On the Face of the Waters Part 42

"Well! There goes the bugle to pitch tents, anyhow," retorted Jim Douglas recklessly. "So I suppose we had better have our breakfast too--coffee and a rasher of bacon and a boiled egg or so. By G.o.d! its incredible--it's----" He flung himself on a reed stool and covered his face with his hands for a second; but he was up facing her the next.

"I've no right to say these things--no one knows better than I how worse than idle it is to press others to one's own tether--I learned that lesson early, Mrs. Erlton. But"--he gave a quick gesture of impotent impatience--"when the news first came in, the men who brought it ran in at the Cashmere and Moree gates in hundreds, and out at the Ajmere and Turkoman, calling that the masters had come back; and people were keeking round the doors hopefully. I tell you the very boys as I came in here were talking of school again--of holiday tasks, perhaps--Heaven knows! People were running in the streets--they will be walking now--in another hour they will be standing; and then! Well!

I suppose the General funks the sun. So I'll be off. I only came because I thought I had better be here in case; you see the men would have had their blood up rus.h.i.+ng the city----"

"And your breakfast?" she asked coldly, almost sarcastically; for he seemed to her so hard, so grudging, while her sympathies, her enthusiasms were red-hot for the newcomers.

He laughed bitterly. "I've learned to live on parched grain like a native, if need be, and I take opium too; so I shall manage." He was back again to the turret, however, before two o'clock, curtly apologetic, calmer, yet still eager. The people, to be sure, he said, had given up keeking round their doors at every clatter, and the gates had been closed on deserters by the Palace folk; but no one had thought of bricking them up, and after going round everywhere he doubted if there were more than seven or eight thousand real soldiers in Delhi. The 74th and the 11th regiments had been slipping away for days, and numbers of men who had remained did not really mean to fight. Tiddu, who seemed to know everything, said that the mutineers had been very strongly in-trenched at Budli-serai, so the resistance could not have been very dogged, or our troops could not have fought their way in before nine o'clock. Yes! since she pressed for an answer, the General might have been wise in waiting for the cool. Only he personally wished he had thought it possible, for then he would at any rate have tried to get a letter sent to the Ridge. Now it was too late.

And then suddenly, as he spoke, a fierce elation flashed to his face again at the sound of bugles, the roll of a gun from the Moree Bastion; and he was up the stairs of the turret in a second, casting a half-humorous, wholly deprecating glance back at her.

"A hare and a tortoise once--I learned that at school--put it into Latin!" he said lightly, as the walls round them quivered to the reverberating rolls, thundering from the city wall.

Kate walked up and down the roof restlessly, pa.s.sing into the outer one so as to be further from that eager sentinel and his criticisms.

Tara was spinning calmly, and Kate wondered if the woman could be alive. Did she not know that brave men on both sides were going to their deaths? And Tara, from under her heavy eyelashes, watched Kate, and wondered how any woman who had brought Life into the world could fear Death. Did not the Great Wheel spin unceasingly? Let brave men, then, die bravely--even Soma. For she knew by this time that her brother was in Delhi, and by the master's orders had dodged his detection more than once. So the two women waited, each after their nature; while like the pulse of time itself, the beat of artillery shook the walls. It came so regularly that Kate, crouching in a corner weary of restless pacing to and fro, grew almost drowsy and started at a step beside her.

"A false alarm," said Jim Douglas quietly; "a sortie, as far as I could judge, from the Moree; easily driven back."

His tone roused her antagonism instantly. "Perhaps they are waiting for night."

"There is a full moon--almost," he replied; "besides, there is fair cover up to within four hundred yards of the Cabul gate. They could rush that, and a bag or two of gunpowder would finish the business."

"They could do that as well to-morrow," she remarked hotly.

"I hope to G.o.d they won't be such fools as to try it!" he replied as hotly. "If they don't come in to-night they will have to batter down the walls, and then the city will go against them. What city wouldn't?

It will rouse memories we can't afford to rouse. Who could? And every wounded man who creeps in to-day will be a center of resistance by to-morrow. The women will hound others on to protect him. It is their way. You have always to allow for humanity in war. Well! we must wait and see." He paused and rubbed his forehead vexedly. "If I had known, I might have got out with the sortie; but I suppose I couldn't really----" He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and went out.

