On the Face of the Waters Part 38

Save them from men, and since we be all bound to h.e.l.l together by virtue of our s.e.x, then will it be a better place than Paradise by having fewer men in it."

She flung her final taunts over her shoulder at her hearers as she went limping off.

"Heed her not, most pious!" said her uncle apologetically. "She hath been mad against men ever since hers, being old and near his end, took her, a child, and----"

But Moulvie Mohammed Ismail was striding across the courtyard to the long, low, half-ruinous shed in which the prisoners were kept.

"Have they proper food and water?" he asked sharply of the guard. "The King gave orders for it."

"It comes but now!" replied the sergeant glibly, pointing to a file of servants bearing dishes which were crossing the courtyard from the royal kitchens. The Moulvie gave a sigh of relief, for Hafzan's hints had alarmed him. These same helpless prisoners lay on his conscience, since he and his like were mainly responsible for the diligent search for Christians which had been going on during the last few days; for it was not to be tolerated that the faithful should risk salvation by concealing them. The proper course was plain, unmistakable. They should be given up to the authorities and be made into good Mohammedans; by persuasion if possible, if not, by force. In truth the Moulvie dreamed already of ninety and odd willing converts, as a further manifestation of divine favor. Perhaps more; though most of these ill-advised attempts at concealment must have come to an end by now.

They had indeed; those four days of peace, of hourly increasing religious enthusiasm for a cause so evidently favored by High Heaven, had made it well nigh impossible to carry on a task attempted by so many, when it seemed likely to last for a few hours only.

Even Jim Douglas told himself he must fail unless he could get help.

He had succeeded so far, simply because--by a mere chance--he had, not one but several, places of concealment ready to his hand without the necessity for taking anyone into his confidence. For he had found it convenient in his work to have cities of refuge, as it were, where he could escape from curiosity or change a disguise at leisure. The s.h.i.+lling or so a month required for the rent of a room in some tenement house being more than repaid by the sense of security the possession gave him. It was to one of these, therefore, that he took Kate on the dawn of the 12th, leaving her locked up in it alone; till night enabled him to take her on to another; so by constant change managing to escape suspicion. But as the days pa.s.sed in miraculous peace, he recognized the hopelessness of continuing this life for long. To begin with, Kate's nerves could not stand it. She was brave enough, but she had an imagination, and what woman with that could stand being left alone in the dark for twelve hours at a time, never knowing if the slow starvation, which would be her fate if anything untoward happened to him, had not already begun? He could not expect her to stand it, when three days of something far less difficult had left him haggard, his nerves unstrung; left him with the possibility looming in the future of his losing his self-control some day, and going madly for the whole world as young Mainwaring had done. Not that he cared for Kate's safety so much, as that the mere thought of failure roused a beast-like ferocity in him. So, as he wandered restlessly about the city, waiting in a fever of impatience for some sign of the world without those rose-red walls--waiting day by day, with a growing tempest of rage, for the night to return and let him creep up some dark stairs and a.s.sure himself of a woman's safety, he was piecing together a plan in case---- Of what? In case the stories he heard in the bazaars were true? No! that was impossible. How could the English have been wiped out of India? Yet as he saw the deserted shops being reopened in solemn procession by an old pantaloon on an elephant calling himself the Emperor, when he saw Abool-Bukr letting off squibs in general rejoicing over the reestablishment of Mohammedan empire; above all when he saw the tide of life returning to the streets, his mad desire to strike a blow and smash the sham was tempered by an almost unbearable curiosity as to what had really happened. But he dared not try and find out. Useless though he knew it was, he hung round the quarter where Kate lay concealed for the day, feeling a certain consolation in knowing that he was as close to her as he dared to be. Such a life was manifestly impossible, and so, bit by bit, his plan grew. Yet, when it had grown, he almost shrank from it, so strange did it seem, in its linking of the past with the present. For Kate must pa.s.s as his wife--his sick wife, hidden, as Zora had been, on some terraced roof, with Tara as her servant; he, meanwhile, pa.s.sing as an Afghan horse-dealer, kept from returning North, like others of his trade, by this illness in his house. The plan was perfectly feasible if Tara would consent. And Jim Douglas, though he ignored his own certainty, never really doubted that she would. He had not been born in the mist-covered mountains of the North for nothing. Their mysticism was part of his nature, and he felt that he had saved her for this; that for this, and this only, he had played that childish but successful cantrip with her hair. In a way, was not the pathetic idyl on the roof with little Zora but a rehearsal of a tragedy--a rehearsal without which he could not have played his part?

