On the Face of the Waters

BOOK III
CHAPTER II

DAWN.

The chill wind which comes with dawn swayed the tall grass beyond the river, and ruffling the calm stretches below the Palace wall died away again as an oldish man stepped out of a reed hut, built on a sandbank beside the boat-bridge, and looked eastward. He was a poojari, or master of ceremonial at the bathing-place where, with the first streak of light, the Hindoos came to perform their religious ablutions. So he had to be up betimes, in order to prepare the little saucers of vermilion and sandal and sacred gypsum needed in his profession; for he earned his livelihood by inherited right of hallmarking his fellow-creatures with their caste-signs when they came up out of the water. Thus he looked out over those eastern plains for the dawn, day after day. He looks for it still; this account is from his lips. And this dawn there was a cloud of dust no bigger than a man's hand upon the Meerut road. Someone was coming to Delhi.

But someone was already on the bridge, for it creaked and swayed, sending little shivers of ripples down the calm stretches. The poojari turned and looked to see the cause; then turned eastward again. It was only a man on a camel with a strange gait, bumping noiselessly even on the resounding wood. That was all.

The city was still asleep; though here and there a widow was stealing out in her white shroud for that touch of the sacred river without which she would indeed be accursed. And in a little mosque hard by the road from the boat-bridge a muezzin was about to give the very first call to prayer with pious self-complacency. But someone was ahead of him in devotion, for, upon the still air, came a continuous rolling of chanted texts. The muezzin leaned over the parapet, disappointed, to see who had thus forestalled him at heaven's gate; stared, then muttered a hasty charm. Were there visions about? The suggestion softened the disappointment, and he looked after the strange, wild figure, half-seen in the shimmering, shadowy dawn-light, with growing and awed satisfaction. This was no mere mortal, this green-clad figure on a camel, chanting texts and waving a scimitar. A vision has been vouchsafed to him for his diligence; a vision that would not lose in the telling. So he stood up and gave the cry from full lungs.

"Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!"

The echo from the rose-red fortifications took it up first; then one chanting voice after another, monotonously insistent.

"Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!"

And the city woke to another day of fasting. Woke hurriedly, so as to find time for food ere the sun rose, for it was Rumzân, and one-half of the inhabitants would have no drop of water till the sun set, to assuage the terrible drought of every living, growing thing beneath the fierce May sun. The backwaters lay like a steel mirror reflecting the gray shadowy pile of the Palace, the poojari—waist-deep in them—was a solitary figure flinging water to the sacred airts, absorbed in a thorough purification from sin.

Then from the serrated line of the Ridge came a bugle followed by the roll of a time gun. All the world was waking now. Waking to give orders, to receive them; waking to mark itself apart with signs of salvation; waking to bow westward and pray for the discomfiture of the infidel; waking to stand on parade and salute the royal standard of a ruler, hell-doomed inevitably, according to both creeds.

A flock of purple pigeons, startled by the sound, rose like cloud flakes on the light gray sky above the glimmering dome of the big mosque, then flew westward toward the green fields and groves on the further side of the town. For the roll of the gun was followed by a reverberating roll, and groan, and creak, from the boat-bridge. The little cloud on the Meerut road had grown into five troopers dashing over the bridge at a gallop recklessly. The poojari, busy now with his pigments, followed them with his eyes as they clattered straight for the city gate. They were waking in the Palace now, for a slender hand set a lattice wide. Perhaps from curiosity, perhaps simply to let in the cool air of dawn. It was a lattice in the women's apartments.

The poojari went on rubbing up the colors that were to bring such spiritual pride to the wearers, then turned to look again. The troopers, finding the city gate closed, were back again; clamoring for admittance through the low arched doorway leading from Selimgarh to the Palace. And as the yawning custodian fumbled for his keys, the men cursed and swore at the delay; for in truth they knew not what lay behind them. The two thousand from Meerut, or some of them, of course. But at what distance?

As a matter of fact only one Englishman was close enough to be considered a pursuer, and he was but a poor creature on foot, still dazed by a fall, striking across country to reach the Raj-ghât ferry below the city. For when Jim Douglas had recovered consciousness it had been to recognize that he was too late to be the first in Delhi, and that he could only hope to help in the struggle. And that tardily, for the Arab was dead lame.

So, removing its saddle and bridle to give it a better chance of escaping notice, he had left it grazing peacefully in a field and stumbled on riverward, intending to cross it as best he could; and so make for his own house in Duryagunj for a fresh horse and a more suitable kit. And as he plodded along doggedly he cursed the sheer ill-luck which had made him late.

For he was late.

The five troopers were already galloping through the grape-garden toward the women's apartments and the King's sleeping rooms.

Their shouts of "The King! The King! Help for the martyrs! Help for the Holy War!" dumfoundered the court muezzin, who was going late to his prayers in the Pearl Mosque; the reckless hoofs sent a squatting bronze image of a gardener, threading jasmine chaplets for his gods peacefully in the pathway, flying into a rose bush.

"The King! The King! Help! Help!"

The women woke with the cry, confused, alarmed, surprised; save one or two who, creeping to the Queen's room, found her awake, excited, calling to her maids. "Too soon!" she echoed contemptuously. "Can a good thing come too soon? Quick, woman—I must see the King at once—nay, I will go as I am if it comes to that."

"The physician Ahsan-Oolah hath arrived as usual for the dawn pulse-feeling," protested the shocked tirewoman.

"All the more need for hurry," retorted Zeenut Maihl. "Quick! Slippers and a veil! Thine will do, Fâtma; sure what makes thee decent——" She gave a spiteful laugh as she snatched it from the woman's head and passed to the door; but there she paused a second. "See if Hafzân be below. I bid her come early, so she should be. Tell her to write word to Hussan Askuri to dream as he never dreamed before! And see," her voice grew shriller, keener, "the rest of you have leave. Go! cozen every man you know, every man you meet. I care not how. Make their blood flow! I care not wherefore, so that it leaps and bounds, and would spill other blood that checked it." She clenched her hands as she passed on muttering to herself. "Ah! if he were a man—if his blood were not chilled with age—if I had someone——"

She broke off into smiles; for in the anteroom she entered was, man or no man, the representative of the Great Moghul.

"Ah, Zeenut!" he cried in tones of relief. "I would have sought thee." The trembling, shrunken figure in its wadded silk dressing gown paused and gave a backward glance at Ahsan-Oolah, whose shrewd face was full of alarm.

"Believe nothing, my liege!" he protested eagerly. "These rioters are boasters. Are there not two thousand British soldiers in Meerut? Their tale is not possible. They are cowards fled from defeat; liars, hoping to be saved at your expense. The thing is impossible."

The Queen turned on him passionately. "Are not all things possible with God, and is not His Majesty the defender of the faith!"

"But not defender of five runaway rioters," sneered the physician. "My liege! Remember your pension."

Zeenut Maihl glared at his cunning; it was an argument needing all her art to combat.

"Five!" she echoed, passing to the lattice quickly. "Then miracles are about—the five have grown to fifty. Look, my lord, look! Hark! How they call on the defender of the faith."

With reckless hand she set the lattice wide, so becoming visible for an instant, and a shout of "The Queen! The Queen!" mingled with that other of "The Faith! The Faith! Lead us, Oh! Ghâzee-o-din-Bahâdur-shâh, to die for the faith."

Pale as he was with age, the cry stirred the blood in the King's veins and sent it to his face.

"Stand back," he cried in sudden dignity, waving both counselors aside with trembling, outstretched hands. "I will speak mine own words."

But the sight of him, rousing a fresh burst of enthusiasm, left him no possibility of speech for a time. The Lord had been on their side, they cried. They had killed every hell-doomed infidel in Meerut! They would do so in Delhi if he would help! They were but an advance guard of an army coming from every cantonment in India to swear allegiance to the Pâdishah. Long live the King! and the Queen!