And Kate, as she sat watching the red flush of sunset grow to the dome, remembered his look at her with a half-angry pang. Why should she be in this man's way always? So the day died away in soft silence, and there on the housetop it seemed incredible that so much hung in the balance, and that down in the streets the crowds must be drifting to and fro restlessly. At least she supposed so. Yet, monotonous as ever, there was the evening cry of the muezzin and the persistent thrumming of toms-toms and saringis which evening brings to a native city. It rose louder than usual from a roof hard by, where, so Tara told her, a princess of the blood royal lived; a great friend of Abool-Bukr's. The remembrance of little Sonny's hands all red with blood, and the cruel face smiling over an apology, made her s.h.i.+ver, and wonder as she often did with a desperate craving what the child's fate had been. Why had she let the old ayah take him? Why was he not here, safe; making life bearable? As she sat, the tears falling quietly over her cheeks, Tara came and looked at her curiously. "The mem should not cry," she said consolingly. "The Huzoor will save her somehow."

For an instant Kate felt as if she would rather he did not. Then on the distance and the darkening air came a familiar sound: the evening bugle from the Ridge with its cheerful invitation:

"Come-and-set-a-picket-boys! come-and-keep-a-watch."

So someone else was within hail, ready to help! The knowledge brought her a vast consolation, and for the first time in that environment she slept through the night without wakening in deadly dreamy fear at the least sound.

Even the uproarious devilry of Prince Abool in the alley below did not rouse her, when about midnight he broke loose from the feverish detaining hold which Newasi had kept on him by every art of her power during the day, lest the master returning should find the Prince in mischief. But now he lurched away with a party of young bloods who had come to fetch him, swearing that he must celebrate the victory properly. But for a moment's weakness, fostered by a foolish, fearful woman, he might have led the cavalry. He wept maudlin tears over the thought, swearing he would yet show his mettle. He would not leave one h.e.l.l-doomed alive; and, suiting the action to the word, he began incontinently to search for fugitives in some open cowyards close by, till the strapping dairymaids, roused from slumber, declared in revenge that they had seen a man slip down the culvert of the big drain. Five minutes afterward Prince Abool, half-choked, half-drowned, was dragged from the sewer by his comrades, protesting feebly that he must have killed an infidel; else why did the blood smell so horribly?

But after that the city sank into the soundlessness, the stillness, of the hour before dawn, save for a recurring call of the watch bugles on wall and Ridge and the twinkling lights which burned all night in camp and court. For those two had challenged each other, and the fight was to the bitter end. What else could it be with a death-pledge between them? The townspeople might sleep uncertain which side they would espouse, but between the Men and the Murderers the issue was clear.

And it remained so, even though the month-of-miracle lingered, and no a.s.sault came on the morrow, or the day after, or the day after that.

So that the old King himself set his back to the wall and for once spoke as a King should. "If the army will not fight without pay, punish it," he said to the Commander-in-chief. But it was only a flash in the pan, and he retired once more to the latticed marble balcony and set the sign-manual to a general fiat that "those who would be satisfied with a trifle might be paid something." Whereat Mahb.o.o.b Ali shook his head, for there was not even a trifle in the privy purse.

As for the city people, their ears and tongues grew longer during those three days, when the sepoys, returning from the sorties and skirmishes, brought back tales of glorious victory, stupendous slaughter. Her man had killed fifteen Huzoors himself, and there were not five hundred left on the Ridge, said Futteh-deen's wife to Pera-Khan's as they gossiped at the wall; and a good job too. When they were gone there would be an end of these sword cuts and bullet wounds. Not a wink of sleep had she had for nights, yawned Zainub, what with thirsts and poultices! And on the steps of the mosque, too, the learned lingered to discuss the newspapers. So Bukht Khan with fifty thousand men was on his way to swear allegiance, and the Shah of Persia had sacked Lah.o.r.e, where Jan Larnce himself had been caught trying to escape on an elephant and identified by wounds on his back.

And the London correspondent of the _Authentic News_ was no doubt right in saying the Queen was dumfoundered, while the St. Petersburg one was clearly correct in a.s.serting that the Czar was about to put on his crown at last. Why not, since his vow was at an end with the pa.s.sing of India from British supremacy?

So the dream went on; the little brocaded bags kept coming in; the stupendous slaughter continued. Yet every night the Widow's Cruse of a Ridge echoed to the picket bugles, and the court and the camp twinkled at each other till dawn.

A sort of vexed despairing patience came to Jim Douglas, and more than once he apologized to Kate for his moodiness, like a patient who apologizes to his nurse when unfavorable symptoms set in. He gave her what news he could glean, which was not much, for Tiddu had gone south for another consignment of grain. But on the morning of the 12th he turned up with a face clearer than it had been; and a friendlier look in his eyes.

"The guides came in to camp yesterday. Splendid fellows. They were at it hammer and tongs immediately, though that man Rujjub Ali I told you of--it was he who said Hodson was with the force--declares they marched from Murdin in twenty-one days. Over thirty miles a day! Well!

they looked like it. I saw them ride slap up to the Cabul gate.

