Part 45 (2/2)

”Reward him, Keeper-of-the-Purse,” he said punctiliously, ”and read, slave. It is some victory to our troops, no doubt.”

There was a pause, during which people waited indifferently, wondering, some of them, if it was bogus news that was to come or not.

Then the court moonshee stood up with a doubtful face. ”'Tis from Cawnpore,” he murmured, forgetting decorum and etiquette; forgetting everything save the news that the Nana of Bithoor had killed the two hundred women and children he had pledged himself to save.

Bukht Khan's hand went to his sword once more, as he listened, and he turned hastily to Hussan Askuri. ”That settles it as _thou_ wouldst have it,” he whispered. ”It is Holy War indeed, or defeat.”

But Mirza Moghul shrank as a man shrinks from the scaffold.

The old King stood up quickly; stood up between the lights looking out on the curtain of flowers. ”Whatever happens,” he said tremulously, ”happens by the will of G.o.d.”

His sanctimoniousness never failed him.

So on the night of the 23d of August there was an unwonted stillness in the city, and the coming of day did not break it. The rain, it is true, fell in torrents, but many an attack had been made in rain before. There was none now. The bugles and fifes had ended, and folk were waiting for the drum ecclesiastic to begin. What they thought meanwhile, who knows? Delhi held a hundred and fifty thousand souls, swelled to nigh two hundred thousand by soldiers. Only this, therefore, is certain, the thoughts must have been diverse.

But on the Ridge, when, after a few days, the tidings reached it with certainty, there was but one. It found expression in a letter which the General wrote on the last day of July. ”It is my firm intention to hold my present position and resist attack to the last. The enemy are very numerous, and may possibly break through our intrenchments and overwhelm us, but the force will die at its post.”

No talk of retirement now! The millions of peasants plowing their land peaceably in firm faith of a just master who would take no more than his due, the thousands even in the b.l.o.o.d.y city itself waiting for this tyranny to pa.s.s, were not to be deserted. The fight would go on. The fight for law and order.

So the sanctimonious old King had said sooth, ”Whatever happens, happens by the will of G.o.d.”

Those two hundred had not died in vain.

CHAPTER V.

THE DRUM ECCLESIASTIC.

The silence of the city had lasted for seven days. And now, on the 1st of August, the dawn was at hand, and the rain which had been falling all night had ceased, leaving pools of water about the city walls.

Still, smooth pools like plates of steel, dimly reflecting the gray misty sky against which the minarets of the mosque showed as darker streaks, its dome like a faint cloud.

And suddenly the silence ended. The first shuddering beat of a royal salute vibrated through the heavy dewy air, the first chord of ”G.o.d save the Queen,” played by every band in Delhi, floated Ridgeward.

The cheek of it!

That phrase--no other less trenchant, more refined--expressed purely the feeling with which the roused six thousand listened from picket or tent, comfortable bed or damp sentry-go, to this topsy-turveydom of anthems! The cheek of it! The very walls ought to fall Jericho-wise before such sacrilegious music.

But in the city it sent a thrill through hearts and brains. For it roused many a dreamer wild had never felt the chill of a sword-hilt on his palm to the knowledge that the time for gripping one had come.

Since this was Bukr-eed, the Great Day of Sacrifice. No common Bukr-eed either, when the blood of a goat or a bull would worthily commemorate Abraham's sacrifice of his best and dearest, but something more akin to the old patriarch's devotion. Since on Bukr-eed, 1857, the infidel was to be sacrificed by the faithful, and the faithful by the infidel.

For the silence of seven days had been a silence only from bugles and fifes; the drum ecclesiastic had taken their place. The mosques had resounded day and night to the wild tirades of preachers, and even Mohammed Ismail, feeling that in religious war lay the only chance of forgiveness for past horrors, spent every hour in painting its perfections, in deprecating any deviation from its rule. The sword or the faith for men; the faith without the sword for those who could not fight. But others were less scrupulous, their denunciations less guarded, and as the processions pa.s.sed through the narrow streets flaunting the green banner, half the Mohammedan population felt that the time had come to strike their blow for the faith. And Hussan Askuri dreamed dreams; and the Bird-of-Heaven, with its crest new-dyed for the occasion, gave the Great Cry viciously as it was paraded through jostling crowds in the Thunbi Bazaar, where religion found recruits by the score even among the women. While Abool-Bukr, vaguely impressed by the stir, the color, the noise, took to the green and swore to live cleanly. So that Newasi's soft eyes shone as she repeated Mohammed Ismail's theories. They were very true, the Prince said; besides this could be nothing but honest fighting since there were no women on the Ridge; whereupon she st.i.tched away at his green banner fearlessly.

But in the Palace it needed all Bukht Khan's determination and Hussan Askuri's wily dreams to reconcile the old King to the breach of etiquette which the sacrifice of a camel instead of a bull by the royal hands involved. For the army--three-quarters Brahmin and Rajpoot had been promised, as a reward for helping to drive out the infidel, that no sacred kine should be killed in Hindustan.

And others besides the King objected to the restriction. Old Fatma, for instance, Shumsha-deen the seal-cutter's wife, as she swathed her husband's white beard with pounded henna leaves to give it the orthodox red dye.

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