In the dim room behind, Zeenut Maihl and the physician listened to the wild, almost incredible, tale which drifted in with the scented air from the garden, and watched each other silently. Each found in it fresh cause for obstinacy. If this were true, what need to be foolhardy? time would show, the thing come of itself without risk. If this were true, decisive action should be taken at once; and would be taken.

But the King, assailed, molested by that rude interrupting loyalty, above all by that cry of the Queen, felt the Turk stir in him also. Who were these intruders in the sacred precincts, infringing the seclusion of the Great Moghul's women? Trembling with impotent passion, inherited from passions that had not been impotent, he turned to Ahsan-Oolah, ignoring the Queen, who, he felt, was mostly to blame for this outrage on her modesty. Why had she come there? Why had she dared to be seen?

"Your Majesty should send for the Captain of the Palace Guards and bid him disperse the rioters, and force them into respect for your royal person," suggested the physician, carefully avoiding all but the immediate present, "and your Majesty should pass to the Hall of Audience. The King can scarce receive the Captain-sahib here in presence of the Consort." He did not add—"in her present costume"—but his tone implied it, and the King, with an angry mortified glance toward his favorite, took the physician's arm. If looks could kill, Ahsan-Oolah would not, he knew, have supported those tottering steps far; but it was no time to stick at trifles.

When they had passed from the anteroom Zeenut Maihl still stood as if half stupefied by the insult. Then she dashed to the open lattice again, scornful and defiant; dignified into positive beauty for the moment by her recklessness.

"For the Faith!" she cried in her shrill woman's voice, "if ye are men, as I would be, to be loved of woman, as I am, strike for the Faith!"

A sort of shiver ran through the clustering crowd of men below; the shiver of anticipation, of the marvelous, the unexpected. The Queen had spoken to them as men; of herself as woman. Inconceivable!—improper of course—yet exciting. Their blood thrilled, the instinct of the man to fight for the woman rose at once.

"Quick, brothers! Rouse the guard! Close the gates! Close the gates!"

It was a cry to heal all strife within those rose-red walls, for the dearest wish of every faction was to close them against civilization; against those prying Western eyes and sniffing Western noses, detecting drains and sinks of iniquity. So the clamor grew, and faces which had frowned at each other yesterday sought support in each other's ferocity to-day, and wild tales began to pass from mouth to mouth. Men, crowding recklessly over the flower-beds, trampling down the roses, talked of visions, of signs and warnings, while the troopers, dismounting for a pull at a pipe, became the center of eager circles listening not to dreams, but deeds.

"Dost feel the rope about thy neck, Sir Martyr?" said a bitter jeering voice behind one of the speakers. And something gripped him round the throat from behind, then as suddenly loosed its hold, as a shrouded woman's figure hobbled on through the crowd. The trooper started up with an oath, his own hand seeking his throat involuntarily.

"Heed her not!" said a bystander hastily, "'tis the Queen's scribe, Hafzân. She hath a craze against men. One made her what she is. Go on! Havildar-jee. So thou didst cut the mem down, and fling the babe——"

But the doer of the deed stood silent. He did in truth seem to feel the rope about his neck. And he seemed to feel it till he died; when it was there.

But Hafzân had passed on, and there were no more with words of warning. So the clamor grew and grew, till the garden swarmed with men ready for any deed.

Ahsan-Oolah saw this, and laid a detaining hand on the Captain of the Guard's arm, who, summoned in hot haste from his quarters over the Lahore gate, came in by the private way, and proposed to go down and harangue the crowd.

"It is not safe, Huzoor," he cried. "My liege, detain him. These men by their own confession are murderers——"

The King looked from one to the other doubtfully. Someone must get rid of the rioters; yet the physician said truth.

"And if aught befall," added the latter craftily, "your Majesty will be held responsible."

