Could, then, this amazing tale be true? The very thought sent them cringing round the old man, who might ere long be King indeed.
Yet as the Captain dashed at a gallop past the sentries standing calmly at the Lah.o.r.e gate, there was no sign of trouble beyond, and he gave a quick glance of relief back at those cool quarters of his over the arched tunnel where the chaplain, his daughter, and her friend were staying as his guests. He felt less fear of leaving them when he saw that the city was waking to life as always, buckling down quietly to the burden and heat of a new day. It was now past seven o"clock, and the sunlight, still cool, was bright enough to cleave all things into dark or light, shade or shine. Up on the Ridge, the brigade, after listening to the sentence on the Barrackpore mutineers, was dispersing quietly; many of the men with that fiat of patience till the 31st in their minds, for the carriage-load of native officers returning from the Meerut court-martial had come into cantonments late the night before. On the roofs of the houses in the learned quarter women were giving the boys their breakfasts ere sending them off to school. The milkwomen were trooping in cityward from the country, the fruit-sellers and hawkers trooping out Ridge-way as usual. The postman going his rounds had left letters, written in Meerut the day before, at two houses. And Kate Erlton returning from early church had found hers and was reading it with a scared face. Alice Gissing, however, having had that laconic telegram, had taken hers coolly. The decision had had to be made, since nothing had happened; and Herbert had the right to make it. For her part, she could make him happy; she had the knack of making most men happy, and she herself was always content when the people about her were jolly. So she was packing boxes in the back veranda of the little house on the city wall.
Thus she did not see the man who, between six and seven o"clock, ran breathlessly past her house, as a shortcut to the Court House from the bridge, taking a message from the toll-keeper to the nearest Huzoor, the Collector, who was holding early office, that a party of armed troopers had come down the Meerut road, that more could be seen coming, and would the Huzoor kindly issue orders. That first and final suggestion of the average native subordinate in any difficulty.
Armed men? That might mean much or nothing. Yet scarcely anything really serious, or warning would have been sent. The Commissioner, anyhow, must be told. So the Collector flung himself on his horse, which, in Indian fashion, was waiting under a tree outside the Court House, and galloped toward Ludlow Castle. No need for that warning, however, for just by the Cashmere gate he met the man he sought driving furiously down with a mounted escort to close the city gates.
He had already heard the news.[3]
Gathering graver apprehensions from this hasty meeting, the Collector was off again to warn the Resident, then still further to beg help from cantonments. No delay here, no hesitation. Simply a man on a horse doing his best for the future, leaving the present for those on the spot.
Nor was there delay anywhere. The Commissioner, calling by the way for the Captain of the Guard, the nearest man with men under him, was at the gate, giving on the bridge of boats, by half-past seven. The Resident, calling on his way at the magazine for two guns to sweep the bridge, joined him there soon after. Too late. The enemy had crossed, and were in possession of the only ground commanding the bridge.
Nothing remained but to close the gate and keep the city quiet till the columns of pursuit from Meerut should arrive; for that there was one upon the road no one doubted. The very rebels clamoring at the gate were listening for the sound of those following footsteps. The very fanatics, longing for another blow or two at an infidel to gain Paradise withal ere martyrdom was theirs, listened too; for during that moonlit night the certainty of failure had been as myrrh and hyssop deadening them to the sacrifice of life.
So the little knot of Englishmen, looking hopefully down the road, looked anxiously at each other, and closed the river gate; kept it closed, too, even when the 20th claimed admittance from their friends the guard within. For the 38th regiment, whose turn it was for city work, was also rotten to the core.
But they could not close that way through Selimgarh, though it, in truth, brought no trouble to the town. The men who chose it being intriguers, fanatics, the better cla.s.s of patriots more anxious to intrench themselves for the struggle within walls, than to swarm into a town they could not hope to hold. But there were others of different mettle, longing for loot and license. The 3d Cavalry had many friends in Delhi, especially in the Thunbi Bazaar; so they made for it by braving the shallow streams and shifting sandbanks below the eastern wall, and so gaining the Raj-ghat gate. Here, after compact with vile friends in that vile quarter, they found admittance and help. For what?
Between the bazaar and the Palace lay Duryagunj, full of helpless Christian women and children; and so, "_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed_,"
the convenient Cry of Faith, was ready as, followed by the rabble and refuse once more, the troopers raced through the peaceful gardens, pausing only to kill the infidels they met. But like a furious wind gathering up all vile things in the street and carrying them along for a s.p.a.ce, then dropping them again, the band left a legacy of license and sheer murder behind it, while it sped on to loot.
But now the cry of "Close the gates" rose once more, this time from the shopkeepers, the respectable quarters, the secluded alleys, and courtyards. And many a door was closed on the confusion and never opened again, except to pa.s.s in bare bread, for four long months.
