On the Face of the Waters

BOOK V
CHAPTER II

BITS, BRIDLES, SPURS.

The letter, however, did not refer to Kate; though, curiously enough, the Englishwoman it concerned had been, and still was concealed in an Afghan's house. Kate, then, had not been the only Englishwoman in Delhi. There was a certain consolation in the thought, since what was being done for one person by kindly natives might very well be done for another. Besides, removed as he was now from the fret and strain of actual search, Jim Douglas admitted frankly to Major Hodson that he was right in saying that Mrs. Erlton must either have come to an end of her troubles altogether, or have found friends better able, perhaps, than he to protect her.

Regarding the first possibility also Major Hodson was skeptical. He had hundreds of spies in the city. Such a piece of good luck as the discovery of a Christian must have been noised abroad. They had not mentioned it; he did not, therefore, believe it had occurred. He would, however, inquire, and till the answer came it would be foolish to go back to the city. Jim Douglas admitted this also; but as the days passed, the desire to return increased; especially when Major Erlton came to see him, which he did with dutiful regularity. Jim Douglas could not help admiring him when he stood, stiff and square, thanking him as Englishmen thank their fellows for what they know to be beyond thanks.

"I am sure no one could have done more, and I know I couldn't have done a quarter so much; and I'm grateful," he said awkwardly. Then with the best intentions, born from a real pity for the haggard man who sat on the edge of his cot looking as men do after a struggle of weeks with malarial fever, he added, "And the luck has been a bit against you all the time, hasn't it?"

"As yet, perhaps," replied Jim Douglas, feeling inclined then and there to start cityward, "but the game isn't over. When I go back——"

"Hodson says you could do no good," continued the big man, still with the best intentions.

"I don't agree with him," retorted the other sharply.

"Perhaps not—but—but I wouldn't, if I were you. Or—rather—I should of course—only—you see it is different for me. She——" Major Erlton paused, finding it difficult to explain himself. The memory of that last letter he had written to Kate was always with him, making him feel she was not, in a way, his wife. He had never regretted it. He had scarcely thought what would happen if she came back from the dead, as it were, to answer it; for he hated thought. Even now the complexity of his emotions irritated him, and he broke through them almost brutally. "She was my wife, you see. But you had nothing to do with it; so you had better leave it alone. You've done enough already. And as I said before, I'm grateful."

So he had stalked away, leaving his hearer frowning. It was true. The luck had been against him. But what right had it to be so? Above all, what right had that big brutal fellow to say so? There he was going off to win more distinction, no doubt. He would end by getting the Victoria Cross, and confound him! from what people said of him, he would well deserve it.

While he? Even these two days had brought his failure home to him. And yet he told himself, that if he had failed to save one Englishwoman, others had failed to save hundreds. Fresh as he was to the facts, they seemed to him almost incredible. As he wandered round the Ridge inspecting that rear-guard of graves, or sat talking to some of the thousand-and-odd sick and wounded in hospital, listening to endless tales of courage, pluck, sheer dogged resistance, he realized at what a terrible cost that armed force, varying from three to six thousand men, had simply clung to the rocks and looked at the city. There seemed enough heroism in it to have removed mountains; and coming upon him, not in the monotonous sequence of day-to-day experience, but in a single impression, the futility of it left him appalled. So did the news of the world beyond Delhi, heard, reliably, for the first time. Briefly, England was everywhere on her defense. It seemed to him as if from that mad dream of conquest within the city he had passed to as strange a dream of defeat. And why? The fire, unchecked at first, had blazed up with fresh fuel in place after place and left?—Nothing. Not a single attempt to wrest the government of the country from us; not even an organized resistance, when once the order to advance had been given. Had there been some mysterious influence abroad making men blind to the truth?

It was about to pass away if there had been, he felt, when on the 14th, he watched John Nicholson re-enter the Ridge at the head of his column. And many others felt the same, without in any way disparaging those who for long months of defense had borne the burden and heat of the day. They simply saw that Fate had sent a new factor into the problem, that the old order was changing. The defense was to be attack.

And why not, with that reinforcement of fine fighting men? Played in by the band of the 8th, amid cheering and counter-cheering, which almost drowned the music, it seemed fit—as the joke ran—if not to face hell itself, at any rate to take Pandymonium. The 52d Regiment looked like the mastiff to which its leader had likened it. The 2d Sikhs were admittedly the biggest fellows ever seen. The wild Mooltânee Horse sat their lean Beloochees with the loose security of seat which tells of men born to the saddle.

