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.