Strange thread of fate, indeed, linking these women together! and though he shrank from admitting its very existence, it gave him confidence that the whole would hang together securely. So that when he sought Tara out, his only real doubt was whether it would be wiser to tell her the truth about Kate, or a.s.sert that she was his wife. He chose the latter as less risky, since, even if Tara refused aid, she would not overtly betray anyone belonging to him.

But Tara did not refuse. To begin with, she could have refused nothing in the first joy of finding him safe when she had believed him dead like all the other Huzoors. And then a vast confusion of love, and pride, and remorse, and fierce pa.s.sionate denial of all three, led her into consent. If the Huzoor wanted her to help to save his wife why should she object? Though it was nothing to her if the mem was _his_ mem or not. Jim Douglas, listening to the eager protest, wondered if he might not safely have saved himself an unnecessary complication; but then he wondered at many things Tara said and did. At her quick frown when he promised her both hair and locket as her reward. At the faint quiver amid the scorn with which she had replied that he would still want the latter for the mem's hair. At her slow smile when he opened the gold oval to show the black lock still in sole possession.

She had turned aside to look at the hearth-cakes she had been toasting when he came in, and then gone into the necessary details of arrangement in the most matter-of-fact way. Naturally the Huzoor had sought help from his servant. From whom else could he seek it? As for her saints.h.i.+p, there was nothing new in that. She had been suttee always as the master very well knew. So nothing she did for him, or he for her, could make that suffer. Therefore she would arrange as she had arranged for Zora. The Huzoor must rent a roof--roofs were safest--and she would engage a half-blind, half-deaf old sweeper-woman she knew of. Perhaps another if need be. But the Huzoor need have no fear of such details if he gave her money. And this Jim Douglas had hidden in the garden of his deserted bungalow in Duryagunj; so that in truth it seemed as if the whole plan had been evolved for them by a kindly fate.

And yet Jim Douglas felt a keen pang of regret when, for the first time, he gave the familiar knock of those old Lucknow days at the door of a Delhi roof and Tara opened it to him, dressed in the old crimson drapery, the gold bangles restored to her beautiful brown arms. He had brought Kate round during the previous night to the lodging he had managed to secure in the Mufti's quarter, and, leaving her there alone, had taken the key to Tara; this being the safest plan, since everything could then be arranged in discreet woman's fas.h.i.+on before he put in an appearance.

And the task had been done well. The outside square or yard of parapeted roof which he entered lay conventional to the uttermost. A spinning-wheel here, a row of water-pots there, a mat, a reed stool or two, a cooking place in one corner, a ragged canvas screen at the inner doors. Nothing there to prepare him for finding an Englishwoman within; an Englishwoman with a faint color in her wan cheeks; a new peace in her gray eyes, busy--Heaven save the mark!--in sticking some disjointed jasmine buds into the shallow saucer of a water-pot.

"Tara brought them strung on a string," said Kate half apologetically after her first welcome, as she noted his look. "I suppose she meant me to wear them--with the other things," she paused to glance down with a smile at her dress, "but it seemed a pity. They were like a new world to me--like a promise--somehow."

He sat down on the edge of the string bed feeling a little dazed and looked at her and her surroundings critically. It was a pleasant suns.h.i.+ny bit of roof, vaulted by the still cool morning sky. There was a little arcaded room at one end, the topmost branches of a neem tree showed over one side; on the other, the swelling dome of the big mosque looked like a great white cloud, and in one corner was a sort of square turret, from the roof of which, gained by a narrow brick ladder, the whole city was visible. For it was the highest house in the quarter, higher even than the roof beside it, over which the same neem tree cast a shadow.