Jim Douglas noted these things like his fellows; but what sent that thrill of confidence through him was the look on many a face, as at some pause or turn it caught a glimpse of the General's figure. It was that heroic figure itself, seen for the first time, riding ahead of all with no unconsciousness of the attention it attracted! but with a self-reliant acceptance of the fact—as far from modesty as it was from vanity—that here rode John Nicholson ready to do what John Nicholson could do. But in the pale face, made paler by the darkness of the beard, there was more than this. There was an almost languid patience as if the owner knew that the men around him said of him, "If ever there is a desperate deed to do in India, John Nicholson is the man to do it," and was biding his time to fulfill their hopes.

The look haunted Jim Douglas all day, stimulating him strangely. Here was a man, he felt, who was in the grip of Fate, but who gave back the grip so firmly that his Fate could not escape him. Gave it back frankly, freely, as one man might grip another's hand in friendship. And then he smiled, thinking that John Nicholson's hand-clasp would go a long way in giving anyone a help over a hard stile. If he had had a lead-over like that after the smash came; if even now—— Idle thoughts, he told himself; and all because the picturesqueness of a man's outward appearance had taken his fancy, his imagination. For all he knew, or was ever likely to know——

He had been sitting idly on the edge of his cot in the tiny tent Major Erlton had lent him, having in truth nothing better to do, and now a voice from the blaze and blare of the heat and light outside startled him.

"May I come in—John Nicholson?"

He almost stammered in his surprise; but without waiting for more than a word the General walked in, alone. He was still in full uniform; and surely no man could become it more, thought Jim Douglas involuntarily.

"I have heard your story, Mr. Douglas," he began in a sonorous but very pleasant voice. "It is a curious one. And I was curious to see you. You must know so much." He paused, fixed his eyes in a perfectly unembarassed stare on his host's face, then said suddenly, with a sort of old-fashioned courtesy: "Sit you down again, please; there isn't a chair, I see; but the cot will stand two of us. If it doesn't it will be clearly my fault." He smiled kindly. "Wounded too—I didn't know that."

"A scratch, sir," put in his hearer hastily, fighting shy even of that commiseration. "I had a little fever in the city; that is all."

The bright hazel eyes, with a hint of sunlight in them, took rather an absent look. "I should like to have done it myself. I've tried that sort of thing; but they always find me out."

"I fancy you must be rather difficult to disguise," began Jim Douglas with a smile, when John Nicholson plunged straight into the heart of things.

"You must know a lot I want to know. Of course I've seen Hodson and his letters; but this is different. First: Will the city fight?"

"As well as it knows how, and it knows better than it did."

"So I fancied. Hodson said not. By the way, he told me that you declared his Intelligence Department was simply perfect. And his accounts—I mean his information—wonderfully accurate."

"I did, indeed, sir," replied Jim Douglas, smiling again.

Nicholson gave him a sharp look. "And he is a wonderfully fine soldier too, sir; one of the finest we have. Wilson is sending him out this afternoon to punish those Ringhars at Rohtuck. I don't know why I should present you with this information, Mr. Douglas?"

"Don't you, sir?" was the cool reply; "I think I do. Major Hodson may have his faults, sir, but the Ridge couldn't do without him. And I'm glad to hear he is going out. It is time we punished those chaps; time we got some grip on the country again."

The General's face cleared. "Hm," he said, "you don't mince matters; but I don't think we lost much grip in the Punjâb. And as for punishments! Do you know over two thousand have been executed already?"

"I don't, sir; though I knew Sir John's hand was out. But if you'll excuse me, we don't want the hangings now—they can come by-and-by. We want to lick them—show them we are not really in a blind funk."

"You use strong language too, sir—very strong language."

"I did not say we were in one——" began Jim Douglas eagerly, when a voice asking if General Nicholson were within interrupted him.

"He is," replied the sonorous voice calmly. "Come in, Hodson, and I hope you are prepared to fight." The bright hazel eyes met Jim Douglas' with a distinct twinkle in them; but Major Hodson entering—a perfect blaze of scarlet and fawn and gold, loose, lank, lavish—gave the speech a different turn.

