Part 15 (2/2)

”Fire wors.h.i.+p for a hundred years, A century of Christ and tears, Then the True G.o.d shall come again And every infidel be slain,”

quoted he of Fyzabad under his breath, and the others nodded. They knew the prophecy of Shah N'amut-Oolah well. It was being bandied from mouth to mouth in those days; for the Mohammedan crowd was also agape for wonders.

CHAPTER III.

ON THE RIDGE.

”A melly Klistmus to zoo, Miffis Erlton! An' oh! they's suts a lot of boo'ful, boo'ful sings in a velanda.”

Sonny's liquid lisp said true. On this Christmas morning the veranda of Major Erlton's house on the Ridge of Delhi was full of beauties to childish eyes. For, he being on special duty regarding a scheme for cavalry remounts and having Delhi for his winter headquarters, there were plenty of contractors, agents, troopers, dealers, what not, to be remembered by one who might probably have a voice in much future patronage. So there were trays on trays of oranges and apples, pistachios, almonds, raisins, round boxes of Cabul grapes, all decked with flowers. And on most of them, as the surest bid for recognition, lay a trumpery toy of some sort for the Major sahib's little unknown son, whose existence could, nevertheless, not be ignored by these gift-bringers, to whom children are the greatest gift of all.

And so, as they waited, with a certain child-like complacency in their own offerings, for the recipients' tardy appearance, they had smiled on little Sonny Seymour as he pa.s.sed them on his way to give greeting to his dearest Mrs. Erlton. For the Seymours had had the expected change to Delhi, and Sonny's mother was now complaining of the climate, and the servants, and the babies, in one of the houses within the Cashmere gate of the city; a fact which took from her the grievance regarding dog-carts, since it lay within a walk of her husband's office.

So some of the smiles had not simply been given to a child, but to a child whose father was a sahib known to the smiler; and one broad grin had come because Sonny had paused to say, with the quaint precision with which all English children speak Hindustani.

”_Ai! Bij Rao! tu kyon aie?_” (Oh, Bij Rao, why are you here?) The orderly's face, which Mrs. Seymour had said gave her the s.h.i.+vers, had beamed over the recognition; he had risen and saluted, explaining gravely to the _chota_ sahib that he came from Meerut, because the Major sahib was now his sahib for the time. Sonny had nodded gravely as if he understood the position perfectly, and pa.s.sed on to the drawing room, where Kate Erlton was sticking a few sprigs of holly and mistletoe round the portrait of another fair-haired boy; these same sprigs being themselves a Christmas offering from the Pa.r.s.ee merchant, who had a branch establishment at a hill station. He sent for them from the snows every year for his customers as a delicate attention.

And this year something still more reminiscent of home had come with them: a real spruce fir for the Christmas tree which Kate Erlton was organizing for the school children. The tree in itself was new to India, and she had suggested a still greater innovation; namely, that all children of parents employed in Government offices or workshops should be invited, not only those with pretensions to white faces. For Kate, being herself far happier and more contented than she had been nine months before, when she begged that last chance from Jim Douglas, had begun to look out from her own life into the world around her with greater interest. In a way, it seemed to her that the chance had come.

Not tragically, as Jim Douglas had hinted, but easily, naturally, in this special duty which had removed her husband both from Alice Gissing and his own past reputation.

It had sent him to Simla, where people are accepted for what they are; and here his good looks, his good-natured, devil-may-care desire for amus.e.m.e.nt had made him a favorite in society, and his undoubted knowledge of cavalry requirements stood him in good stead with the authorities. So he had come down for the winter to Delhi on a new track altogether. To begin with, his work interested him and made him lead a more wholesome life. It took him away from home pretty often, so lessening friction; for it was pleasant to return to a well-ordered house after roughing it in out-stations. Then it took him into the wilds where there was no betting or card-playing. He shot deer and duck instead, and talked of caps and charges, instead of colors and tricks. To his vast improvement; for though the slaying instinct may not be admirable in itself, and though the hunter may rightly have been branded from the beginning with the mark of Cain, still the shooter or fisher generally lives straighter than his fellows, and murder is not the most heinous of crimes. Not even in regard to the safety and welfare of the community.