And as he looked, he thought idly that no dress in the world was more graceful than the Delhi dress with its billowy train and loose, soft, filmy veil. And Kate looked well in white--all in white. He pulled himself up sharply; but indeed memory was playing him tricks, and the stress and strain of reality seemed far from that slip of sun-saturated roof where a graceful woman in white was sticking jasmine buds into water. And suddenly the thought came that Zora would have worn the chaplets heedlessly; there would have been no sentimentality over withered flowers on her part.

"A promise," he echoed half-bitterly. "Well! one must hope so. And even if the worst comes, it will come easier here."

She looked up at him reproachfully. "Don't remind me of that, please,"

she said hurriedly; "I seem to have forgotten--here under the blue sky. I dare say it's very trivial of me, but I can't help it.

Everything amuses me, interests me. It is so quaint, so new. Even this dress; it is hardly credible, but I wished so much for a looking-gla.s.s just now, to see how I looked in it."

Her eyes met his almost gayly, and he felt an odd resentment in recognizing that Zora would have said the words as frankly.

"I have one here--in a ring," he replied somewhat stiffly, with a vague feeling he had done all this before, as he untied the knot of a small bundle he had brought with him. "It is not much use--for that sort of thing--I'm afraid," he went on, "but I think you had better have these: it is a great point--even for your own sake--to dress as well as play the part."

Kate, with a sudden gravity, looked at the pile of native ornaments he emptied out on to the bed. Bracelets in gold and silver, anklets, odd little jeweled ta.s.sels for the hair, quaint silk-strung necklets and talismans.

"Here is the looking-gla.s.s," he said, choosing out a tiny round one set in filigree gold; "you must wear it on your thumb--but it will barely go on my little finger," he spoke half to himself, and Kate, fitting on the ring, looked at him and set her lips.

"It is too small for me also," she said, laying it down with a faint air of distaste. "They are very pretty, Mr. Greyman,"

she added quickly, "but I would rather not--unless it is really necessary--unless you think----"

He rose half-wearily, half-impatiently. "I should prefer it; but you can do as you like. The jewels belonged to a woman I loved very dearly, Mrs. Erlton. She was not my wife--but she was a good woman for all that. You need not be afraid."

Kate felt the blood tingle to her face as she laid violent hands on the first ornament she touched. It happened to be a solid gold bangle.

"It is too small too," she said petulantly, trying to squeeze her hand through it. "Really it would be better----"

"Excuse me," he replied coolly, "if you will let me." He drew the great carved k.n.o.bs apart deftly, slipped her wrist sideways through the opening, and had them closed again in a second.

"You can't take it off at night, that is all," he went on, "but I will tell Tara to show you how to wear the rest. I must be off now and settle a thousand things."

As he pa.s.sed into the outer roof once more, Kate felt that flush, half of resentment, half of shame, still on her face. In such surroundings how trivial it was, and yet he had guessed her thought truly. Had he guessed also the odd thrill which the touch of that gold fetter gave her? Half-mechanically she tried to loosen it, to remove it, and then with an impatient frown desisted and began to put on the other bracelets. What did it matter, one way or the other? And then, becoming interested despite herself, she set to work to puzzle out uses and places for the pile.

Meanwhile Jim Douglas was dinning instructions into Tara's ear; but she also, he told himself angrily, was trivial to the last degree. And when finally he urged an immediate darkening of Kate's hair and a faint staining of the face to suit the only part possible with her gray eyes--that of a fair Afghan--he flung away in despair from the irrelevant remark:

"But the mem will never be so pretty as Zora; and besides she has such big feet."

Big feet! He swore under his breath that all women were alike in this, that they saw the whole world through the medium of their s.e.x; and _that_ was at the bottom of all the mischief. Delhi had been lost to save women; the trouble had begun to please them. Even now, as far as he could see, resistance would collapse but for one woman's ambition; though despite the Queen and her plots, a hundred brave men or so might still be masters of Delhi if they chose. Since it was still each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost with the mutineers. The certainty of this had made these long days of inaction almost beyond bearing to him; and as Jim Douglas pa.s.sed out into the street he thought bitterly that here again a woman stood in the way; since but for Kate he could surely have forced Meerut into making reprisals by reporting the true state of affairs.