"I hope you'll excuse the intrusion, sir," he said saluting, as it were, loudly, "but being certain I owed this piece of luck to your kind offices, I ventured to follow you. And as for the fighting, sir, trust Hodson's Horse to give a good account of itself."

"I do, Major, I do," replied Nicholson gravely, despite the twinkle, "but at present I want you to fight Mr. Douglas for me. He suggests we are all in a blind funk."

With anyone else Jim Douglas might have refused this cool demand, for it was little else, that he should defend his statement against a man who in himself was a refutation of it, who was a type of the most reckless, dare-devil courage and dash; but the thought of that umpire, ready to give an overwhelming thrust at any time, roused his temper and pugnacity.

"I'm not conscious of being in one myself," said the Major, turning with a swing and a brief "How do, Douglas." He was the most martial of figures in the last-developed uniform of the Flamingoes, or the Ring-tailed Roarers, or the Aloo Bokhâra's, as Hodson's levies were called indiscriminately during their lengthy process of dress evolution. "And what is more, I don't understand what you mean, sir!"

"General Nicholson does, I think," replied the other. "But I will go further than I did, sir," he added, facing the General boldly: "I only said that the natives thought we were in a blind funk. I now assert that they had a right to say so. We never stirred hand or foot for a whole month."

"Oh! I give you in Meerut," interrupted Hodson hastily. "It was pitiable. Our leaders lost their heads."

"Not only our leaders. We all lost them. From that moment to this it seems to me we have never been calm."

"Calm!" echoed Hodson disdainfully. "Who wants to be calm? Who would be calm with those massacred women and children to avenge."

"Exactly so. The horrors of those ghastly murders got on our nerves, and no wonder. We exaggerated the position from the first; we exaggerate the dangers of it now."

"Of taking Delhi, you mean?" interrupted Nicholson dryly.

Jim Douglas smiled. "No, sir! Even you will find that difficult. I meant the ultimate danger to our rule——"

"There you mistake utterly," put in Hodson magnificently. "We mean to win—we admit no danger. There isn't an Englishman, or, thank Heaven, an Englishwoman——"

"Is the crisis so desperate that we need levy the ladies?" asked his adversary sarcastically. "Personally I want to leave them out of the question as much as I can. It is their intrusion into it which has done the mischief. I don't want to minimize these horrors; but if we could forget those massacres——"

"Forget them! I hope to God every Englishman will remember them when the time comes to avenge them! Ay! and make the murderers remember them, too."

"If I had them in my power to-day," put in the sonorous voice, "and knew I was to die to-morrow, I would inflict the most excruciating tortures I could think of on them with an easy conscience."

"Bravo! sir," cried Hodson, "and I'd do executioner gladly."

John Nicholson's face flinched slightly. "There is generally a common hangman, I believe," he said; then turned on Jim Douglas with bent brows: "And you, sir?"

"I would kill them, sir; as I would kill a mad dog in the quickest way handy; as I'd kill every man found with arms in his hands. Treason is a worse crime than murder to us now; and by God! if I tortured anyone it would be the men who betrayed the garrison at Cawnpore. Yet even there, in our only real collapse, what has happened? It is reoccupied already—the road to it is hung with dead bodies. Havelock's march is one long procession of success. Yet we count ourselves beleaguered. Why? I can't understand it! Where has an order to charge, to advance boldly, met with a reverse? It seems to me that but for these massacres, this fear for women and children, we could hold our own gayly. Look at Lucknow——"

"Yes, Lucknow," assented Hodson savagely. "Sir Henry, the bravest, gentlest, dead! Women and children pent up—by Heaven! it's sickening to think what may have happened."

John Nicholson shot a quick glance at Jim Douglas.

"It proves my contention," said the latter. "Think of it! Fifteen hundred, English and natives, in a weak position with not even a palisade in some places between them and five times their number of trained soldiers backed by the wildest, wickedest, wantonest town rabble in India! What does it mean? Make every one of the fifteen hundred a paladin, and, by Heaven! they are heroes. Still, what does it mean?"

He spoke to the General, but he was silent.

"Mean?" echoed Hodson. "Palpably that the foe is contemptible. So he is. Pandy can't fight——"

"He fought well enough for us in the past. I know my regiment——" Jim Douglas caught himself up hard. "I believe they will fight for us again. The truth is that half, even of the army, does not want to fight, and the country does not mean fight at all."

"Delhi?" came the dry voice again.