The old man's hand fell instantly on the Englishman's arm. "Nay, nay, sahib! go not. Go not, my friend! Speak to them from the balcony. They will not dare to violate it."

So, backed by the sanctity of the Audience Hall of a dead dynasty, the Englishman stood and ordered the crowd to desist from profaning privacy in the name of the old man behind him; whose power he, in common with all his race, hoped and believed to be dead.

It was sufficient, however, to leave some respect for the royal person, and make the crowd disperse. To little purpose so far as peace and quiet went, since the only effect was to send a leaven of revolt to every corner of the Palace. And the Palace was so full of malcontents, docked of power, privilege, pensions; of all that makes life in a Palace worth living.

So the cry "Close the gates" grew wider. The dazed old King clung to the Englishman's arm imploring him to stay; but now a messenger came running to say that the Commissioner-sahib had called and left word that the Captain was to follow without delay to the Calcutta gate of the city. The courtiers, who had begun to assemble, looked at each other curiously; the disturbance, then, had spread beyond the Palace. Could, then, this amazing tale be true? The very thought sent them cringing round the old man, who might ere long be King indeed.

Yet as the Captain dashed at a gallop past the sentries standing calmly at the Lahore gate, there was no sign of trouble beyond, and he gave a quick glance of relief back at those cool quarters of his over the arched tunnel where the chaplain, his daughter, and her friend were staying as his guests. He felt less fear of leaving them when he saw that the city was waking to life as always, buckling down quietly to the burden and heat of a new day. It was now past seven o'clock, and the sunlight, still cool, was bright enough to cleave all things into dark or light, shade or shine. Up on the Ridge, the brigade, after listening to the sentence on the Barrackpore mutineers, was dispersing quietly; many of the men with that fiat of patience till the 31st in their minds, for the carriage-load of native officers returning from the Meerut court-martial had come into cantonments late the night before. On the roofs of the houses in the learned quarter women were giving the boys their breakfasts ere sending them off to school. The milkwomen were trooping in cityward from the country, the fruit-sellers and hawkers trooping out Ridge-way as usual. The postman going his rounds had left letters, written in Meerut the day before, at two houses. And Kate Erlton returning from early church had found hers and was reading it with a scared face. Alice Gissing, however, having had that laconic telegram, had taken hers coolly. The decision had had to be made, since nothing had happened; and Herbert had the right to make it. For her part, she could make him happy; she had the knack of making most men happy, and she herself was always content when the people about her were jolly. So she was packing boxes in the back veranda of the little house on the city wall.

Thus she did not see the man who, between six and seven o'clock, ran breathlessly past her house, as a shortcut to the Court House from the bridge, taking a message from the toll-keeper to the nearest Huzoor, the Collector, who was holding early office, that a party of armed troopers had come down the Meerut road, that more could be seen coming, and would the Huzoor kindly issue orders. That first and final suggestion of the average native subordinate in any difficulty.

Armed men? That might mean much or nothing. Yet scarcely anything really serious, or warning would have been sent. The Commissioner, anyhow, must be told. So the Collector flung himself on his horse, which, in Indian fashion, was waiting under a tree outside the Court House, and galloped toward Ludlow Castle. No need for that warning, however, for just by the Cashmere gate he met the man he sought driving furiously down with a mounted escort to close the city gates. He had already heard the news.[3]

Gathering graver apprehensions from this hasty meeting, the Collector was off again to warn the Resident, then still further to beg help from cantonments. No delay here, no hesitation. Simply a man on a horse doing his best for the future, leaving the present for those on the spot.

Nor was there delay anywhere. The Commissioner, calling by the way for the Captain of the Guard, the nearest man with men under him, was at the gate, giving on the bridge of boats, by half-past seven. The Resident, calling on his way at the magazine for two guns to sweep the bridge, joined him there soon after. Too late. The enemy had crossed, and were in possession of the only ground commanding the bridge. Nothing remained but to close the gate and keep the city quiet till the columns of pursuit from Meerut should arrive; for that there was one upon the road no one doubted. The very rebels clamoring at the gate were listening for the sound of those following footsteps. The very fanatics, longing for another blow or two at an infidel to gain Paradise withal ere martyrdom was theirs, listened too; for during that moonlit night the certainty of failure had been as myrrh and hyssop deadening them to the sacrifice of life.

