On the Face of the Waters Part 29

The echo from the rose-red fortifications took it up first; then one chanting voice after another, monotonously insistent.

"Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!"

And the city woke to another day of fasting. Woke hurriedly, so as to find time for food ere the sun rose, for it was Rumzan, and one-half of the inhabitants would have no drop of water till the sun set, to a.s.suage the terrible drought of every living, growing thing beneath the fierce May sun. The backwaters lay like a steel mirror reflecting the gray shadowy pile of the Palace, the poojari--waist-deep in them--was a solitary figure flinging water to the sacred airts, absorbed in a thorough purification from sin.

Then from the serrated line of the Ridge came a bugle followed by the roll of a time gun. All the world was waking now. Waking to give orders, to receive them; waking to mark itself apart with signs of salvation; waking to bow westward and pray for the discomfiture of the infidel; waking to stand on parade and salute the royal standard of a ruler, h.e.l.l-doomed inevitably, according to both creeds.

A flock of purple pigeons, startled by the sound, rose like cloud flakes on the light gray sky above the glimmering dome of the big mosque, then flew westward toward the green fields and groves on the further side of the town. For the roll of the gun was followed by a reverberating roll, and groan, and creak, from the boat-bridge. The little cloud on the Meerut road had grown into five troopers das.h.i.+ng over the bridge at a gallop recklessly. The poojari, busy now with his pigments, followed them with his eyes as they clattered straight for the city gate. They were waking in the Palace now, for a slender hand set a lattice wide. Perhaps from curiosity, perhaps simply to let in the cool air of dawn. It was a lattice in the women's apartments.

The poojari went on rubbing up the colors that were to bring such spiritual pride to the wearers, then turned to look again. The troopers, finding the city gate closed, were back again; clamoring for admittance through the low arched doorway leading from Selimgarh to the Palace. And as the yawning custodian fumbled for his keys, the men cursed and swore at the delay; for in truth they knew not what lay behind them. The two thousand from Meerut, or some of them, of course.

But at what distance?

As a matter of fact only one Englishman was close enough to be considered a pursuer, and he was but a poor creature on foot, still dazed by a fall, striking across country to reach the Raj-ghat ferry below the city. For when Jim Douglas had recovered consciousness it had been to recognize that he was too late to be the first in Delhi, and that he could only hope to help in the struggle. And that tardily, for the Arab was dead lame.

So, removing its saddle and bridle to give it a better chance of escaping notice, he had left it grazing peacefully in a field and stumbled on riverward, intending to cross it as best he could; and so make for his own house in Duryagunj for a fresh horse and a more suitable kit. And as he plodded along doggedly he cursed the sheer ill-luck which had made him late.

For he was late.

The five troopers were already galloping through the grape-garden toward the women's apartments and the King's sleeping rooms.

Their shouts of "The King! The King! Help for the martyrs! Help for the Holy War!" dumfoundered the court muezzin, who was going late to his prayers in the Pearl Mosque; the reckless hoofs sent a squatting bronze image of a gardener, threading jasmine chaplets for his G.o.ds peacefully in the pathway, flying into a rose bush.

"The King! The King! Help! Help!"

The women woke with the cry, confused, alarmed, surprised; save one or two who, creeping to the Queen's room, found her awake, excited, calling to her maids. "Too soon!" she echoed contemptuously. "Can a good thing come too soon? Quick, woman--I must see the King at once--nay, I will go as I am if it comes to that."

"The physician Ahsan-Oolah hath arrived as usual for the dawn pulse-feeling," protested the shocked tirewoman.

"All the more need for hurry," retorted Zeenut Maihl. "Quick! Slippers and a veil! Thine will do, Fatma; sure what makes thee decent----" She gave a spiteful laugh as she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the woman's head and pa.s.sed to the door; but there she paused a second. "See if Hafzan be below. I bid her come early, so she should be. Tell her to write word to Hussan Askuri to dream as he never dreamed before! And see," her voice grew shriller, keener, "the rest of you have leave. Go! cozen every man you know, every man you meet. I care not how. Make their blood flow! I care not wherefore, so that it leaps and bounds, and would spill other blood that checked it." She clenched her hands as she pa.s.sed on muttering to herself. "Ah! if _he_ were a man--if _his_ blood were not chilled with age--if I had someone----"

She broke off into smiles; for in the anteroom she entered was, man or no man, the representative of the Great Moghul.

"Ah, Zeenut!" he cried in tones of relief. "I would have sought thee."

The trembling, shrunken figure in its wadded silk dressing gown paused and gave a backward glance at Ahsan-Oolah, whose shrewd face was full of alarm.

"Believe nothing, my liege!" he protested eagerly. "These rioters are boasters. Are there not two thousand British soldiers in Meerut? Their tale is not possible. They are cowards fled from defeat; liars, hoping to be saved at your expense. The thing is impossible."

The Queen turned on him pa.s.sionately. "Are not all things possible with G.o.d, and is not His Majesty the defender of the faith!"

"But not defender of five runaway rioters," sneered the physician. "My liege! Remember your pension."

Zeenut Maihl glared at his cunning; it was an argument needing all her art to combat.

"Five!" she echoed, pa.s.sing to the lattice quickly. "Then miracles are about--the five have grown to fifty. Look, my lord, look! Hark! How they call on the defender of the faith."

With reckless hand she set the lattice wide, so becoming visible for an instant, and a shout of "The Queen! The Queen!"

mingled with that other of "The Faith! The Faith! Lead us, Oh!

Ghazee-o-din-Bahadur-shah, to die for the faith."

Pale as he was with age, the cry stirred the blood in the King's veins and sent it to his face.

"Stand back," he cried in sudden dignity, waving both counselors aside with trembling, outstretched hands. "I will speak mine own words."

But the sight of him, rousing a fresh burst of enthusiasm, left him no possibility of speech for a time. The Lord had been on their side, they cried. They had killed every h.e.l.l-doomed infidel in Meerut! They would do so in Delhi if he would help! They were but an advance guard of an army coming from every cantonment in India to swear allegiance to the Padishah. Long live the King! and the Queen!

In the dim room behind, Zeenut Maihl and the physician listened to the wild, almost incredible, tale which drifted in with the scented air from the garden, and watched each other silently. Each found in it fresh cause for obstinacy. If this were true, what need to be foolhardy? time would show, the thing come of itself without risk. If this were true, decisive action should be taken at once; and would be taken.

But the King, a.s.sailed, molested by that rude interrupting loyalty, above all by that cry of the Queen, felt the Turk stir in him also.

Who were these intruders in the sacred precincts, infringing the seclusion of the Great Moghul's women? Trembling with impotent pa.s.sion, inherited from pa.s.sions that had not been impotent, he turned to Ahsan-Oolah, ignoring the Queen, who, he felt, was mostly to blame for this outrage on her modesty. Why had she come there? Why had she dared to be seen?

"Your Majesty should send for the Captain of the Palace Guards and bid him disperse the rioters, and force them into respect for your royal person," suggested the physician, carefully avoiding all but the immediate present, "and your Majesty should pa.s.s to the Hall of Audience. The King can scarce receive the Captain-sahib here in presence of the Consort." He did not add--"in her present costume"--but his tone implied it, and the King, with an angry mortified glance toward his favorite, took the physician's arm. If looks could kill, Ahsan-Oolah would not, he knew, have supported those tottering steps far; but it was no time to stick at trifles.

When they had pa.s.sed from the anteroom Zeenut Maihl still stood as if half stupefied by the insult. Then she dashed to the open lattice again, scornful and defiant; dignified into positive beauty for the moment by her recklessness.

"For the Faith!" she cried in her shrill woman's voice, "if ye are men, as I would be, to be loved of woman, as I am, strike for the Faith!"

A sort of s.h.i.+ver ran through the cl.u.s.tering crowd of men below; the s.h.i.+ver of antic.i.p.ation, of the marvelous, the unexpected.

The Queen had spoken to them as men; of herself as woman.

Inconceivable!--improper of course--yet exciting. Their blood thrilled, the instinct of the man to fight for the woman rose at once.

"Quick, brothers! Rouse the guard! Close the gates! Close the gates!"

It was a cry to heal all strife within those rose-red walls, for the dearest wish of every faction was to close them against civilization; against those prying Western eyes and sniffing Western noses, detecting drains and sinks of iniquity. So the clamor grew, and faces which had frowned at each other yesterday sought support in each other's ferocity to-day, and wild tales began to pa.s.s from mouth to mouth. Men, crowding recklessly over the flower-beds, trampling down the roses, talked of visions, of signs and warnings, while the troopers, dismounting for a pull at a pipe, became the center of eager circles listening not to dreams, but deeds.

"Dost feel the rope about thy neck, Sir Martyr?" said a bitter jeering voice behind one of the speakers. And something gripped him round the throat from behind, then as suddenly loosed its hold, as a shrouded woman's figure hobbled on through the crowd. The trooper started up with an oath, his own hand seeking his throat involuntarily.

"Heed her not!" said a bystander hastily, "'tis the Queen's scribe, Hafzan. She hath a craze against men. One made her what she is. Go on!

Havildar-jee. So thou didst cut the _mem_ down, and fling the babe----"

But the doer of the deed stood silent. He did in truth seem to feel the rope about his neck. And he seemed to feel it till he died; when it _was_ there.

But Hafzan had pa.s.sed on, and there were no more with words of warning. So the clamor grew and grew, till the garden swarmed with men ready for any deed.

Ahsan-Oolah saw this, and laid a detaining hand on the Captain of the Guard's arm, who, summoned in hot haste from his quarters over the Lah.o.r.e gate, came in by the private way, and proposed to go down and harangue the crowd.

"It is not safe, Huzoor," he cried. "My liege, detain him. These men by their own confession are murderers----"

The King looked from one to the other doubtfully. Someone must get rid of the rioters; yet the physician said truth.

"And if aught befall," added the latter craftily, "your Majesty will be held responsible."

The old man's hand fell instantly on the Englishman's arm. "Nay, nay, sahib! go not. Go not, my friend! Speak to them from the balcony. They will not dare to violate it."

So, backed by the sanct.i.ty of the Audience Hall of a dead dynasty, the Englishman stood and ordered the crowd to desist from profaning privacy in the name of the old man behind him; whose power he, in common with all his race, hoped and believed to be dead.

It was sufficient, however, to leave some respect for the royal person, and make the crowd disperse. To little purpose so far as peace and quiet went, since the only effect was to send a leaven of revolt to every corner of the Palace. And the Palace was so full of malcontents, docked of power, privilege, pensions; of all that makes life in a Palace worth living.

So the cry "Close the gates" grew wider. The dazed old King clung to the Englishman's arm imploring him to stay; but now a messenger came running to say that the Commissioner-sahib had called and left word that the Captain was to follow without delay to the Calcutta gate of the city. The courtiers, who had begun to a.s.semble, looked at each other curiously; the disturbance, then, had spread beyond the Palace.