"Delhi is exceptional. Besides, it can do nothing else now. Remember we condemned it, unheard, on the 8th of June."

"I told you that before, sir; didn't I?" put in Hodson quickly. "If we had gone in on the 11th, as I suggested."

"You wouldn't have succeeded," replied Jim Douglas coolly. Nicholson rose with a smile.

"Well, we are going to succeed now. So, good-luck in the meantime, Hodson. Put bit and bridle on the Rânghars. Show them we can't have 'em disturbing the public peace, and kicking up futile rows. Eh—Mr. Douglas?"

"No fear, sir!" said Hodson effusively. "The Ring-tailed Roarers are not in a blind funk. I only wish that I was as sure that the politicals will keep order when we've made it. I had to do it twice over at Bhâgput. And it is hard, sir, when one has fagged horses and men to death, to be told one has exceeded orders——"

"If you served under me, Major Hodson," said the General with a sudden freeze of formality, "that would be impossible. My instructions are always to do everything that can be done."

Jim Douglas felt that he could well believe it, as with a regret that the interview was over, he held the flap of the tent aside for the imperial figure to pass out. But it lingered in the blaze of sunshine after Major Hodson had jingled off.

"You are right in some things, Mr. Douglas," said the sonorous voice suddenly: "I'd ask no finer soldiers than some of those against us. By and by, unless I'm wrong, men of their stock will be our best war weapons; for, mind you, war is a primitive art and needs a primitive people. And the country isn't against us. If it were, we shouldn't be standing here. It is too busy plowing, Mr. Douglas; this rain is points in our favor. As for the women and children—poor souls"—his voice softened infinitely—"they have been in our way terribly; but—we shall fight all the better for that, by and by. Meanwhile we have got to smash Delhi. The odds are bigger than they were first. But Baird Smith will sap us in somehow, and then——" He paused, looking kindly at Jim Douglas, and said, "You had better stop and go in with—with the rest of us."

"I think not, sir——"

"Why? Because of that poor lady? Woman again—eh?"

"In a way; besides, I really have nothing else to do."

John Nicholson looked at him for a moment from head to foot; then said sharply:

"I didn't know, sir. I give my personal staff plenty of work."

For an instant the offer took his hearer's breath away, and he stood silent.

"I'm afraid not, sir," he said at last, though from the first he had known what his answer would be. "I—I can't, that's the fact. I was cashiered from the army fifteen years ago."

General Nicholson stepped back, with sheer anger in his face. "Then what do you mean, sir, by wearing Her Majesty's uniform?"

Jim Douglas looked down hastily on old Tiddu's staff properties, which he had quite forgotten. They had passed muster in the darkness of the tent, but here, in the sunlight, looked inconceivably worn, and shabby, and unreal. He smiled rather bitterly; then held out his sleeve to show the braiding.

"It's a general's coat, sir," he said defiantly. "God knows what old duffer it belonged to; but I might have worn it first- instead of second-hand, if I hadn't been a d——d young fool."

The splendid figure drew itself together formally, but the other's pride was up too, and so for a minute the two men faced each other honestly, Nicholson's eyes narrowing under their bent brows.

"What was it? A woman, I expect."

"Perhaps. I don't see that it matters."

A faint smile of approval rather took from the sternness of the military salute. "Not at all. That ends it, of course."

"Of course."

Not quite; for ere Jim Douglas could drop the curtain between himself and that brilliant, successful figure, it had turned sharply and laid a hand on his shoulder. A curiously characteristic hand—large, thin, smooth, and white as a woman's, with a grip in it beyond most men's.

"You have a vile habit of telling the truth to superior officers, Mr. Douglas. So have I. Shake hands on it."

With that hand on his shoulder, that clasp on his, Jim Douglas felt as if he were in the grip of Fate itself, and following John Nicholson's example, gave it back frankly, freely. So, suddenly the whole face before him melted into perfect friendliness. "Stick to it, man—stick to it! Save that poor lady—or—or kill somebody. It's what we are all doing. As for the rest"—the smile was almost boyish—"I may get the sack myself before the general's coat. I'm insubordinate enough, they tell me—but I shall have taken Delhi first. So—so good-luck to you!"

As he walked away, he seemed to the eyes watching him bigger, more king-like, more heroic than ever; perhaps because they were dim with tears. But as Jim Douglas went off with a new cheerfulness to see Hodson's Horse jingle out on their lesson of peace, he told himself that the old scoundrel, Tiddu, had once more been right. Nikalseyn had the Great Gift. He could take a man's heart out and look at it, and put it back sounder than it had been for years. He could put his own heart into a whole camp and make it believe it was its own.