So the little knot of Englishmen, looking hopefully down the road, looked anxiously at each other, and closed the river gate; kept it closed, too, even when the 20th claimed admittance from their friends the guard within. For the 38th regiment, whose turn it was for city work, was also rotten to the core.

But they could not close that way through Selimgarh, though it, in truth, brought no trouble to the town. The men who chose it being intriguers, fanatics, the better class of patriots more anxious to intrench themselves for the struggle within walls, than to swarm into a town they could not hope to hold. But there were others of different mettle, longing for loot and license. The 3d Cavalry had many friends in Delhi, especially in the Thunbi Bazaar; so they made for it by braving the shallow streams and shifting sandbanks below the eastern wall, and so gaining the Raj-ghât gate. Here, after compact with vile friends in that vile quarter, they found admittance and help. For what?

Between the bazaar and the Palace lay Duryagunj, full of helpless Christian women and children; and so, "Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed," the convenient Cry of Faith, was ready as, followed by the rabble and refuse once more, the troopers raced through the peaceful gardens, pausing only to kill the infidels they met. But like a furious wind gathering up all vile things in the street and carrying them along for a space, then dropping them again, the band left a legacy of license and sheer murder behind it, while it sped on to loot.

But now the cry of "Close the gates" rose once more, this time from the shopkeepers, the respectable quarters, the secluded alleys, and courtyards. And many a door was closed on the confusion and never opened again, except to pass in bare bread, for four long months.

"Close the gates! Close the gates! Close the gates!" The cry rose from the Palace, the city, the little knot of Englishmen looking down the Meerut road. Yet no one could compass that closing. Recruits swarmed in through Selimgarh to the Palace. Robbers swarmed in through the Raj-ghât gate to harry the bazaars. Only through the Cashmere gate, held by English officers and a guard of the 38th, no help came. The Collector arriving therein, hot from his gallop to cantonments, found more wonder than alarm; for death was dealt in Delhi by noiseless cold steel; and the main-guard having to be kept, in order to secure retreat and safety to the European houses around it, no one had been able to leave it. And all around was still peaceful utterly; even the roar of growing tumult in the city had not reached it. Sonny Seymour was playing with his parrot in the veranda, Alice Gissing packing boxes methodically. The Collector galloping past—as, scorning the suggestion that it was needless risk to go further, he replied briefly, that he was the magistrate of the town, and struck spurs to his horse—made some folk look up—that was all.

But he could scarcely make his way through the growing crowd, which, led by troopers, was beginning to close in behind the knot of waiting Englishmen. And once more they looked down the Meerut road as they heard that some time must elapse ere they could hope for reinforcement. The guns could not be got ready at a moment's notice; nor could the Cashmere gate guard leave the post. But the 54th regiment should be down in about—— In about what? No one asked; but those waiting faces listened as for a verdict of life and death.

In about an hour.

An hour! And not a cloud of dust upon the Meerut road.

"They can't be long, though, now," said the eldest there hopefully. "And Ripley will bring his men down at the double. If we go into the guard-house we can hold our own till then, surely."

"I can hold mine," replied a young fellow with a rough-hewn homely face. He gave a curt nod as he spoke to a companion, and together they turned back, skirting the wall, followed by an older, burlier man. They belonged to the magazine, and they were off to see the best way of holding their own. And they found it—found it for all time.