Yet every hour made these reprisals more difficult. Indeed, as he left the Mufti's quarters on that morning of the 16th of May, something was going on in the Palace which ended indecision for many a man and left no chance of retreat. For Zeenut Maihl saw facts as clearly as Jim Douglas, and knew that the first tramp of disciplined feet would be the signal for scuttle; if a chance of escape remained.

And so this something was going on. By someone's orders of course; by whose is one of the unanswered questions of the Indian Mutiny.

The Queen herself was sitting with the King, amicably, innocently, applauding his latest couplet; which was in sober truth, one of his best:

"G.o.d takes this dice-box world, shakes upside down, Throws one defeat, and one a kingly crown."

He was beginning to feel the latter on the old head, which was so diligently stuffed with dreams; but the Queen knew in her heart of hearts that the fight for sovereignty had only just begun. So her mind was chiefly occupied in a spiteful exultation at the thought of some folk's useless terror when--this thing being done--they would find their hands irrevocably on the plow. Ahsan-Oolah and Elahi-Buksh, for instance; their elaborate bridges would be useless; and Abool-Bukr with his squibs and processions, Farkhoonda with her patter of virtue and religion. If only for the sake of immes.h.i.+ng this last victim Zeenut Maihl would not have shrunk; since those three or four days of cozening had left the Queen with a still more vigorous hate for the Princess Farkhoonda, who had fallen into the trap so easily, and who already began to give herself airs and discuss the future on a plane of equality. Pretty, conceited fool! who even now, so the spies said, was waiting to receive the Prince, her nephew, for the first time since she came to the Palace. The very fact that it was the first time seemed an aggravation in the Queen's angry eyes, proving as it did a certain reality in Farkhoonda's pretensions to decorum.

In truth they were very real to the Princess herself; had been gaining reality ever since that first deft suggestion of a possibility had set her heart beating. The possibility, briefly, of the King choosing to set aside that early marriage so tragically interrupted; choosing to declare it no marriage and give his consent to another. Newasi had indignantly scouted the suggestion, had stopped her ears, her heart; but the remembrance of it lingered, enervating her mind, and as she waited for the interview with the Prince she felt vaguely that it was a very different matter receiving him in these bride-like garments, in these dim, heavily scented rooms, to what it had been under the clear sky in her scholar's dress. Yet as she stooped from mere habit, aroused by the finery itself, to arrange her long brocaded train into better folds, she gave something between a sigh and a laugh at the certainty of his admiration. And after all, why should she not have it if the King----

The sound of a distant shot made her start and pause, listening for another. So she stood a slim figure ablaze with color and jewels, a figure with studied seductiveness in every detail of its dress; and she knew that it was so. Why not? If--if he liked it so, and if the King----

Newasi clasped her hands nervously and walked up and down the dim room. Abool was late, and he had no right to be late on this his first visit of ceremony to his aunt. The Mirza-sahib was no doubt late, admitted her attendants, but the door-keeper had reported a disturbance of some kind in the outer court which might be the cause of delay.

A disturbance! Newasi, a born coward, shrank from the very thought, though she felt that it could be nothing--nothing but one of the many brawls, the constant quarrels.

G.o.d and his prophet! who--what was that? She recoiled with a scream of terror from the wild figure which burst in on her unceremoniously, which followed her retreat into the far corner, flung itself at her knees, clasping them, burying its face among her scented draperies.

But by that time her terror was gone, and she stooped, trying to free herself from those clinging arms, from the disgrace, from the outrage; from the drunken----

"Abool!" she cried fiercely, then turning to the curious t.i.ttering women, stamped her foot at them and bade them begone. And when they had obeyed, she beat her little hands against those clinging ones again with wild upbraidings, till suddenly they fell as if paralyzed before the awful horror and dread in the face which rose from her fineries.

"Come, Newasi!" stammered the white trembling lips, "come from this hangman's den. Did I not warn thee? But thou hast put the rope round my neck--I who only wanted to live my own life, die my own death.

Come! Come!"

He stumbled to his feet, but seemed unable to stir. So he stood looking at his hands stupidly.

Farkhoonda looked too, her face growing gray.

"What is't, Abool?" she faltered; "what is't, dear?"

But she knew; it was blood, new shed, still wet.