Such a clattering of hoofs and clinking of bits and bridles had been heard often before, but never with such gay light-heartedness. Only two days before a lesson had been given to the city. There had been no more harrassing of pickets at night. Now the arm of the law was going coolly to reach out forty miles. It was a change indeed. And more than Jim Douglas watched the sun set red on the city wall that evening with a certain content in their hearts. As for him, he seemed still to feel that grip, and hear the voice saying, "Stick to it, man, stick to it! Save that poor lady or kill somebody. It's what we are all doing."

He sat dreaming over the whole strange dream with a curious sense of comradeship and sympathy through it all, until the glow faded and left the city dark and stern beneath the storm-clouds which had been gathering all day.

Then he rose and went back to his tent cheerfully. He would run no needless risks; he would not lose his head; but as soon as the doctors said it was safe, he would find and save Kate, or—kill somebody. That was the whole duty of man.

Kate, however, had already been found, or rather she had never been lost; and when Tara, a few hours after Jim Douglas slipped out of the city, had gone to the roof to fetch away her spinning wheel, and finding the door padlocked on the inside, had in sheer bewilderment tried the effect of a signal knock, Kate had let her in as if, so poor Tara told herself, it was all to begin over again.

All over again, even though she had spent those few hours of freedom in a perfect passion of purification, so that she might return to her saintship once more.

The gold circlets were gone already, her head was shaven, the coarse white shroud had replaced the crimson scarf. Yet here was the mem asking for the Huzoor, and setting her blood on fire with vague jealousies.

She squatted down almost helplessly on the floor, answering all Kate's eager questions, until suddenly in the midst of it all she started to her feet, and flung up her arms in the old wild cry for righteousness, "I am suttee! before God! I am suttee!"

Then she had said with a gloomy calm, "I will bring the mem more food and drink. But I must think. Tiddu is away; Soma will not help. I am alone; but I am suttee."

Kate, frightened at her wild eyes, felt relieved when she was left alone, and inclined not to open the door to her again. She could manage, she told herself, as she had managed, for a few days, and by that time Mr. Greyman would have come back. But as the long hours dragged by, giving her endless opportunity of thought, she began to ask herself why he should come back at all. She had not realized at first that he had escaped, that he was safe; that he was, as it were, quit of her. But he was, and he must remain so. A new decision, almost a content, came to her with the suggestion. She was busy in a moment over details. To begin with, no news must be sent. Then, in case he were to return, she must leave the roof. Tara might do so much for her, especially if it was made clear that it was for the master's benefit. But Tara might never return. There had been that in her manner which hinted at such a possibility, and the stores she had brought in had been unduly lavish. In that case, Kate told herself, she would creep out some night, go back to the Princess Farkhoonda, and see if she could not help. If not, there was always the alternative of ending everything by going into the streets boldly and declaring herself a Christian. But she would appeal to these two women first.

And as she sat resolving this, the two women were cursing her in their inmost hearts. For there had been no bangings of drums or thrumming of sutâras on Newâsi's roof these three days. Abool-Bukr had broken away from her kind, detaining hand, and gone back to the intrigues of the Palace. So the Mufti's quarter benefited in decent quiet, during which the poor Princess began that process of weeping her eyes out, which left her blind at last. But not blind yet. And so she sat swaying gracefully before the book-rest, on which lay the Word of her God, her voice quavering sometimes over the monotonous chant, as she tried to distill comfort to her own heart from the proposition that "He is Might and Right."

And far away in another quarter of the town Tara, crouched up before a mere block of stone, half hidden in flowers, was telling her beads feverishly. "Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm!" That was the form she used for a whole tragedy of appeal and aspiration, remorse, despair, and hope. And as she muttered on, looking dully at the little row of platters she had presented to the shrine that morning—going far beyond necessity in her determination to be heard—the groups of women coming in to lay a fresh chaplet among the withered ones and give a "jow" to the deep-toned bell hung in the archway in order to attract the god's attention to their offering, paused to whisper among themselves of her piety. While more than once a widow crept close to kiss the edge of her veil humbly.