But fate had denied to those other brave men the nameless something which makes men succeed together, or die together. Within half an hour they were scattered helplessly. The Resident, after seeking support from the city police for one whose name had been a terror to Delhi for fifty years, and finding insult instead, was flying for dear life through the Ajmere gate to the open county; The Commissioner, who, after seizing a musket from a wavering guard beside him and—with the first shot fired in Delhi—shooting the foremost trooper dead, seems to have lost hope, with mutiny around and treason beside him, jumped into his buggy alone and drove off to those cool quarters above the Palace gate, as his nearest refuge. Their owner, the Captain sought like refuge by flinging himself into the cover of the dry moat, and creeping—despite injuries from the fall—along it till some of his men, faithful so far, seeing him unable for more, carried him to his own room.

The Collector! Strangely enough there is no record of what the Magistrate of the city did, thus left alone. He had been wounded by the crowd at first, and was no doubt weary after his wild gallopings. Still he, holding his own so far, managed to gain the same refuge, somehow. What else could he do alone? One thing we know he could not do. That is, mount the broad, curving flight of shallow stone stairs leading to the cool upper rooms. So the chaplain helped him; the chaplain who had "from an early hour been watching the advance of the Meerut mutineers through a telescope and feeling there was mischief in the wind."

Mischief indeed! and danger; most of all in those rose-red walls within which refuge had been sought. For the King was back in the women's apartments listening to the Queen's cozenings and Hussan Askuri's visions, when that urgent appeal to send dhoolies to convey the English ladies at the gate to the security of the harem reached him; reached him in Ahsan-Oolah's warning voice of wisdom. And he listened to both the wheedling ambition and the crafty policy with a half-hearing for something beyond it of pity, honor, good faith; while Hâfzan, pen in hand, sat with her large profoundly sad eyes fixed on the old man's face, waiting—waiting.

"If they come here—outcaste! infidel! I go," said Zeenut Maihl.

"Thou shalt go with a bowstring about thy neck, woman, if I choose," said the old King fiercely. "Write! girl—the Queen's dhoolies to the Lahore gate at once."

So, through the swarms of pensioners quarreling already over new titles and perquisites, through the groups of excited fanatics preparing for martyrdom about the Mosque, past Abool-Bukr, three parts drunk, boasting to ruffling blades of the European mistresses he meant to keep, the Queen's dhoolies went swaying out of the precincts; all yielding place to them. And beyond, in the denser, more dangerous crowd without, they passed easily; for those tinsel-decked, tawdry canopies, screened with sodden musk and dirt-scented curtains, were sacred.

Sacred even to the refuse and rabble of the city, the dissolute eunuchs, the mob of retainers, palace guards, and blood-drunk soldierly surging through that long arched tunnel by the Lahore gate, and hustling to get round that wide arch, and so, a few steps further, see the Commissioner standing at bay upon that wide curving red-stone stair that led upward. Standing and thinking of the women above; of one woman mostly. Standing, facing the wild sea of faces, waiting to see if that last appeal for help had been heard.

"Room! Room! for the Queen's dhoolies!"

The cry echoed above the roar of the crowd.

At last! He turned, to pass on the welcome news, perchance; but it was enough—that one waver of that stern face! There was a rush, a cry, a clang of steel on stone, a fall! And then up those wide curving stairs, like fiends incarnate, jostled a mad crew, elbowing each other, cursing each other, in their eagerness for that blow which would win Paradise.

Four crowns of glory in the first room, where the chaplain, the Captain, and the two English girls fell side by side. One in the next, where the Collector and Magistrate, weary and wounded, still lay alone.

"Way! Way! for the Queen's dhoolies!"

But they had come too late, as all things seemed to come too late on that fatal 11th of May.

Too late! Too late! The words dinned themselves into a horseman's brain, as he dashed out of the compound of a small house in Duryagunj and headed straight through the bazaar for the little house on the city wall by the Cashmere gate. And as he rode he shouted: "Deen! Deen!"

It was a convenient cry, and suited the trooper's dress he wore. He had had to shoot a man to get it, but he hoped to shoot many more when he had seen Alice Gissing in safety, and the Meerut column had come in. It could not be long now.

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