheels and placed upon it beside the two other corpses for conveyance to the city. And none of all the crowd, ready--so the tale runs--to rescue the Princes lest death should be their portion in the future, raised voice or hand to avenge them now that it had come so ruthlessly, so wantonly. Perhaps the English guard at the Delhi gate cowed them, as it had cowed those who the day before had followed the King so far, then slunk away.

So the little _cortege_ moved on peacefully; far more peacefully than the other ruth, which, with _its_ unconscious burden, was racing Kutb-ward as if it was afraid of the very sunshine. But the Princess Farkhoonda, huddled up in all her jewels and fineries, had forgotten even that; forgotten even that vision seen in it.

But Hodson as he rode at ease behind the dead Princes seemed to court the light. He gloried in the deed, telling himself that "in less than twenty-four hours he had disposed of the princ.i.p.al members of the House of Timoor"; so fulfilling his own words written weeks before, "If I get into the Palace, the House of Timoor will not be worth five minutes' purchase, I ween." Telling himself also, that in shooting down with his own hand men who had surrendered without stipulations to his generosity and clemency, surrendered to a hundred troopers when they had five thousand men behind them, he "had rid the earth of ruffians." Telling himself that he was "glad to have had the opportunity, and was game to face the moral risk of praise or blame."

He got the former unstintingly from most of his fellows as, in triumphant procession, the bodies were taken to the chief police station, there to be exposed, so say eye-witnesses, "In the very spot where, four months before, Englishwomen had been outraged and murdered, in the very place where their helpless victims had lain."

A strange perversion of the truth, responsible, perhaps, not only for the praise, but for the very deed itself; so Mohammed Ismail's barter of his truth and soul for the lives of the forty prisoners at the Kolwab counted for nothing in the judgment of this world.

But Hodson lacked either praise or blame from one man. John Nicholson lay too near the judgment of another world to be disturbed by vexed questions in this; and when the next morning came, men, meeting each other, said sadly, "He is dead."

The news, brought to Kate Erlton by Captain Morecombe when he came over to report another failure, took the heart out of even her hope.

"There is no use in my staying longer, I'm afraid," she said quietly.

"I'm only in the way. I will go back to Meerut; and then home--to the boy."

"I think it would be best," he replied kindly. "I can arrange for you to start to-morrow morning. You will be the better for a change; it will help you to forget."

She smiled a little bitterly; but when he had gone she set to work, packing up such of her husband's things as she wished the boy to have with calm deliberation; and early in the afternoon went over to the garden of her old house to get some fresh flowers for what would be her last visit to that rear-guard of graves. To take, also, her last look at the city, and watch it grow mysterious in the glamour of sunset. Seen from afar it seemed unchanged. A ma.s.s of rosy light and lilac shadow, with the great white dome of the mosque hanging airily above the smoke wreaths.

Yet the end had come to its four months' dream as it had come to hers.

Rebellion would linger long, but its stronghold, its very _raison d'etre_, was gone. And Memory would last longer still; yet surely it would not be all bitter. Hers was not. Then with a rush of real regret she thought of the peaceful roof, of old Tiddu, of the Princess Farkhoonda--Tara--Soma--of Sri Anunda in his garden. Was she to go home to safe, snug England, live in a suburb, and forget? Forget all but the tragedy! Yet even that held beautiful memories. Alice Gissing under young Mainwaring's scarf, while he lay at her feet. Her husband leaving a good name to his son. Did not these things help to make the story perfect? No! not perfect. And with the remembrance her eyes filled with sudden tears. There would always be a blank for her in the record. The Spirit which had moved on the Face of the Waters, bringing their chance of Healing and Atonement to so many, had left hers in the shadow. She had learned her lesson. Ah! yes; she had learned it. But the chance of using it?

As she sat on the plinth of the ruined veranda, watching the city growing dim through the mist of her tears, John Nicholson's words came back to her once more, "If ever you have the chance"; but it would never come now--never!

She started up wildly at the clutch of a brown hand on her wrist--a brown hand with a circlet of dead gold above it.

"Come!" said a voice behind her; "come quick! he needs you."

"Tara!" she gasped--"Tara! Is--is he alive then?"

"He would not need the mem if he were dead," came the swift reply.

Then with her wild eyes fixed on another gold circlet upon the wrist she held, Tara laughed shrilly. "So the mem wears it still. She has not forgotten. Women do not forget, white or black"--with a strange stamp of her foot she interrupted herself fiercely--"come, I say, come!"

If there had been doubts as to the Rajpootni's sanity at times in past days, there was none now. A glance at her face was sufficient. It was utterly distraught, the clutch on Kate's arm utterly uncontrolled; so that, involuntarily, the latter shrank back.

"The mem is afraid," cried Tara exultantly. "So be it! I will go back and tell the master. Tell him I was right and he wrong, for all the English he chattered. I will tell him the mem is not suttee--how could she be----"

The old taunt roused many memories, and made Kate ready to risk anything. "I am coming, Tara--but where?" She stood facing the tall figure in crimson, a tall figure also, in white, her hands full of the roses she had gathered.

Tara looked at her with that old mingling of regret and approbation, jealousy and pride. "Then she must come at once. He is dying--may be dead ere we get back."

"Dead!" echoed Kate faintly. "Is he wounded then?"

A sort of somber sullenness dulled the excitement of Tara's face. "He is ill," she replied laconically. Suddenly, however, she burst out again: "The mem need not look so! I have done all--all she could have done. It is his fault. He will not take things. The mem can do no more; but I have come to her, so that none shall say, 'Tara killed the master.' So come. Come quick!"

Five minutes after Kate was swinging cityward in a curtained dhooli which Tara had left waiting on the road below, and trying to piece out a consecutive story from the odd jumble of facts and fancies and explanations which Tara poured into her ear between her swift abuse of the bearers for not going faster, and her a.s.sertion that there was no need to hurry. The mem need not hope to save the Huzoor, since everything had been done. It seemed, however, that Tiddu had taken back the letter telling of Kate's safety, and that in consequence of this the master had arranged to leave the city in a day or two, and Tiddu--born liar and gold grubber, so the Rajpootni styled him--had gone off at once to make more money. But on the very eve of his going back to the Ridge, Jim Douglas had been struck down with the Great Sickness, and after two or three days, instead of getting better, had fallen--as Tara put it--into the old way. So far Kate made out clearly; but from this point it became difficult to understand the reproaches, excuses, pathetic a.s.sertions of helplessness, and fierce declarations that no one could have done more. But what was the use of the Huzoor's talking English all night? she said; even a suttee could not go out when everyone was being shot in the streets. Besides, it was all obstinacy. The master could have got well if he had tried. And who was to know where to find the mem? Indeed, if it had not been for Sri Anunda's gardener, who knew all the gardener folk, of course, she would not have found the mem even now; for she would never have known which house to inquire at. Not that it would have mattered, since the mem could do nothing--nothing--nothing----

Kate, looking down on the bunch of white flowers which she had literally been too hurried to think of laying aside, felt her heart shrink. They were rather a fateful gift to be in her hands now. Had they come there of set purpose, and would the man who had done so much for her be beyond all care save those pitiful offices of the dead?

Still, even that was better than that he should lie alone, untended.

So, urged by Tara's vehement upbraidings, the dhooli-bearers lurched along, to stop at last. It seemed to Kate as if her heart stopped also. She could not think of what might lie before her as she followed Tara up the dark, strangely familiar stair. Surely, she thought, she would have known it among a thousand. And there was the step on which she had once crouched terror-stricken, because she was shut out from shelter within. But now Tara's fingers were at the padlock, Tara's hand set the door wide.

Kate paused on the threshold, feeling, in truth, dazed once more at the strange familiarity of all things. It seemed to her as if she had but just left that strip of roof aglow with the setting, sun, the bubble dome of the mosque beginning to flush like a cloud upon the sky. But Tara, watching her with resentful eyes, put a different interpretation on the pause, and said quickly:

"He is within. The mem was away, and it was quieter. But the rest is all the same--there is nothing forgotten--nothing."