It was balm indeed! It was peace. The mem might starve, she told herself fiercely, but she would be suttee. After all the strain, and the pain, and the wondering ache at her heart, she had come back to her own life. This she understood. Let the Huzoors keep to their own. This was hers.

The sun danced in motes through the branches of the peepul tree above the little shrine, the squirrels chirruped among them, the parrots chattered, sending a rain of soft little figs to fall with a faint sound on the hard stones, and still Tara counted her beads feverishly.

"Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm! Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm!"

"Ari! sisters! she is a saint indeed. She was here at dawn and she prays still," said the women, coming in the lengthening shadows with odd little bits of feastings. A handful of cocoa-nut chips, a platter of flour, a dish of curds, or a dab of butter.

"Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm!"

And all the while poor Tara was thinking of the Huzoor's face, if he ever found out that she had left the mem to starve. It was almost dark when she stood up, abandoning the useless struggle, so she waited to see the sacred Circling of the Lights and get her little sip of holy water before she went back to her perch among the pigeons, to put on the crimson scarf and the gold circlets again. Since it was hopeless trying to be a saint till she had done what she had promised the Huzoor she would do. She must go back to the mem first.

But Kate, opening the door to her with eyes a-glitter and a whole cut-and-dried plan for the future, almost took her breath away, and reduced her into looking at the Englishwoman with a sort of fear.

"The mem will he suttee too," she said stupidly, after listening a while. "The mem will shave her head and put away her jewels! The mem will wear a widow's shroud and sweep the floor, saying she comes from Bengal to serve the saint?"

"I do not care, Tara, how it is done. Perhaps you may have a better plan. But we must prevent the master from finding me again. He has done too much for me as it is; you know he has," replied Kate, her eyes shining like stars with determination. "I only want you to save him; that is all. You may take me away and kill me if you like; and if you won't help me to hide, I'll go out into the streets and let them kill me there. I will not have him risk his life for me again."

"Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm!" said Tara under her breath. That settled it, and at dawn the next day Tara stood in her odd little perch above the shrine among the pigeons, looking down curiously at the mem who, wearied out by her long midnight walk through the city and all the excitement of the day, had dozed off on a bare mat in the corner, her head resting on her arm. Three months ago Kate could not have slept without a pillow; now, as she lay on the hard ground, her face looked soft and peaceful in sheer honest dreamless sleep. But Tara had not slept; that was to be told from the anxious strain of her eyes. She had sat out since she had returned home, on her two square yards of balcony in the waning moonlight, looking down on the unseen shrine, hidden by the tall peepul tree whose branches she could almost touch.

Would the mem really be suttee? she had asked herself again and again. Would she do so much for the master? Would she—would she really shave her head? A grim smile of incredulity came to Tara's face, then a quick, sharp frown of pain. If she did, she must care very much for the Huzoor. Besides, she had no right to do it! The mems were never suttee. They married again many times. And then this mem was married to someone else. No! she would never shave her head for a strange man. She might take off her jewels, she might even sweep the floor. But shave her head? Never!

But supposing she did?

The oddest jumble of jealousy and approbation filled Tara's heart. So, as the yellow dawn broke, she bent over Kate.

"Wake, mem sahib!" she said, "wake. It is time to prepare for the day. It is time to get ready."

Kate started up, rubbing her eyes, wondering where she was; as in truth she well might, for she had never been in such a place before. The long, low slip of a room was absolutely empty save for a reed mat or two; but every inch of it, floor, walls, ceiling, was freshly plastered with mud. That on the floor was still wet, for Tara had been at work on it already. Over each doorway hung a faded chaplet, on each lintel was printed the mark of a bloody hand, and round and about, in broad finger-marks of red and white, ran the eternal Râm-Râm-Sita-Râm! in Sanskrit letterings. In truth, Tara's knowledge of secular and religious learning was strictly confined to this sentence. There was a faint smell of incense in the room, rising from a tiny brazier sending up a blue spiral flame of smoke before a two-inch high brass idol with an elephant's head which sat on a niche in the wall. It represented Eternal Wisdom. But Kate did not know this. Nor in a way did Tara. She only knew it was Gunesh-jee. And outside was the yellow dawn, the purple pigeons beginning to coo and sidle, the quivering hearts of the peepul leaves.

"I have everything ready for the mem," began Tara hurriedly, "if she will take off her jewels."

"You must pull this one open for me, Tara," said Kate, holding out her arm with the gold bangle on it. "The master put it on for me, and I have never had it off since."

