Part 63 (2/2)
A sort of somber sullenness dulled the excitement of Tara's face. ”He is ill,” she replied laconically. Suddenly, however, she burst out again: ”The mem need not look so! I have done all--all she could have done. It is his fault. He will not take things. The mem can do no more; but I have come to her, so that none shall say, 'Tara killed the master.' So come. Come quick!”
Five minutes after Kate was swinging cityward in a curtained dhooli which Tara had left waiting on the road below, and trying to piece out a consecutive story from the odd jumble of facts and fancies and explanations which Tara poured into her ear between her swift abuse of the bearers for not going faster, and her a.s.sertion that there was no need to hurry. The mem need not hope to save the Huzoor, since everything had been done. It seemed, however, that Tiddu had taken back the letter telling of Kate's safety, and that in consequence of this the master had arranged to leave the city in a day or two, and Tiddu--born liar and gold grubber, so the Rajpootni styled him--had gone off at once to make more money. But on the very eve of his going back to the Ridge, Jim Douglas had been struck down with the Great Sickness, and after two or three days, instead of getting better, had fallen--as Tara put it--into the old way. So far Kate made out clearly; but from this point it became difficult to understand the reproaches, excuses, pathetic a.s.sertions of helplessness, and fierce declarations that no one could have done more. But what was the use of the Huzoor's talking English all night? she said; even a suttee could not go out when everyone was being shot in the streets. Besides, it was all obstinacy. The master could have got well if he had tried. And who was to know where to find the mem? Indeed, if it had not been for Sri Anunda's gardener, who knew all the gardener folk, of course, she would not have found the mem even now; for she would never have known which house to inquire at. Not that it would have mattered, since the mem could do nothing--nothing--nothing----
Kate, looking down on the bunch of white flowers which she had literally been too hurried to think of laying aside, felt her heart shrink. They were rather a fateful gift to be in her hands now. Had they come there of set purpose, and would the man who had done so much for her be beyond all care save those pitiful offices of the dead?
Still, even that was better than that he should lie alone, untended.
So, urged by Tara's vehement upbraidings, the dhooli-bearers lurched along, to stop at last. It seemed to Kate as if her heart stopped also. She could not think of what might lie before her as she followed Tara up the dark, strangely familiar stair. Surely, she thought, she would have known it among a thousand. And there was the step on which she had once crouched terror-stricken, because she was shut out from shelter within. But now Tara's fingers were at the padlock, Tara's hand set the door wide.
Kate paused on the threshold, feeling, in truth, dazed once more at the strange familiarity of all things. It seemed to her as if she had but just left that strip of roof aglow with the setting, sun, the bubble dome of the mosque beginning to flush like a cloud upon the sky. But Tara, watching her with resentful eyes, put a different interpretation on the pause, and said quickly:
”He is within. The mem was away, and it was quieter. But the rest is all the same--there is nothing forgotten--nothing.”
Kate, however, heard only the first words, and was already across the outer roof to gain the inner one. Tara, still beyond the threshold, watched her disappear, then stood listening for a minute, with a face tragic in its intensity. Suddenly a faint voice broke the silence, and her hands, which had been tightly clenched, relaxed. She closed the door silently, and went downstairs.
Meanwhile Kate, on the inner roof, had paused beside the low string bed set in its middle, scarcely daring to look at its burden, and so put hope and fear to the touchstone of truth. But as she stood hesitating, a voice, querulous in its extreme weakness, said in Hindustani:
”It is too soon, Tara; I don't want anything; and--and you needn't wait--thank you.”
He lay with his face turned from her, so she could stand, wondering how best to break her presence to him, noting with a failing heart the curious slackness, the lack of contour even on that hard string bed.
He seemed lost, sunk in it; and she had seen that sign so often of late that she knew what it meant. One thing was certain, he must have food--stimulants if possible--before she startled him. So she stole back to the outer roof, expecting to find Tara there, and Tara's help.
But the roof lay empty, and a sudden fear lest, after all, she had only come to see him die, while she was powerless to fight that death from sheer exhaustion, which seemed so perilously near, made her put down the bunch of flowers she held with an impatient gesture. What a fool she had been not to think of other things!
But as she glanced round, her eye fell on a familiar earthenware basin kept warm in a pan of water over the ashes. It was full of _chikken-brat_, and excellent of its kind, too. Then in a niche stood milk and eggs--a bottle of brandy, arrow-root---everything a nurse could wish for. And in another, evidently in case the brew should be condemned, was a fresh chicken ready for use. Strange sights these to bring tears of pity to a woman's eyes; but they did. For Kate, reading between the lines of poor Tara's confusion, began to understand the tragedy underlying those words she had just heard:
”I don't want anything, Tara. And you needn't wait, thank you.” She seemed to see, with a flash, the long, long days which had pa.s.sed, with that patient, polite negative coming to chill the half distraught devotion.
He must take something now, for all that. So, armed with a cup and spoon, she went back, going round the bed so that he could see her.
”It is time for your food, Mr. Greyman,” she said quietly; ”when you have taken some, I'll tell you everything. Only you must take this first.” As she slipped her hand under him, pillow and all, to raise his head slightly, she could see the pained, puzzled expression narrow his eyes as he swallowed a spoonful. Then with a frown he turned his head from her impatiently.
”You must take three,” she insisted; ”you must, indeed, Mr. Greyman.
Then I will tell you--everything.”
His face came back to hers with the faintest shadow of his old mutinous sarcasm upon it, and he lay looking at her deliberately for a second or two. ”I thought you were a ghost,” he said feebly at last; ”only they don't bully. Well let's get it over.”
The memory of many such a bantering reply to her insistence in the past sent a lump to her throat and kept her silent. The little low stool on which she had been wont to sit beside him was in its old place, and half-mechanically she drew it closer, and, resting her elbow on the bed as she used to do, looked round her, feeling as if the last six weeks were a dream. Tara had told truth. Everything was in its place. There were flowers in a gla.s.s, a spotless fringed cloth on the bra.s.s platter. The pity held in these trivial signs brought a fresh pang to her heart for that other woman.
But Jim Douglas, lying almost in the arms of death, was not thinking of such things.
”Then Delhi must have fallen,” he said suddenly in a stronger voice.
”Did Nicholson take it?”
”Yes,” she replied quietly, thinking it best to be concise and give him, as it were, a fresh grip on facts. ”It has fallen. The King is a prisoner, the Princes have been shot, and most of the troops move on to-morrow toward Agra.”
It epitomized the situation beyond the possibility of doubt, and he gave a faint sigh. ”Then it is all over. I'm glad to hear it. Tara never knew anything; and it seemed so long.”
Had she known and refused to tell, Kate wondered? or in her insane absorption had she really thought of nothing but the chance Fate had thrown in her way of saving this man's life? Yes! it must have been very long. Kate realized this as she watched the spent and weary face before her, its bright, hollow eyes fixed on the glow which was now fast fading from the dome. ”All over!” he murmured to himself. ”Well!
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