So Kate had begun to have those pangs of remorse which come to women of her sort at the first symptom of regeneration in a sinner. Pangs of pitiful consideration for the big, handsome fellow who could behave so nicely when he chose, vague questionings as to whether the past had not been partly her fault; whether if this were the chance, she ought not to forget and forgive--many things.

He looked very handsome as he lounged in, dressed spick and span in full uniform for church parade. And she, poised on a chair, her dainty ankles showing, looked spick and span also in a pretty new dress. He noticed the fact instantly.

”A merry Christmas, Kate! Here! give me your hand and I'll help you down.”

How many years was it since he had spoken like that, with a glint in his eyes, and she had had that faint flush in her cheek at his touch?

The consciousness of this stirring among the dry bones of something they had both deemed dead, made her set to shaking some leaves from her dress, while he, with an irrelevantly boisterous laugh, stooped to swing Sonny to his shoulder. ”You here, jackanapes!” he cried. ”A merry Christmas! Come and get a sweetie--you come too, Kate, the beggars will like to see the _mem_. By Jove! what a jolly morning!”

A foretaste of the winter rains had fallen during the night, leaving a crisp new-washed feeling in the air, a heavy rime-like dew on the earth; the sky of a pale blue, yet colorful, vaulted the wide expanse cloudlessly. And from the veranda of the Erltons' house the expanse was wide indeed; for it stood on the summit of the Ridge at its extreme northern end--the end, therefore, furthest from the city, which, nearly three miles away, blocked the widening wedge of densely wooded lowland lying between the rocky range and the river. The Ridge itself was not unlike some huge spiny saurian, basking in the sunlight; its tail in the river, its wider, flatter head, crowned by Hindoo Rao's house, resting on the groves and gardens of the Subz-mundi or Green Market, a suburb to the west of the town. It is a quaint, fanciful spot, this Delhi Ridge, even without the history of heroism crystallized into its very dust. A red dust which might almost have been stained by blood. A dust which matches that history, since it is formed of isolated atoms of rock, glittering, perfect in themselves, like the isolated deeds which went to make up the finest record of pluck and perseverance the world is ever likely to see.

Perseverance and pluck which sent more Englishmen to die cheerfully in that red dust than in the defenses and reliefs of Lucknow, Cawnpore, and the subsequent campaigns all combined. Let the verdict on the wisdom of those months of stolid endurance be what it may, that fact remains.

And the quaintness of the Ridge lies in its individuality. Not eighty feet above the river, its gradients so slight that a driver scarce slackens speed at its steepest, there is never a mistake possible as to where it begins or ends. Here is the river bed, founded on sand; there, cleaving the green with rough red shoulder, is the ridge of rock.

From the veranda, then, its stony spine split by a road like a parting, it trended southwest, so giving room between it and the river for the rose-lit, lilac-shaded ma.s.s of the town, with the big white bubble of the Jumma mosque in its midst; the delicate domes fringing the palace gateways showing like strings of pearls on the blue sky.

And beyond them, a dazzle of gold among the green of the Garden of Grapes, marked that last sanctuary of a dead dynasty upon the city's eastern wall.

The cantonments lay to the back of the house on the western slope of the Ridge and on the plain beyond. This also was a widening wedge of green wooded land cut off from the rest of the plain by a tree-set overflow ca.n.a.l. The Ridge, therefore, formed the backbone of a triangle protected by water on two sides. On the third was the city and its suburbs. But--to carry out the image of the lizard--a natural outwork lay like a huge paw on either side of the head; on the river side the spur of Ludlow Castle, on the ca.n.a.l side the General's mound.

A brisk breeze was fluttering the flag on the tower cresting the ridge, a few hundred yards from the house, and as Major Erlton stepped into the veranda, a puff of white smoke curled cityward, and the roll of the time-gun reverberated among the rocks.

”By Jingo! I must hurry up if I'm to have breakfast before church,” he exclaimed, as the circle of gift-bringers, who had been waiting nearly half an hour, rose simultaneously with salaams and good wishes. The sudden action made a white c.o.c.katoo perched in the corner raise its flame-colored crest and begin to prance.

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