"Close the gates! Close the gates! Close the gates!" The cry rose from the Palace, the city, the little knot of Englishmen looking down the Meerut road. Yet no one could compa.s.s that closing. Recruits swarmed in through Selimgarh to the Palace. Robbers swarmed in through the Raj-ghat gate to harry the bazaars. Only through the Cashmere gate, held by English officers and a guard of the 38th, no help came. The Collector arriving therein, hot from his gallop to cantonments, found more wonder than alarm; for death was dealt in Delhi by noiseless cold steel; and the main-guard having to be kept, in order to secure retreat and safety to the European houses around it, no one had been able to leave it. And all around was still peaceful utterly; even the roar of growing tumult in the city had not reached it. Sonny Seymour was playing with his parrot in the veranda, Alice Gissing packing boxes methodically. The Collector galloping past--as, scorning the suggestion that it was needless risk to go further, he replied briefly, that he was the magistrate of the town, and struck spurs to his horse--made some folk look up--that was all.
But he could scarcely make his way through the growing crowd, which, led by troopers, was beginning to close in behind the knot of waiting Englishmen. And once more they looked down the Meerut road as they heard that some time must elapse ere they could hope for reinforcement. The guns could not be got ready at a moment"s notice; nor could the Cashmere gate guard leave the post. But the 54th regiment should be down in about---- In about what? No one asked; but those waiting faces listened as for a verdict of life and death.
In about an hour.
An hour! And not a cloud of dust upon the Meerut road.
"They can"t be long, though, now," said the eldest there hopefully.
"And Ripley will bring his men down at the double. If we go into the guard-house we can hold our own till then, surely."
"I can hold mine," replied a young fellow with a rough-hewn homely face. He gave a curt nod as he spoke to a companion, and together they turned back, skirting the wall, followed by an older, burlier man.
They belonged to the magazine, and they were off to see the best way of holding their own. And they found it--found it for all time.
But fate had denied to those other brave men the nameless something which makes men succeed together, or die together. Within half an hour they were scattered helplessly. The Resident, after seeking support from the city police for one whose name had been a terror to Delhi for fifty years, and finding insult instead, was flying for dear life through the Ajmere gate to the open county; The Commissioner, who, after seizing a musket from a wavering guard beside him and--with the first shot fired in Delhi--shooting the foremost trooper dead, seems to have lost hope, with mutiny around and treason beside him, jumped into his buggy alone and drove off to those cool quarters above the Palace gate, as his nearest refuge. Their owner, the Captain sought like refuge by flinging himself into the cover of the dry moat, and creeping--despite injuries from the fall--along it till some of his men, faithful so far, seeing him unable for more, carried him to his own room.
The Collector! Strangely enough there is no record of what the Magistrate of the city did, thus left alone. He had been wounded by the crowd at first, and was no doubt weary after his wild gallopings.
Still he, holding his own so far, managed to gain the same refuge, somehow. What else could he do alone? One thing we know he could not do. That is, mount the broad, curving flight of shallow stone stairs leading to the cool upper rooms. So the chaplain helped him; the chaplain who had "from an early hour been watching the advance of the Meerut mutineers through a telescope and feeling there was mischief in the wind."
Mischief indeed! and danger; most of all in those rose-red walls within which refuge had been sought. For the King was back in the women"s apartments listening to the Queen"s cozenings and Hussan Askuri"s visions, when that urgent appeal to send dhoolies to convey the English ladies at the gate to the security of the harem reached him; reached him in Ahsan-Oolah"s warning voice of wisdom. And he listened to both the wheedling ambition and the crafty policy with a half-hearing for something beyond it of pity, honor, good faith; while Hafzan, pen in hand, sat with her large profoundly sad eyes fixed on the old man"s face, waiting--waiting.
"If they come here--outcaste! infidel! I go," said Zeenut Maihl.
"Thou shalt go with a bowstring about thy neck, woman, if I choose,"
said the old King fiercely. "Write! girl--the Queen"s dhoolies to the Lah.o.r.e gate at once."
So, through the swarms of pensioners quarreling already over new t.i.tles and perquisites, through the groups of excited fanatics preparing for martyrdom about the Mosque, past Abool-Bukr, three parts drunk, boasting to ruffling blades of the European mistresses he meant to keep, the Queen"s dhoolies went swaying out of the precincts; all yielding place to them. And beyond, in the denser, more dangerous crowd without, they pa.s.sed easily; for those tinsel-decked, tawdry canopies, screened with sodden musk and dirt-scented curtains, were sacred.
Sacred even to the refuse and rabble of the city, the dissolute eunuchs, the mob of retainers, palace guards, and blood-drunk soldierly surging through that long arched tunnel by the Lah.o.r.e gate, and hustling to get round that wide arch, and so, a few steps further, see the Commissioner standing at bay upon that wide curving red-stone stair that led upward. Standing and thinking of the women above; of one woman mostly. Standing, facing the wild sea of faces, waiting to see if that last appeal for help had been heard.
"Room! Room! for the Queen"s dhoolies!"
