Part 30 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+ne. 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 s.h.i.+fting 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.”