Part 62 (1/2)

But Hafzan, her veil up to prevent mistakes, limped over to where the Moulvie lay, turned him gently on his back, straightened his limbs and closed his eyes. She would have liked to tell the truth to someone, but there was no one to listen. So she left him there before the tribunal to which he had appealed.

CHAPTER VI.

REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.

So the strain of months was over on the Ridge. Delhi was taken; the Queen's health was being drunk night after night in the Palace of the Moghuls. But there was one person to whom the pa.s.sing days brought a growing anxiety. This was Kate Erlton; for there were no tidings of Jim Douglas. None.

At first she had comforted herself with the idea that he was still, for some reason or another, keeping to the yet unconquered part of the city; that he was obliged to do so being impossible, the long files of women and children seeking safety and pa.s.sing through the Ridge fearlessly precluding that consolation. Still it was conceivable he might be busy, though it seemed strange he should have sent no word.

So, like many another in India at that time, she waited, hoping against hope, possessing her soul in patience. She had no lack of occupation to distract her. How could there be for a woman, when close on twelve hundred men had come back from the city dead or wounded?

But now the 21st of September was upon them. The city was occupied, the work was over. Yet Captain Morecombe, coming back from it, shook his head. He had spent time and trouble in the search, but had failed--failed even, from Kate's limited ideas of their locality, to find either Tara's lodging or the roof in the Mufti's quarter. She could have found them herself, she said almost pathetically; but of course that was impossible now, and would be so for some time to come.

”I'm afraid it is no use, Mrs. Erlton,” said the Captain kindly.

”There is not a trace to be found, even by Hodson's spies. Unless he is shut up somewhere, he--he must be dead. It is so likely that he should be; you must see that. Possibly before the siege began. Let us hope so.”

”Why?” she asked quickly. ”You mean that there have been horrible things done of late?--things like that poor soldier who was found chained outside the Cashmere gate as a target for his fellows? Have there? I would so much rather know the worst,--I used always to tell Mr. Douglas so,--it prevents one dreaming at night.” She s.h.i.+vered as she spoke, and the man watching her felt his heart go out toward her with a throb of pity. How long, he wondered irrelevantly, would it take her to forget the miserable tragedy, to be ready for consolation?

”Yes, there have been terrible things on both sides. There always are.

You can't help it when you sack cities,” he replied, interrupting himself hastily with a sort of shame. ”The Ghoorkhas had the devil in them when I was down in the Mufti's quarter. They shot dozens of helpless learned people in the Chelon-ke-kucha--one who coached me up for my exams. And about twelve women in the house of a 'Professor of Arabic'--so he styled himself--jumped down the wall to escape--their own fears chiefly. For the men wanted loot, nothing else. That is the worst of it. The whole story from beginning to end seems so needless.

It is as if Fate----”

She interrupted him quietly, ”It has been Fate. Fate from beginning to end.”

He sat for an instant with a grave face, then looked up with a smile.

”Perhaps. It's rather _apropos des bottes_, Mrs. Erlton, but I wanted to ask you a question. Hadn't you a white c.o.c.katoo, once? When you first came here. I seem to recollect the bird making a row in the veranda when I used to drive up.”

Her face grew suddenly pale, she sat staring at him with dread in her eyes. ”Yes!” she replied with a manifest effort, ”I gave it to Sonny Seymour because--because it loved him----” She broke off, then added swiftly, eagerly, ”What then?”

”Only that I found one in the Palace to-day. There is a jolly marble latticed balcony overlooking the river. The King used to write his poetry there, they say. Well! I saw a bra.s.s cage hanging high up on a hook--there has been no loot in the precincts, you know, for the Staff has annexed them; I thought the cage was empty till I took it down from sheer curiosity, and there was a dead c.o.c.katoo.”

”Dead!” echoed Kate, with a quick smile of relief. ”Oh! how glad I am it was dead.”

Captain Morecombe stared at her. ”Poor brute!” he said under his breath. ”It was skin and bone. Starved to death. I expect they forgot all about it when they got really frightened. They are cruel devils, Mrs. Erlton.”

The Major had used the self-same words to Alice Gissing eighteen months before, and in the same connection. But, perhaps fortunately for Kate in her present state of nervous strain, that knowledge was denied to her. Even so the coincidence of the bird itself absorbed her.

”It had a yellow crest,” she began.

”Oh! then it couldn't have been yours,” interrupted Captain Morecombe, rather relieved, for he saw that he had somehow touched on a hidden wound. ”This one was green; yellowish green. I dare say the King kept pets like the Oude man----”

”It is dead anyhow,” said Kate hurriedly.

And the knowledge gave her an unreasoning comfort. To begin with, it seemed to her as if those fateful white wings, which had begun to overshadow her world on that sunny evening down by the Goomtee river, had ceased to hover over it. And then this rounding of the tale--for that the bird was little Sonny's favorite she did not doubt--made her feel that Fate would not leave that other portion of it unfinished.

The inevitable sequence would be worked out somehow. She would hear something. So once more she waited like many another; waiting with eyes strained past the last known deed of gallantry for the end which surely must have been n.o.bler still. When that knowledge came, she told herself, she would be content.

Yet there was another thing which held her to hope even more than this; it was the remembrance of John Nicholson's words, ”If ever you have a chance of making up.” They seemed prophetic; for he who spoke them was so often right. Men talking of him as he lingered, watching, advising, warning, despite dire agony of pain and drowsiness of morphia, said there was none like him for clear insight into the very heart of things.