Part 37 (1/2)
But that still further down! Jim Douglas gave a quick cry, dropped Kate's hand, and was on his knees beside the tall young figure--coatless, its white s.h.i.+rt stiff with blood, which lay head downward on the last steps as if it had pitched forward in some mad pursuit. As he turned it over on its back gently, the young face showed in the moonlight stern, yet still exultant, and the sword, still clenched in the stiff right hand, rattled on the steps.
”Mainwaring! I don't understand,” he said, looking up bewildered into Kate's face. The puzzle had gone from it; she seemed roused to life again.
”I understand now,” she said softly, and as she spoke she stooped and raised the boy's head tenderly in her hands. ”Don't let us leave him here,” she went on eagerly, hastily. ”Leave him there, beside--beside--_her_.”
Jim Douglas made no reply. He understood also dimly, and he only signed to her to take the feet instead. So together they managed to place that dead weight within the threshold and close the door.
Then Jim Douglas held out his hand again, but there was a new friendliness in its grip. ”Come!” he said, and there was a new ring in his voice, ”the night is far spent, the day is at hand.”
It was true. As they stepped from the now waning moonlight into the shadow of the trees, the birds, beginning to dream of dawn, s.h.i.+fted and twittered faintly among the branches. And once, startling them both, there was a louder rustling from a taller tree, a flutter of broad white wings to a perch nearer the city, a half-sleepy cry of:
”_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!_”
”If I had time,” muttered Jim Douglas fiercely, ”I would go and wring that cursed bird's neck! But for it----” Kate's tighter clasp on his hand seemed like an appeal, and he went on in silence.
So, as they slipped from the gardens into the silent streets, the muezzin's monotonous chant began from the shadowy minaret of the big mosque.
”Prayer is more than sleep!--than sleep!--than sleep!”
The night was far spent; the day was indeed at hand--and what would it bring forth? Jim Douglas, with a sinking at his heart, told himself he could at least be thankful that one day was done.
BOOK IV.
”SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE OF.”
CHAPTER I.
THE DEATH PLEDGE.
The outer court of the Palace lay steeped in the suns.h.i.+ne of noon. Its hot rose-red walls and arcades seemed to s.h.i.+mmer in the glare, and the dazzle and glitter gave a strange air of unreality, of instability to all things. To the crowds of loungers taking their siesta in every arcade and every sc.r.a.p of shadow, to the horses stabled in rows in the glare and the blaze, to the eager groups of new arrivals which, from time to time, came in from the outer world by the cool, dark tunnel of the Lah.o.r.e gate to stand for a second, as if blinded by the s.h.i.+mmer and glitter, before becoming a part of that silent, drowsy stir of life.
From an arch close to the inner entry to the precincts rose a monotonous voice reading aloud. The reader was evidently the author also, for his frown of annoyance was unmistakable at a sudden diversion caused by the entry of a dozen or more armed men, shouting at the top of their voices: ”_Padisath, Padisath, Padisath!_ We be fighters for The Faith. _Padisath!_ a blessing, a blessing!”
A malicious laugh came from one of the listeners in the arcade--a woman shrouded in a Pathan veil.
”'Tis as well his Majesty hath taken another cooling draught,” came her voice shrilly. ”What with writing letters for help to the Huzoors to please Ahsan-Oolah and Elahi-Buksh, and blessing faith to please the Queen, he hath enough to do in keeping his brain from getting dizzy with whirling this way and that. Mayhap faith will fail first, since it is not satisfied with blessings. They are windy diet, and I heard Mahb.o.o.b say an hour agone that there was too much faith for the Treasury. Lo! moonshee-jee, put that fact down among thy heroics--they need balance!”
”Sure, niece Hafzan,” reproved the old editor of the Court Journal, ”I see naught that needs it. Syyed Abdulla's periods fit the case as peas fit a pod; they hang together.”
”As we shall when the Huzoors return,” a.s.sented the voice from the veil.
”They will return no more, woman!” said another. It belonged to a man who leaned against a pilaster, looking dreamily out into the glare where, after a brief struggle, the band of fighters for the faith had pushed aside the timid door-keepers and forced their way to the inner garden. Through the open door they showed picturesquely, surging down the path, backed by green foliage and the white dome of the Pearl Mosque rising against the blue sky.
”The Faith! The Faith! We come to fight for the Faith!”
Their cry echoed over the drowsy, dreaming crowds, making men turn over in their sleep; that was all.
But the dreaminess grew in the face looking at the vista through the open door till its eyes became like those Botticelli gives to his Moses--the eyes of one who sees a promised land--and the dreamy voice went on: