Part 35 (2/2)

”Don't touch him, brothers!” said one of the two or three who had followed at a distance, as they might have followed a mad dog, which they hoped others would meet and kill. ”Provoke him not, or the demon possessing him may possess us. 'Tis never safe to touch till they have been dead a watch. Then the poison leaves them. Krishnjee, save us!

Saw you how he turned our lead?”

”He has eaten mine, I'll swear,” put in another sepoy boastfully, pointing gingerly with his booted foot to a round scorched hole in the red coat. ”The muzzle was against him as I fired.”

”And mine shall be his portion too,” broke in a new arrival breathlessly, preparing to fire at the prostrate foe; but the first speaker knocked aside the barrel with an oath.

”Not while I stand by, since devils choose the best men. As 'tis, having women in our houses 'twere best to take precautions.” He stooped down as he spoke, and muttering spells the while, raised a little heap of dust at the lad's head and feet and outstretched arms--a little cross of dust, as it were, on which the young body lay impaled.

”What is't?” asked a haughty-looking native officer, pausing as he rode by.

”'Tis a h.e.l.l-doomed who went possessed, and Dittu makes spells to keep him dead,” said one.

”Fool!” muttered the man. ”He was drunk, likely. They get like that, the cursed ones, when they take wine.” And he spat piously on the red coat as he pa.s.sed on. So they left the lad there lying face down in the growing gloom, hedged round by spells to keep him from harming women. Left him for dead.

But the scoffer had been right. He was drunk, but with the Elixir of Life and Love which holds a soul captive from the clasp of Death for a s.p.a.ce. So, after a time, the cross of dust gave up its victim; he staggered to his feet again; and so, tumbling, falling, rising to fall again, he made his way to the haven where he would be, to the side of a dead woman.

And the birds, startled from their roosting-places by the stumbling, falling figure, waited, fluttering over the topmost branches for it to pa.s.s, or paused among them to fill up the time with a last twittering song of goodnight to the day; for the sun still lingered in the heat-haze on the horizon as if loath to take its glow from that corona of red dust above the northern wall of Delhi, mute sign of the only protest made as yet by the master against mutiny.

And now he had left the city to its own devices. The rebels were free to do as they liked. The three thousand disciplined soldiers, more or less, might have marched out, had they chose, and annihilated the handful of loyal men about the Flagstaff Tower. But it was sunset--sunset in Rumzan. And the eyes of thousands, deprived even of a drop of water since dawn, were watching the red globe sink in the West, hungrily, thirstily; their ears were attuned but to one sound--the firework signal from the big mosque that the day's fast was over. The very children on the roofs were watching, listening, so as to send the joyful news that day was done, in shrill voices to their elders below, waiting with their water-pots ready in their hands.

Then, in good truth, there was no set purpose from one end of the city to another. From the Palace to the meanest brothel which had belched forth its vilest to swell the tide of sheer rascality which had ebbed and flowed all day, the one thought was still, ”What does it mean? How long will it last? Where is the master?”

So men ate and drank their fill first, then looked at each other almost suspiciously, and drifted away to do what pleased them best.

Some to the Palace to swell the turmoil of bellicose loyalty to the King--loyalty which sounded unreal, almost ridiculous, even as it was spoken. Others to plunder while they could. The bungalows had long since been rifled, the very church bells thrown down and broken; for the time had been ample even for wanton destruction. But the city remained. And while shops were being looted inside, the dispossessed Goojurs were busy over Metcalfe House, tearing up the very books in their revenge. The Flagstaff Tower lay not a mile away, almost helpless against attack. But there was no stomach for cold steel in Delhi on the 11th of May, 1857. No stomach for anything except safe murder, safe pillaging. Least of all was it to be found in the Palace, where men had given the rein to everything they possessed--to their emotions, their horses, their pa.s.sions, their aspirations. Stabling some in the King's gardens, some in dream-palaces, some in pigstyes of sheer brutality. Weeping maudlin tears over heaven-sent success, and boasting of their own prowess in the same breath; squabbling insanely over the part.i.tion of coming honors and emoluments.