And--and I saw someone else with them, Mrs. Erlton. I wasn't sure at first if I had better tell you; but I think I had. I saw your husband."

"My husband," she echoed faintly. In truth the past seemed to have slipped from her. She seemed to have forgotten so much; and then suddenly she remembered that the letter he had written must still be in the pocket of the dress Tara had hidden away. How strange! She must find it, and look at it again.

Jim Douglas watched her curiously with a quick recognition of his own rough touch. Yet it could not be helped.

"Yes. He was looking splendid, doing splendidly. I couldn't help wis.h.i.+ng---- Well! I wish you could have seen him; you would have been proud."

She interrupted him with swift, appealing hand. "Oh!--don't--please don't--what have I to do with it? Can't you see--can't you understand he was thinking of--of her--and doesn't she deserve it? while I--I----"

It was the first breakdown he had seen during those long weeks of strain, and he stood absolutely, wholly compa.s.sionate before it.

"My dear lady," he said gently, as he walked away to give her time, "if you good women would only recognize the fact which worse ones do, that most men think of many women in their lives, you would be happier.

But I doubt if Major Erlton was thinking of anyone in particular. He was thinking of the dead, and you are among them, for _him_; remember that. Come," he continued, crossing over to her again and holding out his hand. "Cheer up! Aren't you always telling me it is bad for a man to have one woman on the brain, and think, think how many there may be to avenge by this time!"

His voice, sounding a whole gamut of emotion, a whole cadence of consolation, seemed to find an echo in her heart, and she looked up at him gratefully.

It would have found one also in most hearts upon the Ridge, where men were beginning to think with a sort of mad fury of women and children in a hundred places to which this unchecked conflagration of mutiny was spreading swiftly. What would become of Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, if something were not done at Delhi? if the challenge so well given were not followed up? And men elsewhere telegraphed the same question, until, half-heartedly, the General listened, and finally gave a grudging a.s.sent to a plan of a.s.sault urged by four subalterns.

What the details were matters little. A bag of gunpowder somewhere, with fixed bayonets to follow. A gamester's throw for sixes or deuce-ace, so said even its supporters. But anything seemed better than being a target for artillery practice five times better than their own, while the mutiny spread around them.

The secret was well kept as such secrets must be. Still the afternoon of the 12th saw a vague stir on the Ridge, and though even the fighting men turned in to sleep, each man knew what the midnight order meant which sent him fumbling hurriedly with belts and buckles.

"The city at last, mates! No more playin' ball," they said to each other as they fell in, and stood waiting the next order under the stars; waiting with growing impatience as the minutes slipped by.

"My G.o.d! where is Graves?" fumed Hodson. "We can't go on without him and his three hundred. Ride, someone, and see. The explosion party is ready, the Rifles safe within three hundred yards of the wall. The dawn will be on us in no time--ride sharp!"

"Something has gone wrong," whispered a comrade. "There were lights in the General's tent and two mounted officers--there! I thought so! It's all up!"

All up indeed! For the bugle which rang out was the retreat. Some of those who heard it remembered a moonlight night just a month before when it had echoed over the Meerut parade ground; and if muttered curses could have silenced it the bugle would have sounded in vain.

But they could not, and so the men went back sulkily, despondently to bed. Back to inaction, back to target practice.

"Graves says he misunderstood the verbal orders, so I understand,"

palliated a staff-officer in a mess tent whither others drifted to find solace from the chill of dis-appointment, the heat of anger. A tall man with hawk's eyes and spa.r.s.e red hair paused for a moment ere pa.s.sing out into the night again. "I dislike euphemisms," he said curtly. "In these days I prefer to call a spade a spade. Then you can tell what you have to trust to."

"Hodson's in a towering temper," said an artilleryman as he watched a native servant thirstily; "I don't wonder. Well! here's to better luck next time."

"I don't believe there will be a next time," echoed a lad gloomily.

And there was not, for him, the target practice settling that point definitely next day.

"But why the devil couldn't--" began another vexed voice, then paused.

"Ah! here comes Erlton from the General. He'll know. I say, Major----"

he broke off aghast.

"Have a gla.s.s of something, Erlton?" put in a senior hastily, "you look as if you had seen a ghost, man!"

The Major gave an odd hollow laugh. "The other way on--I mean--I--I can't believe it--but my wife--she--she's alive--she's in Delhi." The startled faces around seemed too much for him; he sat down hurriedly and hid his face in his hands, only to look up in a second more collectedly. "It has brought the whole d----d business home, somehow, to have her there."

"But how?" the eager voices got so far--no further.