The cry echoed above the roar of the crowd.
At last! He turned, to pa.s.s on the welcome news, perchance; but it was enough--that one waver of that stern face! There was a rush, a cry, a clang of steel on stone, a fall! And then up those wide curving stairs, like fiends incarnate, jostled a mad crew, elbowing each other, cursing each other, in their eagerness for that blow which would win Paradise.
Four crowns of glory in the first room, where the chaplain, the Captain, and the two English girls fell side by side. One in the next, where the Collector and Magistrate, weary and wounded, still lay alone.
"Way! Way! for the Queen"s dhoolies!"
But they had come too late, as all things seemed to come too late on that fatal 11th of May.
Too late! Too late! The words dinned themselves into a horseman"s brain, as he dashed out of the compound of a small house in Duryagunj and headed straight through the bazaar for the little house on the city wall by the Cashmere gate. And as he rode he shouted: "_Deen!
Deen!_"
It was a convenient cry, and suited the trooper"s dress he wore. He had had to shoot a man to get it, but he hoped to shoot many more when he had seen Alice Gissing in safety, and the Meerut column had come in. It could not be long now.
CHAPTER III.
DAYLIGHT.
Three miles away Kate Erlton sat in her home-like, peaceful drawing room, feeling dazzled. The sunshine, streaming through the open doors, seemed to stream into the very recesses of her mind as she sat, still looking at the letter which she had found half an hour before waiting for her beside a bunch of late roses which the gardener had laid on the table ready for her to arrange in the vases. The flowers were fading fast; the dog-cart waiting outside to take her on to see a sick friend ere the sun grew hot, shifted to find another shadow; but she did not move.
She was trying to understand what it all meant; really--deprived of her conventional thoughts about such things. And one sentence in the letter had a strange fascination for her. "I am not such a fool as to think you will mind. I know you will get on much better without me."
Of course. She had, in a way, accepted the truth of this years ago.
The fact must have been patent to him also all that time; and she had known that he accepted it.
But now, set down in black and white, it forced her into seeing--as she had never seen before--the deadly injury she had done to the man by not minding. And then the question came keenly--"Why had she not minded?" Because she had not been content with her bargain. She had wanted something else. What? The emotion, the refinement, the _fin-fleur_ of sentiment. Briefly, what made _her_ happy; what gave _her_ satisfaction. It was only, then, a question between different forms of enjoyment; the one as purely selfish as the other. More so, in a way, for it claimed more and carried the grievance of denial into every detail of life. She moved restlessly in her chair, confused by this sudden daylight in her mind; laid down the letter, then took it up again and read another sentence.
"I believe you used to think that I"d get the regiment some day; but I shouldn"t--after all, the finish is the win or the lose of a race."
The letter went down on the table again, but this time her head went down with it to rest upon it above her clasped hands. Oh! the pity of it! the pity of it! Yet how could she have avoided standing aloof from this man"s life as she had done from the moment she had discovered she did not love him?
Suddenly she stood up, pressing those clasped hands tight to her forehead as if to hold in her thoughts. The sunlight, streaming in, shone right into her cool gray eyes, showing in a ray on the iris, as if it were pa.s.sing into her very soul.
If she had been this man"s sister, instead of his wife, could she not have lived with him contentedly enough, palliating what could be palliated, gaining what influence she could with him, giving him affection and sympathy? Why, briefly, had she failed to make him what Alice Gissing had made him--a better man? And yet Alice Gissing did not love him; she had no romantic sentiment about him. Did she really lay less stress--she, the woman at whom other women held up pious hands of horror--on that elemental difference between the tie of husband and wife, and brother and sister than she, Kate Erlton, did, who had affected to rise superior to it altogether? It seemed so. She had asked for a purely selfish gratification of the mind. And Alice Gissing? A strange jealousy came to her with the thought, not for herself, but for her husband; for the man who was content to give up everything for a woman whom he "loved very dearly." That was true.
Kate had watched him for those three months, and she had watched Mrs.
Gissing too, and knew for a certainty the latter gave him nothing any woman might not have given him if she had been content to put her own claims for happiness, her own gratification, her own mental pa.s.sion aside. So a quick resolve came to her. He must not give up the finish, the win or the lose of the race, for so little. There was time yet for the chance. She had pleaded for one with a man a year ago; she would plead for it with a woman to-day.
She pa.s.sed into the veranda hastily, pausing involuntarily ere getting into the dog-cart before the still, sunlit beauty of that panorama of the eastern plains, stretching away behind the gardens which fringed the shining curves of the river. There was scarcely a shadow anywhere, not a sign to tell that three miles down that river the man with whom she had pleaded a year ago was straining every nerve to give her and himself a chance, and that within the rose-lit, lilac-shaded city the chance of some had come and gone.
Nor, as she drove along the road intent on that coming interview in the hot little house upon the wall, was there any sign to warn her of danger. The Cashmere gate stood open, and the guard saluted as usual.