Part 33 (1/2)
”Twelve! The Meerut troops will be in soon--if they started at dawn.”
There was the finest inflection of scorn in his voice.
”They must have started,” began his companion. But the tall figure with the grave young face was straining its eyes from the bastion they were pa.s.sing; it gave upon the bridge of boats and the lessening white streak of road. He was looking for a cloud of dust upon it; but there was none.
”I hope so,” he remarked as he went on. He gave a half-involuntary glance back, however, to the stunted lemon-bush. There was a black streak by it, which might be relied upon to give aid at dawn, or dusk, or noon; high noon as it was now.
The chime of it echoed methodically as ever from the main-guard, making a cheerful young voice in the officer's room say, ”Well! the enemy is pa.s.sing, anyhow. The reliefs can't be long--if they started at dawn.”
”If they had started when they ought to have started, they would have been here hours ago,” said an older man, almost petulantly, as he rose and wandered to the door, to stand looking out on the baking court where his men--the two companies of the 54th, who had come down under his charge after those under Colonel Riply had shot down their officers by the church--were lounging about sullenly. These men might have shot him also but for the timely arrival of the two guns; might have shot at him, even now, but for those loyal 74th over-awing them.
He turned and looked at some of the latter with a sort of envy. These men had come forward in a body when the regiment was called upon by its commandant to give honest volunteers to keep order in the city.
What had they had, which his men had lacked? Nothing that he knew of.
And then, inevitably, he thought of his six murdered friends and comrades, officers apparently as popular as he, whose bodies were lying in the next room waiting for a cart to remove them to the Ridge.
For even Major Paterson, saddened, depressed, looked forward to decent sepulture for his comrades by and by--by and by when the Meerut troops should arrive. And the half dozen or more of women upstairs were comforting each other with the same hope, and crus.h.i.+ng down the cry that it seemed an eternity, already, since they had waited for that little cloud of dust upon the Meerut road. But for that hope they might have gone Meerutward themselves; for the country was peaceful.
Even in Duryagunj, though by noon it was a charnel-house, the score or so of men who kept cowards at bay in a miserable storehouse comforted themselves with the same hope; and women with the long languid eyes of one race, looked out of them with the temper and fire of the other, saying in soft staccato voices--”It will not be long now. They will be here soon, for they would start at dawn.”
”They will come soon,” said a young telegraph clerk coolly, as he stood by his instrument hoping for a welcome _kling_; sending, finally, that bulletin northward which ended with the reluctant admission, ”we must shut up.” Must indeed; seeing that some ruffians rushed in and sabered him with his hands still on the levers.
”They will be here soon,” agreed the compositors of the _Delhi Gazette_ as they worked at the strangest piece of printing the world is ever likely to see. That famous extra, wedged in between English election news, which told in bald journalese of a crisis, which became the crisis of their own lives before the whole edition was sent out.
But down in the Palace Zeenut Maihl had been watching that white streak of road also, and as the hours pa.s.sed, her wild impatience would let her watch it no longer. She paced up and down the Queen's bastion like a caged tigress, leaving Hafzan to take her place at the lattice. No sign of an avenging army yet! Then the troopers' tale must be true! The hour of decisive action had come, it was slipping past, the King was in the hands of Ahsan-Oolah, and Elahi Buksh, whose face was set both ways, like the physician's. And she, helpless, half in disgrace, caged, veiled, screened, unable to lay hands on anyone! Oh!
why was she not a man! Why had she not a man to deal with! Her henna-stained nails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands, then in sheer childish pa.s.sion tore off her hampering veil and, rolling it into a ball, flung it at the head of a drowsy eunuch in the outside arcade--the nearest thing to a man within her reach.
”No sign yet, Hafzan?” she asked fiercely.
”No sign, my Queen,” replied Hafzan, with an odd derisive smile. If they did not come now, thought this woman with her warped nature, they would come later on; come and put a rope round the necks of men who had laid violent hands on women.
”Then I stop here no longer!” cried Zeenut Maihl recklessly; ”I must see somewhat of it or die. Quick, girls, my dhooli, I will go back to my own rooms. 'Twill at least bear me through the crowd, and the jogging will keep the blood from tingling from very stillness.”
So through the tawdry, dirty, musky curtains a woman's fierce eye watched the crowd hungrily, as the dhooli swung through it. A fierce crowd too in its way, but lacking cohesion. Like the world without those four rose-red walls, it was waiting for a master. And the man who should have been master was taking cooling draughts, and composing couplets, so her spies brought word. No hope from him till she could lure him back from his vexation and put some of her own energy into him. Who next was there likely to do her bidding? Her eye, taking in all the strangeness of the scene, troopers stabling their horses in the colonnades, sepoys bivouacking under the trees, courtiers hurrying up and down the private steps, found none in all that crowd of place-hunters, boasters, enthusiasts, whom she could trust. The King's eldest son Mirza Moghul was the fiercest tempered of them all, the only one whom she feared in any way; perhaps if she could get hold of him----
As her dhooli swayed up the steps he was standing on them talking to Mirza Khair Sultan. She could have put out her hand and touched him; but even she did not dare convention enough for that. Nevertheless, the sight of him determined her. If the King did not come back to her by noon, she must lure the Mirza to her side.
”Thou art a fool, Pir-jee,” she said petulantly to Hussan Askuri who, as father confessor, had entrance to the womens' rooms and was awaiting her. ”Thou hast no grip on the King when I am absent. Canst not even drive that slithering physician from his side?”
”Cooling draughts, seest thou, Pir-jee,” put in Hafzan maliciously, ”have tangible effects. Thy dreams----”
”Peace, woman!” interrupted the Queen sternly, ”'tis no time for jesting. Where sits the King now?”
”In the river balcony, Ornament-of-palaces,” replied Fatma glibly, ”where he is not to be disturbed these two hours, so the physician says, lest the cooling draught----”
The Queen stamped her foot in sheer impotent rage. ”I must see someone. And Jewan Bukht, my son? why hath he not answered my summons?”
”His Highness,” put in Hafzan gravely, ”was, as I came by just now, quarreling in his cups with his nephew, the princely Abool-Bukr, regarding the Inspectors.h.i.+p-of-Cavalry; which office both desire--a weighty matter----”
”Peace! she-devil!” almost screamed the Queen. ”Can I not see, can I not hear for myself, that thy sharp wits must forever drag the rotten heart to light--thou wilt go too far, some day, Hafzan, and then----”