Abool-Bukr, drunk as a lord, lurched about a.s.serting his intention of being Inspector-General of the King's cavalry, and not leaving man, woman, or child of the h.e.l.l-doomed alive in India. For he had been right when he had warned Newasi to leave him to his own life, his own death; when he had shrunk from the inherited bloodstains on his hands, the inherited tinder in his breast. It had caught fire with the first spark, and there was fresh blood on his hands: the blood of a Eurasian boy who had tried to defend his sister from drunken kisses. Someone in the melee had killed the girl and finished the boy: the Prince himself being saved from greater crime by tumbling into the gutter and setting his nose a-bleeding, a catastrophe which had sent him back to the Palace partially sobered.

But Princess Farkhoonda Zamani, safe housed in the rooms kept for honored visitors, knew nothing of this, knew little even of the disturbances; for she had been a close prisoner since noon--a prisoner with servants who would answer no questions, with trays of jewels and dresses as if she had been a bride. She sat in a flutter, trying to piece out the reason for this kidnaping. Was she to be married by force to some royal nominee? But why to-day? Why in all this turmoil, unless she was required as a bribe. The arch-plotter was capable of that. But who? One thing was certain, Abool-Bukr could know nothing of this--he would not dare--and suddenly the hot blood tingled through every vein as she lay all unconsciously enjoying the return to the easeful idleness and luxury she had renounced. But if he did dare? if it was not mere anger which brought bewilderment to heart and brain, as she hid her face from the dim light which filtered in through the lattice--the dim, scented, voluptuous light from which she had fled once to purer air?

And not a hundred yards away from where she was trying to steady her bounding pulse, Abool-Bukr himself was bawling away at his favorite love-song to a circle of intimates, all of whom he had already provided with places on the civil list. His head was full of promises, his skin as full of wine as it could be, and he not be a mere wastrel unable to enjoy life. For Abool-Bukr gave care to this; since to be dead drunk was sheer loss of time.

”Ah mistress rare, divine, Thy lover like a vine With tendril arms entwine.”

Here his effort to combine gesture with song nearly caused him to fall off the steps, and roused a roar of laughter from some sepoys bivouacking under the trees hard by. But Mirza Moghul, pa.s.sing hastily to an audience with the King, frowned. To-day, when none knew what might come, the Queen might have her way so far; but this idle drunkard must be got rid of soon. He would offend the pious to begin with, and then he could not be trusted. Who could trust a man who had been known to lure back his hawk because a bird's gay feathers shone in the suns.h.i.+ne?

But Ahsan-Oolah, dismissed from feeling the royal pulse once more, by the Mirza's audience, paused as he pa.s.sed to recommend a cooling draught if the Inspector-General of Cavalry wanted to keep his head clear. It was the physician's panacea for excitement of all kinds. But an exhibition of steel would have done better on the 11th of May.

There was no one, however, to administer it to Delhi, and even the refugees in the Flagstaff Tower were beginning to give up hope of its arriving from Meerut. Those in the storehouse at Duryagunj still clung to the belief that succor must come somehow; but Kate Erlton, behind the wood-pile, knew that her hope lay only in herself.

For how could Jim Douglas, as he more than once pa.s.sed through the now open and almost deserted Cashmere gate, in the hope, or rather the fear, of finding some trace of her, know that she was hidden within a few yards of him? or, how could she distinguish the sound of his horse's hoofs from the hundreds which pa.s.sed?

She must have escaped with the others, he concluded, as he galloped toward the cantonments to see if she were there. But she was not. He had failed again, he told himself; failed through no fault of his own; for who could have foretold that madness of retreat from the gate?

So now, there was nothing to be done in Delhi save gather what information he could, give decent burial--if he could--to Alice Gissing's body, and, if no troops arrived before dawn, leave the city.

CHAPTER VI.

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