Tara knew that as well as she. Knew that the master must have put it on, since she had not. Had, in fact, watched it with jealous eyes over and over again. And there was the mem without it, smiling over the scantiness and the intricacies of a coarse cotton shroud.

"There is the hair yet," said Tara with quite a catch in her voice; "if the mem will undo the plaits, I will go round to the old poojârnis and get the loan of her razor—she only lives up the next stair."

"We shall have to snip it off first," said Kate quite eagerly, for, in truth, she was becoming interested in her own adventures, now that she had, as it were, the control over them. "It is so long." She held up a tress as she spoke. It was beautiful hair; soft, wavy, even, and the dye—unrenewed for days—had almost gone, leaving the coppery sheen distinct.

"She would never cut it off!" said Tara to herself as she went for the razor. No woman would ever shave her head willingly. Why! when she had had it done for the first time, she had screamed and fought. Her mother-in-law had held her hands, and——

She paused at the door as she re-entered, paralyzed by what she saw. Kate had found the knife Tara used for her limited cooking, and, seated on the ground cheerfully, was already surrounded by rippling hair which she had cut off by clubbing it in her hand and sawing away as a groom does at a horse's tail.

Tara's cry made her pause. The next moment the Rajpootni had snatched the knife from her and flung it one way, the razor another, and stood before her with blazing eyes and heaving breast.

"It is foolishness!" she said fiercely. "The mems cannot be suttee. I will not have it."

Kate stared at her. "But I must——" she began.

"There is no must at all," interrupted Tara superbly; "I will find some other way." And then she bent over quickly, and Kate felt her hands upon her hair. "There is plenty left," she said with a sigh of relief. "I will plait it up so that no one will see the difference."

And she did. She put the gold bangle on again also, and by dawn the next day Kate found herself once more installed as a screened woman; but this time as a Hindoo lady under a vow of silence and solitude in the hopes of securing a son for her lord through the intercession of old Anunda, the Swâmi.

"I have told Sri Anunda," said Tara with a new respect in her manner. "I had to trust someone. And he is as God. He would not hurt a fly." She paused, then went on with a tone of satisfaction, "But he says the mem could not have been suttee, so that foolishness is well over."

"But what is to be done next, Tara?" asked Kate, looking in astonishment round the wide old garden, arched over by tall forest trees, and set round with high walls, in which she found herself. In the faint dawn she could just see glimmering straight paths parceling it out into squares; and she could hear the faint tinkle of the water runnels. "I can't surely stop here."

"The mem will only have to keep still all day in the darkest corner with her face to the wall," said Tara. "Sri Anunda will do the rest. And when Soma returns he must take the mem away before the thirty regiments come and the trouble begins."

"Thirty regiments!" echoed Kate, startled.

"He and others have gone out to see if it is true. They say so in the Palace; but it is full of lies," said Tara indifferently.

It was indeed. More than ever. But they began to need confirmation, and so there was big talk of action, and jingling of bits and bridles and spurs in the city as well as in the camp. They were to intercept the siege train from Firozpur; they were to get round to the rear of the Ridge and overwhelm it. They were to do everything save attack it in face.

And, meanwhile, other people besides Soma and such-like Sadducean sepoys had gone out to find the thirty regiments, and secret scouts from the Palace were hunting about for someone to whom they might deliver a letter addressed

"To the Officers, Subadars, Chiefs, and others of the whole military force coming from the Bombay Presidency:

"To the effect that the statement of the defeat of the Royal troops at Delhi is a false and lying fabrication contrived by contemptible infidels—the English. The true story is that nearly eighty or ninety thousand organized Military Troops, and nearly ten or fifteen thousand regular and other Cavalry, are now here in Delhi. The troops are constantly engaged, night and day, in attacks on the infidels, and have driven back their batteries from the Ridge. In three or four days, please God, the whole Ridge will be taken, when every one of the base unbelievers will be sent to hell. You are, therefore, on seeing this order, to use all endeavors to reach the Royal Presence, so, joining the Faithful, give proofs of zeal, and establish your renown. Consider this imperative."

But though they hunted high and low, east, north, south, and west, the Royal scouts found no one to receive the order. So it came back to Delhi, damp and pulpy; for the rains had begun again, turning great tracts of country into marsh and bog, and generally wetting the blankets in which the sepoys kept guard sulkily.

Last | Next | Contents