Kate, however, heard only the first words, and was already across the outer roof to gain the inner one. Tara, still beyond the threshold, watched her disappear, then stood listening for a minute, with a face tragic in its intensity. Suddenly a faint voice broke the silence, and her hands, which had been tightly clenched, relaxed. She closed the door silently, and went downstairs.

Meanwhile Kate, on the inner roof, had paused beside the low string bed set in its middle, scarcely daring to look at its burden, and so put hope and fear to the touchstone of truth. But as she stood hesitating, a voice, querulous in its extreme weakness, said in Hindustani:

"It is too soon, Tara; I don't want anything; and--and you needn't wait--thank you."

He lay with his face turned from her, so she could stand, wondering how best to break her presence to him, noting with a failing heart the curious slackness, the lack of contour even on that hard string bed.

He seemed lost, sunk in it; and she had seen that sign so often of late that she knew what it meant. One thing was certain, he must have food--stimulants if possible--before she startled him. So she stole back to the outer roof, expecting to find Tara there, and Tara's help.

But the roof lay empty, and a sudden fear lest, after all, she had only come to see him die, while she was powerless to fight that death from sheer exhaustion, which seemed so perilously near, made her put down the bunch of flowers she held with an impatient gesture. What a fool she had been not to think of other things!

But as she glanced round, her eye fell on a familiar earthenware basin kept warm in a pan of water over the ashes. It was full of _chikken-brat_, and excellent of its kind, too. Then in a niche stood milk and eggs--a bottle of brandy, arrow-root---everything a nurse could wish for. And in another, evidently in case the brew should be condemned, was a fresh chicken ready for use. Strange sights these to bring tears of pity to a woman's eyes; but they did. For Kate, reading between the lines of poor Tara's confusion, began to understand the tragedy underlying those words she had just heard:

"I don't want anything, Tara. And you needn't wait, thank you." She seemed to see, with a flash, the long, long days which had pa.s.sed, with that patient, polite negative coming to chill the half distraught devotion.

He must take something now, for all that. So, armed with a cup and spoon, she went back, going round the bed so that he could see her.

"It is time for your food, Mr. Greyman," she said quietly; "when you have taken some, I'll tell you everything. Only you must take this first." As she slipped her hand under him, pillow and all, to raise his head slightly, she could see the pained, puzzled expression narrow his eyes as he swallowed a spoonful. Then with a frown he turned his head from her impatiently.

"You must take three," she insisted; "you must, indeed, Mr. Greyman.

Then I will tell you--everything."

His face came back to hers with the faintest shadow of his old mutinous sarcasm upon it, and he lay looking at her deliberately for a second or two. "I thought you were a ghost," he said feebly at last; "only they don't bully. Well let's get it over."

The memory of many such a bantering reply to her insistence in the past sent a lump to her throat and kept her silent. The little low stool on which she had been wont to sit beside him was in its old place, and half-mechanically she drew it closer, and, resting her elbow on the bed as she used to do, looked round her, feeling as if the last six weeks were a dream. Tara had told truth. Everything was in its place. There were flowers in a gla.s.s, a spotless fringed cloth on the bra.s.s platter. The pity held in these trivial signs brought a fresh pang to her heart for that other woman.

But Jim Douglas, lying almost in the arms of death, was not thinking of such things.

"Then Delhi must have fallen," he said suddenly in a stronger voice.

"Did Nicholson take it?"

"Yes," she replied quietly, thinking it best to be concise and give him, as it were, a fresh grip on facts. "It has fallen. The King is a prisoner, the Princes have been shot, and most of the troops move on to-morrow toward Agra."

It epitomized the situation beyond the possibility of doubt, and he gave a faint sigh. "Then it is all over. I'm glad to hear it. Tara never knew anything; and it seemed so long."

Had she known and refused to tell, Kate wondered? or in her insane absorption had she really thought of nothing but the chance Fate had thrown in her way of saving this man's life? Yes! it must have been very long. Kate realized this as she watched the spent and weary face before her, its bright, hollow eyes fixed on the glow which was now fast fading from the dome. "All over!" he murmured to himself. "Well!